No Place I'd Rather Be

by Cathy Lamb

  “Yes. Please. One second.”

  I finally focused. What? Were those . . . “What happened?” The numbers were way, way up. About 7,500 more hits than normal per day.

  “It’s your video, Olivia. The one when the mixer takes on a life of her own and rebels.”

  “Oh, my gosh.”

  “And look at your e-mail in-box.”

  Filled. Tons of e-mails.

  “I think they want your recipes, minus the devil demon mixer. See this comment? Does Martindale Ranch have a cookbook?”

  Wow. Oh, wow.

  * * *

  I showed Jace the hits for the website in his office upstairs. He grinned and wrapped his muscled arms around me and gave me a whirl. “Great job, Olivia. Make another video. I have not stopped laughing over the possessed hand mixer.”

  He dropped me back down and, smashed up against his chest, I couldn’t resist him and we had a long and seductive kiss. He picked me up, my legs around his hips, and leaned me against the wall. I thought I was going to lose it in a sensual and sexy way right there, but I didn’t because I heard our guests laughing outside and said, “Jace, we cannot do this,” and he said, “How about coming to my house,” and I said, “No,” and he smiled and I smiled and I said, “You are irresistible,” and he said, “I have felt the same about you since we met. You are driving me out of my mind, babe.”

  What to do?

  I kissed him again.

  * * *

  I loved how the Martindale Ranch cookbook project was coming along.

  I had no idea how to put a book together, so I started making a very primitive, fake cookbook in a three-ring binder with the recipe on the right side and a suggestion for a photo on the other.

  I would photograph Jace holding a platter of ribs made from his grandfather Ricardo’s recipe, called Rockin’ Rivera’s Ribs.

  I would have Dinah, Justin, and Earl hold out bowls of Super Delicious Spaghetti with Ox-Sized Meatballs while sitting on the white fence. I’d make our Sky-High Lemon Cake with lemon slices piled on top and photograph it outside on a picnic table, the mountains a blurry image in the distance. I’d take photos of our staff, cowboy hats on, eating Manly-Man Burgers in front of the campfire, and I would have Lucy and Stephi hold out Crazy Coconut Cream Pie while perched on hay bales. I would have my mother, in her cowgirl boots, hold fancy cocktails next to the red barn, and I would have my grandma hold a silver tureen of her mother’s onion soup on the wood deck. Kyle would hold a cinnamon roll in one hand and a handful of colored pencils in the other hand, and I’d have my sister balance a platter of stacked onion rings on her head. She would love that goofiness.

  In my heart, I finally felt it, after years of heaviness and darkness: Light.

  * * *

  “Mom,” I said, “want to join me as a guest cook for a video I’m making?”

  “A guest cook?” She turned and glared at me, as if to say, “What is this nonsense!?” We were out on my deck watching the Telena River run by. It was warmer than usual, and there were pinkish buds on the trees. “That’s a ridiculous idea. You know I bake cakes but I don’t cook. It nauseates me. All that measuring and slicing and burning food. The smoke.”

  “But you’re funny.”

  “Funny? No, I’m not. Don’t flatter me, it’s irritating, Rebel Child. I’m not funny at all. I deal with blood and guts, and diseases and accidents, and hysterical and scared people. Nothing funny about that.”

  “You’re funny in the way you talk. How blunt you are.”

  “Blunt is best. I am so sick of people tiptoeing around each other. My philosophy is: Say it and then shut your mouth.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “What?” She pulled her thick brown and gray hair back into her no-nonsense bun. “You want me to get on your video and tell people, ‘Dump this much sugar in and not more, but I don’t cook because it bores me straight out of my skull, but if you do, make sure you add a tablespoon of vanilla, and for those of you who don’t want to cook, go and get takeout and wine?’”

  “I want you to help me cook something. Something tasty.”

  “And you want me to pretend I’m excited about turning a blender on or cracking eggs or measuring flour? What am I supposed to say about that? Boring. I’d rather talk about infectious diseases.”

  “Please don’t. Diseases and dinner aren’t yummy together.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll do it. You homemaking freak.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Love you, too.”

