Get Cozy, Josey! Read online

  Praise for Christy Award finalist

  SUSAN MAY

  WARREN

  and her novels

  “Warren’s fantastic book combines humor, romance and superb spiritual insight. The first-person narrative allows the reader to really know Josey and experience life right alongside her. Filled with life lessons, this book is not to be missed.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Everything’s Coming Up Josey

  “Warren presents a likable heroine who learns about the compromises and joys of married life and impending motherhood while adjusting to living in a foreign culture.”

  —Library Journal on Chill Out, Josey!

  “Susie writes a delightful story…A few hours of reading doesn’t get better.”

  —Dee Henderson, CBA bestselling author of the O’Malley series

  “Susan’s characters deliver love and laughter and a solid story with every book.”

  —Lori Copeland, bestselling author of Bluebonnet Belle

  For your glory, Lord

  Get Cozy, Josey!

  SUSAN MAY WARREN

  Contents

  Acknowledgment

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Questions For Discussion

  Acknowledgment

  What fun I had in writing this story! Remembering the rich cast of friends and family who helped ours survive the frozen world of Far East Russia brought back delicious memories. I have many to thank for this story. Thank you to Krista Stroever and Joan Marlow Golan who let Josey tell her story. Thank you for that gift. Ellen Tarver, my “first eyes” who read the rough story and with me remembered all the things I’d left out. (She, better than nearly anyone, remembers what it’s like to live in Siberia!) To my friends in Russia: Vadeem and Sveta Warrenov, who let me stay in their home and introduced me to the intricacies of life with an outhouse. Gene and Luda Khakhaleva, who taught me how to cook and layer my children in fur. To Costa, my friend in heaven, the itinerant pastor who would show up on my doorstep for food and shelter. To my friends in FER who shared my life: Cindy, Patty, Kathy, Melanie, Jennifer, Debby, Robin, Bertha, Lori, Sharon and many, many other women who, like me, learned how to make cookies with foreign ingredients. And to the rest of my fellow Far East Russia missionaries, former and current, Navigator and SEND, who endured and rejoiced and learned with me—thank you for sharing our lives. I hope this book can make you laugh, even in the cold.

  Chapter One

  My Evil Plot

  It’s on account of the jellyfish that I ended up in Siberia. That, and a can of Pringles, a volleyball and two very sloppy plumbere vanilla ice-cream cones that ended up down the front of my Tasmanian-devil pajama top.

  But probably I should tell the entire story of how Chase not only talked me into moving to the backside of the world—where the snow crests off the tundra like whirling dervishes, where a person can literally freeze the nose off her face, and where people eat pig fat for snacks—but how it made me reach deep inside myself to find more of me than I’d ever dreamed.

  Definitely more than Chase ever dreamed. But we’ll get to that.

  I need to state for the record that I, Josey Berglund Anderson, never liked camping. At least, not my husband’s definition of camping, which I’ve discovered is vastly different from mine. But that, in part, is what marriage is all about—discovering the definitions of our personal vocabulary.

  Case in point: To me, camping is smores over a crackling fire after a day of hiking some well-used trail along a northern river while the sun sets above a perfect, rose-gilded lake, fireflies twinkling in the indigo twilight. It’s watching the moon rise and heating up coffee in a tin camping cup as the night settles in around us. That much I believe Chase and I can agree on. However, it is here where our definitions diverge and trek off into opposite accommodations. I retire to a cabin with indoor plumbing, screens and something to sleep on that is padded and well away from the creepy-crawlies that live in the dirt. In short, when I camp, I want to just add water. This, however, is not Chase’s definition. Chase likes to camp from scratch.

  I should have known that Chase’s interpretation of camping might be different from mine. After all, as an anthropologist—or former anthropologist—his greatest dreams are along the lines of living among the Nepalese, trekking up the sides of mountains clad only in felt moccasins, sleeping in clay-covered huts and eating boiled dal-bhat while playing the sarangi. I know, because he has a fifty-pound textbook on the subject. My Chase likes doing things like bathing in a glacial river and wearing the same natty attire for two weeks.

