Julia's Chocolates

  “That is not true, Katie.” J.D.’s face paled.

  “I went to the bank today and closed our account and told Margo I was separating from you. I have my own account now.”

  “You have your own account?” He looked stricken. “You took my money?”

  “No, I took my money. The money I’ve been earning. There wasn’t much in there. You do know that rent is due again soon? I told the landlord that I am moving out today.”

  “Katie,” J.D. said, flustered, confused.

  “Well, you probably didn’t know that, because I always paid it, but I’m letting you know now.”

  “You take the money, you take the furniture, you take the kids.” He blinked, as if he’d just thought of something. “I gotta right to the kids, too.”

  “You have a right to the kids?” Katie laughed, so bitterly, I cringed. “Tell me, J.D. What’s tomorrow?”

  He looked totally confused, and at the same time crafty and sneaky. “What’s tomorrow?”

  “You don’t know what tomorrow is?”

  “What is this, a quiz?”

  “Yes, it’s a quiz. Why is tomorrow special?”

  “I don’t have time for this, Katie,” he muttered, but he looked like a rat caught in a trap.

  “Tomorrow is Haley’s birthday, but you didn’t remember, did you? You never have. And you don’t need to anymore. The children hate you, J.D., as I do. You want this house, that’s fine. It’s yours for as long as you can pay the rent. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re leaving.”

  “You can’t leave, Katie!” J.D. yelled, pointing a crutch at her and swinging it back and forth. “You can’t leave!”

  “I am leaving, J.D. Call Deidre. I’m sure she would be happy to come and take care of you.”

  J.D. flushed.

  “In fact, I’m sure she’ll find you more and more attractive each day. Especially if she has to work full-time so that you can sit and listen to your stereo. And I’m sure she’ll love cooking for you, and cleaning, and doing your laundry, and if you criticize everything she does and tell her she’s a tramp and useless and you can’t ever figure out why you got together with her, well, I’m sure that Deidre will stick around for more of the same.”

  J.D. finally realized when Katie picked up a stack of books to take with her that she was serious.

  “Katie, now look here, honey…”

  “It’s too late for that,” she snapped at him. “Way too late. You haven’t called me ‘honey’ in almost ten years.”

  He hung his head, and I could almost hear that tiny pea-brain of his whirring away. His remorse was so fake I wanted to laugh. “I’ve made mistakes, Katie. Big ones. I’m a sinner. As God as my witness, I admit that I’ve sinned. Sinned badly against you, and I’m praying about it, I really am, and I know you can’t forgive me right now, but I’ll work every day to make it up to you.”

  Katie froze. “What will you do to make it up to me?”

  J.D.’s eyes blinked furiously. “I’ll do anything,” he finally announced.

  “Well, really, specifically, J.D. what are you going to do make it up to me?”

  J.D. bit his lip. He thought. I could see him thinking real hard. “I’ll get a job.”

  Katie laughed.

  “Of course you will. And soon I’ll see pigs jumping over the stars. Good-bye, J.D. Good luck.”

  “Katie!” he yelled, shock turning to hate on his face. “Katie! You call yourself a Christian, but you’re no Christian. A Christian wouldn’t walk out on her injured husband leaving him with no money!”

  “You’re wrong, J.D. God helps those who help themselves. I am helping myself to a peaceful life, a life without abuse, which is what God intended me to have. My only problem is that I’ve been so busy taking care of the kids and you and cleaning houses and running my home that I couldn’t hear God’s voice telling me to get the hell away from you.”

  “You bitch,” J.D. whispered. “You total bitch.”

  J.D. screamed in pain when Stash grabbed his neck again. Then he slumped to the couch.

  Katie grabbed a set of coasters off a coffee table.

  “You can’t take those!” J.D. squeaked at her. “You can’t take nothing! This is my stuff, too. I’ll make you pay for this, Katie. You’re gonna pay. You can’t just walk out when I can’t pay the rent!”

