“For Sabrina,” her mother said impatiently. “Obviously it doesn’t do her any good to just trash things like this. What’s she left with, then—Frannie’s wins on a technicality? That’s crap TV. She must want something.”
“She does.” Mae spoke slowly. “She wants me to help you clean it up.”
“Oh.”
“And not just me, like me your daughter. Mae Moore me. She means Mae Moore, organizational guru.”
“She wants you to make me sparkle, then.”
Mae didn’t know if her mother meant to be funny, but she started to laugh, and once she started, she couldn’t stop. She laughed, and she cried, and she leaned on Barbara, and Patches licked both of their faces, then bounced around them joyfully. Mae’s stomach ached and her cheeks ached and she was covered in snot and tears, and the whole thing felt so bleak and hopeless that she wasn’t sure why she was laughing at all. Barbara didn’t laugh, but Mae could feel the lift of her chest as she smiled.
“Yeah. That’s exactly it. She wants me to make you sparkle, Mom.”
She could hear Aida’s cane thumping toward them, and the door opened. They’d have to tell her what had happened. Mae scrambled up and dusted herself off, then extended a hand to her mother, still on the step, and after a moment Barbara took it.
Barbara’s hand shook in hers, as it had before, and as Mae put another hand on her mother’s elbow (because helping Barbara up wasn’t easy), she realized that the tremor went back through her arm, and that her mother was somehow at once heavy and frail—and different. As she took her mother’s weight, Mae’s sense that something was wrong was so strong that she almost lost her grip, and although she managed to help her mother to her feet, she couldn’t hide her reaction to Barbara’s struggle. This was not the way Mae’s mother was supposed to be. Everything was wrong already, but this was something so much bigger that it hollowed out Mae’s chest, leaving her unable to breathe.
Aida, who in spite of a broken foot was nearly as strong and tough as she had always been, stepped quickly through the door to get behind Barbara, who took a visible moment to steady herself. The two older women exchanged looks, and then it was Mae who needed bracing. Something was happening to her mother, and now that she had tuned in to it, a dozen things she’d seen without registering them in the past few days dropped into place.
“What’s wrong? What was that?”
Barbara let out a long breath. “You better come in and sit down, Mae. It’s not that bad. It’s not that great, either, but it’s not that bad.”
A minute before, Mae would have said the hardest thing for her to do would be to walk through the door into her mother’s kitchen, but now she barely noticed the piles and boxes and ever-present faint smell of rot surrounding her. In that single instant, everything shifted. The only thing that mattered now was Barbara. Aida took a stool, and Barbara cleared a paper grocery bag off another for Mae to sit down, which she did impatiently. Mae had dozens of questions rushing through her head, each a separate and new fear—cancer, Alzheimer’s—and she didn’t dare ask a single one.
Barbara took her own stool and pulled a cup of cold coffee toward her, staring down into it as if reading tea leaves. “I’ve been having these symptoms,” she said. “I get shaky. I’m stiff. I can’t smell things like I used to.” She stirred the coffee with the spoon that was still in it, and then just as Mae was about to snatch it away and demand that she get to the point, she did. “I’ve been to a doctor, and they can’t say for certain, but their guess is early Parkinson’s disease. Which doesn’t kill you.”
Aida took Mae’s hand and held it between both of hers. “We looked it up,” she said. “On the Internet. It might not even be terrible, Mae.”
It might not even be terrible. That was her family all over. Most things were terrible, but maybe not this, not this time.
“What does it mean, then? What is it?”
Barbara reached into the grocery bag and took out one of the top papers from a huge pile, and Mae pictured the two women in the public library, printing page after page, poring over the results like rune stones. “Here’s why I went to the doctor.” She read aloud. “Shaking or tremor. Slowness of movement, called bradykinesia. Stiffness or rigidity of the arms, legs, or trunk. Trouble with balance and possible falls, also called postural instability.” She looked up. “I have all those, a little.”
“She also gets this look on her face,” said Aida. “Like she’s pissed off, even though she’s not. Resting bitch face.” Mae could tell she was proud of knowing the phrase.
