Lighting Candles in the Snow (9 page)

Spicy Chicken Wings

2 pounds chicken wing drummettes (24)

2 tablespoon honey

2 tablespoon ketchup

1 tablespoon red pepper sauce

1 tablespoon soy sauce

Paprika

1 cup ranch dressing

Heat oven to 350º F. Line large cookie sheet with sides with aluminum foil.

Mix honey, ketchup, pepper sauce and soy sauce in one gallon Zip-Loc bag. Add chicken. Seal bag and refrigerate, turning occasionally, for several hours.

Place chicken in prepared pan and sprinkle with paprika. Bake, uncovered about thirty minutes or until crisp and juice runs clear. Serve with ranch dressing and plenty of napkins.

Chapter Ten

G
etting off work at the candy factory, I parked my car and approached my apartment house. With its six large, white pillars framing the wraparound front porch, it looked warm and inviting on this cold day. I couldn’t wait to get upstairs to my apartment, pull on my sweats and relax.

My landlord was out front, sweeping snow and debris off the porch.

“Hello, Mr. Rahimian,” I greeted him.

He nodded and smiled. “How are you today, Karoline?”

“Good,” I lied. After another boring day wrapping saltwater taffy, I felt like crap.

Mr. Rahimian leaned on the broom. “You okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

I wondered if my rent was late. For a second, I couldn’t remember what month it was. Oh right, February, nearly March. The rent was due next week.

“I paid my rent this month, didn’t I?”

“Oh sure, sure. You good with paying rent. I never worry about you with rent.”

“That’s good then. You know how it is without a set routine, being unemployed; the days and weeks can run together sometimes.”

Mr. Rahimian nodded and returned to sweeping accumulated dead leaves out of the corners of the porch. I doubt that the man had ever been unemployed in his life, at least not since coming to this country. Immigrants like the Rahimians came to the United States to live the American dream and earn money, often by taking menial jobs like my coworkers at the candy factory, and saving up for the day they can buy a house and run their own businesses.

He made an excellent landlord, keeping things in top condition. I’d been in older apartment buildings like this that were dirty and falling apart and disgusting. Even the large foyer gleamed with personal attention.

The Rahimians had left their home in Persia—as they called it, never Iran—when the Shah was ousted. They had been wealthy landowners and part of the royal court, having to leave behind everything they owned, including their true name, to escape with their lives. They had told me about drugging their infant son and carrying him through customs in a duffel bag, praying he wouldn’t wake up and praying the officials would not unzip the bag to inspect it. No boys regardless of age were allowed out of the country. They were needed to grow up and fight for Ayatollah Khomeini and the revolution.

Instead of opening the bag, a soldier stabbed it through again and again with his sword, while the parents struggled to keep any expression of horror from their faces.

Once safely away, Mr. Rahimian unzipped the duffel bag, knowing their baby would surely be dead. He was unharmed and still sleeping soundly. Now their son was a grown man living nearby under the same adopted name as his parents. He was an engineer, married, with a young daughter. I’d met him and his wife and child, as they frequently visited the parents.

I felt like such a whiner. What did I know about suffering?

As I opened the front door, the smells of Mrs. Rahimian’s curry potatoes wafted out into the hall. She liked to cook traditional Persian food, and I debated whether to pop in and invite myself to dinner. I could use some solid comfort food. Instead, I would probably grab something quick then eat low fat microwave popcorn in front of the TV.

My neighbors knew about the job loss and the divorce. We were a fairly close bunch, sharing meals, having barbecues out back in the summer months, chatting as we came and went. Currently, the unit across from the Rahimian’s was empty. Sheila kept threatening to leave hers and move into it, except like me she enjoyed the larger front rooms upstairs and the tall windows that looked out over the street, with the view of the Wasatch Mountains in the distance.

Sheila must have come in behind me. She caught me trudging upstairs and hollered from the downstairs hall, “Hey, wait up, Karoline.”

I turned and saw her grab her mail from the box. “Hi, Sheila. What’s up?”

“I have a question for you.”

She stuffed her mail in the black leather, multi-pocketed bag that hung from her shoulder and trotted up the stairs. Although mid-forties, Sheila was tiny and petite; I didn’t understand her complaining about the stairs causing her trouble. She weighed a lot less than I did, being about five inches shorter and a slip of nothing.

I waited on the stairway.

She approached with that concerned “oh I feel so bad for poor you” expression I saw on people since my divorce. I hated that look. Sheila was divorced, too. Why should she feel sorry for me?

“So, Karoline, are you dating anyone yet?”

Ugh, the most dreaded question ever. Right after, “What happened between you two anyway? You seemed happy when I saw you last.”

“No, not yet. I haven’t met anyone I want to go out with.”

