No Place I'd Rather Be

by Cathy Lamb

  When he got up, he swore and charged me, murder on his face, and I picked up a knife and raised it.

  Gary paused. He was a possum, but he wasn’t a stupid possum and he was having trouble breathing. I advanced.

  Justin and Earl yelled and shoved him out the door while Larry swayed. I realized Larry was semi-drunk.

  I was so sick of Larry. Him and his lard stomach, the way his eyes watched me, his fleshy lips.

  I took a breath. Without this job I would be immediately broke.

  I had attorney bills. I had a hospital bill. I had two little girls. I was a single mother fighting for custody and I would be unemployed.

  Scary.

  But I had a log cabin to live in with a red door, a lasso on the deck, and my grandparents’ cowboy hats nailed to the wall. I would find another job. I could work two jobs. I couldn’t handle this for another minute.

  “I’m done,” I said, quiet, calm. “I quit.”

  “What? No! No!” Larry squawked, coming out of his drunken stupor. “Gary’s gone. He’s out. I’ll fire him.”

  “It’s not only Gary, although you allowed a man to come and work here who was repulsive and offensive. It’s you. You’re disgusting.”

  “What?” His voice pitched high. “No, I’m not. I’ll change. I’ve changed. Right here, right now. I’ve changed.” He put his palms out. I could tell he was scared. “You make the rules now, Olivia. You.”

  “You haven’t changed.” I was incredibly tired all of a sudden. “I have worked and worked for you for months. Your restaurant was in the gutter when I arrived, now it’s the most popular breakfast restaurant in Kalulell and you have thanked me by being a sexist, demeaning, condescending, slobbery, ball-clutching, porn-talking jerk. You are incapable of changing.”

  “No, no! I’ll change.” Larry ran in front of me. He gripped both of my arms to stop me. He blocked me from leaving.

  “Let go of me before I break all the fingers in your hands.”

  He let go. “I’ll give you a huge raise.” He put his face close to mine. “Name a price.”

  “There is no price, Larry. None. This environment is toxic. I need a job. Desperately. And you played off that desperation, but I don’t need one this desperately.”

  “I’m out, too,” Dinah said. Justin and Earl and the other employees took off their aprons. They threw them on the floor. Larry howled, begged, whined.

  We left. We hugged each other outside.

  I was now both unemployed and broke.

  But free. Free of Larry and Gary. I smiled when I climbed into my light blue truck and gunned it.

  * * *

  My mother came over later. She’d had to go to the hospital to check on two of her patients. “I saw Gary Simonson in the emergency room. Next time you’re going to attack a flea-bitten criminal in the neck, please let me know. A good daughter lets her mother know when a jackass is going to get what he’s got comin’ to him.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She winked at me and left.

  * * *

  The police chief, Adam Kalama, came to my house the next day in his police car. No lights. No sirens. I gave him a hug, invited him in. He’s about sixty. His father is Hawaiian. We ate an apple pie I made that morning. The key is tart apples and half a lemon. “Gary Simonson says you attacked him for no reason, Olivia.”

  “Self-defense.”

  “Good enough for me.” He took another bite of apple pie. “I love this crisscross crust, Olivia. Can I get the recipe?”

  “Sure.”

  “I heard you and Jace got back together, then I heard that you didn’t. Have you worked things out yet?”

  “No.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Olivia. You’re two of my favorite people. My wife feels the same.”

  “Thanks.” I added more vanilla ice cream to our pie. So delicious.

  * * *

  Stephi got upset the next afternoon because she missed Annabelle, and she wanted to know if her mom was going to get killed in prison, and she didn’t want that to happen, but was it bad to not want to live with her mom because when she was mad she was scary? Did I know that their dad’s friend, Ross, killed their cat? He did.

  * * *

  Stephi, Lucy, Annabelle, and I had so much fun together in Portland. We were a family made by choice. We also hung out with other people in our apartment building, including the families from Iran and Ethiopia, often on Monday nights, when I didn’t work. We took turns cooking, so we had food from around the world.

