Julia's Chocolates (25 page)

I stood with what little strength I had and shook my legs as hard as I could, hoping to get the blood running through my body again. Blood is something you don’t want to see, but you certainly do want to keep it flowing. Flowing blood, as long as it’s in your body is a good thing. Very good.

Soon I could take a little breath, and another one, and a larger breath, and I stumbled back to the rocking chair and held my head in my still frozen hands, my body suffused with an exhaustion that was so complete, a few tears rolled out of my eyes.

I was sick of this. Sick of the fear. Sick of the symptoms of my Dread Disease. Sick of worrying about my imminent death.

I would have to go to the doctor soon. I didn’t want a diagnosis. Didn’t want to hear about the end of my life, didn’t want to know about the treatments I was sure to have to undergo. Didn’t want to deal with hospitals and doctors and needles.

But not knowing was getting to be worse than knowing and dealing with it. And maybe medication would help me to breathe again. Breathing, like flowing blood, is a good thing, too.

I leaned my head back on the rocking chair again.

I was running from two things: Robert and the Dread Disease. And running was getting so tiring.

Dean called me that night, as usual. The Dread Disease retreated a bit, and my heart warmed up past the temperature of a corpse.

I packed a lunch and dinner for Shawn and Carrie Lynn, added a box of my chocolates, and new sandals for each of them. I was past the point of worrying about whether or not their mother would notice and take offense. She obviously barely looked at their faces, much less their feet.

Today for Story Hour I read books on an animals. All the kids made paper hats with dog, cat, rabbit, or bear ears. We had animal cookies for a snack, sang songs about frogs and a grumpy grizzly bear, then made the sound of our animal and hopped, jumped, or otherwise moved about the library.

I thanked everyone for coming, invited them back tomorrow.

The parents gave me a standing ovation.

I almost cried.

They liked me. A bunch of normal, happy, good, family people liked me.

Me.

Stash came over that afternoon and insisted on another round of target practice. Aunt Lydia came, too. I cannot believe how good those two are with their pistols. I think they could shoot the eye out of a spider hanging from a tree if they wanted to.

They were not real pleased with my performance, so we had to practice for a long, long time, and my arms ached.

“You must find the raging woman within you,” Aunt Lydia admonished me. “And tell her to shoot to kill. You are not concentrating. The raging woman in you will help you to focus.”

“Hold steady, aim, fire,” added Stash, staring down at me sternly. “When you are in danger, dear, don’t hesitate to protect yourself. Shoot to kill.”

Allrighty
, I thought.
I’ll try to shoot to kill. I really will try.

Before I fainted on the front of Aunt Lydia’s porch late the next afternoon, I could hear Stash and Aunt Lydia’s voices encouraging me to shoot to kill.

In my hands lay a brown paper–wrapped package. It had been mailed from Boston.

I knew who had sent it.

I knew I shouldn’t open it.

I vaguely remembered Caroline’s warning.

But some sick, dependent part of me gently opened the package, as if the paper itself were priceless. My fingers shook, and I could hear death whispering in my ear. “I’m coming for you, Julia. Soon you’ll be with me in a black, cold place.”

I dropped the box with the dead chicken in it, the small knife sticking out of the center of its chest, the smell intense.

He knew. Robert had located my mother. He had located me. It would only be a matter of time.

“H
e got an attorney.”

“What?” I stared at Katie across the red-and-white checkered tablecloth of the town’s only café. Outside it was pouring. “Very strange,” I was told by the residents. “It doesn’t usually rain at this point in the summer.”

Dave, Stash’s foreman, told me that this signaled a cold winter.

Aunt Lydia told me it was a sign that all women should change, rise up against their oppressors, and be free of all testosterone. The young girl at the cash register told me with some bitterness that she figured her father had ordered up the rain so she wouldn’t be able to go out with her boyfriend in a bikini anymore.

All of Katie’s kids were in the Kid’s Corner of the café playing with blocks and dolls and a castle. I bent to give each of them a hug and a kiss. They clung to me a little longer than normal and gave me wet kisses.

“Hi, Hulia,” said Luke. “I’m wearing four shirts and three underwears today!” he said with triumph in his voice.

“Good for you!” I squeezed him tight.

“Joo Joo!” Logan chortled. His hands were sticky as he put them on my cheeks. He was wearing his Spiderman outfit as usual.

Haley gave me a kiss, too, her antennas with the glittering purple eyeballs whacking me in the face.

Hannah looked worried and pale. Dressed all in black, she gave me a quick hug and a steady look. I knew what that look said: “Help us, Julia. Please.”

Katie smiled at the children, told them to go play, then lowered her voice. She was tearing a napkin to shreds. A pile of an already shredded napkin was next to her coffee cup. “He moved back in last night, too. Came by taxi. Just used his key and came back in.”

“J.D. came back?” I confirmed, my stomach flipping.

She nodded, kept shredding, her eyes darting to the entrance as if she expected him to burst through the door of the café at any moment, which was a definite possibility. “You should have seen the kids’ faces. Hannah burst into tears. Logan ran to his room. Luke hid behind the couch and shook. Haley started to hyperventilate. It was awful.”

