The Kitchen Daughter

by Jael McHenry

  I can picture Greg Davis—she brought him to the house once that summer—but I don’t mention it. I don’t know what she’s trying to tell me, but I know what she doesn’t want to hear.

  “He’s buried under years of details,” she says, talking faster, “all the things I did and had to do, paying bills, for years, figuring out how to get our security deposit back when we moved to a new apartment, the little things like making reservations on our anniversary, the big things like deciding on a hospital to give birth, the time we had to drive in a snowstorm to get to Brennan’s parents’ house by Christmas and how scared I was and how sure I was we were going to drive into a ditch and die, I mean, it’s thousands of things, it’s millions of things.”

  She picks up a notebook in each hand and says, “You know what all this tells me?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve changed,” she says. “A lot. Getting older, getting married, being a mom, moving from house to house, all that has changed me. I’ve grown up.”

  “I know.”

  “You haven’t,” she says.

  I’m stunned for a moment, then I say, “That’s not true.”

  She says, “It’s not your fault. I see that. Mom and Dad took care of things so you didn’t have to. You live here and it’s all so comfortable. And the question is, can you even be an adult? Because you didn’t grow up. You’ve never had to.”

  “I am grown up!”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes!” I’m done being stunned. I’m angry.

  “A person who hides in a closet is not a grown-up,” she says. “That’s not normal.”

  “Just because it’s not what you would do doesn’t mean it’s not normal.”

  “Grown-ups finish college,” she says.

  “You didn’t,” I snap back.

  “Because I got pregnant! That’s not the same thing at all!”

  “Then why’d you bring it up?”

  “Whatever. My plan got derailed because real things happened to me. Real things. Nothing real ever happened to you because Mom wouldn’t let it.”

  I yell, “Do you think I wanted that? I hated that!”

  “Bullshit,” says Amanda. I have never heard her swear.

  I’m so furious I realize I’m starting to lose control, and I can’t do that, especially because Amanda will just assume that means she’s right. That I’m not a grown-up if I can’t even handle an argument. I know I can’t slap her so I slap one of the boxes, it makes a loud sound, I know I’m about to break apart.

  I focus on food. I need it.

  I pick the slick nuttiness of sesame oil. I don’t know any other words for what sesame oil tastes like. It tastes like toasted. It tastes like brown. A drop of any oil on the tongue will spread and slide, except sesame oil. Canola, sunflower, grapeseed, olive, they all slide. Sesame oil stays where you put it.

  “Don’t you have anything to say?” she says.

  I say, “Yes. No matter how much you push me, I am not going to any doctor. A lawyer, maybe.”

  “What for?”

  I work hard on keeping my voice soft, keeping the anger out of it. “This house is half mine,” I tell her. Logic is all I have. “Legally. And if you insist on trying to sell it, I will make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “It’s half mine too,” she says.

  “Yes. Only half. Not all.”

  “Yeah, exactly half. That’s how things work. We’re supposed to be equal, even if we’re not.”

  “We’re equal,” I say.

  “Yeah,” she sighs, tossing the notebooks back in the box. “We’re equal. You know what? I have two little girls who depend on me for everything. I had friends, really good friends, back in Los Angeles. But I wanted my girls to know their grandparents. Dad was retiring, I knew they’d both have time on their hands. So I talked Brennan into getting transferred back to the East Coast. I gave up that life to come back here and then the rug got pulled out from under me. They died, Ginny.”

  She slams the lid onto the box.

  “I know you’re sad,” I start, but she holds up her palm.

  “Don’t even try,” she says. “You don’t know how. You don’t have a clue what it’s like for me. Did you get the call that they were dead? Were you the one who made all the arrangements? Headstones? Flowers? Coffins? Did you have to go and identify their bodies?”

  She looks at me and I know she wants an answer and I look at the cardboard box and give her the only one that’s true. “No.”

  “No! That wasn’t you! It was me. You, you’re standing here helpless with no one but your stupid cat in this big empty house and I am your sister and you can’t even look me in the face when you talk to me and you’re saying we’re equal? You’re saying we get to go halfsies? Bullshit, equal. I’m leaving. You’re on your own.”

  I chase her down the stairs, but I don’t know what to say to her. I’m angry and scared and a lot of other things.

  At the front door she says, “And don’t think I haven’t noticed. They’re not coming back, Ginny. They’re not going to need their shoes.”

  Instead of slamming the door she leaves it hanging open, and I watch her get smaller and smaller as she goes down the street, cold air blowing in around me.

  Then I realize she didn’t even mention the e-mail I sent her, with the list of symptoms, asking, Shannon? Which might make her angry but I can’t imagine her any angrier than she already is.

  My sister hates me. She’s right. I didn’t do anything, I never do anything. I’m helpless. Maybe I do have a syndrome. Maybe I am not normal.