  Annabelle would sometimes talk to me about her heartbreak over her daughter, Sarah, aka Devlin, how she worried about her in jail but was glad she couldn’t get drugs. She told me she had a will, the girls were to go to Annabelle’s older sister, in Oklahoma, if anything happened to her and Devlin was still in jail. But then the sister, who was seventy, started having health problems and obviously could not take the girls.

  “Would you take Stephi and Lucy, Olivia?” Annabelle asked me one night. We’d been friends for almost a year and a half. “I’m as healthy as an ox and an old warhorse combined, but I like to plan ahead. With the girls, it’s even more important. I cannot have them going into foster care again.”

  I didn’t even have to think about it. “Yes. I’ll take them. I’ll raise them like my own daughters.”

  “It won’t be official. Sarah’s and Parker’s parental rights haven’t been terminated. But it will hold weight, I think, in court, if it came to deciding who the girls should live with if Sarah is still in jail, or refuses to stay clean or commits another crime when she’s out.”

  “I understand.”

  “I love Sarah. I always will. But I can’t have the girls going back to being raised in a drug house.” Annabelle hugged me. “I love you, Olivia.”

  “You too, Annabelle.”

  And I did. Friends can come at any stage of life. They can be much older or much younger. From a different country, of a different faith, with beliefs like yours or totally opposite. Annabelle was one of those friends. She was, is, one of the best friends of my life.

  So Annabelle wrote a letter naming me as her preferred guardian for the girls and attached it to her will. She gave me a copy of the paperwork, and the information for the small college funds she had set up for the girls.

  She apologized for not having more money for me to raise the girls if it came to that—much of her life savings had been lost to rehab for Devlin. She apologized for not having life insurance. She had had heart surgery when she was forty-five and since then had not been able to qualify. I told her not to worry about it. Annabelle was only in her early sixties, a healthy nurse who worked fifty hours a week. We never thought about it again, never talked about it. It was only a precaution.

  What I learned the hard way? Everyone needs a will.

  * * *

  I untied the pink ribbon and flipped through my grandma’s cookbook the next night when I couldn’t sleep, too worried about too many things to relax.

  I couldn’t help wondering about the remnants of the rose, two heart-shaped gold lockets, the two red ribbons, a sun charm, and a white feather tucked into the back pages.

  I hoped I would know one day where they came from.

  Chapter 10

  “Greetings, Aunt Olivia.”

  “Hi, Kyle.” I hugged him, he allowed it. He patted my back three times. “Come on in. The girls and I made Martindale Family Pizza with extra mozzarella cheese, garlic, and artichoke hearts. Want a slice?”

  “Thank you. I would appreciate the nourishment.” The girls hugged him and made him promise that he would play Darts and Dragons with them later. They dress up like dragons and throw balls at one another. They had told Kyle about it the last time he visited, and he agreed to play today.

  “Aunt Olivia, I believe I have had a small, although nonscientific, breakthrough in understanding the social habits and emotional lives of other teenagers.”

  “How so?” I took a sip of white wine. Wine goes
splendidly with Martindale Family Pizza.

  “I did what you instructed.” His gaze slid away from mine, then back up. “Correction of myself. I wrote down what you said in my Questions Notebook and spent time evaluating your proposal. Then I did what you instructed.”

  “You mean when I told you to offer to draw other kids at school?”

  “Precisely. It was a peculiar suggestion to me, but because I trust you and you have proven in the past to be both sensible and practical, and because you have told me on numerous occasions that you love me, hence you would wish for a positive outcome for me, I embarked upon the experiment.”

  “And?” I leaned forward, so hopeful. “What happened?”

  “I studied all of my peers to determine who might be most receptive to this undertaking. I finally asked a girl in my biology class if I could draw her. She is attractive. Her skin is the color of my mother’s coffee with cream in it. She has dark eyes, like one might imagine a black hole, only there is gold and, curiously, both azure and jade. Her hair is an ebony color like the piano key, which is intriguing as she does play the piano. She has a wider than average smile. She said yes to my query, and so I drew her during study hall.”