  And you ask, I know, how we ended up together. Alas, the differences in our definitions of camping didn’t surface until long after our wedding day, and even after the birth of our twins, Chloe and Justin. Perhaps Chase snowed me with his black motorcycle and the way he filled out a football-letter jacket. Perhaps it was the way he chased me across the planet to get my attention and win my heart.

  Or maybe, as usual, it was the way he backed me into a corner, one hand propped over my shoulder as he leaned into my neck to plant a kiss and whispered, “C’mon, GI, it’ll be fun.”

  The use of my GI-Josey nickname should have been my first warning. As I’ve discovered, that word—fun—has vastly different definitions. For example, I do not think it is fun to pack into backpacks everything we own—including buckets for hauling water (aka the kitchen sink), swim gear, sleeping bags, clothes, pots and pans, plates, cups, silverware, tents, blankets, a shovel and enough food for ten days—spend two days on a train from Moscow to Simferopol, Ukraine, spend four more hours on a bus and then hike across a treeless steppe to a cliff that drops a hundred meters or so of sure death to the sea where we have to erect our own shelter like nomads, all the while carrying two munchkins (who have their own backpacks, I might add).

  I should have realized as we stood on the high cliffs overlooking the Black Sea, watching the waves crashing across a pebbled, not-so-sandy beach and against the boulders below, that setting up camp in a still-rustic yet sturdy cabin hadn’t even registered on Chase’s list of expectations.

  Which led to panic and a softly breathed question. “Where are the bathrooms?”

  “Outhouses.” Chase pointed to the shovel attached to his pack. “Do it yourself.”

  Of course.

  I stood there a moment, taking in the view, trying to make it all better by focusing on the aqua-green bay under a cloudless sky, on the way the beach curved as if cupping the water, rimmed by rugged, orange, lichen-covered cliffs and lush, green brush. Scattered along the beach like so many shells were tents of all size, shape and color, evidence that Chase is not the only adventurer in Russia. A road wound down to this Chasonian paradise from the cliff, and with a grin, Chase headed for it.

  Justin and Chloe ran after him, as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamlin.

  I sacrificed three things the day I gave birth to my twins:

  1. My waistline. I must have offended it with one too many peanut-butter cookies because it hasn’t been back, something my maternity clothes are oh-too-happy to embrace. Chase says two children are enough, especially living in a high-rise, two-bedroom flat in the center of Russia, but I’ve been
holding on to my painfully acquired pregnancy wardrobe (yoga pants and all of Chase’s extra-large shirts) just in case. At least that’s the story I’m sticking to.

  2. My sense of romantic adventure. Take our arrival at the Black Sea, for instance. Instead of running down the beach, the Ray Conniff Singers crooning “Love Story” in my head, rushing toward the crashing waves without a care in the world, I descended the cliff and saw with my maternal eye broken glass, jagged beer cans and old cigarette butts hidden in the sand like land mines. Three-year-old Justin rushed into the water up to his knees, laughing and splashing. I stepped close to grab him in case he went under.

  I’ll probably never enjoy water again.

  3. My bladder. Which has decided that when it wants attention, it gets it. Immediately.

  Chase dropped our gear on an empty patch of dirty sand and dug out the shovel. I looked at it, looked at Chase and tried not to cry.

  I’ve come to expect a few inconveniences while living in Russia over the past four-plus years. For example, I don’t really expect the electricity to stay on the entire time I’m cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. I know that the hot water will be shut off from May until November, and that if I want a warm bath, I need to prepare at least twelve hours in advance. I have every public bathroom in Moscow plotted out in my mind and have rated them on a scale of “worth walking to” to “I’m desperate.” Moreover, I know that when Chase latches on to a new idea, it’s much like body surfing. Catch the idea at the right time and you’re on top of the wave, enjoying the view. Catch it too late and the wave crests over your head, saltwater up your nose. You land choking and gasping and even a little roughed up by the sand and shells.

