The Chicken Sisters

by Kj Dell'Antonia

She glanced over at Amanda, expecting to see the same doubts running across her face, but the sister who never wore makeup looked almost as good as the professionals.

  Mae had expected to feel at ease—after all, she had done this before, and she’d certainly faced less appealing audiences under different circumstances—but instead, she felt as if she were shrinking. She felt fine in Mimi’s—she was killing it in Mimi’s. Planning with Andy, seamlessly trading shifts at the fryer, stepping out to greet everyone from her old chorus teacher to the guy who’d pumped gas at the Texaco throughout her whole childhood, she’d felt dropped right back into place but even more so, combining what she had learned about business and showmanship with what she had always known about running Mimi’s. But that confidence seemed to have come with a trade-off—here, she had become a supplicant.

  The surroundings were right, but she was in the wrong place, in between a visibly nervous Andy and her mother, who had dressed for the occasion in her usual slacks and blouse covered with her usual smock. Mae, with an increasingly forced smile on her face, felt her inner churning speed up. What was she doing behind a platter of fried chicken on national television? This had been a terrible, stupid idea, one that would mark her as “not one of us” forevermore in the eyes of everyone who mattered—to her career, to her whole life.

  How had she forgotten the cardinal rule of the makeover/remodel reality television genre—that you never want to be the one who needs help? She’d been fooled by the different format, but now here she was, the yokel in a roomful of pros. Jay had been right. This wasn’t going to help her career; it was going to destroy it.

  At this auspicious moment in her thought process, the lights came on and Simon Rideaux addressed her.

  “So, Mae, tell us what you have for us today.”

  Mae stepped forward, feeling as if she ought to curtsy, and gave Andy what she hoped was an imperceptible tug; he set the platter in front of the three chefs.

  “This is Mimi’s fried chicken, Chef. We use the same seasoning recipe Mimi used when she started Mimi’s in 1886 as a whistle-stop. Passengers on the train used to get off and buy her chicken and biscuits in a box lunch. Hers was so good that conductors would tell the passengers they liked best to skip the earlier stops and wait for Mimi’s.”

  Now it was Andy’s turn. “We cook the chicken pretty much exactly like Mimi would have, in big cast-iron skillets, with a few concessions to modern taste.”

  As expected, that caught the chefs’ attention. “What have you changed, then?” James Melville asked, his expression suggesting that truly authentic cooks at a truly authentic legacy restaurant would have altered nothing.

  “Well, Mimi probably would have used pure lard, which is impractical today, although we do use a blend. And it’s likely she would never have changed the oil at all, just replenished it.”

  Argue with that, James Melville, Mae thought. She’d watched hours of this guy to figure out what they could say that wouldn’t set him off on a “but real chefs do it this way” tirade, and what had felt like even more hours convincing Andy that he couldn’t just wing it.

  Andy went on. “We start our oil up fresh every Saturday, and we do keep up one tradition we think sets the oil up right—we do a batch of doughnuts in it first thing Saturday morning.”

  “That sounds delicious,” said Cary Catlin. “Are those on the menu?”

  “Nope,” said Andy, sounding, just as they’d planned, very casual. “We just sell them to whoever stops by until we run out.”

  Mae would bet Cary Catlin hadn’t eaten a doughnut in years, but she could see the plan working: Cary was trying to figure out how she could get a doughnut. And she couldn’t. No doughnuts for you, Mae chanted in her head.

  “Today’s went fast,” Mae said, feeling more confident now. In fact, they’d eaten most of the doughnuts themselves. “It’s pretty much the same with the chicken, and definitely with the pies, although of course those are on the menu,” she added. “We just serve what we serve, until we run out, just like Mimi used to. Legend has it that once, a customer who didn’t get any pulled out a six-shooter and offered to duel somebody for his box. And that means you ought to get here early, people.”

  In New York, people clamored for anything that was limited. Mae was betting it would work here, too. Win or lose, she thought anyone close enough who saw this episode would want to come try the chicken worth dueling for.

  Rideaux turned to Amanda next. “And what do you have for us?”