“I don’t know what comes next,” said Barbara, looking down at the paper in her hand as though there were a script printed there. “It might not be much. Here. ‘Parkinson’s disease is sometimes referred to as a bespoke disease: each person experiences a different version. You cannot predict which symptoms will affect you or when and how that will happen. Some people wind up in wheelchairs; others still climb mountains. Some can’t tie a scarf, while others weave scarves by hand.’”
Parkinson’s disease. Disease, a disease. Not a death sentence, not one of the many horrors she’d been imagining, but the weight of her mother, her inability to help herself, and her great-aunt’s immediate understanding told Mae that this was big, and not new, and not going away. She could tell her mother didn’t want that to be true, so she tried to match Barbara’s light tone even while the heaviness of what was happening threatened to sink her.
“Weaving and mountain climbing. Got it. That will be a change for you.” Or wheelchairs, she thought but didn’t say. Mae looked around the kitchen, trying to envision Barbara, debilitated, piloting her way through the narrow corridors among the boxes and furniture. It was hard enough to navigate this mess in perfect health. A wheelchair, a walker, even an unsteady gait—did Barbara know how much she was going to need Mae to clear the path in front of her? This would all have to go, and now Mae knew she would take her mother, hale and healthy and hoarding, over any changes that came like this.
“You can read it all. Or not.” Barbara put the papers back in the bag and carefully set it down on the floor. “Anyway. It’s fine. I mean, I’ve thought about it. I’ll manage. I’ll run Mimi’s as long as I can. And then Andy will take over, because there’s no one else.” And there it was, the unsung chorus that had been playing ever since Mae first walked into Mimi’s earlier that week, what she knew her mother wanted, and had wanted all along. She just hadn’t known why.
“It would be easier if I lived here, wouldn’t it?” Mae asked.
Her mother didn’t answer, but Aida did. “Your mom doesn’t want you to give up anything for her, Mae. She just wishes you wanted to come home, right?”
Barbara nodded, still looking away from them, and Mae realized her mother was crying. The only other time she had seen her cry was when Amanda was in the hospital with food poisoning, and the nurse, who had known Barbara for years, had been very direct about what had probably led to her sister’s illness: bacteria in food that was too old, or stored wrong, probably old chicken her mother brought home from the restaurant and maybe left on the counter. That had been the last time Amanda ate chicken, Mae suddenly realized, and unwillingly her mind drifted to her sister. “Amanda doesn’t know, does she?”
Her mother shook her head. “We don’t—” She took another breath, a sharp one. “We don’t talk a lot.”
“You should,” Aida said angrily. “I’ve always said this feud thing is ridiculous. What does it matter, a little fried chicken? It shouldn’t get between families.”
“Of course it gets between families,” snapped Barbara. “She married Frannie’s great-great-grandson! It’s my job to keep Mimi’s going, Aida, and that means protecting it from people who want to change it or shut it down, and the Pogociellos have been trying to do that for years. Just because you bailed on Mimi’s doesn’t mean I’m going to.”
“Lightening up on Ama
nda isn’t bailing on Mimi’s, Barbara. It’s your business. You can choose how to run it.”
“Amanda—she chose her side,” said Barbara, as if it hurt to say Amanda’s name. “It’s our business. Yours, mine, and Mae’s. But it won’t be for long, if we don’t win this thing.” She looked at Mae, then turned away. “Maybe it’s time to just let it go.”
“Let it go?” Sitting there in her mother’s hot, overstuffed kitchen, windows closed, shades drawn, as they always were, Mae actually felt a chill like the one that sometimes came when Mimi, or Mary Cat or Mary Margaret or whichever wicked old lady had stuck around, moved through her space. But this wasn’t Mimi; this was her, Mae, hearing words her mother had never said and a possibility she had been trying to ignore. Mimi’s had always been here, would always be here, because Barbara would always be here.
