The Chicken Sisters

by Kj Dell'Antonia

  Amanda sank down farther into the chair and stretched her legs out. Sabrina had that right—and maybe it wasn’t so bad that she knew Mae if Sabrina and Amanda had so much in common.

  “In the book she just sounds so nice and together, and she kind of is, but—” How to explain Mae? It was harder than it sounded. “She’s, like, messy inside. I mean, she probably wouldn’t want me to say that, but it’s true.”

  Sabrina nodded. “Isn’t everybody? My sister hates for people to know that about her too. I’m supposed to be the messy one.”

  It was nice to talk to someone who really got it. “She knows how everybody should live their lives, just like she knows how everybody should keep everything clean,” Amanda said. “It was okay when we were little. But now, we hardly ever talk, and when we do, it’s like she doesn’t know I grew up.”

  When they were little—Mae was Amanda’s rock, back then. Amanda had been easily eight or nine before she realized that in most families, it was the mom who made lunches, who got out clothes for the next day or made sure you did your homework. Barbara did none of those things, but Mae did, so well that Amanda had never felt the lack. It was just that Mae never stopped doing them.

  Sabrina was gazing up into her face, smiling encouragingly. “I bet she has ideas about your job, right? Mine’s always saying how I could do better for myself. Every job I get, she puts down.”

  Amanda wondered what Sabrina’s sister could do that she thought was so much better than Food Wars, but at least she understood the attitude. “That’s exactly it! And it’s not like she’s perfect. Everybody here knows it, too. She used to smoke, and she got good grades but she always kind of annoyed the teachers. She always acted like she knew better than anyone else. And then she went to college in Dallas, and then New York, and it just got worse.”

  “That’s the first time I met her,” said Sabrina. “We had a dancing gig together, when we were both first getting started.”

  Amanda looked at her, surprised. Really? Maybe that was what Sabrina’s sister was giving her a hard time about. At least that made some sense. “Seriously? You knew her at”—oh gosh, what would be the right way to say it?—“that place in Dallas? The, uh, gentlemen’s club?”

  “The what?”

  Maybe that wasn’t the way people said it. Especially if they worked there. “Um, the exotic dance place? The Yellow Rose, or something like that?”

  Sabrina stared at Amanda for a second, then hooted. “Wait! No. Seriously? Mae worked as a stripper? No.” She leaned on the desk and laughed, a huge laugh that told Amanda that her earlier laughs had been nothing but polite, a laugh that left her wiping her eyes as she turned to Gordo. “I met her at MTV, we were both in a video, and then we auditioned to be VJs. Not”—she laughed again—“the Yellow Rose of Texas. Oh man, that’s unbelievable. Seriously? Gordo, did you hear that? Tell me you’re dying here.”

  Gordo stepped out and stretched, and Amanda suddenly realized he’d been behind the camera for some time, not twitching the lights or setting the scene. “I’m dying,” he said, plainly sarcastic.

  “Oh shit, you don’t know her.” Sabrina wiped her eyes again. “Well, maybe you will. If she comes, and now, oh man, I really hope she comes. And then you’ll see. Oh, that’s a total crack-up. Mae Moore, a stripper? Well, you’ve fired the first salvo in the Food Wars big-time, Amanda. Family-Friendly Frannie’s versus—what—Hot-Mama Mimi’s?” She laughed again, but for Amanda, this was suddenly not very funny.

  “Wait, you weren’t recording that, were you?” she asked. They would have said they were filming, right? They would have asked her questions about Frannie’s and chicken. “You can’t use that. That wasn’t about chicken or anything. I thought we were just talking.”

  Sabrina smiled, her face still full of laughter. “Your first on-camera interview,” she said. “I could tell you might be nervous, so I eased you into it.”

  Wait, really? She’d said a thousand things she would not have said if she’d realized they were taping. Or probably not, anyway. About Mae, yeah, but also about getting tired of chicken, and Frannie’s, and— What had she said, anyway? Shit. “Wait—I didn’t—I mean, especially about Mae. She was putting herself through college, we literally didn’t have any money—and I wouldn’t want Nancy to hear that I get tired of chicken, because I don’t, not really.”

