The Chicken Sisters(98)
All of the other ways in which their mom was going to need help soon sat heavy between them. Mae hoped her sister was right about Nancy. She’d like to have a Nancy to lean on.
“I guess I’m going to come home,” she said, and Amanda sat up straight and turned to her.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Mae said. She understood why Amanda looked surprised, but wasn’t that exactly what they had just been talking about? “For a while, anyway. I can still write a new book if I can sell one. I can help Mom, but it will be good for me, too. I feel like, if everybody knows you, you can’t be all, Well, I don’t have any idea what I want to do with my life but at least my silverware drawer is perfect.”
“Sure you can,” said Amanda. “You just described half the parents of kids in Frankie’s class.”
Damn it, Amanda wasn’t supposed to argue with her—wasn’t this Mae telling Amanda that maybe she was right all along? “But you stayed. You’re part of the town. You get to know everybody who makes your coffee and your kids got to be little here where everyone knows who they are, and you don’t have to be always working so hard to make things happen. You can just live.”
“That’s the problem,” Amanda said. “That’s why I wrote Food Wars in the first place—nothing ever does happen. You just get up and do things, and every day is the same until it isn’t, and then you’re old and your kids are gone and you’re still the hostess in a chicken restaurant. It’s exactly what you always used to say. Which you should still be sorry for, as long as we’re apologizing, because you were really mean about Frank, and about Gus. But even though I loved Frank—” Amanda paused and gulped, and Mae eyed her apprehensively, but she wasn’t crying, even if she looked like she might be about to. Instead, she looked out at Main Street, ran her tongue over her lips, and went on. “Even though I loved him and I wanted Gus and Frankie, so much, it didn’t exactly end up being what I thought it would be. And now there’s nothing to do and nothing to hope for, and Food Wars turned out to be more of the same crap. Worse, even.”
Mae turned Mimi’s recipe, and her note for her sister, over in her hands, gently. Amanda was right. She had been mean, or at least, too blunt. A steamroller, Jay had said. But Amanda had been so young—and she had been right—
And also wrong. Especially because somehow she had thought it should be so easy for her sister to do very hard things. She’d been young too, and maybe she had thought that if Amanda did what she did, came away to college, moved heaven and earth, and, yeah, hips and boobs, to pay for it, bought into the new life Mae was creating, then it would be even more solid. When it had never been solid in the first place, whereas the life Amanda had made with Frank, especially Gus and Frankie but not just them, the whole thing, was a rock, even if it seemed like it was Amanda who was having trouble seeing it now.
“I am sorry about that,” Mae said softly, and felt rather than saw Amanda’s blue eyes trained on her. “I am. I wanted you with me, not with Frank, but you did okay. You guys were great. Your kids are great. Watching them, today, with Mom—you have them, you have Nancy, and even when Frank died, you had this amazing place and community around you. And you still do.”
Amanda stretched her legs out, then stood up suddenly. Mae knew she was trying not to cry, but her next words were still a surprise. “It didn’t really turn out to be enough.”
AMANDA
Enough heart-to-heart. Amanda reached out and slid Mimi’s recipe from Mae’s hands, changing the subject abruptly, as you can with someone who knows when you’ve had all you can take.
“What are we going to do about this money thing? Because Nancy wants to make it right, and I don’t know what that means, and Mom— I’m afraid Mom will take Nancy’s money.” She looked at Mae to make sure her sister didn’t just think that was a fine idea, but Mae was still listening to her. “Nancy doesn’t have any money. I know it looks like she does, or at least has more than Mom, but unless we win—”
“You’re not winning,” Mae said almost automatically.
Then she stuck out her tongue, and Amanda had to laugh. “Yes, we are,” she said. “We’re going to expand and make Frannie’s the best fried chicken place in the state. Or that was the plan.” Should she even say this, this next part? Might as well. She’d already said so much. “But I’m not even sure we want to anymore.”
“You did all that stuff to win—and you don’t want to win?” Mae was staring at her now, her face serious again.
“I still want to win. For Nancy. And Frannie’s. We’re still going to win. I just—I think I’m done with chicken. You said it a long time ago, and you were wrong then, but you’re right now. I need to get out there and try to figure out who I am without”—she gestured around her—“any of this. Not that I know what I do want to do. And Nancy—I’m not even sure she wants it either. But we’re still winning.” She smiled faintly as she stood up, stretching her legs, and Mae followed. “Maybe we just want to beat the pants off you.”
“No, you’re not.” Mae paused for a minute, and a look came across her face that Amanda recognized. Mae, thinking. Mae, about to start something. Without even realizing she was doing it, Amanda took a step back, and Mae put a hand out and grabbed her sister’s arm. “What do you mean, Nancy might not want to win either?”