No Place I'd Rather Be by Cathy Lamb
We held her ten minutes later when she collapsed, sobbing, hysterical, crushed. She was skin and bones. We took her to Serene Hands. She refused to get out of the truck, yelled for Mrs. Gisela, instead of “You, Mary Beth, the pushy vampire lady doctor,” then gave in. “I’m toast, aren’t I?” she asked me.
“Right now you are,” I said. “You know how this works. You stay, you get better, you get settled, and then you’re home.”
She hugged my mother and me. Yes, we would come and visit her. And yes, we promised that Mrs. Gisela would come and talk to the doctors here about giving her “natural medicine.”
“How about a beer?” I asked my mom on the way home.
“Yes to that.”
* * *
“I saw you kissing Aunt Olivia,” Lucy said to Jace, her blond curls back in a ponytail.
The four of us were in the stables at the ranch, “visiting” the horses.
“You saw me kissing Aunt Olivia?” Jace said. “Hmmm.” He crossed his arms. “Did I do that? Let me think . . .” He peered up at the ceiling, as if trying to remember. I tried not to laugh. He had kissed me when I drove the girls up in my truck twenty minutes ago.
“You did it when we got out of the truck. You grabbed her and gave her a lot of kisses,” Lucy said, with some accusation, that finger of hers pointed straight into the air.
“I saw it, too,” Stephi said, fiddling with her rocks in her pocket. “You’re kissing.”
“Charlie Zimmerman told me that you’re Aunt Olivia’s husband, and I went home and I said, ‘Is Jace the Giant your husband? ’ and Aunt Olivia said yes, so does that make you our uncle?”
“Yes.”
Whoa. I whipped my head around to Jace.
“So we call you Uncle Jace?” Lucy asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m confused up here.” Stephi tapped her head, those brown eyes baffled. “You’re married to Aunt Olivia but you don’t live with us.”
“That’s weird.” Lucy shook her head. “Weird. If you’re married you live together and you sleep in the same bed.”
“It is weird,” Jace said. “Maybe you all can come over to my house and have a spend-the-night party.”
“Oh! Oh! I want to do that.” Lucy’s face lit up. “I want to play with Garmin and Snickers, too.”
“And I want to play with K.C. the kitty cat and look for rocks for my rock collection.” Stephi clapped. “And Lucy and I will sleep together because we get scared at night, and will Aunt Olivia sleep with you? Because you’re married, you know.”
“I hope so,” Jace said. “I’ll say please.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sakes,” I muttered.
“Aunt Olivia says that you can’t eat cookies in bed because of the crumbs, Uncle Jace,” Stephi said. “So no cookies in bed.”
“It’s a smart rule. I won’t let Aunt Olivia eat cookies in our bed.”
“And she also says no drinking in bed because it could spill,” Lucy said.
“I won’t let her drink in bed,” Jace said.
I coughed and raised my eyebrows at him. I tried to appear stern. Didn’t work. I smiled.
“You two want to go and find Garmin and Snickers?” Jace asked.
They did. I rolled my eyes at Jace. He winked back. “Can’t wait for the sleepover. How about tonight?”
* * *
To work on Kyle’s empathy for others, Chloe told Kyle to draw people in town who seemed like they were having a bad day. “Give them a better day,” my sister told him in front of me. “We all get crap thrown at us. When you see someone who has had a lot of crap thrown at them, give them the gift of one of your portraits and de-crap their lives for a while.”
Kyle said, “Thank you, Mother, for that advice.” He wrote the advice in his Questions Notebook. “I’ll follow it. The word ‘de-crap’ is not in the dictionary, but I understand the meaning.”
So that was how a number of people in Kalulell, who were having a bad day, came to be sitting quite still, on a chair, while Kyle drew their portraits.