  She headed for the door. “J.D., I have supported you for years. You have drunk through every penny you ever made, and much of the money that I made. You have been a lousy father to the children. I mistakenly believed the children needed a father, and forevermore I will regret my own stupidity, my own fear of being alone. You left me and the kids to fend for ourselves years ago. And, yes, I can walk out on you. Watch me. I’m doing it right now.”

  She held her head up high and walked out.

  “Do you have a moment, Mr. Margold?” Scrambler asked, his voice so even, so well-modulated that if I couldn’t understand English, I’d have thought he was offering some soothing advice on how to grow orchids. “You’re a right fine major loser, and if you come on Stash’s property even by only one foot I will be compelled to break your neck with one hand. I learned how to do this when I was asked to take a brief sojourn at the state pen for an extended period a few years ago. A criminal, as you called me earlier, has special talents in that area. Have we got that clear, Mr. Margold? We do? Wonderful. You have a pleasant day.”

  J.D’s mouth fell open, and he sagged further into the couch.

  Scrambler turned to follow Katie out, a box on his muscled shoulder, but he stopped, took a few paces back toward J.D.

  I saw J.D. swallow hard.

  “Oh, one more thing, if I may, Mr. Margold? If you come near Katie, ever, I will feel compelled to snap your spine. We’re clear on that, too? Again, splendid.”

  J.D. made a choking sound.

  Scrambler turned toward the door, then held up one finger, his voice as smooth as hot buttered rum. “Oh dear, Mr. Margold. I forgot the most important rule of all. If you harm any one of your children, ever, or try to take them away from Katie, I will personally remove all of your limbs and put you in a little lake I know intimately up in the mountains. We’re still clear? Fabulous, Mr. Margold, fabulous. Again, you have a pleasant day.”

  “I could call the police on you, Scrambler, and tell them what you said to me,” J.D. whispered. “I could tell.”

  “I didn’t hear Scrambler say anything, not anything at all,” Stash said, eyes open and innocent. “Did you, Dave?”

  “Nope. I didn’t hear a thing. Not one thing except that J.D. seems to think it’s okay to leave his wife and kids for another woman and clear out the checking account before he leaves, and then he uses foul language in the presence of women. Funny thing is, I know Carl Sandstrom and Doug Meachan down at the police station, ya know those two men, J.D.? Carl’s been married to Julie for forty years and has four boys, as you know.” J.D. seemed to be getting smaller before my eyes.

  Dave slapped his forehead. “Of course you know that! I remember when you tried to pick on Carl, Jr., and got the tar beat out of you. Anyhow, Carl and Julie’s anniversary is the same as me and my wife’s, and we celebrate together each year. I bring my chili, Carl bakes the bread and whips up a salad. The wives get the dessert together. It’s a real special night for all of us. And you know Doug Meachan, too, his assistant? Doug’s been married for twenty-five years and is the part-time youth pastor at church.”

  I watched J.D. shrivel right into that couch.

  “Anyhow, those two men don’t take too well to men who walk out on their families, but you should feel free to go to them with your complaints. Fact is, when I see Carl and Doug at church on Sunday, I’ll tell them how you feel your wife has done you a wrong by leaving you after years of abuse and neglect and your chronic drinking. Those men will be particularly sympathetic when they hear you cleaned out the checking account before abandoning your children to go after your rather slutty-looking girlfriend, I’m sure.”
r />   Now J.D. looked like a shriveled man who was about to vomit.

  “That’s a fine idea, Dave,” Stash said. “A fine idea. You always do reach out to help people in your own godly way.”

  “Yes, you do, Dave,” said Scrambler. “God’s word has certainly reached your heart. You even put out your hand to the worst sinners among us.”

  “I do my best,” Dave drawled. “I do my best. Be sure to tell Carl and Doug your problems, J.D. Right after church would be the perfect time. I’m sure they’ll have great sympathy for a drunk, abusive adulterer.”

  We filed out. I met Katie on the porch. She had been listening in, and her eyes sparkled like, well, like sparklers on the Fourth of July. Later she told me that she felt lighter than she had felt since the day she met J.D.

  “I felt positively skinny,” she told me. “Sticklike, even.”

