Julia's Chocolates (7 page)

Stash made a sound like a donkey braying. Lydia answered with her own high-pitched choking sound.

“But I don’t like
spicy
sausages….”

Please
, I told my mouth,
oh please
,
stop
.

“Nothing spicy,” Paul Bunyan said, those lips moving over his words like hot syrup.

“Right.” We needed to get away from this conversation.

“So,” Stash said, tears floating in his eyes. “That’s a good thing for you to remember, my boy, Dean. She likes sausages of any kind.”

Aunt Lydia didn’t even try to pretend anymore, her laughter filling the room like sweet flowers on a cold winter day.

“But nothing spicy.”

“Never,” said Stash, laughter spilling from his mouth like caramel corn from a paper bag. “Women are picky about these things. Some women like one type of sausage, some another. Spicy sausages. Big ones, small ones, sausages from different countries. There’s just no pleasin’ these gals sometimes, Dean, no pleasin’ them at all.”

“Well, I like your sausage, Stash,” Aunt Lydia said. “I like it right fine. Right fine.”

I stared, astonished. Then I laughed. I couldn’t help it. For all the time that Aunt Lydia was fighting with Stash, this was the first compliment I’d heard her give him in a long time. The tension rolled right out of my body with that laugh. I looked at Paul Bunyan, who did not seem the least bit embarrassed about my sausage comment. His eyes were still on me, but now they had a look in them, a considering look, a curious look.

“But you must remember!” Lydia boomed, holding her fork high in the air.

“I know, I know, darlin’,” Stash said, still laughing. “Men are pricks!”

C
aroline Harper’s house was a study in surprise. Her home is actually a pole barn, painted brown on the outside. From the front, all you can see is a door and a tiny window. There’s a red and white sign in that tiny window that says
GUNS ARE LOADED
. Outside another sign says
NO TRESPASSING
.

It looks like the kind of place where methamphetamine might be manufactured. At the very least, it looks to be a hideout for wicked criminals. I asked her about the signs later, when we were having tea over a lace-draped table, and she said they added humor to her life. The old man who lived here before her was slightly insane. He had twenty-two cats, was rumored to eat a full garlic clove a day, and made his own whiskey. He lived to be 104. Caroline knew him, liked him, and kept the signs in memory of him.

At first I was sure I had gotten the wrong directions from Lydia. Surely no one like Caroline Harper lived in such a depressing, dark, scary-looking place. And Aunt Lydia had said she lived in a dollhouse. This wasn’t a dollhouse.

But Lydia had mentioned the signs, so I slammed the door of the truck closed and proceeded with caution.

And there’s where the surprises started.

Caroline opened the door, a smile lighting her gentle features. She wore a red cotton dress that on anyone else probably would have looked frumpy, with its square neckline and flared skirt. I would have looked like a giant blood clot. But on Caroline, it looked stylish and hip and lovely. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, her cheekbones gracious curves. Her right eye winked at me, but slowly, gently. She hugged me as I walked in the door. And then I stopped.

As shocked as I had been at the outside of Caroline’s house, the inside left me gaping. I remembered to shut my mouth after a long minute so I wouldn’t look like an air-starved guppy.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, awed.

Though the outside of the house looked like a drug warren, the inside décor was English Country/dollhouse. The furniture was overstuffed and comfy and covered in flowered or striped fabric. It was old, and used, and plush and cheerful.

Tables held books and candles and lace doilies, and the room was filled with light from floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors everywhere. The walls were painted an eggshell blue, white, or pink.

It was one huge room, Caroline showed me, with two areas walled off, one for a bedroom and one for Caroline’s “workroom.” The door to the workroom was closed.

The kitchen was surprisingly modern, and she had painted all of the cabinets pink. It was clear she had been cutting bouquets, as flowers were scattered about the white counters. I looked out her back windows and saw an enormous garden.

I wanted to stay forever.

“Would you like to see the garden, too?” Caroline asked, her voice soft and cultured. I again felt like a water buffalo next to this petite woman, and I would have hated her if I could for being perfect, but I couldn’t. She was kind, for sure, but more than that, I related to that twitching eye of hers. Twitch twitch. I was twitching on the inside, Caroline twitched on the outside.

“Come and see the flower garden first,” she said, leading me to the most gynormous, lovely array of raised flower beds. “It doesn’t look very good right now. Spring is much better.”

