Meg and Jo

by Virginia Kantra

  “Thank you, Daddy. Very pretty,” I approved. “Where are your barrettes, baby?”

  “I didn’t see any barrettes,” John said.

  “They’re sitting right on the dresser.” Along with her socks.

  Something tightened in his face. “I don’t do hair.”

  “I know. It’s fine.” I was lucky he was trying to help. Not like some fathers. Not like my father. “Thanks, honey. I’ll do it.”

  That was me—the mommy who could do it all, the sister who had everything. It wasn’t John’s fault if everything I ever wanted suddenly felt like more than I could handle.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jo

  Our mother stood at the kitchen island, dicing celery and onions for her corn bread dressing with slow, precise cuts.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Momma?” Beth asked.

  “Can’t,” our mother said.

  Because she had too much to do? I wondered. Or because it hurt her back to sit?

  Part of me wanted to grab her knife away and show her what I’d learned at Gusto. This, I imagined myself saying proudly, is how you chop an onion. Hearing Chef’s voice, seeing the blur of his knife and hands.

  But this was Momma, the real housewife of Harnett County. This was her kitchen. Her stuffing. Despite the pill bottles lining the windowsill, she was still competent. In charge. No matter how many professional techniques I learned in faraway kitchens, at home I was only her sous chef.

  Honestly, I didn’t have many memories of cooking with our mother. Meg was the one who helped in the kitchen while I holed up in my room, reading and scribbling. Or spent the time out in the barn. Or off with our father. Before he was deployed—and after, when he got back—he took me with him to serve Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless. “My daughter,” he would introduce me in the line, and I would glow with pride.

  But Beth had already tackled the barn chores. And for the first time ever, Dad had gone to the veterans’ center alone—the only acknowledgment from either of our parents that this holiday was not like other years.

  “Your mother needs you,” Daddy said as he left.

  What about you? I wanted to ask. Doesn’t she need you?

  I bit my tongue. The truth was, my mother never seemed to need anybody. For years, she did the work of the farm alone, managed the house and the budget, drove us girls to the doctor’s or to play practice, packed our lunches, cooked our dinner, poured our father’s coffee. Daddy’s job was taking care of others; Mom’s was taking care of us.

  I’d always considered myself my father’s daughter.

  But maybe in some weird way, he was counting on me, like he used to. “Take care of Momma and your sisters for me,” he would say before he left for the base or Afghanistan. We all had been raised to respect our father’s service. He poured out his life for others. Making a bed or a meal or a home seemed pretty unimportant in comparison.

  But people had to eat. Feeding them . . . Wasn’t that important, too?

  I couldn’t fix whatever was wrong with our mother. But at least I could be her hands in the kitchen.

  She shifted her weight, leaning against the counter. “Do you have the onions?”

  I scanned the glistening pile on her cutting board. “Do you need more?”

  She shook her head. “The crispy ones. For the casserole.”

  Right. That would be the traditional casserole made with canned green beans, canned cream of mushroom soup, and canned crispy fried onions on top. Not exactly the locally sourced, seasonal ingredients I was used to at Gusto. I could just picture Chef’s quizzical look as he surveyed my work space. No cans, March, I imagined him saying. Not for green beans.

  I patted the red-and-white container. “Right here.”

  The front door opened. Our mother glanced toward the living room. “Is that Meg already?”

  “It’s Amy!” Beth cried, darting from the kitchen.

  “She must have got an early start.” Mom shuffled toward the living room, delivering a pat on my shoulder as she passed.

  I wiped my hands on a dish towel and followed her.

  “Jokies!” Amy disentangled herself and grabbed me, her smooth cheek pressing mine. That’s what she called me, what she’d always called me since she was old enough to think the nickname was funny.

  I patted her back awkwardly. “Hey, Ames.” I didn’t call her Princess, the way Daddy did. Even though she looked the part: deep-blue eyes, tiny waist, funny snub nose. Like the princess in Disney’s Tangled, with a choppy blond haircut that would have looked at home in New York’s Fashion District.

