Miracles, I thought, do happen. Even to stressed out, plump, scared newspaper-delivery/Story Hour leading/ex-fiancées on the run.
Yes, indeedy, they do.
On Sunday morning I ran my paper route. Dean met me at his newspaper box. I got out of the car and, with a flourish, handed him the newspaper. He took the newspaper, dropped it on the ground, and gave me a kiss. “Congratulations, honey,” he said. He looked so happy for me all I could do was blush at him. “I told you that you make the best chocolate on the planet. But I guess it took hundreds of people to reassure you of that fact,” he said, kissing me again, his smile easy and suggestive and tasty, so tasty.
He had been at the fair, but I hadn’t seen him much. One time he came by with Stash and Dave. They all bought chocolate. The next time he’d come around, I’d sold out of his favorites. He bought my last box of fudge. He had helped me load my boxes into the pickup that night, making me kiss him every time we passed each other.
I must say, it was the most erotic box-loading experience I’d ever had.
“Thank you.” I almost wiggled with delight. “I’ll make you more black-bottom pie.”
“You do that.” He kissed me again, and I hate to sound like a wimpy woman in a romance novel, but my knees actually did feel weak. “Why don’t you serve it to me for dessert after dinner, and then after dessert we could have a sleepover?”
A sleepover? I smiled. Oh yeah. I’d like to do that, but since the very thought struck fear deep into my heart, I couldn’t. Make love to Dean Garrett? To that he-man? Me? Cannonball Butt? Possum? Cold-as-an-icicle-in-bed? I had too many sex fears to make love to Dean.
“Even the very thought of making love scares you, doesn’t it?” Dean asked.
I actually heard myself gasp in his arms. I put my forehead against his shoulder and closed my eyes. Oh, that man knew me too well.
“You’re not ready yet, are you, Julia.” He said it as a statement, not a question, and I knew exactly what he was talking about.
My body was ready. My mind was not. My heart was not. My emotional health was certainly not. I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”
He kissed my hand, then clasped it between both of his. “There’s nothing to be sorry about, sweetheart.”
The endearment made my breath catch in a good way, and I looked him straight in those blue, blue eyes. His lashes were black and thick. This was a man who would still be gorgeous at ninety years of age.
“When you’re ready, you’re ready, Julia.”
I nodded. The problem with getting older is that you realize that unbridled lust can get you into serious, serious trouble. You get pregnant with the wrong guy, and your child has a lousy father for the rest of his/her life. You marry a jerk and get stuck. You waste your life trying to turn what should have been just a one-night stand into a relationship that really was never meant to be.
Lust is a great feeling. It sharpens everything in life. Rainbows are brighter. Snowflakes more intricate. Ice cream creamier. The little annoying things in life are even covered in this lust, and they simply cease to bother you any more. All you can think about is sex, and when you see that person you feel those smoldering sex embers in your body flare into a burning inferno.
And then, well, it’s over.
And you get to deal with the aftermath.
But this time, this once, I, Julia Bennett, was going to be smart. I wanted Dean Garrett more than I had wanted any man in my life ever. But I wasn’t going to jump, wasn’t going to mess myself up further.
“I don’t feel strong enough to handle you,” I said, then nearly choked. That hadn’t come out the way I’d planned.
“What? I think you can handle me just fine.” He laughed and hugged me closer, tipping my head up with his palm.
I avoided looking at his eyes, though. The image of me “handling” him was too much. I tried again.
“What I meant, Dean, is that I don’t feel…”
“You don’t feel what?” His tone sharpened, and I instantly knew he thought I was breaking things off with him, that he thought I was telling him I didn’t feel that he was right, that we were right.
His arms dropped, and I suddenly felt cold and alone.
“I’m not saying this right at all, Dean. I…I…” Please, words, I begged, come out of my mouth the right way. “I don’t feel that I have a lot to offer you right now.”
He shook his head. “You have everything to offer me.”
“No, I don’t. I have a paper route, for heaven’s sake, and you’re an attorney….”
