Julia's Chocolates

  “We’re waiting for a call,” Dean said, smooth as molasses.

  Ms. Cuddly flushed more. Now she really did look like a cherry. “From who?”

  “From Teresa Gonzales, who is the head of Children’s Services for this state.”

  Within three minutes, Ms. Cuddly was glancing down at her waistline, where she had hung her phone on her belt. She checked the number, grabbed the phone, and pushed a button. “Hello, Teresa,” she said, her voice sounding sick and wobbly. “Yes. Yes I am. No, I did not recommend that they could take the children…. Well, because of the mother’s wishes…. Yes, the mother is in jail…. assault…meth user…. Uh…uh…her record is a bit extensive…well, quite extensive…. Yes…. yes…I’ll do that.”

  She hung up. Coughed. “It appears there’s been a change of plans,” she began.

  When Shawn and Carrie Lynn were released from the hospital, Aunt Lydia, Stash, and I brought them straight home.

  The chickens proved to be great therapy for Shawn and Carrie Lynn. So were Melissa Lynn and her little piglets, who took an instant liking to the children. Carrie Lynn got a real kick out of the fact that she and Melissa Lynn shared a name.

  And the birds that were let loose in the house in the morning and evening for their daily hour flight also brought smiles to their faces.

  But it was the year-old golden retriever that Dean gave the children that brought the most smiles. Shawn and Carrie Lynn played with that dog for hours, walking it around the farm and even inside the house on a leash. He let them put flowers in his collar, a white bonnet on his head, and pink socks on his feet. Alphy was a very naughty dog, chewing on everything in sight and barking at the birds that flew through the rooms and Aunt Lydia’s favorite green vase, but he licked those kids on a constant basis and couldn’t stand to be without them.

  Alphy slept with Carrie Lynn in her bed, and more than once I found both children crying into his neck. Sometimes I joined them, rocking both kids and the dog in my lap, and other times I just let the kids cry, that big golden dog licking their tears away as fast as they came down their faces.

  Day by day Shawn and Carrie Lynn got better, although I knew from my own experience that they would never be completely healed. The cast on Shawn’s arm was removed, as was the cast on Carrie Lynn’s leg. Their stitches were pulled out. The bruises disappeared. The haunted, hunted look in their eyes faded a bit. They spent their time helping Aunt Lydia on the farm, gardening with Caroline, playing with Katie’s kids, and making chocolate with me.

  If they had any question about how Ms. Cutter felt about them, it had been settled at the hospital and at her three-times-a-week visits to our home. At first she sat stiffly on a chair by their beds reading the nonfiction books and classics she brought with her. But the kids couldn’t see the pictures very well, so when Carrie Lynn held the sheet of her bed up with one hand, an invitation to the gray-haired librarian to snuggle on in, Olivia Cutter didn’t hesitate.

  From then on, if the kids were in bed or on the couch, she sat right next to them. They continued their crocheting, too, and both kids made a scarf. Shawn made one for Stash, and Carrie Lynn wrapped hers up real pretty and gave it to Ms. Cutter.

  Which, of course, made the woman cry all over the place. She wore that scarf every day from then on in.

  I blamed myself for not protecting the children, the guilt almost overwhelming. I should have taken those kids and moved to some tiny island in the Pacific. My recriminations went on endlessly, often into the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes I even cried into Alphy’s neck.

  He was one great dog.

  “It has to be tonight,” Caroline said, her voice strident over the phone. “Tonight. I had a vision, Julia. But I don’t know who it is.”

  “Who what is?” I gripped the phone, Caroline’s hysteria strangling me like talons in my throat. “I don’t understand. Slow down, Caroline. You’re talking too fast.

  “I had a vision. Yesterday. In my garden. Of a woman. She was naked. I couldn’t tell who it was, but she had cancer. I could see a black spot. A tiny, tiny black spot. Oh, God. It’s someone I care about, because I saw myself crying. Call the Psychic Night group, Julia, please.”

  I assured her I would, then dropped the phone and ran out to the chicken coop to Aunt Lydia. She listened gravely, her face tight, fingers clenched around a shovel.

