Julia's Chocolates (39 page)

I kept that knife front and center as I yanked up my pants with one hand, my breath coming in short gasps. “Don’t come near me, Robert,” I panted. “Get away or I will kill you. I. Will. Kill. You.”

He stumbled to his feet. His hand was soaked with blood, which dripped down his leg. He stared at his hand as if he’d never seen it before, then looked at me. I buttoned my pants and tried not to think about the fact that I was cornered in the barn.

Then suddenly he laughed, his face full of delight. A sick, twisted sort of delight. And as quick as lightning hits the ground, then gets sucked back up into the atmosphere, Robert lunged at me. The knife went flying out of my hand, and Robert was on top of me, his twisted face an inch from mine.

“God, I love this, Beaver Face. I love you fighting me. We’re going to do this again and again.” He ground his hips against mine. “I had no idea you had this kind of fire in you, no idea.” He bent his head to kiss me, and it was that kiss that did it. I didn’t want Robert to touch my lips. Kissing was too personal, too intimate. The only one I wanted kissing me on the mouth was Dean Garrett. Ever. Only Dean Garrett.

So I screamed. Screamed in fear and frustration and the utter despair that was welling up in my body. I knew no one was around to hear, but I screamed anyhow. Robert tried to cover my mouth, so I bit him, and he cracked me again on the face with his fist.

And then, as everything started going black, and this time I feared that I would pass out and would wake up naked and beat up, or wake up dead and in heaven, I saw Caroline standing above me. Shock made the scream die in my throat as she raised both hands up and then brought something down as hard as she could on Robert’s head. Robert slumped onto my body. The last thing I remember is looking into Caroline’s deep green, worried eyes, and I noted to myself that neither one of her eyes was twitching.

And then I let myself pass out.

What else is a girl to do?

I didn’t get to sleep long. When I could pry an eye open again, I noticed that Caroline was dragging me out of the barn by my ankles, hay all the way up my shirt. I wanted to go back to sleep because my whole body was aching, but she saw my eyes open and she bent over me, her face panicked and white.

“Help me, Julia,” she said, panting, sweating. “Help me get you out of here. I hit that bastard with a shovel, but he’ll probably only be out for a few minutes. Please, Julia, please. Honey, get up. We have to get you to the hospital and call the police.”

She yanked me by the shoulders, and I remember thinking that Caroline was such a great friend, and she looked so worried, that I would do as she said. That very second. But as soon as I stood up, I fell back down again because my shin felt like it had been split in two, and my head was spinning like a top and aching as if someone had stuck an ice pick in it, and my vagina felt broken, but she helped me up again.

When I was finally standing, swaying on my feet, I dared to look back into the barn, and I could see Robert lying flat on the ground. His head was moving, back and forth, like an angry bull, like he was trying to wake up, and that galvanized me like nothing else.

Leaning heavily on Caroline, I hopped out of the barn. This task was made even more difficult because I could see out of only one eye. I figured it was because the other was swollen shut and because my brain felt like it was on fire, but I didn’t think about it much. Caroline shoved me into her car and slammed the door.

She locked the doors as soon as she was in, and we roared off, using her cell phone to call the police and an ambulance.

We met the ambulance in front of the general store, which had, of course, attracted a crowd of townspeople. My body was throbbing with pain, and everything looked fuzzy to me, but it was not so fuzzy that I couldn’t see the townspeople’s utter shock and horror when they looked at me slumped in Caroline’s passenger seat. I tried to remember to keep my shirt pulled together. I heard several women start to cry.

Scrambler’s face appeared before me, intense and furious.

“The man who did this is at Lydia’s?” he asked Caroline, his voice still well-modulated, almost harmonious.

She nodded. “He’s in the barn.”

“Let’s go and visit the man in Lydia’s barn, shall we?” Scrambler said to the two other ranch hands who were with him.

The paramedics took one look at me, and one ran for the stretcher. Caroline and I were speeding toward the hospital within seconds. I figured that since I was in an ambulance and on my way to a hospital, it was now completely safe to pass out, at least for a while.

So I did.

When I awoke, a number of nurses and doctors were all peering down at me as if I were a specimen in a Petri dish doing something scientifically fascinating. Tubes were flying out of my arm, and an oxygen mask was over my face. I think I even had one up my vagina, but I sure wasn’t going to look. Pain splintered through my head, my shin, and my breast.