  Mae listened to her sister go on. Frannie’s fried chicken, original recipe, coal miners, blah blah. But mostly she focused on Amanda’s haircut. It looked good. Mae’s hair would not look good like that: she was too short, her neck not long and elegant. But the short cut made Amanda’s blue eyes look huge and her cheekbones sharp. Mae noticed that Andy was staring at her sister too, the dope. Amanda, at least, hadn’t so much as looked his way.

  Now they were tasting the chicken. Traditionally, the chef-judges refrained from commenting on the food in front of the contestants, and they didn’t today, either, although they did taste it—and looked at it, and compared it, nudging one another and murmuring among themselves as one held a piece of Mimi’s chicken up and broke off a crispy golden piece of skin and another bit loudly into a Frannie’s drumstick. It was hard to see whose chicken they were eating more of, though Mae subtly craned her neck to try.

  Although they’d been told to remain at their posts, Barbara went and sat at a table off in the corner; when Mae looked again, her mother was gone, presumably back home to Patches, who was apparently “a little under the weather.” Mae and Andy stood awkwardly by, as did Nancy and Amanda. Sabrina, noticing, beckoned. “There’s a lot of chicken,” she said. “Try some. You probably never eat each other’s chicken.”

  Amanda, of course, hung back—had she really managed to hide the fact that she didn’t eat chicken? Nancy took a leg from the Mimi’s plate and then stood, holding it and not eating, looking like someone who hates cake trying to be a good sport at a children’s birthday party.

  Mae stepped toward the platter. Frannie’s chicken had long been forbidden fruit. She’d always wanted to try it. She nodded to Andy, and they both took a piece. She held hers over a napkin and took a bite.

  It was pretty good, really. Maybe less crispy than Mimi’s. Not as flavorful, of course; this was chicken that came with a frozen biscuit and a side of “just slap it on the plate and get on with it,” but it was okay. She’d eat it. She watched as the judges huddled over the chicken, an assistant offering them paper and pencils. Sabrina gestured to a cameraperson to come in close over that scene, then stopped to confer with Rideaux and the assistant as the chefs waited, Cary Catlin turning over the chicken on the Mimi’s platter while her husband gazed, apparently bored, into the distance.

  Andy took one bite of his wing, and then, his eyes growing large, another, before he dropped his piece into his napkin and grabbed Mae’s arm. “Wait,” he said, looking confused. “Wait. Do you taste that?”

  Mae detached his greasy hand from her sleeve and hissed at him. “Don’t react to their chicken. They’re filming us.”

  “But this is so weird,” Andy said. “Don’t you taste it?”

  “We’ll talk about this outside,” Mae said, glancing at Sabrina, who was turning back toward them. “Just stop.”

  Sabrina came back, the camera following, and gestured broadly. “We’ll ask the restaurateurs to go, so the chefs can start evaluating,” she said. “No listening at the door!”

  Mae, with a firm glance at Andy, began to walk out, taking another bite of her chicken as she went. She didn’t taste anything weird at all.

  Andy, though, could barely contain himself. Ignoring the cameras and Mae’s glare, he stepped forward, right in front of the judges, took two more pieces of Frannie’s chicken, and wrapped them in a napkin to take with him. Sabrina watched him, her
curiosity apparent, then turned away as one of the assistants touched her arm.

  A blast of unseasonable early-summer heat met them as Andy shouldered the Inn door open. Once they were outside, Amanda and Nancy immediately headed for the Inn’s parking lot, but Andy grabbed Mae’s arm again and pulled her out onto the sidewalk.

  “Did you taste their chicken?”

  “It just tastes like fried chicken to me,” Mae said. “Maybe not as good as ours, but it’s just chicken. Sabrina totally noticed you making a big deal out of it, too.”

  “Not as good as ours? It’s exactly as good as ours. It is ours. It’s the same. You can’t taste that? They fry it differently—it’s deep-fried, not batch-fried—but other than that, it’s the same. It’s exactly the same chicken.”

  Even in the hot sun, a tingle ran over Mae’s skin as she took that in. “The same? How could it be the same? Andy, that’s ridiculous.”

