Dying for Chocolate

“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 floor. Decals floated down like confetti.

Joan Rasmussen marched off to use one of the phones. The switchboard operator continued to sing her greeting to callers. As I gathered up the decals from the floor, I watched the headmaster do a slithery Uriah Heep routine with the politely attentive Mr. Coors.

“What happened here?” said Sissy Stone from far above me.

I looked up and tried to give her a big smile. When we had last parted, she had not been in a terrific mood.

“I’m cleaning up my decals, what else?”

She craned her neck around to see if anyone more important was in the vicinity. “My, my, look who’s here,” she said under her breath.

“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in gathering some of these up?”

She sighed with great drama. “Sorry. I’m waiting for Julian, and I can’t get my pants dirty on the floor.”

I grunted, and stuffed the last of the decals into the envelope. When I had heaved myself back up on the bench I thought again about what Elizabeth had told me about Philip’s problematic clients. I gave Sissy a long look. Perfect makeup, perfect hair, perfect rounded and polished nails, perfect pink-on-blue printed blouse coordinated with blue-on-pink printed pants. Miss Perfect had worked for Philip Miller. I wondered if he had been interested in her psychological makeup as well.