No Place I'd Rather Be

by Cathy Lamb

  “I love you, too. I enjoyed being wild. The pranks were fun. Sorry about the doctor part. I wanted to mix sugar and flour and eggs. Not medicine.”

  She sighed. “Disappointing. But I’ve gotten over it, Olivia.”

  We sat in the dark silence as another falling star soared through the night.

  “No, you haven’t.” I laughed.

  “You’re right.” She stabbed her cheesecake with a fork. “I haven’t.”

  * * *

  “Hello, I’m Olivia Martindale.”

  “Yep, yep, yep. I know, honey.” The tall, beefy man with a fat chest, stubby legs like sausages, and a brown, scraggly beard under a balding, shiny head shook my hand. Larry Harrison’s eyes traveled from my head to toe like a slithery eel, and I wanted to smack him.

  I didn’t because I needed a job and this was his restaurant, Larry’s Diner, a semi-dive in the center of Kalulell. He could have called it Disease And Bacteria On A Plate. It had blue leather seats not more than thirty hard years old, a bunch of brown tables, ugly dirty carpet, and an old menu. Rumor had it he was still in business because his mother owned the building and didn’t charge him rent. But I was desperate, and when you’re desperate you can’t be picky.

  Plus, this was the fifteenth restaurant/café I’d hit up for a job, and there were no openings for a chef. It wasn’t a big city. I knew who Larry Harrison was. He was about fifteen years older than me and moved back to Kalulell to live with his mommy about four years ago. When I lived here I avoided him like I would avoid a rattler.

  Kalulell is charming. I had loved living here. It’s a tourist destination between mountains and rivers, with a blue sky that goes on forever. We have delicious restaurants, art galleries, boutiques, cafes, bakeries, and gift shops. People come to fish and ski and hike and to attend our festivals. Downtown Kalulell has about three streets, and is decorated with twinkling lights during the holidays. There’s a town parade on Fourth of July, a Skinny-Dip Day in the middle of winter where everyone jumps in the lake, and a Halloween parade down Main Street that can be absolutely freezing if the weather doesn’t cooperate.

  There aren’t a lot of jobs out here for chefs, and I had run out of options. There were a few bars I did not want to work in, though I have a bartending license; but I was going to those next if Larry, whose reputation was pig boar, didn’t hire me.

  “I know your mother and grandma, Olivia girl. Your mother took a splinter the size of a small tree out of my arm a few months ago when I got drunk and landed myself in my woodpile. Smashed on down like a bowling pin, ya know? Ha-ha. Had too much whiskey that time. Or beer. Can’t remember. Ha-ha. Another time I crashed my tractor into my barn. Had too much Jim Bean, I remember that for sure. You know him, right? Jim Bean. Hurt my noggin’.” He pointed to his head so I could find it. “Bam. Fixed me right up, your mom, did. Put me in the hospital.”

  My mother was the one who had described this restaurant to me in graphic terms. “Smells like fried goat in there. And the goat was bathed in a fart before it was fried.”

  “I’m glad you’re better.” I’m glad you’re still alive so I can apply for a job. I tried not to breathe in. He smelled like onions and whiskey.

  “Look here.” Larry pointed to a scar on his arm. “I actually like this scar from the woodpile incident. Looks like a snake. I like snakes. Not afraid of them buggers at all. I got my gun on me all the time, anyhow. Got a right to protect myself and my women.” He winked at me.

  I had to keep my eyes straight so I didn’t roll them back into my head. What an idiot. I felt a wave of depression. This was what it had come to. After graduating from college, traveling the world for years and working in many restaurants, culinary school, and more years of hard work, I was now asking for a job from a man who reminded me of gonorrhea.

  I reminded myself that I was now responsible for two little girls. That prevented me from turning on my burgundy cowgirl boots and heading straight out the door.

  I had dropped Stephi and Lucy off at school and registered them before hitting the restaurants and cafés in town on my first day of job hunting. It was the same elementary school I had gone to. My friend from high school, Mattie Shoemaker, was the secretary, and another friend from high school, Sheryl Lalonski, was the principal.