“I have a nephew who’s single and about your age, and I think you two would be perfect for each other,” she said.

I moved up the stairs, Sheila following behind, chattering on about her nephew and how he’s cute and smart and recently moved here from Wyoming and is looking for a nice girl.

Well, I hated Wyoming. It’s the most boring state to drive across, and I couldn’t imagine myself liking any guy who was from ugly Wyoming.

Sheila didn’t pause at the door to her apartment but kept following me to mine. I didn’t want to ask her in. These days I was not only divorced, bitter, borderline fat and essentially jobless, I was also seriously anti-social. The last thing I needed was a blind date with my neighbor’s nephew from Wyoming. What if things didn’t work out? Or what if he liked me and I didn’t like him? It could get awkward with Sheila, and I believed in keeping my neighborly relationships issue-free.

I dug in my purse and pulled out my key. “Oh, I don’t know, Sheila. I think it’s still too soon for me.”

She tilted her head in a questioning way. “Hasn’t it been awhile?”

I sighed and rubbed my temples, feeling a headache coming on. “Six, seven months. Not that long.”

“You need to get out, Karoline. You’re still young and pretty with plenty of good years left. Don’t give up on happiness. You only need to find the right guy.”

I had a strong suspicion that Sheila’s nephew wouldn’t be that guy. “I know, Sheila, and I appreciate the concern, but I don’t think so. I’m simply not up to meeting anyone right now.”

She laughed and said, “Not right now, silly. Give me a week or two to get it set up.”

I hurried to say, “I knew what you meant. But I need to go lay down. I have such a splitting headache. I’ll be sure and let you know if I change my mind.”

I pushed the door open and turned to go inside, hoping she would take the hint and leave.

She took a breath as though readying herself for another onslaught.

I frowned at her. “Never mind, Sheila. Seriously.”

She nodded. “I understand, honey. It’s rough. I’ve been there.”

I stepped into my apartment and made a move to shut the door, not wanting to hurt her feelings but not willing to have this discussion at the moment. “Okay,” I said, “thanks.”

“You let me know, won’t you, if you change your mind? I can have the two of you over to dinner. That way it won’t be like a date, it’ll be me inviting my nephew and my neighbor for dinner. What’s the big deal, right?”

It sounded absolutely horrible. Not in a million years. I liked Sheila. She had always been a good neighbor, friendly but not too pushy—well, except for now—and I didn’t want to jeopardize our relationship.

“Okay, Sheila, I’ll let you know. Thanks, I appreciate your concern. I need to go lay down though, because I’m . . . I’m not feeling well.”

She waved a cheery goodbye and I shut my door, leaning against the back of it like I’d managed to escape the swine flu. Ugh, blind dates.

I went straight to the kitchen and pulled out the cottage cheese. I had no energy to make myself a real meal tonight. I sat at the table and ate cottage cheese out of the container using celery sticks to scoop it up. Protein, vegetable, done and done. I poured myself a glass of Diet Coke over ice and sipped it slowly, beginning to feel somewhat revived.

Hooking up with another guy right now didn’t sound the least bit appealing. I was dog tired from my big day at the candy factory, wrapping taffy and hearing Spanish conversation from which I could only catch snippets of meaning.

And I kept thinking about Jeremy which made me want to avoid men in general.

Well, except for my brother-in-law. And my dad. If all men were like Rob and my dad, this world wouldn’t be in such a mess. Mr. Rahimian was very nice as well. He and his wife seemed quite happy. Maybe it was younger men, those in their twenties and early thirties that annoyed me. I should only date men in their forties and fifties. Rob was forty, six years older than Suzie.

I emptied the cottage cheese container and tossed it in the trash. Assuming Jeremy and I were still married, he wouldn’t be home for dinner tonight. That kind of domestic routine had evaded him. He often stayed out late writing and who knew what else until midnight.

Jeremy had women’s numbers saved in his cell phone. He had a few close female friends, women he had once dated and then kept on a strictly friends relationship. Or so he told me. He also had phone numbers of women he’d never spoken of, and I suspected the worst. Why did I snoop in my husband’s cell phone, you ask? Because, although suspicious, I wouldn’t want to accuse him falsely; I had to know the facts. Not that it did me any good.

He always denied any wrong-doing. “They’re just friends, Karoline, what’s the big deal? Can’t we have friends of the opposite sex? If you wanted to go out to lunch or have a drink with a guy from work, I wouldn’t think anything about it. Go ahead, try me. You need to stop being jealous about some woman’s number in my phone.”

He never admitted anything and I ended up feeling like a shrew overreacting at the slightest thing. Finally, I let it go and found it easier to bury my head in the sand as they say. Or bury myself in work. Either way, it was better than starting fights over something I couldn’t seem to control or change anyway.

