Death by Chocolate

pointed to the other bag. “What’s in there?”
    “Hot coffee with lots of
cream and two big fat slices of chocolate-dipped cheesecake.” She chuckled.
“Woman does not live on alfalfa sprouts alone.”
    Laughing, Cordele shook her
head. “I should have known.”
    They munched in contented
silence for a while, then Savannah cleared her throat and said, “So, are we
friends again?”
    Cordele took a drink of her
juice. “What do you mean?”
    “I felt bad all day about
this morning. I don’t like it when my loved ones and I are on the outs.”
    When Cordele didn’t reply,
Savannah continued. “I’m  sorry if I gave you the impression that I don’t
respect and appreciate the field of psychology. I truly do. And I   think
it’s wonderful that you’re pursuing a career where you’ll be healing and
helping people. I think you’ll be really good at it.”
    Cordele swallowed hard.
‘Thanks.”
    ‘You’ve always been the smartest
one in the family and the most dedicated when it comes to your education. I’m
very proud of you.”
    Cordele’s eyes filled with
tears, and she nearly choked on her sandwich. Savannah found a clean nap-kin in
the bag and handed it to her. i
    “I didn’t mean to make you
cry,” she said. “That was supposed to make you feel better.”
    “It did.”
    “Those are happy tears?”
    “Mostly.”
    Savannah was afraid to ask,
but she knew it was expected. “So.... why the unhappy ones?”
    “Because, just once, just once
in my whole miserable life, I’d like to hear my own mother say that she’s proud
of me. Or my dad. Your parents are the most influential — people in a person’s
life and neither one of them has ever given me any validation. Do you know how
much that hurts?” Sniff. “Do you?”
    A couple of timeworn photos
flashed across Savannah’s memory: the blue ribbon from the spelling bee that
had wound up in the trash rather than on the refrigerator door as she had
hoped. The phone call to her mother telling her that she had graduated from the
Police academy with honors, that she was finally a cop— and her mother’s
drunken, lackluster reply. The equally dull response from her father when she
had made detective first class.
    “Yes, I think I do know how
that feels,” Savannah said.
    “Do you remember that time
when I was in the Christmas play and I got to be Mary.... and Mom was too drunk
to come see me, and Dad was out of town with his girlfriend?”
    “Yes, I remember. You made
a beautiful Mary, and you said all of your lines perfectly.”
    “But what good was it if
nobody saw me?”
    “I saw you. Gran was there,
and the other kids.”
    “That doesn’t count. I
needed parental validation during my developmental years, and I didn’t get it.
I know you don’t realize this, because you haven’t studied psychology, like I
have, but that sort of emotional abuse really damages a person’s self-esteem.”
    “Well, actually, I am aware
that it causes problems. And I—”
    “No, you don’t know. You
have no idea the pain I’ve been through.”
    Savannah sighed. “You have mentioned it once or twice. In fact, that’s pretty much the basis of most
conversations you and I have had these past ten or twelve years.”
    “Well, you aren’t very
sympathetic.”
    Savannah bit her lower lip.
“I believe I was sympathetic... say, the first eight or ten years. I’ve
just run out of things to say about the topic of your unhappy childhood.”
    “What about your own
miserable childhood?”
    “I don’t have much to say
about that anymore, either.”
    Cordele stopped her
sniffing and donned her all-seeing, all-knowing look. ‘That’s because you’re in
denial about your upbringing. That’s probably why you have food issues and
haven’t ever had a real relationship except whatever you’ve got with that Dirk
guy and—”
    “Cordele, stop!” Savannah
held up her right hand in her best traffic-cop pose. ‘You wanna be a shrink,
Godspeed. But you’ve got to learn not to shrink your friends, and especially
not your family. Believe me, it’s dangerous. Someday one of us is going to
murder you, and it’ll probably be me.”
    “But don’t you want to know
what’s wrong with you? Don’t you want the benefit of what I’ve learned?”
    “Not really. I think I’d
prefer to just wander around in the darkness of my ignorance and denial without
your guiding light. Thanks anyway.”
    Cordele puffed up, reminding
Savannah of some toads she’d seen