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"I can't believe you're letting Johnny fry the turkey," Sue hisses at her father the minute she gets him alone.
"He's a grown man," says Franklin, "and I won't let him hurt himself. It's a better option than Reed or Victor."
"I could do it," she says.
"Susan. You hate cooking."
"I don't hate - okay, yes, I hate cooking, it's like baking but awful, but you know what else I hate? Emergency rooms. You know where teaching Johnny to cook ends? Emergency rooms."
Franklin eyes her. "Is this because of what happened when you were eight?"
"Oh my god, dad, this isn't about that. Although he never should've been playing with my Easy Bake Oven to begin with."
"It was a small fire, and I bought you a new one--"
"My bedroom smelled like burnt hair and melting plastic for months."
"He cleaned your room for half a year."
"He put all my clothes away randomly and stole my foundation to use for vampire makeup, and when I complained, he started leaving coupons for tanning salons all over the house!"
"You didn't have to use the coupons," says Franklin, and he's clearly fighting a smile, which makes her scowl momentarily, and then she can't help but crack up.
"I was orange for weeks!"
"I couldn't even ground him," he says, "he didn't do anything."
"I walked right into it. God. Although—my revenge was pretty good."
Her dad sighs, exasperated but good-natured. "I preordered school pictures that year, 'good' is not a word I would use to describe it," he says. His voice is too fond to be reproachful, although she seems to remember him managing a look of solemn disappointment in her behavior when she was eight years old and the yearbook photos he always used for Christmas cards now featured Johnny without eyebrows, half of his hair significantly lighter than the other half.
"Do you still have them?" She asks.
"I have multiple copies of them. I don't get blackmail material like that every day."
There's a clatter from the direction of the kitchen, and Sue winces. "If we leave them in there alone, their medical records would be pretty decent blackmail material. If they survive," she adds, because the clatter is followed up by a loud thud, Victor swearing, and Johnny's laugh.
She looks pointedly at her father.
He, at least, has the grace to look slightly less amused at her expense, more placating. "This is why you're here, to keep them under supervision at all times. Ben should help."
"If he shows," Sue says darkly. "We might've scared them off already."
As if on cue, there comes a knock at the door, and Sue hurries past him to get the door and usher Ben and Mrs. Grimm inside, accepting the bag of groceries and the bottle of wine with warm greetings that mostly hid the utter panic on her face. Mrs. Grimm looks around the foyer of the brownstone with the eye of a woman pricing every fixture and furnishing. Sue sees it a lot on people who came to Baxter from impoverished areas. Sue also sees exactly what Mrs. Grimm is noting: the brownstone is well maintained, everything a few steps above builder grade, plain enough to bear the passage of time without becoming horrendously unfashionable, with tasteful taupe walls and Ikea furniture – the house of someone who knew not to get too fancy, practicality and budget weighed close behind comfort and hominess.
Her face softens when she reaches the array of photographs from Sue and Johnny's childhood – just one with their mother in it, the other mostly just the two of them, since Dad had been behind the camera. In one, Sue had just lost her first tooth and is beaming for the camera to show the wide gap, and her arm is slung over Johnny's shoulder while he grins, having already lost two teeth despite being younger.
Dad steps in, clasping Mrs. Grimm's hand and asking her about the drive, thanking her again for picking them up from the police station – and oh boy, does Sue never want to relive the conversation where she told her dad that they'd had to call a virtual stranger to pick them up from state police headquarters – and offering her a cold drink.
"Madhouse already?" Ben asks.
Sue can't help but huff a laugh. "Have you met those three?"
"Unfortunately, in some cases, yes," he replies, but he grins to soften the blow. "So, I'm helping cook, right?"
"God, yes," says Sue. "Better you than me."
Dad takes the opportunity to go get Mrs. Grimm a glass of water while Sue leads Ben back to the kitchen, and draws her aside. "Sue," he says. "You are a terrible cook, but you are very good at keeping an eye on your boys. So treat it like a delicate lab procedure, and just… supervise them. And don't get too hands on, your brother won't thank you for that."
Sue nods, steeling herself, and goes to the kitchen to play shepherd.
A little over an hour later, Sue determines that, okay, this is less like herding sheep and more like herding neurodivergent, high-IQ cats.
