Chapter 15 Divorce Croissants #3
"Which I am firmly against," Eloise announced. "I would love to hex someone and feel that it would be a service to the community." Ursula and Tilly gave her raised eyebrows. "Creed Lawson?" Eloise posed.
A collective sound of voices agreeing with her filled the air as they all took seats around the resplendent table.
Creed Lawson was a retired English teacher who ended his career with a flowing speech using grand literary quotes about the most important thing that he learned: girls should not read books.
He could often be found at the library in his worn-out cardigan giving disgruntled looks to anyone of the female persuasion.
He was asked to leave twice. And then banned for the rest of his grouchy life.
Ursula put two stone ramekins of her homemade ricotta at each end of the table and squeezed fresh lemon with a sprinkle of flaky sea salt with a flourish.
Honey wine was poured.
Music was played.
The sun warmed them as it dipped lower and lower bringing on a cerulean backdrop for a brilliant pink and orange tinted sky.
Laughter was flowing and conversation was easy. Many hands had to reach up to right their dinner neighbor's tipping crowns throughout the meal. It was decadent and lovely.
Eloise felt, for the first time in a few weeks, calm and safe.
She could breathe, and when she did it was lungfuls of fresh air that promised life with a hint of line-dried cotton.
It made her think of when she was little and would read outside in the old beach chair that was red and white striped and creaked when you folded it together so that you could unfold it exactly at the angle you wanted.
She would sit there with a book or magazine next to the line of drying clothes letting the sunshine brush away the water and leave behind the perfect scent of the cotton and sunscreen.
She thought of white picket fences and her dad teaching her how to parallel park using a riding lawn mower.
She felt a deep pang in her chest and flattened her hand on the pale pink tablecloth at the memory, at how easily it slid into her mind like innocence and sharpened knives.
"Are you okay?" Ursula leaned her head near her shoulder and Eloise borrowed her strength, taking in her vanilla and sea salt smell to ground her.
"Yeah. This is nice. Jessica is great," she said with a wide smile.
"Yeah, she is. I'm glad she's moving back. She could use you as a friend," Ursula said and the way she said it was so easy, so simple. Like it was a fact, that someone could need someone else and find comfort from who they are. Like she did with Ursula.
"Why me?"
Her green eyes found her amber ones and she said, "Because you're the kind of person that just is who you are but in a gentle way that tells others it's okay to be who they are. And we all need someone to give us that permission sometimes."
She swallowed hard at the emotion surfacing again and looking into her best friend's eyes, so honest and pure, she knew she needed to tell her what was going on. Not because she deserved to know, but because she would want to be there for Eloise.
"Can we talk later?" she asked.
Ursula nodded. And that was it.
"Hey, is Kelsea okay?"
"As odd as it may be, she is probably battling demons of her own, but nothing of the sort from Jessica.
She wouldn't tell me exactly what was said, the night I was drugged," Ursula whispered, remembering that horrible night at the Halloween festival.
"But she assured me that Jessica had been nothing but kind towards her, despite everything. "
"Despite everything," she repeated confused then it hit her. The tentative way Kelsea had been holding herself apart tonight. "Oh, Rob?" Her mind shifted back over shame-filled conversations with Kelsea. "He was the married man she had an affair with?"
"Oh, I thought you knew. She talked about it with you," Ursula said.
"Damn," she exclaimed softly, taking in this new information. "Wait, so she and Jessica?"
"Aren't enemies."
A memory hit Eloise of a woman sitting across from her, her eyes pained and her fingers anxiously wringing apart a cheap napkin.
She understood personal demons.
She leaned forward catching Kelsea's eye and gave her the look between women silently checking in. Kelsea nodded and smiled, though it was tight.
She melted back into the table's conversation and Jessica shared about her kids and what she was up to, what her plans were in Salem.
She and Rob had sold their perfect house, which she hated, and she was looking around for a small cottage to raise the kids and maybe get a messy dog they weren't allowed to have before.
"And the perfectly peachy pink bedroom with cream bedding and curtains?" Ursula asked. Jessica's happiness shone at her memory.
"Ah, ladies! My darlings," Crystal announced at one end of the table where she stood.
She had a crown on top of her pink hat and a glass of honey wine raised in the air.
"We have one more event for this evening and that is the part of the evening where we get rid of the juju of Rob and any lingering darkness and," she shrugged her thin shoulders, "well, it's just going to be fun as hell.
If you'll follow me, we are going to the glitter barn!
" And then she was walking away with her pink kaftan floating behind her like a feminine witchy goddess as she walked into the sunset setting the sky into a blaze of pinks and peaches; the perfect overhead banner for tonight.
"What's the glitter barn?" Ursula asked for anyone close.
"Do you think we're going to do crafts?" Kelsea asked.
"I haven't played with glitter in," Jen tilted her head, her braids swinging, "well, there's probably a childhood memory in there somewhere."
"Oh, same. I guess maybe some outrageous posters in high school," Tilly agreed.
"Last week," came Bess's reply and they turned surprised looks her way. She shrugged. "Galaxy bottles. You put cotton balls, paint, and glitter in them and they're really calming. Sometimes I hand one to Uncle Jay when he's getting moody."
"Nice," Jen replied with a high five for Bess, and Ursula laughed.
They followed Crystal into a dilapidated barn looking around the structure, splintering in some places, needing paint in most.
"Uh, is this safe, Crystal?" Jen asked clear distrust in her voice.
"Probably," she replied looking around. "Though I have visions of knocking out that wall and putting up new braces and creating a range of sorts."