  That night I made chocolates in the shapes of tiny bunnies with pink frosted ears and a fluffy looking tail made from icing. Then I made chocolates in the shapes of miniature whales with pink tongues and little blue icing eyes. Next I made chocolates in the shapes of little brown cats with licorice bows around their necks and green frosting eyes.

  I must have been in an animal mood.

  At 2:00 in the morning I stepped back and studied my handiwork. I must say I was pleased with myself. So I ate a bunny and a whale and a cat. Scrumptious. My chocolate is rich and dense and yet tastes so light and creamy it makes your mouth want to orgasm.

  The fair was in three days. I had made enough chocolate to feed an army. I knew there was no way I could sell all my chocolates, and I was already thinking of places I could give them to. I would find out if there were any women’s shelters anywhere within a hundred-mile radius and drive there with the extras.

  I had spent a small fortune for all the ingredients, but making masses of chocolate animals, chocolate brownies with chips, fudge with a hint of mint, chocolate cookies with creamy chocolate insides and an array of other chocolate desserts had given me a break from my mind’s devouring fears of imminent death.

  And that in itself had made the whole endeavor worthwhile.

  I cleaned up the kitchen until it damn near sparkled like one of those detergent commercials. Some women can’t stand cleaning, but I often find the rote motions soothing. I can let my mind wander.

  And of course it wandered, for the hundredth time that day, to Dean Garrett.

  First I let my mind think of how utterly gorgeous he was. Then I told myself to think of the man, not the package.

  I knew that Dean Garrett was an honest man. Plus, he was interesting, and surprisingly easy to talk to once I got past being scared. He’s strong and smart and laid-back and yet intense, too.

  But I didn’t really know him. He hid much of himself, letting me see only what he wanted me to see. As a major secret-keeper myself, I could recognize the same traits in someone else.

  I knew there was more to him than he was sharing, and I think he knew it. There was more to me than I was sharing, and I knew he knew it.

  I almost smiled. We were quite a pair.

  But the time hadn’t come to spill our guts, and maybe it never would. It seems to be that way sometimes. Somehow, some way, it’s okay to take a person where they are at that moment. Everyone has baggage. Is it really necessary to unwrap and dissect all of the baggage in detail?

  With Dean Garrett, I was comfortable with what I knew. And I felt comfortable with whatever baggage would arrive.

  Although my mind was willing to do all this introspection, my body was now throbbing at the very thought of a Naked Dean. And though whenever he was around I had to think about things like Albert-Einstein hair and the taste of chalk and dogs who slobber and complex mathematical equations so I wouldn’t have a tiny orgasm right there and then, I decided, on an intellectual level, that I could not have sex with the man.

  I had jumped into one man’s bed, refused to see what a psychopath he was, and now was being hunted down like prey by said psychopath. I was not in any emotional shape to handle another man, no matter how kind and smart and upright he appeared to be.

  I sat down when the kitchen was clean and stared at the chocolates on the counters. The rest were piled up in boxes in Lydia’s spare bedroom. Each would be sold with a white doily. On every single doily, “Julia’s Chocolates” was printed in gold.

  My body wanted to make love to Dean, to have and to hold him. My mind said forget it. For now.

  I sighed heavily, then suddenly, maybe because of the late hour, or my lustful thoughts about Dean, or my fear of Robert, or the fact that I’d had little sleep the night before, my heart raced and my breath caught in my throat. The Dread Disease had arrived again, but this time, I stood up and grabbed the counter with my hands and shook my legs back and forth as fast as I could. I had learned that walking or running in place—just moving—could sometimes make the attack lessen.

  So I shook my legs, and I started counting chocolate animals, and I thought about all the chickens and Aunt Lydia and Stash and the Psychic Night Girlfriends group and Shawn and Carrie Lynn, and before I knew it I was breathing normally again, with only a fine line of sweat beading my brow.

  Maybe I was truly going to learn how to control the Dread Disease. Now, wouldn’t that be something?

  I sank back down into my seat and stared out at the black night, proud of myself for a millisecond until I remembered Robert could be out there now, looking in, waiting and watching, wanting to put his hands around my neck and squeeze.