  “Love you, Olivia.” She pushed my hair back from my face and kissed my cheek. “I wanted you to be a doctor, but you turned into a dang-fine chef, dang fine.”

  “I try.”

  “Don’t be modest, young woman. You’re irritating me again, and that’s the second time during this conversation. Don’t do it again.”

  I laughed. Under my mother’s brusqueness, I have always known she loves me.

  * * *

  The governor had a heart attack in his vacation home here. Chloe was first on scene. She provided the care, got him breathing again, pumped his chest, etc. The governor is not popular. He invited Chloe to Helena so he could publicly thank her in his office at the state capitol, the press present. “Anything to get more attention for himself. ‘I had a heart attack and I came back from the dead, whooeee, vote for me!’” Chloe told me. “The man is a cold, slithering snake under that sneaky smile.”

  When asked by the press for a comment, after the governor thanked her at the capitol, wrapping it around a cheesy but hopefully vote-getting speech, Chloe said this, which was broadcast in full on the news that night.

  “Look. I’ll save anyone’s life, no matter if they have sound and sane political opinions or if their opinions are archaic, sexist, discriminatory, or ridiculous.” She turned to stare at the governor, whose face had gone slack. “That’s my job. But Governor Balio, you need to stop being a misogynistic Neanderthal. You cut funding for women’s health care. You voted against raising the minimum wage, which hurts women and leaves them in poverty. You’re against family leave and equal pay for women. You want to cut funding for birth control, but you’re against abortion. How does that make sense, you idiot? You have chosen no women for the highest levels in this state. You pretend that you care about women, but you don’t, and a woman saved your life. Hopefully you’ll make some changes and start respecting people who aren’t white males. Now I gotta go. I have to go back to work and save someone else’s life—even if their opinions are based in caveman thinking, like yours.”

  Governor Balio, shown on TV, opened his mouth, shut it, opened his mouth, shut it. Hard to criticize the woman who saved you.

  Chloe is extremely popular in Kalulell.

  * * *

  As I left the ranch on Monday afternoon I stared up at the snowy hill with the view of the magical sunsets. I would go up there soon no matter how hard it would be. I thought again of my grandma and my ancestors and what they had been through.

  This time, I would do it.

  * * *

  “Hello, everyone.” I smiled as serenely as I could at Dinah, who was holding the camera for another cooking lesson that we would upload to the Martindale Ranch website, along with the recipe. I was wearing my white chef’s jacket. “I’m Olivia Martindale. Welcome to Cooking with Olivia on Martindale Ranch in Montana. Today I’m cooking with my mother, Dr. Mary Beth Martindale.”

  My mother, who was still wearing a white doctor’s coat and a stethoscope, waved in the direction of Dinah, on the other side of our long island. I opened my mouth to talk again, when my mother interrupted me.

  “I am not a competent cook,” she said, her tone impatient, sharp. “In fact, I’m a lousy cook. When my daughters were growing up, Olivia and Chloe, both wild girls, I am being honest here, they were out of control in high school, I was a working, single mother seeing patients all day. Their rat-ass father left with his girlfriend—she was from Vegas. I’ve always wondered
if Barney’s girlfriend was a hooker—anyhow, I was busy. This is Montana. We get a lot of accidents out here with yahoos heading out to the wilderness from New York and California who don’t know what the hell they’re doing. They think they’re gonna play cowboy and cowgirl. They ski too fast. Shoot each other hunting. Get lost and fall down ravines on trails.” She rolled her eyes. Those yahoos!

  What? What was all this? My mother was facing the camera. We were side by side. I thought we were there to make a chicken taco soup together.

  I kept trying to smile calmly and serenely.

  “Anyhow, as a doctor I was too busy sewing people back together and taking care of sick patients to cook. My own mother, she calls me Fire Breather, cooks like a professional chef, but my girls grew up on the basics. Spaghetti. Tacos. Hamburgers. I can grill almost anything, but that’s because I like flames and fires. Personal preference. My girls also had cereal a lot, and they had popcorn for dinner when I was wiped out from working all day. Hey. Popcorn is made from corn kernels. Corn is a vegetable. Therefore, their dinner consisted of vegetables. So to all of you moms out there who can’t get a nutritious dinner on the table. Hell.” She waved a hand in the air. “Don’t you worry and don’t you feel guilty. Say no to guilt. My daughters grew up and they’re healthy and strong bull-whipping, target-shooting women.” She turned to me. “Okay, are we ready?”

