The Chicken Sisters

by Kj Dell'Antonia

  Sabrina motioned to the camerawoman, who nodded and aimed. No one said anything. Something about this didn’t feel right. Amanda’s heart began to pound, and the sweat on her face and arms felt cold even in the sun. Should she ask again? Say something else? What was this? Mae glanced at Sabrina, and Amanda thought her sister looked a little uncertain, but then Mae—still wearing her cute skirt, of course—walked up to Amanda and faced her, arms crossed over her chest.

  “Andy tasted the chicken,” Mae said. “The Frannie’s chicken. And it’s Mimi’s chicken. What the hell, Amanda?”

  “What?” Amanda stared blankly at her sister.

  “The chicken. Frannie’s chicken. We know it’s Mimi’s recipe, Amanda. Did you think no one would notice? Seriously?”

  “What are you talking about? Of course it’s not Mimi’s recipe. Nancy made that chicken same as she always makes it.” Amanda crossed her own arms over her chest, then uncrossed them. This wasn’t an argument. This was just—she didn’t know what this was, or why Sabrina was filming it.

  “No, she didn’t,” Mae said, “It’s exactly the same seasoning as Mimi’s, and not the way Nancy always makes it. Frannie’s chicken used to be way different. Now it’s just like Mimi’s, which means that you took the recipe, Amanda. You must have taken a picture of it when you were in the kitchen with Andy. It was down off the wall when I came in. It’s the only way.”

  “That’s— I— What? That doesn’t even make any sense, Mae.” Amanda looked at Andy, then at Sabrina, which was a mistake, because Sabrina was right in front of the camera. Andy was staring at the ground now, but he looked serious. Mae looked serious. The camera looked serious.

  “There is no recipe for Frannie’s chicken,” Amanda said slowly. “Nancy makes it the way Frank made it and he made it the way his father made it and he made it the way Frannie made it. I don’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Maybe you didn’t before, but this time you did. You stole Mimi’s recipe when you were in Mimi’s, and now the chicken tastes exactly the same.”

  What? Amanda kept looking from one face to the other, waiting for someone to laugh. How could the chicken be the same? Was Mae making this up just to mess with her? “How would you even know what Frannie’s chicken tastes like?” Amanda asked. “You’ve never tasted it. Until today, apparently.”

  “Andy’s tasted it,” Mae said. “Maybe you thought nobody could tell, because you don’t eat chicken, but Andy tried Frannie’s chicken before he even worked at Mimi’s. And then right when he started. And it was different then. Really, really different.” Mae looked at Andy, who was still staring at the ground, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere but here, a sentiment Amanda wholeheartedly agreed with.

  He took a breath and looked at the camera, not Amanda. “It’s the same recipe,” he said. “Before I took the job at Mimi’s, I ate fried chicken everywhere. I studied it. And Frannie’s had a totally different flavor profile. Kind of a surprising one, actually. It was quite notably different. And now it’s exactly like Mimi’s.”

  That night at Mimi’s, he’d taken her hand and drawn her in, and Amanda had gone. She’d felt welcome, relaxed, in a way she never had at Mimi’s. It felt right, being there with him, and she had leaned lazily back, sitting there on the counter, appreciating his broad back and the way his height matched hers as he turned toward the sink, with a pleasant sense of anticipation that she hadn’t felt in years. Did he really think she’d only gone in to steal a recipe? Her ears were ringing, a strange hum between her and the world, and the skin on her scalp prickled and crawled. Everything already felt wrong, and now it was tipping over into a point where she couldn’t feel at all.

  “I didn’t— This is crazy. Why would I do that? That’s not why I—” The camera was on her.

  Mae stared into her face. “First you and Nancy stole our chicken. Now you took Mimi’s recipe. You’ll do anything to win this.” She pointed to Andy. “Anything at all. You stole and you cheated and now you’re lying.”

  “I don’t lie!” Mae knew that. She knew this couldn’t be true. Andy’s dark eyes met hers as she spoke, and before he looked away Amanda thought she saw a hurt and betrayal that mirrored her own feelings. What right did he have to feel that way? Looking at him, at Sabrina, Amanda could see that they really believed she had done this, and while Amanda didn’t know how Mae had pulled it off, she knew there wasn’t anyone else who would stand up for her. She had put her whole world in the hands of something that was now spiraling wildly out of control and threatening to take everything she had with it. She had to show them that she wasn’t the one who was hiding something—and there was only one thing she could say.

