Читать книгу Julia's Chocolates - Cathy Lamb - Страница 6

“Men are pricks!” Lydia whacked a wooden spoon against the giant pan, the strawberries melting into a thick goo that would turn out to be the most delicious jam you have ever tasted in your life. I remember drinking the jam right from the jar as a child.

It was Aunt Lydia who had turned me on to cooking and, particularly, baking chocolate desserts and cookies when I was a kid. We had spent hundreds of hours right here among her plants and books and birds. It was the happiest time of my life.

“Big pricks. Little pricks. They are all”—she slammed the wooden spoon against the rim of the pot for the umpteenth time—“pricks!”

I sipped the herbal tea she had thrust at me the instant I arrived. It was laced with a good deal of rum, so I figured I would have at least three or four teas tonight. Maybe five. I took a shuddery breath. The wood stove she’d settled me by in the kitchen was blowing out heat like a fire-breathing dragon.

“But!” Aunt Lydia declared, her green eyes flashing, her thick gray hair dancing around her face as if all the energy packed into her was flying through the follicles. “I am so glad you didn’t marry the King Prick, Robert.”

I ignored the stab of pain that shot right through my heart. “You never even met him.” Why was I defending him? Geez. I am a sick, wimpy woman. And my eye had looked like hard purple and green vomit today, too.

“I knew by the way you talked, by what you didn’t say. By how I could never call you at your apartment because he would tell you to get off the phone.” Her eyes flew open so I saw all the white. “I didn’t want to spend any time with King Prick. Do you think I should have Janice make me another pig and name him King Prick?”

I opened and closed my mouth. A giant pig named after my ex-fiancé. There was some appeal.

“No!” Lydia shouted, arguing aloud with herself as she stomped her tiny foot. “I won’t. I don’t want any piece of him near my property. Oh, Good Lord.” She sorted through the cabinets above her head. “I am ALMOST out of cinnamon! I can’t BELIEVE it!” This last part she yelled so loud the multitude of birds in three giant cages went crazy.

“I’ll go get you some cinnamon—”

“No! Heavens, no, Julia. I’ll get some tomorrow. But I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE IT!”

This is classic Lydia. The smallest problems leave her totally exasperated, even furious. Astounded. And yet, the big problems, the terrible things in her life that had happened, like losing her father and brother as a child in a car accident and being stuck in that car with two dead people for hours while the police dismantled the car, she rarely talked about, and when she did it was with strength and courage and acceptance.

And she never talked about being raped by a stranger when she was twenty-five. That was about five years after she had a miscarriage and a drunk doctor slipped with the knife and made Aunt Lydia forever infertile, and then her husband left her. My mother had told me about that.

Aunt Lydia’s phone rang again, but she didn’t answer it. In the other room I could hear her birds singing to each other. “Cinnamon. Well, I don’t need it for the jam. But I was going to make cinnamon rolls for the girls tonight. It’s Psychic Night, and we’re having it here, I did tell you, didn’t I?”

“Psychic Night?” I choked a bit on my tea, but I could feel the rum floating through my body, and it felt like a river of pure warmth. Or maybe that was the wood stove that was so hot my back felt as if it were on fire.

She pushed her gray hair out of her eyes and peered at me. “We’re discussing the power of breasts.”

My mug dropped onto the table. “The power of what?”

“The power of our BREASTS!” Aunt Lydia held two fingers in the air, then pointed at her own breasts. “You know what they are! Your mother and I and you”—she glared with indignant accusation at my chest—“all have the same big boobs. And there’s power there. We have to rein it in and use it for our own benefit.”

“Absolutely,” I muttered. “I need to rein in my Breast Power.”

“That’s right! Rein in your Breast Power!” Lydia rolled the words in her mouth. “Brrreeeassstt power! Perfect! We’ll call it Breast Power Psychic Night. Every week we have a new title. I’m so glad you’re here, honey. Here, come and stir the jam for me.”

I brought my big breasts with me as I got up obediently and started stirring, watching the strawberries getting smaller and smaller, the color a brilliant burgundy and soft red. It fascinated me, and I couldn’t look away as Lydia picked up the phone and called her friends.

I heard her talk to a Katie, a Caroline, and a Lara. It was only on the last phone call that I really listened in.

