The Kitchen Daughter

by Jael McHenry

  it may seem normal to your friend, but

  you need to tell someone about his

  considers her perfectionist behavior

  normal, and you need to decide how

  normal to have good days and bad days

  at first after any major change

  hero-worship of one parent over another

  is normal but can still be destructive

  used to be a stigma but medication is

  now considered normal, or at least

  can’t let the desire to be “normal”

  override every other thing, Annie

  it’s normal for a child of that age to ask

  questions that his parents don’t want to

  got a normal haircut and good clothes

  like she wanted, so why won’t she take

  The Normal Book has been with me as long as I can remember. My parents knew about it, but no one else. I feel calmer now. It clears my head.

  Now that I think about it, if Grandma Damson’s ghost had come, what would I even have said to her? I doubt she would have known about Nonna’s message. Then again, maybe ghosts know everything there is to know. They’re sure to have more answers than I do, in any case. I’m not even sure I know the questions.

  Hours later, as I try to fall asleep, I can smell the soft, buttery scent of the shortbread. The air currents have brought it up into the farthest corner of the house. It will take all night to fade. Even though the shortbread itself is gone, I smell it as if it were right here on a platter on the nightstand. It smells warm.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Georgia Peach

  When my phone rings, I can’t tell if it wakes me up because I’m not sure I’ve been asleep. It never rang much before, so I fumble with the unfamiliar buttons and somehow end up on speakerphone with the unknown caller saying “Hello? Hello? Ginny?”

  “Yes, this is she.”

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  “Me?” I figure out how to switch off the speaker and put the phone to my ear.

  “Me. Amanda. Your sister.” The orange juice voice comes through.

  “Hi.”

  “Everything okay? You sound weird.”

  “You sound weird,” I reply, even though she sounds like she always does.

  “I do not. Well, maybe. I’m pretty stressed. Okay. Great. So.” She takes a deep breath. This means she’s going to start talking about something I don’t want her to talk about. Or she’s smoking. But Amanda doesn’t smoke. As I once heard Ma say of something deeply unlikely, it would be like the Pope drunk on Manischewitz.

  She says, “I wanted to have this conversation in person, but I just can’t get out of the house.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “It’s just life,” she says. “The girls are kind of a handful today.”

  “Take your time,” I say.

  “Well, but we need to start packing things up.”

  “Why?”

  Another deep breath, blown air. “We talked about this. I have time now, I may not have time later.”

  “But why even later?” I ask. “Why can’t we just leave things where they are?”

  “We just can’t. Oh, and I meant to tell you, I don’t think she’s going to come today, but I didn’t want you to be worried if she does. If she shows up and I’m not there. Just let her in. Show her around.”

  I’m completely lost. “Who?”

  “Angelica. My friend from high school, the real estate agent. She knows the Center City market like the back of her hand. She’s going to check out the house and make some recommendations, maybe show it to some people.”

  “Why?”

  “So maybe someone will buy it.”

  “But we’re not going to sell it.”

  “Well, we’ll see how it goes.”

  “You’re not listening to me,” I say. “I don’t want to sell it. That doesn’t mean maybe. That means no.”

  “Seriously, Ginny? I don’t see how you get a veto in this situation. It’s not like you need all that space.”

  “You want to kick me out of my house?”

  “No, I just, no! Parker! Get back here! Listen, sis, I gotta go, just keep an eye out for Angelica, she’s a real sweetheart. Start pulling together some of the stuff for charity.”

  “Charity?”

  She says, “I could have sworn I told you this. Didn’t I? We need to pack up their clothes for donation regardless. That’s in the will. That’s what they wanted.”

  “You’ve seen the will?”

  “We’ll talk about that later. Start packing up the clothes in their bedroom, okay? Make yourself useful. I’ll be there when I can.”

  “Okay,” I say, and hang up. She can’t know the effect she has on me. Otherwise she’d behave differently. She couldn’t know that if she tells me to do something, I don’t want to do it, and as soon as she tells me not to do something, it makes me want to. With Ma it wasn’t this bad. With Amanda, I feel much more contrary.

