Dying for Chocolate

and dry sneakers, there was a knock at my door.

“Mom, it’s me.”

I wrapped a towel around my wet head and opened the door.

He avoided my eyes. His voice was shaky. He said, “Mom, I know you want to help. But it’s just not working.”

“Honey, please. I thought you were drowning.”

“Well. I just wanted to tell you. I’m definitely going to ask Dad if I can go live with him for a while.”

Somebody had told me once, In times of crisis, do nothing. I wished I had remembered that before The Poseidon Adventure.

Now I said, “Let’s talk about this tomorrow. You’ve got guests downstairs.”

The show went on. The biscotti-cum-sparklers were a hit. Now that the excitement was over, both adults and children conversed quietly. I felt low. I didn’t know whether I wanted to eat a dozen biscotti or none at all, so I settled on three. They were heavenly: the thin coating of dark chocolate blended exquisitely with the breath of anise and crunch of almonds, and melded perfectly with the hazelnut-flavored French roast coffee. The planet Venus floated in a dazzle of brightness just above the western horizon. The perfumed evening breeze brought the guests’ voices down to hushed tones. The guests discovered the delights of dipping biscotti into their demitasse before eating them, and there was much exclamation over the result.

That afternoon the general had placed torches at the edges of the concrete. Around nine o’clock, he lit them. He sat down next to Adele and drew a small jewelry box out of his pocket.

He said, “For my bride,” and smiled with such adoration that something closed in my throat. Adele unwrapped the ring and held it up. Sapphires and diamonds glittered in the torchlight.

But Adele’s smile was forced. After the gift she avoided Bo’s eyes. Maybe her back was bothering her. Perhaps she felt bad that she didn’t have something for him. Maybe it just wasn’t a very good party.

I could sympathize with that assessment; I wasn’t very happy either. I didn’t want to think about Arch, about his living with John Richard, about how John Richard would ignore him. The guests filtered out. Their voices full of gratitude rose into the night air. I did the dishes and crawled upstairs, exhausted.

Scout the cat sensed sadness. He followed me up to my room and gathered himself into a ball in one corner of the bed. I thanked him for his company, treated myself to an emergency chocolate in the form of a Toblerone bar, and reflected on the rest of the evening. The interchange with Brian Harrington had been bizarre. I guess I hoped he would call Schulz, although I didn’t really care. The implications of Harrington’s political and social conflia with Philip Miller could lead to a maelstrom of gossip in our little town. Good, that would serve Brian Harrington right, if he was indeed Pierre.

I closed my eyes, let the chocolate melt slowly in my mouth, and tried not to think about the Mountain Journal. This same group of people (minus kids and extraneous adults) had been at Weezie’s aphrodisiac banquet, subject of the last derisive review. Had I once again entertained Pierre the critic? Alias Brian Harrington? He would probably interpret the pool incident as my trying to save Arch from an earthquake.

People will tell you chocolate is a relaxant, but I don’t believe it. The soothing power evaporated once the Toblerone was no more. I couldn’t sleep. I remembered my rebuttal for the Mountain Journal was due the next day. If Brian Harrington was not the critic, who could it be? Julian and Sissy were both in high school, which was a little young to be so venomous. The general and Adele seemed sympathetic. Weezie. Maybe she had indeed been sleeping with Philip Miller. The criticism could be her revenge against me. But that didn’t feel right either. You never know who your enemies are. I turned on the light and got out pen and paper.

To my anonymous, misspoken critic, the infamous Pierre,

Perhaps I should not say he misspoke himself, like someone working for Richard Nixon. This was someone who really did not like me. His taste buds had deteriorated. After his lobotomy.

Dear misguided son of a bitch,

No, that wouldn’t do either. I put down my pen and tried to think positive thoughts. Let go of it. For all the time I had denied, stuffed, repressed, and done other unhealthy things with anger during my marriage to John Richard, I had paid for it with rage during the divorce. Ventilate first. I went into the bathroom, twisted a towel into a rope, bit on it, and screamed. Okay. I splashed cold water on my face and opened the bathroom window.

Again I thought I heard splashing noises out by the pool. It was probably Julian. Whoever it was, I’d be damned before I would try to save two people from drowning in one night.

I plopped down on the bed and frowned at the paper. What was my real worry with this cruel person? Did I really care about him or his silly ideas? I did not. I only cared about preserving my business. This dolt would not get the satisfaction of a response from me.

Dear supportive clients and friends,

Thanks to all of you who have called, visited, or written in response to the spiteful reviews my culinary work has received in the pages of this newspaper.

Thanks to all those who have pointed out the wild inaccuracies of the menus reported and the cowardliness of the critic who refuses to sign his name. And thanks especially to all the clients who have remained loyal and enthusiastic in giving me your business.

I remain,

Goldy the Caterer

I still had not resolved the name issue, but that was the least of my problems at the moment. It felt good to get my feelings on paper. I looked around my room to see if there was any other unfinished business. What the heck, I was on a roll.

The Poe book sat—reproachfully, it seemed to me— on the bureau. The thought of starting the school project made me immediately sleepy. But as I snuggled under the covers, I remembered Arch saying that three other kids in the class were making tapes of telltale heartbeats. One kid’s father, he had earnestly informed me, was even a cardiologist, and his tape was coming with a murmur! It made me wish Edgar Allan had written something along the lines of “Brutalized in a Baltimore Bakery,” but you can’t have everything.

I got up and flipped open to “The Purloined Letter.”

Within a paragraph Poe had me by the cerebrum, if not by the throat. His narrative wove around the insight that the way to thwart a villain was to think the way he did, and follow those paths of thought until villainy was undone. This without a major in psychology, no less. The story was mesmerizing. I went to sleep satisfied that by having read it, I was on the road to reclaiming good-mother status. Now all we needed was a school project to go with the story. This, too, I would have to point out to Arch, would be an undertaking for which his father would have no interest.

When you have read Poe just before sleep, your dreams are full of persons identified only as D— and G—, with events happening in 18—. Nevertheless, I awoke refreshed and ready to tackle the custody crisis.

Scout meowed to go out. I tiptoed down the first set of stairs, disarmed the security system, slipped silently down more stairs, and let Scout out on the patio. The door to Julian’s room was closed. Rather than risk having him emerge suddenly and see me standing foolishly by the door, I followed Scout out onto the cold ground.

The early-morning sun cast dark pools of shadow across the landscape. Tops of the far mountains were hazily lit. The near mountains were immersed in dark green, like still, silent hills at the bottom of a lagoon.

I crossed my arms and breathed the cool, piney air. Arch just didn’t appreciate me, I thought for the thousandth time. This time of day reminded me, for example, of one of my volunteer jobs at his Montessori school. My job was to go in early and replenish paper, mix new batches of tempera paints, and set up the special projects of the day. The teachers asked all the Morning Moms, as we were called, to check the animal cages first thing, in case any member of the rodent-and-bird menagerie had died during the night. Given my hatred of rodents, I had done this job with some trepidation. Luckily I had avoided the job of animal undertaker. A Morning Mom in my car pool had been confronted with the corpse of a baby gerbil, and it had not been pleasant.

I shivered. Scout had not returned. Perhaps if he had, I would not have experienced the unwelcome and ghastly return of my worst fears as Morning Mom. For there, floating face down in the Farquhars’ pool, was Brian