“No, no, don’t bring a thing, Lara,” Lydia tossed a dish towel from one hand to another like a ball juggler. “I’m making The Brownies. I ran out of cinnamon! Can you BELIEVE IT? No cinnamon!” She tsked herself deep in her throat. “So a little pot would be okay? Right, just enough to take the edge off of life, that’s a good way of putting it, dear. And good luck with that infernal Bible study. Oh, for God’s sakes, you know as sure as hell I don’t want to go to anything like that! You know what happened the last time…. I don’t care if Linda still talks about it, she needed to hear that God doesn’t like self-righteous, sanctimonious prisses who tell everyone they’re going to burn in hell!”

Aunt Lydia listened again, then laughed. “Oh, heckles! Tell them to pray for my poor soul and that I’m hoping to get saved by next Tuesday at eight o’clock, right before I out-drink Stash before our next poker game. See you tonight, love.”

“Who was that?” I finally looked up from my stirring and took another sip of tea. Aunt Lydia tipped a bit more rum into my cup.

“That was the minister’s wife, Lara Keene. Dear girl. She’ll be here tonight.”

I stopped stirring, my jaw falling open. If there had been a fly in that room, it could have flown straight in, making several circles around my molars. “The minister’s wife is coming to Breast Power Psychic Night?”

“Of course! Lara is a splendid person. Very religious. Very kind and holy.” Aunt Lydia tightened her lips. “I had to agree to only put a bit of pot in the brownies, though. Lord knows, after Bible study with that group of Bible-thumping losers, she’s going to need more than a bit of pot!”

“I can’t—”

“What is it?” Aunt Lydia, in a whirl as usual, started dumping the ingredients for brownies all over the huge wooden farm table that sat in the middle of the kitchen. Windows surrounding the room and two sets of French doors brought in the spring sunshine in golden columns, their rays settling on the ingredients as if in blessing.

“I’m surprised, that’s all, that a minister’s wife would be coming.”

“Well, she is. She comes every week. She needs a break from the preaching and screeching and likes to hang out with people who don’t use Jesus as a weapon to make others feel inferior. God. One time she dragged me to one of those Bible studies, and I swear all those women wanted to do was stand around and see who could say, ‘I’ve been blessed…I’ve been praying…the Lord has been good to me…it’s His will…’ the most number of times. It was pathetic. I’m positive God is sick to shit of them.”

“Do…do other people in the town know that Lara comes to the Psychic Night meetings?” Sheesh. A minister’s wife at a meeting like this? In a small town?

“Heck, no. Are you kidding?” Aunt Lydia started melting chocolate. She’s good at her chocolate desserts, but not as good as me, although she is better at every other type of dessert. “Four people know. Me, you, Katie, and Caroline. And all of us took an oath over a bottle of brandy and a cigar and swore to keep it secret. Lara needs a place where she can be herself without someone talking about all the souls in Golden who will not be saved and will be thrown into hell to burn there forever like hot dogs on a stick.”

I contemplated burning in hell forever like a hot dog on a stick. The rum wound its way down my body. “So, what do you do in these meetings?”

“Caroline is psychic, like I told you, and she tells us what’s going to happen to us, which makes it an official Psychic Night. Caroline only charges the women of this town a few dollars to do their readings.” Aunt Lydia, a true businesswoman, shook her head. “Although she did it for Mrs. Guzman for homemade tequila and for Dr. Tims for some of his salsa. Come to think of it, she also does readings for Terri, the postmistress, in exchange for Terri’s pies, which I think are terrible, and she does readings for Chad Whitmore, whose wife died. He takes care of their four kids and works. In exchange he gives her bacon every year from one of their pigs.

“I have no idea how that woman makes it. She owns a tiny little home, about the size of a dollhouse, not far from here, and drives a car I swear will break down any second. Stash has had to go and get her on three different occasions.” Aunt Lydia froze for a minute. “I should tell Caroline to paint her door black to ward off diseases and seedy men. I can’t BELIEVE I forgot to tell her that. Next time she goes to the city I’ll whip on over there and paint it for her. She’ll appreciate that.”