  My vision’s going black, which doesn’t usually happen unless I’m being physically threatened, but no time to analyze now I just rush inside, upstairs, the closet, the shoes, the dark. Sesame oil, sesame oil, sesame oil. Think of everything wonderful made with sesame. Tahini, therefore hummus. Benne seed wafers. Cold sesame noodles. Pasteli. Halvah. Creamy and shattering all at once. Grainy but round. A contradiction. I lose myself inside the thought of food, go in as deep as I can go, retreating from the light and the world and my sister’s fury.

  ….

  WHEN I AM calmer I step out into the light and let my eyes readjust. I look back into the closet, at the shoes. That’s one thing Amanda’s right about. I don’t just put the shoes back in the closet so I can put my hands in them when I’m retreating from the world. I like seeing them there, imagining my parents’ feet stepping into them. All these boxes don’t matter if I can just make contact with the shoes. It may not be logical to the rest of the world but it makes sense to me.

  But I can’t force everything into the arrangement I’d like. I can’t use denial to make everything simple. I’m furious that Amanda thinks I’m no better than a child, but I also can’t imagine life without my sister. With no family at all. She’s all I have left. But it’s more complicated than that. My family is dead, but I can bring them back, at least for a short time, through their recipes. I tell myself that power would confuse anyone. I don’t know why I have it, but I do. Something about the way I cook their recipes calls to them. I tell myself it doesn’t mean I’m crazy, or not normal, or that I have a syndrome. I’m flawed. I never said I wasn’t.

  Difficult, Ma called me. It cuts both ways. Difficult for her to deal with me, sure, but difficult for me too. Difficult to feel like I’m always a little bit on the outside. Difficult to launch myself into activities everyone else seems to take for granted like a school day, a lecture, a lunchroom, knowing that I might have a reaction I can’t control.

  Difficult, but not impossible. I am not impossible.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Chicken Soup

  When the phone rings later, without any hello or anything, Amanda says, “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said.” “What did I say?” It’s not that I don’t remember. In a sense I remember too well, I remember everything I said to her and everything she said to me. That’s not normal. You don’t know how. Their bodies. Bullshit.

  Aman
da says, “I want to give you a name.”

  “I have a name.”

  “Someone else’s name,” she says. “Someone you can go to.”

  Now I think I know what she’s talking about. “A lawyer?”

  “Why not,” she says. “You need someone to look after your interests. I’ve been thinking a lot about that. This turned into a big fight and it doesn’t need to be. I meant what I said. I really think we should be sticking together.”

  She’s not quite making sense, but no one does all the time.

  “So you’ll go?”

  “To a lawyer? Sure.”

  “Here’s the name and address,” she says, and rattles it off. “I made an appointment for you. Four o’clock.”

  “Today?”

  “No time like the present,” she says. She is biting off the ends of her words. I think I know what this means. She’s not happy. But right now it’s not her happiness I care about. It’s mine.

  “Thanks.”

  Amanda says, “Well, I just want us to get along. I want you to figure out what you want. And I guess maybe I haven’t been taking that into account. So, you get things figured out, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  THE OFFICE IS on Broad Street, not far from the Kimmel Center. I walk straight along Spruce. It’s the most familiar way, the most familiar street. I could get there just as easily on Locust, and that route would take me past the community garden that Ma loved so much, but I don’t turn. Instead, when I get to Broad, I pause and look up the street toward City Hall. I love that building. All bizarre and lumpy and way too huge. From one direction it’s a big square behemoth. From another, an oddly slender tower. It is both things, mashed together. And at night the clock has a glowing yellow face. Right now, the clock is just the same color as the rest of the tower. And William Penn is facing away from me, northward.

  It’s time. I go to the address Amanda gave me. I take the elevator up to the eighth floor, practicing. I’m here to see Ms. Stewart. I have a four o’clock appointment. This won’t be hard.

  But I notice that the nameplate on the door says Dr. Stewart, not Ms. Stewart, and if I weren’t already in the process of pushing the door open … but then it’s too late, because I’m looking the receptionist square in the eye. It’s almost a physical pain.

  I look down.

  I say, “There’s some kind of mistake, I’m sorry.”

  She says, “Are you Ms. Selvaggio? Her four o’clock?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please, just go right through that door.”

  I don’t want to. I want to run.

  “Please,” says the receptionist again, politely. “Right through that door.”

  So I do what she says. Authority really screws with my head.

  I expect a cold, clinical, all-white doctor’s office, but apparently, Dr. Stewart is not that kind of doctor. The walls are warm beige, like sugar cookies. The lighting is gentle. There’s an overstuffed chair, and a more streamlined leather one. This is much worse than a regular doctor. Much worse.

  “Hi, Ms. Selvaggio? It’s great to meet you.” Gray pants with barely visible stripes, an open-necked shirt. Round-toed shoes.

  Dr. Stewart says, “I know your sister well.”

  “I bet,” is all I can manage. I can’t tell if her shoes are high heels. The toes are all I can see. I keep my eyes on them.

  “Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

  “There’s been a mistake,” I say. I wish I thought it was a mistake. “Amanda told me you were a lawyer. That’s why I came to see you. But you’re not a lawyer, are you?”

  “No. I’m a psychiatrist. I think you know that.”