  I stood there, openmouthed.

  “Are we going to cook, Olivia,” she snapped, “or are you going to stand there with your mouth hanging open, trying to catch flies?” She looked at Dinah, holding the camera and laughing. “Not that there are flies in Olivia’s kitchen. It’s clean.” My mother’s face scrunched a bit, as if she was thinking. “Not like my kitchen, which isn’t always sterile clean like this.” She spread her arms out, indicating my stainless steel kitchen. “Who has time to clean their kitchen at home constantly? Women who don’t have enough going on in their lives have a perfectly clean kitchen, that’s who. Don’t be that woman. Pfft.”

  Pfft? What was pfft?

  “I don’t have time to make sure that there is not a sliver of bacteria doing a dance on my kitchen counters, and you don’t have time, either. You could end up in the hospital tomorrow, trust me it happens every day, so don’t waste your life cleaning away. I’ve always said that a too-clean house will cause kids to get sick because their immune systems aren’t used to fighting germs.”

  Oh. My. Goodness.

  “Now, in my medical clinic, everything is sterile. Let me tell you, the diseases that walk through our doors every day. Today we had a man, he returned from Africa weeks ago, he had contracted this rare—”

  “Thank you, Mom,” I interrupted, still smiling. I kicked my mother behind the island, and she said, “Ouch, Olivia.”

  “Today Mom and I are going to make one of my favorite recipes. Everyone loves soup, and here at Martindale Ranch we are no different. Soup warms the bones, is what I say. We’re going to make chicken taco soup. Perfect after a day of work—”

  “Perfect after a day where you have to do three prostate checks for three brothers who come to see me on the same day, once a year, for their checkups—”

  “Mom!” I kicked her again, and she said, “Ouch, Olivia!” “The ingredients are . . .” I hurriedly listed the ingredients.

  My mother interrupted. “I want to say, before I forget, or in case I get a call to run back to the clinic, two words.” She held up her fingers. “Red wine. Listen, ladies, when you’re cooking, don’t hesitate to have a glass of wine and have another one during the meal. Unless you have to drive the kids to soccer, or some such drivel. Or, if you have a night shift working at a hospital and you might have to cut someone open and move his organs around, don’t be slamming wine down like a drunk coyote. No one wants a drunk doctor, but if not, drink red wine. It’s a health bump for you and your heart. That’s all.”

  “Thank you, Mom, again,” I said. “The next step is . . .” I went through the process, adding ingredients, my mother “helping,” by making comments like, “If you want to be a feminist, you must include vegetables in your diet. They’ll give you strength.” And “Fresh deer is delicious. Kill it in the morning, eat it over a fire at night.” And “Broccoli. It’ll clean the colon. Shut your eyes, swallow it.”

  I smiled at the camera, Dinah trying not to laugh so that the viewers wouldn’t hear her, but it wasn’t working, and I said, with as much composure as I could manage, “We’re almost done, Mom. For the final touch, remember to add shredded cheddar cheese and—”

  “Eat it with tequila,” my mother said, with authority. “It’ll taste better. Nothin’ like chicken tortilla soup and tequila.”

  “Thank you for joining us today on Cooking with Olivia on Martindale Ranch in Montana.”

  “And remember that wine, everyone.”

  * * *

  I watched the video with Dinah, Justin, Earl, and Jace.

  “Put it up,” Jace said, laughing. “No one has seen a cooking show quite like this one.”

  I posted it.

  Two days later, Dinah came up to me, laptop open, giggling. “You did it again, Olivia. Look at these numbers!”

  The cooking video with my deer-shooting, blunt-talking momma had gone viral. More people on our website wanted to know if we had a cookbook.

  I wanted to say, “Yes! The cookbook is coming!”

