The Chocolate Lover

by Susan A. O'Doherty

Dear Curtis:

I am leaving this right under your nose because I don’t know where I’ll be when you realize that I’m gone. I was going to say, “when you come to,” but “coming to” presupposes a “from,” doesn’t it? And you’re here; you’re lying in my bed at this instant, looking straight at me.

I have been trying to imagine what will happen next - next for you, since our worlds seem to be split, at least for this instant. What will you make of it? How will you explain, to yourself, of course, but also to our friends, that I just disappeared the afternoon of our “surprise” wedding shower? And not in the traditional sense, the “Everything was fine yesterday, and then I woke up with this note on my pillow” story. People understand that, even if it’s embarrassing. Who could comprehend this? Not me, and I have been living with it for quite some time now.

You may think that you passed out, or even that we were assaulted and I was kidnapped. That would explain at least some of what you will find - yourself, shirtless and shoeless, on the bed, with writing all over your face and chest (I’ll explain that part later) when you had been standing in the doorway a moment before - and what you won’t find, which is, of course, me. I know it will raise other questions, though, and even though I don’t have the answers, I will try to tell you what happened from my side. Maybe that will help.

Okay. My experience:

Saturday afternoon, around 1:30. I was in the bedroom, getting dressed. It was hard to figure out what to wear - I wanted to look great at the shower, especially since I knew your brother Ray would bring the video camera as always, but since I was supposed to think you were taking me shopping for a couch, I couldn’t get too dressed up. I tried to justify wearing the black a-line that you like so much because it minimizes my hips, but it was hard to imagine anyone buying the idea that I’d thrown it on to hit Krasman’s Furniture Showroom. Ditto the claret silk. So it’s not my fault that when you let yourself in I had on the navy pantsuit my mother gave me, that, yes, I know, is too tight, because unlike normal fiancées I have put on weight during the wedding-planning period. I was not necessarily going to wear this pantsuit to the shower, but I had reached the back of the closet and was trying on everything in there.

I heard the door open, and turned around to meet you as you came into the room. You looked great, as always - your black pants a perfect fit, your soft shirt, and your hair still wet from the shower, but falling into fabulous waves. It looks so easy when you do it, Curtis. You could be a movie star or a rising young statesman, rather than assistant sales manager at SmartSuits Unlimited - not that there’s anything wrong with that. And, you’re right, working out at the gym, and taking the time to select the right clothes and keep them in good repair, does make you more attractive, which is of course a great benefit to me. I wanted to jump you right then and there.

Until you looked at me in the pantsuit and opened your mouth. That was when I felt like my head was splitting in two, and that was when it happened.

At first I thought you were the one it had happened to. You stopped in your tracks. I keep trying to find words to describe it - I started to say “stopped dead,” but you are warm and alive. It took a minute for me to grasp that, though, since you had gone stiff, your face frozen in a half-smile, half-reprimand, one arm extended toward me, the other pushed out palm forward like a traffic cop ordering me to slam the brakes.

I thought you had had a stroke. I slapped your face a couple of times and screamed your name, but you didn’t move, I couldn’t feel your breath and I couldn’t find your pulse. I tried to ease you onto the bed, but I ended up pushing and nudging you to the edge of the mattress and then toppling you over. I took off your shirt in case it was choking you, and then I took your shoes off because I had seen somewhere that you’re supposed to, though I have no idea why. Then I called 911.

When the phone just kept ringing on the other end - nobody picked up and there was no recording - I thought I must have misdialed in my panic. I tried again, and the same thing happened.

That was when I saw Rupert, caught in mid-leap onto the windowsill. He was suspended there, Curtis, his little paws thrust forward, almost onto the sill, his tail sweeping the floor. I know that must be hard to believe. I didn’t even start to take it in myself. I picked him up and put him on the bed next to you. I know how much he irritates you, but I couldn’t leave him in the air that way. He was as stiff as you.

I ran out into the hall and banged on Mrs. Toomey’s door, and then the Olsons’. Mrs. Toomey never goes anywhere, and there’s always somebody watching TV at the Olsons’, but nobody answered either door, and there were no sounds. When I took a breath and listened, I realized that there were no sounds, period. Coming from anywhere.