  She could have cried. This was awful. How were they going to win and get people here if they heard her saying stuff like that about Frannie’s? And Mae—everybody knew, but she might be mad, and Amanda didn’t need that. If Mae even showed.

  Gordo, still fiddling with the camera, spoke. “The stripper thing is probably too much, to start off with,” he said.

  Sabrina sighed. “I know,” she said, and then she looked at Amanda. “Oh honey, don’t worry. He’s right. It’s just funny to me because I know her. You didn’t say anything else bad. That part about her being messy inside—that’s very perceptive. If she comes and you’re competing, that might be nice to work in. Other than that, it’s all just B roll.”

  If she comes, and you’re competing— Somehow, in all the e-mailing and the flurry of back-and-forth texting, it had never occurred to her that she would be competing with Mae. She couldn’t compete with Mae. No one could, but least of all Amanda. Every nerve she’d managed to set aside as she and Sabrina talked was back, and then some.

  Sabrina seemed to know what she was thinking. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re going to be great, and this is going to be a fabulous Food Wars. It’s totally different from what Mae’s used to. She’ll be her, and you’ll be you, and you’ll be wonderful and relatable and the audience will love you. This is what we do—we show them who you really are. And we make a fun rivalry for the audience. It’s no big deal.”

  Amanda wanted to believe her. And if Gordo said they’d leave the part about the Yellow Rose out—of course they would. Still, she wished she hadn’t said it. She didn’t say anything else now, and Sabrina smiled and patted her leg.

  “It really is okay,” she said. “Now I’m going to talk to your mother-in-law, and we’ll start off the night here, and then I’m going to go over to Mimi’s and see just how right you are.” She got up and, before Amanda could stand too, bent over her, so close Amanda could smell her perfume, a faintly citrusy floral, a little cloying. Her smooth hands lifted Amanda’s hair off her neck, and Sabrina held the thick brown mass up speculatively, with a look back at Gordo. “But first, I was wondering. How would you feel about cutting your hair?”

  MAE

  When Mae boarded the first flight out of LaGuardia, she’d looked exactly as she meant to when she arrived in Merinac. She was smartly but simply and practically dressed in a hot pink V-neck T-shirt tucked into a full khaki skirt and paired with a cloth belt she wouldn’t have to take off for security: classic, nontrendy clothes that would work as well when they landed in Joplin to get the rental car as they did stepping into the cab in Brooklyn, a moment that she had, of course, documented and Instagrammed. She had all the markers of a hometown girl made good, including two appealing and generally well-behaved children, copies of her book to share if anyone was interested, and a great answer to anyone asking “So, what have you been up to?”

  Her plan—to bring a little Brooklyn to Food Wars and Chicken Mimi’s—was rock solid. Her followers loved fresh local foods. They valued authenticity and originality. They wanted to spend more time with family. She knew all this because profiling your target market was Social Media Brand Building 101. They might like the Chicken Mimi’s part of her history. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before.

  Well, she did, actually. There were very good reasons for keeping this particular piece of the past in the past, but if she couldn’t do that, she could at least make sure it was worth it. But after two delayed flights, including a three-hour wait on the boiling-hot tarmac in Chicago and an additional two hou
rs in the rental car with two cranky kids, she felt rumpled and exhausted, more like a dishrag than a returning heroine. Jessa had politely invoked their agreement that she have the evening off, so Mae dropped her at the hotel on the outskirts of town before heading toward Mimi’s. The kids dozed in the back seat, which Mae knew she would regret when bedtime came, but she couldn’t bring herself to rouse them.

  There was a moment every time Mae made the drive into Merinac, when she knew she was almost home. She’d taken this same highway home from Dallas and SMU all through college, and then, later, from the airport in Joplin. And every time, when she saw the exit, it sank in: Here we go again.

  Here we go with that girl of Barbara’s has always been trouble and thinks she’s too good for this town. Here we go with people who thought they had her pegged when she was in grade school and hadn’t rethought it (or anything else) since. Mae had armor she wore in this town, and she didn’t even think of it as a metaphor.

