Dying for Chocolate Read online

  “It is I,” said Marla as she trundled forward and gave Adele a peck on the cheek. Sequins flashed against navy-blue silk. “I won’t be staying long,” she added apologetically. “I was just trying to help Goldy.”

  “No, that’s fine, really. Stay. Where’s Bo now?”

  Marla’s and my voices tumbled over each other as we told of the explosion and the general going for Arch.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Adele said, shaking her perfect hair. She pulled herself up stiffly. “Let’s go out to the porch. You’ve had too much of a shock.”

  “I’ll be going,” Marla said.

  “You don’t have to,” was Adele’s halfhearted protest.

  I looked from one to the other of them. This was the first time I had seen the two sisters together since Marla had introduced us a week ago, when I arrived. I had sensed some slight discomfort then, but I had put it down to the move. Where Marla was always full of news and information, a walking radio station in designer sweat suits, Adele was reserved, elegantly groomed, erect in a wardrobe that featured only natural materials: silk, cotton, linen, cashmere. It was more than the ten-year difference in their ages. My emotional antennae picked up on unresolved pain. I would have to ask Marla about it. But not now.

  “Bye, everybody,” said Marla with a nod to us both. She whipped out the front door so quickly that I had only a moment to remember to press the button for the driveway gate. Her Jaguar revved, then growled down Sam Snead Lane.

  “Let’s go outside,” Adele said. She turned and hobbled efficiently ahead of me to what the general called “the veranda.” “Poor Bo, I don’t know what he was thinking with that garden. I don’t want to know what the neighbors must think . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  I whisked back to the kitchen to get a pitcher of water and two glasses, then rummaged through the kitchen desk to get Adele’s antiinflammatory and muscle-relaxant medicine. If I did not bring it with me, she would be asking for it once we sat down. I found them behind a tin of Julian’s fudge, which I put along with the pills, water, and glasses on a Florentine painted wood tray. Like the knickknacks and art objects in the living room, the tray was one of the many souvenirs of the Farquhars’ travels before Adele’s back problems had slowed them down.

  On the covered porch it was quite chilly. Storm clouds still threatened to obscure the late afternoon sun. Adele gave me a wan smile and looked off toward the tops of the nearby mountains, where snow glimmered between the deep greens as incongruously as ice in a jungle. Next to the deck, birds—robins, jays, chickadees—were all busy, loud and angry at the weather for disturbing their nest-making. A jewel-winged hummingbird soared past, then swooped back to hover at the long-necked feeder.

  “Water?” I asked. Adele nodded gratefully and reached for her pills.

  I set the tray on the wicker coffee table, then let myself down into one of the wicker chairs. Again fatigue like a chill crept up from the floor. I sipped water, tried to shake the feeling off.

  “Adele,” I said, “I need to talk to you about your car. The T-bird. I’m sorry—I was trying to save Philip.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. Her cane circumscribed a circle on the tile.

  The phone rang. This time Adele motioned me to sit as she painfully rose to answer it. I could hear a one-sided conversation with the choirmaster from Utah. Some people never quit.

  I pulled a periwinkle-and-white afghan from its matching overstuffed cushion held snug in a white wicker divan. Adele had decorated the house the way she dressed herself, with elegance and money. The style was traditional, without a rustic wood piece or southwestern accent in sight.

  I tucked the afghan around my legs and gazed off into the distance. Fingers of fog snaked down the nearby canyons. In the meadow below, puffs of vapor glided by, ghostlike. Clumps of wild iris stood like clusters of pale-purple flags between hummocks of new green grass. Everything else was a tumult of greens: new green of wet spring grass, black-green of ponderosa pines, pale blue-green of spruce, bright green of new aspen trees. Another hummingbird dropped a twittering ribbon of sound as it shot by us. Adele tap-stepped back out to the porch.

  “I put the machine on,” she said apologetically. Then she held up a finger as we again heard the phone. After three rings the machine picked up. “Peace,” she said as she sat down again. Her eyes found mine.

