by Jael McHenry
“That’s amazing!” says David, taking the plate from me. “You make it look so easy.”
“I love it,” I say. “So I learned it.” It’s an explanation that leaves a lot out. But I learned a long time ago that people don’t really want explanations. Ma taught me almost everything I know about cooking, but the omelet, I learned from Julia Child.
He leans against the kitchen wall to eat. He wolfs down the fragile envelope of egg.
When the plate is clean, he says, “Thank you. That hit the spot.”
“Do you want another?”
“I’ve abused your hospitality enough.”
“It’s not abuse!”
“I didn’t mean it literally,” says David. “But thank you. You don’t need to.”
“Just so you can see it again,” I say, and make him another. Heat the pan, drop the butter, shake. Swirl. Flip.
He says, “That’s amazing, how fast you are. I could never do that.”
“Of course you could. You just have to learn.”
He eats the second omelet more slowly. His eyes are on the plate and not my face, so I tell him everything. How to whisk the egg. How to heat the pan. How much butter to drop in and when. Most important, how to shake the pan to cook the egg nearly all the way through to the point of almost-doneness, without going too far. How to tip and roll so the omelet comes out curled just right on the plate. Julia makes them in about twenty seconds on the DVD, but that’s because she already has the eggs cracked and whisked and ready to go. There’s always a trick like that.
The front door bangs and Amanda’s voice calls, “Hey, what smells so good?”
“Omelet,” I yell. To David I say, “Do you know my sister?”
“No,” he says through a mouthful.
“Hey, Amanda, I’d like—” I’m saying as she walks in, and she stops short in the doorway with her hand on the sill.
“Excuse me, who are you?” she says, her voice sharp with acid.
“I think Ginny was about to introduce me,” he says. “I’m David. I’m—”
She interrupts him and doesn’t reach for his hand. “What are you doing in my kitchen? With my sister?”
“It’s not your kitchen, I made him an omelet, he was saying he doesn’t cook, he brought eggs,” I try to explain, but she’s not even looking at me.
“Back up, back up,” David says, and I almost do, but that’s not how he means it. “I’m Gert’s son, David.”
I say, “He delivers the groceries. The eggs got broken, so he brought new eggs.”
He says, “I’m really not sketchy. I swear.”
Amanda drops her hand from the doorframe and says, “I’m sorry. Let’s start over. I’m Amanda, Ginny’s sister.”
“Do you live here too?”
“Yes,” she says.
“No, you don’t,” I say.
“It’s a lovely home,” says David.
“Thank you,” says Amanda. “Do you and your wife live in the area?”
Nobody says anything.
She says, “Your ring. I assumed.”
David says, “There was an accident. Last year.” I hear the unsweetened chocolate again in his voice now, drying, bitter.
“I am so sorry,” says Amanda. “I didn’t know. I was living in California. Mom kept me up on some of the news, but—I am so sorry.”
David says, “You couldn’t know.” There’s more silence.
“Amanda, do you want an omelet?”
“No, thank you.”
Then I remember she just came back from lunch, so it was a dumb thing to say, but at least it was something. Ma said, Nature abhors a vacuum, and that goes double for conversation.
David says, “My mom sure does love your family. You know she won’t let anyone else clean this place?”
“Who else would?” I ask.
“She’s got a whole business,” he says. “Four employees. This is the only house she still cleans herself.”
“I didn’t know,” says Amanda. “Do you work for her too?”
“No. I do this as a favor. I’m not a full-time delivery boy.”
“Oh, what do you do?”
“Well, actually, I guess I’m between things right now. Right now I’m just a guy with a bike.”
We all trail off into silence again and this time I can’t think of a single thing to break it.
Eventually, David turns to me and says, “It was nice to see you. Thanks for the cooking lesson. Enjoy the eggs.”
“Thank you,” I say.
We all sort of shuffle toward the front door.
“Have a nice night,” he says.
“You too,” my sister and I say in unison.
Amanda opens the door and lets him out, like a fly.
