Dying for Chocolate

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. I 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, I 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