Miriam's Confectionary

“Mmm… vanilla,” said nobody, ever. Of course it had to be chocolate, it was always chocolate- decadent, sweet, rich, and luscious chocolate. Four thousand years of chocolate- born from cacao, that wonderous bitter bean which made its journey from the steaming jungles of the Yucatan to traverse the world one end to the other, evolving into all its myriad forms- chocolate cakes and brownies, hot black cups of java and foaming lattes, simmering whirlpools of melted chocolate trickling into molds of Hershey bars and Reese’s cups and milk duds, drizzling onto ice cream- even chocolate covered ants!

If someone tells you that they don’t like chocolate, you will look at them like they’re crazy, as though there’s something wrong with them. Doubly so if they’ve made chocolate into their profession of choice, if they spend their days working chocolate into magic, molding it into heavenly little confections, baking it into cupcakes and glazing it on donuts.

But despite all that, Miriam didn’t like chocolate.

She didn’t like the smooth stickiness of it upon her fingers, or the rich wafting scent of it that lingered in the air, or the way it swirled into little spirals as she squeezed it from a frosting tube. She didn’t even like people who liked chocolate- which was everyone- and she glowered at the customers who came into her confectionary, their eyes gleaming with chocolate-lust, and would shoot disapproving frowns at the rambunctious and excited children- those little chocolate-addicts with their sticky fingers who tapped exuberantly upon the glass barriers displaying her sugary wares.

But the customers came anyway because her chocolate was the best around. Miriam was the Michelangelo of chocolate, the Caravaggio of confections- simply put she was a baker of the highest order. The plumpness of her figure had once served as ample evidence of her passion for her art, though in the last year or two she had leaned and withered out considerably, until she resembled more a nun with a bent towards asceticism than a purveyor of sweets. Her sour disposition was a far cry from the jolliness which had marked her personality before- but in those days she had not worked alone. Other hands than hers had helped to knead the dough and spread the sprinkles, had painted the sign above the door which read “The Carpenter’s Confectionary”.

Carpenter- a name which she had made her own, yet which was only now a bitter reminder of the past, bitter as dark chocolate. And now each piece of dough, each puff of flour, each little Hershey’s kiss, was just another memory that she couldn’t escape. Yet neither could she leave the place behind- like any good artist, her finances were stretched thin, and ravaged by the inequities of divorce.

“Can’t. Believe. He. Left Me. For. That. Little. Hussy!” she chanted, the rhythm of each word matching the pounding of her fist upon the dough. Here she labored on, trapped in her gingerbread house, slowly turning into a wicked witch. When she looked into the mirror, she half expected to see that she had turned green and sprouted an ugly mole upon her chin. She hated what she was becoming, but try as she might, she could not exorcise the pain of her regret. If only she could reach him, bare her heart to him, tell him how she felt…

On and on she went like this, until that fateful day when the little chime above the doorbell sang, and her ex-husband wattled through the door. His eyes darted nervously around, and he fidgeted with the bowler cap he held in his plump fingers.

“Miriam, dearest?” he said, his voice tinged with trepidation.

Miriam turned away from her work and looked into the eyes of her ex-husband. For a moment she stood breathless, nearly tearing up with the joy that sparked inside her.

“Oh Johnny, I’ve been waiting so long for this day,” she said, clasping her hands in front of her face.

“Have you? Oh Miriam, have you really? I wondered, really I did, if you would forgive me,” Johnny said, still spinning his cap in his hands uncertainly, but encouraged by the response. “I’ve made such a terrible mistake, I know I have, and I always wished to speak to you, you know, but Jessica wouldn’t hear of it, but that’s all over now, and…”

“So very long,” Miriam whispered, her hands floating over to the rolling pin she kept beside her station. She picked it up, feeling its weight- the firm, dry grip of the flour coating the handle.

“Let’s start again, start over from scratch, it’ll all be like it was before, you and me, together…” Johnny continued, but his words came to a screeching halt as Miriam slammed open the folding counter and stormed towards him, a vision of explosive anger, her rolling pin raised high. Fearsome as Medusa herself, Miriam came at him like a thundering storm of pent-up rage, discharging vicious lightning bolts of words.

“You ungrateful, sniveling, pathetic man! Off you go with your little floozy, running away without a word?! Only a letter in the mail?! You cheating, lying, bastard! You claim half, HALF of the business that I built?! After all you did?!”

Johnny blanched with fear, retreating backwards before the gale-force wind of Miriam’s assault, shirking back from the rolling pin which swooped and swung about like the deadly sword of Achilles.

“Dearest, please, stop! Forgive me!”

But Miriam was a cataclysm, her graying hair flying wild and untamed. “Forgive you?! Never in my life, or even my afterlife will I forgive you!”

The doorbell tinkered as Johnny fled, stumbling and running away, fleeing from Miriam’s wrath. Miriam watched him go sprinting down the boulevard, his beet-red face puffing from exertion, as the various town-folk looked on in bewilderment and amusement. Back into the store she turned, and, hesitating no longer, grabbed a stool from behind the counter and marched outside. Up she went onto the stool, and with a single hand she grabbed the sign above the door and ripped it down. The flimsy plywood crashed to the ground and splintered, and “The Carpenter’s Confectionary” was no more.

Bosom still heaving, Miriam retreated back into her store and planted her hands upon the cool glass of the display case. Exaltation was running through her like wildfire, and as her sudden blaze of anger cooled, she wondered- what now? Her eyes were upon the display case, surveying the magnificent spread of chocolates, candies and cakes she had crafted that day. On a whim, she reached down and snatched up a savory-looking chocolate cupcake. She bit down- the frosting parted, and her teeth broke into the crumbling cake to reach the creamy, chocolatey bliss inside. For the first time in a long time, she smiled. It tasted sweet.