  I try to see things from Amanda’s point of view. This is an exercise the advice columnists generally advocate. They have different ways of saying it. Take a new angle. Pivot ninety degrees. Remember that the villain is the hero of his own story. Put yourself in her shoes. I’ve tried putting myself in Amanda’s shoes before but it doesn’t work. I’m too literal. I can’t stop picturing her shoes, and how uncomfortable they must feel, and I never get to the emotional stuff.

  Maybe I should just do what I would do if this were an ordinary day. Of course if it were ordinary Ma would be here. In the spring or summer I’d go with her to the community garden first thing in the morning, before anyone else got there, but now it’s winter. If I didn’t have anything in particular I wanted to cook for breakfast, I’d stay in bed and open my laptop. I’d visit thirty-seven food blogs to check for updates, then five daily advice columns, and then nine cooking sites, and finally Kitcherati, which is my favorite. I like eGullet and Serious Eats but they both spend a lot of time talking about restaurants, and I only care about the cooking and not the eating, so Kitcherati is the best place for me.

  They say you learn by doing, but you don’t have to. If you learn only from your own experience, you’re limited. By reading the Internet you can find out more. What grows in what season. The best way to strip an artichoke. What type of onions work best in French onion soup. Endless detail on any topic. You can learn from people who are experimenting with Swiss buttercream, or perfecting their gluten-free pumpernickel crackers, or taste-testing everything from caviar to frozen pizza to ginger ale. All of their failures keep you from having to fail in the same way.

  I reach for my laptop, but then change my mind. Maybe I should do what Amanda suggests after all. If I’m organized when she gets here, maybe she’ll stop worrying about me. Then again, if she’s made up her mind to worry, there’s probably not much I can do to stop her.

  The house is quiet but not silent. I get up out of bed and walk downstairs. The stairs creak just like I expect them to. A car goes by in the street with a soft whoosh like I expect it to. The morning light beams in through the skylight at the front of the stairs just like I expect it to. I stand on the second-floor landing and hug myself around the waist. It’s a big house. Everything feels large, and empty, and permanent, the same way it has forever.

  I had just gotten used to living here in Ma and Dad’s absence, and now I need to get used to the idea that they’re not coming back. I can’t, not yet. I can’t even believe that they’re gone. Maybe this means I am in denial, as the advice columns say. Maybe it just means they haven’t even been dead a week and they were plenty alive last time I saw them.

  The night before they left I heard them talking. Ma said, It’s not too late to stay. Dad said, I don’t want to stay. I want to go. Ma said, I worry about her. Dad said, Well, stop. They went. Now they’re dead. I can’t believe that, but I also can’t process it. Process is a very popular advice column word. So is issues.

  Most of w
hat I know about how to act and what constitutes psychological disaster, I’ve learned from advice columns. On some level I know this is absurd. It’s troubling to know I study the emotional range of humans as if I’m not one. But after a while you see patterns. Patterns help you figure things out. The columnist almost never says, Do this. Or, That’s not normal. Or, Leave him. She says, Think about it. She says, Be clear about what you want. Or she says, There is no normal. There’s only what’s right for you, and being honest.

  I like There is no normal. It appears several times in the Normal Book. But whether I am normal or not, whether my life is a good one or not, I know it isn’t my perception that matters. Ma’s did. Dad’s did. Amanda’s does. Really, my perception seems to matter less than everyone else’s, if it even matters at all.

  Thinking of the Normal Book reminds me that Amanda’s coming over. If I’m unlucky, this Angelica person will too. There are a number of things I want to hide from my sister—the envelopes of cash, the food she threw out that I reclaimed—but above all I don’t want her to see the book.

  I find the Normal Book on the floor of my room. I must have dropped it when I fell asleep. I look for a place Amanda won’t find it. Under my bed is too obvious. There are many nooks and crannies in my attic space, but there must be somewhere else more secret. I head downstairs to the library.