“Julia, that stuff doesn’t matter to me at all, not at all.”
“But it matters to me. You’re so…so strong all the time. And you’re smart, and you’re obviously an incredibly successful attorney, and I’m, Dean, I’m a wreck, I really am.” I couldn’t even tell him how much of a wreck I was. How could I? How could I explain to him that I had a Dread Disease and would probably be a corpse in only a matter of months?
“I’m not sophisticated like you, I don’t live in a world like yours. I don’t have a background like yours, and I don’t feel like I’m all together, if that makes any sense. I’m a mess, my life is a mess. I can’t meet you on even ground right now. I have to get myself in order before I get involved with anyone else. Am I making even the slightest bit of sense?”
Dean Garrett looked at me long and hard. “I think you’re saying that you recenlty broke things off with a violent fiancé, and you’re still reeling from that experience and need time to recover. In addition, you want to get yourself to a place where you’re secure and steady before you get involved with me or anyone else.”
I marveled. I did not know that men like Dean existed on this planet. “Yes, that’s about it. I need to be independent, I need to find myself, find out what I want to do, get a real job…. I’m sorry, Dean. I want you so bad I feel like I’m going to explode, but it’s just not the right time for me. I would wreck it. I would wreck us. And I can’t handle any more trauma right now.”
He nodded. “I understand. I do, Julia.” He kissed me on the forehead, then cupped my face and kissed me on the cheeks and landed a sweet, warm one on my mouth that went on and on and on until I felt all my good intentions slipping away….
“Julia,” he tipped my face up to his and waited until I opened my eyes. “I’m not going to push you into anything. But I’m not waiting forever, either.”
I nodded.
“It’s not my intent to be alone the rest of my life,” he said, his voice low and quiet. “I know you’re scared, but I give you my word that I will never, ever hurt you.”
I nodded, wondering if I’d made a huge, enormous, gigantic, terrible mistake in not going into Dean’s house right then and there and insisting we spend the next three days in bed getting to know each other.
But I knew I was right. I was too screwed up to be involved with anyone. That’s, again, the problem with getting older: you don’t throw caution to the wind, because you know that wind can come back and hit you in the face so hard you land on your butt and can’t get up for years.
I put my hands on his chest and took a deep breath. I would sound stupid, but as this is not abnormal for me, what the heck. “I don’t understand…”
“You don’t understand what?”
How in the world did I say this without sounding pathetic and needy and like I was digging for compliments? “I don’t understand why someone like you would be interested in me in the first place.”
There. I said it. The silence was deafening.
And then he cupped my face with both of his hands. “Look at me, Julia.”
I looked.
“You are the first person I’ve really been able to talk to my entire life. I relate to you more than you know. You’re a strong person, Julia, and you’re not giving yourself enough credit for that strength. Yes, you have a paper route, but I see that as a strength. You wanted to make money, you couldn’t find a decent job here, so you took what you could g
et and didn’t complain. And you found yourself another job, too, which as I hear it, is a huge success. Your Story Hours are mobbed. Kids love you. Their parents love you.
“You help your Aunt Lydia for hours every day, and a bunch of women in town already love you and call you their friend. You joined your Aunt Lydia in her one-woman crusade to help people in town who are struggling by bringing them meals and food. You make me think. You make me laugh. You bring a calm and peace to my life that I’ve not had.” He kissed me, sweet and gentle. “Plus, I love your chocolates. You’re an incredible woman, Julia, and I hope one day you realize it.”
Okay, I asked myself, now why in hell aren’t you in bed with this guy right this minute? Please explain it to me again, you fool.
“And when you do realize it, I hope that you’ll come looking for me.”
Sometimes life just takes the words right out of your mouth and all you can do is nod, and that’s what I did.
And then I turned to Dean Garrett, put both arms around his neck and kissed him.
When the kiss was over he put his forehead against mine and held me close. I kissed him on the cheek, got into my ratty car, and drove off.
