No Place I'd Rather Be by Cathy Lamb
“You have used a lot of clichéd phrases to lift your client to sainthood,” I said, “but it’s not working. How about going over her past?”
“Olivia,” my attorney warned.
“Sarah was abused by her husband,” Anthony III droned on, as if I hadn’t spoken. Of course he would not call his client Devlin. Too devilish. “Parker McDaniel threatened her life and, worse, the lives of her children, if she did not participate in the robbery. Sarah felt pressure to stay with him, to do what he told her to do, to save her own life and those of her children. She suffered from battered women’s syndrome. Her actions as a mother were heroic. She is proud to be drug free.”
“Give me a break,” I said. “Parker did not force her into the robbery. That never came out in the trial, or in any investigation, and you know it. Look at the security footage of the robbery. She was clearly the leader. She broke the window herself with a bat, then turned and yelled at Parker and told him what to do while she went through the cash register. It sounded like the robbery was Devlin’s idea. She’s lying to you about Parker.”
“I agree,” Zoe Something said. “I’ve looked at the trial transcripts and there was nothing in the trial to indicate that Sarah was forced into the robbery at all.” She tilted her head at Anthony III. “Where did you get this information?”
He cleared his throat, twitched. “From Sarah. She felt comfortable opening up to me and being honest about her life and her marriage, now that she’s away from the dangers that Parker presented.”
I laughed. “She’s lying.”
“We need to stick with the established facts, Anthony,” Claudine said. “We’re not going to create a new story here, one that hasn’t been presented before, and run with it.”
“Sarah is—” Anthony III went on after an awkward pause.
“Devlin,” I corrected. “The reason Sarah changed her name to Devlin, Anthony the third, is because the name reminded her of the devil. Devlin has no addiction problems at the moment because she is locked up behind bars. They don’t sell cocaine in the vending machines. She has been an addict since she was a teenager.”
“Sarah adores her children.” Anthony III talked over me. “She tried as best she could to take care of them with love, but Parker was abusive and she felt like a trapped prisoner in her own home.”
“That is not true,” I said. “Annabelle told me that Devlin, her own daughter, was a neglectful, abusive mother. Didn’t you read the Children’s Services reports not only from Oregon but also from Idaho and California? She was a hellacious mother.”
“I object to your tone and to your argument.” Anthony III stroked his red beard.
“And I object to your lies. Devlin’s desperate. Devlin thinks that her mother left money for the girls and she wants it. The only money is in college funds. The girls told me, many times, how life was with Devlin. Lucy talked about being hungry all the time. They both have a horrible fear of rats. They have scars from the cigarette burns. They call fleas ‘biters.’ They remember being scared and alone. They are still not comfortable around men and loud noises. They both told me about how they couldn’t sleep at night because of the fighting, and they talked about the scary people in their home, some of whom tried to get in their bedroom at night, and they talked about the needles and the trash and the mice they made friends with—”
“You weren’t there, now, were you, Ms. Martindale?” Anthony III said. “Or is it Miss? Or Mrs.? I am confused about your marital status.”
“I am their Aunt Olivia.”
“But your marital status?”
“We are not here to talk about Olivia’s marital status,” Claudine said. “We are here to talk about why these children, who were abused and neglected by Devlin, would go back to her when she gets out of prison.”
“Ms. Martindale,” Anthony III prodded again. “What is your marital status? I believe we need to know that, as we need to know who the children are living with.”
“The children are living with me.”
“Are you married?”
“Legally, yes. I’m separated.”
“And where is your husband?”
“He lives about twenty minutes away from me in Kalulell. I work for him.”
“And how does he feel about the children?”
“He thinks they’re terrific.”
“I care about the girls, too,” Anthony III said, his tone pious. “I want what’s best for them.”
“You care about them?” I leaned toward him across the table.
“Yes. Very much. I am here to do what’s right for those girls, which is to reunite them with their loving mother, who is starting a new life.”
“What are their names?”
“What?”
“You care about the girls. What are their names?”
“I . . . uh . . . not relevant . . . er . . .”
Two of the women in that room sighed. Dameon, who usually has no facial expression, frowned. Zoe Something said, “If you care about the girls, you should know their names.”
Later, two of the people from Children’s Services spoke to discuss Devlin’s parenting and her alarming past. Their folder on her was thick. Dameon, back to no facial expression, said that I was an outstanding mother to the girls, that I was loving and caring and made sure that the girls were on track in school. The girls’ teachers also felt that I was outstanding as a parent, as did the neighbors he talked to. He said that I took the girls on many outings, which he listed, and taught them to cook. The girls, in the many individual interviews he had had with them, said that they “loved their Aunt Olivia.”
He also read aloud, in a monotone, the report from Joan, in which she gave me an A-plus.
“Anthony the third, you are trying to give these innocent children back to a mother who will abuse and neglect them again, as she has done since they were born. She is a drug addict with a long criminal record and a personality disorder. I know she’s beautiful, but get past the blond hair and falsely innocent blue eyes and see the truth.”
Anthony III actually blushed. I’d hit a nerve. Devlin was beautiful. A beautiful sociopath.
