No Place I'd Rather Be

  * * *

  My phone rang.

  The number hit me in the gut, as usual.

  I didn’t answer, also as usual. It made me shake.

  She told me that what I was doing was illegal. She was going to sue me. She would see me in court.

  I was a whole slew of terrible words, including a bitch, a slut, and a whore.

  The words didn’t bother me.

  It was what was behind them that did.

  It was that kernel of truth, the fact that she might be right. Not the part about me being a bitch but that she would win and I would lose and then all the rest of the years of my life would be utterly and completely miserable.

  Chapter 4

  “I’m not going to the hospital, Mary Beth.”

  “Mr. Giles, I am not here to argue with a crotchety old man. It will only be for a few days, so get your feathers settled back on down.” My mother held Mr. Giles’s hand, gnarled from arthritis and eight decades of working outdoors. “While you’re there I’ll come and harangue you every day. That will be a benefit to you. My pleasing company.”

  I sat beside my mother in a chair at Mr. Giles’s bedside in his Kalulell home. He was propped up on pillows, a table full of medicine beside him. He had a fever and labored breathing and looked pale. He was eighty-six years old with a full head of white hair. Mr. Giles was a successful rancher and farmer, and I’d known him all my life. He and his wife were close friends of my grandparents. His wife, Mellie, was on the other side of his bed smiling vacantly and swaying, as if she had a song in her head.

  “And that would be right kind of you, Mary Beth, to take time out of your day to harangue me, but no thank you.”

  “You’re so pale you look like a dead ghost.” My mother impatiently tapped both cowgirl boots. Today they were turquoise with gold stars. “You’re so weak you’re like paper. I’m surprised you can stand up to piss. Your chest sounds so cluttered I feel like I’m listening to tar boil. You are going to the hospital, Mr. Giles.”

  “Isn’t my mother kind?” I asked. “Isn’t her bedside manner soothing and comforting, so gentle.”

  My mother snorted and said, “I do not coddle my patients, Olivia.”

  “But you should go to the hospital, Mr. Giles,” I said, “if I can weigh in here.”

  “Hell no, Olivia, and I apologize for swearing in front of you ladies, and you are both ladies except for how all the women in your family handle guns, including Gisela. You’re all as quick at the draw as the boys I served with in the military, but a hospital trip is not gonna happen.”

  His wife giggled. Then she put her hand to her mouth, in a flirty way, and blew him a kiss. She giggled again. He smiled at her, such a gentleman. I did not miss the worry when he did so.

  “The hospital will send me a bill larger than the state of Montana, Mary Beth. They’ll charge me fifty bucks for an aspirin. They’ll charge me if I pee too long. They’ll charge me if I breathe heavy. You go to the hospital, and if you’re not careful they’ll take your kidneys out and sell them on the black market and send you a bill for that, too.”

  “Mr. Giles, you have pneumonia and heart disease,” my mother said. “And I promise you that no one will take your kidneys and sell them on the black market. Your kidneys aren’t anything to be proud of. You’re way too old, and no one wants them. I’m being honest with you.”

  “I always appreciate your honesty, Mary Beth, even when you told me the last time I saw you that I was more stubborn than a mule with a stick up its ass. But I got my woman here with me. She’s taking care of me plenty fine, isn’t that right, Mellie?”

  Mellie, eighty-five years old, white curls, climbed up on the bed and bent down and kissed Mr. Giles’s head and whispered, “I think the aliens are coming tonight, my darling. They’ll take us away like they did last night.” She giggled. “I wonder if they’ll do that same thing to us again.” She giggled once again, then patted his crotch beneath the blanket.

  “She’s a mite confused,” Mr. Giles whispered, grabbing her hand. Mellie smiled, sitting cross-legged on the bed. She was wearing a silky pink dress, tennis shoes, and a black witch’s hat she must have saved from Halloween. Mellie had always been kind and creative, and she still was.

  “And who is taking care of Mellie?” my mother asked.

