The Chicken Sisters

by Kj Dell'Antonia

  “I didn’t mean to,” Amanda said. “I was defending Frannie’s and it just came out. I didn’t think people would go after the dog. I didn’t know they’d really film it.”

  Like Sabrina, Mary Laura rolled her eyes. “You didn’t know?” She snorted. “Of course you knew. But nobody would blame you for getting a little revenge, after all those years in that house. Won’t hurt her to have to clean it up. Still, you brought a fox into the hen coop; that’s for sure. But there were too many hens in here, right? We needed some stirring up.”

  Amanda ignored Mary Laura’s claim that she knew what she was doing. She hadn’t intended any of this. “That’s an awful analogy, though,” Amanda said. “No one needs to get eaten.”

  “You sure?” Mary Laura was heading back to the bar, leaving a drink for Amanda behind her. She liked to get in the last word. “I have to say, I don’t really see a way out of this that leaves every chicken standing.”

  Amanda deeply regretted showing her friend any part of her chicken-centric Carrie adaptation, even if Mary Laura had loved it. If there had been fewer people waiting to eat, Amanda would have thrown the seating chart at her. She endured a few more snide comments about Mimi’s, and then, just as the night’s rush was really beginning, she saw Nancy, pinned in the corner by Sabrina and two cameras. She appeared to be arguing fiercely with Sabrina, although Amanda couldn’t hear what she was saying over the noise of the crowded bar. As she watched, Nancy looked up, and as their eyes met, Nancy pushed roughly past Sabrina and walked toward her.

  This was it. Sabrina must have asked her about the recipe and told her why she was asking. Of course Nancy would be angry. Angry that Amanda would expose them to this, that she had put them in the position of having to defend themselves when there was no easy defense, no recipe they could point to and say, “Look, this is ours.” She had made the very thing that was a virtue about Frannie’s into a problem, and she’d done it—this was the worst part—by betraying Frank, and their marriage, and her only real family.

  Nancy reached her, trailed by cameras. She turned and addressed the camerawoman, rather than Sabrina, who was standing right there. “I would like to have a word with Amanda,” she said. “Alone.”

  The woman behind the camera didn’t answer. Instead, Sabrina smiled. “Can’t do it right now, Nancy. You and Amanda are kind of at the center of things tonight, and I can’t let you two out of my sight.”

  Nancy put her hands on her hips; Amanda could see that she was struggling to control herself. “I would think you could let us have a small private word.”

  Sabrina shook her head. “Nope. Not tonight.”

  “Fine.” Nancy dropped her arms, then took off the small radio she wore so that the kitchen could buzz her at any time and handed it to Amanda. “I am going home,” she said. “This has gone too far, and I am through.” She turned to Sabrina. “No amount of money is worth this.”

  Nancy walked out the door, leaving Amanda staring after her, and the cameras staring at Amanda. Could she just—leave? Didn’t they have to stay? And could they say things like that—things about Food Wars itself? Then, as if Nancy had passed her anger to her daughter-in-law along with the radio, Amanda found herself speaking more directly to Sabrina than she had to anyone in days. Or maybe years.

  “You know it’s all a lie,” Amanda said. “You must know. They must know—Rideaux, Cary. And I don’t know how you got into my mom’s house, but even if she let you in, you know she had no clue what would happen. Putting it out there, on the Internet—you know that’s wrong. It’s not what I meant for you to do. None of this is what I meant to have happen.”

  Sabrina sighed and waved away the camera. “Oh, come on, Amanda. You knew exactly what I would do. If you didn’t want this out there, you wouldn’t have told me. And I don’t know what the hell’s up with the recipe, but it will come out. This is the way it always goes. It starts out as Food Wars, but it comes down to Family Wars, every time.”

  “Only because you let it,” said Amanda, looking down at Sabrina, who even in heels didn’t reach Amanda’s height. Amanda straightened, feeling the strength of her realization through her very bones. “And you don’t just let it. You push it. You’ve been nudging us along, haven’t you?”