And then the Dread Disease hit. My heart started to race like it was in a dead sprint. I couldn’t breathe, and I became freezing-cold. The doctors and nurses jumped into action, and I prepared for my death as I heard a nurse say, “Her heart rate is escalating. It’s at a hundred and seventy…eighty…ninety…two hundred…”

Two doctors ran out the door, then ran back in pushing a giant machine with those electroshock things they put on people’s chests when they’re having a heart attack. Four other people poured into the room, all looking at the machines, all shouting at each other, touching my chest, my face.

“She’s cold and clammy…heart rate is two hundred…blood pressure is normal….”

And then, suddenly, as usual, I could breathe again. The air poured down my lungs, I felt my body go limp, my legs stopped shaking, my hands started to sweat.

As I relaxed, I saw the doctors’ and nurses’ faces relax, too.

Finally, one young doctor with horn-rimmed glasses leaned over me. “How long have you had panic attacks, Miss Bennett?”

Panic attacks. That’s what I had. Later that night, as I was watching Letterman, I started to laugh. I laughed again and again.

Panic attacks.

The nurses and the doctors had explained what they were. Every symptom they spoke of—racing heart, sweating palms, trembling, feeling like you’re going insane, not being able to breathe—was something I had experienced.

For some people, panic attacks appear to be genetic. Sometimes women can trace them back to their mother and grandmother and great-grandmother, who might have complained about having “spells” where they would have to lie down. For others, panic attacks are caused by a prolapsed mitral valve or hormones or menopause. For still others—me included, apparently—they were caused by life.

Stressful, freaked-out, whacked-out, out-of-control, unhappy lives. It was the body’s way of saying, “I’ve had it.”

But, the doctors told me, patting my hands, smiling. I could get rid of them.

One of the nurses wiped the tears from my face.

“So I don’t have some dreadful disease? I don’t have cancer? I’m not dying?”

“No, no, no,” said one of the nurses, an African American with the brightest white teeth I’d ever seen. “Except for the injuries that boyfriend of yours gave you, you are good to go.”

Good to go.

I needed rest, they told me, and peace, and maybe a little sedative. I nodded at the sedative. “Bring me a couple,” I told them.
Bring me a hundred
, my brain cried out.
Even a thousand.

But a huge weight had suddenly been lifted from my shoulders. Not even my cracked shinbone could diminish my joy. I knew what had caused my panic attacks: Robert.

And Robert was now in jail, Oregon-style. Rich daddy would not be able to buy him out or buy any favors.

I was free.

A
lthough I was free of Robert, I had a tiger of a different sort to deal with.

Caroline had called Dean in Portland right after I was admitted to the hospital and he came immediately. In fact, he arrived at the hospital so quickly I shuddered to think of how fast he had driven. I made a tired crack about this, my voice raw, and he told me a friend had flown him into town.

I nodded, closed the one eye that was not already swollen shut. I did not want Dean to see me like this, did not want to bring him into this ugly part of my life. I did not want him to feel sorry for me. In particular, I did not want him to be angry with me as I had not been open, in any of our many, many conversations, about Robert’s continual harassment of me.

I wanted our relationship to be pure, good. Pure, honest goodness. Now, Dean could make the argument that a relationship that was “pure, good” would also involve honesty, and I would definitely have to concede that point.

He was kind and gentle when he saw me, hugging me close, his cheek on mine, our tears blending together as they ran down our faces.

That lasted for two days. But by the third day, Dean Garrett, my very own Paul Bunyan, had something to say. He paced in front of my hospital bed, and from where I lay, with my leg up, my stitches bandaged, my neck in a brace, he looked so, well, yummy, I could have eaten him. I just wished, so wished, that he wasn’t angry.

Strong, lithe, commanding, tough-looking Dean Garrett strutting across the room, running his hands through his hair in agitation, was sex in motion. I wanted to grab him and hug him and never, ever stop hugging him.

I couldn’t help smiling.

“Stop smiling, Julia,” he said in a clipped voice. “I am so damn mad at you.”

I tried to stop smiling. But there was so much to be grateful for. Robert had been arrested for assault. Here in Oregon, they don’t screw around. Mommy and Daddy were flying in the lawyers, but no amount of hotshot lawyers could alter the fact that Robert’s fingers were on the letters and the boxes where the dead cat and chicken had been.

No amount of hotshot lawyers could alter the fact that Caroline had seen him pummel my face.

And no amount of lawyers could explain away how my leg had been broken, my face busted, and my nipple damn near bitten off, especially since there were actually teeth marks on my skin. Though I knew they would try.

But currently, Robert was in jail, and I, unbelievably, was alive. Aunt Lydia was feeling much better, and she and Stash were taking a lunch break in the hospital’s cafeteria when Dean arrived in my room.