  “I saw the sign. I’m not stupid.”

  “That would be judging language. I didn’t say that.”

  “Not in those words, no.”

  “Okay, that’s okay.” She gestures at the soft, deep chair. “Since you’re here anyway …?”

  “No.” I stay on my feet.

  “You sound angry.”

  “You’d be angry too.”

  “You’re right,” she says. “I probably would. But I’d try to keep an open mind.”

  “My mind is open,” I say. “Wide open.” I sit down, just to show her it doesn’t scare me.

  She has skinny fingers that pluck at her collar. “But you don’t want to talk to me. Even though there are people who care about you, who think it’s the right thing for you. Why? You have nothing to lose.”

  “Nothing to gain, either.” It’s a reflex.

  “Do you really think that’s true?”

  “I have to,” I say, suddenly aware I’m whispering.

  “Your sister says you don’t like people.”

  “My sister is a liar.”

  “You do like people?”

  “Well—no—that’s not what she lied about.”

  “So she told the truth in this respect. You don’t like people.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I don’t.”

  “Well, why not?”

  I consider it, and my answer surprises me. “Because I never know what they’re thinking, that’s why.”

  “You could learn. Figure out how people do it, read the signs.”

  “I’ve tried, actually.”

  “Tell me more about that.”

  “No.”

  “Well, I can imagine. It must be frustrating.”

  “You have no idea,” I say, and have to try to pull myself back. I’m on the verge of getting truly furious. It’s a shame that anger is pretty much the only emotion I can identify in myself for sure. A few black freckles swim at the edge of my vision but they pop and vanish like bubbles. I sink back in the overstuffed chair and it surrounds me. It looked soft but it feels firmer than it looks. I think of peppercorns in a mortar and pestle, grinding around in a circle until they finally yield and crack.

  Dr. Stewart says, “Maybe I do.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Ginny, one of the hardest things about Asperger’s is the isolation. But that’s in your power to change. You can do something about it.”

  “Pills? Brain magnets?” I remember what I saw on the Internet. It didn’t sound pleasant.

  “That’s what some people choose to do, yes. But you don’t have to choose that. You have options.”

  “Hey,” I say. “Hey! I don’t even have it. Why are you assuming I have it just because my sister says I do? My sister is a proven liar. She lied to get me here.”

  “I don’t want that to affect how you view me. I didn’t know that.”

  “But she told you I have a problem and you took her word for it. That’s lousy medicine. I don’t think you’re very good at your job, Dr. Stewart.”

  She says, with lots of space between the words, “Ginny, it would be premature of me to diagnose you. But just talking to you, I can see that you aren’t meeting my eyes. That’s a key symptom.”

  I look her in the eyes and it hurts but I do it so I can say, “I do not have symptoms because I do not have a disease.”

  “Your sister is scared for you.”

  “My sister wants to control me.” And take my home away and probably all my money too, but I know I don’t need to say everything I’m thinking.

  “I don’t think that’s the case.”

  I say, “Well, I’ve known her longer than you have.”

  The doctor plucks at her collar some more and says, “I just want you to know that there’s help for you if you want it. What we’re seeing now with younger children is if we start encouraging them to participate, to socialize, that they don’t put up these barriers—”

  I cut her off. “So if I had it, and I don’t, but if I did, you’re saying it’s too late for me anyway? Great motivation, Doc.”

  “No, no, I didn’t say that. It’s just, that’s when patterns get set, and probably by the time you were seven or eight you’d already developed your own understanding of what was normal. And—”

  “Normal” makes me
think of it. “Seven or eight?”

  “Around then, yes.”

  “So, Shannon is still young enough to do this—what are you talking about, socializing?”

  “Oh, Amanda’s never thought that Shannon has Asp—” She stops in the middle of the word. I feel a surge of pride. She should have pretended she didn’t know who Shannon was at all. For once, for a moment, I know what it’s like to have what the advice columnists call the upper hand. It doesn’t mean anything, but it helps, just for a second.

  Then she says, “We’re just talking about you, Ginny, and how I can help you. You can work on understanding what people are thinking. I’m sure you feel lonely. Especially with your parents gone.”

  “They’re not gone.” Shit. “It feels like they’re with me, I mean, since I live in the house. With everything of theirs still there. I know they’re dead, of course. Anyway, I don’t feel lonely.” I qualify it in my mind to make it true. Not right now. Not every day.

  “Maybe you could tell me some of what you’re feeling, then.”

  “Maybe,” I say, crossing my arms deliberately, “you’re just trying to sucker me into staying here longer and talking to you longer so you can report back your conclusions or whatever to my conniving sister.”

  “I’m not going to report anything to her at all,” says Dr. Stewart. “This conversation is between you and me.”

  If that’s how she’s going to play it, then I will too. “So tell me,” I say. “How would my parents have known? Say I was five years old. How would my parents know that I had this syndrome? What would I have acted like?”

  She says, “Certainly that’s an age when a neurotypical child would be socializing, reaching out, learning to interact with other children. While an Aspergian child is more likely to withdraw, be private.”