No Place I'd Rather Be

by Cathy Lamb

  “The Nazis got them.”

  “Probably.”

  Chloe and I sat in that unspeakable tragedy. Our own relatives, dying in concentration camps.

  We looked at a few of Esther’s other recipes, all written carefully, in German, or Yiddish, most with drawings of nature, leaves, herbs, or a garden.

  “Let’s get cooking,” I said, pulling myself away from the horrors of Grandma’s past.

  “Bring it on, baby. I need to get rid of the sadness sitting on my shoulders from what happened to our relatives.”

  We made Great-Grandma Esther’s Onion Soup.

  We talked about Teddy, and how Chloe still missed him but was moving forward, and she said, “Olivia, I know you’re hurting. I would be, too. It wasn’t fair, what happened to you, but don’t let that cowboy go.”

  We shed a few tears, we laughed, we added beef stock and apple and onions and salt and pepper, as Esther’s recipe said to do.

  Combine. Stir. Pour. Sprinkle. Slice. Shake. Sautée.

  Cooking is healing.

  * * *

  That night we sat down altogether, my grandma, my mother, the girls, Chloe, Kyle, and me at the blue farmhouse. Chloe and I set the table with my grandma’s china, a gift from my granddad’s parents to her for their wedding. I hoped no one would come through the door needing to be laid flat and treated on the table as it would take us awhile to move the china. We made hot bread and a huge green salad and put both on the china platters.

  We put Esther’s Onion Soup in a tureen, then Chloe dished it out with a ladle. The first bowl went to Grandma. She was chatting with my mother about one of their patients who came in with an arrow stuck in his arm.

  Grandma stopped in midsentence, caught her breath. She bent her head and smelled the soup. She closed her eyes. “That’s my mother Esther’s onion soup, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, hoping we’d done the right thing. I was now deeply doubting myself. “We followed it exactly, down to the beer, the marjoram, and the homemade croutons.”

  My grandma lifted her spoon to her lips. She took a taste, held it in her mouth, closed her eyes. She put the spoon back in the bowl. She bent her head into both hands.

  “Oh, man,” Chloe whispered. “Grandma, I apologize. I am sorry.”

  “We didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said, anguished. “I’m sorry, Grandma.”

  “You only have to take three bites and if you still don’t like it, Grandma Gisela,” Lucy said, her brow furrowed with worry, “you don’t have to eat it.”

  “It’s okay, Grandma Gisela,” Stephi said, leaning over the table toward her. “Spit it out.”

  Kyle took a bite. “Delicious. Onions. Butter. Flour for thickening. Chives. I am confused. Is there a problem I am unable to discern?”

  “Mom?” my mom said to her mother. “Are you all right?” She picked up her wrist, took her pulse.

  My grandma stared off into the distance, as if she wasn’t with us in our cozy kitchen in the blue farmhouse, next to a kitchen island made from a fallen oak tree, in Montana, the snow lightly falling. Two tears rolled down her cheeks, then another two tears.

  Kyle seemed distressed and started writing in his Questions Notebook.

  Grandma picked up her cloth napkin and dabbed her cheeks. “It’s perfect, Nutmeg and Cinnamon. Exactly as my mother used to make it. I can even taste the Emmental cheese she used.” She smiled at both of us. “Thank you. You’ve brought my mother back to me through her soup.” She turned to the kids. “My mother’s name was Esther Gobenko. She was a lovely, strong, intelligent woman who went through terrible times, starting when she was little, in Odessa. She was brave. She was smart.”

  “What happened to her?” Lucy asked.

  “Something sad happened to her,” Grandma said.

  She told us another part of her story. We forgot to eat Esther’s onion soup. Horror always takes away the appetite.

  Chapter 8

  July 1938

  Munich, Germany

  Esther Gobenko, great-grandmother of Olivia Martindale

  The fire tore through the wall of their home. The black, churning smoke clogged her throat, her lungs, stealing her breath away.