  Midnight is curled up on Dad’s leather chair. I shoo her off. She sniffs a few things, investigates a few corners, and yawns ostentatiously. Ostentatious is one of my favorite words. I learned a lot of words when I was young by the same method. When I read a word I didn’t know, I looked it up in the dictionary. Then I learned whatever was on that page. When I first read the word osteopath in one of Dad’s medical books, I opened the dictionary to osteopath, and from that same page I learned ostentatious, and also osso buco. This worked well except for once. When I was ten, my mother slapped me for the first and only time, because I told her she was niggardly. It was on the same page with Nietzsche and night-blindness.

  The dictionaries are here, nestled among all the other hundreds of books in the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. This is where Dad spent most of this time when he wasn’t at the hospital. His leather chair is here, and his desk, with another chair behind it. The desk is a broad, flat slab of wood, with legs but no drawers, therefore no hiding places. I look at the walls of books instead. The Normal Book would be at home here, but thinking ahead, I can’t chance it. Amanda didn’t finish what she was saying about the will. Maybe Ma and Dad wanted their books to go to charity too. It won’t work.

  I walk out into the hall and remember when Ma chose the paint. Mountain Sage out here, Irish Oatmeal in their bedroom, the master bathroom in Ice Blue Gloss. She gave me the samples from the paint store and I cut them out in little identical squares, playing the game of remembering which was which, knowing every color by its name.

  The carpets on the second floor are soft under my bare feet. The next room down is Amanda’s, a pale buttery yellow called Chardonnay on the walls, boxes of shoes still under the bed. Then my old room, now a spare, painted in the same color. Another bathroom, its cabinets full of towels and medicines and soaps. When I graduated high school I moved upstairs to the attic. Ma didn’t want me to at first because she thought it got too cold up there. But I insisted, and since there wasn’t a rule against it, she let me go ahead. My rebellions have always been small ones.

  I descend the stairs. On the ground floor there is the living room in front, then the dining room, both floored with long bare planks of hardwood, both with the swirling patterns lining the ceilings. In the living room is a fireplace, which works, though I have never built a fire in it. Behind me on the right is the bathroom, behind me on the left the kitchen.

  Under the stairs, there is the coat closet. Two days ago—was it only two days?—I hid there and put my hands in Dad’s rain boots. What I really wanted was the closet in their bedroom. I walk upstairs to look at it. I rub my cheek against the rough wool of a winter suit Dad hadn’t worn in years. He hated suits. I don’t know what Amanda put on him and on Ma, after. I didn’t see.

  I look down. On the floor of the closet are Dad’s dress shoes, probably the only wearable thing he hated more than suits. They smell of leather. Next to them are Ma’s bedroom slippers, the ones that always made her laugh. Years ago she told Dad she wanted marabou slippers for her birthday, so he took her wool slippers and sewed a strip of marabou across the toe. The slippers are gray-green cable-knit and the marabou is a frilly hot pink. A few feathers have been shed on the floor of the closet. When I touch the soft marabou I hear Ma laughing, even now. Ma’s laugh sounded exactly like spearmint bubble gum. Her voice was like regular spearmint, clean and cool, but the laugh was a gum bubble popping.

  I don’t know if there’s anywhere in here to hide the book. I look around. Their suitcases sit next to the bed. Amanda must have gotten them back somehow. No, I don’t want to think about that. Think about the window seat, the fireplace, the closet, the bureau. This fireplace doesn’t work and I don’t know if it ever has. Ma keeps a rectangular pot of bright red geraniums there instead. Watering them is part of my routine on Mondays and Thursdays.

  If I have to leave, what will my routine be then? I can’t even imagine.

  Amanda wants to sell this house with me still in it. I’ve never lived anywhere else, and can’t imagine any other home.

  Do no let her.

  Don’t let Amanda sell the house? That could be what the warning means. The warning won’t help me stop her—Amanda, we can’t sell the house because our dead grandmother said so—but it would still be nice to know what and who it is I’m supposed to be stopping.

  Need to stay focused. Hide the Normal Book.

  I tap my fingers on the mantel of the fireplace while I’m thinking. Thumb to pinky and back. One two three four five four three two one. I look down at the fireplace. It might work. I get down, move the geraniums aside, and peer up into the darkness. I can’t imagine Amanda will go digging around in here. I crouch inside the chimney and fill my lungs with air in case I need it, and reach my hand up.

