The Kitchen Daughter
Read The Kitchen Daughter Online
Authors: Jael McHenry
the
KITCHEN
DAUGHTER
Gallery Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Jael McHenry
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Gallery Books hardcover edition April 2011
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Designed by Renato Stanisic
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4391-9169-9
ISBN 978-1-4391-9196-5 (ebook)
F
OR MY PARENTS
,
K
ARL AND
L
YNNEA
M
C
H
ENRY
.
A
LL THE BEST PARTS OF ME ARE YOU
.
Chapter Three: The Georgia Peach
Chapter Four: Midnight Cry Brownies
Chapter Seven: Biscuits and Gravy
Chapter Eight: Butternut Squash Soup
Chapter Nine: Hard-boiled Eggs
Chapter Eleven: Homemade Play-Doh
Chapter Thirteen: Aji de Gallina
Chapter Fourteen: Hot Chocolate
So many generous and wonderful people have contributed to
The Kitchen Daughter
in countless ways. I could have filled every page of this book with your names. Instead, here is a shorter list of some of my larger debts.
Huge thanks to my brilliant agent Elisabeth Weed and my remarkable editor Lauren McKenna for reading the manuscript that was and recognizing what it could become. I see your patience, diligence, and insight on every page. I’m also immensely grateful to Megan McKeever, Jean Anne Rose, Ayelet Gruenspecht, and everyone else at Gallery Books for their expertise and assistance as I did this whole publication thing for the first time. Many thanks to Kathleen Zrelak, Jenny Meyer, Blair Bryant Nichols, Stephanie Sun, and Samuel Krowchenko for their help with publicity, foreign rights, speaking engagements, and much more. If any of you are reading this without homemade brownies in hand, give me a call and we’ll fix that.
For reading, editing, brainstorming, fact-checking, naming, suggesting, taste-testing, inspiring, advising, and when I needed it, just listening: Michelle Von Euw, Erin Baggett, Heather Brewer, Joan Cadigan and the St. John’s Book Club, Robb Cadigan, Russ Carr, Linda Cambier, Pam Claughton, Keith Cronin, Karen Dionne, Chris Graham, Dan Hornberger, Lynne Griffin, Tracey Kelley, Derek Lee of The Best Food Blog Ever (bestfoodblogever.com), Juli McCarthy, Derek McHenry, Heather McHenry, Randy Susan Meyers, Amy Sue
Nathan, Joe Procopio, Kennan Rapp and Rocio Malpica Rapp, Margaret Schaum, Dr. Ariane Schneider, Therese Walsh, and Barbara Yost.
My critique group, for dead-on insight and never-ending encouragement: Ken Kraus, Shelley Nolden, Kelly O’Donnell, Rick Spilman, and Bruce Wood.
My writers’ strategy group, for support and ideas and good company: Camille Noe Pagán, Emma Johnson, Maris Kreizman, Siobhan O’Connor, and Laura Vanderkam.
For writing brilliantly about Asperger’s syndrome, from the outside and the inside: Dr. Tony Attwood, Gavin Bollard, John Elder Robison, and the women from all over the spectrum who contributed to
Women From Another Planet?: Our Lives in the Universe of Autism
.
Everyone at Backspace (bksp.org), Intrepid Media (intrepidmedia.com), and Writer Unboxed (writerunboxed.com). I’m honored to be a part of some of the best writing communities online. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Friends and family everywhere, from Philadelphia to Petoskey and Westwood to Wasilla, for your love and support. I owe you all more than I can say.
And of course to my husband Jonathan, with whom I share everything, including a brain, and all the credit.
The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a star.
—B
RILLAT
-S
AVARIN
Eat what is cooked; listen to what is said.
—R
USSIAN PROVERB
the
KITCHEN
DAUGHTER
HAPTER
O
NE
Bread Soup
B
ad things come in threes. My father dies. My mother dies. Then there’s the funeral.
Other people would say these are all the same bad news. For me, they’re different.
The cemetery is the easiest part. There’s a soothing low voice, the caskets are closed, and I can just stand and observe like I’m not there at all. The man in the robe talks (“celebrated surgeon … loving mother …”) and then Amanda does (“a shock to all of us … best parents we could have ever …”). I keep my eyes on the girls, Amanda’s daughters, Shannon and Parker. They’re younger than I was at my first funeral. This, at twenty-six, is my second.
It’s cold. They must have heated the ground to dig the graves. The soil wouldn’t yield to a shovel otherwise. Not in December, not in Philadelphia. I know that from the garden.
After Amanda finishes talking, she walks back toward us and leans against her husband. She makes a choking sound and I can see Brennan’s arm reaching out to hold her. She bends her head down, leaning further in, until she’s almost hidden. Held in Brennan’s other arm, Parker drops a Cheerio and makes a little O shape with her tiny mouth. Dismay, surprise, something. I hope she doesn’t start crying. Everyone is crying but me and the girls. They don’t because they’re too young. I don’t because I don’t feel like this is really happening.
A new voice, a man’s voice, goes on. I don’t listen to the words. It doesn’t feel real, this funeral. It doesn’t feel like I’m here. Maybe that’s a good thing. Here is not somewhere I want to be. Dad’s gone. Ma’s gone. I’m not ready.
I look at hands clutching tissues. I watch feet shifting back and forth on the uneven ground. All the toes point in the same direction until, by a signal I miss, they don’t. I walk slowly so I don’t trip. Amanda reaches back and gestures. I follow her to the car. We travel back home by an unfamiliar road. I stare down at my black skirt, dusted with white cat hair, and feel the pinch of my narrow black shoes.
But at home, things are worse. There isn’t even a moment for me to be alone before the house fills up. Strangers are here. Disrupting my patterns. Breathing my air. I’m not just bad at crowds, crowds are bad at me. If it were an ordinary day, if things were right and not wrong, I’d be sitting down with my laptop to read Kitcherati, but my laptop is up in my attic room on the third floor. There are too many bodies between me and the banister and I can’t escape upstairs. This is my only home and I know every inch of it, but right now it is invaded. If I look up I’ll see their faces so instead I look down and see all their feet. Their shoes are black like licorice or brown like brisket, tracking
in the winter slush and salt from the graveyard and the street. Dozens.
Without meaning to listen, I still hear certain things. I catch
Isn’t she the older one?
and
Not standing up for the people who raised you right, I just can’t say
and
Strange enough when she was a girl but now it’s downright weird
and
Caroline always did spoil her something awful.
I keep moving around to escape attention, but these conversations fall silent around me, and that’s how I know it’s me they mean. When people aim their condolences at me, I say “Thank you,” and count to three, and move away. Once I find myself in a corner and can’t move but Amanda comes to move the other person instead. I feel rescued.
It gets warmer, worse, like they’re not just inside the house, they’re inside my body. Stomping around on the lining of my stomach. Swinging from my ribs. They’re touching everything in the house, pale fingers like nocturnal worms swarming over picture frames and the doorknobs and the furniture, and if they get to me they’ll crawl and cluster all over my skin.