"Oh my god, you're a disaster, move," Sue sighs, shooing Reed away from his pile of horribly unevenly sized potato cubes. "Reed, if you apply the same heat to many objects with different masses and volumes, are they uniformly affected?"
"No," he says.
"Not even if they have the same, or roughly the same, molecular composition?" She prompts.
Reed's gaze darts to the potatoes, and then his eyes go wide. "No," he answers again, with more comprehension this time. "Oh god, did I ruin the potatoes?"
Sue finishes dicing a small portion of the potatoes into the same approximate size, then turns to Reed. "The furthest extremes of your range of mass and volume of potato cubes should be within one to two standard deviations of the mean potato size, which should be approximately equal to the mode potato size. Understand?"
Reed nods earnestly enough that she's satisfied he'll chop the rest right, and she turns her attention to making sure Johnny doesn't poke the fryer or throw away all the celery. Obviously celery is the absolute worst part of stuffing, but the recipe says celery and thus celery is going into the goddamn stuffing.
"Keep your statistics bullshit out of my food," Johnny says.
"You're wearing lab goggles and soldering gloves," she feels compelled to point out.
"For safety," he says. "Safety, and also, they make me look good." He strikes a pose, and Sue flicks him on the nose, ruining it.
"Get back to monitoring temperature, and do not mix up the turkey thermometer and the cranberry sauce thermometer, and if you destroy the apples I picked by over-boiling, Dad will never find your body."
"Yeesh," he says, but turns his attention back to the oven.
"Don't even come over here," Victor growls, from where he's rolling out the dough for pierogi.
Sue ignores him. "You've never made this before," she says, "and I know you don't cook much."
"It's rubbing a wooden cylinder—don't, Johnny—" he adds sharply, and Johnny snickers into the pot where the apples should be just about done cooking, dammit, if he doesn't remove them soon...
"Over chilled dough, and cutting shapes out. Children can do it."
Sue pokes the edge of the dough experimentally. It's a bit dry, and warmer than it ought to be. "So you've re-rolled the dough a half dozen times why?" She asks, too quietly for her brother to overhear.
"Three times," Victor snaps, and then sighs. "The shapes get distended and asymmetrical when I pickthem up."
"The dough is malleable, you can squish it around so it's mostly even. Doesn't have to be perfect." She reaches over the bags of as-of-yet untouched carrots and sweet potatoes to run her hand under the tap, and flicks water onto the dough a few times. "Get it flat, and it'll be fine, just cut em and fill em."
"Sue," he says, before she can turn away.
"Hmm?"
He kisses her, her still damp hand pressed between them briefly - no doubt getting droplets of water on his soft, new henley - and then he leans back. "It might've been four times," he says, and she rolls her eyes to the ceiling so she doesn't grin too dopily, because her brother is mumbling about soft ball stage and her boyfriend is studiously fitting as many cut outs of dough into each bit of dough as possible, and Reed's silence and slow chopping means he's paying attention to the size of his potatoes and to not cutting his fingers open, and her dad is laughing with Mrs. Grimm in the den, the sound muffled but still warm, and Ben -
Sue whirls on Ben. "The matzot – "
"Relax," he says, expression faintly amused. "I've been making this for years, Sue, I'm not going to ruin it. Sit down and clean some root vegetables, I want to hear every embarrassing story about your brother so I have dirt on him if Jimmy actually shows and tries to embarrass me."
So Sue somehow winds up telling Ben about the summer Johnny was obsessed with tree forts and tree swings and hunting blinds and climbing the biggest tree in the neighborhood and by the time school started back up, he had a cast that had been signed by the firefighter who had cut the lock open when he'd chained himself to a tree the city was going to tear down, and then he was so dazzled by the encounter that he got really into firefighters for a few months. (Sue still calls it 'that time he had a crush on a firefighter', to Johnny's mortification.) And then that leads into Johnny and pyrotechnics, and Ben is wheezing with laughter over the story about Sue and Johnny building a professional grade firework and launching it, causing a rather fervent UFO craze in their middle school.
By the time the tzimmes and sweet potato casserole are being put into the second oven to stay warm with the green beans and the cinnamon apples, and the applesauce is cooling beside the cranberry sauce, and the pierogis are just waiting to be boiled, and the turkey's close to being done—well, it's time to make their mom's mac and cheese, and for years it's been a family-only affair, just Franklin and Sue and Johnny, but no-one says a word to banish the others from the kitchen, and Mrs. Grimm joins them to help tidy up so there's less to do after dinner.