  “And?” Please, please, please. Tell me it went well . . .

  His hands fluttered, then stopped. “I believe that the session was productive in terms of peer-to-peer relationships, of which I know little.”

  “Music to my ears, kid. Tell me more. Why do you think that?”

  “The young lady’s name is Natasha Jefferson, birthday May 14. She smiled and laughed and said, ‘Can I keep it?’ when I was finished with the drawing, which I found to be a strange question but I did not express that.”

  “Why did you think it was strange?”

  “Because, rightly so, she could keep the drawing. It was of her. She took a picture of it with her phone and sent it to her parents, Zack and Corinne; her grandparents; her aunt Maudie; and her uncle Sam, who is in a mental health institution because he believes he is former President Clinton. She was smiling and thanked me several times and I said, ‘You’re welcome, Natasha,’ each time. I did not comment on the dark color of her eyes with gold, azure, and jade.”

  “What did the other kids do?”

  “That was peculiar to me also.” He took his glasses off, then put them back on. “An unpredictable result. When I first began drawing, there was no one around us in study hall. Then one person arrived to my right, behind my elbow, at a thirty-degree angle. Soon another person came and stood to my left, peering over my shoulder, approximately forty-five degrees. Followed by more students. When I was finished and presented the drawing to Natasha, everyone clapped. I then stood and bowed to Natasha.”

  “Did she like that?”

  He was perplexed. “She laughed, but I don’t believe it was in a mocking way, though I could be wrong. I thought a gesture of bowing was appropriate. Men used to bow to women in the past when they wanted to impress a lady and show respect. That’s when she gave me a hug. She smelled like lemons and jasmine. I told her that.”

  I smiled.

  “A boy named Nathan Beskill, birthday November 29, asked me to draw him, and a girl, Lele Duan, birthday April 2, and another girl, Liisa Elshaund, with two I’s, birthday March 12, asked the same question. There was soon a list, I did not start it, Liisa did. Liisa informed me, ‘I’ll be the organizer.’ People signed up if they wanted a portrait. Twenty-seven people wrote their names down. Fortunately, with thirty-seven minutes left in class, I was able to draw LeLe. She seemed equally pleased and felt compelled to hug me also. I bowed. She bowed back. She also took a photo of the drawing and sent it to her mother, her father, her stepfather, another stepfather, and two stepsisters and one half sister.”

  “How did you feel about the hugs and the attention?” I finished my wine. This was something to celebrate. I poured another glass.

  Kyle clasped his hands together, then opened them back up and touched his fingers to his palms and tapped them. “I was uncomfortable with the touching, and it was loud and warm, approximately fifteen degrees warmer than is comfortable for my internal body temperature. My fellow students were crowded around me. These are all triggers for my anxiety and for feeling slightly claustrophobic. However, I determined that to express this, or to leave the room, would only make me seem peculiar. This was not the positive experience I wanted, so I did what my mother said and I breathed deeply, then shallowly, and focused. I remembered her words, ‘Don’t freak out, Kyle, breathe.’ I also used mathematical equations to calm me down as I drew. It did lower my heart rate.”

  He paused, looked me in the eye, and held my gaze. “I believe it was a pleasant experience. No one wanted to hit me, there was no laughter that I did not understand, and the other students did not appear to be frightened of me or angry.”

  “They’re not frightened of you, Kyle, they need a chance to get to know you.”

  “I hope that you are correct in that assumption.” He sniffled. I saw tears in his eyes. This was a rare, rare occurrence, and I put my arm around him. He allowed it.

  “Perhaps this is my chance to get to know them and for them to make my acquaintance. It is better to know people than to always be alone. After study hall there were five people—three girls, two boys—who said, ‘Hello, Kyle,’ or, ‘Hi, Kyle,’ in the halls to me later that day. That is five more than normal. I stopped, said hello, and wished them a good day.”

  “I think you gotta keep drawing, kid.”

  “It does seem that it might help with my serious deficit in friendships.”