I imagined a woman leaving her home with a maroon-colored door and coming home to a black door. “She makes a living as a psychic?” I imagined tea leaves and cards and a woman whose face looked as if it had been shoved through a strainer, the wrinkles hardened and grooved on her cheeks. A cigarette would burn aimlessly, and I’d reach to share one short drag, then stop myself. No more smoking. I had smoked for a year, then quit. And the lust for nicotine could still turn my head.

“I wouldn’t call it a living, my dear Julia. She ekes out a life. Barely, I think. She sells her vegetables and fruits at the farmer’s market, and she also bakes bread. Delicious bread. Bread that can almost bring you to orgasm, it’s so good. I told her to call it Orgasmic Bread, but she didn’t think that would work. She does the readings on the side. I have never met anyone as frugal as Caroline. Oh, she’s generous with a capital G, but if you gave her a piece of sackcloth, she would whip out her sewing machine and make the most beautiful curtains out of it you’ve ever seen.”

I started to chuckle, and Aunt Lydia narrowed her eyes, but I could see a smile tugging at those full lips of hers. Sixty-three years old and her mouth was one that many a starlet had paid thousands and thousands of dollars to achieve.

“You don’t believe she’s a real psychic, do you?” Aunt Lydia put her hands on her hips, as if ready to draw her guns.

I didn’t roll my eyes and prided myself on that. I was back to staring at the reds swirling hotly in the pan.

“I’m telling you, Julia, that woman has been right on the button so many times—for all of us. And she doesn’t charge for her services on Psychic Night. We try to pay her, but she won’t take a dime, so all of us, just to keep her going, drop off eggs and cookies and dinners.” Lydia shook her head back and forth like a bowling ball gone crazy. “She’s a proud one, though. Proud as a stallion who can flip all the cowboys off his back.

“And it’s her upside-down pineapple pound cake and her carrot bread with cream cheese frosting that brings in the most money every year at the church’s auction. Every year. Sweetest woman you ever did want to meet, that’s dear Caroline. Doesn’t open up and tell us much about herself, but she is as straight and honest as my cornstalks.”

“I’ll look forward to meeting her.” Unexpectedly, my eyes filled with tears. “Thanks for letting me come, Aunt Lydia.”

“You’re welcome. You’ll love Psychic Night.” She had misinterpreted what I said. She walked over and gave me a big hug, smelling like vanilla and lavender and chocolate, and I buried my face in her shoulder. “Don’t cry, love! You’ve escaped a life’s prison sentence with King Prick. Prison! You might as well have worn a shirt that said ‘Inmate’ on the back. ‘Inmate of King Prick’! Aren’t you happy you’re not an inmate?”

“I am,” I cried. “I am.” I ached. My face hurt. I’m fat. No one would marry me. Robert had wanted to, but as I couldn’t see letting my face become his punching bag for forty years, I’d bolted. Finally. And I didn’t regret it, did I? I wanted a husband, but not that much. Right?

I pulled away from Lydia, sniffling. She went back to her brownies, extolling the virtues of feminine freedom from men, how they and they alone were responsible for the turmoil of our hormones. Then she made up a song about men with little penises.

My stomach gnawed again at my insides as if anxiety were eating it alive, and my heart suddenly started to palpitate, seemingly bent on cruising me right into a coronary.

I coughed, coughed again, knowing what was coming. The Dread Disease was back. I instantly felt as if I couldn’t drag enough air into my deflated lungs. My hands froze into little clenched blocks of ice while at the same time my body trembled as if a giant hand were shaking it.

I closed my eyes in defeat, knowing I could easier stop a speeding train with my ample buttocks than stop this. Death was after my sorry hide, I knew it. I had some horrible, currently unnamed disease that would torture me for months, probably devour my insides until they collapsed into their own wormholes, and then I’d die. That was why my heart often raced as if I’d been running a marathon and why I would feel cold, then burning hot, and my hands shook like leaves on speed and I couldn’t breathe.

I listened to Aunt Lydia’s penis song half-heartedly, trying to hide the fact that, at least to me, the air had been siphoned from the room, every last molecule of it. I rode the “wave of fear,” as I’d dubbed it, the best I could. The air was already gone, and then a familiar feeling of overwhelming panic flooded my body. This happened because my body knew it was dying, I surmised.

I clenched my teeth together and tried to breathe through my nose as dizziness struck. I was going crazy. Losing my mind. Hello, sanitarium!