I reassured her it was beautiful, as it truly was, and she gently pulled out a plant with long-stemmed flowers from one of the beds. “You like to garden, don’t you?” she asked, and before I could answer, she piled yet another plant on, and another, rattling off directions on how to plant them, where to plant them.

Next we moved to the vegetable garden. This time she grabbed one of the crates she had stacked against a small shed. Within seconds I had enough vegetables to feed me and half of the third world. She insisted on helping me take my loot to the car. I wondered if the tires would pop.

“Now come in for some tea,” she said, grabbing my hand. For an instant, right in the middle of the driveway of her drug house/English Country Manor, she stopped, closed her eyes, her hand tightening on mine.

“Caroline?” I asked. Her hand had gone cold.

Having a Dread Disease like I do is difficult. Not only do I have to deal with my own triggers that take away my breath, but if someone around me is upset, that can trigger an episode, also.

Her hand seemed to get colder by the second until I felt like I was holding ice. I could feel my own hand losing all warmth. Soon, I told myself, both of us would be freezing-cold. We would turn into ice women together. I wondered if she would think it odd if I asked if I could go to her bed and pull the comforter over my head and hide.

“It’s nothing,” she whispered. “Everything is fine. Everything will be…fine.”

“But what is it? Please, Caroline. Aunt Lydia knows that you can see the future. You’re freaking me out,” I said, hearing my own shaky voice.

She turned to me abruptly then, holding both my hands in hers, her green eyes luminous, close to mine, and yet real far away. She was clearly on another plane than me. I was not inclined to believe this stuff, but I didn’t want to dismiss it, either.

“Your fiancé,” she said, her face tight, her right eye twitching at a higher speed as soon as the words left her mouth.

Oh God. Not him. “Yes.”

She stepped closer. She smelled like roses and tea and butter. Who knew why she smelled like butter? “I can feel him.”

“Me too,” I said. I wanted to jump into the house, grab a gun, and hole up, waiting for his imminent appearance.

“Julia, he’s angry. I can feel it. He’s hot. Very hot.” Twitch. Twitch. Faster even.

I knew that Caroline knew I had an ex-fiancé. And she also knew that he had beat up my face, turning it lovely shades of purple and green. For her to say he was “hot” did not take much deduction on her part.

“He’s burning. He’s trying to find you. I see him.”

Just thinking about Robert scared me. I could almost see my liver shriveling up in fear, my intestines frozen solid, the blueberry muffin I ate this morning hardening as the temperature dropped.

But, of course, I still wasn’t convinced that Caroline was authentic. I mean, really, who can see the future? Everything she said could have been deduced by talking to Aunt Lydia for a few minutes.

“I see the dog, Julia.”

The ice edged up my throat.

“He was small. White. I see pink, too.” Caroline’s voice was small, broken.

The ice leaped several inches, like a miniature glacier, choking me.

I knew a small white dog. He was mine up until three months ago. His name was Spot, though there was not a single spot on him. I had loved that dog, and he had loved me.

But one night I had voiced to Robert, again, my concern that his mother, well, detested me like vermin, although I left the word “vermin” out.

“She’s so beneath you, Robert,” I had overheard her say. “Beneath us as a family, beneath us as influential, powerful people in this country. And that figure of hers. For God’s sakes, Robert dear, she looks like a hooker. I’m feeling disgraced already. Disgraced.
Disgraced
. Sleep with her if you must. I can see, from a very base and vulgar perspective, the rather animalistic attraction to someone who looks like that, someone who has come from such an
unusual
background. But must you
marry
her?”

“Robert,” I had said. “I’ve tried to get your mother to like me—”

“You can’t force my mother to like you, Boobs.” Another favorite nickname he was so amused by. “It’s you who needs to change. You. Not me. Not my mother. You.” His hand tightened on my chin like a metal clamp as his cold eyes dropped to Spot, growling low in his throat. “And goddammit, Julia, quit clinging to that dog. I’m sick of it. Sick of him barking at me, sick of him biting me. Sick to shit of him.” His other hand darted out and grabbed Spot’s muzzle, holding the dog’s mouth shut. “I am at my limit,” he said, his mouth an inch from my ear, his voice soft. “Don’t push me over the edge.”

The next day Spot was gone. Two days after that my neighbor found him on her lawn. She brought him, shoulders heaving as she cried, wrapped in one of her own fuzzy baby blankets. His neck had been slashed. His license and collar were pink but you would have thought they were black. Black with blood. I cried for days. Still cry when I think about him. Shake, too.