“I know you’re mad at me, Dean,” I said. I also wanted to tell him that I wasn’t wearing any panties under my hospital gown and that if my leg hadn’t been up in a sling and I hadn’t had bandages covering half my face, I would have felt downright sexy.

Dean Garrett could always set that vagina of mine on fire.

He stopped pacing and sat on the edge of my bed. I wished he would hold my hand, but he didn’t.

“You should have told me.”

I nodded. He was upset, and I felt really, really bad.

“You should have told me that you were getting the letters.”

I nodded again, feeling worse.

“You should have told me about the chicken with a knife in its neck.”

I nodded. Now I felt bad and scared.

“You should have told me that he mailed you a dead cat.”

I nodded again, still scared. Still feeling bad.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

I took a deep breath, then told him the truth: That I didn’t want him dragged into the messy part of my life. That I didn’t want to taint what we had with my past. That our relationship was too new to burden it with the news of a psychotic ex-fiancé.

“Those excuses aren’t good enough for me, Julia.”

I closed my eyes, preparing myself.
Here it comes. Dean is going to walk out and have nothing more to do with me.
I felt a sense of loss that I had never before experienced.

“I would have protected you, Julia. I would have moved you to the city with me. I would have sent investigators out looking for him. I would have hunted him down myself. I would have kept this from happening.”

I had emasculated Dean Garrett. I hadn’t meant to, but I had.

“You didn’t share with me what was really going on in your life. You didn’t trust me, Julia.”

“I did. I do. Please, Dean,” I tried, knowing I was losing him.

He shook his head, kissed me on the forehead. But it wasn’t the kiss of a lover, it was the kiss of a friend. A friend who forgave you, but wouldn’t forget what you’d done.

I wanted to plead with him, beg him, but his expression—guarded, hurt, showing reined-in anger—told me it would be useless.

I looked into those cool blue eyes, eyes that had always warmed up when he’d looked at me before but were now cold and distant. I realized that I’d hurt him horribly. Dean Garrett was an old-fashioned kind of guy, the kind of guy that is almost now extinct. He wanted to protect home and hearth, and his woman in that home and hearth. I hadn’t let him be the man.

As dated as that sounded, it was the truth. I hadn’t leaned on him, hadn’t asked him for help, hadn’t been truthful. And it hurt him.

“Dean,” I put my hand on his face, ran my thumb over his lips, tried to memorize how they felt. I summoned up the courage to tell him the truth. “I love you.”

My words fell into silence. Then Dean turned and buried his face in his hands, his back to me.

I was going to say more, but Aunt Lydia and Stash burst into the room. “Turn on the TV!” Aunt Lydia boomed. “Katie called us. Quick, do it, Stash!”

Stash turned on the TV. Dean sat up straight, and I sighed. What on earth could possibly be on TV that I had to watch?

And then I saw America’s most beloved talk-show host. She was wearing white and looked gorgeous, which was nothing new. What was new was that she was eating a box of chocolates. I sat up. The gold box with the little gold stars she was holding was one that I had created.

Amelia Zaphyl held up a chocolate cat. The camera took a close-up shot. The hostess laughed and took a bite. A look of pure heaven came over her features. “These are the best chocolates I have ever had in my life. I feel bad about eating a cat, but it is totally worth it, folks. Look at this one!”

Next she held up a tiny chocolate mouse, then a dog, then a monster. I had put the monster in the gold box of chocolates with the cat and dog and mouse just for fun.

“Folks, I’ve got more to show you,” Amelia said, laughing. “Chocolates like this don’t come around every day.” Then she held up the chocolate penis and the chocolate boobs and the chocolate bottoms I had made. The sensor sent a fuzzy ball over the front of them so the viewer couldn’t quite make out what she was looking at, but the hostess explained it succinctly.

“Delicious,” she said again. “This chocolate is better than an orgasm. I am not kidding. No, don’t laugh. This chocolate is better than an orgasm. It is called ‘Julia’s Chocolates.’ The woman who makes this chocolate is named Julia Bennett. She lives in a tiny town called Golden, in Oregon. She’s got a paper route, and she works as a storyteller at the library, and in her spare time she makes chocolates that taste like orgasms. I am not kidding you, folks.”

How she knew all this I didn’t know, but I didn’t think about it too long. On the Internet you can find out anything about anyone in seconds. Of course, why would me and my former paper route be on the Internet? Again, I didn’t ponder it for too long. This moment would have been perfect if only Dean had held my hand and smiled at me.

“You gotta get some. I feel odd eating chocolate breasts, I will admit,” she went on. “But they are fabulous breasts. Splendidly fabulous.”

