chapter twenty

On a lazy August morning, Jim and the kids swung by Stari Baća while I was writing. Zadie’s hair was a tangled mess, and both kids’ faces were smeared with ice cream. It struck me that my children had gone feral in Mrkopalj.

“We’re driving to Rijeka,” Jim said, pulling up a chair. The kids hung themselves on me, one on each side. Zadie picked up my pen and drew in my notebook.

“Voluntarily, you’re going to Rijeka?” I asked, incredulous.

Jim nodded.

“What on earth for?” I asked.

“Robert said there’s a store called Metro, like a Costco, for members only,” he said. “They’ve got more food than Konzum, and I’m making hamburgers!”

“Hamburgers?” I asked. My mouth began to water.

Robert popped his head out from the back kitchen, his mouth loaded with what appeared to be boiled potato. “Originale American hamburger!” he called.

Jim shot him double ones across the bar. “Robert gave me his Metro card so we could get in. It’s Burger Quest! You want anything?”

“I would love something like mustard on my hamburger,” I gushed.

“Dad says we can get junky cereal there,” Sam said.

“And maybe chicken nuggets!” Zadie added.

“They have both of those things,” Jim confirmed. “I asked Robert.”

“What else do they have?” I asked. “Peanut butter? Dr Pepper? Doritos?”

“I don’t know.” Jim laughed. “We’ll see!”

Late in the afternoon, I found Jim in the dorm, adrift in a sea of grocery bags. “Shopping took five hours,” he said. “Making hamburgers in Croatia is a daylong affair.”

The gardens in Croatia were going nuts, and every meal we had included fresh carrots, cucumbers, and lettuce from our neighbors, who knew we had no garden of our own. I sliced onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and—here’s the miracle—hamburger buns. Jim had unearthed an acceptable facsimile at Metro.

Jim patted together discs of ground beef, and directed me to take a look in the dorm fridge. There, wedged into a side compartment, next to the homemade raspberry juice Anđelka made us, was a jar of yellowish brownish substance labeled “senf.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I’ve got a feeling that it’s mustard,” Jim said.

I unscrewed the lid and tasted. Indeed it was mustard. I did a happy dance.

We headed outside with the fixings. From old bricks and a grate that he found somewhere, Jim had built a makeshift grill in the area of the yard where we’d burned that huge hole. Mario and Jasminka came over, and Tomo pulled into the driveway.

Jim was in a frenzy, just like he was back home when he was preparing a meal for friends, trying to get everything perfect. I sat down next to Jasminka and chewed on an onion. When it came to food preparation, Jim and I traded personalities. Cooking hamburgers over natural flame was melting his brain—we’d forgotten to pack his Barbecue Bible, and Jim didn’t go for inexact science when it came to meat.

Tomo, Mario, and Robert shifted uncomfortably in their lawn chairs as they watched. Though I’m pretty sure they were critiquing Jim’s fire-building skills in Croatian, they didn’t say a word to him in English. I even saw Mario sit on his hands. It wasn’t until Jim grabbed the plate of buns—clearly with the intention of toasting them—that all three men stood and eased toward the fire ring, gently crowding out my sweating husband and nurturing his coals into a tiny heap, then a concentrated inferno, and then turning to Jim to hand back the reins with quiet nods. He toasted his buns to perfection.

“Originale American hamburger!” Robert declared as Jim put the finishing touches on the table. Everyone sat down to eat, and Jim modeled the ideal burger design—bun, patty, lettuce, tomato, onion, ketchup, mustard—for his guests.

Jasminka sneaked in a few cucumber slices, and I congratulated her instincts.

“Back home, we put pickles on them,” I said. “Jim couldn’t find pickles.”

The buns were hard, the meat dry and bland. Mario passed, claiming an aversion to “mixed meat.” But mostly our friends wolfed down the burgers with enthusiasm, marveling that Americans certainly have big mouths to be able to manage such a giant sandwich. For some reason, this made us proud. We had big mouths!

Robert, more than anyone, seemed to sense the gravity of Jim’s Burger Quest. East met West in one big greasy package of gratitude delivered from a visitor who had embraced Mrkopalj from the very beginning. The Originale American Hamburger was the first thing we’d forced Robert to eat that he actually enjoyed. He’d run away in alarm when Jim offered the chili. He’d covered his face in horror when I showed him my peach cobbler. But he stuffed so much of that hamburger in his mouth that he shot out chunks of it when he complimented the chef and gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Jim looked so pleased that I thought his chest would burst. He had communicated love in his own meat-centric way and our friends in Mrkopalj had copied the message.

Sam and Zadie served jelly beans and Twinkies from a care package my parents had sent. This offering Mario accepted. It turned into a game between him and Zadie, with him asking her for just one more, and her digging into the bag to hand him jelly beans throughout the night.

I busted out a tin of Jiffy Pop popcorn, another care-package goodie. Tensions mounted as the Jiffy Pop expanded and erupted. When Jim cut open the foil to reveal popcorn, everyone seemed visibly relieved, and we ate the whole thing in minutes.

As the sun began to set, we noticed Željko Crnić sitting at his backyard picnic table, looking skyward. Jim hollered across the fence, asking him to join. Željko went into his house and returned with an old straw hat full of delicate pears from one of his trees. Željko gave Jim the pears, nodded in thanks, and took a burger. He had been outside, he explained, because he was waiting for the Perseid meteor shower.

And so we built up the fire, brought out more chairs, and waited for stardust to fall from the sky as Tomo, Jim, and Robert floated away on a sea of gemišt, which culminated in Tomo’s passionate declarations about the large heart of Mrkopalj. I think this was the local equivalent to “I love you, man.”

And that night, for all of us assembled around the fire, the feeling was very much mutual.