  Sabrina leaned cozily into the hostess stand, looking perfectly comfortable with herself. “It doesn’t take much,” she said, lifting her eyebrows. “Everybody’s so willing to call everybody else out. People don’t get into this unless they have something they want out there, Amanda. I never know why, when I first read the e-mails, but you can feel it. Everybody thinks they want fame, or a hundred grand, but what they really want is to tell, to have everybody know that they’re right, they’re the best, their father was wrong all along, whatever. It’s always something, and it makes good TV, and that’s my job.”

  She was worse than Chef Rideaux, with his witchy pronouncements, and she was so, so far off base. “That’s bullshit, Sabrina,” Amanda said. “You guys all think you’re so smart because you’re not from here. You think we all fit into these little patterns, and we don’t, and that’s just a sorry excuse for manipulating people.”

  Sabrina shook her head. “I’m not so smart,” she said. “I just see a lot of people, and they’re pretty much all the same that way. I’m just giving them a chance to do what they already want to do.” She grinned. “A lot of them do this, too, by the way—what you’re doing now. Objecting. Getting all moral. So, fine, you see through us. But you’re stuck with us all the same.” She nodded toward the parking lot. “There’s your next customers,” she said. “Looks like you’re in charge, kid. Good luck.” She walked back into the restaurant, leaving Amanda to hold the door for a party of six, one high chair, two kids’ menus, “and could we have a table, not a booth, please?”

  MAE

  It took all night before she reached Sabrina, a night when, more than once, Mae had seen customers bent over their phones, heads together. She’d heard snatches of conversation, thought she caught people staring—because of course anyone in town would know that video referred to Barbara. But anyone in town had also been eating at Mimi’s for years, and they weren’t going to let a little thing like a messy house stop them—especially not one that most of them were already vaguely aware of. None of their business, as always. Once, that attitude had infuriated Mae. Now that she was no longer a little kid wishing someone would save her—now that she had long since saved herself—she blessed it. Pay no attention to the house behind the restaurant, folks. Move along. Nothing to see here.

  Mimi’s was still pretty busy. The food was all gone; the pie case (which Mae had, somewhat against Barbara’s wishes, clearly labeled BAKED AT THE 1908 STANDARD FROM MIMI’S RECIPES) was empty except for the few slices of coconut cream that always lingered. Sabrina never appeared, instead sending cameras and one of her minions to take some chicken back to the chefs, which must mean that the whole stolen-recipe business was still a thing, although Mae couldn’t bring herself to care anymore. They were supposed to do a “winners” announcement tomorrow, Sunday morning, but Sabrina hadn’t told them what to do or where to be, and what did it matter? Nobody was winning this game.

  This time, the tenth time Mae tried her, Sabrina picked up even before Mae heard her phone ring. To Mae’s shock, Sabrina sounded nothing but delighted to chat. “Mae! Mae, who’s about to take this show where it’s never been before, are you ready?”

  “What the fuck, Sabrina? I told you, this has nothing to do with the restaurant, or Food Wars. It’s my mom’s fucking house, and it’s none of anyone’s business.”

  “It is if she makes her pies in there, and you know she does—I checked. Come on, Mae, this is brilliant. Don’t think I can’t tell you’ve been angling for your own show. This is your chance, right here.”

  Those words—“your own show”—froze Mae mid–anxious pacing, tagging some region of her brain that had been waiting
to hear exactly that and twisting all her thoughts up as if someone had pulled a knot tight. Everything else was so wrong, but that felt so right—

  “I’ve set you up, Mae. You’re going to make this happen. You clean your mom’s place up, get it straightened out, and the whole world will be watching. This has everything people love. Family, a little fighting, a daughter coming through for her mother, puppies . . . You do your thing, then we do ours—announce the winner, call it done—and you’ll be able to write your own ticket with whatever network you want. Organizing, food, country living—you’ve got all the pieces, and you were made for television. Everyone will want you.”

  Sabrina had no idea what she was asking. “I can’t fix my mom,” Mae said. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? It won’t work.” Mae remembered what she had been planning to say. “And you guys—you snuck in! Or somebody did! Someone entered the house, and nobody let them in. My mom is going to call the police.”