  Once past the truck stop, every turn meant something. The exit, past the QuikTrip. The shortcut to the dam, the stoplight at the intersection by the high school, the turn-off for Kenneth’s house, the new road that had replaced the dirt cut-through to the strip mall with the Albertsons. As she turned down Main Street toward Mimi’s, Ryder started to stir.

  “I go potty,” Ryder said.

  “No problem, sweetie. We’re almost there.”

  “No, I go potty now, now, Mommy, now—”

  “One minute.” They were turning into Mimi’s. “One minute, really, less, I’m parking.”

  “Now!” Ryder was squirming, trying to get to his own seat belt while Madison leaned over from her booster seat and pushed his hands away. “Now, now, now,” he roared, and then, “Oh.”

  “Ryder!” Madison screamed. “Ryder, that stinks! Ryder, eww.”

  Plane travel had not agreed with Ryder. Mae acted fast, without exactly knowing what she planned to do next, slamming the car into park and undoing her own seat belt as she opened her door, “It’s okay, Ryder. Hold still. Ryder! No!”

  Ryder had put a hand under his bottom and pulled it out, obviously wet and dark, then slid from the seat, frantic, and wiped it on the back of the driver’s seat.

  “Mommy! I’m dirty, get it off, get it off, Mommy!”

  As she tried to pull him from the rental car while touching him as little as possible, he plunged his hand into her hair, trying to hang on. She swung him around into her body to get his hand away and found the front of her skirt and the bottom of her shirt in nearly as bad shape as everything Ryder was wearing. “Ryder! No! Hold still!” She put him down, fast, on his feet.

  “I’m dirty! Mommy, clean me. I need new pants, Mommy. New pants. Not these pants. I don’t like these pants.”

  “He’s going to need a new car seat, too,” Madison said sadly.

  Or something. Damn. She had clothes—with her one clean hand, she carefully lifted the smaller of their two suitcases out of the hatchback—but she couldn’t clean this up without water, and lots of it. This was how she’d be making her return entrance to Mimi’s, then. Covered in shit and with a kid in even worse shape, and another kid hopping along helpfully narrating the whole thing.

  “Mommy! How will we clean the car, Mommy? Will Grandma help? I’m going to tell Grandma Ryder pooped in the car.” Slowly, because Mae couldn’t put a hand on Madison and move her along, they made their way around the back of the restaurant, skirting the patio area and walking around behind the fence that separated it from the parking lot. Even with her attention on the kids, Mae could see that things looked worse than she had expected. A lot worse. The grass hadn’t been mowed, and clearly more than one patron had chosen to dump trash back here rather than in the trash cans on the side of the patio. Her optimism about this whole plan was disappearing fast. At least the door to the kitchen was propped open.

  She gestured to Madison to stay behind her and leaned her head into the door, carefully holding both of Ryder’s hands so that he wouldn’t touch anything.

  “Mom?”

  The guy at the fryer was easily six three, as tall as Jay but with twice his bulk. He wore a black T-shirt, shorts with a white apron tied around his waist, and Mario Batali–style orange clogs. There was no sign of her mother. Instead, clearly framed by the pass-through window into the serving area, she saw the last person she wanted to see at this moment: Sabrina Skelly, Food Wars host. The convertible and the fancy van in the crowded parking lot suddenly made sense; how had she not realized they would beat her here? She’d turned back toward her car when Madison started to push past her.

  “I want fries!” Mae hip-checked her daughter, still not wanting to touch her, and Madison fell to the floor dramatically, howling. “That hurt! Fries!” she said. “You said fries and chicken and I want fries and chicken and where is Grandma?”

  Her shouts caught the attention of the cook, who started across the kitchen before cursing and turning back to the fryer, pulling out the chicken, plating it quickly, and grabbing two of the paper orders off the row in front of him.

  Another woman Mae didn’t recognize leaned into the pass-through window from behind the counter. Sabrina had disappeared from view. “Can I help you?” the woman asked, but the man spoke over her, sliding the plated chicken through the window as he did.

  “Door’s on the other side,” he said over his shoulder. “This is the kitchen. Go around.”