“She is their mother. It is my aim to reunite the girls with their mother. And I don’t appreciate your insinuations, Ms. Martindale.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
He blushed again. Coughed. “No. Not at all. Not for a minute.”
I leaned toward him again. “She’s got you wrapped around her finger, Anthony the third, and she will drop you as soon as she gets what she wants, do not delude yourself.”
Zoe Something said, “Let’s move on.”
The meeting continued. Things did not end on a bright note, an hour later, when I told Anthony III, in a shouting type of voice, that if he returned my girls to their biological mother I would hold him personally responsible when she starved and hit them again, and when rats bit, and fleas crawled, and scary men brought their needles into the home.
I also accused him of being an “uncaring, ridiculously stupid, reckless asshole.” And topped it off with, “And I don’t care if you appreciate my insinuations or not. You are one more man Devlin is manipulating with the tears, and the lies. You are very young, and you have no idea what she’s doing to you.”
Anthony III blushed again. “I know what she’s doing to me.” He coughed. “I mean, I know what I am doing to her.” Coughed again. “I know that I am Sarah’s attorney doing her, doing her . . . her work.”
Children’s Services chimed in, as did my attorney, and I spent the rest of the meeting glaring at Anthony III, who tried as hard as he could, without blushing too much, to hide his burgeoning feelings for Devlin, resident sociopath.
* * *
“The most important thing you must remember when cooking for other people is that you want to bring them love and peace,” my grandma said, staring straight into the camera that Dinah held in the ranch’s kitchen, her smile angelic, as always.
I stood beside my grandma
My grandma’s white hair was pulled back into a bun, and she was wearing a turquoise scarf with yellow daffodils on it. She was bringing beauty to the world. “May I tell you about this shepherd’s pie recipe? My parents, Esther and Alexander Gobenko, put my sister and me on the Kindertransport in Munich in 1939. We had to leave them, and my brother, Isaac, who was too old for the train, behind in Germany. They knew it was our only chance at living, at escaping the Nazis who were rounding up Jews. Our family businesses had been looted and firebombed, and the Nazis had robbed our homes and bank accounts. Two of my uncles had disappeared.
“We escaped to England, and Renata and I soon trained to become nurses. When the Nazis came to London and the Blitz started, the bombs relentless, my sister and I had to go down into air raid shelters or the Tube to survive. That was where we wrote down this particular recipe for shepherd’s pie. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope that the people you cook it for find peace and your love within it. Let’s begin, shall we?”
We began.
* * *
So many, many, many hits on the ranch’s website. We received a ton of e-mail. People wanted to know when Mrs. Gisela was going to be on again, they wanted to hear more about her life in Germany and England, they wanted to know what happened to her family, they wanted to see the shepherd’s pie recipe in its original handwritten form, and they wanted to know if Martindale Ranch had a cookbook.
“That was fun, Olivia!” my grandma said. “May I visit again?”
Oh, she absolutely could.
* * *
On Tuesday evening, with the girls out with my mother for ice-cream sundaes because they’d memorized ten facts about the body’s immune system and five facts about cells, my grandma and I sat in front of the fireplace at the blue farmhouse.
She held the old cookbook in her hands, the pink ribbon stained, the pages burned around the edges, water damage, blood splatters, and tears telling our family’s history. The upper-right-hand corner of the back cover was slightly torn. We looked through the pages together as the fire crackled. There was a drawing of a park in Munich, Germany, the city rising behind it. There was a drawing of Ida’s Bakery, pink and white, and the desserts, cakes, and breads Ida and Esther used to make. There was a picture of Boris’s Leather Goods and Esther and Alexander’s, the department store Grandma’s parents owned.
Inside the cookbook were the last remnants of a pink rose, the two heart-shaped gold lockets, two red ribbons, the sun charm, and a white feather.
She said something in German.
“What did you say, Grandma?”
“I love you, Renata.” She kissed my cheek. “Let’s make a Danube Wave Cake. I have the recipe right here. I think we need Martindale Cake Therapy.”
While we baked, she talked. She told me the story of her and her sister, Renata, the pink rose, two heart-shaped lockets, two red ribbons, the sun charm, the white feather, and the poems.
May 1941
London, England
Gisela Gobenko, grandmother of Olivia Martindale
The bombs started dropping through the pitch-black night over London, bringing the usual chaos and annihilation. Gisela heard the sirens and the explosions, but she, and the surgeon she was working with, didn’t leave their patient. They couldn’t run to a safe shelter, they couldn’t hustle underground to the Tube. If they did, the British pilot, whose leg had been nearly entirely cut off when he crash-landed his plane after a bombing mission over Germany, would die. He had risked his life to save England, and they would risk their lives to save his.
Gisela and the exhausted surgeon were doing the best they could to put the young man back together again, working in an underground ward below the hospital.
They heard the sirens, warning of the Luftwaffe flying in to pound the British people into submission. Then they heard the doodlebug, like a hive of angry bees, then silence. They knew what was coming next: A building exploded on their block and the surgeon, two other nurses, and she instinctively flinched. They worked on.