  Now that question upset Mr. Giles. He was a true Montana man. He provided for and protected his wife. He sniffled. His nose turned red. He blinked rapidly. “I’m doin’ my best, Mary Beth. This here pneumonia has only gotten me down like a frozen cat for the last couple of weeks. I can get up now and then, and I make sure she turns the stove off. Forgot again yesterday, that she did. She put a frozen turkey on the stove and turned it on high.” He wheezed. “And she did try to leave yesterday. I found her all dressed up in her Sunday best in the driveway. She said she was waiting for the aliens.”

  “And how did you feel after you had to get up and convince her the aliens weren’t coming?”

  “The aliens are coming, dear,” Mellie said, looking at my mother, smiling. She swayed with that song in her head then readjusted her witch’s hat. “Soon. But they’re nice. And they let me sleep with my cougar.” She pointed at Mr. Giles. “He’s a cougar in bed.” She growled, a sexy growl.

  Mr. Giles cleared his throat. “I had to be in bed the rest of the day, but I was able to move a table in front of the door. Mellie don’t like to push things aside, and that seemed to do the trick.”

  Mellie got up, skipped to the kitchen, and came back with a beer. She reached over to give it to Mr. Giles, then snatched it back, sat down, and started drinking it. When their white cat jumped on the bed, she put some beer in the palm of her hand and said, “Here kitty, kitty. Have your cream.”

  My mother and I waited for Mr. Giles to speak. He wheezed again.

  “Mary Beth, I can’t leave Mellie.”

  “She can go into Morningside Heights for elderly care. I already called Sylvio Martinez, and I have it arranged—”

  “No. She would be scared. She wouldn’t like it.”

  “Mr. Giles, you have got to start thinking here, for Mellie’s sake.” My mother tapped those cowgirl boots again, with force. “I’m getting irritated.”

  “Mellie!” Mellie said, as if she was cheering. She threw the beer in the air. “Gooo, Mellie!”

  “Denial is never an effective choice for wise living, so quit doing it,” my mother said. “If you don’t get better, she’s going to Morningside Heights forever. Do you not understand that? You die, and you will if you don’t go to the hospital, you will lie in that bed and suffocate, and she’s there. Alone.”

  His face crumbled. “Mellie and I agreed years ago that neither of us would put the other in a home. We didn’t let our parents go in homes, either. We took care of all four of them when it was their time, right here, in our guest room, and her mother went batty and used to dress like a princess and carry a wand. I love my Mellie and we are staying together.”

  “I wish I had a screwdriver, because I’d give you a lobotomy myself.” My mother exhaled.

  “Once again,” I said, “my mother shows her gentle, soft side. Very impressive, Mother.”

  She glared at me for half a second. “You don’t have a choice, Mr. Giles. You. Are. Going.”

  “I will take care of my woman here. I’ve got the medicines you gave me.”

  “I have known you my whole life, you stubborn old coot, and I’ve tried very hard to be as polite as I can be today, which was hard for me, but we’re doing this my way or you’re going to die, and instead of calling an ambulance Mellie will put a witch’s hat on your head and get the cat drunk.”

  Mellie giggled. “Drunk cat! Here, kitty, kitty, have your cream.” Mellie put more beer in her hand. She held it out to the cat, who backed away, then Mellie lapped it out of her palm with her tongue, like a cat. She meowed, then turned to Mr. Giles, leaned in close, and growled once again. In a sexy way.

  “It’s my way or the highway.”
My mother glared at him. “Don’t take the highway.”

  “Mary Beth—” Mr. Giles stopped arguing when Mellie stood up on the bed and took off her witch’s hat, then the silky pink dress, while humming some kind of stripper song. She was wearing a red bra and red underwear. Very pretty. She wriggled her hips, then climbed under the covers with Mr. Giles, rolled on top of him, and kissed him as if we weren’t even there. “Want to see my pussy, darling? She wants to meet your cougar. Meow!”

  He kissed her back, then pulled away, as Mellie started working her way down his body.

  “Okay, Mary Beth.” He sighed, resigned, so sick, exhausted. “I’ll do it.”

  “Meow, meow!”

  * * *

  I had eleven dollars.

  I was broke.

  I hate being broke. When I was younger and broke, traveling the world after college, working in restaurants in different countries, it didn’t bother me so much. It was only me. But now I have two kids.

  And a legal fight baring down on me like a tiger showing its fangs.