  “No, seriously, it’s the same. Mae, I tried every fried chicken in the state getting ready for this job. I played with the heat of the oil, the oil blend, everything but the seasoning, to get Mimi’s chicken just right, and I asked every chef who would talk to me to tell me what they did and why. I know you think you know fried chicken, but you only know Mimi’s fried chicken. I know fried chicken—and this is Mimi’s fried chicken.”

  “But how could it be? Did you eat from the wrong platter? Or maybe they got switched?”

  “No, it’s theirs. It’s fried differently. It’s the seasoning that’s the same. And the thing is, Mae, it wasn’t the same before. I ate there before I took the job with your mother. A handful of times. And the chicken wasn’t like this. It wasn’t even always the same from one day to the next. Once I swear it had dill in it. I mean, it was always cooked the same, but the seasoning wasn’t the same.”

  They stood there, on asphalt so hot Mae could feel it through her shoes, staring at the chicken leg in Andy’s hand. Mae felt pieces falling into place in her mind, and at the same time a rising sense of anger and disbelief. “She took the recipe,” Mae said. “Or probably she took a picture of it. It was down on the counter when Amanda was in the kitchen. I remember you putting it back up the next day and saying something about Mimi hiding things from you.”

  Andy shook his head. “No way.”

  “It’s the only way. She hasn’t been inside Mimi’s since the day after Frank’s funeral, and she sure as hell didn’t take it then and wait all this time to use it. We told you: my mother doesn’t let Amanda into Mimi’s. You knew it, too. Until you let your dick overrule your brain.”

  Andy turned red. “It wasn’t like that.”

  Mae was furious, mostly with Amanda, but Andy was here in front of her, and without him, this never would have happened. “It was like that. It was absolutely like that. It was a stupid guy letting a smart woman use him.” Smart woman was not a phrase she had expected to use about Amanda, who had always just seemed to let the winds of chance dump her wherever. But apparently her little sister had had plans for Andy all along.

  “How would she know I’d let her—”

  Mae just looked at Andy. Because men were predictable, maybe? Because if they thought they had you, they’d head for the nearest flat surface without a second thought? She rolled her eyes.

  He looked away and shrugged. “Yeah, okay. I guess it was that.” All the excitement had gone out of him. He probably needed a minute, but Mae didn’t have time to let him process the crushing news that maybe he wasn’t as irresistible as he’d thought.

  “She stole our recipe!” Mae said, “What are we going to do? Can we prove it? Can we test it?”

  Before Andy could answer, they both heard the click of heels running up the sidewalk. Sabrina was coming, as fast as her shoes would let her. As their eyes met, she called out to them. “What is it? There was something about the chicken. What’s up?”

  Andy put a warning hand on Mae’s arm, but Mae was too upset to wait. “Amanda stole our recipe! Their chicken—it didn’t used to be the same, and now it is. Andy noticed it first, but he’s right. It’s Mimi’s seasoning on their chicken.”

  Sabrina stopped short. “No way.” She pulled out her phone. “Say that again, Mae. Tell me again.”

  Andy waved his hand in front of the phone’s camera. “Maybe she doesn’t want to. Maybe this isn’t a good idea, Mae. We should talk about it. Talk to Amanda.”

  There was no good explanation for this, though. None. For Amanda to give Nancy that recipe, to betray Mimi and Barbara and Mae and her entire family, she had to hate them. Not just Mae. All of them. A week ago, Mae would have confessed she didn’t really care about Mimi’s. She wanted it to thrive, sure, but it didn’t mean much to her. After these few days back, though, after cleaning it up, after her night behind the stove, the family restaurant felt like more a part of her than she had ever realized. She could even see how the rhythm of the cooking line was her rhythm, had fed her need to have only what was necessary to the job at hand and her desire to keep things moving. That order was what Mae was looking for, as she cleaned and organized her way through life. She wanted every space to live up to the simple utility of Mimi’s kitchen. Because that simplicity was beautiful. Mae had always wanted to share what made Mimi’s special with people who didn’t get enough authenticity in their lives.

  And Amanda wanted to take all that away. Whether her plan was to shut down Mimi’s, or beat them, or just steal what made Mimi’s special, Mae didn’t know, and she didn’t care. What mattered was that she stand up for a place she finally realized she loved.

