Mercy is standing on a kitchen chair at the stove, moving ground beef around a frying pan with a wooden spoon and explaining to Tammy how to make Hamburger Helper. Tammy can see she is warming to her role as hostess. It is as if she is pretending she is on a TV cooking show. Smiling into the camera. She flicks her hair over her shoulder and turns back to Tammy.
“You just keep stirring the hamburger until it is all brown and there is no pink left. Then you add the powder.”
“How do you know how to cook, Mercy?” Tammy is fidgeting nervously at the counter beside Mercy, wondering what her role is. She feels like she is failing a test of some kind. Is this right? Were she and Trudy allowed to use the stove when they were — what — five years old? Should she stop the child from cooking? It seems like it would hurt Mercy’s feelings if Tammy tried to stop her.
“Grandma Claire taught me. I can make scrambled eggs, too. And soup if it is the canned kind. You can help if you want. Just open that packet and sprinkle the powder around.”
Tammy does as she is told. She opens the packet and sprinkles the beige-orange powder over the very cooked hamburger. “Now some water!” Mercy gestures at the cupboard. “Just fill up one of the big coffee cups with warm water and pour it in. When it bubbles, we can add the macaroni. I love macaroni.” A salty mist rises off the pan as Tammy pours in the cup of water.
“Did you miss me, Mercy?” Tammy is trying to provoke something, to break into the steady stream of cheerful chatter. Why does her child seem like a stranger? She can’t find anything in her that seems familiar. Tammy doesn’t feel like a mother. She feels tough like gristle.
Mercy looks at the pan and stirs the beef around with the wooden spoon as Tammy pours in more water. “I think so. But it was hard to remember you. You were gone so fast.”
Tammy’s heart shrinks a little. She puts the coffee cup in the sink.
“I always wished you would come back, though.” Tammy can see Mercy is choosing her words. “I just didn’t know what it would be like.”
“So what’s it like?” Tammy regrets asking it. It is too soon. There is nothing good to say yet. Maybe there won’t ever be.
“I don’t know. Weird. Scary. Crowded.” Mercy blows her bangs off her forehead.
“Crowded?” Tammy thinks she knows what she means.
“Yeah. I didn’t think there would be so many people all at once.”
“Me neither.”
“Is Fenton your boyfriend?”
“Uh-huh,” says Tammy. “Can you believe it?”
“Not really.” Mercy starts giggling, and Tammy is laughing, too. Poor Fenton! They shouldn’t be laughing. “He seems nice, though.”
Tammy nods, still laughing. And crying a little bit now. “Oh, he is. Fenton is very, very nice. He’s just weird.”