Downstairs, James was hunched over his paper at the front desk, as always. Stiff. Out at the pool, Amanda Mayfield was arced over the water, like she’d just taken one of her prizewinning dives in her form-fitting tankini that I know you admire so much, but she hadn’t hit the surface yet. I ran out to the highway, and all the traffic was stopped dead, people sitting in their cars and trucks looking like statues. A man in a blue Volvo was flipping the bird at a truck that was cutting him off; a woman was half-turned in the front seat of her van, with her hand raised at the boy poking his sister with a ball-point pen. She was about to rear-end the farmer in his pickup who was driving too slowly because he was shouting into his cell phone.

My thought then, Curtis, was international terrorism. Germ warfare, most likely - some paralyzing virus. Next they would be coming to take over. Maybe I was the only one who was immune, or, more likely, there were others, as scared and confused as I was.

I ran back up to the apartment and turned on the TV, but I got nothing but static. Same with the radio. I called my mother, but the phone just rang; the machine didn’t even come on. The computer was on, but I couldn’t get the Internet. I got out the Yellow Pages and started calling all the big institutions I could think of - the hospital, the TV station, the bus terminal - figuring that maybe somebody was alert and would pick up. Nothing.

That was when it all hit me, Curtis. I sat down on the bed next to you and started shaking and crying, and I think even screaming. I hoped I was dreaming this, but I knew I wasn’t. Even after I had worn myself out with hysterics and could think a little, I could not imagine a good ending for this. Either the terrorists would come and wake everyone up but we would all be slaves, or this was a permanent condition and I was the only one left in the world.

I gave in then. I had some Ephedra left from when I was going to try to fit into my sister’s wedding dress, and half a prescription Xanax from the time I caught you with Amanda Mayfield in the poolhouse. (Yes, I know, a stuck zipper. Let’s not get into that again.) I swallowed it all, then lay down next to you with the Jack Daniels your brother Phil brought. I put Rupert on my stomach and waited.

As you have observed, though, I have a cast-iron stomach. I got drunk, cried some more thinking about our wedding that was never going to be, fell asleep, then woke up hardly feeling sick at all.

My first thought was that I was going to have to find something stronger. I wondered how to do this with all of the doctors incapacitated. That was when it dawned on me that I had the run of the city - that I didn’t need a prescription, or money, for that matter. I could just walk into the drugstore and take whatever I wanted.

I tried to drive to Miller’s, but the highway was like a huge traffic jam, so I ended up leaving my car on the shoulder and walking. I have to admit, even though I felt through with life, I started looking into the cars to see what people were up to. There was a couple having sex in the back of a car service car, in the middle of the day, and the windows weren’t shaded or anything! And a woman who looked like a model, looking in the rearview mirror to put on mascara as she changed lanes.

I was brought up, like you, to believe it was rude to stare, and as a result I have never indulged my curiosity to the extent I’ve wanted to. There was so much going on in those cars, Curtis, and I looked at every one for as long as I liked.

When I got to Miller’s, it was crowded as usual on a Saturday. I stopped and looked in everyone’s carts. I saw Mrs. Ostrovsky with her cart full of construction paper and glue sticks; I guess she was getting ready to decorate for the first day of third grade. I can’t make myself call her Frederica, or even Fredi, as some of the other teachers do. I don’t think she can quite take in that we’re co-workers now, either.

Remember how there was a construction-paper bunny at each desk, with the occupant’s name on it? I still have mine, and here’s a secret, Curtis - I still have yours, too. You probably don’t remember the hue and cry when yours disappeared. Mrs. Ostrovsky made us all take everything out of our desks. Little did she know I had stuck it into the waistband of my skirt. You cried until she cut out a new one, with a red paper bow tie and a placard that read “CURTIS” in rainbow letters. It was the nicest bunny of them all, and you loved it. If your mother has one, it’s that one, but I pressed the original into my scrapbook that night, and at the end of the year when we got to take the others home, I taped my bunny next to yours so it looked like they were holding hands.

You were such a great kid, Curtis! At that age, most of the other boys had crud under their fingernails, punched each other on the playground, and thought girls had cooties. You were always clean and polite, with your neat little sweater-vests and your sharpened pencils, and you liked nice things, like the bunnies. My heart was yours.

So I was a thief even then, Curtis, although I never told anyone until now. Maybe knowing that will prepare you for what I did next.