  “Go, Julia. Call Caroline and Lara. Now.”

  20

  Katie, Caroline, Aunt Lydia, Lara, and I sat around three burning candles on the floor of Aunt Lydia’s darkened family room with our shirts off.

  None of us was the slightest bit embarrassed. Some might have feared that Caroline had gone right off the deep end and into a deranged pit, but we knew her, which is why we were all scared shitless—too scared to be embarrassed.

  The Dread Disease started creeping up on me again. I assumed that the cancer Caroline sensed was mine, which would explain my months and months of breathing problems, my heart issues. I could feel my throat start to close, and my hands were freezing-cold and trembling. I told my body to calm down, to pound out the disease, to take control, but my body did not respond. Neither did my brain, which seemed to be knocking around in my skull with fright. I knew something bad was coming. We all did.

  Caroline closed her eyes, her right one blinking at frantic speed even while shut.

  I shook, my huge boobs quaking, and I noticed that Lara shook, too. I noted the dark circles under her eyes, her pale, strained-looking face. Her hands fluttered in her lap. I knew that this meeting was not the only thing stressing Lara to a breaking point. It did not take a psychic to determine that Lara was ready to implode. Steadily over the last few weeks, she had seemed to become more nervous, more uptight.

  Plus, every time I saw her, she was fidgeting. Fidget, fidget, fidget.

  Katie looked better than I’d ever seen her, although she was scared to death like the rest of us. She had lost weight, and the strain was gone from her features. It was as if J.D. had drained the life out of her, and without him life was oozing back into her soul.

  I asked her how the book-writing was going.

  “Better. Much better. It’s so much easier to write when tears aren’t spilling onto the keyboard.” She spread her arms out. “My main character doesn’t seem to have an underlying hatred of men anymore. In fact, she’s turning into a downright funny gal who doesn’t take an ounce of baloney from anyone.”

  I hoped with all my heart that the cancer did not belong to Katie. With four children and an alcoholic, phlegm-infested, fart-filled, rutting pig for an ex-husband, who would automatically get custody…I shuddered.

  Caroline held her arms out, both of them palms up, her eyes tightly closed. She pointed them toward Katie, then moved to me, then Lara, then Aunt Lydia. When they were pointed at Aunt Lydia, they shook. With her eyes still closed, Caroline told us to quietly change places, so we did. Again, when her hands were pointed toward Aunt Lydia, they shook. Then they pointed at me, Katie, Lara.

  It seemed so new-wave, so abundantly weird to be sitting half naked in front of a woman with her arms stretched straight out, but I could feel the authenticity of the moment, the cold tragedy about to hit us all in the face.

  Caroline took a deep breath, eyes closed. “One more time. Switch places.” We did so, my heart pounding with fear. Same result. Her hands shook when they were pointed toward Aunt Lydia. They were still when pointing toward me, Lara, and Katie.

  She pointed her hands at Aunt Lydia again.

  They shook.

  Caroline opened her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Lydia,” Caroline said, her voice breaking. “I’m very, very sorry.”

  Radiation treatments began immediately after the mammogram results were in. Aunt Lydia had never had a mammogram. Stash accompanied her to her mammogram appointment, literally dragging her, he told me later. When Aunt Lydia saw the mammogram machine, she threw her hands up in the air, then placed her palms over her breasts protectively. r />
  “I refuse to have my breasts smashed like pancakes!”

  The doctor assured her it wouldn’t hurt.

  “How would you like your jingle bells smashed in a machine while someone took photos?” she asked him, leaning close.

  The doctor was apparently very experienced and used to working with all kinds of people. “Mrs. Thornburgh, the mammogram is not going to hurt—”

  “Can you guarantee me that machine will actually let me take my breasts with me when we’re done?”

  He could guarantee that.

  “What if the machine catches on fire?”

  He could also guarantee her the machine would not catch on fire.

  The day that followed the Mammogram Torture Machine, as Aunt Lydia dubbed it, passed by so very, very slowly.

  And then the call came.

  The doctors had found a tumor in her right breast. She would need radiation, surgery, chemotherapy.