I tried real hard not to cry.
When I got home, I helped Aunt Lydia in the yard, then she and I sat down to a celebratory meal of omelets with Katie, who had brought the kids with her, and a cinnamon coffee cake, and with Caroline, who had brought a spice loaf and banana bread. Katie hugged me, Caroline kissed my cheek, and the kids danced around me calling me The Chocolate Lady and Aunt Lydia, The Egg Lady.
Aunt Lydia had sold all her eggs, too. The city folk had been out in force, and they had loved the different eggshell colors. “Doesn’t take much to turn them on, does it?” Lydia said.
Luke showed me that he was wearing four T-shirts, then pulled two pairs of pants down to show me he was also wearing three pairs of Superhero boxer underwear. Logan circled me in his Spiderman outfit, arms out at his side. Haley jumped up and down, and the purple glittering eyeballs on her antennas bebopped about on her head, and Hannah, dressed in black as usual, looked happier than I’d seen her in a long time.
Lara darted in to our Egg and Chocolate Celebration after parking her car behind the barn, telling us she had told Jerry she was sick and couldn’t go to church today. “I have to be home before the last sermon ends,” she said. She gave me a huge hug and a bouquet of flowers from her garden. She gave Aunt Lydia a bouquet, too. Then she brought out two bottles of champagne.
My Psychic Night friends and Katie’s kids toasted me, and we laughed our way through breakfast. Lara had a few too many, but Katie was going to drive her home. We did not know how she would explain the smell of champagne on her breath to her husband, but we didn’t much worry—we were having too much fun.
The laughter stopped only when we got the phone call from the state police.
Hospitals have always made me feel ill. Doctors have always made me nervous. It does not take a psychotherapist to figure out why I avoid hospitals as if they’re covered in germs from the Black Plague.
I ended up in hospitals several times as a child. Once after one of my mother’s boyfriends knocked me across the room and I hit my face straight on and blacked out. A neighbor, high as a kite on pot, but a kindly soul nonetheless, was there when it happened. Over my mother’s objections, the drugged-out neighbor called the ambulance.
I stayed in the hospital for five days. The boyfriend fled the state, and my mother admonished me for making him mad when she finally visited me on the third day.
“You always, always piss him off, Julia. Surely you can learn to keep your mouth shut around men when they’re already in a bad mood? You didn’t need to butt your big nose into our business.”
“But, Momma, he was hitting you!” I whispered through swollen lips the size of bananas.
“Haven’t you learned nothin’ yet? They all got tempers, and you can’t make a fuss every time you get a little knocked around.” She drew out a cigarette, but a nurse, who was making sounds in her throat during the whole visit as if she was disgusted with my mother, told her to put it out. Now.
“I can take care of myself, Julia, you just make things worse for me. Look what you done now. Trayce’s gone to who knows where because of you. If you looked at yourself more often in the mirror I would think you would be focusing on yourself instead of me. You don’t get rid of your holier than thou attitude and do something with all that hair, there ain’t gonna be any man who will come near you.”
“Good,” I muttered. Very good.
“What did you say?” My mother snapped. “Are you giving me some of your lip?”
“No, Momma,” I said quickly, my head starting to ache again, as if a thousand needles were being pounded into it. “No Momma, no lip.”
“The police came lookin’ for him ’cause of you, Julia, and now I ain’t got my man. What do you have to say for yourself?”
I just looked at my mother, sitting across the room from me in a tight pink dress, her white-blond hair piled on top of her head, her makeup thick. She was working as a dancer at that point, which was where she had met this latest creep.
“Well, what do you have to say for yourself, girl? I get ya a roof over your head, your clothes, your food….” she went on and on about what she provided, and my neck was aching and my head was pounding as if needles were being poked into it with a sledgehammer, and I didn’t want to argue with her.
