Dying for Chocolate

“I have a big caseload, Miss G. But I’ll do what I can to find out about Julian.”

I made a face at him.

“Mainly because,” he said before wheeling off with his empty cart, “you aren’t going to be able to get this Philip fellow out of your mind until I do.” He paused to look at me. “Am I right?”

I looked away.

After half an hour my cart bulged with packages of fresh rotini, bunches of dark slender asparagus, a feathery dill plant and shiny lemon, almonds, as well as anise seed, and unsalted butter. Finally, I stopped to pick up what I had ordered the previous week: pounds upon pounds of jumbo shrimp and ground chuck that the grocery had meticulously wrapped in butcher paper. I loved spending other people’s money.

The van gave me a little bit of trouble when I turned the key.

I whispered to it. I coaxed. I shrieked. The engine finally turned over and I started toward Aspen Meadow Country Club. I would have made it in ten minutes, too, if I hadn’t seen Arch walking along the dirt shoulder at a very determined pace. When I pulled over, the van sputtered and died.

“Arch! Where are you going? Why aren’t you in school? This road is too dangerous for you to walk along, what’s—”

“Go away! Leave me alone! You don’t care anyway!”

I put my head on the steering wheel. This was why women could never get ahead. Just when you thought you were getting somewhere, your child was going to have a crisis. I put on the emergency flashers and got out.

“Arch,” I said as I pursued him along the narrow path of dust and weeds, “please stop and talk to me. I do care. Come on and get in the van and we’ll go back to the Farquhars and we can talk while I cook—”

He whirled and glared at me. “I’m going into town to get some magic stuff and then I’m going to walk over to my friends’ houses and ask their parents if they can come tonight.”

“I’m sorry. Why don’t you just call them?”

“You were supposed to call them.”

“I didn’t see the list—”

“It’s in your Poe book! You always tell me Lot to invite friends myself! That it’s the mom’s job!”

I felt my body slouch. “I’m sorry, hon, but I haven’t had time to read . . .”

He turned his back to me and resumed walking.

“Okay, look!” I called. “Just get into the van and we’ll go home and make the calls together. It’ll be much faster!”

He stopped and turned again. “I still need a hat and cape.”

“Okay, okay, I can probably manage a cape,” I said. “The top hat will have to wait until the next trip to Denver.”

Arch walked toward me, apparently satisfied with the compromise.

“Where are you going to get a cape?” he asked once we had settled into the van.

I turned the key. Nothing happened. I looked at him. “I was thinking the church might have one.”

Arch reached for the door handle, as if I had double-crossed him and he was going to get out of the car as quickly as possible.

He said, “I don’t want a chasuble.”

How he could remember the names of all the priestly garments when that same vocabulary eluded me was another of Arch’s amazing traits. But in this particular context, when the van again refused to turn over, it just made me angry. Why couldn’t Arch know about cars, say, instead of magic and fantasy role-playing games and ecclesiastical trappings?

I said, “We’ll go to Aspen Meadow Drug, then. They have everything.” The van, as if in agreement, finally turned over.

We pawed through the drugstore racks. Nothing. I told Arch to let me have one more look, and while I did he saw one of his friends from the list. The kid had just come from the doctor where he’d had an ear check. I invited him to the party. While they were chatting (“Bring a swimsuit,” Arch was saying, while the mother gave me a startled look. How can you afford a pool?) I trundled off to find a clerk, a teenage girl who was so fat my heart went out to her. Still, I was not above promising her a dozen Scout’s Brownies if she would check the upstairs storeroom for a cape left unsold at Halloween. Her eyes brightened, and after disappearing for five minutes she handed me a black satin adult cape still in its plastic wrapper. Fifty dollars. I thanked her profusely and got her name so I could leave her the brownies.

“We’re in business, kid,” I called to Arch as I held the package aloft, headed for the checkout, and prayed that my groceries had survived this half-hour delay.

But the van would not start. Arch gave me an impatient look.

I screamed, “This is not my fault!”

To my complete amazement, he said quietly, “Why don’t you just get out the jumper cables?”

I nodded in dumbfounded silence and began to extract the jumper cables from old newspapers and cans and other things I had been meaning to recycle. Arch climbed out of the van and found his friend’s mother, who agreed to give us a jump. Problem was, she couldn’t remember which wire went where, and I was so frazzled I couldn’t either, so it was something of a relief when Arch took the wires out of my hands and commanded the woman to start her car.

“Do you really not know how to do this, Mom?”