The Chicken Sisters

by Kj Dell'Antonia

  Amanda opened every drawer in the kitchen. She dumped out every basket of magazines from under the coffee table, scrutinized every cabinet, moved every pile, and then opened every drawer again. She knew where she put it, and it wasn’t there anymore. It wasn’t anywhere.

  She gave up. Amanda took two of the Ambien left over from the prescription she’d never used up after Frank’s death, added a whiskey chaser, put a pillow over her head, and went to sleep.

  * * *

  ×

  Seven hours later, she woke to a terrible taste in her mouth and a vague sense of foreboding that didn’t get any better when she considered the day ahead. Her hand, as always, had gone to her phone almost before she was even awake. She had sent Nancy one text last night, asking her if they could talk, just one, although she had typed and deleted many more.

  Nancy had finally replied.

  I don’t know what to say anymore, Amanda, I don’t know how to fix this. I only know where I will be tomorrow—at your mother’s, helping her get out of this mess, if she’ll have me.

  You’d better be there, too.

  She would be, but she didn’t have to like it. Angrily, Amanda dragged herself out of the bed, leaving its twisted sheets and fallen pillows strewn across the floor, pulled on a sloppy T-shirt and cutoff shorts that Frankie had somehow missed in her sweeping condemnation and purge of Amanda’s wardrobe, and stomped out of the house without even bothering with coffee. It wasn’t going to help.

  A different Amanda would have driven her car in the opposite direction. Instead, she parked down the road and walked slowly toward everything she most wanted to avoid. By the time she reached Mimi’s, half of her mother’s house appeared to be out on the front lawn.

  Half of the house, and half of the town. None of these people had ever lifted a finger to help when the girls were little and so caught up in Barbara’s mess. None of them had done more than offer a pat on the arm and maybe a casserole when Frank died. Now, here were the Russells, and Pinky Heckard, and Crystal Kennedy, carrying bags and boxes, trotting in and out the front door as though there were no more natural thing in the world, when Amanda could barely remember that door being used over the course of her entire lifetime. As she watched, Morty Rountree’s wife backed a pickup into the driveway, and Morty threw a box up into it. There they all were, cleaning out the house as though that, too, was nothing unusual. Just hauling three decades’ worth of crap out of the town haunted house, you know. Like you do. This must have been Mae’s doing, and Amanda didn’t like it.

  Nancy had to be there somewhere, but Amanda didn’t see her, and wasn’t sure she wanted to, anyway. Amanda walked around to the back of the house because going in through that front door would just be too weird, and found herself with a perfect view of her sister, holding court in the kitchen, surrounded by acolytes awaiting her bidding. There was a shout of laughter, and Amanda could see Mae framed in the glass of one of the windows over the sink and the camera in the other. Kenneth was on one side of her sister, Patrick on the other. All three looked delighted with themselves. Mae, laughing. The camera, fawning.

  This was what Mae got? Years of letting everything pile up without lifting a polished professional finger to help her own mother and now she looked like a Disney princess, basking in the sunshine streaming through the windows amid happy laughter from the crowd? How could anyone just let Mae give the orders when Mae had been part of the problem, giving up on Barbara as soon as she herself could get away? This was total bullshit. After decades in this town, Amanda had shit to show for it. Mae was back for ten minutes, and she was running the place. No matter how hard Amanda tried, Mae seemed to come out on top.

  On second thought, she would go in through the front door. Anything to avoid Mae. She went back around the house and walked straight in, and was instantly punished for her boldness. She nearly collided with Barbara, who held a box in her arms and was followed by Andy, arms fully loaded with clothes on hangers, a coatrack perched precariously on top. Barbara stopped short, and Andy, too close behind, nearly ran her down.

  “Amanda!” She put down her box and put both hands on her hips, facing her daughter. “Good.” Amanda faced her mother, waiting. “We’re just getting started in your old room. I know a bunch of this junk is yours; now you can decide what you want to take with you.” With that, she picked up the box and set it off to the side with a pile of similar boxes, then turned and marched back into the house.