  I’ve been wondering—at what point does a girl get to stand in the surf, let the wave crash against her knees and say Nyet?

  Clearly, I’m not there yet. Which is why, now, I find myself one outpost in a sea of tents facing Russia and Ukraine’s idea of paradise, smack in the middle of Chase’s definition of a vacation. He’s been planning said vacation since we arrived in Russia, and I figure it’s his well-earned bonus for four years of dedication to WorldMar, his NGO (non-government organization) in Moscow. Over the past four years, he’s launched and managed an entrepreneurial peanut-butter company that’s created a new love for creamy spreads—as well as lots of jobs—all the way down the Yalta.

  Here’s where I admit to my evil master plan, the real reason I agreed to set up camp at the edge of the world. The project has ended, and we’ve got two choices on the horizon.

  Choice One: Head back to Gull Lake, Minnesota, buy a house, and enroll the kids in soccer and ballet lessons. Chase will work for my dad until a teaching position at the school opens up, and we’ll finally get to live someplace where the backyard isn’t a hazardous-waste zone. (This is obviously my vote.)

  Choice Two: Another NGO project, this time working with local, private, chicken farmers.

  Can you believe Chase is actually considering it? Not that I have anything against chickens. Rather, I’m thinking that maybe I did my time, and it’s my turn.

  So, my master plan is, give the man a camping trip, he’ll give me Gull Lake. Because, well, four years into marriage I’m learning fast how to bargain. All that time in the market haggling over potatoes has made me a master.

  Hence, this last adventure to the south of Ukraine. As far as the eye can see, tents—blue, orange, brown—dot the coast. Russia and Ukraine, in fact all of Eastern Europe, take a vacation in August, most people heading to the sea, where some make, uh, reservations and stay at a resort (which, by the way, has been my family’s livelihood back home in Minnesota for nearly forty years), and others find a space of land and set up a homestead. With kitchens (portable stoves and campfires) and laundry facilities (buckets and clotheslines) and living rooms (tarps staked over cars and paddles and other makeshift walls). Kids run naked to the sea and back—my preschoolers are overdressed in their pull-ups, T-shirts, and sunhats. The smell of fish and smoke taint the fresh air. Someone has decided to run the battery down on their boom box and picked up a radio station. I recognize a Machina Vremina song.

  About fifty paces behind all this chaos is another village—of outhouses. Most are made of driftwood or scrap lumber shoved into the ground and covered on three sides (some of them poorly) with an old sheet. The backside is open to face, uh, nature. Not ours, however. The American outhouse is made of four rebars and a dark sheet secured on three sides, with a hanging door for privacy. It’s quite sturdy, and I have a feeling it could survive a typhoon.

  The fact that there is no chance my backside will flash the world—even in the most dramatic of weather—is my one consolation for having to spend every waking moment sweeping out the tent, making sure our children don’t kick off their beach shoes or disappear forever into the sea, cooking another pot of potatoes and lathering on another layer of sunblock.

  Yeah, I’m having fun. I love camping.

  Gull Lake, think Gull Lake. Three-bedroom home. Swing set.

  Dog. A black Lab, or maybe a collie—

  “Josey, look what our neighbors Nastia and Vadeem gave us.” Chase comes tromping across the sand, all grins. Of course Chase is on a first-name basis with the “neighbors.” Another day, and they’ll adopt him.

  Okay, yes, I have some attitude issues. Although I came to Russia first, over five years ago, learned to speak Russian first, learned how to negotiate the Moscow subway first, Chase was born to live in Russia. He even looks Russian, and he speaks it so well after four years that someone even asked him how he, as a Russian, managed to nab me, an American wife. That particular day, I didn’t have an answer for that.

