The Madhatter's Guide To Chocolate

by Rhett DeVane

  “Yoo-hoo! Jakey!” I called in singsong. “I’ve got something to show you!”

  At the doorway to the parlor, I stopped dead like a rookie starlet stunned by twenty floodlights. The scene would be permanently etched in my mind’s eye: Holston Lewis—sweaty, paint-flecked, no shirt, jeans sitting low on his slim hips. He turned toward the sound of my noisy intrusion, the paint roller poised in his right hand—one of those slow- motion movements, as if I was on some kind of drug, or in a music video. The flesh at the corners of his dark eyes crinkled as he smiled in recognition. “Hattie! How nice of you to drop by! Are you home for the weekend?”

  “Umm…ummm…ummm,” I stuttered. I felt like Ralph Cramden in an old Honeymooner’s episode where his wife, Alice, nails him for some infraction, and he just stands there stupidly repeating ah-ba…ah-ba…ah-ba, over and over.

  Jake came up behind me. “Hattie!” he yelled as he tapped me on the butt with the end of his everyday sweetgum cane, “snap out of it!” Then, to Holston, “she gets stuck sometimes—kinda like a broken record with a skip. Isn’t it a relief that we’re all old enough to actually remember what a record is?”

  We laughed, and I finally released the breath I’d been holding.

  “You come by to help paint?” Holston asked.

  A heat rush prickled the skin on my face. “No, that is… I could help. I didn’t know you were working… I mean, I don’t want to interrupt you…” God, I sounded like a lovesick teenage queen!

  Holston dropped the roller in the paint pan, and wiped his hands on a rag hanging from his front pocket. “We can always take a break to welcome a visitor.”

  Jake peered out of the doorway toward the front door. The front fender of the Escape barely showed through the opening. “Sister-girl! What have you done?” He shrieked.

  “Oh, Yeah,” I said, as if the real reason I had searched for Jake for a half-hour had just been announced to my brain. “I wanted to show you my new truck.”

  Jake hobbled quickly from the room, and we followed. “She is beautiful! You didn’t tell me you wanted a new truck! What bank did you rob!?”

  I handed Jake the keys and he crawled into the driver’s seat. He closed his eyes as he relished the new car aroma. “She is su—weet! And you got an automatic ’cause you love me.”

  After two follow-up corrective surgeries on his damaged right leg, Jake still walked with a slight limp. Luckily, the delivery van’s automatic transmission saved him from the discomfort of shifting gears. He refused to undergo further treatment, emphatically stating, “I can’t let go of my impressive collection of walking canes!”

  Holston walked around the SUV. “V-6. Smart move. More powerful than a four cylinder, but not too much harder on the gas mileage.”

  I nodded. “The salesperson said the average was around 23 mpg in town, with up to 28 mpg on the open road.”

  Jake hopped out of the driver’s seat and surveyed the outside of the SUV. “When did you get her?”

  I smiled sheepishly. “I bought it on the way home today.”

  Holston and Jake looked at me for a long moment.

  “Well…I had noticed them when they first came out. Saw a few in traffic. I don’t know what came over me. I was driving by the dealership on the way home, and I pulled in to just look. I ended up putting the down payment on my Visa and driving it off the lot.”

  Jake blinked and studied me like I was an alien life form. “The Queen of No Debt put a down payment for a vehicle on her always-paid-off credit card?” He held his hand to his forehead. “I’m having a spell. I think I need to sit down.”

  “Actually, I have a certificate of deposit maturing at the end of the month. I figured I could pay off the credit card and most of the remainder of the debt. It’s not like I’m destitute, Jake.”

  Jake snorted. “Well, I certainly feel better.” He narrowed his eyes. “Am I recalling this right? Didn’t you buy your last truck the same way?” Jake threw his hands into the air. “You wanton hussy! You’ve left Pearl in some used-car lot in Tallahassee at the mercy of God-knows-who! How could you?”

  Holston’s brow wrinkled. “Who’s Pearl?”

  Jake propped his hands on his hips. “Just the precious little gray pick-up truck who has faithfully shuffled this ungrateful wench around for the past seven years.”

  Holston shook his head.