You are a decent, compassionate person, and I know you would understand a person breaking into the pharmacy department for the drugs she needs to commit suicide because her fiancé has (she thinks) been paralyzed by alien terrorists. That is what I intended to do, and I would have, if Larry Greenway hadn’t been picking up his OxyContin at the counter. I hope this doesn’t cause any more trouble for Larry, but at the moment swiping it seemed more ethical than breaking and entering.

What I planned to do then was to go home, lie down with you, and finish what I had started. Maybe that is what would have happened if I had walked back through the store a different way. As things worked out, though, I found myself in the snacks aisle.

As you know, it was my habit to avoid that particular aisle in every supermarket and convenience store, since all I have to do to gain five pounds is inhale the aroma of M&Ms.; I started to walk as quickly as I could, eyes front, holding my breath.

I don’t know if you realize how hard that is for me to do, Curtis. I know you feel that if I would only exercise a little discipline I could look as good as you. And ever since the third grade, I have tried to be the sort of girl you would be proud of, even if it means going against my natural impulses.

When I got to the Reese’s Cups, though, I wavered. It occurred to me that holding back might not be necessary since the world as we knew it had ended and I would most likely never see you conscious again. I was ashamed of myself for having such a thought - a decent person would be too heartbroken to even think of eating - but even as I was thinking this, my hand had strayed over to the family pack of the Chocolate Lovers Cups, and before I knew it I was ripping it open and stuffing one in, right there in the store.

And so I became a common looter, Curtis. I know this would offend you on so many levels - the thievery, of course, so different from the suicide pills, and my gluttony, which has always repelled you, I know, since I was a chubby eight year old.

It gets worse. First, I actually enjoyed it. I was surrounded by frozen people - a mother swatting her preschooler’s hands away from the merchandise (too late, judging from the chocolate line on his lips); Mrs. Nelson from the post office loading up her cart, I guess for the grandkids; and Katie Marsh hiding four Hershey’s Special King Size Bars under the Tampax and shampoo as if we didn’t all know she makes herself throw up - people with lives, and families, that were now forever lost - and here I was, savoring the sweet slide of chocolate down my throat, and the satisfying solid feel of the peanut butter between my teeth. I am shameless.

Then, after I’d eaten three cups, I remembered the bakery section. I hightailed over, ran behind the counter, and dug into one of those chocolate fudge cakes with the multicolored frosting flowers.

These are the cakes that the girls from the trashier families used to have as birthday cakes. I was always ashamed to admit that I liked them better than my mother’s home-baked ones. I have always felt low-class because of this - and many other things.

The cake was every bit as yummy as I remembered from those long-ago parties. I don’t know what they make those flowers out of (chemicals and dye, you would say, and I’m sure you are right) but they are so fluffy and sweet, and the fudge is so dark and rich, that when they swish around together in your mouth it feels like singing hymns in church on a beautiful day when you really believe that God is in charge. (That may offend you, too, Curtis. The fact is, I have been forced to do a lot of thinking and questioning on my own since this crisis began, but even before that I had my doubts. Starvation, floods, wars, sick children - I have tried to make myself believe they are all part of some great plan, but God would have to be a sadist. I never felt I could say this to you before. Even so, there are those mornings when I don’t think about it all; I just feel the beautiful day and the miracle of being alive, and the music pours out. The cake tastes like that.)

All right. I’m sure it is painful for you to learn all at once that your fiancée is a selfish pig, a looter, and possibly an atheist. I won’t compound it by giving you a blow-by-blow of the rest of my debauchery. Suffice it to say that I loaded up a shopping cart with items that would have made you gag and walked it back home, munching all the way.

I still intended to kill myself. In fact, I stopped off at the liquor store on the way home and lifted two bottles of rum, to help the the OxyContin do its work. My thought (though maybe I shouldn’t call it that; I felt so tipsy from all the chocolate that I wasn’t planning things out very well) was to go back and eat everything I wanted, then take the pills and drink the rum, lie down again with you and Rupert, and pass off into oblivion. Of course I see now that it wouldn’t have worked - how could I have imagined ingesting all that without throwing up? But that was the plan.

I believe I would have carried it out if I hadn’t noticed two things on returning home.

First: When I went into the bedroom to check on you, the clock on the VCR caught my eye. It still said 1:31 pm. As you know, I am not the most observant person, and the events of the day had disoriented me, so I had not taken in that it was still light out until that moment. (My watch, as you may remember, needed a battery change, and I had not gotten around to it despite your reminders. Not that it matters now.)

