No Place I'd Rather Be

  Gisela tried to be brave, but she started to cry. Renata cried. Isaac cried, agitated, disturbed. Their parents cried. They all hugged one another again.

  When it was time, when a man yelled that all children were to board the train in an orderly and quiet fashion, no parents on the platform, they went together, the two sisters, Gisela seventeen, Renata sixteen. Their passports, stamped with a red J, as ordered by the Nazis, were in their bags.

  Midway across the platform, Gisela turned to go back, but she was pushed forward by the other children, many of whom were crying, all who were scared witless. They had no choice but to continue toward the train, numbers draped around their necks. Gisela had one bag in her hand, stuffed with clothes and food for the journey, including her favorite banana bread that her mother had made for them that morning.

  Her cousins had not been able to get on the train with her and Renata, and she was already grieving. She feared for them. She had heard her parents whispering to each other, crying for their nieces and nephews. “They will have to fight to get their children on it. Orphans and homeless children, children with both parents in the camps, they have gone first. There is a limited amount of space . . .” She knew her parents had sold all of the hidden jewelry, that they had even had to pay a bond for Gisela and Renata’s future care in England, for them to board this train. It was the last-chance train.

  Her mother had put their family’s leather-bound cookbook with the pink ribbon in her bag that morning and had taped photos of their relatives to the last pages. “Take it, Gisela,” she said. “Don’t lose it. You will be taking our family with you on this journey.” She had also given them the small, silver menorah they had seen in their grandparents’ window since they were children.

  “This is a gift from your grandma Ida and granddad Boris. They wanted you two to have it, to remember their love, to remember your faith.” The menorah had been made by Ida’s grandfather, Aron Bezkrovny, who made it for Ida and Boris as a wedding gift. It was the only item to survive when Ida’s home was set on fire during the pogrom in Odessa, besides the cookbook and Boris’s tools.

  She and Renata stumbled into seats on the train and tried to wave to their parents, to Isaac, but they couldn’t see them, they were lost. They waved anyhow. Then they cried, along with many of the other children, their loss unbearable, their world shattered.

  Later, the train whizzing through the night toward a boat that would take them to England, Gisela held the cookbook. She touched the leather cover and the pink ribbon. Inside her grandma Ida had added more recipes, from herself, her mother, Sarrah Tolstonog, and her grandma, Tsilia Bezkrovny, and had drawn her own home in Munich in summertime, and their home, too, both with red doors and red geraniums.

  Her mother had also added more recipes, many for desserts and cakes they used in Ida’s Bakery, with drawings and imprints of leaves, flowers, and herbs. And there were stains—tea, wine, blood, tears. Gisela knew what they were, where they were from. She knew why some pages were damaged by water and fire. Her mother and Grandma Ida had told her.

  “Girls, use the cookbook, use our family’s recipes, and think of how much we all love you,” their mother had said to them, hugging them one more time. “Our love will come to you through the recipes.”

  Gisela studied the banana bread recipe. Her mother had drawn a banana, a sugar container, and nutmeg and cinnamon jars. She had drawn a purple wisteria vine around the edges. Her mother loved wisteria. Her mother had accidentally spilled vanilla on the corner. She could smell it. There was also some cinnamon between the pages. She smelled that, too. She wanted to cry again, but she didn’t. She would be brave. She had to be brave.

  Renata took her hand in that crowded, cramped train car, filled with hundreds of suddenly orphaned children, all with numbers around their necks, all holding suitcases and bags, all with their passports marked J for Jew.

  “Gisela?” Renata said. “I’m so scared . . .”

  “Me too, Renata, me too.”

  They ate two slices of banana bread and shared the rest with two brothers who had no food.

  The girls wouldn’t know for years, but the fear they felt then was nothing compared to the terror they would have felt had they stayed in Munich, Germany.

  They would have ended up in the camps: Dachau. Buchenwald. Auschwitz.

  They were the lucky ones.

  They were on the Kindertransport.

  The sisters were going to England.