  That was not the reception Amanda had expected. With no one else there to turn to, Amanda shot a confused glance at Andy. Did she know Amanda had told? She couldn’t. Or about the recipe? Amanda struggled to frame a question. “She doesn’t—”

  “Know about the recipe?” His voice was flat, as if he was being carefully neutral. “Or that you’re responsible for all of this? No. Don’t ask me why not, but your sister said not to tell her, and so far no one has.”

  That made no sense. Why wouldn’t Mae tell her? It could hardly make things worse, and might even make Mae look better, so why not just go all in? Amanda shrugged and strode through the door and up the front stairs. She wasn’t going to bother trying to figure out Mae now. Her old room was about the last place she wanted to go, but her feet took her there regardless, until she stood in the doorway, loath to go further.

  This had been her room, shared for years with Mae until one day her sister declared herself done with sharing. Mae being Mae, she’d forcefully cleaned out the room next door, packing its contents into other rooms and closets that already seemed so stuffed that adding things was unthinkable, then dragging what she wanted into the newly empty space. Mae’s move had inspired Amanda, and Mae took pity on her and helped her clear out Amanda’s now-solo room.

  Mae bought a lock for her own door with money earned from tips at Mimi’s—which she had also fought for the right to keep—not to lock herself in but to lock their mother out. Amanda, though, had been helpless when faced with Barbara, who was soon filling the room again, adding things “just to get it out of the way” or “because I thought you could use it.” Amanda had felt a little special then, like she was more part of her mother’s world than Mae. After Mae moved out, Amanda thought that maybe Barbara would talk to her like she did Mae, teach her to do the cooking like Mae had, sit with her out on the patio after work. But she never asked, and Barbara took over cooking again, staying late to clean the kitchen after Amanda was done behind the counter. Amanda had never fried a piece of chicken in her life, and she never would, and at this point that was fine by her.

  Barbara’s increasing distance had made the welcome Frank’s family offered feel even warmer. In Nancy’s house, she found what she’d been missing, even when Mae was home—people who were interested, encouraging, who listened when she spoke, congratulated her successes, supported her few failures. She loved Frank, with his earnest approach to school, the sweet way he finally, after she’d nudged it near him for so long, took her hand at the movies, but oh, she had loved Nancy and Daddy Frank too, basking in their approval. When they were first married, she and Frank lived with his parents. Amanda had little room for things she’d left behind and, once she realized Barbara wasn’t letting her back into the restaurant, very little desire to go back for them. Now, standing in the doorway, she surveyed the few things left from her pre-Nancy life. Old track shoes. Flip-flops. Some books, a boom box, and a stack of CDs.

  Well, hell. Those old running shoes were completely cool again now. She took a deep breath and entered the room, picking up the shoes and trying not to look around or be caught by her memories. Maybe Frankie wanted the books. Or Gus could laugh at the CDs. How could they never have been in here with her? Even Frank had never come in.

  Gulping back a sob, Amanda stared at the floor, trying to concentrate on a stain in the old rug. Was it any wonder she always felt like two totally different people, the before Amanda and the after Amanda? And now—she didn’t feel like ei
ther, and these track shoes wouldn’t help. This was pointless, and it hurt like hell, and she wasn’t going to do it anymore.

  Amanda rushed out of the room, nearly knocking Andy over on the stairs, blinded by the tears she wasn’t able to hold back. He caught her by the shoulders, and she yanked herself away. “Sorry,” he said, then, looking at her more closely: “It’s okay. Sorry. Just—catch your breath.”

  She gulped, and snorted, an ugly great sniff that she didn’t help at all by wiping her face with the arm holding the dusty sneakers, and started past him, but he stopped her, putting a quick hand on her shoulder again, then yanking it away.

  “You might want to wait,” he said, gesturing down the stairs. “It’s—there are a lot of people down there.” He smiled, a weak, dubious smile. “Um, you a runner, then?” He pointed to the sneakers, still in her hand, and it was all Amanda could do not to slap him across the face with them. Anybody downstairs was better than standing here with him. She didn’t answer, just kept going, but at least she didn’t feel like crying anymore. She was just pissed. Why the hell was he even trying to be friendly?