“I drew a Vietnam veteran at Beatrice’s Restaurant,” he told me one evening. “His name was Rodney. Birthday April 16. I deduced that he was unhappy based on the fact that he wiped tears away with a napkin. He told me about crawling down holes in the ground to get to the Viet Cong and how they would shoot at him. He said he was ‘screwed up in the head for about twenty years,’ his words, not mine, Olivia. He said he tried to forget what happened through ‘those damn drugs and alcohol but that made it worse,’ so he got himself cleaned up and now he’s a trucker. At first I laughed when he told me about the drugs and alcohol, which is an inappropriate reaction that I am working on. Mother is helping me with this problem. I drew his portrait. Afterward he tried to pay me, because he said he had a work of art, but I remembered what Mother said, ‘Do good for other people with your art, Kyle. De-crap their day. You’ve got some strange kinks in that personality of yours, and this will show people that behind the strange kinks you are one cool kid.’ Mother’s advice is always helpful.”
I laughed. Chloe is so blunt. “Your mom told me that you drew a picture of Harry, too.”
“Yes. Harry, birthday March 21, was having a bad day indicated by him shouting at himself in downtown Kalulell. I watched him shout at himself and I remembered what Grandma told me about him. Harry has schizophrenia.
“I relate to Harry because of my challenges with Asperger’s, though his challenges are exponentially greater than mine. Harry was yelling at voices to get the hell away, pardon the word ‘hell,’ and he was going to kill them and he had a knife and was going to use it on them. I approached him when he held the knife up in the air, and said, ‘Harry, are you having a bad day? May I draw your portrait?’ and he said, ‘What did you say, you little shit?’ Again, Aunt Olivia, I apologize for the poor language that is not in the dictionary.
“I said to Harry, ‘I would like to draw your portrait,’ and he said, ‘I know what a portrait is. I know Van Gogh. You can draw me a Van Gogh but don’t draw the voices in, I don’t want the voices in the picture.’ I assured him I would not draw the voices as I could not see or hear them. He said, ‘And don’t cut off my ear like Van Gogh did.’ I assured him that cutting off an ear wouldn’t happen and he said, ‘I’ll sit down and you can draw me but don’t use a pen that’s got a gun in it.’ I again assured him that nothing like that would happen, that our guns are all locked in a safe in the basement and are taken out only for hunting season, which I do not partake in because I cannot stand to see an animal hurt.
“By the time I was done, I believe that Harry was having a better day. His brother, Marvin, birthday March 21, as they are twins, but Marvin does not have an affliction of schizophrenia, came down and sat with Harry while I was drawing. Someone, apparently, told Marvin that Harry was in town. Harry said, ‘Don’t worry, Marvin, this kid’s not drawing the voices in the picture. He told me he’d leave them out.’
“Because Marvin was then sitting by Harry, I drew them together. You can definitely tell that they share common genetics, though Marvin was in a suit and has trimmed hair, and Harry’s hair is long and straggling and his face is creased with lines and wrinkles. I gave the portrait to Harry and Marvin and they sat and stared at it for a long time and Marvin had to be handed a handkerchief by a man nearby who had watched the process because Marvin was crying. I have learned that tears over my portraits do not mean that I have hurt someone. So I kept quiet and refrained from inappropriate laughing.
“Then Marvin said to Harry, ‘Hey, Harry. How about you come home with me, we’ll try it again, and I’ll hang this picture in your bedroom.’ And Harry said, ‘I’m not going to your house unless all the snakes under the bed are gone,’ and Marvin said that all the snakes were gone, and he said, ‘We can eat pizza and watch a game,’ and Harry said, ‘I’ll do it, but I don’t want any scissors in the house,’ and Marvin said, ‘All the scissors are gone.’
“Marvin hugged me and said, ‘Th
“You reunited the brothers,” I said, sniffling.
“For the moment.” His brow furrowed. “That would be a positive outcome.”
“You are a positive outcome.”
“Now I’m confused, Aunt Olivia.”
“It simply means you are a gift because you make other people happy.”
He didn’t look me in the eye and his hands flapped, then settled. “Thank you, Aunt Olivia. Birthday February 27.”
I told my sister about the drawings later. “He has the social instincts of a polar bear, but he’s teachable.”
I could tell she was proud of him. As she should be.
