The Chicken Sisters(43)
Still. She wanted to muster up some honest hope for her mother, but it wasn’t happening. “I don’t know, Mom,” she finally said. “I’m here, and I’m going to do everything I can, okay?”
Barbara didn’t look satisfied, and Mae realized she had sounded weak, at best. “Seriously,” she said, straightening her shoulders. She forced a smile, then saw Patti, behind Barbara, holding up what was truly a beautiful pot of flowers, with Aida standing by, smiling proudly as though it was all her doing.
The sun was shining, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and somehow Patti, a Michelangelo hidden in a big-box store, had managed to create a masterpiece out of the humblest of materials. It was a tiny thing, but Mae felt her smile becoming real. If nothing else, it was kind of fun that Barbara was so into this. They’d get Mimi’s cleaned up, and then they’d see.
“It’s just the beginning, Mae,” called Patti. “Wait until I get started along the fence.”
“It looks awesome,” Mae said. And it did. “We’re going to give it our best, Mom, and that’s what matters, right?”
“What matters is winning, Mae,” Barbara said, but at least she was smiling now, too.
“Then could you quit fidgeting around and do something?” Mae rummaged through her supplies. “Here,” she said. “Go start scraping the fence.”
There was only so much even Mae could achieve in a day, but by the time the Mimi’s makeover team was trading high fives and heading off for well-earned showers before Food Wars—and the night’s customers—showed up, they had made a visible difference. Some projects, like the peeling paint around the entrance, Mae just abandoned for now, planning to set an alarm for the crack of dawn and tackle them before anyone else was up in the morning. As for the rest, they had come a surprisingly long way since last night, and as she made her way back to Mimi’s, ready for the night ahead, Mae felt deeply satisfied. She realized with a start that she hadn’t posted the progress anywhere—no before-and-afters, no Instagrams of the new coming in and the old going out, no selfie with a carefully soiled gardening glove and a pot of blooming flowers. How had she missed so many opportunities? She had been so deep in the work, and so sure of her every next move, that she’d never stopped to check in with the rest of the world.
Damn, she’d meant to promote every aspect of this. She’d have to try to catch up. She went inside and arranged sharp piles of simple white plates and napkins on the freshly painted red counter—dry, thank goodness, but only just—and took a shot from the top down, then another from the side. As she was kneeling beside the counter so that she could see how the shot would look with the top of the phone level with the top of the stack of plates, Andy’s voice startled her.
“What are you doing? Paper plate glamour shots?”
Sheepish, but not willing to abandon the angle, which was much better than the others, Mae took her picture, then slid everything back into place under the counter. “Social media,” she said. “You know, encouraging people to come out. I should have been doing it all day.”
Andy laughed. “Kenneth and Patrick have been blasting about this nonstop. We’re going to have more than we can handle tonight,” he said. “Hope you brought your A game.”
He’d been getting in little digs about her long absence all day, but somehow it didn’t bother her. With a pleasant sense of confidence, Mae took her place next to him in front of the big stove, where they had agreed she would start the night. He’d been prepping for an hour, but still, she ran her own accustomed check on every burner, the knobs as familiar as her own hands. It had been a long time since she had run the kitchen at Mimi’s, but frying chicken, for her, was like riding a bicycle. She was totally at home in this kitchen, just as the women in her family had always been. Signs of them were everywhere, from the cast-iron pans seasoned from long use to Mimi’s original recipe, burned into her brain but still framed and hung on the wall behind the prep counter. She had this.
“Oh, I’m always at the top of my game,” she said cheerfully. “Clean living, that’s what does it.”
Andy gave her a sharp look. Mae, who had her suspicions about how an obviously smart and extremely well-trained chef had ended up at her mother’s chicken shack, met his gaze squarely. She’d been aware since she arrived that he thought she was a lightweight, and while she didn’t care much—it was always easy to manage someone who’d underestimated you—she had no intention of letting him push her around tonight. “Plus, you’ve got my back, right?” She smiled. “We both want to knock it out of the park.”
Just as Mae finished speaking, Barbara, dressed in fresh slacks and a short-sleeve blouse and looking bare without her usual covering smock, walked in. “Knock it out of the park,” Barbara echoed, too loudly. Mae and Andy gaped at her. “What?” Barbara asked. “That’s the point, right? Whatever it takes.” Barbara took her apron down from the wall and wrapped it around herself, murmuring. “Whatever it takes,” she repeated softly.
Andy’s eyes met Mae’s again, this time sharing their surprise at Barbara’s oddly phrased vehemence, but there wasn’t time to talk about it. Customers were arriving; Angelique was beginning to call orders into the pass-through. The night had begun.