Barbara. Who might have Parkinson’s, and who was now, uncharacteristically, dragging them toward talking about what that might mean. “But you’re fine now,” Mae said, a little frantic. “And you have Andy, and Mimi’s is doing fine, and we’re going to win. But even if we don’t”—if hoarding house trumped recipe theft in some grand Food Wars rule book somewhere—“there are so many customers, Mom. People love Mimi’s. You love Mimi’s. It’s part of Merinac. You can’t just—why would you even say that?”
“There’s a mortgage, Mae. A big mortgage. And people love Mimi’s and yes there’s Andy, but it’s not enough. It’s never quite enough. And when I die”—Mae and Aida started to protest, but Barbara kept talking, rolling right over them both, as though now that she had started, she couldn’t stop—“when I go, you’ll never be able to pay the death taxes. My mother was dead before she got to my age, Mae. She just dropped dead. Her mother, too. They went quick. I could go quick, and then, you don’t know what it’s like, Mae. When I came home and you girls were tiny, they took everything, all the cash plus money from everything I could sell, just to let me keep the place.” Barbara sniffled, loud and hard, and put her hand into the bottom of an empty Kleenex box, then took a paper towel from the roll on the counter and wiped angrily at her face.
“They were always on us. Frank Pogociello wanted to buy the place and his friend owned the bank and I had to do a new mortgage, and every month it was Can you make the payment? It will be the same for you, Mae. I don’t know how to make it not the same, I can’t pay it off, and if anyone comes to inspect it for a new mortgage, the building isn’t up to code, the house isn’t up to code, you’ll never be able to do everything that has to be done.”
Aida, who must have known all this, sat quietly. Barbara turned away from both of them, pressing her hands up over her lips, staring out into the room as if she were looking at the past, while Mae felt pieces of her own past clicking into place. The scrimping and saving every week, her mother’s hatred and almost fear of the Pogociellos. Even the piles of stuff that hemmed them into the increasingly tiny kitchen made more sense now. Maybe if you felt like your home could be ripped away at any minute—maybe if your whole world had already changed in an instant—maybe it made more sense to just hang on to everything.
And Barbara must have been carrying all that around with her for years, since her own mother died, since she came back and took over the house and the business and the two live old ladies, not to mention the dead one. Did Barbara feel her mother in the house the way they all felt Mimi? For Mae, the spirit of the house and Mimi’s was a little sad, a little funny, occasionally a little creepy. But she had never really thought about how it felt for her mother to take on the responsibility for the whole thing when she was only in her twenties—more than a decade younger than Mae was now.
Mae knew what her mother was thinking even before she said it, because Mae was thinking it, too. “I needed this place, when we came back here, when Mom died,” Barbara said. “I had to leave your father; I didn’t finish school. Mimi’s saved us. I was lucky to have it to come back to. But—you don’t need it, Mae. And I don’t think you want it.”
Lucky to have it to come back to. On some level, that was what Mae had been feeling all week. What had initially felt like a trip to purgatory had come to feel like a journey to a refuge, a place where all the things that started out as fun before becoming mandatory elements of selling the Mae Moore brand didn’t matter anymore. The social media posts, the pictures, the constant chatter—even with the omnipresent Food Wars, the noise of it all died away under the reality of running Mimi’s, keeping the kids and Jessa busy, even the ongoing battle with Amanda, all very present and pressing things with surprisingly little foothold in the digital world.
When Mae saw the video of her mother’s house online, the sudden re-intrusion of that chattery place with all of its rush to judgment had been as much of a shock as the revelation of this piece of her history itself. Sitting here now with Barbara and Aida, it was all gone again, or at least so distant that it didn’t really matter. This was real life. She was proud of her book and the people she’d helped while she was writing it, but the rest—the whole person she had built online—was slipping away, and somehow she didn’t mind much. All that was what she’d thought she wanted. Maybe she was wrong. How were you supposed to make good decisions if you didn’t even know what you wanted?
“I think maybe I do need it,” she said softly, then realized neither her mother nor Aida could hear her. She raised her voice. “I don’t know, Mom. I don’t think I’m quite ready to give up on Mimi’s yet.”