  When I saw them I could not help but remember the glorious night that they, along with my sister and I, decided it would be a fabulous idea to go drag racing outside of town, in my mother’s truck, with everyone else in the back in bikinis. We threw in a plastic kiddie pool filled with a mixture of water and beer. Another time the four of us got drunk on the football field’s fifty-yard line. We decided to strip and run around naked. Worked until someone turned the lights on.

  No, we were all professional, but we hugged and laughed, and Sheryl winked at me and said, “Can you believe this? I’m a principal of a school.”

  And I said three words to them. “Fifty-yard line,” and we all cracked up.

  Stephi and Lucy gave me long, somewhat tearful hugs before heading to their new classrooms, Sheryl holding their hands. I hugged them back, sent them on their way. I did not know how long I would be here, but I did know they were not going to miss school. Then I started my job search.

  It took four days, going door to door. I thought of going to other towns, but that would be a lengthy commute driving in winter conditions, which meant less time with the girls.

  On the fifth morning I arrived, with black dread, at Larry’s doorstep. It took all I had to open the door, pride crushed, hopelessness hopping around my heels.

  “I saw your sign outside that you’re looking for a chef.” I pulled on my blue scarf. It had a charming English village on it. I had picked it up in, wait for it, an English village. It felt like it was strangling me. My gold hummingbird earrings were from Laos.

  “You’re hired.”

  “What?”

  “You’re hired. Get in there and start cooking.” He smiled. It was more of a leer than a smile as his eyes dropped to my chest. He was missing two teeth. He had a tattoo of a mermaid on his arm. The mermaid’s boobs were probably the only boobs he ever saw.

  Could I even do this? I thought of my checkbook. I thought of the money I owed my attorney and the hospital. Frightening. “We need to discuss my salary.”

  “Your salary? I’ll pay you minimum wage.”

  “Plus five dollars.”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” I started to walk away. I could go into a different field. Different job. Maybe I’d haul rock. Maybe I’d work in a salt mine. Do we have salt mines anymore?

  “Okay. Plus four dollars.”

  I kept walking.

  “Five. You win. You get yourself and your little ass on in here.”

  I whipped around. I have a no-tolerance rule for harassment from men. “Do not talk about my ass again, Larry, as comments like that make me feel like vomiting.” I didn’t smile when I said it.

  He seemed surprised. “I don’t take any of that back talk from my employees. You work for me now, missy.”

  “And I don’t take sexual harassment. Your choice. You don’t make any comments about my ass and I won’t make any comments about how your body reminds me of gray Play-Doh infused with chicken pox.”

  His jaw went slack. “What? No, it don’t look like that. Okay. I won’t say anything about that . . . that your ass.”

  “Good.”

  And that was it. I was employed.

  The kitchen was gross. The dining room wasn’t clean. How had this restaurant passed inspection?

  Two of the line cooks, Joey and Garrett, looked like they would sooner be out back shooting possums. Two others, Justin and Earl, seemed nice. The waitress, Dinah, platinum hair, dark make up, early twenties probably, looked interesting and hopeful. She probably wanted another woman among these testosterone-driven hyenas. Larry told me they all worked part time.

  I had a moment of blackness. I did not want to come back to my hometown and work in a di
ve. I didn’t want to come back here after my mother and grandma told everyone I was a chef in a “fancy-pancy” place in Portland and start flipping burgers. I didn’t want to work for Larry, whom no one liked, in his grease-filled slop of a kitchen and have people I’ve known since I was a baby see me in the back of this squalid, virus-laden hole. I didn’t want Jace to see me here most of all. Not Jace.

  My shoulders sunk. I was broke, but my pride was gone in favor of two little girls with blond curls and beautiful smiles whom I loved and adored. Buck up, Olivia, I told myself. You are making me ill with your pity party. No whining. No complaining, you pathetic, wretched creature. Get to work.

  I pulled a fairly clean apron off the hooks and introduced myself to everyone, smiled, was friendly and firm. I told the potential possum killers, Joey and Garrett; Larry; and the other three what we needed to do.

  The possum killers and Larry balked at first at my long list of things to get done. I could feel the “I’m not taking orders from no woman” mentality. I started sharpening the knives. “Larry, I’m not arguing with you. You and your two tongue-wagging friends here either do what I say to get this place cleaned up before the state Department of Health shuts you down, or I’m leaving and you’ll have no money.”