* * *
As the meeting with my attorney, Devlin’s attorney, and Children’s Services in Oregon loomed closer, like a devil with a switchblade, my nerves shattered at the ends and split. To calm my shot nerves, I made my great-grandmother Esther’s twisted bread rolls after I put Lucy and Stephi to bed that night. Flour, salt, yeast . . .
I could lose my girls.
I love Stephi and Lucy with all my heart. I have not had the honor and joy of raising them their whole lives, but they are my daughters.
Mix the ingredients . . .
They could be sent back to live with their drug-addicted mother.
And if that happened, we would leave the country.
We would get in my truck and fly out of here into the wild blue yonder.
Knead the dough . . .
My shoulders slumped. I couldn’t do that.
You can’t hide anymore in this world. You can’t get a job without paperwork, a social security number, references. What would we live off of? I’m a decent shot. I can kill deer. I can fly-fish with the best of them.
But that wasn’t enough. The girls would need to go to school. We would need money.
I would be found. I would be jailed.
Knead the dough, knead the dough . . .
The girls would go back to their mother and I wouldn’t even be given visitation. You cannot be given visitation in jail with the girls you kidnapped.
But how could I let them go? How could I let them go back to Devlin, who would only neglect and abuse them again and hook up with some other drug-addicted freak?
I kneaded the dough harder, then I gave up, sank down in my kitchen, leaned against the cabinets, and had a good cry.
When I was done, I brushed off the tears and kept kneading.
I did not have time for these breakdowns anymore. I needed cement in my spine.
I sniffled.
Sometimes cooking is the best therapy for the bricks that life throws at your head.
Measure. Mix. Stir. Whip. Bake.
* * *
I kept taking photos of the hearty, ranch-style entrées, appetizers, desserts, salads, breads, and soups that we made at the ranch, including Grandma’s recipe for Battenberg cake with white marzipan and apricot jam that she wrote down in a bomb shelter in London during the Blitz.
“Let me take photos of you,” Jace said one afternoon as we had what was becoming our usual coffee break in a quiet kitchen. I had not forgotten whipping my clothes off with him at his house. He hadn’t, either. We had silently decided not to discuss it. But I could see it in the way he smiled at me, kissed my neck, and hugged me. He is too, too much, and my resistance was wearing down.
“Oh, ugh. No photos of me.”
“Not ugh.” He laughed and took the camera. And that’s where we became the old Jace and Olivia who goofed off a lot.
I posed with my favorite red mixing bowl . . . on my head, covering my eyes. I posed holding a whole bunch of bottled spices, as many as I could hold, with a bottle of nutmeg in my mouth. I posed lying on top of the island counter, trying on my sexy expression, with an apple in my mouth like a stuffed pig. I posed with two wine bottles in each hand and a pile of bananas stacked on my head.
“Your turn,” I told Jace, as we laughed.
I took photos of him holding two uncooked chickens in both hands, by the legs, his jean shirt making him look all the more masculine. I gave him a huge, five-layer white coconut cheesecake to hold, and pushed it down so he was holding it straight on his crotch.
I wrapped a flowered apron around him, put flowered hot mitts on his hands, and shot away. He was so sexy.
We did selfies together and made such weird, scrunched funny faces we laughed until I thought I might wet my pants. Goofing off is like food for the soul.
Ah, Jace. He kissed me before he left, an up-against-the-wall, full body-to-body kiss, and I let him because I couldn’t resist him, I can’t resist him. And I didn’t know what I was doing here, as his chef, and I didn’t know why I was letting myself slide into a relationship with Jace, because the ending wasn’t pretty last time and it wouldn’t be this time, and it would slice my heart in half.
Again.
Yet there I was, working on the ranch, kissing Jace.
I laughed when I thought of Jace holding two wine bottles straight out on his chest as if he had wine bottle boobs.
* * *
I sat in the gazebo that night by the river after I got the girls in bed. The sky was clear, stars so white, as if someone had picked up white jewels of different sizes and brightness and threw them into the sky. I thought of Jace in his flowered apron and how I’d missed him the last two years.