  Stash and I sat in shock in Aunt Lydia’s living room. Caroline did not look shocked. Pained, anguished, worried—but not shocked. Her eye betrayed her fear, winking on hyper-over-drive.

  Aunt Lydia was the only one who didn’t seem bothered at all.

  “It’s just a little cancer,” she told all of us that night at her kitchen table as she worked on her needlepoint. She had created a beautiful scene of her home, complete with the rainbow bridge and two of her giant concrete pigs. In the center she had stitched the words, “A Black Front Door Will Ward Off Seedy Men.”

  “Hell, I’ve fought off worse than cancer before. Everything is going to be fine. Damn fine. You’ll see.”

  We all nodded. The word “cancer” must be one of the scariest, most devastating words on the planet. I already hated that word with a passion.

  “Woman, I know it’s going to be fine,” Stash suddenly declared, hitting both hands against his knees. “We don’t got nothing to worry about at all. We’re getting you the best care we can get in this damn country and you’re going to be goddamn fine.”

  He was pissed off, I could tell, but I have learned that when men feel powerless, they get pissed off. That’s why it’s hard to tell a man a problem. They want to fix it all up, nice and tidy, and move along to your next problem. There. All done. Can I have a beer now?

  But looking at Stash’s face, and the stark fear he couldn’t hide, I knew that a beer was not going to cut it.

  “It’s a small spot. One spot,” he said, more to himself than to any of us. “We’re strong, Lydia, and this is gonna be gone before you know it.”

  “Damn straight,” Aunt Lydia said, not looking up from her needlepoint.

  “Yep,” Stash added, sitting up straight in his chair next to Aunt Lydia’s and rubbing her leg. “Doctors can make miracles happen. Not, of course, that we need a miracle here, because the cancer is so small.”

  “Very small,” Aunt Lydia said. “Tiny. Probably hasn’t spread a whit.”

  Caroline’s eye kept winking.

  “You’re gonna have that surgery on that tiny tumor, and I’m gonna move in here and take care of you, and, no, don’t you even start arguin’ with me. This is the way it’s gonna be.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do, Stash,” Aunt Lydia said, but there was no force behind her words. She brought the needlepoint canvas up closer to her eyes so she could see better.

  “I can, and I am, Lydia. I’m taking charge of things between us from now on. You’ve been running the show for too many years, and now you’re done.”

  “Stash, I’ve been running the show because I know best how to run it!” Aunt Lydia dropped her needlepoint on her lap, but she still had that needle in her hand and she pointed it at Stash for emphasis. “You’re not taking over my life.”

  “Yessiree, I am. From this moment on. I will take you to your appointments, and you will rest when I tell you to rest, and you will eat healthy foods with a lot of corn and peaches and zucchini when I tell you to eat them, because that’s what’s good for you.”

  “All you need is a club and a dead animal over your arm and you’d fit right in with the cavemen,” Aunt Lydia muttered.

  Stash leaned toward her, patting her knee. “I like cavemen, always have, and I admire the way they took control of their caves and all the people in them. I also wouldn’t mind a club.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Please, Lydia.”

  Aunt Lydia smiled then, tucked the needle into her canvas, and put her arms around Stash’s broad shoulders. “I love you, old man. You’re a pain in the butt, and I love you.”

  I bowed my head, not wanting to intrude on their moment, even as I felt my heart cracking.

  I heard Aunt Lydia laugh, then she pulled away from Stash, looked deep into his eyes, and once again, for the thousandth time since I moved here, I saw that bond the two of them have, that steady, hard-core love that never dies.

  Then Aunt Lydia flung her braid over her shoulder and looked at me, Caroline, and Stash each in turn as she said, “I think we need to visit the basement, don’t you all?”

  We followed her down the steps to the basement.

  A little pot now and then sure can take the edge off life’s stresses.

  I didn’t bother telling Aunt Lydia or Stash or Dean that lately my cell phone would ring, the Caller ID would record an anonymous number, and when I picked up, all I heard was silence. A living, breathing…silence. I didn’t tell them when I found an envelope to me in Robert’s handwriting in the mailbox with no return address.

