The Chicken Sisters

by Kj Dell'Antonia

  Sabrina was pointing to him, and one camera followed her finger while the other stayed on Mae, its gaze, like Jay’s, holding her frozen. How could she possibly explain any of this—the house, the way she’d just shoved Amanda across the porch like some battling real housewife, the announcement she’d just shouted at her sister—with Sabrina and her Food Wars cameras hanging on every word? Jay would just shut the cameras down, but her mother needed this Food Wars win for Mimi’s so much more than Mae had realized. Mae had to carry this off, and Jay had to go along with her. Did he even know this was her mother’s house? How on earth did he get here?

  From behind her, Mae heard the thud of Aida’s cane. “You girls need to quit fighting and get back to work,” her great-aunt called as she came through the front door. “Your mother—” She stopped short as she found herself on what amounted to a stage, and the hand that wasn’t holding the cane floated up to touch her hair as she straightened and smiled. Aida knew how to play her part; that was for certain.

  And Mae would play hers. Forget the fight with Amanda, pretend that never happened, cut, new scene. Mae rushed down the stairs and threw her arms around Jay, so tall, so thin—was he even thinner than when she’d left him? It was both exactly what she wanted to do and the scariest thing she had ever done, because what if he pulled away? What if he just held her off coldly, looking around at the mess, then recoiled and walked off? “Please, just listen,” she breathed in his ear, smelling the peppermint shampoo he favored and feeling the soft bristle of that spot right in front of his ear that he never quite got shaved right. She kissed him, really meaning it, and felt him respond, lips on hers, arms softening around her just a little, then straighten. It was incredibly good to feel him in her arms again, but as he began to pull away, she felt an icy panic in her throat. If she let him react to any of what had just happened, this might be her last shot at that feeling.

  Mae knew exactly what she wanted now. She wanted Jay to throw himself in with her like Patrick had with Kenneth, to take this on and dig in and make it work. But she didn’t have any right to expect it of him, or even ask, at least not until she let Jay see the house and the place that had made her. And she was going to have to do that in front of the trailing cameras, which he would hate, and after she’d just shouted an ultimatum right in his face, exactly the way she would have least wanted him to hear her plans. I’m here, and I’m staying . . . But she had plans, and they were good plans. Jay would want this; he really would. If he would just hear her out. If they could just get that far.

  Madison and Ryder shared none of these conflicting feelings. They were delighted to have both Mommy and Daddy again. Ryder, who was on Jay’s hip, reached for Mae with his arms while sticking tight to Jay with his legs. Madison, apparently feeling low on the totem pole, stood on Mae’s foot to reach up to them both.

  Mae took Jay’s hand, and Madison’s, and started to walk, and to her relief, he accepted her unspoken invitation, although he didn’t return the pressure of her fingers. Pretend you expected him, pretend this is all going perfectly and maybe it somehow will. “Let me show you what’s going on,” she said. “First, you remember my aunt Aida.” Aunt Aida, who knew better than anyone the facade Mae had created for her life in New York, who had gracefully maneuvered Barbara around Mae and Jay’s wedding. “Aida deserves even more Hollywood greatness,” Mae explained, “but in light of the studio’s preference for casting women forty years younger than the roles they’re playing, she’s decided to come home and boss us all around.” Aida put one hand up to each of Jay’s cheeks and kissed him firmly, and Mae knew she saw him smile as he let go of Mae’s hand to give Aida a one-armed hug. No one could resist Aida.

  She took his hand again, and this time, she felt him holding hers. A tiny bit of her tension slipped away, but as they moved up to the porch and through the front door. Mae saw her mother’s house through Jay’s eyes. Things she’d accepted since she was a kid became painfully obvious—the tottering stacks of old newspapers and bags and boxes of dollar-store crap that were still everywhere even with the helpers carting box after box away, yes, but also the faded and peeling wallpaper, the water stains where the porch and house rooflines met, the outright dirt and grime on floors and stairs that hadn’t been cleaned during her lifetime. Beyond that was the smell—the combined odors of decaying food, dog shit, unwashed laundry and humans, and, the grown-up Mae now knew, an unpumped septic system. She saw Jay’s face as he took it in and felt in him that physical lurch she had seen in everyone who had come in for the first time that day. Madison and Ryder seemed oblivious to it, their focus on something else entirely. “You have to come see the puppies,” Madison squealed, running ahead, and Ryder squirmed down from his father’s arms.

