No Place I'd Rather Be

by Cathy Lamb

  Jace hugged me more. He spent more time with me. We played cards. We played horseshoes. My tears fell on his chest and cheeks, but I was a broken, cracked, emotionally disintegrating, tearful, hopeless wife. Every time I raged I knew I was failing him as a wife. I said mean things. I shut down. I was moody and temperamental, and I began to hate myself for how I was and who I was.

  I wanted to be alone.

  My leaving was not the stuff of martyrs. Jace wanted kids, I was unwilling to try again. I knew he thought I would eventually change my mind, that we would go to another specialist and we would get pregnant. I didn’t have the strength to fight with him about it, and the thought of fighting with him about it in the future, for the rest of our marriage, was something I could not do.

  He needed, he deserved children, a family. He wanted kids so much. I would not be giving him that family. So we had an unsolvable problem.

  It was at the end of fall that I left. Jace went to town. He would be gone for a few hours. I packed up. I didn’t take anything I bought the babies. Nothing. I didn’t bring much with me at all. I wrote the note with shaking hands. My hands had hardly stopped shaking since the third baby died. I told him the truth, but it was short. I would not be getting pregnant again, he deserved kids, I was depressed, and I couldn’t be his wife anymore. I wished him the best. I put the note on our kitchen table along with my wedding ring.

  I don’t think I stopped crying until I got to Coeur d’Alene. Jace called, several times, and I finally called him back. I could hardly talk. He said, “Olivia, please, sweetheart . . . come home. Or tell me where you are, I’ll come to you. We can talk. I love you, babe . . .”

  I told him I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I was done.

  I didn’t call Jace back for a week, though he called every day, twice a day. Our conversation was short. I told him the same thing I said in the note. I could tell he was crying. He said we did not have to have kids. He was happy with it being only him and me. He loved me. He missed me. He asked if he could come to me, where was I? I told him I was going to get a job outside of Montana, I didn’t say where. He guessed Portland.

  I hung up on him. I didn’t return his e-mails or take his calls for another two weeks. I picked up the phone in a moment of weakness when he called at ten one night. I cried. He wanted to come see me. I said no.

  He arrived on my doorstep about a week later. He’d hired a private detective. He was pale, thinner, seemed ill. Those dark eyes of his filled with tears, but I refused to return to Montana. He didn’t push. He didn’t argue with me. He pulled me into a hug and I made the mistake of tilting my head up, and that was all it took. We were naked and on my sleeping bag within minutes, but then I stopped him because he did not have a condom and I knew I’d probably get pregnant and I could not take that.

  It was soul destroying to roll off of him. He lay there with his hands over his face. I told him, quietly, gently, to leave. We argued, he pleaded, I told him again, please go. And he did.

  He returned to Montana, but the calls and e-mails came less frequently.

  Jace came to see me a month later. That time he brought condoms, and I gave in because I loved him with all my heart. It was wrong to do so. What was I doing? I was not intending to get back together with him. I hated myself. He wanted to stay, to talk, to work things out. I told him to leave. I thought my heart would stop, watching those broad shoulders retreat right out my front door.

  He visited two months later, same thing happened. He told me, again, that we didn’t need to have kids. But he did. Jace needed a wife who could have kids. He would deeply miss not having children. He would resent me, resent us. It wasn’t fair to him. I told him not to come again. It was too hard, we needed to move on.

  Leaving Jace was shattering. It is hard to make rational decisions when you are where I was: devastated from three miscarriages and losing my granddad. Probably hormonally screwed up. Exhausted from crying. Grieving a life without children. Plagued with anxiety, panic attacks, trouble swallowing, insomnia, and a huge weight loss.

  Was my decision to leave Jace rational? It seemed so at the time. I had lost my mind. I needed my mind back.

  In the lonely months that followed, he would call now and then, send flowers for my birthday, send flowers because it was a Tuesday. He sent me Christmas presents. He e-mailed and texted sometimes. It wasn’t clingy or creepy, but an open door to start a friendly conversation about anything.

  By the time I returned to Montana with the girls, I hadn’t heard from him in six months.