  Today I might. Because he’s looking tan and toned, his dark-blond needs-a-cut hair curly on his neck and shiny in the sun. He smiles at me, his blue eyes alight with mischief. Wearing a red handkerchief he’s tied on his head, a T-shirt with the arms cut off and a pair of swim trunks (the American kind, not the Russian-favored Speedo style), he crouches where I’m sitting, accidentally kicking sand and pebbles onto my towel. I have an eye on Chloe, who is standing just at the edge of the water with a plastic shovel, perhaps contemplating how long it might take to fill the hole she’s just dug with water. Her blond hair is nearly white, curling out under her hat like Chase’s. Justin is napping in the tent behind me, his lips askew, a fine bead of sweat along his brow. He’s going to be a charmer, just like his dad. Someday his wife will ask me why she agreed to live three billion miles away from her family and home, in a country whose word for “hello” sounds like someone clearing their throat of phlegm. Zhdrastvyootya? Please.

  I’ll just smile at her and say I have no idea. But of course I will. “What?” I ask Chase.

  Chase plunks down a blue bucket—my blue bucket, formerly used to wash preschooler underwear in. “Flounder!”

  I stare at the bucket, and my stomach responds before I do. Because the shiny, smelly thing is staring at me with both glassy eyes, his fins still twitching. “Both eyes are on the same side of his head,” I say, not sure what Chase wants me to do with it.

  “That’s because he lies on the bottom of the sea, hiding in the sand, waiting to surprise his prey.”

  Creepy. “Is he a pet?”

  Chase laughs. “We’re invited to Vadeem and Nastia’s place for dinner. We just have to clean it.”

  Not I, said the little red hen.

  But before I can refuse, I’m distracted by a cry from Chloe. She’s wandered into the water and has picked up a bag, dripping, see-through—

  “That’s a jellyfish!” I am on my feet, running toward Chloe, who’s laughing and flinging the fish around like it’s her teddy bear.

  Jellyfish abound in the Black Sea, so much so that the first time I waded out into the water, I felt as if I were swimming through Jell-O. “They won’t sting,” Chase—the jellyfish expert—had assured me, as I made a face and cleared a path back to shore.

  Sure. Because they like me and want to be my fri
end?

  I grab the jellyfish and fling it out of Chloe’s hand. She’s startled and starts to cry. I sweep her up. Glare at Chase.

  “I’ll clean the fish,” he says.

  Ya think?

  I dig into my supply bag and hand Chloe a cookie. She takes it in her grubby little hands, grinning up at me through her tears. Yeah, I have her number. I take one, too.

  The Black Sea at dusk is nearly magical, with the colors of autumn streaked like watercolors across the western sky, slowly vanishing into a perfect, diamond-studded canvas that seems so close I feel I could reach out and wrap my fingers around a star. The wind off the sea is cool and smells of the world, of the places it’s traveled. Sitting before the fire, as Nastia fries fish on her portable stove, listening to Chase converse with Vadeem, I’m reminded so much of Gull Lake and magical moments back home, that melancholy finds me and moistens my eyes. I love Gull Lake, the small town where I can walk down the street and know the names, even the secrets, of everyone I meet. Where the Fourth of July parade circles the town twice and still only takes ten minutes. Where the most exciting article in the paper is the Annual Walleye Fishing Contest results. I miss fresh-brewed coffee and kringle, and my sister Jasmine, who just had baby number two. And H, my punk, now married, lead-singer friend, who just cut her second album.

  I am on the other side of the planet, eating creepy fish, drowning it down with watery orange sok, praying my children don’t pick up tuberculosis.

  “Hey there,” a voice says in English.

  I look up, startled. Above me stands a dark-haired man, brown eyes, nice smile, wearing dark shorts and a white “Vote for Pedro” T-shirt, holding a tube of Pringles. (Who is Pedro, and what is he running for?) My gaze latches on to the Pringles.

  Pringle Man sits next to me. “Want one?”

  I am a Minnesotan. I long for a Pringle with everything inside me, but you’ll have to offer three times. That was only once.