  “Can I get your stuff from the car?” Beth offered.

  “Not yet.” Amy stretched luxuriously, her crop top sliding up to reveal her pale, flat stomach. “I want to enjoy being home for a while.”

  “Come into the kitchen, then,” our mother said. “Plenty of work to go around.”

  Amy pouted. “But I just got here. Aren’t we going to watch the parade?”

  Momma smiled. “Turn on the TV. And then you can set the table.”

  Under our mother’s direction, we executed her Day of Thanksgiving Plan, scrubbing, chopping, grating, and arranging to the muffled sound of the Macy’s parade. Amy was in the dining room, setting the table the way our mother liked, with the good china that had belonged to her grandmother and the pinecone turkeys Amy made in second grade.

  “The minute I walk into this house, I feel like I’m twelve,” she observed.

  I grinned. “You act like you’re twelve.”

  She stuck out her tongue.

  “Proving my point,” I said, and she laughed.

  Beth paused in her straightening of the living room to turn up the volume on the television. “Momma, come quick! The Rockettes are on!”

  Amy dropped a handful of silverware. “Chorus line!”

  I watched, bemused, as our mother left her work in the kitchen. My sisters positioned themselves on either side of her, lining up in front of the TV, giggling and grabbing each other for balance. Momma couldn’t kick, but she laughed and lurched along with them.

  They’d done this before, I realized. Watched the parade together, stepping along with the Rockettes, while I was off with Daddy feeding the homeless.

  Amy stumbled. Laughed. “We need Meg.”

  I jumped in at the end of the line, wrapping my arm around Beth, matching my steps with my sisters’, doing my best to support Mom in the middle. We giggled and kicked our way to the end of the song, hopping and breathless.

  “Ooph!” Amy collapsed into a chair. “That’s it. I’m done.”

  “That was so fun,” Beth said.

  Our mother eased herself onto the couch, smiling. “I always wanted to visit Radio City Music Hall. See the Rockettes in person.”

  Which was news to me. She’d never said anything. Never taken a day off in her life. “Maybe you should come for a visit,” I suggested.

  But she wasn’t listening to me. “Have you heard anything yet from Branson?” she asked Beth.

  Beth shook her head.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Beth said.

  “Branson, Missouri.” Our mother’s voice warmed with pride. “Your sister tried out for one of the Christmas shows there.”

  “My voice teacher thought the audition would be good practice.”

  “Mouse! Good for you! That’s awesome.”

  Beth smiled wistfully. “Remember when you used to write those plays for us?”

  I nodded. “On the parsonage porch. Meg charged all the neighborhood kids a quarter to watch.”

  “You and Meg always got to be the heroes,” Amy said.

  “Or the villains,” I said. “Because we were tallest.”

  “And I was the golden-haired princess.”

  “Because you were too y
oung to remember your lines.”

  “Only a year younger than Beth.”

  “I was the prince once,” Beth said.

  Our Bethie had never sought the family spotlight. I smiled at her affectionately. “You played a selection of kindly retainers.”

  “And the prince’s horse,” said Amy.

  “And now you’re going to be a star!” I hugged Beth. She was so talented, a voice major at UNC Greensboro. She deserved a chance to shine. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Beth’s cheeks turned pink. “I didn’t think I’d get a part.”

  “But you did. She’s an angel,” Mom said to me. “In the chorus.”

  “Typecasting,” Amy said.

  “It’s not a real part,” Beth said. “I’m only an alternate. They’re not going to call me unless somebody drops out of the cast.”

  “It’s all good experience,” our mother said. “Colt Henderson is one of the headliners.”

  Country music was one of those things I swore I’d left behind when I fled home, like sweet tea and church homecomings. But even in New York I’d heard Colt Henderson’s music, heartland rock with a country core.