  I have never stopped missing Jace, never. But in the two-plus years in Portland, I’d put myself back together again. I’d gotten some of my confidence back, some of me back. I was stronger than when I left. I felt older, too. Grief does that, it ages a person.

  And I was a mother. A mother to two thoughtful, smart, sweet girls who had been through one terrible time after another.

  Jace and I still had that unsolvable problem.

  Didn’t we?

  * * *

  The girls were busy memorizing the organs and bones of the body with my mother. She had photos and diagrams. “It’s important they get a head start for medical school,” my mother said.

  “Now I know where my liver is,” Stephi said, pointing to it.

  “And I know where my colon is,” Lucy said, pointing to it.

  “Do you know where your fallopian tubes are, Aunt Olivia?”

  Oh, yes, I did.

  “And this is my uterus!” Stephi announced.

  I had one of those, too. It didn’t work. It was broken.

  My mother had a quiz for them. If they got everything right she would take them to get hot fudge sundaes.

  It worked.

  Chapter 13

  My sister became more and more nervous as Kalulell’s annual talent contest drew closer.

  “My son is going to get up in front of hundreds of people, many of whom think he’s the weirdest thing since Edward Scissorhands, and do something.” She threw up her hands, then poured herself a straight shot of scotch. She handed me a shot, too.

  I glanced at a recipe for Bubble and Squeak Cake in my grandma’s cookbook. It was not a sugary cake, it was a cake made from potatoes, Brussels sprouts, onions, cabbage, carrots, peas, beans, salt and pepper, a little cheese, and flour. Eggs would be added later, on top of the patties, when it was done. It was written in English. I recognized my grandma’s writing. In the notes she had written things like, “If you cannot find onions, don’t worry.” And “If you cannot find eggs, or egg powder, add more beans.” And “You can use almost any vegetables you can find.” It was war time, I understood. With rations, they had to do the best they could.

  There was an oily stain in the upper right-hand corner. I wondered what had made it.

  To add a touch of humor to my life, I said, “Chloe, can you hand me the cheddar cheese?”

  “Yes.” She opened my fridge and gave me a gallon of milk. Ah! Both milk products. Close. I tried not to laugh. When Chloe is in the kitchen and distracted, she simply can’t think.

  “So Kyle won’t tell you what he’s doing for his talent?”

  “Nope. I’ve told him he doesn’t get a long time up there on stage. He says he’s”—she made air quotes—“ ‘timing it to the second so the presentation fits within the parameters of the stated rules.’” She had another shot of scotch. When we were younger she could sling back multiple shots successively and still walk a straight line, ride a horse, or shoot cans off logs.

  “Things have been way better at school since he drew the mural of the bully whackers, and because he’s still drawing kids’ portraits, but still. What if they laugh at him? At my son?” She put her hands on the counter, her head down. “I can’t stand the thought of people laughing at my son up on stage. I’m a tough-talkin’, hip-rockin’ Montana woman, but I can’t take my son getting humiliated like that.”

  “They won’t laugh. They’ll be stunned watching his talent. Whate
ver it is.” I gave her a hug; she sniffled. “Okay, Olivia. I gotta straighten my spine. My son is being brave, so I gotta be brave. Let’s cook this sucker.” We turned to the cookbook.

  Tucked into the pages following the recipe for Bubble and Squeak cake were the two red ribbons and a picture, drawn in pencil, of an extended family, grandparents to babies, a menorah in a windowsill. The artist was Isaac Gobenko.

  There was another drawing, tucked into the next page, of Isaac alone holding colored pencils, the resemblance to Kyle uncanny. When Chloe saw it she said, “That’s a self-portrait that Isaac made of himself, Grandma told me. Kyle has a twin born decades apart. I’ll have to ask her if Isaac was as obsessed with science and math as Kyle. They have the same artistic talent; you can see the similarities in their artwork. I wonder if Isaac was an Edward Scissorhands kind of kid, too.”

  I studied the pictures again and was overwhelmed with sadness for Grandma. How do you live through losing your whole family? How do you go on? How do you breathe?

  But Grandma had gone on. She had breathed. She had started a new life. She had not let her grief stop her. I thought about that. I had let my grief stop me.