  “Hattie always gives her automobiles names, you see,” Jake explained.

  “Wait a minute! Get your panties out of the wad they’re in,” I said. “For your information, I didn’t trade Pearl. The salesperson helped me drop her by the townhouse. I’ll pick her up later. She can retire to her home in the country for her golden years.”

  Jake sighed. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t lose your mind completely. That little girl will be running long after all the rest of our vehicles have gone to the big metal heap in the sky. She deserves to stay in the family. We’ll have to get her back over here to the Hill as soon as we can.”

  “Would you like to come in for a while?” Holston asked. “We don’t have anything special, except fresh coffee and some iced tea. I could use a break. How ’bout you, Jake?”

  The three of us settled onto a canvas drop cloth in the entrance parlor.

  Jake winced as he stretched his right leg. “I haven’t been able to do as much as Holston. My leg won’t bend enough to allow me to do the trim work.”

  Holston sipped his coffee. “You’ve picked the color scheme and shuffled paint and supplies. That’s been a huge help.”

  I glanced around the cavernous room. “What are you planning to do with this big place? I can’t imagine one person rambling around in all this space.”

  Holston shrugged. “I may keep the back bedroom and sitting room as my private quarters. As for the rest, I don’t know yet. I thought about paying someone to move in and open a Bed and Breakfast, but the Madhatter’s B&B uptown is doing so well, I wouldn’t want to cause a problem. I don’t know if this area would support both. For now, I’ll just complete the renovations and hope some notion strikes me.”

  Jake took a sip of iced tea. “There are rumors afloat that an out-of-town investor may be looking to buy the state golf course by the hospital.”

  “I hadn’t heard that,” I said.

  “Piddie told me.” He stuck his tongue out like a bratty first-grader. “If you hung out at Mandy’s Cut ’n’ Curl as much as she and Evelyn, you could get the scoop on upcoming events, too.”

  I stretched out my legs. “I don’t have the leisure of passing the time at the beauty parlor like they do. I guess you’ll just have to depend on Piddie.”

  Jake picked at my hair. “You could use a trim.”

  I waved him off. “I’ll call Mandy for an appointment next week.”

  Jake’s blue eyes lit up. I knew the look—a set-up. “Why don’t you help us paint this weekend?”

  Holston smiled warmly. Unlike the I-want-something-from-you smirk I had just endured from Garrett Douglas, Holston’s expression was genuine. Heat settled deep within my heart, then it crept lower.

  Excerpt from Max the Madhatter’s notebook, August 30, 1958

  Dark chocolate coats my mouth—the same silky feel of a flower petal on my cheek. The umm rises from my soul. The pleasure-heat coming from some place deep inside.

  Chapter Eighteen

  MASSAGE THERAPY

  Under Jake’s careful watch, the new color scheme for the mansion unfolded as we worked through the house. The rooms off the front entryway, we painted with gentle, calming shades of cream and muted green, the colors becoming warmer and more inviting as the traffic flow entered the rooms in the back of the house. Having chosen the shades for the downstairs public portion of the house, Jake was currently busy fussing around with paint samples, choosing the hues for the upstairs bedrooms, baths, and sitting rooms. He stopped by at different times during the day to check the colors as they changed character with the quality of light.

  Although I spent Wednes
day through Friday in Tallahassee, I had begun to look forward to the trip home at week’s end. I stopped on the Hill long enough to slather Shammie with love and adoration before changing into an old T-shirt and a ratty pair of shorts in preparation for an evening of mindless trim painting. Spam, our ancient retriever, had died peacefully in his sleep the previous winter, so Shammie now ruled the farmhouse. Small caches of her prized possessions, gleaned from upended trashcans or the tops of bureaus and nightstands, graced hidden nooks in every room. When I moved the living room couch during a spring-cleaning frenzy, I located one of her hidey-holes. The neat mound contained a wad of used mint dental floss, a Heineken beer bottle cap, two pieces of aluminum foil, and a gold ball earring I’d been missing for several months.

