Grandma looked at the half-cooked carcass. She gave it a poke with her fork. “Do you think those onions are caramelizing? They don’t look caramel to me. They look soggy.”
I peered at the chicken that was squatting on a bed of sliced lemons, fennel, and onions. She didn’t really need my opinion; she could make a gourmet meal out of nothing but a soft carrot from the bottom of the crisper drawer, a slice of toast, and the spices no one ever uses, like coriander seed.
“I think the recipe called for too much broth. The onions are just boiling in there, practically floating.” She shook her head at the tragedy.
I gave a sigh. Chicken advice I didn’t need.
She looked at me. “Sorry about that. Tell me the problem again.”
“My friend Brenda doesn’t want to try out for the play.”
“Maybe the play isn’t her kind of thing.”
“It’s not. She’s not good at the spotlight. She’s more of a books and laboratories kind of person.”
“Well, then there you go.” Grandma drained some of the broth and chicken fat into the sink. “So if she doesn’t want to do it, why does that frost your cookies? Just because you’re doing the play doesn’t mean she has to do it with you. Friends can have different interests.”
I rolled my eyes. Grandma was usually pretty good at this, but every so often, usually if she had been watching too much Dr. Phil, her advice got all cheesy. Of course, I couldn’t tell her the real reason I needed Brenda to try out for the play. Grandma was out of the revenge loop.
“It’s not that. I can do the play on my own. It’s that I think she would be really good. It seems like a waste to have all that talent and then not use it.”
“Not like you and art.”
I sighed again. Grandma was on my case to pull together some kind of portfolio so I could apply to college art programs. It wasn’t that I didn’t like to draw, but I hated the idea of sticking my stuff in between plastic sheets so everyone could ooh and aah and decide if it was any good. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go to college, which was fine with my parents who are all about “finding yourself,” but Grandma is all about the value of a college education.
Grandma had always been the sane one in my family. She stayed in the same house versus moving from apartment to apartment. She remembered to pay her property taxes, and you would never catch her out in the backyard naked at midnight chanting at the moon. I loved that her linen closet was full of towels and sheets as opposed to ours, which was always full of plants and herbs my mom was drying out. I used to love to visit my grandma’s because it seemed like what a home was supposed to be, but now that we were living together, I was discovering the downside. Grandma believed in regular mealtimes and lights out by eleven. My parents never gave me a curfew because they felt that to learn responsibility I had to have freedom. Grandma was more of the “be home by midnight, Cinderella, or turn into a pumpkin” kind of guardian. She wasn’t keen on the whole “letting life unfold” thing. She wanted me to have a plan for my future. She was becoming borderline annoying about the whole art school thing.
“You can’t talk someone into something they don’t want to do,” Grandma said. “All you can do is point out what you think is in it for them. Not why you think they should do it, but what might appeal to them.” She brushed her hair out of her eyes and I laughed. “What’s so funny?”
Her hands must have had grease from the chicken on them because her hair now looked like she last took a shower in the early summer. I pointed at her head and she reached up, giving a curse when she felt the oil.
A flash of inspiration came to me. I stuck the chicken back in the oven for her while she went to wash up and hummed a victory tune. Grandma was still helping me with my revenge plan, even if she didn’t know it.