  Chloe pounded her closed fist on the cutting board and let out a mini Tarzan scream. It scared me, and I dropped a cube of butter on the floor.

  “I am so worried that I’m going to have to beat up a whole bunch of people at the talent show when they laugh at my son.”

  “They won’t laugh. They won’t. We’ll all be there together. We’ll cheer. No one will need to be beat up. And you’re a paramedic. Don’t cause blood.”

  “I don’t want to cause blood. I like to clean it up and get people patched together again, blood and guts back in the right place.” She put her hands on her back. “This body makes the men lose their minds. I am a curvy woman and proud of it, but my watermelons are killing my back.”

  “Then I think you need smaller watermelons. Can you hand me three carrots?” Chloe opened the fridge and gave me the mustard. Almost the same color! “Thank you.” I put the mustard back and grabbed the carrots.

  I could call it Having Fun Cooking With Chloe.

  * * *

  Later, when the Bubble and Squeak patties were done and we were waiting for my mother, Grandma, Kyle, and the girls to sit down for dinner, Chloe and I flipped through the cookbook again. We studied handwritten recipes that had been taped into the pages of the cookbook, some written by Ida, others by Esther. A few of the recipes, signed by Ida, also had the names Sarrah Tolstonog and Tsilia Bezkrovny on them.

  Ida had drawn her daughter, Esther, and four sons, Moishe, Zino, Grigori, and Solomon, on their wedding days with their new spouses, along with the wedding cake and the recipe. Other recipes, signed by Esther, were surrounded by drawings of red geraniums, tulips, roses, daisies, and herbs. There was also a picture of two girls—Grandma and her sister, Renata, I guessed—in what looked to be a subway, sitting together, the people around them knitting, reading, chatting, praying.

  Tucked in between more pages were a few poems and letters, written in different hands, in Ukrainian, Yiddish, and German to Gisela and Renata Gobenko, in London, England.

  “I would love to know what these letters say,” I said.

  “Me too.”

  “Maybe she’ll translate them for us.”

  “Hopefully she’ll want to.”

  That night, Grandma told us more of her story.

  September 1940

  London, England

  Gisela Gobenko, grandmother of Olivia Martindale

  The Germans came like hellfire to London on September 7, 1940, bombs torpedoing through the sky and exploding buildings, industrial sites, neighborhoods, churches, ports, and businesses. Destruction, death, war. The Blitz had started.

  Gisela and Renata thought the world might be ending in the hurricane of Hitler’s hate and violence, but each day they would get back up, like everyone else in England, and carry on.

  Gisela was training to be a nurse at the hospital, and the training immediately began with hands-on work, as the hospital was in dire need of nurses. Renata was in school, and after school worked at a garment factory, awaiting the time when she, too, could go to nursing school.

  Their destiny, to become nurses, had been set soon after they arrived from Munich, scared and exhausted, at Liverpool Station in London, with the rest of the children on the Kindertransport. All of the children and teens on their train debarked and waited in the cavernous station for their names to be called. Renata and Gisela were two of the last people to be called, their name tags around their necks, their bags on the floor beside them.

  “Renata and Gisela Gobenko?” They heard a man call out.

  They walked over to a cheerful, harried, bald man with a clipboard. “Hello, girls. I am Mr. William Danafort. The two of you will be going to live in a group home with other teenage girls your age. This is Mrs. Lowenstein. She will be taking care of you.”

  Mrs. Lowenstein was a white-haired, smiling, strong-willed woman in her seventies. She was calm and competent. She had been a nurse for decades.

  And so it was. They went to live in a group home for girls run by Mrs. Lowenstein. They had a room with two other Jewish girls, sisters named Keila and Naomi, from the town of Kassel in Germany. The four became best friends. Renata and Gisela put their family’s cookbook on their nightstand next to the silver menorah. They were fed, they went to school, and then they went to work at the garment factory and tried not to lose their minds to fear and grief. They wrote to their family, told them their new address, cried, hugged each other, and hoped.

  In the first months the girls received letters from their family members once they received their address in London. Their mother sent recipes with hand drawn pictures of red geraniums, tulips, roses, daisies, and herbs, along with her letters. Their father sent poems he had written about a father’s love for his beloved daughters.