  * * *

  I gathered all of my recipes that I’d used at Martindale Ranch and started typing them into a document. I also started taking photographs of the meals we were making, the fancy appetizers and layered desserts, the colorful salads and thick soups.

  I took photos of the horses, the dogs, the cat, the ranch itself. I took photos of the sunsets and sunrises, the bunkhouse for the employees, and the employees themselves as they worked. I took photos of the dining hall, set for dinner with our heavy white dishes and candlelight, the log cabins, the wild animals, the mountains, the river, the hills. I took photos of Jace.

  I loved those photos the best.

  I asked Jace to write the introduction, about himself and his family, starting with his grandfather, Ricardo Rivera; the cattle ranch, which he still ran; and the inspiration to open Martindale Ranch.

  I wrote a few paragraphs introducing myself, how I started cooking as a girl in our blue farmhouse and my grandparents’ log cabin here in Montana. I wrote about baking cakes with my family during Martindale Cake Therapy, the countries I’d traveled to and cooked in, the culinary school I’d attended, and what we liked to serve at Martindale Ranch. I encouraged them to come and visit us at the ranch.

  I certainly couldn’t write a truthful introduction, as it would have to go something like this: Now, folks, here is a husband and wife team running Martindale Ranch, but they’re separated, and the wife is a head case. She is so turned on by her husband she loses track of what she’s saying, but they can’t get back together because their problem can’t be fixed. There are also two almost-adopted daughters in the picture, but the bio mother is a dangerous drug addict about to be sprung from jail and the girls might be placed back into her morally corrupt hands.

  I have realized, as I have gotten older, that the beaming, smiling faces in the photograph with the perfect family can be the cover for a deeply troubled life.

  What a mess we often hide behind our beaming smiles.

  * * *

  My phone rang.

  I saw the number and didn’t answer it, once again. I wished that she would never call. I wished that she would leave us alone, but I had to have these recordings.

  When she was done leaving her vitriol, her hatred, on my voice mail, I listened.

  This time, she was conciliatory. Apologetic. Her voice sweet. Reasonable. Calm.

  That scared me more than the screaming and swearing.

  * * *

  I had Dinah help me with the first video. She had dyed her hair with pretty purple streaks, so first we had to talk about that, but then we got on with it. She held the camera.

  I had decided to make a dark chocolate, four-layer truffle cake for the video. I figured I would go for delicious, and fairly simple, first. It wouldn’t be a normal chocolate truffle cake, though. I was going to add chocolate meringue logs and chocolate shavings two inches high on top, with a ring of raspberries around the outside.

  I was nervous. I don’t like cameras, or photos of myself, or feeling like I’m being watched. And, gee-whiz, the dang camera does that.

  Dinah laughed. “Okay, Olivia. Shake it off. Be you. You know, the tough Montana woman who tells Larry off, whacks Gary in the neck with a wooden spoon, and shoots at bears coming too close to her property. Ready? Go!”

  I smiled at the camera in my white chef’s jacket. I tried to appear calm and serene. “Hello, everyone. I’m Olivia Martindale. Welcome to Cooking with Olivia on Martindale Ranch in Montana.

  “I live in Kalulell, Monta
na; I’m the head chef at Martindale Ranch; and I love to cook and bake. Measuring. Mixing. Stirring. Simmering. Sautéing. It all brings me joy.

  “I absolutely love to bake cakes. I was brought up baking cakes with my sister, mother, and grandma, so that’s what we’re going to do today. I’m going to show you how to make a dark chocolate, four-layer truffle cake. Ever wonder how pastry chefs make their cakes look so fancy? We’re going to get fancy today, too.”

  I went through the ingredients they would need, then I started combining them. I tried to smile at the camera and look like a natural and normal woman, not one with a whole host of demons in her head who didn’t like cameras pointed at her pointy face. It was when we got to the mixing part that I had a problem.