  Amanda did not feel friendly. Not toward Andy, or Barbara, or Sabrina, or even Nancy. She felt tricked and ambushed and as if every single person in that house—no, in this town—was out to get her, and if they weren’t yet, they would be, once they heard everything Mae and Andy were saying. Everybody was all in for Mae, back home in all her glory, and everybody was ready to toss Amanda out with these stupid shoes. Nancy, too. Nancy made her come here, and Nancy had run out on her last night at Frannie’s when all Amanda had ever tried to do was help. Fuck Frannie’s. Fuck Mimi’s. Fuck them all.

  Andy’s question flashed back through Amanda’s mind. Was she a runner? Not today. Today she was a fighter. Make me look like a bitch, Sabrina, and I’ll give you a bitch.

  When one of Sabrina’s camerapeople met her at the bottom of the stairs, she didn’t hesitate. “What do I think of it? I think it’s disgusting, same as you.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her mother coming toward her, but she didn’t let that stop her. “It sucked to live here, and I left the minute I could. Wouldn’t you?”

  Sabrina appeared, inevitable microphone in hand. “But you live five minutes away. Haven’t you tried to help?”

  “My mother doesn’t want my help,” Amanda said. “Never did. She was as glad to see me go as I was to leave.” The times Barbara had helped her, especially after Frank died, Amanda pushed out of her mind. “I’ll help now because anybody would. But you all are so upset about dogs living here—think about being a kid in this.” It felt so good to finally say that, to finally have someone to listen, even if everyone did seem to think this whole cleanup was some kind of goddamn picnic. “Think about what that was like. And you know, we can clean it up, but she won’t change. The dogs will be lost or poisoned or something within six months. But fine, try. I won’t stop you. I’ll even help. But it’s pointless.”

  Amanda marched off with her running shoes, brushing past Barbara without looking at her, and threw them on a random pile—if there was some system here, she didn’t know it—then marched back in, refusing to acknowledge anyone as she passed them. She had said what needed to be said, and she was done. Who the hell cared, anyway? This would all be over soon, Food Wars would leave, her mother would fill the house again, Andy would find some much better job in some much better town, Mae would go back to Brooklyn, Gus would go to college, if they could just find some money, and she and Frankie would be here, working at Frannie’s unless Nancy threw them out, and if she did, well, Amanda was a good hostess. She’d find work. All that other crap, drawing, writing—she’d been stupid to ever waste her time on it. This was real life, right here, and it sucked.

  She made herself a machine, reciting her every move to keep her mind from doing anything else. In, get box, out. In, get pile of clothing, out. In, figure out how to wrestle chair down the stairs, out. In, two boxes this time, try to see around them to get down the stairs.

  And then there was Mae, standing on the front porch, blocking her way. Amanda shifted the boxes up in her arms. “Move, Mae. These are heavy.” Why wasn’t she carrying anything, anyway? “Go get some boxes yourself if you don’t believe me. You look too clean to be doing any real work.”

  Mae did look clean. Clean and cute, with her dark braids and her red-striped T-shirt and her freckles. And she wasn’t moving. Amanda shifted her weight and tried to kick her sister in the shins. “Come on, get out of my way.”

  “Why don’t you get out of everybody’s way? Put the stupid boxes down and just go? You’re just”—she glanced at the camera that had inevitably appeared when Mae did—“screwing everything up. I had Mom feeling fine about this and you just about destroyed her, just now, with whatever you said about growing up here. She’s off crying, and I don’t know how to fix that, but having you here isn’t going to help. So you should go.”

  Amanda had cooled off a little since snapping at the camera, but Mae’s words lit her right back up again. Mae felt the same way, and she knew it. It wouldn’t hurt Barbara to hear the truth about what it had been like to be them as kids. It wouldn’t hurt anybody to hear a little truth.

