The Chicken Sisters(21)
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 hours 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.