  “I was following him to town,” I said to her unasked question, “to pick up a few things for the Harringtons’ dinner tomorrow night.” I faltered. In my mind’s eye the BMW careened down the last hill toward the bus. I looked at Adele, who had screwed up her face at the mention of the Harringtons.

  She said, “I don’t suppose Weezie will cancel, even though I think she was . . . you know, seeing him.” She shook her head. “But you were saying . . .”

  “Well. It was awful. I tried to help him, but—”

  “You tried to help him? How gruesome. You poor thing.” Her voice, like Marla’s, was threaded with warmth and sympathy. The muscles in my neck relaxed.

  “It all went too fast. And the way he was driving . . . Crazy, just crazy, as if he were drunk.”

  “Horrid.”

  I wasn’t hungry, but I reached for Julian’s fudge anyway. The buttery, rich chocolate melted, warming my mouth.

  “Is Julian going to be okay? How close were they?” I asked.

  Adele pursed her lips. “Poor Julian, I believe, had just grown to trust Philip Miller, I think this will be extremely hard for him.” Her fingers brushed the pearls around her neck; the large diamond in her West Point miniature trapped the sun in a fleeting explosion of light.

  I said, “Excuse me, Adele.”

  I went into the bathroom and buried my face in a towel.

  When I came out, Adele assured me she would care for Arch when the general brought him. She convinced me to go up and lie down. The combination of brandy, tea, and espresso had the unusual effect of zonking me out for five hours. I awoke to the gray light of dusk. In my confusion I thought it was the next morning. But the sun slanting through the third-floor dormer windows and playing over the sloped ceiling and walls brought the realization that it was an early-June evening, around eight. I hoped the Farquhars had managed dinner.

  In my mind I saw Philip’s sightless face. I shook the image away.

  Arch was rummaging around next door. I thought with dismay of all the work I would have to do the next day for the Harrington dinner. Usually I organized such affairs well in advance. But the headmaster at Elk Park Prep had pleaded so fervently that I salvage his brunch that my whole schedule had been put in disarray. I remembered that a cop might come out and ask more questions about the accident. Well. Sufficient unto the day. I needed to talk to Arch.

  “Arch,” I said through his closed door. “Did you hear about Philip Miller?”

  “Yeah, I heard,” came his muffled voice. “Bummer!” A pause. “Do you know where my suit is? I’m going swimming.”

  I caught myself making an audible groan and stifled it. Julian was trying to teach Arch how to do the front and back flip, the jackknife, and other dives in the Farquhars’ pool. Chronic ear infections and bouts of virally induced asthma when Arch was little had prevented his learning to swim when other kids had. He was still not adept at anything besides the doggie paddle, so the diving gave me fits.

  I said, “How’d the first day of summer school go?”

  His head appeared at the door. Behind him I could see discarded clothes strewn around in piles. He had found the trunks, expensive blue Jams I had found on sale at a Denver department store. He said, “Huh?”

  I repeated my question.

  “Okay,” he said. “Classes don’t start until Monday. Can we talk about this later? I gotta go.”

  I steeled myself. He hated it when I acted protective, when I told him how much I worried about him, how it was especially bad when there was a loss like this. But. He was okay. That was all that mattered.

  I said, “What are you
studying?”

  Arch pushed past me to get a towel from the linen closet. He said, “We start with Edgar Allan Poe.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  He didn’t. He backed out of the linen closet with a beach towel.

  “Not now, Mom. I want to swim.” He looked into my eyes hard. “You won’t have Philip Miller to go out with now.”

  “No,” I said. Like most children of divorce, Arch held a secret longing for his parents to be reunited. This despite the fact that twice I had been forced to run out our back door carrying Arch to a safe house, to escape the rain of blows from Dr. John Richard Korman. Never for Arch, only for me, but how could I have escaped without my child?

  “Oh well,” Arch said now, “guess you’ll miss him. Philip Miller, I mean.”

  I returned his look. “Yes,” I said. “I will.”

  7.