  “I wouldn’t be here if Nancy hadn’t told me to come—and you wouldn’t be here, either, if you could help it. You hate this place as much as I do. More, even. You never stop running away from it. It’s all you ever do—run from this mess. Mom might as well know it.”

  “But I don’t hate her, and apparently you do. I don’t know what you said, but you crushed her, and that’s the last thing she needs.” Again, Mae glanced at the camera, and this time she lowered her voice and hissed in Amanda’s ear, grabbing her arm. “Can you not see that she’s sick? And she doesn’t want anyone to know?”

  Amanda shook Mae off. This was total typical-Mae bullshit, designed to shut Amanda up and get her to do what Mae wanted, and Amanda wasn’t buying it. “Anyone can see she’s sick!” Amanda dumped the boxes, as close to Mae’s feet as she could, making her sister jump back, and waved her arm around the living room. “She’s obviously sick! And she’s always been sick and she’ll always be sick and cleaning out this shit won’t change her. She’ll just make it even worse, and you’ll go back to Brooklyn, and eventually she’ll die in her filth, and I’ll be the one to find her, because I’m here and you’re not. You’re the one who should go, Mae, because you’re just doing this for the cameras. Why don’t you take off your clothes next? You’re good at that. Just strip for the camera and keep everybody’s eyes on you, where you want them.”

  Mae stepped over the boxes and shouted in Amanda’s face. “Well, apparently you’d sleep with anybody just to win this thing. And you’re wrong, Amanda. About everything. I’m here, and I’m staying, because somebody has to really be here, and you’re about as useless as a two-legged stool. So you get out.” She grabbed Amanda and pushed her out onto the porch. “Just go draw your stupid chickens and let me do the real work.”

  Amanda caught her balance just as she came down the first step and yelled back into the doorway at her sister. “You don’t work, Mae. You just tell everybody else to work, and you’re about as likely to stay here as I am to fly. The minute there’s nothing in it for you, you’ll be out of here so fast we’ll see dust.”

  “Oh, I’m not lying. And at least I don’t have to cheat and steal recipes and throw myself at every man in sight trying to win a game I don’t even understand.” Mae stepped out onto the porch and lowered her voice to a hiss. “And Mom is really sick. I don’t mean the house. But clearly you don’t give a shit, and that’s fine. I can take care of Mom. I don’t need you, I don’t want you, and she doesn’t either.”

  There were more cameras on the porch, Amanda suddenly saw, and Sabrina, too. And—

  “Mom?” Gus, standing next to Frankie, was calling to her from the yard. Nancy was hurrying toward her, too, coming up the stairs to the
porch.

  “Amanda,” Nancy yelled, “Amanda, stop this right now. Just stop.” When Nancy reached her, panting a little, she grabbed Amanda’s arm. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  Amanda pulled her arm away. She was embarrassing herself? What about Mae? And what did Mae mean, about Barbara being sick? Barbara was fine; she was exactly the same as she had always been. Mae just needed to get the last word, and fine, she could have it.

  It was absolutely time to get out of here. Amanda pushed past Nancy and ran down the steps, holding back tears. Frankie grabbed at her, but she shook her head. “Just give me a minute, please, honey.” Her feet knew where to go; she had run this way so many times. She turned—for God’s sake, why was there actually a crowd watching this madness—and ran into a lanky man holding Mae’s kids, with straight black hair just like Ryder’s, staring at Amanda like he knew her as she headed for the familiar old path, for the tree that wasn’t there, for anywhere but here. She had to get away, and sit, and just think, away from the cameras and everything else.

  About three steps later it clicked. Jay. That was Jay. And Mae had just announced that she was staying in Kansas. Not that Amanda cared anymore, but maybe things weren’t so perfect for Mae after all.

  MAE

  Jay?

  Unexpectedly, her first reaction was a rush of the same excitement that would shoot through her whenever she saw him back in their first months of dating, when the only thing she could think of was her amazement that they had found each other and that she was somehow making this work. Today, that joy was immediately quenched by dread. What was he doing here, in the yard full of three decades of hoarded trash and junk?