  If ever a drug needed to be developed, it was one that mimicked the euphoria of a budding affection. I wasn’t willing, or even cognizant enough, to call it love. Love is reserved for star struck-teenagers, and the way I feel about rich, dark chocolate. At forty-plus, I found myself floating in a dreamy, pastel-dipped fog, appreciating the blooming azaleas, dogwoods, and bridal veil spirea as if I hadn’t seen them each spring of my entire life. A sappy, misty-eyed love song made me choke up. I couldn’t eat or sleep. Piddie had a cliché that fit perfectly: a woman headin’ for a fall.

  My past romantic entanglements felt more like an extended hormonal imbalance. After the heated physical component waned, the inevitable bland aftermath settled into sad discontent when I realized I really didn’t like the person with whom I was sharing my life.

  Why had I felt the need to remain friends with ex-lovers? Most folks turned their backs on past relationships, severing contact completely. Loose ends annoyed me. With the exception of one past love who later married an obsessively jealous woman, my relationships had come full circle. We often met for lunch or dinner, Dutch treat, and kept up with the events of each other’s lives. With the expectations of a love relationship removed, I once again found reasons to locate common ground with a partner I had once lusted for, loved passionately, then wanted to choke. I hadn’t been promiscuous in the twenty-plus years my eggs had been viable. Four serious relationships dotted my past, one coming dangerously close to matrimony with a person I later found totally undesirable.

  Holston Lewis was, as Piddie phrased it, an azalea of a different color. Since I spent time each week in Tallahassee, I was spared the daily humiliation of following him like a homeless puppy. Visitors to the mansion came in a constant stream: construction workers, neighbors, bored city police officers on patrol, and Elvina Houston. She stopped by on a biweekly basis to get an update on the renovations. Her information hotline fed the surrounding counties, preventing their entire populations from traipsing through the double doors.

  In the few moments we had alone, I gleaned snippets of Holston’s life before he moved south. He had been married once to Claire Beaumont Lewis, an upwardly mobile socialite with aspirations of glory. When he left the pressured world of day-trading on Wall Street to pursue his dream of writing, she dumped him after twelve years of marriage. Claire immediately hooked a rich oral surgeon from Manhattan. Fortunately, Holston and Claire’s union had produced no children to reap his ex-wife’s cruel version of his retreat into obscurity. And, Holston’s former occupation and careful investments had left him financially solvent.

  Other than occasional contact with his previous mother-in-law, a sweet woman he adored, Holston had cut all emotional ties to the city. According to his account, fate had led him to Chattahoochee following the lead story of Jake’s assault, and he had fallen hopelessly in love with the area and its people. Like me, he was a mid-life orphan. His father had died when he was young, leaving him to be raised by his doting mother until her death three years prior at the age of seventy-eight.

  I pushed a damp hank of unruly hair away from my face, and studied the wall in Holston’s private study. “You know, I didn’t like this color initially. It looked a little muddy on Jake’s sample. Now that I see it on the walls, it reminds me of a rich mocha latte with whipped cream.”

  Holston wiped a trickle of sweat from his temple. “Hattie Davis, you do have a way with words! Now, I’ll crave designer coffee every time I come into this room.”

  Jake waltzed into the room holding a ragged, half-starved puppy in one arm. “Look what followed me home!”

  He put the ugly patchwork brown and tan puppy on the floor. It sniffed around for a few minutes, then peed on a corner of a drop cloth.

  “Jake!” I scolded.

  “Hey, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do! Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up. Can we keep him, Ma? Can we?” Jake bounced from side to side.

  Holston bent down to ruffle the wiry hair on the pup’s back. The dog wagged his tail and licked him on the hand. “He’s so ugly, he’s almost cute.”

  When the orphaned puppy’s sad brown eyes looked directly into mine, I was a goner. “Only if you take him to the vet first thing tomorrow, Jake. He’s probably loaded with fleas and worms. I want him to have all his shots and to be on heartworm prevention. If we’re going to adopt him, he has to be taken care of properly.”

  “Well, of course. I’ll take him by Doc Swanson’s in the morning before I start work.”

  “You given him a name yet?” Holston asked.

  Jake spread his arms wide as if to present the dog to the world “In keeping with the Hattie Davis tradition of pet names starting with an s, I have named him Spackle.”