  The no-money part moved Larry.

  He brought himself up. It was like watching a drunk grizzly finally standing on two feet. “I got money. We been here for years.”

  “Hardly anyone comes here, Larry, and you know it. Let’s clean it up. Now.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, Olivia. You’re feisty”—he winked—“and I like that.”

  “Gross, Larry. Stop.”

  “In fact”—he swirled a finger in the air—“that’s what I’m going to call you from now on. Chef Feisty.”

  The two possum-killing young men snickered.

  I turned to them. “Do you need a tissue for your noses? I’m hearing sounds come out of them I don’t like.”

  “Nothin’, nothin’.” They exchanged a smirk. Larry saw it. He belched, grinned, hit his chest with his fist.

  “You can respect me as the chef, or you’re out,” I said. “Yes. You two. Respect me as the chef or find another job sweeping gum off the streets with your teeth.”

  One of them had big teeth, which prompted that comment. He closed his mouth. He knew he had beaver teeth.

  “Hey, you two,” Larry said, slamming a hand on the counter. “Do what she says, or I’ll knock your stupid heads together and you’ll be stupider than you were before.”

  I caught Dinah’s grin. I knew she was loving that they were finally getting their due.

  I looked around. “Close this place down, Larry.”

  “What? No. I’m stayin’ open.”

  “Don’t. This place needs help. It’s not like you’re flooded with customers, anyhow, right?”

  Larry mumbled. Something about a “slow day.”

  “We’re remodeling and we’re cleaning. I need to go shopping with your credit card for new décor and for ingredients. We’ll reopen when this place doesn’t look like a disease anymore.” I opened a menu. “Breakfast and lunch.”

  “You think you know what you’re doin’, do ya?” Larry said, hands on his hips.

  “You clearly don’t.”

  “Now, that ain’t nice, hon. I’m in business.”

  “Barely. And my name is not Hon. My name is Olivia. Close down. Now. It’s disgusting in here. I will not cook in this wreck. Are we ready to get this place back together?”

  The possum killers, Earl and Justin, Dinah, and Larry the Lazy nodded.

  * * *

  The possum killers took a break after an hour of semiwork to smoke a cigarette.

  An hour later they took a break to smoke pot out in the back alley by the trash cans.

  I fired them.

  One of them threw his joint at me, and it hit my chest.

  I picked up a piece of wood about five feet long and swung it at both of their heads. I knew they would duck, and they did. Then I chased them out of the alley and to the street. They were shocked that a female had fought back.

  No one should mess with a Montana woman.

  * * *

  On the way home, I drove by the white fence, out into the country, away from town, and got out of my mother’s truck. The blue sky was clear, the silence peaceful, the wind a soft puff, the branches of the trees holding snow with gentle hands. I stared across the property toward a hill in the distance.

  I would go there soon. It would bring me to my knees, but I’d do it.

  * * *

  The insurance company called. They acknowledged that my car was totaled.

  They offered a horrible amount of money for it. They always do that. All those years of paying monthly premiums and they stiff you when you need them.

  “It’s worth far more than that.”

  They did not think so. We had an argument. I was unhappy.

  I had my attorney call. She got me a thousand dollars more. “There were 120,000 miles on your car, Olivia. That’s all I can do.”

  I took it.

  * * *

  That night I thought about Jace and tried not to cry. That proved impossible, so I tried not to cry about him for very long.

  Chapter 3

  “I think I’m going to get a boob job.”

  My eyes dropped to my sister, Chloe Razolli’s, boobs. She is . . . fully endowed. Chloe’s about five foot five and two hundred proud pounds. Says she’s got a ‘whole lotta body to love,’ and she is “proud to be a woman of physical substance. My body is a temple of lush.”

  My mother, grandma, Chloe, and I were making Carefree Cowgirl Coconut Chocolate Cake together at the farmhouse. When we bake cakes together we call it Martindale Cake Therapy because we all feel better when we’re done.

  “Is your back still bothering you?” I asked.

  “Yep. It’s like I’ve got jumping watermelons pulling on my spine all day long.” She wrapped her fingers around the ends of her brown ponytail.