Immediately after the door falls shut, she turns to me and says, “I can’t believe I am such a tool.”
“You’re not a tool.” I don’t know how she means it. A hammer? A saw?
“An idiot. That thing about his wife, and then, the job thing, geez. Sometimes I can’t say anything right.”
“Now you know how I feel.”
She doesn’t say anything so I sneak a look at her face, but she’s looking at me intently and I can’t make myself hold her gaze.
She goes on, “Well, it’s no fun. Anyway, I was all thrown. I come back home and you’re standing in the kitchen with a complete stranger. What was I supposed to think? You have no instinct about people at all. You’d let an axe murderer in and make him fettuccini alfredo.”
“That’s not true.”
“It practically is. I worry about you.”
“Stop worrying.”
She hisses, “I can’t.”
“Well, stop talking about it, at least.”
“Okay.”
She goes upstairs to pack some more. I rinse the pan out in the sink and swipe it with a towel. I rub away a few stubborn droplets and lean down to put the pan back. Then I rinse the spatula, dry it, and put it away in a drawer full of long-handled things. Everything in its place.
Amanda is wrong. I do have an instinct about people, and it tells me David is just fine. I wonder if he doesn’t cook because his wife did all the cooking until she died. I wonder what she was like. Like Ma, maybe, capable and in charge, always repeating rules and being protective. I felt smothered sometimes but I know Ma always tried to do what was right for me. One of her unsuccessful lessons in how to make and keep friends was Be a little mysterious. Of course I could never find the right level of mystery. If I asserted myself, she said, Don’t be too insistent, and if I hung back too much, it was Don’t be such a little wallflower. I preferred to think of myself as a cat. If I think of my behavior as cat behavior instead of people behavior, it pretty much always makes sense. Maybe that’s part of why I love Midnight. Maybe she reminds me of me.
Maybe it’s like David said. People who are naturally good at something think it’s easy. Ma was born charming so she couldn’t explain to me how to be that way. Amanda can’t explain people to me either. When we were kids we were each other’s best friend, but the older she got, the more she pulled away. I’m not good with Amanda, not anymore. I used to be. That was when we were little and she looked up to me. Now she thinks she knows better than I do. About everything. I wonder if Parker and Shannon are like us, the older sister teaching the younger sister what she knows. I wonder if things will change for them, like they’ve changed for us, over time.
When it’s time to go to sleep she makes up the bed in her old room. I hear her call her family to say good night. She still has an orange juice voice no matter who she’s talking to, but sometimes when she talks to the girls, it’s a lighter, softer voice, like orange juice cut with club soda.
I wait until it’s very late, and then go back to Ma and Dad’s room. It’s risky. Amanda might wake up. But I need this reassurance, and there’s only one way to get it.
I slip the Normal Book out of its hiding place in the chimney and make sure none of the paprika dust ha
s gotten on my clothes, then sit down on the window seat to read. I wish it were day outside. I’d prefer more light, but I don’t want to turn on a lamp. That might attract attention.
Cross-legged on the window seat, Midnight curled up in the doorway like a fat, useless security guard, I thumb through the book. Some of the cutouts are newspaper. Some are printouts. The earliest clippings are yellowed with age. I’ve been gathering them a long time. I cut them neatly in squares, and paste them in double columns down each page.
Dear Abby: I don’t normally ask for
help, but I’m really worried about my
He will miss his mother when she goes
to work, and may cry. This is normal
to some, but then again, normal to some
makes Caligula look like kindergarten
raised in a home where it was normal to
get beaten if you didn’t behave, so now
paralyzed, depressed, angry. Is this just
normal grief? A typical reaction of the
normal to blow off steam over a drink
or two after work. But my boss heard
nausea is normal in the first trimester. If
you resent your body right now, know
So, Aberrant in Aberdeen, quit
wondering if you’re “normal”! That’s
There are so many flavors of normal, it doesn’t matter which one I am. That’s what the Normal Book tells me. There really is no normal. After all the upheaval of the last week, after the funeral and the ghosts and my unreasonable sister and everything, it’s worth reminding myself. As strange as my life gets, it’s just my life. I’m still in it. Whatever happens, I’m going to have to find a way to get by. Hopefully, on my own. Because I don’t like the other options.