And then, after what seemed like hours, my heartbeat started to slow, the air whooshed back into the room, and my body stopped trembling. It was replaced by a familiar bone-racking exhaustion, but it was better than suffocating—much better.

I have so come to appreciate air these last months. Air, glorious air.

I pushed my frizzy curls off my damp forehead with a shaky hand, desperate to get my mind away from my imminent death and on to another subject. I inhaled, ragged and low. “What are we doing at Breast Power Psychic Night, then?” I choked out, amazed that Aunt Lydia hadn’t noticed that I was temporarily dying, though I prided myself on my ability to hide this peculiar aspect of my life from others.

“Why, we’re going to be talking about our breasts. What else did you think we were going to do?” She blinked at me, her huge eyes round and curious as she used both hands to crack six eggs at once with great force against the rim of a pan. “Breasts have a lot to say, Julia! You simply have to listen to them.”

I looked at my breasts, still heaving. They had nothing to say, I surmised. They were simply happy they weren’t attached to a corpse.

Breast Power Psychic Night had begun in Aunt Lydia’s living room. The lights were turned down low, windows opened to let in the freshness of a spring evening in the mountains. The furniture might be old, but it was plush and worn and plentiful. A red couch and two purple loveseats were covered with pillows Aunt Lydia had embroidered and two quilts she had sewn. Stacks of books competed for space with herbs growing in huge trays, a forest of plants, and an abundance of vanilla-scented candles.

A huge wreath decorated with dried roses, purple and sage-colored ribbons, raffia, pinecones, and tiny birdhouses hung on the fireplace hearth. As much as my Aunt Lydia likes her guns and her chickens, she loves a good craft project. Martha Stewart would love her.

“We’re here to find the power within our breasts,” Aunt Lydia semi-shouted, cupping her boobs, her tie-dyed T-shirt bunching up under her hands. “Men have objectified us long enough, judged us by the size of our breasts. Our worth summed up with a look at our top half.”

The darkened room flickered with candlelight, alighting on each of the women’s faces as Lydia led the group. I laced my fingers together, almost surprised I wasn’t having another coronary.

Here I was, sitting on an overstuffed pillow, in the dark, on the floor, about to flip off my shirt in front of three women I didn’t know, and I felt perfectly calm. As if I disrobed and swung my boobs around and about all the time in front of people.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” Katie Margold said quietly over the candlelight when Aunt Lydia made a quick trip to the bathroom to expel “the earth’s yellow poisons” from her bladder.

Katie’s brown eyes were soft, like chocolate, but they looked tired, defeated. They skirted about as if she were waiting for me to quickly move on and talk to someone else more interesting. But then she examined my cheek and my eye, both still a lovely shade of purple with puke-green thrown in. Her lips pursed, though not in judgment.

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” I said. “I love your hair. It’s so bouncy. It reminds me of mermaid hair.”

Oh, I am strange, I thought instantly, my shoulders slumping. I was searching for something to say, and there it was.

Tall, no makeup, and heavy, Katie wore an old green T-shirt with a couple of stains and baggy blue jeans. But her hair was her crowning glory. A reddish auburn color, it tumbled in deep waves down her back, clean and shiny. She could have been in one of those shampoo ads.

But I felt like an idiot. The poor woman probably thought I was gay. I wasn’t gay, but neither did I particularly like men at this point in my life.

“Oh! Well, I…” it was hard to tell in the darkened room, but I think Katie blushed a little, then looked enormously pleased, and huge tears formed in her eyes, giant, perfectly shaped tears. If eyes had to breathe for us, she would have drowned.

I stumbled about for something else to say. Good Lord. I’d been invited to Breast Power Psychic Night, and already I had one of the women in tears. I was a classless, chubby, socially inept cow, who often couldn’t breathe and who was going to be chased down by an obsessive fiancé at any moment.

Katie wiped the tears away with her fingers. “Thank you.” She sighed, the sigh a little shaky.

The thank-you was so heartfelt, I felt hot tears spring to my own eyes. “You’re welcome. I’ve always wanted red hair, long hair. I always thought…I saw this mermaid in a book with long red hair once, and I never forgot it. Compared to a mop of dirty-blond curls, well—”

“I remember a mermaid just like that, too—the Little Mermaid.” Her brown eyes pooled again. “I can’t believe I’m crying about a mermaid!”