I realize now that part of the reason I left Jace was because I didn’t feel like I, alone, was enough for him. I had to have children, the children we agreed upon, to be worth enough. I know now it had a lot to do with how I felt when my father abandoned me. I wasn’t enough for him, so he left.
Making that leap, rationally, doesn’t make sense. My father was a selfish, cold, faithless, irresponsible, unloving, immature man. He left because he’s a failure as a man. But my self-worth, as a child, was damaged by my father’s rejection when he walked out on our family, and his continual rejection and absence over the years did further destruction. He didn’t love me. He didn’t want me. I was not important to my father. I was a rejected daughter. It was like taking a razor to my soul.
I carried that lack of love, those feelings of unworthiness, that I alone was not enough, that I wasn’t lovable enough, as part of my being. I hadn’t been able to see it for what it was, and then throw that damage out of my life forever. Unfortunately, so unfairly, I threw some of that emotional mess on my relationship with Jace.
It was one more thing that cowboy did not deserve.
* * *
On Thursday afternoon I left to go to the meeting in Portland. The girls would stay with my mom and grandma. The girls thought I was going to a cooking class. I asked Jace two weeks before if I could have that Friday off. I knew he would say yes. I told him I had to go to a meeting about the girls. I smiled brightly, told him it was a formality. He already knew that Joan, through Montana’s Children’s Services, regularly came by to check on the girls.
“Sure,” he said. “You don’t have to ask. Want company?” He grinned.
Oh, I so wanted his company. He would be a comfort. He would prop me up. He would calm me down when my insides shook with the fear of losing the girls. But I hadn’t told him about how serious the situation was getting for the girls with Devlin getting out of jail soon, having an attorney, demanding her parental rights back, etc. I hadn’t wanted to involve him in my fight. “No, thanks. I’m going in and out.”
“Okay.” His brow creased. “Is there something wrong? Anything else?”
Dang. My bright smile did not deflect his curiosity, his sense that something was off. “No. Everything’s fine.”
I could tell he sort of believed me. Somewhat. Maybe. Not really.
* * *
Twice more he asked me, before I left for the meeting, if something was wrong. That man can see right inside me, I swear.
&
“I don’t understand.”
Everyone in the conference room, in a squat building in downtown Portland, turned to stare at me. My attorney, Claudine, raised her eyebrows at me, as in, Do not blow up, Olivia. Do not.
“I don’t understand why we’re even here. Devlin is not a fit mother. She is in jail. She committed a robbery. Before that she was a neglectful mother and a drug addict. Annabelle Lacey, her mother, had custody of Stephi and Lucy. When she died, with the full support of Children’s Services, the children came to live with me. And now, because Devlin is pretending to be a model prisoner and will be released soon, you are actually considering giving Stephi and Lucy back to her? How is that a safe placement for them?”
Claudine kicked me under the table. I was in a blue suit, and she whacked me in the middle of my shin. A bad word almost slipped out.
The meeting had not started off on a positive note. The room was stuffy and suffocating, the table full.
Besides Claudine and me, there was a court-appointed attorney for Lucy and Stephi’s mother. His name was Anthony Bastfield III. He emphasized III. When he shook my hand it was clammy. Anthony III had a reddish beard, a skinny build, and was in his late twenties.
There were also three people from Children’s Services, two women and a man, including Dameon, the caseworker with no personality and no smile, who wrote me excellent reviews, and another attorney from the state named Zoe Something. I couldn’t remember her last name.
Anthony III announced, early on in the meeting, “I am here to protect the mother’s rights to her children. I will reiterate that Sarah’s parental rights have not been terminated. Again, jail does not necessarily terminate a parent’s rights to his or her children. Sarah has been a model inmate. She has been in counseling, she goes to Bible study once a week in the jail, and she works in the cafeteria helping to feed and nourish her fellow inmates. She is sober and has turned a corner. When she is released early for good behavior, she will be a completely different person than when she went in. She is on the road to success.”