Death by Chocolate

her nose in her lemonade glass, taking
a long, long drink.
    As Cordele sat, radiating
disapproval, wrapped in silence, Savannah knew that she was expected to
inquire. She was supposed to ask about her transgressions du jour and then beg
for forgiveness.
    Funny, she just wasn’t in
the mood to play the game. So, she sipped her lemonade and radiated her own
brand of silence. Gee, she was happy she’d come home early! Who would have
missed this?
    “In case you’re
wondering...” Cordele began.
    I wasn’t. Really. I’m not
that curious.
    “…I’ve recorded the amount
of quality time you and I have shared since I arrived on Tuesday. It’s now
Friday. That’s four days. And in those four days”—she opened her journal and
scanned several pages before continuing—“we have spent a grand total of four
hours and fifteen minutes of semi-intimate time together. I flew all the way to
California for four hours and fifteen minutes with my oldest sister. Pretty
pitiful, huh?”
    Savannah set her lemonade
on the coffee table. Screw the coaster. Who cared about circles when they were
about to commit murder?
    “How about the barbecue we
had?” she asked. “That alone was four hours.”
    “We weren’t alone. You had
your friends over. It wasn’t quality time.”
    “How about the beach?”
    “That was included.”
    “And the mall?”
    Cordele thumbed through a few
pages of her journal. “It’s in there. One hour and twelve minutes.”
    Savannah snapped. She
turned on Cordele like a rabid squirrel. “Do you mean to tell me that you’ve
been keeping track since you got here... right down to the minutes? Is that
what you’re telling me, Cordele Reid, that you’ve been counting the
cotton-pickin’ minutes that we’ve spent together and writing them down
there in your little black book?”
    Cordele hitched her chin
upward. Her lower lip trembled. “Yes, I certainly have. Writing in my journal
is a coping mechanism for me.”
    Savannah drew a deep
breath. “Cordele, I want you to stop and think about this objectively for a
moment. Doesn’t that strike you as just a wee little bit anal-retentive and
petty, not to mention downright stupid?”
    Okay, she had meant to say
that a tad more diplomatically, but.... the words were already out.... hanging
like lead balloons in the air between them.
    “Not at all,” Cordele said,
tears glistening in her eyes. “I record things in my journal that are important
to me. Family is important to me. You”—gulp... sniff —“are
important to me.”
    “You’re important to me,
Cor—”
    “Not that I can tell.
You’ve been gone nearly the whole four days, and when you are here, you’re
distant, emotionally unavailable to me.”
    Savannah looked upward and
silently prayed, Lord, help me understand my sister, like Gran said I should.
Please, give me patience.
    “Cordele, honey,” she said
slowly, deliberately, “would you please tell me what it is that you want from
me? What is it that you need, darlin’, that I’m not giving you?”
    Cordele looked at her in
wounded amazement. “What I want from you? What I need?’
    Lord, could you give me
that patience right now? ‘Cause if you don’t, I’m going to strangle her
until her eyes pop out, and then I won’t even need it.
    “Yes... what do you want
from me? Tell me, and I promise I’ll do my best to—”
    Cordele burst into tears.
“Don’t you realize that the very fact that you would have to ask me such a question
shows how emotionally and spiritually distant we are?” Savannah considered
handing her the box of tissues that were on the end table, but that would
involve getting within reach of her, and she didn’t trust herself. So she just
allowed her to go on sniffing, tissueless.
    “It breaks my heart,”
Cordele continued, “to think how close we used to be. How we used to talk for
hours about.... things...”
    Savannah thought back,
trying to pinpoint those happy days. “You mean, when you first started college,
and we sat around trashing Mom and Dad all afternoon?”
    “We weren’t trashing
anybody. We were exploring our feelings about our childhoods, evaluating our
formative years and how those experiences affected us.” Savannah nodded. “Yes.
I remember that after a lot of ‘exploring,’ we decided that Shirley and Macon
were basically crappy parents and that we were lucky that Gran took up the
slack. It didn’t take rocket science to figure that out.”
    “How can you be so