  I was unprepared for the terror that one white, blank sheet of paper inside the envelope brought to me.

  The next envelope contained the same. One blank sheet of paper.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  Every day an envelope awaited me. Inside the envelope was a white, blank sheet of paper.

  I knew what Robert was trying to say. He knew where I was.

  He had found me and would be coming soon.

  The Dread Disease took over, and I was soon squatting on the ground by the mailbox, rocking back and forth, the letter clenched in my hand as the air whooshed out of me.

  When it was over, I went back to the house. I worked at the library that afternoon, confirmed with Ms. Cutter that, yes, she was still invited to dinner the next week and, yes, I did think that Aunt Lydia would like a new, flowering begonia plant for her front porch. We made pizza that night for dinner and I got ready for work at the library.

  I acted as if nothing had happened.

  No sense worrying anyone. Aunt Lydia and Stash had enough to worry about, and there was no sense telling Dean, who was currently in the city working on another high-profile case. I didn’t want him to become involved in this messy, humiliating, dark part of my life.

  So I kept on keeping on. What can you do?

  When Katie left J.D., it was as if she had also left a giant, black, abusive umbrella that had hung over her head every day since she’d met the creep.

  Katie could now be Katie, and that was no more evident than in the house on Stash’s property she was renting. Stash had given her the okay to paint away, so paint she had. The kitchen and family room were painted a lemon yellow, the loft upstairs a sage green. The girls’ room was pink, the boys’ blue. She painted her bedroom, the smallest of the three, a pure white. “For freedom,” she’d told me. She had even stenciled a leaf design around the kitchen and family room.

  People in town had cheered J.D.’s departure from Katie’s life, and furniture seemed to appear out of nowhere. The pharmacist whose house Katie cleaned suddenly decided that she didn’t want her family-room furniture anymore, so she gave Katie a dark blue couch, a red loveseat, and a red and white flowered overstuffed chair.

  The dentist, whose house she cleaned, decided that she didn’t want her old bedroom set because her fiancé’s was much better, so Katie got a new bed, dresser, and two nightstands. She was thrilled even though the bed took up almost the entire room. “I sleep in the Land of Luxury,” she said as we tried out t
he bed with the lace canopy.

  A carpenter in town gave her his twin boys’ bunk beds as they were both off to college, so Katie got rid of the oldest bunk bed, which wobbled, and used the new one.

  Another cleaning client, ninety-seven-year-old Edith Williams, even gave her an antique buffett and matching hutch for her nook. “They’ll be shipping me off to a nursing home soon,” she cracked, “so ya might as well take the good stuff now, Katie.”

  But what had really changed was how Katie kept house.

  “When I was living with J.D., the one thing I had control over, the only thing, really, was how clean that house was, so I cleaned. And cleaned. And cleaned,” Katie had told me once. “When J.D. came home drunk, I’d clean for hours. When he yelled at me, I cleaned. When he criticized the kids, I could have cleaned my own house for days if I hadn’t had others’ houses to clean. He was like a giant carpet stain that I had to keep sanitizing, but the sanitizing stuff was old and useless, and the stain kept spreading.”

  I looked around Katie’s home as she grabbed a pot of coffee from the kitchen and poured both of us another cup. Sunlight tunneled into her cozy nook. I could hear Shawn and Carrie Lynn and her four children playing outside. Before there was not a speck of dust or mess in her home. Everything had a place, and everything was in its place. It was almost too clean. Now, it was clean, but only fairly tidy.

  She settled down next to me. I knew she had something to say, so I waited.

  “I sent an editor the first three chapters of my book.”

  I set my mug down. It thudded on the table. I waited.

  “She likes it. She wants to see the whole thing.”

  Fabulous, I thought. “Fabulous!” I grabbed her hands across the table. “Absolutely splendiferous! Is the book done?”

  Katie laughed, her red hair piled on top of her head in a loose twist. “No, not at all. I’ve only got the first three chapters written. I assumed that it would be rejected.”

  “But why would you assume that? Editors have asked you before for your books.”