Dying for Chocolate

to the lower level and Julian’s lair. I did not know whether an eleven-year-old would be welcome after a teenagers’ quarrel. But I went back to the cod and resolved to stay out of it.

“Goldy?” Sissy’s voice startled me. I turned around. Her smile was tight, forced; her tense posture distinctly at odds with the portrait-of-innocence outfit. She said, “Are you working?”

No, I wash fish for fun. I said, “I’m about done.”

“What’re you making?”

“Baked cod with Chinese seasonings. Low calorie, low fat, and full of virtue.” I looked at her drawn face briefly, finished chopping the scallions, rolled out and cut squares of foil, placed the fillets and seasonings on top, and rolled each into individual packets. I put them in the refrigerator and took out two soft drinks.

“Want to go out on the porch?”

She gave a facial gesture as if to say, Might as well, and turned. I followed her. The smell of pines moist from the shower was as lovely as it had been on the drive to Schulz’s. I inhaled deeply and tried to bring the feeling back. Sissy’s voice, honed to sharpness, interrupted my reverie.

“Where were all of you this morning?” Sissy demanded. She thrust her face toward mine and sent the jaunty hair bow askew.

“I, um, we went to look for birds at Flicker Ridge.” Her tone was so aggressive that it was a moment before I wondered what business it was of hers where we were. I said, “Why do you ask?”

She did not answer, only took a sip of her drink, then pressed her lips together and gave me an accusing look. “And last night? Where were you then?”

“Well, excuse me, Sissy, not that it’s any concern of yours, but Arch and I went out. For dinner and the evening. Now, what’s going on?”

“Was Julian with you?”

“Is this what you two were arguing about?” I thought back. Julian had said he had a date. I’d just assumed it was with Sissy. I said, “You’re not married to him, you know.” I tried to make my tone soft. “Men don’t like possessive women.” It didn’t come out sounding soft.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the wicker chair. She had the deflated look of a week-old carnation.

I said, “You want to tell me about it?”

With her eyes closed, she said, “When I found Julian, I thought he was the smartest kid I’d ever met.”

“How’d you find . . . meet him?”

“During the Elk Park shadow program for careers. You know, when you follow someone around for a semester to see what it’s really like to be a lawyer or whatever.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Oh sure, I’d been in the same classes with him. But he shadowed Dr. O’Neil from the country club. Dr. O’Neil said Julian was the most gifted student he’d ever met. Wanted to write him a recommendation for Columbia.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s nice.” Not meaning to sound judgmental, but I had seen this phenomenon before: Young woman seeks husband. Only premeds need apply.

“I’m just trying to help him,” Sissy said fiercely. “He’s so smart, and he won’t do anything with it.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked at me and spat out the words. “He wants to cook. He said he should have done his internship at Aspen Meadow Cafe.”

My, my. I wanted to ask Sissy why she didn’t become a doctor. I sipped slowly on my soft drink and decided to leave the career counseling to someone else. I said, “So what does that have to do with last night and this morning?”

“The only reason I wanted to know where he was is that he said he was going to be here. Writing off for catalogs, he said. So I called and called, but just got the machine.”

I looked out at the bowled meadow, where thick fog had settled like cream. Here and there pine trees poked through the white, like aberrant cornflakes.

I said, “You’re not his mother, you know.”

There was a long silence. Sissy turned her face to the meadow.

“Yeah,” she said softly, “maybe that’s the problem.”

I tried to sound lighthearted. She had, after all, sought me out. I said, “Now don’t go getting Oedipal on me.” Another long silence ensued, in which Sissy chewed the inside of her cheek. I said, “It’s hard to lose your counselor. It sounds as if Philip Miller was like a support system for Julian. Maybe you’re expecting too much.”

She grunted. “I’m still not his mother.”

“So what?”

She said nothing for a few minutes. “It’s what came out in his sessions with Dr. Miller,” she said. Hearing Philip addressed by the medical first name, Doctor, still fell strangely on my ears. Sissy went on, “Julian’s adopted. Now he says he can’t go on and make plans for the rest of his life without trying to track down his biological parents first.”

I said, “Oh, Sissy, for heaven’s sake. Let him. People do it all the time now. It’s the quest of the decade.”

She leaned toward me. Her curls shook as she spoke. “If you ask me, it’s a grossly misguided quest. A waste of time. So you find out your father is an insurance salesman down in Dallas and your mother is teaching elementary school in Oregon. These are the people who didn’t want you in the first place, remember? Now they’ve married other people and you have half-siblings who resent your appearance on the scene all of a sudden. Getting on with your life is more important.”

“Well, that’s your opinion.”

She grunted. Maybe she didn’t want to share him with as-yet-unknown relatives. I didn’t know. She did seem awfully angry and bossy all of a sudden. But then at the dinner she had seemed to be studying the Harringtons and their wealth. At the library she had looked around for someone more important to deal with than me. Teenagers. I was dreading Arch becoming one.

She said, “So what do you think? Should he be able to lie to me? Not tell me where he’s going so I’ll worry?”

I looked at her, her earnest dark-brown eyes, her long curly brown hair, her good-looking but anxiously determined face. Here was a girl who had gone through all the hard work of beauty pageants to get to the finals of Colorado Junior Miss, who had decided on her psychology interest and shadowed Philip Miller, who was working at the library to get her college money, the way she got everything else. Foiled in her attempts to have Julian, despite her strong ambition in that area, she was asking me for advice. Me. It was too much.

I said, “I don’t give advice to the lovelorn. You’re going to do what you want to do anyway. I’ll just tell you one thing.”

She waited.

I said, “People don’t change. You can try all you want to make him do what you want, but it is not going to happen.”

She took a deep breath, blew it hard out of both nostrils. “I guess I’ll be going,” she said, and abruptly stood up. “Thanks for trying to be helpful,” she said over her shoulder as she left the deck.

I felt sad and amused. It was like trying to tell someone about childbirth. You just had to go through it, and no amount of advice or description was going to make it any easier. Out on the meadow the fog had lifted. The sun blazed out once again before it began to set. I went back to the kitchen, made a rice pilaf, then washed and trimmed asparagus stalks.

“She gone?”

It was Julian.

I nodded. “Where’s Arch?”

“Down by the pool. Don’t worry, Adele’s watching him. He’s practicing his front flip. He’s getting pretty good,” he added.

I leaned against the counter and crossed my arms. Julian had never once sought my company. He looked around the kitchen.

“You fixing dessert tonight?” he asked.

“Sherbet.”

“Let me fix something, then,” he said. He reached for a cookbook, a fancy one on chocolate. The recipes were