  Their brother, Isaac, sent letters discussing his favorite science topics, and he sent two red ribbons that they had left behind. “Make sure you remember to brush your hair,” he had joked. He drew an exact likeness of himself, colored pencils in his hands. Renata’s green eyes, tilted like a cat’s, lit up with joy when she saw Isaac’s self-portrait. Isaac also sent a picture, drawn in pencil, of their entire extended family, from babies to grandparents, with their menorah in the windowsill.

  Their grandfather, Boris, sent letters of love and good wishes. Grandma Ida sent along new recipes for their cookbook, from her, and a recipe each from her late mother, Sarrah Tolstonog, and grandmother, Tsilia Bezkrovny. She wrote their names under the recipes. She again told Gisela and Renata to cook the recipes and remember their love. The girls taped the recipes into the cookbook for safe keeping, tucked a few of the letters into the back, the rest of the letters into a drawer in their nightstand, and tied the cookbook with the pink ribbon to keep the whole thing together.

  Their four aunts and two uncles also wrote—Uncle Moishe and Uncle Zino still missing—as did their cousins and their father’s parents, Aizik and Raisel Gobenko.

  When Mrs. Lowenstein saw Gisela’s and Renata’s school reports she decided that they should be nurses and that was that. “You’ll always be able to support yourself, girls, and the world will always need nurses.”

  Gisela applied for a program. Mrs. Lowenstein called one of her many friends, her late husband a reputable doctor, and she was in. Surprisingly, Gisela loved nursing school. Loved caring for others, learning, working with the doctors, and meeting the other young women. In the hospital she could put aside her own problems, her deep and endless worry about her family, and bring peace and healing, a kind hand, to someone else who was suffering.

  After work and school the girls tried to use the cookbook as often as they could. Their family seemed closer to them when they cooked their recipes. It was almost impossible, because of rationing, to find the ingredients they needed. Onions were hard to come by, bananas impossible, and they had t
o scrounge and trade and save their rations for sugar, eggs, flour, and butter, but they tried. They had to resort to using dried egg powder when real eggs were not available, and they started using carrots for sweeteners.

  They soon added their favorite British recipes to the cookbook, including shortbread, cottage pie, and Bubble and Squeak Cake. They liked Bubble and Squeak Cake because they could often find potatoes and cabbage, a few vegetables, and, if they were lucky, a tiny bit of chicken. Fried in butter, salt, and pepper, it tasted warm and hearty. This was wartime eating, after all, and everyone was making sacrifices.

  The last time they’d made Bubble and Squeak Cake, Renata had accidentally smeared some of their precious butter in the top right-hand corner of the page. They’d both laughed about wanting to lick the cookbook clean.

  When the Nazis came to London, flying overhead in their death machines, and when the air raid sirens went off, Gisela and Renata brought the cookbook with them to the bomb shelter, or to the Tube, for safekeeping, just in case their home was bombed. It also brought them comfort to look at the recipes, and their family.

  When the bombs thundered, the dust fell, and the sirens screamed, Gisela and Renata sat close together, in the pitch black of the bomb shelter, holding hands, praying a bomb would not hit them, tearing them apart, limb by limb, burying them alive.

  They also wrote recipes in the cookbook in the bomb shelter, old recipes from Germany and new recipes from London. They liked shepherd’s pie, English crumpets and scones, and Battenberg cake with white marzipan and apricot jam. Renata wrote a recipe for cauliflower cheese quiche and drew the London Bridge around it. They would never eat haggis, they decided. Ever. They drew pictures, together, of the people in the shelter who talked, knitted, sewed, darned socks, prayed, and hoped to live until the next day.

  When they emerged from the shelters when the bombings ceased, often the buildings around them had been leveled. It was like walking out into a new world. One walked down into the Tube and there was a neighborhood with sidewalks, trees, and homes, then one walked out and the neighborhood was obliterated. The streets were clogged with debris. Fires burned, people were helped out of tons of concrete, crying or in shock, or digging frantically for family and friends who were buried in the tombs of toppled homes that they had not escaped in time.