The Chicken Sisters(15)
Amanda did not like cameras. In school pictures, she was the awkward tall girl hulking in the back and staring at the ground. She was not Mae, who starred in every school production. Amanda painted sets. She did not appear onstage. She’d thought, when she wrote that first e-mail to Food Wars, that maybe she could overcome that. She could be someone different. After all, she’d gained two children and a mother-in-law and lost a husband since those days—but she knew if Mae showed up, the old Amanda would reemerge.
But Mae wasn’t here. The new Amanda, the one who made things happen in Merinac—made it a place Mae claimed to want to come home to, even—prepared a welcoming smile as Sabrina Skelly opened her car door and headed straight for her, arms outstretched, tiny self nearly running in spite of ridiculously high heels, her brown curls catching the sunlight.
“You must be Amanda! Oh, this is such a delight. We’re just so glad to be here, and this”—she looked around, gesturing to the low buildings that made up Frannie’s, the big sign, with its fifties-era lit-up outline of a chicken and an arrow pointing in, and the fields stretched out around it—“this is perfect. Just perfect.”
Sabrina was right—it was perfect. This little northeastern corner of Kansas really gleamed in the spring, with a fresh light that everyone who lived here treasured before the heat of the summer kicked in, and a few rolling hills that took everyone expecting flat open spaces by surprise. Sabrina embraced Amanda, who returned it as best as she could, given that Nancy had not let go of her hand. “Amanda, really, it’s just lovely to meet you finally.”
Amanda, a little dumbstruck and very aware of her own lack of makeup and the unstyled waves of dull brown hair, which she cut herself at a boring and blunt shoulder length, settled for a straightforward response. “It’s nice to meet you, too. This is my mother-in-law, Nancy, who runs Frannie’s.”
Nancy, too formally dressed in a silky blouse with a light sweater over it, both in Frannie’s maroon, hovered next to her. “I run it with Amanda,” she said. “I couldn’t do it without her.” Behind Nancy pressed every member of Frannie’s staff, all eager to be introduced and recognized, to have the sun of stardom shine on them for a moment. Sabrina waved over her crew, and there was a wild flurry of introductions and explanations before Sabrina clapped her hands. Clearly she wasn’t just the star and nominal producer of Food Wars—this woman ran the show.
“My people! Get on with your jobs; get us settled. Frannie’s people—let’s get this party started! We brought cookies from McLain’s in Kansas City, and let me tell you, they’re divine.” She ushered them inside and started pushing tables together, disrupting the existing precision arrangement, but after a moment even Nancy was dragging over a chair.
All around them, young men and women moved competently around, setting cameras in corners, opening curtains, carrying clipboards, and getting signatures. Amanda signed a release, as well as one for Gus and Frankie, leaning on the bar while watching someone set up a stepladder and begin wiring a camera onto a beam high above the dining room. Feeling as though Nancy’s nerves were igniting hers, Amanda slid quietly around the table and into a seat opposite her just as Gus and Frankie came in. She reached out a hopeful hand to her daughter, inviting her to share the seat, but the gesture was met with a look of fourteen-year-old scorn as Frankie carefully took a chair next to her grandmother. Fine. Amanda found Nancy a far more comforting presence than her own mother as well, although she had tried so hard not to end up there with Frankie. It was just that lately, Frankie only wanted to talk when Amanda had nothing more to give, and when Amanda reached out, which was often, Frankie suddenly wasn’t there as she had always been.
Gus, though, sat next to his mother and smiled, looking nearly at ease as he pulled over the bakery box. “Oh man,” he said softly. “Cup cookies from McLain’s. Okay, these people know food.” Amanda nudged him. Shhh.
Sabrina stood, gathering their attention even more intensely. “So, as I’m sure you know, I’m Sabrina Skelly, your gracious host, and also the producer of the show out here on the front lines. Everybody else gets the cushy jobs back at the office, but I get all the glory, so, you know, trade-offs.” She smiled at them all widely, and of course they smiled back. They loved her. “You’ll meet all the rest of the staff as we roll, but for now, let me set the scene for you and answer any questions. You probably all know the basic schedule. That is, if you’ve watched any Food Wars.” Here she paused, as if she expected exactly the collective burst of laughter she got. Who hadn’t watched Food Wars?
“Only every episode,” called Mary Laura, who had rigged up a way to watch downloads on the TV that played constantly above her bar. Amanda wished, not for the first time, that she had Mary Laura’s cool.
Sabrina smiled and went on. “Let me lay it out for you anyway. We’ve got people with cameras, and cameras that will stay in place. Those cameras will be running the whole time we’re here, so don’t think that if there’s nobody with a camera following you, you’re not on. We’re pretty much able to take you live anytime, and we’ll be putting little snippets up on social media, teasing the audience for the shows later.” She said it all quickly, casually, as though it were the most normal thing in the world.
“Tonight we’ll just film around the restaurant, informal, some background stuff. Tomorrow, Thursday, we’ll do more of that but in a more organized way, capture whole meals, maybe follow one or two of you around for the night. You might do lunches, but we don’t—we’re strictly a dinnertime thing, gives the crew some time off. Then Friday we’ll bring in our chef-judges for a visit and a meal, and first thing Saturday we’ll do an official judging of just the chicken—a chicken-off. Then a little more filming Saturday night if we need it, then we announce the winners Sunday morning, and you can all go back to your lives.”