  I turned my back to the window, thought about target practice and how good I was getting.

  I checked the locks again, turned off the lights, and crawled into bed.

  Sleep came quick and deep.

  18

  As always, it was dark when I woke up a few days later. Dark when I ran my paper route, dark when I kissed Dean outside his house, his arms pulling me close until I was happily breathless. Dark when he leaned in my car and kissed me again and again. Dark when he told me he would see me later that day. Dark when I drove off, my lips tingling, my body on fire.

  But the darkness had a pink and orange glow to it by the time I returned to the house. Aunt Lydia and I waved at Scrambler and Dave as they passed by our house en route to the chickens and pigs in the back. They would care for the animals this morning.

  Aunt Lydia and I had better things to do.

  Without saying much at all, which is unusual for us, we packed up every single piece of chocolate I had made over the last weeks and packed all the chocolate desserts into boxes so they wouldn’t squish each other. I grabbed another stack of doilies, and another stack of gold stickers that said “Julia’s Chocolates.” Back again we went to the house, back again to the truck, our arms full of chocolates. Then we started on the egg cartons, dozens and dozens of them, filled with white, light brown, light blue, and light green eggs. We piled them into a pickup we had borrowed from Stash.

  When dawn was stretching lazily overhead, we drove to the center of town. Unlike other days, the center of town was a hive of activity. Friends and neighbors waved as we parked our trucks. We set up our tables, then used drills to set up the fabricated storefronts that Stash had hammered together with plywood and Lara had painted.

  In my humble opinion, Stash and Lara had outdone themselves. My storefront was cut like a chocolate truffle. Lara had painted it, of course, a rich chocolate color, complete with “Julia’s Chocolates” painted in gold at the top. Stash had made Lydia’s storefront look like a giant egg, and Lara had painted hers a light blue with little chickens and roosters and chicks around the edges. On the top it read “Wild Eggs From the Ladies.”

  Golden’s fiftieth annual town fair actually attracted townspeople from fifty miles away and from the city. The farmers sold fruits and vegetables, apple cider, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, corn, and other veggies. The craftspeople and artists sold their wares. Stash told me that Minnie Bachman sold her nasal-cleaning horseradish and told everyone who
bought from her that she had learned how to make authentic horseradish from her German grandmother.

  The high school band played in the afternoon and early evening. Three churches sent their choirs over. Old men played the harmonica. Young men and women sang their rap songs. Bernie, the town’s dentist, showed off his juggling skills to the children. Elizabeth, his wife, painted kids’ faces. Henry, their son, made animal hats out of balloons.

  And every single townsperson showed up and stayed all day, according to Aunt Lydia. Fireworks were the last hurrah.

  I grabbed several boxes from the truck and put them behind my display. I hoped someone would buy my chocolates, I really did.

  The fireworks shot through the night sky.

  Aunt Lydia and I, from our booths, could hear the crowd oohing and ahhing. Literally. Someone had started yelling, “OOOHHH AHHHHH,” and everyone had joined in unison. They’re a bunch of hams in Golden, I thought, and then I laughed, pure and sweet.

  A bunch of hams who had loved my chocolate.

  I had completely, utterly sold out. Every single piece of chocolate, every single dessert. Sold.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said to Aunt Lydia, pushing my curls off my forehead.

  “I do.” She hugged me, then swatted my rear. “I do.”

  In the sixteen hours I had spent at the fair today, neighbors, friends, the mayor, the fire chief, the fire chief’s wife, their children, teachers in town, the school principal—almost everyone I had met in Golden—bought my chocolates. Most had come back more than once.

  Caroline came by, but she looked upset, distracted, her right eye winking spasmodically. “I’m getting…something’s wrong,” she said shakily. “I can’t place it. I don’t know who. Or where. But something is very wrong…. I’m seeing children. They’re hurt, but I can’t place them. Their faces are in shadows.” She waved her hand, tried to smile, looked ill. I hugged her, then she left. I momentarily felt sick and worried, but then a crowd came up and I turned back to selling my chocolates.

  I had not taken a break except to pee.