I couldn’t believe she cried about mermaids, either. “What a loon,” I said, shaking my head, and Katie laughed.

But I knew I didn’t really think she was a loon. About a month ago, I had stood in line at the library and cried because it was so wonderful I could check out books without paying for them. I didn’t have any money that day because I had taken Robert out to an expensive meal the night before, which he had complained about being tasteless, and I thought to myself, “I love Thomas Jefferson.” And then I had cried, right there in line.

Katie and I were two of a pathetic kind.

To her left sat the psychic, Caroline Harper, and there was not a woman on the planet who looked less like a psychic than she. Petite and willowy, wearing a loose flowered skirt and a black tank top, she looked more like a model for tiny women. High cheekbones plunged to a full mouth, her murky, sea-green eyes slanting in her face.

The only remarkable thing was the constant twitching of her right eye, which she now and then raised a hand to rub, to hold, as if willing the twitch away. When she’d walked into the house, I’d instantly reached up to tuck my wayward curls behind my ears, feeling like a mammoth, worm-eating buffalo as I towered over her. One wrong step and I’d crush the woman.

Caroline was the frugal one. The woman who lived off pennies and made the best pineapple upside-down cake ever. The one who sold produce at the farmer’s market each week and did readings on the side and barely made it month to month with the help of her neighbors, those who dropped off eggs and meals and were then treated the next day to one of Caroline’s perfect baked goods.

Caroline smiled at me over the candlelight, her smile huge, her teeth large and brilliant white, her eyes crinkling just a bit in the corners. I judged her to be about five years older than myself.

She peered into my eyes, bruised and otherwise, and I waited for her to recognize the quaking, ridiculous woman with a yucky past and a strange disease that I am. She would foresee my future and turn pale and sickly-looking.

But she didn’t. In fact, she just kept smiling at me. Cheerful-like. Open. For some reason she reminded me of Cheerios.

“Welcome to Golden.” Caroline’s eye kept winking, but the rest of her face was peaceful, tranquil. “Did Lydia tell you that she calls this Psychic Night each week?”

I nodded my assent, kneading the edge of my blue sweater in my lap, hoping it would hide my hips. Had I gotten even fatter since tiny Caroline walked through the door?

“Lydia!” she laughed, as Aunt Lydia walked back into the room, her bladder apparently having expelled all poisonous yellow liquids from her body. Caroline’s laughter bubbled right there at the surface, even as that eye kept twitching. Twitch. Twitch.

“Well, it is, Caroline! I always call it Psychic Night. After each session, you do our readings for us.” Lydia then glared at her. “I did not like my reading last week, Car-o-line. Not at all.”

“But I was right, wasn’t I?” Caroline laughed, pushing her long brown hair away from her finely carved face. She looked like a queen, not a near-poverty stricken neighbor living off her backyard’s vegetables.

“You planned it with Stash,” Lydia declared, hands on hips.

“I did nothing of the sort. I merely told you that I saw a bit of red in your reading. Soft red for love. For passion. It was all around you, Lydia. Red, red, red.” Caroline smiled, and two dimples flashed in her cheeks.

“And then Stash brought me this!” Lydia stood with righteous anger and opened a drawer of a nearby armoire and yanked out a red negligee with black furry trim.

I tried not to laugh.

“He is a bad-mannered old fool. Comes by, parks his tractor in front of my house, hands me the box, forces a kiss on me, and drives off. I’m going to get another pig and name him Stash Two, that I am.”

Aunt Lydia dropped onto the floor with me and Katie and Caroline, fluffing out the negligee. “Stash thinks that because he owns all the land surrounding my place that he can do what he wants. Really! As if I’d get in something like that!”

“Be glad you get negligees.”

The words, soft, with a tinge of bitterness, dropped from Katie’s lips like tiny ballistic missiles. When we turned to look at her, she covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh dear. Dear, dear. I didn’t mean to sound so pitiful. Of course, my husband and I are past that stage, and look at me. I’d hardly fit in one, anyhow!” She laughed, hollow and embarrassed.