  “Hang on,” Jay said, and something in his voice stopped both children, who looked at him uncertainly. “I’m talking to Mommy now,” he said, and Mae could hear him lightening his tone at their reaction. He smiled at Madison and leaned down to scoop Ryder back into his arms, and as he did, his eyes met Mae’s, unreadable. He might have reassured Madison and Ryder, who came back and leaned against his legs, but Mae had never felt more vulnerable.

  She met his eyes. “This is my mother’s house,” she said clearly. “This is where I grew up.” She wouldn’t explain why that needed to be said to her husband of seven years. Let Food Wars deal with it. She turned, heading through the passage, knowing that with the cameras trailing them both, he would have to follow her into the kitchen and the back room, the main room. Was the disgust she thought she saw in his eyes for the house, or for her? “And if you saw the puppies on Facebook, this is where they were born, but they’re outside now while we clean it up.”

  She thought Jay might be trying not to breathe through his nose, so she took pity on him and led him out the back door, not rushing, making sure he had time to see the kitchen, still overflowing with dishes and bags and debris, before emerging onto the porch, which once would have been a refuge from the mess but was now filled with things from the cleanup.

  She wanted to look at him, but she couldn’t. Instead, she pressed her lips together, taking quick breaths. She would not cry. “We’re taking everything out of the house, so it’s going to take a while,” she said. “Mom hasn’t been able to throw anything away. Ever. She’s always been like this. The house has always been like this. But she’s ready now, she says.” This time, she turned to face him, wanting to be sure he heard her, but his face was turned away, pressed into Ryder’s shirt and the scent of lavender from the sachets Mae kept in their suitcases.

  Why hadn’t she seen before that in Jay, messed up by his parents in a totally different way when they’d split him from his sister and raised them in two separate but equally weird households, she had found someone else who could at least understand how deep the wounds your parents left you with ran? The grown-up Mae knew it wasn’t Barbara’s fault, exactly, especially now that she understood more about how her mother felt about the house, about Mimi’s, about her tenuous hold on the things that mattered most to her.

  But that didn’t mean some part of Mae didn’t share Amanda’s resentment, or that she didn’t still wish that Barbara, so strong in so many ways, could have just gotten her act together on this one. She had spent too long keeping those feelings tucked away all neat and clean inside.

  She waited until Jay looked up again, and then, as their eyes met, she let her anger from the past come through to the person she knew he was inside, once a kid like her, equally confused and betrayed by the ways of grown-ups, equally determined to do better. “She wants to make a better home for the dogs.”

  He got it, at least. She knew it instantly. There was the Jay she married, her Jay, right there with her. His eyes widened and she saw, at the corners of his lips, the hesitant start of a smile. She was so relieved that she smiled back, first a little, then fully, knowing she was giving him permission to express what she herself was feeling.

&nbs
p; “Your mother is cleaning this up”—he looked around, back into the sliding door, through the kitchen windows, at the boxes and bags and piles at his feet—“for the dogs.”

  “For the dogs, yes.” Mae kept her face straight but let her eyes speak to his, and Jay laughed, and suddenly Mae could laugh, too. This was what she had been missing, someone to share this with, someone to see what was funny on top of tragic and push her to see it, too.

  Jay set Ryder down on a table someone had carried out, and Madison tugged at her father. “I want to show you the puppies,” she said. “I’m getting the girl one, she has spots but she is mostly white like snow and I’m calling her Elsa.”

  Ryder stomped, causing the table, which was none too stable, to wobble. He grabbed at Jay, who scooped Ryder up and held him. “No,” he said, pushing his hands on his father’s chest and struggling to get down. “Boy ones. Blackie and Spotty and Potato Chip. I’m having five.” He, too, took his father’s hand and started pulling him.

