Julia's Chocolates. Cathy Lamb

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      Sweating, dirty, and exhausted, I knew the only cure: chocolate. I drove with my knees and peered through the red bag on the passenger seat, grabbing a Baggie full of chocolate squares I had made myself. The first bit of chocolate hit my tongue like a slice of heaven. The second had my tears drying up. The third had me laughing, in a pathetic sort of way, about my hapless wedding dress.

      I dropped two chocolates into my mouth. I had failed in almost every aspect of my life, I thought in a burst of disgusting self-pity, but the one thing I was good at was melting in my mouth right at that moment. I knew chocolate. And, Lord, no one anywhere made chocolate as good as I did.

      Golden reminded me a bit of the tree where my wedding dress was probably still flapping. It had at one time been a thriving little town, but the logging boom was over, the endangered species had won, and many of the residents had moved on. There was one rather long Main Street, lined by the requisite trees; spring flowers hung from the lampposts. The flowers were the only things that looked alive.

      Several of the shops were simply gaping black holes of businesses that had come and gone. But there was a corner drugstore with a broken sign that read S MS DRU STORE.

      There was also a movie theater, a cozy-looking coffee shop with red tablecloths, a grocery, an auto repair shop, a hardware store, and several other stores one would expect to see. There were people out on the streets—coming home, I thought, from one of the town’s two restaurants or a board meeting at school.

      I suddenly felt my heart lighten a bit. I didn’t feel like I was going to vomit in fear, the way I did when I was packing up my suitcases in Boston over a week ago, leaving my tight white heels behind.

      “For God’s sake, Possum, your feet are huge!” I could still hear the sneer in Robert’s voice a month ago. “Shit, bitch, don’t look at me like that! I’m just stating a fact. You always take things so personally.”

      He had picked up my foot and then shoved it off his lap as if he couldn’t bear to have it touching him for a moment longer.

      And still, I tried to appease him, briefly wondering if I could get my feet surgically shortened. But Robert had wanted me. Me—with my frizzy curls and large butt and a family history that could make your blood curdle in your veins and a past I couldn’t share for fear of the revulsion I’d see on people’s faces. I wanted out of my past before it became my present, and Robert offered me a new type of life, light years from apartments with rats the size of possums and cockroaches that knew no fear.

      He had been so charming, so possessive at first, wanting to spend all his time with me, sweeping me off my very big feet. He wanted to know where I was all the time, who I had talked to at the art museum, had any men talked to me? Who?

      He had discouraged me from going out with any friends. Not that I had a lot. Okay, I had only two women friends, but he soon thought I shouldn’t see them anymore and I had caved in and agreed.

      At first I was almost sickeningly dizzy with delight. Robert wanted me all to himself! He loved me! That was why he didn’t want other people in my life.

      But then I had started to irritate him, and I felt his scorn like a sledgehammer. He would upset me, I would cry, he would pin me down on the bed and badger me until I sobbed, but then he would so sweetly apologize, blaming his bad behavior on a fight with his high-profile father or the checker at the supermarket.

      Later Robert sometimes lost his cool and sometimes cracked me in the face with his palm or shoved me against the wall, or leaned me over a chair and stripped off my pants even though I protested. Well…later he would beg me to come back to him, to forgive him, and I did.

      And soon I had my ring. I had slept with him, and come hell or high water, I was going to get married. I was going to leave my wasted mother and jailbird father behind. I was going to be proper and respected in a proper and respected family.

      Even though Robert’s violent behavior escalated and scared the living shit out of me more and more as time went on.

      I shook my head, blowing thoughts out of my mind, and rolled down my window, the mountain air cool. I inhaled the familiar scent of pine trees as I paused at the town’s one and only stoplight. I thought I could hear the river rushing by, although I knew that was unlikely because it was too far out of town.

      After running my fingers through my hair, I switched on the overhead light and stared in the rearview mirror. Yep. Looking lovely again. My eyes were swollen, my face a lovely shade of death, my lips puffy and chapped.

      Gorgeous. No wonder the men were breaking down my door. I ate more chocolate.

      I turned right, went past a few other small businesses, and then through a tiny neighborhood where big wheels and bikes were scattered in the front lawns. Taking a turn into the country, I drove about two miles straight out, then took a left at the mailbox with a giant wooden pig attached to the top with his tongue hanging out.

      Like I said earlier, you can’t miss Aunt Lydia’s house, and when I turned into the gravel drive and saw the giant pigs, the toilets, and the rainbow bridge, all freshly painted, just like I remembered from years ago, I parked the car, bent my head against the steering wheel, and cried.

      And that’s how Aunt Lydia found me.

      2

      “Men are pricks!” Lydia whacked a wooden spoon against the giant pan, the strawberries melting into a thick goo that would turn out to be the most delicious jam you have ever tasted in your life. I remember drinking the jam right from the jar as a child.

      It was Aunt Lydia who had turned me on to cooking and, particularly, baking chocolate desserts and cookies when I was a kid. We had spent hundreds of hours right here among her plants and books and birds. It was the happiest time of my life.

      “Big pricks. Little pricks. They are all”—she slammed the wooden spoon against the rim of the pot for the umpteenth time—“pricks!”

      I sipped the herbal tea she had thrust at me the instant I arrived. It was laced with a good deal of rum, so I figured I would have at least three or four teas tonight. Maybe five. I took a shuddery breath. The wood stove she’d settled me by in the kitchen was blowing out heat like a fire-breathing dragon.

      “But!” Aunt Lydia declared, her green eyes flashing, her thick gray hair dancing around her face as if all the energy packed into her was flying through the follicles. “I am so glad you didn’t marry the King Prick, Robert.”

      I ignored the stab of pain that shot right through my heart. “You never even met him.” Why was I defending him? Geez. I am a sick, wimpy woman. And my eye had looked like hard purple and green vomit today, too.

      “I knew by the way you talked, by what you didn’t say. By how I could never call you at your apartment because he would tell you to get off the phone.” Her eyes flew open so I saw all the white. “I didn’t want to spend any time with King Prick. Do you think I should have Janice make me another pig and name him King Prick?”

      I opened and closed my mouth. A giant pig named after my ex-fiancé. There was some appeal.

      “No!” Lydia shouted, arguing aloud with herself as she stomped her tiny foot. “I won’t. I don’t want any piece of him near my property. Oh, Good Lord.” She sorted through the cabinets above her head. “I am ALMOST out of cinnamon! I can’t СКАЧАТЬ