  “Door was open, Mae. Our cameraman heard the dogs—they might have been in trouble. He’s a Good Samaritan. And nobody’s going to care anyway. They care about the dogs, and they’ll care about the pies, and the mice. That’s what the story is.”

  “She didn’t make the pies in there,” Mae said, trying a different tack. “Patrick, from the coffee shop, made the pies that were on the show.”

  “Details,” declared Sabrina cheerfully. “You’re just complicating things, and no one will pay attention. Maybe that will save you from some food inspector—although there’s no way it hasn’t been that way when she was making pies and you know it—but it’s not going to help you on Facebook.”

  Mae could hear the truth in Sabrina’s words. No one would care. She’d seen those comments. Mimi’s had done okay tonight, probably could stagger along, but this was out there now, whether Mae wanted to accept it or not.

  “Maybe we’re done,” she told Sabrina, hearing the weakness in her own voice. “Maybe my mom doesn’t want anyone in her house. She’ll just shut Food Wars down.”

  “No, she won’t,” Sabrina said. “She’s going to have protestors trying to protect those dogs if she doesn’t do something, to say nothing of the damage to Mimi’s. You guys are going to have to clean it up, and you’re going to have to clean it up big, so people can see it happening. If you don’t, your mom loses her dogs for sure, and maybe her business, too. You don’t want that, Mae, and this is what you do. You can make this better, and it will be a triumph!”

  “It’s not that simple, Sabrina.” Mae wanted to grab the other woman through the phone and shake her. “It’s an illness. She can’t help it, and I can’t help her.” It was what she had been repeating to herself for years, the phrase she had made her peace around. Her mother couldn’t change, and Mae couldn’t do it for her.

  She could practically see Sabrina rolling her eyes. “I don’t care if you fix her forever, Mae. Fix her now. Clean it now. Make a pretty, sparkly place for those puppies now, and paint the whole thing over with glitter and rainbows, and it doesn’t matter what it looks like in six months. You’ll be gone and I’ll be gone and as long as your mom doesn’t kill anybody with her cooking it will all be good. This is a big opportunity, and you’re going to grab it, Mae. And I’m going to film it.”

  Mae didn’t answer her. She didn’t have an answer. She couldn’t even think about the show or the cameras or any of that. She looked at the phone, with Sabrina waiting inside—and the video, and Facebook and Instagram and all of it—and pressed the red button to end the call, then slowly put the thing into the back pocket of her jeans shorts. She should go to the motel, probably. Madison and Ryder had been in rare form when Jessa hauled them out of Mimi’s at close, hours past their bedtime, and Mae had paid very little attention to what the cameras were capturing. Jay was right; she had brought her children out here to be a sideshow. She had made her whole life a sideshow. Maybe if she went back now, if she called him again, FaceTimed him, put the kids on—maybe there was something she could fix there, somehow.

  And maybe not. Instead, she turned back toward Mimi’s.

  Barbara didn’t want to change. The house didn’t want to change. This wasn’t a job for an organizer; it was a job for a psychologist, and possibly an exorcist. Barbara’s problems weren’t something Mae could paper over for the camera, even if she wanted to. It was fine to do that for other people. She cleaned up their messes and walked away, leaving them to enjoy their tidy counters for as long as they lasted, and herself with the illusion that once clean, their lives would stay that way. She didn’t have to watch and see if it worked. It worked for her, and that was enough.

  She probably could clean up the house, if Barbara would let her. But if she cleaned it up and walked away, the change wouldn’t last, and while Sabrina might not care about that, Mae did. When Barbara’s mess overtook Mae’s efforts, she felt herself disappearing, like writing in the sand erased by the tide. She couldn’t do it again.

  But what choice did she have? No matter what Mae did next, there was one thing she couldn’t change: everybody knew. Sabrina, Jessa, Lolly, all of them. They knew where Mae had come from and how much she didn’t belong with them.

  And Jay. He would know that Mae’s entire being was rooted in a mess she had never been able to change, that where other people had something normal and secure, she had a big, fat pile of trash sliding under her feet. And he would know that she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him.