Later, they sewed a woman up who was covered in blood and unconscious. Her building had collapsed when a bomb hit it. Though she had sheltered in the basement, half her ribs were broken, she had a terrible concussion, and her left ankle snapped. After that victim, they sewed up another victim, who had multiple gaping wounds from shattering glass. All from those beastly Nazis.
After twelve hours of the cacophony in the hospital, Gisela returned to the girls’ group home she lived in with Renata. It was six in the morning, the golden light barely over the horizon. Some of the streets she walked on were mostly intact, others weren’t, the bombs from those damn Nazis taking out buildings, churches, another hospital, and blocks of neighborhoods. Her rage rose at Hitler and the German people who had allowed this monster to erupt, who supported him. Injured and traumatized people were being loaded into cars, undoubtedly to be taken to the hospital she just left.
There were children crying, mothers consoling, and some people were going about their day, as if the British were not fighting for their very survival. What else could one do? Help others, be brave, and continue life. There was no choice. They would never give in or give up. Never. Carry on.
Gisela turned the last corner and was confused at first. Had she taken the wrong street, the wrong turn? Surely she had . . . but there was the butcher’s, albeit damaged, there was the school, there was the grocer’s. And . . . and . . . oh no oh no oh no!
Gisela’s high-pitched scream, raw and echoing, was a piercing cry of disbelief as she sprinted to what was left of the home she and Renata lived in with their beloved Mrs. Lowenstein; their best friends, sisters Keila and Naomi; and other young women. Their neighbors and strangers were pulling away the rubble, the front door, and the bricks that had made up their home, as if there was someone buried beneath it.
A bobby she knew tried to stop her, “Wait now, Gisela, let us work here,” but she shrugged him off and ran toward the home. Surely Renata was fine. She would have been in a shelter, right? She would have been in the Tube, the Underground, when the bombs came down. She was asleep somewhere. Gisela only had to find her, find Renata.
She saw Mrs. Lowenstein, Keila, and Naomi digging through the rubble, covered in debris, trembling and crying. “Where is Renata? Where is Renata?”
They didn’t know. They didn’t want to tell Gisela what they feared, didn’t want to tell her they were frantically digging through the rubble with the neighbors for Renata. The four of them had headed to the bomb shelter when they heard the sirens, but Renata told them she was going back for something she forgot and they hadn’t seen her since.
“Renata!” Gisela yelled. “Renata!”
A firefighter came around from the back of the building, holding someone with long, thick dark brown hair, covered in dirt and dust.
It wasn’t her sister.
It couldn’t be. Her sister, her very best friend, didn’t have dirt in her hair. She was never covered in gray dust. She was clean and cheerful and had lovely green eyes tilted like a cat’s. She had been working in the hospital with her, training these last eighteen months. They had had lunch together yesterday in the cafeteria. They had escaped from Germany together on the Kindertransport, and they would find their family again after the war. They would be in each other’s weddings, and they would raise their children together. They would grow old and hug each other’s grandchildren.
No, that girl, that limp and unmoving girl in the firefighter’s arms, wasn’t her sister. It couldn’t be.
Gisela ran over with Mrs. Lowenstein, Naomi, and Keila, stumbling, crying, reaching out to touch the long, dark hair.
The screaming started again.
* * *
Gisela accompanied Renata to the morgue. She did not want her to be alone. She filled out paperwork, her tears sopping the paper as she shook. Mrs. Lowenstein, Keila, and Naomi came with her, their clothes gray and dirty from digging for Renata. When they were done, Gisela insisted on going back home to find what she could. The four of them, all of whom had seen way too much tragedy, dug through the disaster again.
Gisela found the leather-bound cookbook fifteen feet from the wrecked home. It was half buried in dirt, the back cover torn in the upper-right-hand corner, the pink ribbon now brownish, but still tied tight around it. How it wasn’t burned to bits when the bomb exploded, she couldn’t fathom. It should have been buried under the rubble, like the body of her sister.
Gisela knelt in the dirt, trying to calm her hysteria, her insidious grief, her rage, clutching the cookbook to her chest. She rocked back and forth, Mrs. Lowenstein, Keila, and Naomi not leaving her side. Three nights ago, sitting in the Tube underground, she and Renata had written a recipe for Danube Wave Cake. Their grandma Ida had made it for the bakery and had taught them. Gisela knew the cookbook was what Renata had gone back for. She knew it. And now her sister was dead.
Her sister was dead.
Her sister was dead.
How could that be?
She undid the ribbon and opened the cookbook, as if she could find Renata there. Inside was a pressed pink rose that Renata had dried out between napkins and heavy books. She had found it last October and said that it resembled hope. There were two gold, heart-shaped lockets that Renata had bought at a secondhand shop, one for her, one for Gisela, to show their love for each other. There was a charm, in the shape of a sun, that their mother had given Gisela as a birthday gift, tucked inside a letter.
There were two poems that Renata had written, one on friendship and one on sisters and everlasting love, and their father’s poems. There was the white feather that they had found on a walk through Hyde Park, so pure and magical that they’d kept it, and the red ribbons their brother had sent. There were the photographs and mailed recipes from their family that they had taped to the back pages. These were their treasures.