“Oh no! I thought he was gone for good.” I noticed that her glorious hair was a mess. I’m not sure she’d even remembered to brush it. “I thought you told me that after he got kicked out of the hospital, he went to a motel, then an apartment.”

“He ran out of money,” Katie said. “He went right after me, leaning on his crutches. He could barely stand, Julia, but his face was beet-red. ‘You listen up, Katie Bitch,’ he was shouting, and swinging his crutch. Luke started screaming, ‘Mommy, Mommy,’ and Hannah stood right in front of me to protect me until I told her to go to her room. I was afraid he was going to hit her.”

I closed my eyes for a second. J.D. was so like so many of my mother’s boyfriends.

“He broke a lamp with his crutch, then my favorite bowl, and he tossed three plates against the wall and screamed, ‘This is my house, and I’m living here. You can’t kick me out. My attorney says I got as much right as your fat, sorry ass to live here.’

“He limped over to me, and I thought he was going to hit me, but I never let him get close enough. Hannah and Luke were screaming and begging him to stop, but he kept chasing me around the couch, yelling and screaming, saying that I was a bad, fat-ass wife who didn’t even care enough to see her husband in the hospital and that he had told every nurse and doctor at the hospital what a lousy wife I was.”

She paused for a moment, her hands clutched around her coffee cup for dear life.

“He finally tripped over one of the kid’s toys. He picked it up—I think it was a train—and threw it right at Hannah’s head. She ducked and didn’t get hit, but you should have seen her face. She hates him, Julia, absolutely hates him.”

“I would hate him, too,” I said, but I knew she didn’t hear me.

“He was swearing and screaming and telling all of us to help him. He told all the kids they were totally worthless and stupid, and he told Luke he was probably gay the way he protected his mother. As soon as he started in on the kids, I grabbed them and left. We stayed in a hotel last night on the highway.”

She sighed, her eyes looking so tired, as if someone had taken them straight out of her head and left them out to dry and age. She had looked so much better lately, too, the spark back in her eye, a smile on her face. Katie Margold had even had a blush on her cheeks.

Now she looked bone-deep exhausted.

“Katie, we’ll have lunch,” I told her, taking a moment to hope that J.D. got hit by a steamroller. “Then we’ll go and get your things and find someplace for you to live with the kids.”

She nodded, her red ponytail slipping over her shoulder. “The house is rented. I’ll tell Bernie and Diane that I’m moving out and that J.D. is going to pay for it from now on. But where do I go?”

I thought for a minute, and then it hit me. Easy as pie. Chocolate pie, of course. Stash had a small cottage on his property with a nice front porch. It hadn’t been lived in for years, and I was willing to bet he wouldn’t mind if Katie moved in for a while, even for good.

I told Katie about the potential plan, and her eyes opened wide. “That’d be perfect. J.D. would be way too scared to go on Stash’s property. Do you think he’ll say yes?”

I grabbed my cell phone, called Stash.

“Julia, dear!” he said. “Wonderful to hear your voice! I just saw your Aunt Lydia!” I told Stash what Katie told me. “Of course! It’s perfectly okay for Katie to come live here. I’d welcome having her little whippersnappers around!” Katie told me to tell Stash she would pay any rent he asked. I told Stash. He refused to let her pay. “That girl’s been through enough. Tell her to come.”

I put my hand over the phone and told her what Stash said. Katie’s chin went up a couple of inches, she refused to live in Stash’s cottage for free. She would pay what she had been paying before: $600 a month.

I told Stash. He was aghast. He told me to tell Katie that rent would be $100 a month, if she insisted.

I relayed this to Katie. She said forget it.

Stash refused to renegotiate. “I will not charge $600 in rent to a woman in distress with four young children. I will not.” I told Katie. She lowered her amount. I told Stash. He refused but came up a tad.

Katie tightened her lips. “I don’t take charity.”

“I heard that,” Stash bellowed. “Tell that stubborn girl it’s not charity, and if she cleans my house now and then, we’ll call it good.”

Katie held her chin up. “Tell Stash I’ll agree to the low monthly rent but will clean his house on a weekly basis and provide two meals a week.”

I told Stash.

“Done. Shake her hand, Julia girl, and do it on my behalf. I don’t want her sneaking out of her deal. Lord knows I need some good dinners around here since your Aunt Lydia doesn’t invite me over every night.”

I reached out my hand, but Katie refused to shake it. “You tell Stash that he is to cash my check every month. I know him, and he’ll just let my check sit there, but I’m paying for me and the kids.”

On the other end of the phone I heard Stash sigh. “Why can’t you women take a gentleman’s gift? You’re all so damn independent and feisty. Especially your Aunt Lydia. She is the worst. All right. Tell Katie I’ll cash her checks.”

Katie and I shook hands.

I told Stash, “She’ll be there later today. We have to go and get her things before J.D. destroys more.”

“Absolutely, positively not,” Stash roared.

“I’m sorry?”