About a year after we were married, sex-talk calls began to show up on our credit card bills. Porn sites popped up on both our computers, because for a sex addict, one porn-infected computer is never enough.

I knew what Jeremy was. But I didn’t know what to do about it. Confront him? Denial. Catch him in a lie or some other compromising situation? Promises to change and vows of eternal love. “It doesn’t mean anything, babe. You are the only one I love.”

I had threatened divorce before. First it was three years into our marriage. The Incident. I should have gone through with it. What kind of idiot stays with a man after catching him in bed with another woman?

We had argued about the porn. He insisted that sex is a natural, healthy act and there’s nothing wrong with something that makes him better in bed. “We both benefit from it,” he argued. At first he tried to get me involved too, but after a few times I couldn’t watch the stuff. It felt wrong. I’m a person with a healthy sexual appetite, and neither he nor I had absolutely any problems in that area. I’m a multiple orgasm type of woman. It offended me that Jeremy thought we needed this for stimulation.

It hurt that he viewed porn and called sex-talk numbers while knowing my feelings about it. It made me feel less of a woman, like I couldn’t satisfy him. I tried to make him see my way while he tried to convince me otherwise. I suspected him of having a serious problem with sex, an addiction, and I worried that it would lead to something worse. Jeremy loved sex. He had an insatiable appetite for it. I had feared that being married would make him feel restricted, and the day would come when I could no longer satisfy him and he’d look elsewhere.

Most of the porn arguments had happened in the year leading up to the Incident. Our first year of marriage had been happy. Second year the pornography issue reared its ugly head. Third year it got worse, with the sex talk phone calls, the strange numbers showing up on his cell phone, the constant arguments, the staying out late night after night.

And then came the Incident.

I had come home from work early, back when I was still at the bookstore and scheduled to close, when I wouldn’t get home until ten or eleven.

Only that day I hadn’t felt well. My stomach had been upset for several days. I felt giddy and excited, thinking this was it. A baby! I left work early, stopping at the drugstore for an early pregnancy test. I wanted to surprise Jeremy—I would take the test while he was home to celebrate the results.

Opening the door to our apartment, I heard sounds coming from the bedroom. Women’s clothing scattered over our living room. A black lacy bra hung from the ceiling light above our dining room table. I swallowed a bunch of times to keep from vomiting. Did I mention that my stomach had been upset?

I didn’t recognize her. I didn’t know who she was, and Jeremy never told me except to say later, “She’s nobody. She didn’t mean anything to me.”

I tossed the pregnancy test in the garbage as I watched the woman run half-dressed from our apartment.

There might have been a baby forming within me, I still don’t know for sure. But if there was, it died right then. I felt that little fertilized egg shrivel in upon itself and disappear.

The next day I had my period, ten days late, with heavier than normal flow. I’m never late and do not have heavy periods. Farewell, baby of mine who never was to be.

When the shouting ended, Jeremy became as penitent as I’d seen him. I don’t believe it was an act. We did love each other. But a sex addict can’t help himself. Like those powerful men in high places who have everything to lose, yet they get caught in compromising situations with interns, nannies, secretaries, and their wife’s best friend.

Jeremy promised to get treatment. In the Salt Lake Valley, addiction-recovery groups are numerous and ongoing, every day, every hour. Most of them are free, sponsored by the LDS church to help people recover from any and all addictive behaviors: drugs, alcohol, sex, child abuse, gambling, pornography, even overeating.

We couldn’t afford private therapy. Jeremy had no insurance and mine barely covered the basics. Free was his only option.

After the first week of attending the addiction-recovery group, he came home vowing to never return.

“Why?” I pleaded. “You promised me you would do this.”

“I know, babe, and I wanted to. I need to fix this fucking mess but I can’t take the preaching.”

“What preaching? It’s non-denominational.”

“It’s sponsored by the church and they can’t do anything without shoving their goddamn religion down your throat.”

“Are you sure you aren’t reading things into it?”

“Oh, yeah. Christ, they’re all the same. You’ll see after you’ve been here longer. And I can’t say a swear word or I get the looks.”

“So what, Jeremy? You swear too much anyway. I wish you wouldn’t swear around me.”

“Well, look at Miss Priss. Since when did you get religion?”

“I’m not religious, you know that, but I was raised a certain way and profanity was never used in my home. It makes me uncomfortable.”

“‘Profanity was never used in my home.’ What the hell? You sound like a goddamn Mormon when you say that.”

That man always knew how to push my buttons. “Shut up, Jeremy! Just shut up. You are such a jerk. No one can have an intelligent conversation with you these days without being attacked or belittled or mocked.”