The show cut to a commercial, and there was silence in the room. I knew my mouth was hanging open. Aunt Lydia turned to me, shaking her bald head. Stash turned and smiled, his whole face lighting up. In Dean’s eyes I saw a deep joy and pride and something else I wanted to see more of.

“Damn, Julia,” Stash said, slapping both hands on his thighs in delight. “It looks like you’re in the chocolate business!”

I was soon buried in orders for chocolate. All day, every day, except when I was napping off the effects of Robert’s fists and teeth, I made chocolate. Aunt Lydia insisted on helping me. I offered her half a share in my company. She declined. I begged her. She declined. I insisted. She declined again.

So I made her my highest-paid, and only, employee.

We were quite a pair: Aunt Lydia, bald and fighting cancer, and me, with stitches on my cheek, a crutch under my arm, and my neck in a brace.

On the one hand, it sounds heartless to say that I employed a woman who was battling breast cancer with every single fiber of her frail body. On the other, helping me with the chocolate business, taking orders over the phone and credit card numbers, pouring chocolates into their little molds and wrapping them in little boxes kept Aunt Lydia’s mind off her chemotherapy.

It kept my mind off of it, too, although Aunt Lydia’s sweet little bald head was a constant reminder.

We were swamped with running a rapidly expanding business, and I had to do interviews over the phone with a vast array of newspapers, local and national, and even two TV national spots that picked me up after hearing about me on Amelia’s show.

I put the TV spots off as long as I could because of the damage that Robert had done to my face, but within a week I was on the air.

I made for a good story. The press, of course, found out I had had the guts beat out of me by Robert Stanfield III. As his family was rich and spoiled, and I, as they found out, had come from much humbler beginnings, it was a great sell. Especially since I’d run off on my wedding day. In addition, I was trying to launch my tiny business from my aunt’s home, an aunt who was fighting cancer and had giant pigs in her front yard and a bunch of flowering toilets…. Well, we were hot commodities.

Because of several story-hungry reporters, a lot of dirty laundry the Stanfield. family had been hiding came up. When the family tried to deny that Robert had mangled my face and body, three of Robert’s ex-girlfriends spoke of abuse, as did an array of women that his father and uncles and brothers had been involved with. To say the least, the family was utterly humiliated and quickly determined that it would be to their detriment to make me out as a psycho-slut, their usual attack against women who protested their beatings at the hands of male family members.

But the biggest surprise came with Caroline.

Caroline’s name had been in the local paper because of her role in protecting me. A reporter looked it up for the fun of it and found out who Caroline really was, which made the story even juicier. Caroline, my friend and local pauper who sold her psychic readings and her vegetables and breads to survive and collected coupons like mad and bought used clothing, was none other than Caroline Harper Caruthers, only beloved daughter of Martin and Shirley Caruthers, owners of Caruthers Electronics.

The wealth of the Caruthers family, although very new-money, made Robert’s family look like, well, trailer trash.

The press went berzerk when they found out that the Carutherses’ billionaire daughter had shunned the high life and lived on almost nothing. Caroline flipped out at all the attention, wished us all well, told us she loved us, and then disappeared for two weeks to some island in the Pacific her family owned. She called every day.

All would have been wonderful except for Dean Garrett.

He saw me home from the hospital but didn’t kiss me on the lips at all, even when he left and went back to Portland to a trial he had managed to put off when I was in the hospital. And his eyes had lost their warmth, and his smile had lost the secret sparkle he shared only with me, and our conversations were not charged with that special electricity anymore.

Things were not good. Not good at all.

When I was finally able to get up, I worked and worked, and tried not to think about Dean Garrett, tried not to think about how the phone was so very, very quiet. I thought I would give him some space. I thought I would pretend that he would come back, that he would forgive me.

But pretending didn’t change anything, and I was miserable.

It had not been my intent to get involved with any man after Robert. But I had not planned on meeting Dean Garrett, either.

“You’re gonna have to go after him,” Aunt Lydia told me, as she very carefully filled boob molds with chocolate one afternoon. Although it was cool outside, and had snowed the day before, the sun was streaming through the windows, the firs swaying in the distance, the mountains almost purple.

“He’s a man whose testosterone has backed up into his balls. He’s hurt, baby. And mad because you didn’t give him a chance to be the man he wanted to be around you. You didn’t give him a chance to be a part of your real life. You weren’t honest with him.”

I nodded. Of course she was right.

“I know why you didn’t tell him about the King Prick, Julia, and I understand. But he doesn’t, not really. You have to tell him you want him, that you love him, that you need him. He’s a fine man, honey. And if I could pick one man for you to spend the rest of your life with, I would choose him. He’s the stars’ winner.”