  Three-quarters of the way around, my fingers find a loose brick. Excellent. I wiggle it loose and tease it out, setting it down gently on the red glazed tile around the base of the fireplace. Reddish dust the color of smoked paprika sprinkles down and settles on my shoulders and hair. Hold in the sneeze. I reach my fingers into the gap where the brick used to be. I need to know if the space is large enough for the Normal Book.

  It is, but—there’s something in there already.

  Holding myself steady with one hand, stretching and reaching up with the other, I stick two fingers into the space and draw out what’s there. An envelope. Not addressed, not sealed. Inside, a letter. There are no names but I know the handwriting. Scrawled, messy, almost unreadable.

  I need you to forgive me. You always tell me I have a great mind but sometimes it’s not so great. She Her It’s my fault and I can’t pretend it’s not. You say it’s okay but I don’t know. I can’t tell. Maybe if I tell you I’m sorry, if I take responsibility, you’ll truly forgive me. I love you too much not to say something.

  There isn’t a date on it, but there’s a yellowish tint to the paper, and the letter almost falls apart at the crease when I unfold it. It’s old, maybe ten or twenty or even thirty years. When did Dad need Ma to forgive him for something? And what was it? Who is the she, the her, crossed out? Another her. I don’t know who they are, and I don’t know how to find out.

  Then, it occurs to me, maybe I do.

  I saw Nonna. She told me I brought her. How did I do it? Thinking about the person clearly isn’t enough. Neither is food or drink. Dad’s scotch didn’t bring Dad, and Grandma Damson’s shortbread didn’t bring Grandma Damson. There’s something else to it. There has to be. If I could figure out what brings them, I could find out if they have the answers I want.

  Maybe they only come if they have a message. Nonna wanted to tell me not to
let someone do something. Don’t let—who? Amanda? She seems most likely. But how am I supposed to stop her from doing whatever she wants to do? Am I too late, has it already happened?

  Panic, panic, can’t panic. Think of food. Think of sugar. I am a sugar cube in cold water. I won’t dissolve. Precise edges. Made up of tiny, regular, secure parts. If the water were hotter I would worry, but it’s cold. I stay together. Precise. Clean. Surrounded, but whole.

  Okay. I need to cook. It’ll calm me down.

  I fold the letter and put it back in its envelope, and slip the envelope inside the front cover of the Normal Book. Then I tuck the book into the gap inside the chimney and slide the brick back into place. More paprika-colored dust falls on my shoulders. The pot of geraniums goes back too, making a perfect rectangle within a rectangle, settling into the spot where it belongs.

  Everything in its place, I head down to the kitchen and pull the step stool into position.

  On Ma’s side of the cabinet, all the way on the top shelf, is a box. I bring it down. It’s a small Japanese tea box, covered neatly in red-and-gold chrysanthemum paper, worn gray-black at the corners over time.

  These are Ma’s recipes, the ones she made for company, neatly copied in an identical hand. I think she had penmanship lessons. They do things like that in Georgia. The box is filled with identical cards, lined up like Confederate soldiers. When she taught me to cook, sometimes we used these cards, and sometimes cookbooks, and sometimes just things she knew from memory. I’ve taught myself a lot about cooking over the years, but Ma’s lessons were where it all started.

  Food has a power. Nonna knew that. Ma did too. I know it now. And though it can’t save me, it might help me, in some way. All I have besides food is grief. I close the glass doors over the cookbooks, protecting them from the heat and grease of kitchen air.

  There are two cards in the box in a handwriting that isn’t Ma’s. One is the recipe for Grandma Damson’s shortbread that Amanda wrote down, years ago. So neat and even. Dad always joked about that. He said I had the handwriting of a doctor, that I take after him. Took. Our family had two matched sets. Ma and Amanda with crisp, regal penmanship, Dad and me with illegible scrawls. The other card, clearly older, is labeled THE GEORGIA PEACH at the top. I read through the brief instructions. On the back of the card is only a name: Mrs. John Hammersmith.