  “Then do it.” I used a wooden spoon to stir cake batter away from the edges of the bowl.

  Chloe spent six years in the army. She works in Kalulell as a paramedic and, when needed, flies a search and rescue helicopter up into the mountains of Montana. Talk about a badass. When she’s not being a badass, she is hanging out with her son, Kyle, who is fifteen, brilliant, and has Asperger’s.

  Her husband, Teddy Razolli, died mountain climbing eight years ago. He was as much of a daredevil as she was, and had also been in the army, as a Ranger, which is where they met. Teddy was a kind, loud, brave man who adored Chloe. After he died Chloe said, “I am knocked down but not out. I will honor my husband by not being a wuss.” She said this while she was semi-hysterical, my mother preparing to give her a pill to calm her down before she hyperventilated.

  Teddy’s death had been an enormous blow to our families, it had knocked Chloe flat, and she had eaten her grief away to the tune of an additional sixty-five pounds, but now Chloe was dating. Or, trying to get up the courage to date.

  “Those udders get in the way of her paramedic work,” my mother said, sweetly tactful as always. “Can you imagine Chloe leaning over you after you’ve had a heart attack and those huge boobs bearing down on you like moons?”

  “Exactly, Mom,” Chloe said, not offended, pointing at her boobs, both fingers, nodding her head. “But I’ll tell you, these bamboozas get the men’s heartbeats going real quick. I had one man, on the ground, waking up from a heart attack after I’d revived him, and he actually reached out his hands to grab them.”

  “What did you do, Nutmeg?” my grandma asked. She was wearing a white silk scarf with pink zinnias. Bringing beauty to the world. “I swatted his hands away and told him if he touched my knockers I’d hit him so hard his heart would stop again but this time I wouldn’t revive him.” She grabbed a beer.

  “I bet that got his hands back down.” I looked at Stephi and Lucy, dozing on the couch in front
of the fire, probably trying to sleep off a crash in a blizzard, the loneliness of starting a new school, and their ever-present grief from missing their beloved grandmother, Annabelle.

  “Sure did. He knew I meant it, too. I said it in a calming voice, soothing, because that’s my job: Stay calm. But I don’t want the girls squished by some old man with vampire hands.”

  “No to vampire hands,” I said.

  “Always no,” my grandma said. “And if he doesn’t take no, you take action. The Fire Breather and I taught you girls how to protect yourself.”

  My mother nodded proudly and tapped her red cowgirl boot. They had done their duty: knee, punch, kick with the cowgirl boot, claw, hit. Begin again.

  “Chloe, will you pass me the cocoa powder?” I asked. I winked at my mother.

  Instead of passing me the cocoa powder Chloe turned, opened the fridge, and handed me cream. When my sister is talking in the kitchen, she gets easily confused. We ask her for stuff to see what she’ll do. My mother clipped her laughter. My grandma smiled. I got the cocoa powder.

  The four of us have been making cakes together since I was little, although my grandma and I do most of the work, as we share an adoration of baking. My earliest memory is sitting at my grandparents’ solid wood dining room table in the log cabin and watching her add pink dye to a ballerina cake she was making me for my birthday. The ballerina had a fluffy pink tutu with silver candy sparkles. A baker was born on that day.

  The women in our family don’t make normal cakes, though, like a simple three-layer white cake. Every cake has to be special. For example, take Feminist Fun Caramel and Chocolate Cake with Pecans. Six layers. We each took turns writing our names along the sides in pink icing because we are feminists, then we had a straight shot of vodka with the cake.

  Kick-Ass Carrot Cake is one of my favorites. We make carrots with orange and green icing but stick a giant real carrot in the center because we think we’re funny. It was Grandma who taught us that carrot cake should be served with a carrot.

  We love using fondant, so our cakes sometimes come out wild and crazy. We name those cakes Martindale Chicks Crazy Cakes. In the past we’ve made cakes in the shape of a drunken-looking turkey for Thanksgiving holding a bottle of wine; a stack of four fancy hats with lace and candied baubles, one by each of us; a purple dragon because we needed to laugh, badly, that day; intricate wild flowers with faces; and four slinky, sexy, funky bras.