  “You’re the one who lies, Mae. You say anything you have to— Your whole life is a lie! It’s all a sham, all this Mae Moore the organizer, Mae Moore ‘I can help you clean it up and live a beautiful life.’ You can’t help anybody! You can’t even help Mom, and if anybody ever needed help, it’s her, and you just leave her alone in her filth and her hoarding and don’t ever lift a finger.”

  And Barbara didn’t lift a finger either. She would just let Mae ruin Amanda and Nancy if that’s what Mae wanted, and Nancy was too nice to stop them. There was nobody to protect Frannie’s except Amanda, and if everyone just knew, knew what she and Barbara were really like, they would never believe anything Mae or Barbara said, not about this, not about anything.

  Mae hadn’t moved. Amanda could tell by the look on her sister’s face that she’d thought she was safe, that this was the one thing Amanda would never tell the world, but Amanda was done with pretending. She spun to face Sabrina. “Go look,” she said. “Go look at my mom’s house and just see. See if you can believe anything they say. They’re hiding things, both of them, all of them. Andy, too.” She shot an angry look at him, but he was still staring at the ground. He had to know about the house. Everybody in town knew. And everybody ought to know.

  “Mom’s house doesn’t have anything to do with the recipe,” Mae said. “It’s totally”—she looked at Sabrina—“it’s beside the point. It’s the way she likes it. It’s nothing to do with Mimi’s, or me.”

  The camera was on Mae now.

  “Is that true, Mae?” Sabrina’s tone was interested, intrigued. “Your mother is a hoarder? And you’ve never tried to help?”

  “I— This doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” said Mae. “I’m not even going to talk about it. It’s ridiculous.”

  “No, you saying I took Mimi’s recipe is ridiculous.” Amanda was ready to talk, now that the cameras had turned. “This is just truth, Mae. You don’t want it to be true. You don’t want anybody to know it. But it’s true.”

  Mae reached out to grab Amanda’s arm, but Amanda yanked away. She didn’t want to hear it; she was done. She turned, ready to go into the house and lock them all outside and away, and then she slowed. Damn it.

  Frankie was in there, and just about the only thing that could make this worse was—

  Frankie opened the screen door just as Amanda reached it. “Mom, what’s up?”

  That. Amanda frantically rearranged everything about herself, her face, her arms, what she was going to say next. Anything to get Frankie out of this.

  “Everything went great this morning, Frankie,” Amanda said, stepping up close to her and holding out an arm as if she could herd her daughter back into the house. “They’re just— We’re just recapping. Only people who were there, though.” If Frankie would go inside she could use this as an excuse, follow her in, end this now.

  But Frankie stood her ground. Worse, Amanda could tell by the look on Frankie’s face that her daughter saw this as an opportunity. Sure enough, Frankie put her hands on her own hips and stepped down onto the step next to Amanda, staring at her aunt and suddenly also resembling her. “I can’t believe you made a big deal out of the frozen biscuits, Aunt Mae. You know everybody freezes biscuit
dough anyway, and we get them from a really good place, these two women outside Kansas City. They’re fresh and they’re homemade and they’re delicious. So it’s no big deal, and you made those chefs come freak my mom out about it.” She spoke loudly, and as she did, she looked around, appearing satisfied with the impression she was making. Then she seemed to run out of steam. “And I don’t think that was very nice.”

  In spite of everything, Amanda felt a burst of pride in Frankie. That couldn’t have been easy. She didn’t have time to admire her daughter now, though. She needed to get Frankie back in the house before anyone said another word.

  “It’s okay,” Amanda said. “All’s fair in love and Food Wars, right? Mae and I will work it out.” She shot her sister a look that was supposed to say, Please, just leave my kid out of this. Couldn’t Mae just give her that?

  Apparently not.

  “I guess what I would say to that,” Mae said slowly, “is that in general, if you don’t want people to know you’re doing something, you shouldn’t be doing it.”