Lydia tossed the negligee over her shoulder, and it landed in a silky pile on the floor. “I am glad we’re having Breast Power Psychic Night tonight! A negligee is really a gift to the man. To the man!” She leaned over and shook Katie’s shoulders, the flame from the candle only inches away from her swinging gray braids. I reached out and lifted them away before her hair turned into a flaming mass, but Aunt Lydia hardly noticed.

“Do you think women, real women, want to be dressed up like hooker dolls? Lace isn’t comfortable. It itches my crotch. It causes me to break out in an emotional rash! These negligees go straight up your butt, and no woman should be showing the backs of her thighs to any man when she’s passed the age of sixteen. See? This is what men do to us! They make us feel like sexual objects who are there to please them, listen to them, cater to them!”

“Right,” said Katie. Her brown eyes darted to the negligee, and I saw her swallow hard. “We don’t need that. It’s ridiculous, really. We’re not toys. It’s ridiculous that women would want to wear them in the first place.”

“Of course it is!” We all looked at our fearless leader with more than a little fear as she raised both fists in the air. “They drive up in tractors, toss us lingerie that we’re supposed to model for them, making us feel downright cheap, with our breasts yanked to our throats, then we’re to tickle their teensies, and they drive off! Leaving our breasts spiritually unawakened. Dead!”

“Amen to that. Dead breasts, I mean.” The door slammed as another woman walked in, dropping three bottles of wine on the kitchen counter, then expertly opening each one of them. I could only assume it was Lara Keene, the minister’s wife.

Lara grabbed five huge goblets from the cupboards. The goblets were in the shapes of ogres. She filled each ogre goblet to the top. “Praise be to God that I did not kill Mrs. Ellensby.”

Praise be to God that she didn’t kill Mrs. Ellensby?

Lara distributed the wine to all of us, with a nod and a perfunctory smile in my direction. “She called me over, supposedly to study the Bible, then left the room ‘for a wee minute’ to spend five thousand four hundred and eighty-nine dollars online at Pottery Avenue. Then, in the midst of my reading Psalms to her, at her request, she informed me that she sees no reason to have a fund-raiser for a new roof for the church even though there’s an enormous hole over the preschoolers’ classroom.”

Lara imitated the woman’s voice by pitching hers at the highest level, then pinching her throat and waggling it back and forth. “‘We don’t need another roof. We need to pray to God and ask Him what He feels we need. God will provide what needs to be provided. That’s His will, and I know that God will say that the church is fine. I know how God works! People have no money in this town!’” Lara’s voice rose several octaves, shrill like a fish wife’s. “‘We’re scraping by, Lara. Really. You young ministers. You need everything. You want everything. Im-medi-ately.’”

Lara settled herself to my left and took a very long drink of wine. The ogre goblet was half empty when she finally put it down. “I told her that it was difficult for the children to concentrate on their Bible verses when there was water trickling down a wall, and she said, ‘I am going to pray for you, Mrs. Keene. Pray that you will grow with the Lord and not against Him. Suffering is what makes us better people. Suffering is what makes us sacrifice for others. Jesus suffered for us, and we must suffer for Him, and those young children need to learn at an early age that not everything in life is perfect. Now, let’s hurry up and pray. I need to get my manicure.’”

“Damn.” Lara slumped into the circle beside us. “Damn and damnation.”

The silence was complete as all of us women, preparing for Breast Power Psychic Night, contemplated damn and damnation.

After several quiet minutes, Lydia spoke up, “Lara, this is my niece, Julia.”

Lara and I shook hands. “A pleasure,” I said. “What did she buy?”

“Sorry?” Lara looked confused.

“The woman who talks to God. Who knows what He wants. Perhaps God told her what to buy at Pottery Avenue?”

Lara smiled, then sagged. “Well. He told her to buy three different sets of dishes, a chair, tablecloths, a new set of pans…I listened to her arguing with the saleswoman about the bill. ‘No’ to the roof for the preschoolers, but ‘yes’ to a set of striped picnic basket plates for five hundred and thirty-five dollars.”

Lara’s blond hair was ripped up tight into a bun. Bright blue eyes summed me up pretty quickly. I knew that she was taller than me, but almost as thin as the twitchy-eyed but beautiful psychic.