“Neither you nor Katie is to set foot in that house with J.D. in it. He’s a drunk, mean son of a bitch, and I don’t trust him. I’ll come along with Dave and Scrambler and a couple of the other men with a trailer, and we’ll load her stuff up. I repeat, Julia Bennett, you and Katie are not
, not
, to go there alone. We’ll see you in two hours. I’ll bring Oscar.”

Oscar was Stash’s favorite gun.

Dave, an African-American man who had been Stash’s foreman forever, was six feet six inches tall and ran Stash’s farm like it was his own. In return, Stash paid him enough that Dave and his wife had one of the nicest homes in town and a beach house.

Dave and Marie had been married for forty years. One son, Rupert, was a doctor in Portland at a teaching hospital, the other, Jordan, owned three car dealerships, and the third, William, was a screenwriter. I had actually seen his name on several different movies I’d seen over the years. Rupert, Jordan, William and I used to run through Stash’s cornfields and race tractors together during the summer. Rupert delivered me my first kiss. It wasn’t bad, I’d told him. Not good, but not bad, either.

Rupert had not seemed disappointed by my pronouncement.

Every year Dave’s chili won at the state fair. His wife’s roses always won first place at the flower show.

I loved Dave, but if you want someone beside you who looks intimidating, he’s your man.

Scrambler doesn’t look like someone to mess around with, either. He’s almost as big as Dave and has a murky past. “He’s made mistakes,” Stash had told me. “He had a lousy childhood and ended up robbing a couple of stores as a teenager. But he did his time in the pen, he’s worked for me for eight years, and he’s as loyal as they come. Teenagers do stupid things, he’s paid for it, and he’s changed. That’s all anybody needs to know. Story over.”

I personally had always liked Scrambler. He was a perfect gentleman. Very polite, very kind. And very, very loyal to Stash. But he was tough, too. Tell him not to smile, pull his cowboy hat down low, and even a strong man will shake in his boots when he sees him.

“Dave, me, Scrambler, and a couple of our other boys will be fine by ourselves. You tell Katie to meet us there so she can tell us what she wants to take, but she is not to get out of the car until she sees us. And make sure she’s got a sitter for the kids. I don’t want them anywhere near that house this afternoon.”

I told Katie and then called Caroline, who offered to watch the kids for us while we retrieved Katie’s and the kids’ things.

We were set.

Katie pushed her red hair off her face, her brown eyes worried, but definitely relieved. “Stash is a saint.”

I nodded. “You need to go to the bank before we leave. Close the checking accounts, the credit card accounts. You need to let them know that you’re separating.”

Katie nodded. “I’ll go before we leave. Margo will take care of it for me. She’s hated J.D. ever since he ran over her white picket fence, then blamed her for it. Plus, she’s a single mom. She’ll understand.”

I nodded. Margo Fuller was a quiet firebrand who had been promoted to manager of the bank. Her husband had left her for another man. He had initially paid no child support for their four children, telling Margo that he was a new man, that country life bored him, that he had been suppressing his true self for years, and that he and his boyfriend, who had also been married, were forgetting about their pasts and going straight to their futures.

Margo’s last words to him had been “Fuck you,” and her attorney’s last words had been to pay up or have his wages garnished. It wasn’t long before that ex-husband, who had so wanted to go straight to his future, was losing half his paycheck.

Yep. Margo would take care of things.

Dave smiled at me when we drove up to Katie’s small but impeccably cared for house. He was wearing jeans, a button-down sage green shirt, and loafers. At fifty-eight years old, he was fabulously good-looking in his own tough, take-no-shit way.

“How’s Marie?” I asked him, as if we were at a tea party instead of standing outside a drunken lout’s house, ready to go in to get an abused wife’s belongings without anyone getting shot.

“Marie, my dear Marie, is as lovely as the day I met her,” Dave said, that big smile shining. “But age has not diminished that temper. Just the other night she chewed me out for something. What was it? Oh yeah. Now I remember.” Dave shook his big head.

“Does Marie ever let you be the boss?” I teased, already knowing the answer. Marie ran the ship, and her men loved her for it. She was the most loved and adored wife/mother I have ever known, and when she told her boys to do something, or when she told them to shape up, they did.

“Let me tell you something, Julia,” he told me. “A long time ago I figured out that if I did what Marie told me to do, and if I taught the boys to obey their mother, we’d all be happier. So when Marie says jump, we jump. Except if it’s on poker nights. But my Marie knows that those nights are sacred.”

“A sacred time to lose money to Stash?” I laughed.

He spread his arms out like a giant eagle. “I beat him once, and I can beat the other men, so I don’t walk home with nothing. One time, Julia, I came home with fourteen dollars in my pocket. Now, that was a good night. Of course, Marie took the money and gave it to the church on Sunday.”

I laughed. Poor Dave.

Dave said hello to Katie as she reached us, and Katie gave him a hug. Stash and Scrambler were right behind her.

“Let me go in first,” Stash said. Scrambler followed one foot behind Stash. Dave followed Scrambler. Next came three farmhands from Stash’s business. They nodded a polite hello at both of us. I squeezed Katie’s hand, and we walked up together. I felt the fear rise in my throat like bile. Abusive men can do that to me.