  “I’m impressed.” I was, too. And a little hurt I was the last to know. In spite of the four-year gap between us, Beth and I had always been close. She was my baby, the way Amy was Meg’s. “I thought Branson just did big family acts. The Trapp Family Singers. The Osmonds.”

  “He has a new Christmas album,” Beth said.

  “Nice,” Amy said.

  “Your sister got to rehearse with the cast in September,” Mom said.

  “Very cool.” I frowned. “How far away is Branson?”

  “Fifteen hours,” Beth said.

  “You have to follow your heart,” Mom said. “No matter where it leads.”

  I managed not to roll my eyes. “Right.”

  Our father was the one who had pushed me in school, who had encouraged my writing, who told me there was a whole wider world out there for me. He had taught me, by example and sometimes with praise, to follow in his footsteps. To pursue my own vocation, while my mother stayed in the background. “You could always come home,” Momma said. “To save money,” after I graduated. “To figure out your next step,” when I got laid off from the paper.

  She wasn’t wrong, just practical. But her constant offers of support made me feel like she was waiting for me to fail.

  She raised her eyebrows at my tone. “Excuse me?”

  “You never went anywhere,” I said.

  “Because this is my home,” she said a little stiffly.

  I felt guilty. I wasn’t trying to upset her. We’d had to leave the parsonage when Daddy enlisted. Aunt Phee had never offered to take us in at Oak Hill, the big white house that had belonged to my father’s grandparents.

  And anyway, our mother wouldn’t take charity. She moved us to the farm because we had no place else to go.

  “Sorry, Mom. I know you didn’t really have a choice.”

  “This farm is my choice,” she said. “My heritage. I always figured that was worth preserving.”

  “Okay.”

  “You girls may not care about it now, but this land is your heritage, too. Sisters’ Farm.”

  I gaped at her. I’d always figured the “sisters” were my mother and my unknown aunt Elizabeth, the one who died when they both were young. The one Bethie was named after.

  “I care,” I protested. Our grandparents were homesteaders, small-scale farmers living off the land. Rednecks, to my friends in New York. After they died and we moved to the farm, our mother slowly built up the goat herd and started making and selling cheese. There was something cool about growing up on a farm that had been in our family for generations, that our mother owned and operated herself. I just didn’t want to actually live there.

  My mother smiled wryly. “Of course you do.” She pushed to her feet, clutching the sofa arm for balance.

  Anxiety spurted inside me. “Are you all right?”

  “Just tired. Don’t fuss, Jo,” she said, channeling Granny.

  “I’m tired, too,” Amy said. “I was up all night, packing.”

  “Why? You don’t need a lot of clothes. You’re only here for a couple of days.”

  “Not for here.” Amy smiled, a little smugly. “I leave for Paris on Monday.”

  Right.

  “You should take a nap,” our mother said.

  “I will if you will,” Amy said.

  That was Amy, bargaining for what she wanted. Which in this case . . . I looked at her with sudden appreciation. She was trying, in her own way, to get Momma to lie down.

  Our mother hesitated.

  “You go,” I said. “Everything’s under control.”

  After executing a full evening service at the restaurant, I figured I could handle one Thanksgiving dinner. Mom took Amy’s arm to go up the stairs.

  And now that I had the kitchen to myself . . . I glanced at the wall clock. This morning I’d posted a recipe for sweet potato soufflé on my blog. Not the standard Southern casserole with marshmallows and pecans, either, but a real French soufflé with Gruyère cheese and whipped egg whites. I’d barely checked in with my followers all day. But it would be nice to share some photos with them. Maybe I wasn’t going to Paris. Or even Branson. But I had my own dreams to chase, my own work to do.

  Opening the pantry door, I pulled out three large jewel yams.

  Beth stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, watching me. “What can I do?”

  “Want to peel potatoes?”

  Beth smiled. “Sure.”