When Robert came over that night, I told him through these wretched, heaving sobs about Spot. His fury mounted by the second, and he muscled me into my bedroom and informed me that Spot was “a pathetically annoying animal,” and that I treated him like he was a child instead of a dog. “For God’s sake, get over it, Watermelon Buns.”

Not yet making the connection between Robert and my dead dog, I had said to him, “Robert, my dog was killed by some sicko and you want me to
get over it
? Just like that?”

His eyes got this weird, livid look, like fireworks were exploding in his brain, and he told me I was going to have to learn to get control of myself, that no one liked a baby, and he especially did not like to see fat girls cry because it made them look worse. “Fat girls shouldn’t cry at all in front of other people, in point of fact. It’s disgusting.”

I thought of my poor, beloved dog in a little box, wrapped in that fuzzy blanket, buried in my tiny garden outside my apartment and felt sick. “Shut up, Robert! Just shut up! Shut up!”

In answer he spun me around, ripped down my pants, and shoved me against the back of an overstuffed chair. “Shut up yourself, bitch,” he whispered as he bent me over the top. I fought for about thirty seconds, but he grabbed my hair, and exhaustion ran over me like a dump truck and I gave up. My non-responsiveness seemed to turn him on even more, his pants and groans coming harsh and ragged.

When he was done, he steered me over to the bed, his breath hot and fast. I stumbled because my pants were around my ankles, and he swore and ended up carrying me, his arms around my waist. “Damn. You’ve put on even more weight, haven’t you?” When I was lying flat, he straddled me, wrapped both hands around my boobs and glared into my eyes as he squeezed and fondled them.

“I’m glad that dog’s dead, Julia,” he said. “You paid more attention to it than you did me. You’re weird, you know that? You’ve got mental problems. Serious mental problems. You like an animal more than a real man. How do you expect me to stay attracted to a woman who’s turned on by a dog?” He got off the bed, got undressed, then leaned over me, ripping the covers back down that I’d yanked up to my chin, then shoved his fingers up my vagina.

“You like it like this, don’t you? It turns you on.” He cupped my face with his palm, one finger gently stroking my face while the other hand hurt me. He did that often—one hand loving, one hand hurting. “Don’t you ever let some dumb dog get between us again. Do you get that, cunt? Do you get that?” His voice was low and kind. And scary. So very scary.

“Every damn day I see that dog sitting on your lap. I’m glad it’s just me and you now. Just me and you. Only me and you. And do not”—he shoved his hand up me harder and dropped three gentle kisses on my mouth at the same time—“do not even think about getting another dog.”

And then I had this creepy, horrible feeling, and I had to ask the question, even though I knew Robert would filet me as he would a dead fish when he heard it. “Robert…Robert, you didn’t kill Spot, did you?”

The look in his eyes skewered me to the bed. “Oh, Julia,” he said, his voice a caress. “Oh, Julia.” He smashed his mouth on mine so hard I could hardly breathe.

After a couple of minutes, when I began to really struggle, he lifted his head, and I could see that some of his anger had dissipated. “Why do you make me so angry? Why? You constantly provoke me. You know I love you. I can’t live without you, Julia.” He grabbed a fistful of my curls and kissed them, then kissed both breasts as I held my breath. One time he’d bitten down on me. “No, I can’t live without you, and I won’t. But this is your fault. You have to learn how to be a wife. A good wife. And you must learn to be more like my mother.”

He lowered his head again, and this time he kissed me so sweetly, so soft, so gentle, it made me gasp with mind-numbing fear. Of course he misinterpreted my gasps.

“I’ll do you again, don’t worry about it. You’re always hot, always wanting it, aren’t you? You have a need for constant sex. Who would guess that with someone like you?” He shook his head in wonderment as he ran his hands over my trembling-with-fright body. His cell phone rang then, and he answered it and walked out the front door, leaving me cold and half-naked on the bed.

When he left, I resumed my crying jag over Spot, which morphed into me not being able to breathe and my heart palpitating as if it were racing a hundred miles an hour, and I figured I was going to die.

I had found Spot three years ago, literally on the city street near to where I was living. He was sitting by a garbage can. Waiting, waiting, waiting, it seemed, for something to come his way. He was skinny and nervous and dirty, and I thought I was looking at myself in dog form, except for the skinny part. He must have looked at me and seen himself in human form because he came to me instantly. I showered him, fed him, doted on him, loved him.

That dog was happy when I woke up in the morning, happy when I came home, happy when I walked him. He was not happy alone and was often quivering with nerves when I came in from work, which endeared him to me all the more.