  I ruffled the puppy’s dirty fur. “Great name! How’d you come up with that one?”

  “Two things. First, notice the white smudge on the tip of his nose, here. Second, he comes to us during the marvelous renovation of the Witherspoon mansion—a time of much spackle action.”

  Jake gathered Spackle in one arm and headed for the door. He called over his shoulder, “Dinner at Evelyn’s tomorrow night! You’re both invited! No refusals allowed! Aunt Piddie’s supervising the cooking. Special event of some sort. Don’t know the details. Be there at 7!”

  I stared after Jake. “Wonder what that’s all about?”

  “No telling with your family.” Holston immediately did the backstroke. “Didn’t mean anything bad by that, now. They just tend to be a bit on the eccentric side. But, some of my most favorite people are eccentric.”

  Holston rubbed his right shoulder and winced. “Maybe doing some of the work myself wasn’t such a bright idea. My shoulders feel like they are about to seize up completely.”

  “Why don’t we stop for the day? Mine are a little sore, too. I hear a hot bath calling my name.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and winced. “You’re lucky to have your own place. The tub at the hotel is barely big enough to turn around in. I’ll be glad when I finally have all this finished and I can move.”

  He could come home with me… “Yeah, I’m sure you will be. Why don’t you come to my clinic tomorrow at 1:00? I have an opening for an hour massage. I’ll work on your neck and shoulders for you.”

  He closed his eyes and moaned. “That’ll work.”

  Though the ceiling fan in the master bedroom was set on high, I spent the night feverishly churning the sheets with images of Holston’s back muscles rippling surrealistically in my jumbled dreams. Around 6 o’clock, I gave in to frustration and Shammie’s impatient yowls for food.

  I sipped coffee and rocked gently in my father’s old porch rocking chair. The hummingbirds danced in zippy circles around two red nectar-filled feeders hanging from overhead beams. I inhaled deeply. The mixed scent of rich damp soil and tea olive blooms filled my nose. Molded by years of supporting my father’s weight, the woven wicker seat of the rocker dipped four inches lower than the white oak frame, and a few strips of reed had broken around the edges. By far, it was the most comfortable rocker on the Hill, and I’d fight anyone for the privilege of sinking into its creaky cocoon.

  After jotting a quick note to Jake on the notepad next to the coffeemaker, I donned a worn pair of hiking boo
ts and grabbed my mother’s walking stick. Growing up in the rural south had taught me the importance of always taking a stick on a walk through the woods to double as a weapon in the event I startled a rattlesnake. In years not too far past, most country folks held with the adage: the only good snake is a dead snake. Unfortunately, as did many of the early beliefs, this one had led to the endangerment of some species. I would use the stick to keep the snake at bay so that I could get away, if I didn’t fall out in fear first.

  Exercise for its own sake bored me immensely. I’d probably spent close to three thousand dollars in my lifetime on various Tallahassee gym memberships. I had never lost a single pound at one of them. Apparently, I’d missed the small print in the contracts: You have to show up. The way I viewed it, the extra minutes I added to my life span with each half hour of brisk workout might be added to the end of my lifetime—four to five months more at the extended care facility of my choice at $4,000.00 a clip.

  Margie waved from a flowerbed at the rear of their property as I reached the end of the lane. I turned right, walked a few feet through the tall Bahia grass on the shoulder of the highway, then turned right onto Dolan Road. The packed clay and sand roadway had been recently graded by the county road crew, and I walked close to the churned soft edges. Creek Indian tribes had once roamed these hills bordering the Apalachicola River, and a newly plowed field or dirt road often provided a prize find of a flint arrowhead or spear points.

  Dolan Road spanned three miles through hardwood and evergreen forest in the direction of the river, coming to an abrupt dead end before intersecting with the water’s edge. A few families owned land along the road. Whenever I walked this route, I pulled a quick U-turn at the edge of their properties. A couple of mixed-breed dogs guarded the ramshackle farmhouses with snarling glee. One particular steel-jawed pit-bull mix named Precious would rather chew off a leg than breathe. I judiciously avoided contact with her. She could quickly take the joy out of a stroll on a country lane.