  I slept fitfully, dreamt of nothing, and lay in bed the next morning, Saturday, as if nailed there. Ï tried to put the image of Philip Miller out of my mind,

  Sunshine and the strains of voices streamed through the east-facing window of my room as I stretched and breathed through my yoga routine. From the direction of the Farquhars’ pool and garden, Ï could hear Julian and General Bo calling amicably back and forth. When I got up to investigate, I could see Julian vacuuming the pool with a long-handled instrument attached to a hose. Over a raked area of what had been the garden-crater, General Bo arranged flowering plants in rows as straight as well-drilled troops.

  I had to smile. From here I could see it was the kind of garden an eastern couple with no children but lots of money would put in with great optimism. Lots of money for double-blossom begonias, Johnny-jump-ups, and lilac bushes that bordered rainbows upon rainbows of pansies. No children to worry about poisoning with late-blooming Christmas rose and camas lilies. And optimism, in thinking the soil would be acidic enough for hydrangeas.

  Seeing them labor so diligently made me realize I needed to focus on the day’s work. Deadlines for obtaining supplies, cooking, baking, arranging, serving—all these gave caterers their thin and tired look. Alas, the bathroom mirror told me I was not thin, only short and blond and still sporting a field of faded freckles across a nose that even the kinder girls at boarding school had called “snub.”

  Which reminded me.

  I came out of the bathroom and knocked softly on Arch’s door. I felt awful because it was Saturday morning, but I needed to remind him that his father would be over later, and that all hell would break loose if he wasn’t ready. And I wanted to find out if, on orientation day, he’d been snubbed.

  “Arch?” I called through the wood.

  To my surprise he opened the door. He was dressed in one of his all-purpose sweat suits and held his bag of magic tricks in one hand. He had his glasses on, a good sign that he had been up for a while.

  “Your dad will be by this afternoon,” I told him. Then, before he could say anything, I said, “You didn’t finish telling me about the first day. Were the kids nice?”

  He looked into my face and pulled his mouth into a straight line. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “they weren’t as bad as I expected.” He paused and looked around the room. “Hold on, Mom, I got you something.” He reached over to a shelf and solemnly handed me a Russell Stover Mint Dream. My heart warmed. Arch knew I loved chocolate with mint. He was always on the lookout for new combinations of the two ingredients.

  “Well, thanks very much,” I said as I fingered the silver-green foil. This was Arch’s way of saying he was sorry about Philip Miller.

  “You going to eat it?”

  “Not before eight in the morning. But I will! It’s my favorite, you know that.”

  He was not listening but was again rummaging through his belongings. “Wait. There’s a note here for you from Adele, er, Mrs. Farquhar.” He handed me a crumpled index card.

  The Nelsons have canceled and Weezie Harrington is beside herself. She called this morning and invited Julian and a date for tonight. I told her you’d already bought the food. I don’t think she knows Julian is a vegetarian. Sorry if this causes problems! A.

  I looked back at Arch.

  “So what about the first day?”

  “I told you, the kids weren’t too bad. Watch.” He turned his back to me, then pivoted and held up one, two, three ropes. He caught my eyes again and gave a tiny, knowing grin. “And now,” he said with a flourish, and whipped out a single, long rope.

  I clapped.

  “I did it for the kids in my class at orientation. They liked it. Okay, Mom,” he said by way of dismissal, “anything else?”

  “How’d you get the candy?”

  “Julian took me to Aspen Meadow Drug in the general’s car. I told him my parents were divorced and my mom had lost her boyfriend and I needed to get her something.”

  “He wasn’t my boyfriend.”

  “Okay, Mom. I need to practice now. Nobody was mean to me at the school. You don’t need to worry.”

  Back in the bathroom, I started water gushing into the Farquhars’ claw-footed tub. For myself, I was quite sure I hadn’t snubbed anyone in years. Poverty will do that to you. But as a former doctor’s wife, I had learned all about snub-ers and snub-ees. With the post-divorce reduction in circumstances, my friends, with the exception of Marla and a few others, had evaporated like the steam now rising from the bathwater. Former acquaintances feigned looks of confusion when they encountered me at catered functions, as when I’d seen a surgeon’s wife I knew at the Elk Park Prep brunch. There I was up to my elbows in cheese strata and sausage cake, and Mrs. Frosted Hair Usually Seen in Tennis Clothes had said, “Oh, Goldy!” (as if she’d been trying to reach me for weeks) “How are you?” (as if I’d just recovered from a failed suicide attempt) “Are you working now? I mean, besides this.”

