Chocolate mousse.(Diabetes diet).

Byline:Â David E. Rogers

THE PEPPERCORN DUCK Club’s specialty entree is duck roasted on a revolving skewer. One of the restaurant’s more devoted patrons is Bill. Bill’s had diabetes for 20 years, since turning 50. He manages his diabetes with medication, exercise, a rigorous diet, and meditation when necessary. He is faithful to his diet, and that means no candy, no desserts.

The desserts at the Peppercorn Duck Club are located on an enormous black marble table in the center of the room. To many of its clientele, the restaurant’s main attraction is not the duck but that dessert table. It is completely covered with all sorts of chocolate creations–chocolate mousse, chocolate ice cream, chocolate cakes, chocolate tortes, chocolate eclairs, chocolate bonbons, chocolate puffs.

Miriam, Bill’s wife, was prepared for dessert. She did not have diabetes and she was a chocoholic. Bill wondered: How many delectable goodies would she select?

He gazed affectionately at the black marble table. He’d forgotten what chocolate tasted like because it had been 20 years. Bill knew that plenty of people with diabetes could eat treats such as these now and then without harm. But not him–one taste, he feared he’d never be able to stop again.

Twenty years is a long time, he concluded.

“Are you going up for dessert now, dear?” Bill asked.

“Yes,” Miriam answered.

“Think I’ll go with you. Just to see what’s there, the pretty sights.”

They rose from their table and walked over to the dessert spread. This must be what a meal in heaven looks like, Bill thought. Miriam examined all the delights, as if to assure her husband that she would be very selective and not take too much, because he couldn’t have any.

He looked at the mousse and suddenly remembered the best he’d ever eaten, years ago in an Italian restaurant in San Jose, Costa Rica. He wondered if the mousse in front of him was that good.

“That mousse looks out of this world,” he remarked to his wife.

Maybe he could have just a little. A little won’t hurt. He deserved a little reward.

“What are you having?” he asked his wife. “It all looks so good.”

“I knew you shouldn’t have come down here. You’ll make me feel guilty, eating this in front of you.”

“I didn’t say I was taking anything. But, you know, it … well, just a little of that mousse wouldn’t hurt me.”

And then it hit him: the image of that woman who had shared a hospital room with his mother. He remembered everything: the woman’s foot and lower part of her leg in bandages, her daughter-in-law admonishing her for not stopping eating candy, the woman returning from surgery the next day with only a stub for that leg.

The chocolate mousse looked divine on the black marble, like the one in Costa Rica. But, this time, he left the mousse untouched.

David E. Rogers lives in Topeka, Kan., and has had diabetes for 21 years. Although Rogers and his wife have dined at the Peppercorn Duck Club, and he did once encounter a woman in a hospital whose foot needed to be amputated because of her diabetes, much of this story is fiction. Rogers wrote it as part of a writing class at the University of Iowa.