She was wearing proper beige pants. Proper, boring flat shoes. A dull blue blouse that was buttoned straight up. A mediumsized gold cross hung around her neck.

“Nice black eye,” she observed. “Who did that to you?”

I was not surprised by her bluntness. “My ex-fiancé. Fine family. Fine old, respected Bostonian family,” I muttered. “Fine, proper, respected men dot the family, and they all take fine, old potshots at their wives. Apparently they don’t beat up on their girlfriends—no, scratch that. Those scandals are covered up. Who wants to argue with a fine, old respected family, especially when they imply that the woman, the hittee in question is clearly an addict and a slut and after the family money by filing frivolous lawsuits.”

“Ah, I see. Don’t worry. They’ll slip right into hell when they die. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that wife beaters and child abusers go straight on down. Forgiveness does not extend to those who hurt the innocent with no remorse.” Lara took another long sip of her wine, then tiredly ripped the rubber band out of her hair, letting her blond locks fall about her shoulders.

She undid the top few buttons of her sweater and the stiffly starched white blouse, twisting her neck around from right to left as if the shirt had been strangling her.

The transformation was astounding. Lara had gone from looking like, well, like a proper, devout minister’s wife, to looking like a college student who sat around with friends and drank every night.

Lara raised her glass to me, her mouth trembling. “You’re lucky you left. You would have had to be prim and proper your whole life, and you would have to smother exactly who you are as a woman. Forever. You would have to do what everyone expected you to do, be who everyone expected you to be.”

She drank again, and I saw a pulse leap in her temple as she watched the flame dance on the candle.

“And if you deviated from the course even a little bit, people would look at you with shock and disgust, and your mother-in-law would suggest to your husband that you needed counseling and more Bible readings. You, as a person, would be gone. Squashed down like a bug. All because of a mistake you made years ago, when you were young and in love and desperate to please your father but even more desperate to escape from him.”

“Eat this.” Lydia handed her a brownie. “Here. Have two.”

“Is there?” I heard hope in Lara’s voice as she took a bite.

“Just a bit. As requested.”

Lara ate the brownie, interspersed with long gulps of wine, her eyes closed tight. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, what is your name again?”

I told her.

“Julia. Julia. Julia.” She rolled the name around in her mouth, as if tasting it. “That is a lovely, lovely name. And you escaped. You escaped!”

“Quiet, ladies, quiet!” Aunt Lydia commanded, taking a deep breath, the candlelight flickering against the soft curves of her face. After Lara’s “escape” comment we had all taken a detour away from awakening our breasts. The conversation had flown as we all discussed our own quick escapes. I did not mention Robert. “Reach into your inner souls, into your breasts. Do it now. Come on, now, dive into the rhythm of your body, harness your inner beat, and don’t be shy.”

Perhaps it was the wine, but I didn’t feel a shy bone in my body as I whisked off my shirt, then my bra. I almost sighed with relief as my boobs were released from their bondage. Wearing a bra with boobs this size can make you feel like you’re wearing giant blobs of hot metal secured to your chest with duct tape.

I took a deep breath and looked at my boobs as instructed. They were huge, but at least the nipples still looked straight ahead, like they should. Go, nipples!

I studiously avoided looking at the other women’s breasts, giving them privacy as I heard bras unhook and shirts come off. The candles flickered again.

“Now, look at one another,” Aunt Lydia insisted.

Oh, sheesh. I didn’t want to look. I resisted, but could feel other eyes on me, so I lifted my head. What the heck. The first breasts my eyes landed on were Lydia’s. Big, like mine. Sagging a bit, but I have to say she looked great.

Caroline’s were small and pretty. I wondered if, being a psychic, she could see into the future and see what her breasts would look like in fifty years.

Lara had a fairly large chest. She certainly covered up well. I could hate her for having such perfect boobs, but she was swigging another long drink of wine, and I knew why she was drinking, so I decided not to hate her. I wouldn’t have been able to stand being a minister’s wife, either.

Katie’s boobs were even bigger than mine.

She must have been thinking the same thing. “I have wanted to get rid of these things since I was a kid,” she said quietly.

“Me too. God might as well have attached mammoth watermelons to my chest.”

Katie stifled a giggle.