  Would Jay know she’d never say yes to a dog at all and certainly not without his agreeing to it? He seemed unworried by this unplanned addition to his household, but Mae was far from ready to relax. Jay got what she was saying about Barbara, but could he see how much she wanted him to get her as well?

  Jay, too, didn’t seem ready to walk away from this moment, but between the cameras and the kids, they were fully stymied. “Hang on,” he said again to Ryder and Madison, and although neither let go of his hands, they did lessen their tugging. As if Mae had conjured her, Jessa emerged from the front of the house.

  “Want to go with Jessa, guys?” Mae suggested. “Maybe get the puppies ready to see Daddy?”

  Madison looked scornfully at her mother. “You can’t pick them up. Only touch them. Okay, Daddy? Gentle touch.”

  Jessa held out her hands. “But we can go make sure Patches is taking good care of them,” she said. Neither Madison nor Ryder budged, and Jessa caught Mae’s eye. Mae shrugged. They could all recognize kids who weren’t going to be persuaded, and there was no point in causing a scene—well, more of a scene. The echo of her shouted fight with Amanda, witnessed by Jessa and Jay and everyone in the known universe, lingered. Enough scenes, then. “Okay, Daddy will go with you. But can I give him a hug first? I missed Daddy, too.”

  Did Jay believe her? She still didn’t know why he had appeared, or how much of a chance he was willing to give her. She stepped in close to him, close enough to smell him, and hugged him with her entire body, ignoring the cameras, letting her hips melt toward his. His lips were on her ear, but he didn’t say anything, although he did hold her, briefly, before letting her go and bending down to Madison so that she could not see his face.

  “So, this is your town.” His eyes were still on his daughter’s head, and again Mae couldn’t read him. But there was only one answer.

  “This is my town.”

  “And that’s Mimi’s.” He pointed at the old building, freshly painted but still unprepossessing, and like the house, Mae saw it with new and disappointed eyes.

  “That’s Mimi’s. And Amanda works at Frannie’s, the other one. She has ever since she married Frank, before we met. That’s part of why this makes a good Food War. You know, sisters. Fighting.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” He let Madison and Ryder begin to pull him away.

  “Wait—” she said. But she wasn’t sure what to ask him, what she wanted from him now, how to say even part of what needed to be said with the cameras rolling. “What do you, um, want to do after you see the puppies? I mean, obviously I’ll be here for a while.”

  Jay looked back at the house, looked it up and down, then turned to Mae as the kids tugged at him. She wanted a smile, a nod, anything, so badly. “It looks like you could use another set of hands,” he said, and she clung to the little streak of hope in those words. “I’ll hang out with the kids for a bit, and then I’ll come help.”

  Help. She had never wanted his help more, but that wasn’t really the problem, and Mae knew it. The problem was that she had never before asked for his help at all.

  “I’d like that,” she said softly, then more loudly as he kept walking away. “Please. Thank you.”

  Jay took a few steps more forward before he turned and looked over his shoulder again. “And then we’ll talk,” he said, and he wasn’t laughing or meeting Mae’s gaze.

  “Yeah,” she said, holding herself very still, trying to show him that she was open to whatever he could give. “Then we’ll talk.”

  AMANDA

  Snuffling wildly, Amanda walked with what she hoped looked like determination toward the path down to the river, bringing up the edge of her T-shirt to wipe her face and blow her nose. Gross, maybe, but there was no one to see, and as she came up to the fallen giant that had been her and Mae’s secret tree when they were kids, she thought of the argument she and Mae had had just a few days earlier, when they were still speaking, before everything started to go so far wrong.

  Maybe the tree didn’t make a noise. Maybe nothing ever made a noise. Maybe nobody ever heard anything unless it was broadcast to the entire world, which meant that Amanda’s whole life now amounted to about an hour of bad behavior and the failed one-night stand she didn’t have with the only guy she’d even thought about since Frank, a guy who now thought she was not just needy and desperate but a liar and a thief as well.

  As she stood there, breathing heavily and pressing her fist into her lips, she heard footsteps behind her, and Nancy’s voice, calling.

  “Amanda? Are you out here?”