  This wasn’t working. I was cooking eight hours a day at Larry’s, and I was planning menus and recipes at night, but it wasn’t enough. I had payments due to my attorney and the hospital. I had already started using my credit card to survive.

  I put my head on my granddad’s scratched and dented, sixty-five-year-old dining room table and tried not to cry, then I decided to buck up and make a pineapple upside-down cake with the girls, and that’s what we did.

  I was teaching them about the Martindale family code: When life gets bleak, start baking a cake.

  Measure. Mix. Stir. Whip. Bake.

  Martindale Cake Therapy always works.

  * * *

  “Grandma, the other day, in the attic, there was a leak through the roof.” I put my teacup down on the dining room table in my, her, log cabin.

  “Did you go out to the shelf in the garage that says Roofing Supplies? You did. Good. Your granddad was so organized. Is it fixed now?”

  “Yes. Grandma, I patched things up but afterward I opened a box that had gotten wet.” Okay, Grandma. Are you ready for this? I still fought with myself. Was I being selfish because I was curious? Because I wanted to know about her past? Maybe I shouldn’t say anything. Was it even my place to say anything? Was it a violation of her privacy? Was it forcing her to talk about things she didn’t want to remember or talk about? I didn’t want to hurt her. But would she want to, finally, talk about her life? Her life before England? Her family? Her cookbook?

  “I took the things out so I could dry them.” My voice wavered, the fire crackled. I took her hand. “Grandma, I found your wedding dress. Your elegant, lacy wedding dress and veil. I found the butterfly clips, the blue dress and the hat with the white ribbon, the nurse’s uniform, the tin box with the charm bracelets. The menorah. And I found this.” I turned to a shelf and brought the cookbook to her with the cracked leather cover, the pages that had been singed by fire around the edges, the stained pink ribbon tying it together. I had dried it out, sometimes using a hair dryer on it, at a low speed.

  My grandma paled, becoming whiter and whiter.

  “Oh, Grandma,” I cried. I am an awful, awful person! I am so awful! “I am so sorry. I kept arguing with myself, wondering if I should even show it to you—”

  She held out shaky hands, and I gave the cookbook to her. She held it gently, and two tears slipped out of her eyes and down her cheeks and soaked into the battered leather cover.

  “Grandma,” I said so gently, begging. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I am brainless. I am thoughtless. I am an idiot.”

  “You didn’t hurt me, darling Cinnamon.” Her voice wavered. “They did. They hurt me, not you, never you, sweet girl.” She drew a finger down the cracked leather, over the pink ribbon. “So, you are here again,” she whispered to the cookbook. “We have found one another.”

  “I hope you don’t mind, Grandma. I looked at the recipes, the pictures. I found flakes of a rose, a sun charm, two gold lockets, red ribbons, a white feather, poems . . .”

  She nodded and dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “You see, Cinnamon, my mother, my grandma, my great-grandma, we all loved to cook.” Her head wobbled, her white hair swaying, as if what happened had affected the strength of her neck. “Our favorite recipes have been written in this book.”

  “It must be very old.”

  “Yes. It’s very old. Much older than me. You see, we had to save this, save our history, when we escaped, and this is what my mother chose for us to save. It’s what she hurriedly gave to me before . . .” She stopped, her mouth tightened, twitched. She closed her eyes, and I knew she wouldn’t finish what she started to say. “But this is more than a cookbook. This is my family line, it’s your family line. It’s us. You saw the drawings.” I nodded. “We’ve been through terrible times, and so many didn’t survive. But I did. I should not have. I was less deserving than all of them. The guilt has followed me my whole life. Why me? Why did I live and not them? It shouldn’t have been me.”

  Who was she talking about? What happened?

  She opened the cookbook and touched the drawings of a smiling family on a bench, in front of a fireplace, in what must have been the late 1890s or early 1900s, judging by the long skirts of the girl and the mother, the shawls and kerchiefs, and the boots and suspenders of the boys and the father. There were two smiling boys; one girl, who looked to be the oldest; and a baby boy. They were all holding a bowl in one hand and a slice of bread in the other.