  Frankie shrugged. “We’ll tell people where they come from, then. But I still don’t think you should have told everyone like that. On TV. That wasn’t fair.”

  Amanda waited for Mae to start in on all the things Amanda shouldn’t have done, but Mae just stood there, probably planning her next attack. Amanda needed to move fast. “Let’s go inside, Frankie. They were just leaving.” She opened the door wide and gestured. Frankie looked from Mae to Andy to the camera, as if expecting more of a reaction, but other than Sabrina, madly tapping away at her phone just out of view of the camera, everyone else was still, Mae staring at the ground, Andy glancing at Amanda, then quickly looking away. In that moment, Amanda hated them all so fiercely that she wanted to go over and kick them both in the shins, kick and kick and kick until they took it all back and then kick some more. Instead, she spoke softly, trying to keep any emotion out of her voice. “Come on,” she said again to her daughter, more urgently. “Everybody needs a break.”

  Leaving them all behind, Amanda ushered Frankie into the house and shut the door.

  MAE

  It took just long enough for Mae to feel safe before Sabrina made her move.

  After Amanda’s announcement, a mostly quiet Sabrina, apparently lost in thought, returned Andy to Mimi’s and dropped Mae at the park where she was meeting Barbara and the kids. Mae was still conducting a one-sided argument with the Food Wars host as they pulled up at the curb. Her mother’s house had nothing to do with Mimi’s, or Food Wars, she said. It would be unfair to capitalize on it when that had not been what Barbara agreed to; it was just a distraction.

  To all of it, Sabrina kept repeating that she wasn’t in charge. “You know how this works, Mae. There’re higher-ups. There are producers back at the ranch. I just do the filming. I have to say, you and your sister have given us plenty to work with.”

  Sabrina had more clout than she was admitting, and Mae knew it. It was infuriating. Amanda was not, as Sabrina called her, “a dark horse.” She was a traitor and a fool, and she was going to ruin them all, because nothing Barbara did or was could change what Amanda had done. She was just dragging them down with her.

  And now Mae was stuck. No Barbara, no kids, no car. Out of habit, she opened Instagram and Facebook and closed them a dozen times, sitting on the park bench, waiting, barely knowing what she was waiting for. She itched to do something. Anything.

  If Sabrina decided to put it out there, then what? Would they try to film the house? It was bad in there, surely; it had to be bad. Should she try to— No. There was no going there. Her whole adult relationship with her mother was built on not touching the past.

  What would Jay do? That was the one thing she could do. She could call him. Jay knew what it was to paper over a big chunk of childhood and just go forward from there. His mother left him with his father, taking his sister instead, when he was three, and the family never lived together again, and never talked about it either. But they managed cordial if overly formal meals in his mother’s Manhattan town house every month.

  But while Jay knew that there were things Mae and Barbara avoided, he had no idea how much of her past Mae had edited out when she left for college, and Mae wasn’t sure she could stand him knowing. How could he not see her differently if he saw how she had been raised, if he knew about the squalor and the lengths she’d gone to, to escape it?

  There was so much to explain, but maybe it was time. Being here, sliding back into her old self, watching Kenneth and Patrick—she didn’t know exactly what she wanted from Jay, but she wanted him to be part of this, somehow. He said they’d talk later. Maybe later should be now.

  But Jay didn’t answer, and Mae, frustrated, couldn’t think of what to put in a text. He would see she had called.

  He would call her back.

  Of course he would.

  Just as Mae, unable to stand waiting for one more thing, was about to abandon the bench and search for her mother and the kids, there they were. Madison was running up the sidewalk to her, Ryder, smaller and slower, trailing behind, both shouting. “Mommy, Mommy, you have to come in and see them! They’re so cute! Mommy, can we have one, please, the girl one, I want to call her Elsa, she’s mostly white, she’s so cute!”

  Ryder grabbed at his sister as he caught up. “No, the black one! Blackie!”

  Wait, what? Mae looked to Barbara in confusion.

  “Patches had her puppies last night.”

  “Patches was pregnant?”

  “Of course Patches was pregnant, Mae, do you not have eyes? Did you not see how her belly was practically dragging on the ground?”