  Esther could hardly see, but she could hear screaming, yelling and she could hear the baby, Liev, crying in her parents’ bedroom. Her brothers woke up beside her on their bed in front of the fireplace and clutched her in fear. Their father yelled at them, “Get out, get out now!” as he tried to run through the wall of fire to the bedroom. She grabbed her brothers and hauled them up. They were terrified, the flames leaping at their backs as the fire streaked across another wall.

  “Run for the woods,” their mother, Ida, ordered, yanking them toward the door as the fire grew, a monster, the sparks snapping, the roof starting to smolder. “Stay together. Hide. We will come for you. Go Esther, take your brothers. Go!”

  Her brothers were hysterical, but the flames were spreading, the smoke burning, searing her flesh, her hair hot.

  Their mother shoved them, hard, toward the door. “Now, now!”

  Esther saw her father grab her mother, Ida, as she fought to get to the baby. To get little Liev, left behind in the flames. Horrified, she pulled her brothers through the door into the pitch darkness of the night as the fire roared.

  In their socks they ran toward the forest, away from their burning home, the gunshots blasting through the village, and the screams. They ran and ran until they could run no more, the shouts of the neighbors fading, the shifting shadows of the trees towering above them. They were lost, cold, afraid of wild animals. They climbed into a log, holding each other—

  Esther screamed, her eyes flying open.

  Instead of the haunting dark forest and the inferno her home in Odessa had become, she saw her bedroom, the walls white, the bedspread white, her husband, Alexander, beside her, holding her, soothing her . . .

  It was the same nightmare she always had. It never completely left. It had followed her from Odessa to Munich. Clawlike, it clutched her, as death had clutched Liev, the boy they never stopped missing.

  “Shhh, honey, Esther, shhh. It’s okay,” Alexander soothed. “You’re here. At home. In Munich. It’s not Odessa, darling. Breathe. Here, drink some water. I filled your cup . . . there, there, let me hold it for you, you’re shaking too much . . . Everything is okay, sweetheart.”

  She pushed back her thick brown hair, sweaty against her forehead, and tried to catch her breath. Esther saw her white nightstand with her white lace kerchief, a gift from her mother. She saw her crystal lamp, her blue wool coat flung over a chair. Alexander’s yarmulke, his prayer shawl from his parents, and his prayer book were in the same place, as always. Esther pulled her hands together, her diamond wedding ring heavy on her finger. Alexander had bought her a new ring for their anniversary, sweet husband.

  “I’m sorry, Alexander, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Hush, love. I understand, I do.” He kissed her, and they made love, always that seemed to settle her down, to remind her that she was no longer living through a pogrom. Afterward he kissed her cheek and went back to sleep.

  She and Alexander had come a long way from the poverty both their families had experienced in Odessa. They owned their home in Munich, three stories, on a side street, and a department store, Esther and Alexander’s. It had been the most popular store in Munich, their sales high. They sold stylish, modern clothing for men, women, and children. They sold her father’s purses, bags, and wallets in the store, and her mother’s treats, from Ida’s Bakery, in the café on the second floor. Esther advised Alexander on the store, but mostly she worked for her mother in the bakery. She so loved their pink-and-white building; their light, fluffy pastries; the breads and rolls they made.

  Mostly, Esther loved baking cakes. Life went away, fear and anger and sadness. It was peaceful, soul enriching. She wanted to turn food into edible art. She loved blending the ingredients, pouring the batter into pans, the scent of the cakes
as they cooked. She loved decorating, making each cake special, different, adding humor here and there. Why, the other day she added a real carrot to the middle of a carrot cake and everyone in her family—Alexander, Isaac, Gisela, and Renata—had loved it.

  She should have felt safe in their three-story brick home in Munich, but she didn’t. No Jew could feel safe.

  Their children’s lives, with their educations, their music and language lessons, were privileged. Isaac, Gisela, and Renata had had safe lives until the past few years. They hadn’t known the pogroms she had known in Odessa as a little girl. She knew the pogroms haunted her mother, Ida, and her father, Boris, too.

  The nightmares were coming more frequently now, and Esther knew why: The Nazis. Every day, life was worse for Jews. Esther felt the same danger, the same premonition of more danger to come, that she had felt in Odessa as a little girl. Their department store had been painted with the word Jude, as had their bakery, and her father’s shop, Boris’s Leather Goods. People were singing anti-Jewish songs and slogans, condoned by the press and the government. The Nazis shouted, “Heil Hitler,” the SS terrorized their fellow German Jewish citizens, and the long red flag with the black swastika hanging from buildings flapped in the wind.