  Yes indeed, I thought as I lowered myself into the water. Just this.

  I reached for the pad of yellow legal paper I kept on a nearby stool that Arch had piled high with back issues of Magician magazine. Well, at least it wasn’t Playboy. I wrote “Dinner For Six” across the top yellow sheet.

  The hostess, Weezie Harrington, had given me an overview of aphrodisiac foods. I had placed a meat and seafood order, but vegetarian Julian and his date would present a problem.

  “I have to have six,” Weezie had said. “It sets up the right psychological dynamic.” For Julian’s meal I would have to do additional research. All I remembered at this point was Weezie’s raised eyebrow when she’d said, “Chocolate for dessert. At one point, the church banned chocolate because it was believed to be inciteful of lust. So make it decadent.”

  I wrote “DECADENT” in large letters and wondered why Weezie and Brian Harrington, who had been married six years, needed aphrodisiacs anyway. He was an energetic and fit fifty. She was in her mid-forties, slender and elegant and with the look of an aging Greek goddess. The story around town was that Brian had courted Weezie lavishly to get hold of her gently sloping thousand acres just north of Interstate 70 near the Aspen Meadow exit. Once successful in obtaining Flicker Ridge, the story went, Brian had moved on to other conquests in the world of real women and real estate. And Weezie had recently steeped herself in the lore of desire-producing foods and substances, much to the current amusement of the country club. Whether she would win Brian back by these charms was up to the caterer, apparently.

  I stared at the yellow pad. Brian, Weezie, Adele and Bo, Julian Teller and a female friend. I had already asked about food allergies, and managed not to smile when Weezie told me Brian was allergic to nuts. Since Venus was born in the sea, we were starting off with shellfish. Except for Julian. I sighed.

  The library did not open until ten, this being Aspen Meadow and suitably provincial. I would have to whip around and finish shopping by eleven to have enough time to cook. Maybe the Farquhars’ encyclopedia could yield info. Surely it would carry more than entries for rocket-propelled grenades and C-4.

  I pulled t
he tub’s plug. Feel great, I said to myself in the most persuasive way possible. Let the mood fit the food, André, my cooking instructor, had said when he trained me. Act hurried and your clients will feel hassled. Have a great time and your clients will have a great time. How I was supposed to act at an aphrodisiac dinner I did not know.

  I reached for one of Adele’s plush floral towels. Sudden tears bit the back of my eyes as the water sucked loudly down the drain. Have a great time.

  Once dressed, I made my way quickly to the Farquhars’ library-cum-study in the back of the house. Outside there was the regular slap-slap of Julian’s arms hitting water. Through the window I could see him plowing through his morning laps. He had vacuumed up the dirt clods—remnants of the garden explosion—from the pool floor. But there was still dirt everywhere else, and the water looked somewhat murky. General Bo was sweating over another row of pansies. I turned to the books.

  Volume A of the encyclopedia cracked open in my lap to “Aphrodisiacs.”

  I remembered Weezie tossing her lioness mane of blond and silver hair at our interview.

  “Spanish fly,” she’d said, “is really dried cantharides, a kind of beetle. Deadly as hell, despite its reputation.”

  The encyclopedia article talked about bark from the yohimbé tree in Africa. No help there; I was pretty sure yohimbé didn’t grow in Aspen Meadow. And then there was the warning that ingesting Spanish fly was a highly toxic way of causing inflammation in the lower abdominal and genital regions. Burning pain accompanied the inflammation. If enough was taken, the inflammation was followed by death. Better avoid that one, too; didn’t sound as if it would fit the ticket.

  What Weezie had told me was that the effect from food was very subtle. She’d said, “You have to tell them what’s supposed to happen.” Tell them what? This will work if you think it does?

  The encyclopedia concurred. The idea of inciting lust rested largely on the powers of suggestion and sympathetic magic. The rhinoceros had been particularly abused, I learned, owing to the unfortunate resemblance its horn bore to the erect male member.