  Yeah, but she just thought the dog was fat, figuring her mother was about as good at feeding dogs healthy things as she had been with her kids. “I don’t know much about dogs,” she said. Then, for good measure: “It’s not like we had one when I was little.” Should she say anything to Barbara? No. Not yet. Her mother was tired; she could see it. Madison and Ryder took a lot out of anyone. Maybe the thought of adding to Barbara’s list of complaints against Amanda should have made Mae happy, but it didn’t. Instead, she knelt down and hugged both Madison and Ryder hard, but neither could hold still.

  “Grandma said if we lived here, we could have one. Both of us.” Madison was dancing around Mae, pulling her off-balance.

  “Mom!”

  Barbara shrugged. “So what? They could. But you don’t, kids, so that’s that.”

  “I can’t believe you said that to them.” Mae turned toward the park, hoping Madison would be distracted by the swing or slide, and Barbara turned away, as if to walk back toward Mimi’s and home. Mae grabbed her mother’s arm. “Mom. This way. You’re coming with us, remember?”

  Ryder wrapped his arms around Barbara’s leg. “I gone throw ball puppies,” he said. “When they big like me.”

  “Mom!” What had her mother been saying? “We’re just visiting, Ryder. We’re going to go home to Daddy, and then someday we will come back and see the puppies again.”

  Ryder stared up at her. “I want Daddy,” he said, just as Madison said, “Grandma said we could stay,” and now Mae was kneeling to try to soothe Ryder and still being pulled on by Madison, and her mother was just standing there, staring off down the street, an oddly blank look on her face that made Mae want to shake her.

  “You cannot tell them we could stay,” she said, speaking loudly over Ryder, who was beginning to cry. “You’re just—confusing them.”

  “You could stay,” said Barbara. Her voice was distant, a little off, but then she turned and looked at Mae and blinked a little, as if focusing on her for the first time. “You could. Of course I know you won’t. But you could.” Then, as if it followed: “Have you talked to your sister today?”

  Had she— For a minute, Mae had forgotten. Hell yeah, she’d talked to Amanda today. But this was not the moment to say any of t
hat to Barbara, who had bent down to hug Ryder and Madison.

  “You can see the puppies again tomorrow,” she promised. “You’ll still be here tomorrow. Maybe Amanda could drop your cousin Gus by. Or Frankie.” Mae braced herself for more questions—Madison and Ryder had not seen their cousins, had not, apparently, made the connection that cousins who had never been more than lines on a Christmas card might be live, accessible beings in this wonderful town full of puppies and doughnuts, and she did not need them to make it now, when meeting those cousins wasn’t going to happen until—when? How? Had Amanda even realized how much her words would put an end to? Barbara put her hands to her back, stretching, and Mae was again struck by how exhausted she looked. Probably helping Patches have puppies had been an all-night thing. This thing, Amanda, the house . . . This was not going to help.

  “Can we talk about Amanda later, Mom? We talked. But about Food Wars stuff. Forget the park, okay? Maybe go home and rest before tonight. They’re going to come back and film once more.” That’s where Sabrina had left it, anyway. One more night of filming, just in case we need it. For what, Mae couldn’t think about. There was no way she could avoid telling her mother about Amanda and the recipe, but the house—if Sabrina would just leave it alone, Mae was still hoping her mother didn’t have to know how far Amanda had been willing to go to hurt Mimi’s, and Mae. And Barbara.

  “Later. Okay.” Her mother straightened, turned, and walked away, and Mae watched her go, weirdly comforted by their return to a relationship in which they did not even have to say good-bye, while Madison and Ryder ran for the swings.

  Mae and Barbara, and Madison and Ryder, had gained something this week. But right now, Mae was more worried about what Barbara might be about to lose.

  Gus was her mother’s go-to when she needed something moved or fixed, Frankie her recipient of the gifts Barbara loved to buy, spiral notebooks bearing kitten pictures, magnifying mirrors, costume jewelry, brightly colored, slightly cracked plastic containers. Barbara had a hard time living in a world in which so much was so cheap. Mae knew this from Frankie’s #withlovefromGrandma hashtag on Instagram, which she had at first resented on her mother’s behalf and then realized was really a loving tribute from someone who—like Mae—had no intention of letting anyone but herself decide what came into her space.