  I wiped a tear off my cheek.

  He wiped tears off of his. “It appears that I’m crying. I feel that my emotions are out of control. Mother says it’s puberty. In terms of a teen’s biology, she is correct.”

  “It’s okay to cry. You had a huge day. You made people happy.”

  “I am a human being.”

  “That has never been in dispute.”

  His eyes lit up. “I understood that as a joke, Aunt Olivia.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Now I shall go and play Darts and Dragons with Stephi and Lucy. I am the dragon.” He bent to his backpack and pulled out a papier-mâché dragon mask.

  “Did you make that?” It was large and green, with protruding blue eyes and a long tongue.

  “Yes. Last week. It’s taken some time. I did it after homework and cleaning the house. I believe it will make the playing experience more enjoyable for the girls.”

  Oh, it did. I heard them squeal and laugh as he roared.

  * * *

  I was putting more and more debt on my credit card. I did the math. It wouldn’t be long before the credit card was maxed out.

  I was done.

  * * *

  I called Jace the next morning. The conversation was brief.

  “Hi, Jace. Can I come by the ranch and talk to you?”

  “Yes. Anytime. Today?”

  “Tomorrow morning?” I needed time to get my courage up.

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  * * *

  I left Jace a letter on the kitchen table when I left him.

  It was a disgraceful way to leave. He deserved more. He deserved a wife who would stay and work things out with him. He deserved a conversation. He deserved a chance to speak and a chance to ask me to change my mind, to make other changes. He deserved a last hug, a good-bye.

  I didn’t give any of that to him.

  I am an awful, awful person.

  And now the awful, awful wife is asking the husband for a job.

  * * *

  The next morning I dropped the girls off at school, took a shower with sweet-smelling stuff, washed and dried my hair, and put on makeup. I pulled on my favorite cowgirl boots, the ones with the red cutouts of magnolias, because they gave me courage, and my favorite jeans. They were too loose because I wasn’t eating enough because stress makes me feel sick and I can’t eat. I pulled on a blue sweater with a ruff
led hem I bought in Paris, a scarf I bought in Cambodia with a picture of a blue lagoon, and shiny gold bangles from India.

  Ready.

  Sort of.

  Scared.

  Scared of all of the memories that would come at me like a dump truck the second I set foot on Jace’s Martindale Ranch. Some of those memories had brought me to my knees, then dragged me through an ocean of pain, and dropped me off a cliff.

  * * *

  “Hello, Jace.” I twisted my fingers together. I had not looked up at the hill with the magical sunsets as I drove by the white fence into Martindale Ranch. Still, the memories came rushing in, a gash to my soul, and I’d had to pull over to deal with them. I settled my breathing by saying, “Stop it, Olivia, buck up,” then drove on.

  “Hello, Olivia.” He smiled, welcoming me into his office. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine.” I’m terrible. Man, Jace. Jeans and cowboy boots and a black sweater. You are a sex stud cowboy.

  “Please. Have a seat.”

  We sat at a circular wood table near his windows. On it was a carved, painted picture of Martindale Ranch. Jace had commissioned it from Grenadine Scotch Wild, the same artist in central Oregon we had commissioned to make the paintings of my grandparents’ log cabin and our blue farmhouse. It was a work of art, detailed, exquisite, a perfect replica of the ranch, down to the sign.

  Jace’s office is on the second floor of the dining hall, above the kitchen. It’s in the corner, two walls of windows. When I was here he brought in a desk for me. I asked him why, because I was spending all of my time in the kitchen and I actually had a table down there at which to work. He told me it was because we were both in charge and he wanted to work side by side with me. He said he liked my company, too. My desk was now gone.

  “I took your desk out, Olivia. Hurt too much to see it.”

  “Ah. I’m . . . I . . .” I was not prepared for this much honesty and this much pain. “I would have done the same thing.”

  He smiled again, slow and easy. “Did you come to visit?”

  “No. Yes. Uh.” I tried to gather up my nerve to talk to him. “No. Jace, I—”