You had come over at 1:30 in the afternoon. Then all the commotion, then God knows how long I passed out for. That joint gym membership had increased my muscle tone somewhat, but even so I was far from what you would call buff; it had to take me over an hour to walk to Miller’s and even longer to come back since I was pushing the cart and stopping to unwrap candy and cookies. All the clocks in the apartment read 1:31 (thank you, as always, for keeping them synchronized). The sun was still high in the sky.

Second: The expression on your face. It hadn’t changed since you first walked in, but I had not taken the time to examine it thoroughly before. In fact, I had never had the chance to spend an hour or more just tracing every line on your face and pondering what it might mean. Who does get such an opportunity?

Here is what I saw, Curtis: Contempt. Revulsion. Yes, love, too, of course, and kindness. Those I was aware of. Don’t think I’m giving them short shrift. But your lips were pressed together like you were trying to smile but just couldn’t come up with it; and there was panic, as well as affection, in the crinkles around your eyes. Your whole face screamed ambivalence. (Your body, too, with your left arm held out in an embrace and your right hand warding me off.)

I knew what you were seeing, too. Me, with my fat ass crammed into that tacky pantsuit, which was not 100% clean even before the chocolate. My hair needing a trim. My general unpresentableness, just as I was to be presented to one and all as your bride-to-be.

All right. I knew this. It is not as though you’d made a secret of wanting me to be more disciplined and presentable. What I had not admitted to myself was how deep it went. I had believed it was like when we first moved in here and the kitchen cabinets were covered with 23 layers of unsightly paint. I thought, or told myself, that what you wanted was to do what we did with the cabinets - scrape away the crap on the surface, to reveal the beauty of the wood underneath.

But after I forced myself to really look at your face, there was no escaping it. You didn’t want a restoration, you wanted a renovation. A whole different cabinet.

Because the chocolate lover is me, Curtis. So is the slob. Since we were kids I have tried to make that not true, but look what I ran out and did the moment I thought the world was ending.

Of course, the world wasn’t ending. It finally dawned on me that it wasn’t everyone else who was afflicted, but me. I was caught in the split second between your entrance, your look, and whatever happens next.

The first thing I did on realizing that was run to the bathroom and throw up. The chocolate was not the only thing to come up. I expelled years’ worth of junk I’d swallowed without question, the idea that I wasn’t good enough for you being the main one.

You know what else came up? My job. I DO NOT WANT TO BE AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL MUSIC TEACHER. I am a MUSICIAN. I definitely puked up a thousand repetitions of "The Wheels on the Bus" and "Hey, Betty Martin." They are not going back down again, contract or no contract.

Curtis, what you don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, is that I loved working at the Roundhouse. I know it is a dive, but you know what? I am a dive person. I love singing the blues and I didn’t mind waiting on drunk, rowdy old men for the chance. I was comfortable there, Curtis. Everyone knew and liked me. At school, I’m the chubby one who doesn’t mix well, who makes jokes nobody thinks are funny.

When there was nothing left to come up, I sat on the bathroom floor and thought about everything I had just let go of, and wondered what might be left. I realized that, for the first time since I was eight years old, I was thinking of myself as an interesting person. That was when I decided to hold off on the OxyContin.

Okay. The writing. I am truly sorry about that. Here’s what happened. Fortunately, the shower works, so I was able to clean myself up. Afterwards, I fell asleep on the couch, I don’t know for how long. (It’s hard to distinguish a nap from deep slumber when the sun is always in the same place.) When I woke, I ate some chocolate kisses for - what? Breakfast? Then I decided that since I wasn’t going to kill myself just yet after all, I might as well put the rum to better use. I found some orange juice in the fridge and started in.

I guess I overdid it. I thought about everything I’d missed out on, and that now it might be too late, that I might never get back into the stream of life. I thought about the Roundhouse, of course, but also things I’d forgotten about over the past sixteen years - how I never wore my favorite pink satin dress again after the 8th grade glee club concert when you went on about how glamorous Juliet Dunn looked in her skinny black sheath. How you didn’t like me being friends with Chrissy Gordon because she lived in a trailer park and her parents were druggies. She was a great friend, Curtis, and I gave her up. How I went to State to be with you, and majored in music education instead of voice because we needed to be practical in thinking of our future.

