take that home on a silver platter. They don’t need that money, never have. And we do, Mae.” Barbara looked at Mae intently. “We do.”
“Just being on Food Wars will bring more people to Mimi’s, Mom. It’s basically a win even to be asked.”
“That’s not the kind of win I’m talking about, Mae. All this cleaning, painting—this is going to get us a real shot, right? Our food is better; everyone knows it. Theirs is—half of it is frozen. I see that big Sysco truck there all the time. And now Mimi’s will look like it should. So we should win.”
Case closed, apparently. Mae hesitated. Could they win? Last night, looking around, she had spotted families she knew had been eating Mimi’s chicken for generations making the effort to come out for Food Wars. Her mother’s high school baseball sweatshirt had, she knew, been given to her by a grateful team: Barbara had donated the food for a fund-raiser again this year, and not just because baseball was Gus’s sport, and Gus was hands down her favorite family member. She did the same for every team, every year. Frannie’s was more polished. But Mimi’s was special, if Mae could just help the judges see it. And if Frannie’s really served frozen food to the judges, they wouldn’t like that one bit.
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