  Everything she had built for herself was already gone.

  Mae found Barbara inside Mimi’s, sitting quietly, doing nothing. The kitchen, the counter, the tiny dining area, all were restored to the shipshape order Mae and her team had created what felt like years ago, and it was an order that came naturally to the utilitarian space. Everything and everyone had a purpose at Mimi’s, and the complications of the outside world just didn’t apply. Mae stood silently next to her mother for a moment, wishing they never had to leave.

  The instant they stepped out of Mimi’s, the door swung shut behind them, and when Barbara put her hand back to check the latch, she found the door already locked.

  “I guess we’re supposed to go home,” said Mae, trying to speak lightly. It was rare for more than one of them to be around when the ghost of Mimi made herself known, and somehow that made it more creepy, rather than less. Barbara put a hand on Mae’s shoulder as she followed Mae down the step, and Mae was surprised to feel it shaking. She reached up and took it.

  “I’m so sorry, Mom.” There was no point in avoiding this any longer. They walked, still holding hands, along the path around to the back of the house. “I talked to Sabrina, but it didn’t make any difference.” Mae let go of her mother’s hand and sank down on the familiar step, scratching the toe of her shoe around in the dirt, raising one of the smells of her childhood.

  “No, I’m sorry.” As she spoke, Barbara opened the door behind Mae to let Patches out, and the dog trotted into the tall grass to pee. Barbara descended heavily next to Mae, and Patches, apparently unconcerned about her puppies, returned to plant herself on the stoop as well. Barbara put one arm around the dog and the other on Mae’s knee. Three lousy mothers, thought Mae irrelevantly.

  She leaned on Barbara and shook her head. “I got you into this,” she said. “You never would have done the show if I hadn’t told you it was a good idea. And Amanda never would have thought of it, probably, if I hadn’t done Sparkling.” Amanda. Thinking of her sister, Mae’s anger returned, but it was muted, somehow, by all that had come since. This was all Amanda’s fault. So why did it feel like Mae’s fault, too, like the inevitable destination of a train she had boarded a long time ago? “I got us all into this mess.”

  “I think your Internet would say I got us into this mess,” Barbara said.

  Mae tilted her head sideways to look at her mother. There was nothing to say to that. If this was where Mae’s train had always been headed, her mother had bought the ti
ckets. But Barbara had never admitted it before.

  Behind them, the house, and the mess, loomed, as bad as it had ever been and maybe worse. It was spreading over to Mimi’s, and no matter what her mother said about being careful with the pies, that mouse said something different. It was lucky the pies had come from Patrick that week. But if Barbara could even acknowledge that the mess was a problem . . . the teenaged Mae had tried to talk to her mother about it. Of course she had. Why buy one more thing? Why keep it all? Why pile it up higher than Mae’s head, why stack it in bathtubs until only one shower remained functional, why take every orphaned chair or abandoned magazine from the end of every driveway and bring it here to rest?

  But Barbara, who was so open to Mae in every other way, shut down at every turn when it came to the house. Mae could beg, she could stand right in Barbara’s face and scream herself hoarse, and Barbara would just wait until she was finished and then walk away. Mae didn’t know if Patti argued with her, didn’t know if their father had ever tried to come back, didn’t know if anyone else had ever tried to do a damn thing, but if they had, it hadn’t helped. Barbara never alluded to the state of the house except to grow angry when challenged about it, but maybe that mouse, and Patches, meant Mae had a chance to get through to Barbara in a way she never could before. Maybe Barbara would listen. Maybe Mae could make this Food Wars thing go away and make things better for Barbara while she was here. And maybe Andy could keep Mimi’s from being sucked under after Mae was gone, if he stuck around. But those were big maybes. As big as, if not bigger than, the one that waited for her back in Brooklyn.

  They sat like that, staring out into the darkness, until Barbara broke the silence. “So, what do we have to do?”

  Mae looked at her with surprise. She hadn’t said they had to do anything, and she wasn’t at all sure she could go through with Sabrina’s plan, even though it was hard to see any other way out of this.