  I hugged my mother that night.

  “What’s that for?” she snapped.

  “It’s because I love you.” She hugged me back. “Love you too, Olivia.”

  * * *

  I wrapped myself in a jacket and brought a blanket out to the gazebo after I put the girls to bed that night. Crocuses were coming up, purple and white, all over our property. The wind puffed through. It didn’t wail, as it had been. The sun stayed and visited during the day. At the picnic table in the gazebo, which my granddad built for my grandma so she would have a peaceful place to think and be and wrestle with her grief and a hideous past, I thought about how I was still in love with Jace.

  I always would be.

  But there was no future, so why was I here? We would never nail our old cowboy hats to the wall of his house like my grandparents had done.

  Why did I smile at him?

  Why was he my best friend again?

  And why was my lust so out of control?

  There was not a happy ending here.

  I am a fool. I know that, I do.

  I also know that I can’t leave him again. I can’t.

  But what was I supposed to do?

  In my grandma’s gazebo, I found no answers, or peace.

  * * *

  On Wednesday afternoon, on a clear blue day, the snow melting, I called Jace from the kitchen after the clients at the ranch finished lunch. A bunch of them had gone off skiing, as there was still snow on the mountain. Another group was in town at a festival, and some were hiking around the lake.

  “Hi, Jace. Do you have a second? I wanted to talk to you about the cookbook I’m making.”

  “I’m working at the house right now. Come on out.”

  No.

  Not to his house.

  No.

  I couldn’t. Too many scraping memories. It was a sad place that would take me back to a swamp of sadness that I had worked hard to crawl out of. “How about we talk on the phone?”

  “Today is not a talking-on-the-phone day.”

  “What?”

  He laughed and said, “Come on out to the house, Olivia. Please. I’ll give you directions.”

  “What do you mean you’ll give me directions? I believe I know how to get to your house, as I did live in it for years.”

  “Follow the road off the ranch, turn left, but then when you come to the fork, don’t go left, as you normally would to get to the house. Go right, toward town. It’ll take about fifteen minutes. I’m on the left.”

  “I don’t get it—”

  “Left outside of the ranch. At the fork, go right. I’m o
n the left. Look for my truck.”

  He hung up. I was left staring at my phone. Jace never hung up on me. Ever.

  What was he talking about?

  * * *

  I turned left outside of Martindale Ranch and drove to the fork. I knew I should go left to Jace’s family’s home, but he had said go right, toward town. That did not make sense, but I did it. I drove for fifteen minutes.

  There was a new Craftsman home built about a quarter mile off the street. But . . . this was Jace’s property. His land. Whose house was that?

  Had I taken a wrong turn? How could I have taken a wrong turn? But the white fence was Jace’s fence, which encircled part of his property.

  I peered down the driveway toward the home. There were windows everywhere. Stone steps up to the house. Wooden pillars, and a wide deck all around with a steel black rail. A new red barn sat out in the pasture, as if it were part of a postcard.

  There was a red door. A red door. Just like the red doors on our blue farmhouse, my grandparents’ log cabin, and Esther’s and Ida’s homes in Munich.

  And what the heck? That was Jace’s black truck in front of the house.

  He came out onto the deck and waved. He put both hands on the rail. The wind ruffled that black hair. He stood there like he owned the place. And then I realized: He did own the place. That was his home.

  Jace had moved.

  * * *

  “This is your home.”

  Jace’s home was large, but not too large. It wasn’t a Mc-Mansion. It was warm and cozy. High ceilings, wood floors, exposed rafters and beams, a river rock fireplace to the second floor. The whole downstairs opened up—family room, kitchen, dining room, a breakfast nook, with a separate den off to the side. It was light, windows framing views of the craggy mountains, that ever changing Montana sky, and any wildlife that wandered through. There was a hot tub out back on the deck facing the mountains.

  “Yes.”

  “When did you build it?”

  “The planning started about three months after you left.”

  Three months after I’d left? “Why? Why did you leave your family’s home? You love it there.” I put my coffee mug down on his kitchen table, where we were sitting, after I’d walked around the first floor.