Dying for Chocolate

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t know who it was. He’d been seeing her for about a month.”

About a month? I felt as if I’d been punched in the solar plexus. Elizabeth, I was quite sure, did not know why my marriage had broken up. I said, “Really?”

“Yeah, he said he hadn’t broken through to the abuse yet, but that it was a puzzling case because he’d known her a long time ago. She was a strong woman, or so he thought, but she ended up staying with this abusive guy for seven years. His question was, how could somebody who was so competent in other areas be that self- destructive?”

“That was his question, huh? So she was a client?”

“Well, I just assumed she was,” said Elizabeth as she helped herself to more tabbouleh. “She must have been important to him. Oh, I don’t want to make you jealous or anything. I think he really wanted to study her. Wanted to help her, you know?”

“No,” I said carefully, “I guess I don’t.”

Elizabeth and I parted when the raindrops began to fall. I was a good actress. I let my words fall as lightly as the pinpricks of water coming down. “Can’t wait to get together again.” “Everything you brought was so delicious.” “Call me anytime.”

There was a ringing in my ears. I was not aware of crying, only aware of wetness on my cheeks. I batted it away. Crying was a volitional act. Therefore, I was not crying.

Didn’t know how someone could flunk relationships, but be so competent in other areas? Hadn’t they taught him anything in Shrink School?

It felt strange to have been betrayed by someone who was now dead. If indeed that was what had happened— although it was hard to believe one of his clients had exactly the same history as mine, or presented the same psychological puzzle to be solved. I had been an idiot. It was like someone had shot an entire round of ammunition at me a month ago. The bullets were just now reaching their mark.

And here I thought he’d liked me.

I stayed for seven years with an abusive spouse because I was afraid I would lose Arch. I stayed for seven years because I was afraid I would not be able to make a living. But let me ask you about our relationship, Philip, yours and mine. In that relationship, who abused whom?

Within half an hour I had driven back to Aspen Meadow and renegotiated the road to Elk Park Prep. Of all people, I knew the dangers of Highway 203, especially when it was wet. And yet I found myself whipping around its curves as if defying death.

About a hundred feet past the school’s entrance I vaulted my first speed bump. The van caught a foot of air and landed hard. I downshifted. The engine whined in protest. No question about it, I was not driving the way a good prep-school parent should. But I was furious.

I pulled alongside a man-made clump of perfectly planted wildflowers. These mounds, like mock ruins landscaped into nineteenth-century gardens, were placed at irregular intervals along the split-rail fence that ran the length of the drive. This was why they had put up the electrified gate to keep out flower-eating deer. Profusions of asters, daisies, columbines, and poppies spilled every which way. My guess was that the desired impression ran something like, We can tame the wild! This was undoubtedly similar to what they wanted to do with teenage prep students. But our state’s annual rainfall averaged only fifteen inches. Even Mother Nature could never grow flowers that densely. As if in answer, a hidden sprinkler erupted with a tent of mist.

To my right, past the fence and the border of old blue spruce trees planted during the hotel days, more sprinklers gushed over closely shaved, too-green hockey and soccer fields. The shush sound of the water filled the air. I shook my head. If Philip had truly been concerned with the state’s ecology, he should have started with his alma mater’s depletion of the water table.

I began driving again, slowly, up toward the pool construction site. Warning signs—Building in Progress. Keep Out!—were enough to make me swing wide of the chain-link extravaganza. No more speed bumps, I thought with glee, as I pressed the accelerator.

“Jeez, look out, Mom,” Arch yelled as I roared into the dirt between the pool construction site and the school parking lot.

I stepped out of the van and slammed the door behind me, scanned the parking lot with angry eyes, and ended up looking at my son. He was regarding me with some puzzlement. He pushed his glasses back up on his nose.

He said, “What are you doing here?”

What was I doing here, anyway? I stared back at Arch, as if his face could prompt my memory. Oh yes, decals.

“I’m not here to get you,” I told him.

He announced in his grown-up, greater-knowledge voice, “I’m waiting for Julian. He’s going to take me back when he finishes in the lab.”

At that moment I noticed two girls about Arch’s age lolling on top of a hill of dirt behind the pool site. They were watching us.

“Arch, who are those girls?” I asked. I pointed.

He said, “Never mind, Mom. Let me just take you into the office.”

“Great.”

We started to walk toward the stucco building. Behind us female voices called, “Hey! You’re cute!”

I whirled around. “Arch! Are they yelling at you?”

His cheeks were crimson. He was staring at the sidewalk. He said, “Just keep walking, Mom.”

•  •  •

The switchboard operator chirped, “Elk Park Prep! Please hold!” into five lines in quick succession while I waited to ask for my dreaded decals. Arch disappeared. I sat on an imitation-leather bench and allowed blankness to fill my mind. I was just getting started on my mantra when Joan Rasmussen caught sight of me and, like a human Amtrak, chugged purposefully in my direction. I groaned. Loudly, I’m afraid.

“Excuse me, Goldy the caterer, right?” she said with her best imperious tone. “Surely that wasn’t a groan I just heard from you? I am working very hard on this pool project, a lot harder than most parents, I might add, and to think that you—”

“It wasn’t a groan,” I said as I rose to my feet. My face only reached her matronly bosom, which I tried to avoid looking at. “I was doing an om . . . it’s a guttural sound issuing from the soul.”

“I realize that you are in the service industry, Ms. Bear, but we really must ask that you go door to door —”

“Doctors and lawyers are in the service industry,” I replied evenly. “Do they go around pitching the pool and handing out decals?”

“Of course not,” she huffed. “But that is because they can afford to give—”

“Oh, I get it!” I cried. “If you can give a certain amount, you get out of grunt-work! Tell me, Joan, how do I apply for an exemption?”

At that moment, the headmaster appeared from behind the switchboard operator. I had never seen him up close. He was a baby-faced fellow whose round-rimmed glasses gave him the look of a young owl. Despite the fact that we were halfway through June, he was wearing tweeds. Mister Rogers goes to Yale. He peered at us and frowned. Trouble in the neighborhood.

“Here are your decals,” said Joan Rasmussen as she handed me a packet. “Thank you for volunteering your time so generously.”

A noise arose from deep in my throat. “Ommmmmmmm.”

There was a simultaneous sharp intake of breath from Joan and the headmaster as the two of them fixed their eyes at a point beyond my shoulder. Glancing backward, I saw a senior member of the Coors family coming through the doors of the school lobby. Too late I realized that the only thing between the headmaster and all those brewery millions was me.

“Gah!” I yelled as the headmaster mowed me down. I teetered backward and then fell over the imitation- leather bench. The fund-raising packet flew up out of my hand. My back hit the wall and I landed ungracefully on the