  Small trees and tall weeds had grown over the path in the years since it had been in regular use, and Amanda turned to see Nancy holding a particularly prickly growth out of her way, then releasing it behind her. She looked wildly out of place, her neatly pressed slacks and buttoned blouse far more mussed by pushing her tiny frame through the weeds than they had been by anything Barbara’s house had to offer. Amanda’s own clothes, she realized, were speckled with the seeds and burrs that clung to anything they touched, and one arm was scratched. She’d come through the brush without even noticing.

  “What is wrong with you? What was that?” Nancy was breathing heavily, but her fierce energy did not appear to be depleted. She put her hands on her hips, staring intently at Amanda.

  “You said it yourself,” Amanda said. “You don’t know what to say to me. I’ve gone too far. I’ve ruined everything.”

  “Amanda—” Nancy shook her head and stood there, looking at her, and Amanda looked back, her tears coming again. Nancy held her arms open, and Amanda, after a minute, took the two steps toward her mother-in-law, the best mother she had ever had, and fell into them, crying.

  Nancy held her, patting, stroking her hair. “I was angry last night. I’m still angry. Maybe I don’t know what to say. But it doesn’t matter. I’m still here. And we will figure this out. But you have to back down, honey. You want to win. I get it. But you’ve gone way overboard. It’s not worth destroying your relationship with your mother and your sister.”

  “What relationship? Mae’s ruined everything. All that stuff she says—I didn’t do any of it!” It was a relief to say it, even if no one would ever believe her after everything she actually had done.

  “This isn’t about Mae,” Nancy said firmly. “Stop—” She held up a hand as Amanda started to protest. “This isn’t who you are, Amanda. Mae’s not your problem.”

  Furious, Amanda twisted away and kicked up the dirt and dust on the path. “Of course she is! Ever since she got here it’s been all about Mae. It’s the goddamn Mae show. And then—all she does is wave a hand, and the whole town shows up to clean Mom’s house.”

  Nancy touched Amanda’s arm and gently turned her back around. “That was me, not Mae,” she said. “I called Kenneth and Patrick last night and asked them to post something asking for help. For your mother. And for me. And for you. It wasn’
t Mae at all. But if you’re looking for someone to blame here, that producer is the one pushing your buttons. And you’re giving her exactly what she wants, every time.”

  “I know she is,” Amanda said, more quietly. Nancy’s refusal to respond to her anger in kind always forced her to moderate, and Nancy’s refusal to enter into the Food Wars–fueled renewal of the old feud should have helped make Amanda more reasonable. But she really did not want to be reasonable. “I mean, I see that now. I’m not dumb. But Mae—Mae—she—”

  “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” said a familiar voice. Picking her way even more carefully through the unfamiliar foliage, Sabrina stepped over a fallen branch and was suddenly standing next to Amanda. “I’ve got something you need to see, Jan Brady.”

  Nancy put an arm around Amanda again. “There’s your pusher, Amanda. That’s who you’re reacting to. Not Mae.” She looked straight at Sabrina. “I hope you’re happy.”

  Sabrina, wholly unchastened, grinned. “I’m always happy. Here you go, Amanda. This did not go as planned, not one bit. Which is exactly why you need to see it.” She held her phone out to Amanda. “Press play.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “I seriously don’t care, Sabrina,” she said. There was absolutely nothing to do with Food Wars that she wanted. Not now. Maybe not ever, and the sight of Sabrina, perfectly made up, dark hair all neatly in place, smiling all the way up to her ridiculously big brown eyes, just made Amanda want to bite someone. And Sabrina obviously was part of the problem. Not as big a part as Mae, but still.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ll care. Watch.”

  Amanda reluctantly took the device, which had a hot pink cover with “gorgeous” written in flowing gold script across the back. Mary Laura’s face appeared first on the screen. “No way,” she said, and the clip cut to Gwennie, who said, “Huh?” Faces flashed quickly by, all shaking their heads or scoffing at something: Patrick, Tony Russell, his wife, every single waitress from Frannie’s. Mary Laura returned, frowning, and you could hear Sabrina’s voice saying, “The chef at Mimi’s says Amanda stole their recipe to use to win Food Wars.”