I blamed you, Curtis. And, as I said, I’d overdone the rum, so writing it all out on your chest and forehead seemed like a good idea. That way if the world started up again while I was gone, you would be sure to see how I felt.

As soon as I sobered up a little, I regretted it. I tried to wash it all off (which accounts for the patches where I rubbed the skin raw - first I used a washcloth and water, and then, I’m ashamed to admit, I panicked and tried Ajax. I am really sorry. I guess I hadn’t sobered up as much as I thought. They didn’t turn red, but I bet they will once your heart starts pumping again). I know these were my choices, Curtis, because I wanted to please you. You didn’t force me into anything. It’s just that I’ve always been afraid that if I didn’t do what you wanted, you would stop loving me. But what I can’t stop wondering is, who is it that you loved?

That’s why I won’t be here when you find this. When I’m done writing I’m going to check in on my mother, to make sure she’s not caught in the middle of a heart attack or a robbery or anything. Then I plan to walk out to Hal Roper’s Showroom and steal an MG and drive it to New York.

I hope that doesn’t horrify you. I don’t think my old clunker could make it that far, and it’s hard to steer. I figure with a little car like that, I will have a better chance of squeezing between the stalled vehicles, and I can even drive on the shoulder if I have to. Besides, I have always wanted to drive one. I have not tried to make the gas pumps work, but I will bring a siphon with me and steal gas out of other people’s tanks if I need to.

I have always wanted to see New York. I am sorry I couldn’t talk you into going there on our honeymoon, but I understand your feeling that big cities are dangerous and dirty. I want to see Carnegie Hall. In fact, I plan to go in and sing onstage. At the Met, too, and Alice Tully, and the Apollo. I will go to all the museums, and dine at all the best restaurants, sitting down at a nice table and eating other people’s entrees. I will steal clothes from Lane Bryant if I get too fat. I want these experiences. Afterwards, I may go to Chicago and California. I’m sorry there is no way to get overseas, but I don’t trust myself to learn how to fly a plane from reading a book.

There are other things I want to do, too. I want to track down Chrissy Gordon. I heard in the teachers’ lounge that she is living in the projects out by Route 3, and that she has had some trouble with drugs, and has a child. I will stop off there on my way north - she’s not in the phone book, but there has to be some sort of directory there, and I can always get the keys from the super and just go door to door until I happen on her apartment. I will bring groceries and diapers and anything else I can find (okay, steal) that looks useful. There must be other people in the complex who don’t have enough to eat, too, and I’m sure there are plenty in New York. I have a lot to occupy me in whatever time I have left.

I don’t know how much time that is. I don’t even know how much time has passed. Once in a while - when I was drunk and angry at you, and now, when I’m taking in how much I am going to miss you - the air gets quivery, the way it does before a thunderstorm, and I feel like things are going to start up again. But then I remember the other side of the equation - your contempt, or your kindness - and it all goes dead. So I think it’s up to me.

Please understand that I can’t just go on with the shower, with apologizing for my weight and my taste and my general wrongness. If that were an option, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place. So I am going to try to become the person I might have been if we had never met. When I know who that is, I will come back, and I believe you and the world will, too. I hope by that time I am not too fat, or too old, or too immoral for you. I hope you still want me. I know I will still want you. I have never loved anyone else.

I know you will feed Rupert until I get back, because you are an honorable person and would not starve a cat even if he does bite your eyelashes in the middle of the night. Please remember that he only likes Fancy Feast chicken and fish, not beef. You won’t have to take care of him for long - as soon as things get moving again, I will find my way back to you. I hope you will be waiting.

Love always,
Carla

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©Susan A. O'Doherty

Susan O'Doherty's writing has been featured in Eureka Literary Magazine, Northwest Review, Apalachee Review, Ballyhoo Stories, Eclectica, VerbSap, Carve, Word Riot, Style & Sense, Phoebe, and the anthologies It's a Boy! (Seal Press, 2005) and Familiar (The People's Press, 2005), and is scheduled to appear in the forthcoming anthologies About What Was Lost (Penguin, 2006) and The Best of Carve, Volume VI. She is also a psychologist specializing in issues affecting writers. Her advice column for writers, "The Doctor is In," appears each Friday on MJ Rose's blog, "Buzz, Balls, and Hype."