But if I had had the energy to argue, I would have pointed out that the women at the local church had been bringing me their children’s clothing, including a brand-new coat they’d all pitched in to buy, and the school gave me a free breakfast and lunch every day. I often got dinner at one of two neighbors who felt sorry for me: a gay man who was trying to become a ballerina and who had lots of nice artsy-type friends who were always kind to me, and a transsexual who worked as a mechanic by day and wandered around town like a woman by night. The transsexual made great meatloaf, spaghetti and meatballs, and cous cous.
“Well? I’m talkin’ to you, Julia. Your smart mouth lost me another man, so what do you say to your momma?”
“I think I’ll say that it’s time for you to go, Miss Nudley,” one of the nurses said, having caught the tail-end of my mother’s diatribe. The nurse stood straight and tall by my bedside. She had gray hair and a young, flushed face. I could see she hated my mother.
“You can’t tell me what to do,” my mother protested, her eyes wandering down the woman from head to foot. It was her “you sure are ugly and worthless” look that she had down to a science. But it didn’t faze the nurse.
“You may not be aware of it, Ms. Nudley, but your daughter suffered severe injuries when your boyfriend threw her across the room. She has a concussion, bruising—”
“Oh, please!” My mother cut in. “The doctor already told me about her injuries. She’ll be fine. And I’ll leave when I damn well want.”
The room was starting to swirl around for me now, as my mother’s hatred seemed to seep into me like the stuff in the IV that was plugged into my arm.
“No, ma’am,” the nurse said. “You. Will. Go. Now.”
At that, I opened my eyes.
“You fat bitch,” my mother said. “This is my daughter, and you can’t order me around. Get out of this hospital room. Get. Out. Now.” My mother mimicked the nurse’s voice, her little eyes narrowed.
The nurse reached down and pressed a button near my bed, not taking her eyes off my mother. Within a millisecond I heard feet rushing down the corridor, then three men entered the room.
One of them, young and handsome, looked to the nurse. “What is it, Nora?” he asked, his voice kind, his eyes kinder.
“Ms. Nudley is overstaying her welcome, I believe,” the nurse said, her tone calm, but I could hear that hard steel in her voice. “She is angry with her daughter because the police are after her boyfriend, Trayce”—she said the name Trayce as if he were vermin—“because he threw our pa
tient, Julia here, across the room, severely injuring her face and chest. Ms. Nudley is upset because now she has lost ‘her man.’”
My mother’s face became beet-red with fury. I wanted to cry. If Momma was pissed off she would take it out on me. Here, at home, wherever, somehow it would be my fault.
My mother took a deep breath, stood up, straightened her dress, and stuck her ample bosoms out. She took several steps toward the young doctor and the two other men with him, who I assumed were also doctors.
She smiled, a smile I’m sure she thought was sexy. “Doctor.” She looked at his name tag. “May I call you David?”
“You can call me Dr. Horner,” the young man replied.
My mother blinked, surprised. This was not the response she usually got from all the men she had met before in any number of bars.
She tried that smile again. “We have a misunderstanding here. This nurse”—she shot a venomous look at Nora—“is overstepping her boundaries. I am here to visit my daughter. This nurse is telling me to leave. Surely you can inform the nurse that it is not her job to decide who comes and goes here at this hospital?”
My mother’s voice was smooth as honey. Even her speech was different. But she could do that. She would sound one way in front of me and her boyfriends, the speech of her rough childhood, but she also knew how to sound formal and polite, slightly southern, which I assumed she got from her grandmother, who spent a lot of time raising my mother when her mother ran off with various abusive men for months at a time.
My mother blinked her eyes, holding her hands behind her back so the doctor could get a better look at those huge boobs.
The doctor smiled at my mother, and I figured she had won over another man. And just when my mother smiled back and swayed left and right a bit, kind of like a little girl might do, his smile dropped.
“Miss? Mrs.?”
“Oh, honey,” my mother said. “You can call me Candy.”
He paused, as if he didn’t like that name. “Candy it is, then. Your daughter has been here for three days. I know we talked on the phone the first day she was here, but I don’t believe you’ve been to see her until now, is that correct?”