  She turned to the pictures of the small stone and wood home with geraniums in front, a village with cobblestone streets, a handsome man working on a saddle, the inside of a home with flowers hanging from the rafters, shelves holding pans and baskets.

  One of the pictures was of tall fir trees, the sun peeking through the branches, a meadow with flowers, and two deer. Peaceful. But somehow it seemed lonely to me. Sad. Dark.

  “I couldn’t bear to use this cookbook, Olivia.” Her voice cracked. “I couldn’t handle that pain, that loss. All of them gone.” She wiped tears from her cheeks.

  All of them gone. How many had she lost? How many had died? How had they died? Where? I had not forgotten the menorah.

  “If I cooked their recipes, I would be cooking without them. I would have to remember what happened, what they went through, and I . . .” She cried harder, and I got up and put my arms around her. Why did I do this? I had made my grandma cry. What kind of woman does that to her grandma?

  “It still hurts. Decades later. I never expected it to stop hurting, though.” She turned the pages as I let go and wiped the tears from my cheeks. She touched the recipes, in different languages, written in different hands, with her fingers. “But maybe . . .” She took a deep breath. “Maybe it’s time. I’m an old woman. I will join them soon. I feel them, sometimes, around me, in the gazebo.”

  “Please don’t say that you’ll join your family soon, Grandma. I love you so much.” I will miss you when you’re not here.

  “I love you, too, Cinnamon, but it’s always best to be realistic, dear.” She took a long, long breath, then exhaled, as if she was releasing some of that pain. “Maybe it’s time I cooked their recipes, and showed you and your sister how to make our family’s recipes. Maybe it’s time I show Kyle and Stephi and Lucy their heritage. Who their ancestors were and how they baked.”

  “I would love that. We would love that.”

  “You would?”

  “Yes. Definitely yes.”

  She nodded. “Then let’s do it.” She brushed away her tears and turned the pages of the cookbook. When the recipe was in Yiddish, she said a few words in Yiddish, reading from the page. Then Ukrainian, German, and English—but English with a British accent. More tears poured out onto the recipes in the book, from both of us. Finally she said something in Yiddish again.

  “What did you say, Grandma?”

  “I said, ‘Beloved family, you are here again.’” She brought the cookbook to
her lips and kissed it. “We saved this cookbook from hate. From Sarrah Tolstonog to Ida Zaslavsky to my mother, Esther Gobenko, to me. The love of our family. From Odessa in the Russian Empire to Germany to England to Montana. We saved it time and time again.”

  October 1905

  Odessa, the Russian Empire

  Ida Zaslavsky, great-great-grandmother of Olivia Martindale

  Outside Ida Zaslavsky’s small home, on the far edges of the city of Odessa, in what felt like a village, all was black and quiet. Too quiet. It didn’t feel right to Ida. Something was off, something was wrong. She opened the leather-bound cookbook her mother, Sarrah, had given her, hoping it would calm her nerves.

  Ida adjusted her skirt, beige and hanging to her ankles, and took off her blue kerchief. Her long, thick brown hair tumbled down. Boris loved her hair. He was a good man. Perhaps too much good in the bedroom now and then. He told her that her green eyes slanted like a cat’s. He joked that it was helpful that he liked cats.

  She was pregnant again. Three months, maybe four. It was a girl, she knew it. They would name her Talia. Talia would join her sweet siblings, Esther, Moishe, Zino, and baby Liev.

  She had written down recipes from Sarrah, and from her grandmother, Tsilia Bezkrovny, and tonight she would write down a recipe for beet borsch, but first she drew a picture of their children, all sitting in front of the fireplace, including herself and Boris, on the bench Boris made, laughing and holding wooden bowls of borsch and a chunk of bread.

  Ida wrote the recipe on the right side. When she was finished, she put the cookbook on the windowsill, then picked up her knitting. She would darn Boris’s socks. The man worked so hard he was always getting holes in his socks. Her hands shook, and she took a deep breath in the silence.

  Odessa felt dangerous now. It was a modern city. People from all over the world lived there. The French, Greeks, Italians, Russians, and many Jews. It seemed as though every language on Earth was spoken. The port was thriving. Businesses were growing. But more people moved into their city on the Black Sea every year, straining employment and jobs, creating competition and strife for work.