Her mother turned and looked straight into her eyes. “Does that mean you’re giving up on something else?”
Jay. Jay was not distant. He’d been in her mind this whole time, she realized. Not the superficial Jay, the one who thought champagne would cure everything, but the underneath Jay, the one who cared enough to tell her they were toasting not her failure but her—their—ability to start again The man who missed his baseball mitt. The real Jay.
But no matter how great that real Jay was, he did not know who the real Mae was. Would he get that Mae? Barbara did. Aida did. Mimi’s did. Amanda—might.
How could Amanda have not seen something was happening with Barbara, not told Mae, not been here trying to help her make things right? Yes, their mother was stubborn, and it probably wasn’t entirely Amanda’s fault that she and Barbara didn’t talk much, but that didn’t give Amanda a free pass. You didn’t just walk away from someone you loved. It was time somebody reminded Amanda about that.
Mae’s hand went to her phone, and Jay’s message, still unanswered. Sometimes it was easier to fight with people than to fight for them. She stared up at the ceiling, blinking, and pressed her lips together until she was sure she could speak. “I’ll figure it out, Mom.” She sighed, then pushed herself off the barstool so hard it skidded back behind her. Enough of this. “Right now, we have cleaning to do.”
AMANDA
As if everything turned on Amanda’s mood, the night went downhill after Nancy left. Suddenly, no one wanted the cameras there. They avoided them, squirmed away, stopped conversations in midsentence while Sabrina and her crew persisted. “I don’t want you to film the inside of my purse,” Amanda overheard Mary Laura snap.
She was tired. Physically tired, but also that same tired she’d been trying to push away all that time ago when she wrote that first e-mail to Food Wars. Tired of every night at the hostess stand, tired of closing, tired of all the smiling and the sense that she was always on, part of so many families’ traditions and yet feeling so rootless herself.
The drive home with a silent and angry Gus, Frankie scrolling through her phone, interspersing dramatic gasps and frantic typing with glares at Amanda, felt endless. She refused to touch her own phone again until they’d all gone to their separate corners of the house, and now, scanning Facebook, she wished she had left it off until morning.
Comments about the mouse and the pies and the likelihood that anyone who lived like that could run a clean restaurant should have been d
eeply satisfying to someone who had thought pretty much the same thing since she was ten years old, but Amanda mostly found it unsettling. There was just so much venom. How could people with nothing at stake produce so much passion?
And then, Patches.
People like this shouldn’t be allowed to own a dog.
Someone get those puppies out of there!
I hope they called the Humane Society after they took this video.
Food Wars ought to be ashamed if those dogs are still in that house.
Amanda read every word, the pit in her stomach deepening. Sabrina’s words stuck with her like a song you hated but just couldn’t get out of your head. You knew exactly what I would do. If you didn’t want this out there, you wouldn’t have told me.
All she had wanted to do was even the playing field. Her sister had accused her of something Mae should know Amanda would never do. Why didn’t Amanda get to tell about something Mae did do—or at least, something Mae didn’t do? Mae left town years ago like her tail was on fire and barely came back, and when she did come back, she did nothing to improve conditions at Barbara’s, even though it was her job to help people clean up their spaces. This was perfectly fair.
And it was true.
And she shouldn’t have to feel bad.
When Amanda felt bad, she drew, and as she put the phone on the table, facedown, as though that would keep the mean comments about her mother contained, her other hand reached into her tote bag, rummaging for her sketchbook. Which wasn’t there.
After a moment of panic, Amanda remembered. She’d shoved it in the junk drawer, of course. She got up to get it, already feeling the pencil between her fingers, but when she opened the drawer, the sketchbook was gone.
She yanked the drawer out of the bar, not caring that she spilled half the contents on the floor, and knelt, sticking her arm all the way back in. It must have gotten caught, stuck in the back of the drawer like sometimes happened with the piles of bills and mail she dropped into the drawer to get them out of sight, but there was nothing. Nothing in the drawer that remotely resembled a sketchbook. Nothing behind the drawer at all.
The Chicken Sisters Page 24