"A range for what?" Eloise asked taking in the busted windows and three open doors flooding the barn with dust-mote air. It smelled like hay and hope and there was something abruptly lovely about this place.
Crystal lifted two wire baskets full of eggs and next to her were eight more of them filled to the top.
"We're going to throw glitter egg bombs while we listen to music outrageously loudly and paint the barn in pink sparkles!
Bad juju won't make it out of here alive.
" She shifted to the side and wide eyes widened further at life-size cut-outs of Rob Sandis plastered to the far wall.
There was a picture of him giving a speech in his perfect suit and politician smile.
Another of him side-eying an unknown person in derision.
One of his arm around a stiff Jessica, her hair perfectly coiled and her outfit expensive, her mouth frozen in a practiced smile.
And then one of him bending over, his flat ass covered in designer perfectly centered for aim.
Silence. Open mouths. Awe.
"This is the best thing I've ever done," Bess said in her teenaged tone that said they had hit the jackpot of cool.
"Grab a basket and some safety goggles. We don't want glitter in the eyes, darlings."
"There's a saying about that, isn't there?" Tilly asked as she made a beeline for a basket.
"I don't know, but I have a feeling I will have a newfound love of glitter," Kelsea said as she put on her clear goggles.
"How do I look?" Eloise asked and Jessica snapped hers on and gave her a thumbs up.
Music blared. Feminine music. The kind of music that slips into your mind and rubs your thoughts with gentle power and belonging.
"Darling, the honor is yours," Crystal said to Jessica.
"Your ex-husband had no butt, Jess," Eloise said as Jessica lined up with the picture of him bending over.
"He used to wear padded boxers," she replied slyly, taking two fragile eggs in hand.
"Hell yeah, girl! Throw that glitter egg!"
"Go for the ass!" Bess yelled.
"Throw two!"
She cocked her arm and they watched as Jessica was no longer poised, no longer standing straight and stoic, her beautiful face sneered in a beastly way and said, "You always thought I was the perfect trophy wife and I hated that.
I hated that I was no longer a person because of you.
" Her arm threw, an egg flew, and dark, pink glitter exploded on the picture of him holding her waist, his trophy at his side.
She picked up another as they cheered. "You never spent time with your kids.
Never!" She threw this one at him bent over and everyone felt the tingle of satisfaction as it hit the mark and more glitter flew into the air.
"You duped beautiful young women into thinking you were something special and pretended they were to you," she looked at Kelsea, who looked a little ashen but held herself still.
"And you left a mark on them that can never be undone.
You were selfish and they were the collateral and they deserved so much more.
" Balm, soft and healing were her words.
A glittering tear fell from Kelsea's eye and down her cheek.
Jessica nodded to her and there was a passing of pain between them, an apology, an acceptance, and a hope.
Then Jessica smiled wide, gestured to one of the pictures and Kelsea picked up an egg and they threw at the same time, hitting him square in the face with glee.
The music was loud and pulsing and the heartbreak was quietly leaving.
They could all feel it.
That slipping away of grief so that something else could take its place.
And each woman held inside of them their own story, their own pain, their own brokenness and shame. Each launch and explosion of glitter marked their rage or sadness.
Eloise gathered her own inside of her muscles as she released egg after egg.
Light pink glitter and glitter that looked like pepto-bismol baptized the pictures of a man she didn't know, but she was picturing someone else.
He had dark hair with silver laced into the front, dark eyes, and a lying tongue.
She threw eggs at a shadow of someone who used her, then tried to take her out of this world for daring to call him on it.
She threw eggs for the shame she kept like little jewels inside, inexplicably precious to her.
We do that with shame; gather it close like it's worth something, afraid that if we jostle or shatter it, its shards will cause even more damage.
And for thirty-two minutes their entire world was stuffed into that medium-sized barn where bombs of pink sparkles acted as metaphors for whatever they needed.
"That was fucking awesome," Bess said as they looked around in a daze of floating glitter. Her young heart was pounding and there was a renewed sense of self shining in her eyes as she had expelled the pain she was holding in, the rage of feeling heartbreakingly small lately.
"Language," Ursula said. Then she smiled slowly. "But yeah. It was."
Jessica had finished her bout of throwing by peeling off the pictures of her ex-husband and wadding them up into crumpled balls.
"Bonfire with divorce croissants?" She asked.
"What are divorce croissants?" Eloise shook her head. "You don't even need to answer that. I'm in."
Kindling and paper were lit aflame as the sun said goodbye drawing dark indigo down like curtains as the last light pink of the sky hovered over the horizon. Honey wine was passed around, taken away from Bess, and almond croissants were devoured.
"Wedding cake and divorce croissants," Jessica said with a smile.
While a coven of women were coming together in a celebration of new beginnings, someone else was creating a new beginning for themselves.
This one much darker and without the shoulder-to-shoulder support of friends.
No matter, community was overrated to this soul and they found they rather liked the importance of their own self and company. A hand ran over the top of a black headstone.
"Shelby Peridot," the voice said, reading from the newly engraved rock. A kik-kik before a high-pitched whistle sounded from above pulling their attention up into the trees.
"Shut up. I will trap you and then roast you over a crackling fire," they cursed.
The hawk sat steady, unmoved by the threat.
And then the evening settled over the graveyard where the trespasser lingered leaving behind a darkness that they had brought in with them.
The magic in the ground rumbled and shifted, trying to find its footing to hold itself steady and firm against this kind of darkness.
But that was the thing about magic and its shadow side, harnessing enough darkness could mean its abuse.
And the souls, though no longer lost, understood that all too well.