  I have never had problems with hand mixers. Never. But my hand was shaking the slightest bit as I gripped the mixer. I was trying to bake “the old-fashioned way.” Also, I know that many people don’t have expensive kitchen gadgets, but they would have hand mixers. I smiled into the camera and said, “It’s important to whip the ingredients together until they’re completely mixed. I can only compare the importance of completely mixing ingredients to shooting cans off a log here in Montana. You have to aim, hold it, shoot. It’s the same with baking. You have to have a goal in sight that you’re aiming for. Hold the vision of what you’re making and . . . don’t shoot”—I smiled, finally feeling more comfortable—“but mix it and take your time. Remember, cooking should be soothing. It’s cooking therapy.”

  That’s when it happened. I turned the mixer on high and somehow that sucker flew right out of my hand, spun around the bowl, then shot out of the bowl and onto the counter, upside down, spurting batter everywhere. I put up a hand as chocolate batter splattered my face. The mixer took off as if it were trying to escape from the counter and whirl itself out of the kitchen.

  “Oh, my gosh,” I said. I lunged for the devilish mixer and knocked over the vanilla. The vanilla spilled. I got the handle of the mixer, brought it back, and then hit a bowl of cream. The bowl whooshed across the counter, careened off the edge, and broke on the floor.

  Dinah was cracking up, but she had not let go of the camera, and it was still pointed right at me. My vision was blocked by a glob of chocolate batter. I pulled it from my hair, then ran a hand over my cheek.

  Then I laughed. I laughed and laughed. “I caught the devil mixer,” I said, holding up the mixer in victory, now turned off. “Remember, friends. Sometimes your utensils, your kitchen gadgets, even your oven, they’re going to turn on you. It’ll be like they have a life of their own. Sort of like the black bears we have up here in Montana. Most of the time they’re nice, and they leave you alone. Sometimes, they’re not so nice and they want to eat you. This here mixer was having a black bear grumpy day. Let’s try this again.”

  We did. I went back to the lesson. I wiped the chocolate batter off my face, cleaned up the vanilla, and the mixer behaved like a haloed angel the next time around.

  * * *

  Later Dinah and I watched the video, including the grand finale, which showed a tasty end result: a perfectly formed dark chocolate, four-layer truffle cake, with the chocolate meringue logs wrapped around the cake and the dark chocolate shavings piled up on top with the raspberries. I showed my sister, my grandma, my mother, the girls, and Kyle the video when they were over at my house for a simple beef stroganoff that night.

  We laughed until we hurt.

  “Put it up on the Martindale Ranch website,” my mother said. “This is proof that hand mixers can be dangerous and might land you in the ER. Also another reason for me not to cook. A mixer might attack me.”

  “We all need laughter in our lives,” my grandma said, flipping her pink carnation scarf back. “Share it to share the joy.”

  “Women will relate,” Chloe said. “In it you said something like, ‘Life is a mess and so is cooking’ and ‘Never try to be perfect, ladies, it will give you a migraine.’” She banged her fists together. “They’ll get it. We women understand messes, the messes we make and the messes in our lives that are made by others.”

  Kyle said, “I thought the presentation was quite amusing and entertaining, Aunt Olivia. I understood the humor.”

  Stephi said, “I think that mixer was having a temper tantrum. When I feel like doing that, I grab my rocks and squeeze them, like this!” And Lucy said, her finger pointed in the air, “It’s okay to make a mess in the kitchen, Aunt Olivia, as long as it’s yum yum for my tum tum. Can I have some of that cake?”

  * * *

  I showed Jace the video the next day. He laughed so hard he almost cried. Earl and Justin saw it, too. They bent over double laughing. I posted it. I forgot all about it.

  * * *

  “I have continued to take into account your sage advice, Aunt Olivia.”

  “With the portraits you’re making of the kids at school?” I pushed a plate of cheese and crackers toward Kyle across my granddad’s dining room table. The one that my grandma told me he’d laid a pregnant Martha Schumann on during a blizzard when her twins decided to come early.

  “Yes. I have continued to draw my peers.”

  “They love it, don’t they?”