  The sales in their bakery, their department store, and her father’s leather goods were now poor. Their stores had been boycotted by many people because they were Jewish. The Nazis were taking over Jewish businesses. All of their family members had had to register their property and assets with the Nazi government. They were told, as Jews, that they were no longer German citizens. They were all going through their savings, and they had little left.

  The Nazis, over the years, had continued to add new anti-Semitic laws. Jews were now second-class citizens. Jews had lost jobs in government, in medicine, in law, in the army, and in education. They had lost jobs as journalists, in the theater, in music, in dance. Jewish students were being barred from school. Some Jews they knew had simply disappeared. Books were being burned. There was talk of a camp for Jews. A camp? A camp where they imprisoned and killed Jews? Surely that wasn’t true? Other Jews had left the country altogether, leaving assets here they were not allowed to take.

  She and Alexander had talked endlessly, as she had talked to her parents, and to her four brothers and their wives. They all knew that Hitler was a maniac but hoped he would soon be stopped, that other Germans would come to their senses. They hoped that this ugly tone, the threats, the violence, would stop. They thought that sanity would return. It hadn’t.

  Esther had wanted to leave years ago, but something deep inside her was still shocked. How could this happen again? There were so few voices standing up for the Jews. Millions more were standing up for Hitler, standing up for his hate, his divisiveness, his blame of Jews for all the ills of Germany. He stirred up fear and nationalism and appealed to ignorant people.

  “Leave?” Alexander had said to her many times. “This is our home. We have businesses. Family.” His father had had pneumonia and was still weak. His mother had had a stroke and was recovering. “It will get better,” he told her. “We will wait. If not, we have the money in Switzerland. We can use that and leave at a moment’s notice even if the Nazis take everything else.”

  Alexander and she would have to get both sets of parents out. They could not, would not, leave them. Her father, Boris, would fight leaving, she knew that. He had run once, from the pogroms in Odessa, and said he would not run again. But her mother . . . Ida knew, she could feel the danger, as Esther could. Ida would agree to leave if Boris would, and if she knew all five of her children, and their families, would leave, too. She would not leave children behind again, dead or alive.

  Sometimes, when Esther’s fear of the Nazis grew to be too much in the middle of the night, she got up and cooked from her mother’s leather-bound cookbook with the pink ribbon, the one her mother had given her for her wedding to Alexander. She would study her mother’s recipes, some of which came from her mother, Sarrah Tolstonog, and her mother, Tsilia Bezkrovny.

  She would admire her mother’s drawings of their poor neighborhood in Odessa, of Boris, of herself and her brothers as they grew, of her mother’s parents, Efim and Sarrah, and grandparents, Aron and Tsilia. Ida had drawn pictures of her and her brothers with their new spouses when they were married, the wedding cakes she made them, along with the cake recipe she had used.

  Esther had added her own favorite recipes, too. Alexander’s Salmon Dinner With Herbs and Shallots. Gisela’s Cherry Tart. Renata’s Challah Bread. Isaac’s Pecan and Brown Sugar Pastry. And a lemon chiffon cake, light and fluffy, which she made when she needed to settle her nerves. The sweet tartness always made her happy.

  But instead of drawings of people, which Esther felt she had no talent for, she would draw flowers, herbs, fruits, and vegetables. She would place leaves or flowers or petals, especially herbs, under the paper and use a colored pencil over the top. She had sketched their home in Munich, with its red door, symbolizing freedom, and the red geraniums, celebrating life, according to her mother. This cookbook was their history, after all, going back to Tsilia’s recipes.

  Esther knew she would not sleep again that night, so she went to the kitchen and opened the cookbook, which sat next to their Seder plate and Kiddush cups. She would make onion soup with a little beer, marjoram, homemade croutons, and Emmental cheese.