  Mae looked right into Sabrina’s camera. “When we tasted Frannie’s chicken this morning, we were surprised—because it’s our recipe. It’s the same chicken. You can’t copy what makes Mimi’s magical just by duplicating some seasoning, especially not if you’re just going to throw it on a plate with a bunch of stuff you don’t even care about—but it’s just so wrong to try. My sister must have taken the recipe.” She wasn’t going to say how. Let Sabrina put all that together if she wanted to.

  Sabrina turned to Andy. “I could tell by your expression when you tasted the chicken that you were shocked. What did you think had happened?”

  Mae crossed her arms. Come through with it, Andy. She hoped his chef’s pride outweighed anything else. After what seemed like a minute, he looked at the camera.

  “I could tell it was the same,” he said. “For a minute, I thought I’d mixed up the plates—that I was eating my chicken. Our chicken. But it’s fried differently. We just use the deep fryer for the fries; we cook the chicken in cast iron, and you can taste and usually see the difference. But the seasoning—I’d know it anywhere. And when I ate at Frannie’s a few months ago, before I took the job with Mimi’s, it was different. And now it’s the same.”

  Sabrina turned off her camera and shoved the phone into her pocket. “This is incredible,” she said. “We’ve never had anyone actually steal a recipe before. And Amanda, of all people!” She laughed. “I admit it, Mae, I thought you were the ruthless one. And you’re a natural for television, of course. The camera loves you. But I figured if anyone would do something crazy to win this, it would be you, not Amanda.” She shook her head. “Well, as my mother used to say, you’re never safe from being surprised until you’re dead.”

  “But what do we do?” Mae asked.

  Sabrina was already turning around to head for the parking lot, practically skipping. “We confront Amanda, of course.”

  Confront Amanda. Amanda, with the perfect makeup and the great hair and, apparently, a mind full of schemes so hidden from Mae that it was almost as if Mae had never known her sister at all. She looked at Andy. “What if you’re wrong?” she asked.

  “I would really like to be wrong, actually,” he said. “But I’m not.”

  AMANDA

  As she got out of her car, Amanda was already stripping off her Frannie’s shirt, which w
as soaked in sweat both from anxiety and from the ride home in an un-air-conditioned car thoroughly heated by the sun. The morning had basically sucked, although the chicken was fine and Nancy was fine and she hadn’t actively done anything—else—to make a fool of herself. Mae looked like a tiny, adorable Dorothy, in a blue cotton print blouse with a flared skirt, bonus annoying because Amanda knew her sister hated The Wizard of Oz with a passion only someone who has grown up in Kansas and then tried to leave it behind could achieve. Next to her, Amanda felt, and surely looked, like a hulking, sweaty mess as she went through the motions of “sharing” their specialty with the three chefs.

  Other than what was necessary for the taping, Nancy still hadn’t said much to Amanda. She hadn’t been unfriendly, exactly, just so wrapped up in the chicken and the show that Amanda had not felt able to push for absolution as much as she wanted to, and now she was stuck feeling like everything was still wrong but unable to point to anything she could fix.

  The minute she was inside the screened-in porch, she peeled off her pants and threw both shirt and pants over the old swinging bench that hung there. Laundry, later. Right now, ice water. Shorts. T-shirt.

  When she came out of her bedroom, pulling an old tank top over her head, there were cars in the tiny driveway. Mae’s rental. A convertible—wait, that was Sabrina. And there was Andy, the last person Amanda wanted on her front steps, climbing out of yet another car. Behind him was Sabrina’s favorite camerawoman.

  What were they doing? No one had said anything about coming to her house, and she didn’t want them here. Why were they here? She had all of four hours before she had to be at work, and she was done with Food Wars for the moment. And she was wearing a faded tank top with a car wash logo on it. But if she ran back for something else, they’d come to the door and see inside, to the piles around the sink and the remains of multiple days’ breakfasts on the table and the stack of recycling sliding its way past the stove. Instead, she ran straight for the porch, opened the door, and nearly fell down the stairs in her rush to meet the unwanted visitors on the lawn. Once she was there, she stopped, hands on her hips. “What are you guys doing here?”