The Chicken Sisters(96)
Amanda pulled her hand away. “Mom has—what? Mom is sick?”
Mae nodded. “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” she said. “In the house.” She remembered the frustration of that moment, and it crept unbidden into her next words. “But you wouldn’t listen.”
Amanda got up and walked away, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “I wouldn’t listen because you were yelling at me, Mae. You weren’t telling me something. You were telling me off.”
Mae knew Amanda’s reaction wasn’t about her, but about Barbara, but she couldn’t help herself. Amanda was still the reason she and Barbara had spent an entire day up to their elbows in cold chicken water, and the reason they were in there cleaning now. She’d been making fun of Mae ever since Mae came home, with her drinks and her enlightening Sabrina on how Mae put herself through college. She’d still broken all the rules about Mimi’s. Even if they turned out to be pointless rules. Even if Mae had always thought Barbara went too far with them. Even if Barbara herself was all messed up about what Mimi’s was supposed to be.
“You’d just basically told Mom you hated her.” Mae stayed sitting, trying to stay calm, but she held on to the bench so hard that she could feel the grain of the wood pressing into her hands. “You made her cry, and I had to deal with her, and that’s always the way it is. You just go skipping off, and I’ve got Mom, and it can’t be that way. You can’t treat her like that.”
“Seriously, Mae? You haven’t been here in six years. Six years. I’m the one that’s still here. I’m the one that’s coming over and cleaning out the fridge. I’m the one that sees Mom all the time.”
“Maybe you think you are, but she’s not telling you things, and you’re not paying attention. It must have been pretty obvious something was up with Mom. She knew it. Aida knew it. So clearly you’re not here. You’re at Frannie’s.”
“Yeah, because Frannie’s is normal. Everybody there is normal. In case you haven’t noticed, when I am here, Mom alternates between criticizing me and throwing me out.” Amanda crossed her arms over her chest, and Mae wanted to get up and shove her again. Wasn’t she listening?
“Because she’s upset. Because you went to Frannie’s, and maybe it was the right thing for you, but it hurt her.” Mae grabbed the recipe off the table and stood up, waving it in her sister’s face. “This isn’t nothing, Amanda. It never was nothing. It messed up Mom’s whole life.” Mae knew she was being unreasonable. The recipe, the money—not Amanda’s fault, but so much of this was still on Amanda.
Amanda put her hands on her hips. “You told the whole town—the whole world—that I stole Mimi’s recipe! What did you think I was going to do, smile and nod? I know it’s not nothing. Why do you think I’m here? I could have waited, or just shown Sabrina to prove we had a recipe, but I’m here, right? I’m trying to—do something. Fix this.”
“You can’t fix this,” said Mae. “I told you they were going to try to pit us against each other and crawl right into our personal lives, and they did, and you made it easy for them. You’ve made this week hell for Mom. Stealing her chicken, and now the house, Patches—you’re the one that started this whole thing.”
“You painted over my chicken!” Amanda put her hands up to her head and ran them through her short dark hair as if she couldn’t contain her need to move. “You and Kenneth! You were laughing at me, and you painted over my chicken. That’s what started this. Not me. You, having to win, coming here, taking over. You!”
“I didn’t,” Mae said, her voice rising angrily and her own hands on her hips. Behind Amanda, the back door of Mimi’s swung open, but she didn’t have time to go slam it shut. They were having this out, now. She stood there, staring angrily at Amanda, every emotion of the last few days, of the last six years, washing over her, everything her sister had said and done and hadn’t said and hadn’t done—
Thunk.
The crashing sound of wood hitting wood rolled through Mimi’s and out onto the patio, and both Mae and Amanda froze. The first thunk was followed by a much louder one, a resounding smack, the sound of something very large falling, or swinging, or crashing, and the entire little building shook. Mae moved quickly toward the open door of Mimi’s, Amanda behind her, through the kitchen, the counter, seeing nothing, but that sound—it had come from here. She hesitated, looking at Amanda in confusion now. Was someone out there, listening? A car or a person?
There was no one there. But the front door, like the back door, was open, and it was Amanda who walked out first this time, then stopped short, so that Mae careened right into her.
“Oh—” Amanda gave a little gasp, and Mae echoed her, because what had made the sound was obvious now. The sign Kenneth had hung to cover Mae’s bad painting job had fallen, breaking the pot of flowers in front of it before coming to rest flat against the boards of the porch, now covered in potting soil and uprooted impatiens.
Amanda knelt in front of the sign while Mae reached up to where it had hung, embarrassed again by her paint strokes—and now by the emotion that had driven them. She put a hand on the wall where Kenneth had twisted in an eye to hold the hooks on the sign. The screw of the eye had wrenched out, leaving an ugly splintered hole in the wood, and the one on the other side looked even worse.