  She was scared. Her hands trembled as she cooked. Beef stock sloshed out of her measuring cup. She quickly mopped it up, but she knew it would leave a brown stain. She measured the salt into a teaspoon, and some spilled into the crease of the cookbook. She tried to brush it out, but it stayed where it was and she left it.

  She would give the cookbook to Gisela and Renata when it was time. It was so precious to her, meant to be passed down the family line. The girls were best friends, and they would share it.

  As the onion soup lightly bubbled, she wrote the recipe in the cookbook. She drew the onions, an apple, and the salt and pepper shakers.

  She plucked off a daisy from flowers Alexander had brought to her and traced it over the top, in the corner, then wrote their names, Esther and Alexander. She was feeling sentimental so she drew hearts for the leaves and then felt like a little girl.

  Esther Gobenko wondered how many more times she would cook in this kitchen.

  It wasn’t many more, she knew it.

  She could feel it.

  * * *

  “Hey. Olivia,” Larry said to me as I was leaning over the stove making a marinara sauce, adding parsley and thyme and a smidge of sugar. “What’s the special for tomorrow? You better be thinking of something my stomach will like.” He burped. Put a fist to his chest.

  Oh, gall. I could smell his burp.

  Larry’s Diner was thriving. I was trying to serve old-fashioned Montana food in the most delicious and gourmet way possible. I had ramped up the dessert menu, too.

  The treats were sky high, piled with icing, powdered sugar, and originality. I baked all types of cakes from carrot cake to six-layer chocolate cake to cheesecake chocolate bars, lemon bars, my grandma Ida’s strawberry cream rolls, and chocolate chip cookies large enough to fill a plate.

  But I always tried to make them different, too—special. The six-layer chocolate cake came with three inches of whip cream. The kids loved it. The lemon bars were stacked up like a mini building with a swirl of lemon frosting outlining the plate. The carrot cake was served, as a joke, with a carrot, which was Esther’s idea. The apple pie was served with an apple.

  Some people started coming simply for the desserts. We had lines every day.

  I hired more line cooks and more waitstaff.

  “I always think of good meals, Larry. Like pasta marinara today, served in a swirl with a shake of basil and parmesan cheese flakes on top.”

  “Yeah, better be finger-lickin’ tasty. We’ve got a party of twenty-five coming in for lunch tomorrow. Got them in the back room. Don’t screw this up, hon.”

&nb
sp; And there it was. He liked to call me hon, and then he pretended to “forget” that I had told him not to call me hon because I hated it.

  I was done. Done with hon. “I won’t screw it up, tiny dick.”

  His face flushed. “What the hell?”

  “Every time you call me hon, when I have asked you not to call me that, repeatedly, because I am not your hon, I’m going to call you tiny dick.”

  “I forget! I forget!”

  “You never forget. You call me hon and pretend you forget. It’s a power struggle. You want me to know that you can call me whatever you want because I work for you. But when you call me hon, which is demeaning and insulting coming from you, I will now call you tiny dick.”

  And then he did it again. He gave me that look, head to foot, to show me that he could undress me with his eyes and I had to stand there and take it.

  I bent down low and stared at his crotch. “Small. Ineffectual. Unused. Old.” I stood up.

  “Now do you know how it feels?”

  He was red, flushed.

  “You don’t intimidate me, Larry, by staring at every inch of my body. It repels me. Stop doing it.”

  “You’re too sensitive.”

  “Do not blame me for your disgusting behavior. You’re twisting what’s happening here.” I bent down, stared at his crotch. “Stop doing that, tiny dick.”

  “This isn’t your restaurant, Olivia.” He crossed his arms.

  “It isn’t. And I’ll leave.”

  All around me I heard the waitstaff and cooks stop. I took off my apron and they started taking off theirs.

  “What’s going on?” Dinah asked, coming through the double doors.

  “Olivia is leaving,” Justin said. He tossed his apron on the floor.

  “If Olivia is gone, I’m gone,” Dinah said.

  There was general agreement.

  That was it. We all walked out. We didn’t have to wait ten seconds before Larry was chugging behind us outside on the sidewalk, his stomach coming first. “Olivia, stop. Come on, everybody. I won’t do it anymore, I promise. Please.”