CHAPTER SIX
Mulled Cider
Amanda and I work in silence most of the next day. Since it won’t do me any good to refuse to cooperate, I come up with a new plan. I delay. I pack as slowly as I can. I think about each move before I make it and afterward I think about the move I just made. I fold everything neatly, much more neatly than I need to, folding and refolding to get everything absolutely right. I check every pocket, turning them inside out, slipping my fingers down into each corner to feel for anything left behind.
After my parents’ bureaus are empty, I try to start on the closet, but it feels different. The clothes in the drawers were just clothes. The clothes on hangers remind me of their bodies, as if my parents are still inside their clothes and I just can’t see their faces or hands. It’s very unsettling. So I soothe myself. It’s okay, it’s okay. Think of red velvet cake, as Ma made it. White flour sifting down like unmeltable snow, the basis for everything that follows. Blending, tinting, leavening. The soft, liquid batter firms as it bakes in the oven. Growing ever more solid. Rising, thickening, settling. Staying improbably red. Finish the cake with a thick sweet cream cheese frosting, so it all looks pure white again until you press the knife into it, exposing its red heart.
“Ginny,” says Amanda. “Are you listening?”
I say, “Yes,” because I am now.
She says, “Can you handle this?”
I stare at a lace collar that once lay against my mother’s neck and say, “Not right now.”
“Okay,” she says. “It’s all right. Tell you what, why don’t you go look through the boxes in my old room?”
“Okay.”
I turn away from the closet and go to Amanda’s old room. I pull the boxes out from under the bed into plain sight. A few old pairs of shoes, a box of T-shirts from camp, a small collection of stuffed animals. They are already sorted and just need to be labeled.
In her closet there is another unlabeled box, and I tug it out to start going through it. There are layers of construction paper and notebooks and homemade book covers with no books inside. Children’s drawings. Amanda’s drawings. Rainbows, unicorns, flowers. I lose interest halfway through. I write AMANDA KIDHOOD on the side and put it with the stack of boxes against the far wall. These are all things Amanda can take away with her. Whether we sell the house or not, these things don’t need to be here.
I should tell her again that I don’t want to sell the house. She didn’t want to talk about it yesterday, but at some point, we’ll have to. I have to confront her, and I have to figure out Nonna’s warning, and I have to make myself realize that Ma and Dad are not coming home. Any one of these things alone is enough to give me a stomachache. All together it’s more like a stomachache after a birthday party. Yellow cake and chocolate frosting and too many cups of sickly sweet punch. I never had my own birthday parties but I went to Amanda’s.
The Normal Book is hidden, the letter I found in the fireplace is hidden, is there anything else I need to hide? I go up to my room and count the envelopes of cash that Ma left for me. I realize I forgot to pay David for the groceries he brought. But he’ll come back in a few days and I can leave him extra money then. I tuck the envelopes in between the mattress and the box spring in the meantime. If Amanda finds them I can say I just wanted to keep them safe. And lecture her about respecting people’s privacy.
I walk down the stairs, slowly. As I near our parents’ room I don’t see or hear any sign of my sister. I look at their closet. It’s empty. She’s packed everything away. I take two steps back. Near the door she has a box of shoes. On top are Dad’s dress shoes and Ma’s slippers. I listen for Amanda to figure out where she is. A glass clinks, far off, and then I hear a soft thud like the refrigerator door closing. She must be in the kitchen. I take both pairs of shoes and put them back on the closet floor where they belong. Then I close the door.
Amanda is sitting at the dining room table, eating a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and drinking a glass of milk.
“Hey,” she says, looking up.
“Hey.”
“I guess I should have asked if you wanted to eat too.”
“No, I’m not hungry,” I say.
“You’re not dressed yet.”
“I’m dressed.”