  “I know this is the kitchen,” snapped Mae. “I know where the door is, too. I’m looking for my mother—Barbara. Barbara!” she repeated loudly, knowing it was hard to hear over the fryer but suspecting the man was ignoring her anyway. Who the hell did he think he was—and who was he, anyway? “My mother! Barbara! Is she here?” Mae cast a frantic look toward the door that separated the kitchen from the dining room. Had Sabrina heard her?

  “You must be Mae, then,” the cook said, turning fully around. His expression was hard to read, but Mae thought he looked amused. “Finally. Your mom stuck around a long time waiting for you before she went home.” He put out a hand. “Andy.”

  Damn him, he had been messing with her. He knew who she was. And Barbara went home? What the hell? Before Mae could react, Sabrina Skelly appeared in the door that connected the kitchen to the counter area, her face a perfect expression of delight and excitement, trailed by the inevitable camera. “Mae! Mae Moore!” She rushed forward, clearly ready to embrace Mae, and Mae frantically backed away from them both, holding up her hands.

  “I really can’t,” she said. She pointed at her son, and she could see from Sabrina’s face that the smell was telling its tale.

  Andy turned to Sabrina and her camera, grinning cheerfully. “Kid shit his pants,” he said, and Sabrina cast the dismayed look of the childless at Ryder while Mae nodded, cursing the choice to leave Jessa at the Travelodge. She would have paid any amount of money to hand Ryder off and greet Sabrina gracefully, setting a professional tone for the next few days.

  “We just need to clean up a little,” Mae said. The camera turned to her, and she lowered her hands and tried to look as if this were just a little incident, instead of the full-blown stinker that was painfully obvious to everyone present. Ryder, though, had other plans. “We got to clean off the POOP,” he declared, and started to march himself into the kitchen.

  Mae gave in and picked him up, holding him almost as though there was nothing wrong. “You got it,” she said, smiling pleasantly at the camera. She should laugh; she knew she should. Just another mom dealing with the mess. But Mae Moore didn’t do mess, and the probably forced-looking smile was all she could manage. “Y’all excuse us, okay?” Oh God. Y’all? What was she doing? She had to get away.

  Andy pointed to Madison. “She better wait out here,” he said. “The office is small.”

  “I know it’s small,” Mae started, her frustration with him and with the whole situation creeping into her voice
again, and she thought she saw him grin. “Come on, Madison.” Anything to get away from Sabrina and the camera.

  “Suit yourself, then,” he said. “Or I’ve got French fries.” He shook a few onto a plate and held them out to Madison, who looked up at her mother. Too annoyed to be grateful for the favor, she shrugged.

  “Go ahead, honey,” she said. “Ryder and I will be a while.”

  “I want fries!”

  “I’ll save you some, Rydie,” said Madison, looking questioningly at Andy, who nodded. “You go with Mommy.”

  Sabrina knelt down to Madison, and Mae had to let whatever exchange was going to happen, happen. Even Sabrina—and Mae had known her and known of her for years, and she wouldn’t put much past her—wouldn’t mess too much with a six-year-old without her parents around. Especially with the camera there, Mae couldn’t hold off on changing a minute longer. They did look like good French fries, she noticed. When she’d last worked in the kitchen, they’d been frozen, but those looked freshly cut. Barbara hadn’t mentioned hiring a cook, which was so unlike her that Mae could hardly wrap her head around it, but at least the guy seemed to have persuaded Barbara to make some changes.

  Fifteen disgusting minutes later, Mae was ready for her Food Wars debut. In the kitchen another man, a smaller one, was teaching Madison to spray the dishes and slide them through the commercial dishwasher while Sabrina and her camera looked on, cooing admiration and encouragement. “Thank you, Zeus,” Madison said. “Mommy, look!”

  Mae must have looked surprised, because the woman—young, pretty, cheerful—who was doing the serving behind the counter heard her, laughed, and introduced herself. Angelique, she said, and the dishwasher was Zeus. “He’s really Jesús,” she said, pronouncing it the Spanish way, “but the first cook he worked with called him Zeus, and it stuck.”