  “So . . .” I hauled out a saucepan, nudging Beth aside with my hip to fill the pot at the tap. “Tell me about this Branson thing. It’s a big deal, right? Good exposure.”

  “Not that anybody’s going to see me. The show opened three weeks ago.” She smiled shyly. “I did get to meet Colt in rehearsal.”

  Colt Henderson was one of the new bad boys of country music, a former studio guitarist who’d been on tour with Taylor Swift. “And now you’re on a first-name basis,” I teased.

  “He told me to. He’s very friendly.”

  “Define friendly,” I said. Looking out for her, the way I used to.

  She turned pink. “Not like that. He was nice. He asked me to play a song for him.”

  “One of your songs? Beth, that’s so cool. Which one?”

  “‘Leave a Candle in Your Window.’”

  “I haven’t heard that one. Will you play it for me?”

  “Maybe later. He said I showed promise.”

  “So much promise.”

  She ducked her head over the sink. “Not enough to land the job,” she said. Turning to me for confidence, the way she always did.

  “Maybe not this time.” I rummaged in the junk drawer for a second peeler. “But you wait. There will be other auditions. Other songs. You just focus on school and the rest will come.”

  Beth concentrated on the potato in her hand. Peelings flew.

  Uh-oh. “Bethie?”

  “I was thinking . . .”

  “Always a mistake.”

  “Ha-ha. The thing is, Mom could really use some help right now. Around the farm, you know? And I’m good with the goats. I was thinking maybe I’d stay home after Thanksgiving. Go back next semester.”

  “Beth.” Impossible to keep the dismay from my voice. “You’ve missed so much school already. What about your classes? What about finals?”

  “I already talked with my teachers. I could take incompletes.” A flush climbed her cheeks. “It would just be for a little while. Just until Momma’s feeling better.”

  Her thoughtfulness put me to shame. “What does Mom say?”

  “I haven’t told her yet.”

  I pointed my peeler at her. “Because you kn
ow she’ll hate the idea.”

  Beth’s chin came up. “I’m twenty-three. Old enough to make my own decisions.”

  “I just hate to see you wasting your talents in Bunyan.”

  “You know, not everybody thinks living here is some kind of prison sentence,” Beth said quietly.

  My mouth opened. “I don’t think living here is a prison sentence.” Did I?

  * * *

  The soufflé was in the oven when the front door opened again.

  “Dad?” I called.

  But it was Meg with John and the twins. “Sorry we’re late,” my sister said breathlessly. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you!”

  I hugged her. “Hi, munchkins. Hi, John. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  My brother-in-law smiled his slow, attractive smile. “Same to you.”

  DJ regarded me suspiciously as I swooped in for a kiss.

  Meg handed over my niece, a warm, lovely weight in my arms. “He’s still tired. They just got up from their nap.”

  Amy emerged from her room. “Hey, me, too.” She kissed our sister, John, the twins. “Cute socks,” she said to Daisy. “Very fashion forward.”

  Mom came downstairs, holding tightly to the banister. The rest had done her good. There was color in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before. Or maybe that was makeup. “Meg, are these your pies? They look gorgeous.”

  We swept to the kitchen on a flood of hugs and greetings, carrying the twins and dessert along with us. The rise and fall of our voices filled the air along with the scent of roasting turkey.

  “I love your sweater.”

  “Here, taste. Do I need more salt?”

  “Where should I put this?”

  “Don’t touch, DJ. Hot.”

  I leaned against the counter, immersed in family, feeling the tug and strong flow of love. All of my sisters together at last. “Get you a beer?” I asked John.

  Smiling, he shook his head, a rock in the chattering stream. “I’m good, thanks. I think I’ll turn on the game.”

  It was a little noisy in the kitchen, I admitted, watching his retreat to the living room. Where was Dad? Shouldn’t he be home by now?

  The doorbell chimed. Aunt Phee with her little dog, Polly, and her sidekick, Wanda Crocker.