  “I would say yes, affirmative.” His hands fluttered, then he held them together. “When I arrive at study hall, the people whose portraits I am to draw that day, who have signed up on the list, have increased their attention to their personal hygiene. For example, Jacob Nashiro, birthday April 4, wears one of three pairs of blue jeans. Two have significant holes in the left side, and one has a frayed hem on the right side. His T-shirts say “Eat Me” or “Stay Alive, Baby” or “Mangoes Are Like Breasts,” which forced the principal to send him home from school on November third at 9:14 in the morning. But on the day when his portrait was to be drawn he wore a plaid shirt, blue and white, beige pants with a brown belt, silver buckle, and he brushed his hair. He also sat very still for the portrait instead of gyrating his body in jerky movements as is normally the case.”

  “Did he like the portrait?”

  “When I was done he held it in his hands and didn’t say a word, and I thought he was displeased. I said, ‘Are you displeased? ’ And he said, ‘No, man. I love it. My parents are gonna love it, too. Thanks, Kyle.’ Please note, he said ‘gonna.’ That was not my word, Aunt Olivia. I do not use the word ‘gonna.’”

  “So noted. You’re making each one of them a gift, Kyle.”

  “I believe—” He stopped, stared out the window, blinked rapidly, and cleared his throat. “I believe that the students no longer think that I am an oddity, a pervert, or a dick. As you proposed, this has given them a chance to know me. When I sit in the cafeteria with my lunch sack, people come to sit with me. They talk to me. Mother told me to ask people questions of themselves, so this is what I do. I use the questions from my Questions Notebook. Now they tell me their problems. I asked Mother what to say when I hear a problem, and she said, ‘Tell them you’re very sorry, and listen closely and try not to let your eyes skedaddle off like a raccoon hiding in the bushes. You have to look them in the eye, Kyle, or they’ll think you don’t give a rat’s ass about them.’”

  I was delighted. “It sounds like things are much better.”

  “Yes.” He sniffled. “Although my emotions are less controlled recently.”

  “Kyle, you are a brilliant artist. You have the gift to make people happy.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Olivia. I believe you are brilliant, too. In cooking.” His face drew together in concentration. “But you and my mother are brilliant with people. Something I am a failure at.”

  “You are one of the kindest people I know, Kyle.”

  “It does not come naturally to me, but I endeavor to be better, with the help and wise counsel from Mother. She said to me yesterday, ‘Kyle, you are coming in from outer space and becoming a normal human.’ I took that as a wonderful compliment. May I draw you soon, Aunt Olivia?”

  “Yes. I would love that.”


  “We have an agreement then.”

  “We do.” I ruffled his hair, then I hugged him. He allowed it. He patted my back. Three times.

  * * *

  That night the girls and I went to the farmhouse and had tea and chocolate pecan bars with my grandma and mother. My grandma made them from Ida’s recipe. I saw her leather-bound, pink-ribboned cookbook on the counter. I thought of the remnants of that pressed pink rose, the lockets, the red ribbons, the sun charm, and the white feather. I thought of what I already knew, the tragedies and traumas that my relatives had gone through, what my grandma had gone through. They had gone through far, far more than me. They had shown strength and courage when they had been hit with disaster.

  Had I? Had I shown strength and courage?

  That question kept me up for hours that night.

  Chapter 12

  “Did you see this, Olivia?” Dinah asked me at the ranch four days after the demon mixer showed me who was boss. She had added a blue streak to her hair.

  “What?” I was flying, making Pancakes Bigger Than Your Head on the griddle, which would be served with a ring of bananas and strawberries around the top, and Big Bear French Toast with powdered sugar.

  “Ya gotta stop and get over here, Olivia.” Dinah pointed to her laptop screen.

  “I can’t right now. Where is the buttermilk? Shoot. Are we out of buttermilk? No, it’s right here. Where’s the—”

  “Olivia!” She laughed. “Come on!”

  “Later, Dinah. Do you have the omelet ingredients together? We’re having the Montana-Mexican omelets today, did you remember—”

  “Olivia!”

  “What?” She held the laptop up in front of me. “What?”

  “It’s the hits on the website for the last few days.”

  “I know that. But why are you holding it in front of my face? Did you get the oranges squeezed?”