“Ladies, we are one, under the Sisterhood of Women. The Sisterhood of Breasts,” Lydia said, her voice low and hypnotic as she clasped her hands in front of her as if in prayer. “No breasts are better than others, just different.” I would have to disagree with her on that, but I kept my mouthola shut. “Now, ladies, close your eyes. Hold your breasts. Feel the soul inside of them, the core of your womanhood.”

The core of my womanhood was tattered and tired, I thought. Did I even have a core anymore?

“There is courage in our breasts,” Aunt Lydia said, her voice rising. “There is fortitude. There is passion. But we must keep them free of all evil forces, men included. We must offer them freedom.”

Freedom for my breasts? If they were any more free at the moment, they would pop off my chest and do a jig. I grabbed them anyhow. They felt like they always feel. Heavy. Very, very heavy. I wondered for the eightieth time how much they weighed. A hundred pounds each?

“The evil of this world surrounds us, surrounds our nipples,” Aunt Lydia intoned. “We must sensitize our nipples to the dangers, to respond to their cries for help!”

My nipples were probably crying out to be attached to less weight.

“Do not hate your breasts, ladies! Do not diminish them! Your inner soul tells you to love them. Love them! Love them! Love them!”

We were quiet. I closed my eyes, thought about the Mammoth Melons attached to my chest and tried to love them, love them, love them.

“I have reached into my inner soul, into my boobs,” Lara cried, “and I think I need more wine.” She grabbed another bottle. “And a new life.”

“But, Lara,” said the psychic, her eye twitching in quick succession, clearly not focusing on her perky breasts. “What about Jerry? He loves you and you—”

“He loves who he thinks I am, who he wants me to be!” Lara cried. “And I’m not that person. I can’t be that person anymore. I just can’t.”

I rubbed my fingers over my injured eye. Yep. Still swollen. Still painful, although dulled by the wine. “What kind of a person is that?”

“What?”

“You say you can’t be the type of person that Jerry wants. What kind of a person is that?”

“It’s a nothing person,” she said bitterly. “A nothing person.”

A Nothing Person. Yes. I knew a person like that. A Nothing Person. I grabbed the mirror, looked at the underside of my bulging breast. There did not seem to be any power there at all. Only a large curve that pointed more or less up. I closed my eyes. At least the underside of my breast didn’t curve downward like a ski slope yet.

Still, I knew a nothing breast on top of a nothing person when I saw it. I lifted my head just enough to let a bit more wine slide down my throat. For a moment I wondered if I’d run far enough for Robert to leave me alone.

No, I told myself. That was impossible. He hated to lose. He would come.

“I don’t want to help run a church any more,” Lara said, her voice ragged. “I don’t.”

The silence was deep, heavy. It covered the five of us like an invisible black wool blanket.

“Well, then!” Aunt Lydia declared, putting both hands under her boobs and giving them a lift. “Grab those boobies! What do they tell you to do?”

Even in the darkness I could see Lara roll her eyes, but she cupped both her breasts, studying the nipples as if they would suddenly sprout mouths and tell her exactly what she wanted to know. “They’re telling me to do what I want to do.”

“Good!” Aunt Lydia stood up, at least a dozen braids swinging over her naked breasts, the candlelight flashing against her skin. Sixty-three years old. I got teary-eyed looking at her. She was fabulous. Must be all the target shooting and jam making and brownies with pot and the tea she drank that was laced with rum.

“Your breasts, ladies, will talk to you. They’ll offer sage advice, help to corral in your courage, steer you on your womanly course. They are, after all, closest to your heart. So. Tell us, Lara, what do you want to do? What have your breasts communicated to you?”

“That’s simple.” Lara dropped her breasts, her eyes flashing in anger, her mouth twisting. “They can’t stand being a minister’s wife any longer. They can’t stand the lid that is tightly nailed down onto the box. They want out. Completely out. They want to be free. Very free. Completely free.” She took another swig of wine, her blond hair falling about her shoulders.

“Well, then! Your breasts are offering you truth! Wisdom! Share more, share!” Lydia’s eyes opened wide, awaiting the official announcement.

“They want me to leave here and become an artist,” Lara said quietly. “In New York.”

And then she burst into tears, burying her face in her hands, the cross dangling between her knees until she reached up and broke it right off the chain.