“Pajamas are not dressed. Angelica’s coming later. No one’s going to buy the place with you lurking around in black pajamas like a ninja.”
I say, “Well, maybe that’s okay if no one wants to buy it, since I don’t want to sell it.”
“Not again,” she mumbles, almost to herself, but she wants me to hear her.
“It’s half mine,” I say. “I get a vote.”
“Let’s please just not do this right now. I don’t want to get in a big argument. Here’s a great question to get in the habit of asking yourself. It’s how I always make sure everything gets done. Whenever I have a free moment, I ask myself, could I be doing something useful?”
I think of Angelica, and remember what she said. “Yes, I could.”
First I go upstairs and change out of my pajamas as Amanda suggested. Then I go to work in the kitchen.
I don’t really need a recipe, but I pull down one of my favorite cookbooks anyway. It’s an awkwardly large, heavy old tome called Drinkonomicon, and as Dad used to say, anything not listed on its 738 pages isn’t worth drinking. I run my finger down the list of mulled cider ingredients and set to it.
The pot, the jug, the cutting board, first. Break the seal of the hard red plastic cap. I pour the cider into a tall pot and turn the burner up high. I hone the knife before slicing the orange into whisper-thin, windowpane slices. I pinch the spices out of their small glass jars. Whole cloves, stars of star anise. A cinnamon stick. A few black peppercorns. Lay the orange slices on top. Turn the heat down to a bare simmer, until the bubbles are only a suggestion around the edge of the pot.
Since I’m in here anyway looking at the spice shelf, I go through the jars to determine what I need the next time I place an order online. Cinnamon, definitely. Bay leaves. Some of the more interesting powdered chilies. Ancho, aleppo, chipotle. People think chilies are just chilies but they each have a completely distinctive heat. The sweet sear of habanero, the smoky bu
rn of chipotle, the tart green vegetal bite of jalapeño.
“Making yourself some cider?” Amanda says, looking down over the top of the pot.
“It’s for the smell. Angelica said the place should smell like cooking. Have some if you want.” I hold the ladle out to her.
“Don’t mind if I do,” she says, helping herself to a mugful. “It’s really sweet that you would do this. I’m so glad you took Angelica’s suggestion. Thanks.”
The doorbell rings.
When I see who comes in, I wish for the relatively inoffensive custard-skinned Warren. I look back, almost fondly, on his stupid suit.
Besides Angelica, there are two adults, and two kids, little boys whose age I can’t possibly estimate. They are older than Amanda’s girls and younger than teenagers. I take several steps back as soon as I see them. One is very loud. The other, even louder. They dash around the ground floor and I stand on the stairs in the hopes my body will block them from charging up to the second floor as well. Their parents don’t seem to make any effort to keep them in check. Confining them would be like confining race cars, weasels, tornadoes.
Angelica claps her hands and says, “Okay, everyone? Let me show you this gorgeous parlor to start with! This way!” Most of the family tracks her, but the mother comes my way.
“You grew up here, right?” says the mom. I back up to keep a decent distance between us. The heavy carved banister of the stairs works as a natural barrier. I grip its solid bulk with both hands. I should always talk to people with a stair banister between us. I might lead a happier life.
I answer her. “Yes.”
“Was it a great place to grow up?”
“Sure,” I say. “I broke my leg falling down the stairs, but it was just the one time.”
“Oh.” She asks, “But the neighborhood’s safe, right?”
“Yes. There aren’t nearly as many muggings as there used to be.”
Suddenly there’s a clatter and a howl, and it turns out that one of the children has burned himself reaching into the pot of hot cider, and the other one turned the heat up instead of down, making the situation worse, and everything’s high-pitched howling wails and chatter and shouting, so I just stay out of the way at my perch on the stairs, and everyone retreats quickly, and I’m left alone, thank goodness. I walk into the quiet kitchen. And after all that no one even turned the stove off. I extinguish the flame and ladle myself a mug of cider, then leave the rest to cool so I can put it in the fridge for later.