It's weird, to have the kitchen filled and bustling. For so long, it was just the three of them, and then just her and Dad, and even last year, when they'd gotten together for the holiday and invited Victor, it'd been quiet. Victor had been uncertain around them, awkward lulls stacking up, and he hadn't helped cook and slipped away soon after the meal.
She's used to silence. She barely remembers anything before the loneliness of no extended family, no close friends, and her mom long since gone. But now, the silence is conspicuous in its absence, in the way it's been filled up by the flurry of laughter and questions and everyone trying to avoid treading on each other or bumping a hot pan.
"Okay," Dad says, when the macaroni's in the oven. They're all assembled there in the kitchen, like a team during halftime in those terrible sports movies Johnny has a weird love-hate relationship with – awaiting a speech, she thinks, even though Mrs. Grimm doesn't know about Dad's propensity for speech making.
"I'll set a timer for when we need to boil the pierogis, and then all that's left is to get them fried up and start putting dishes out on potholders. Do not put them on the counters without potholders," he adds, and Sue and Johnny immediately nudge each other pointedly.
"'08," says Johnny.
"2011," Sue retorts.
He ignores them, except for a smile. "Elsie has graciously agreed to fry the pierogi, and I'll be handling the turkey, so you kids just need to set the table and wait for us to call you."
"We can catch the third quarter in the Dallas game," says Johnny, and points at Sue as they head out of the kitchen. "I'll give you $20 on Panthers winning," he suggests.
"That's a sucker's bet," says Sue, "Panthers haven't had a loss since pre-season, 10-0."
"Yeah, but they've been shaky all month, losing with way narrower margins, the Colts game was a nail-biter."
"They just slaughtered the Team That Shall Not Be Named on Sunday!"
"Yeah, but Team Voldemort is a shit team."
"Whereas Dallas has had a stunning record of 3-7."
"Raise your hand if you're lost," says Ben wryly.
Reed raises his, then reaches over and raises Victor's too, for which he only musters up a glare. Softie, Sue mouths at him.
"Stop trying to make me take stupid bets," Sue says.
"You gotta respect the Cowboys here, I feel like you're not taking my offer of a wager at face value. I mean, have they had some rough times lately? Sure. But they pulled together last week, and now they're gonna prove themselves at the bottom of the ninth, and win a pardon for a turkey."
"I think you're mixing sports here," says Ben.
Sue is crowing victoriously over Ben's vague explanation of the rules of football when Dad calls for them. "See, they're winning," she says.
"Hey, I was trying to bet on them winning," Johnny retorts.
"And you were trying to convince me the Cowboys had a snowball's chance to beat them so that I'd take the bet, brat."
The rest of the usual football wager argument is set aside in favor of delivering dish after dish to the table, and making sure everyone's got their drinks and oh, crap, napkins—and then the doorbell rings.
Everyone's quiet for a moment. "Did someone order pizza?" asks Johnny.
"Well, we did know you'd be attempting to cook," Victor replies.
Reed's face is a little scrunched up as he clearly puzzles it out. "Maybe it's carolers? Little early, but you know…"
Dad solves the problem by getting up. They all set down their utensils and file out, too curious to wait, and also Sue maybe slapped Johnny's hand when he tried to start eating without Dad.
"Hi," the man on the porch says, "uh. My mom and brother—"
"You must be Jimmy," Dad says.
Ben looks shell-shocked, clearly not having expected his brother to actually show.
"There's a chair for you," says Sue. "Come on in."
He holds up a cardboard box of pie, the kind you get at a grocery store, as what appears to be a weird peace offering.
"Do you like mac and cheese?" Johnny asks.
Jimmy looks baffled. "Uh… yes, yeah, I guess," he says.
"If you're cool, we'll let you have some," Johnny announces. "It's the best."
If Jimmy is confused, then Ben is clearly completely and utterly out of his depth. Sue's not exactly certain what bad blood is there, but she can see that this is an attempt to bury a hatchet.
Dad leads Jimmy into the kitchen to put the pie in the fridge, and Reed and Ben trail behind Mrs. Elsie.
"Well," Victor says, "if we're lucky, there'll be a very interesting screaming match."
"Or heartwarming holiday reconciliation," she says.
Victor shrugs. "Either way, it'll be good for some of us."
"I can't help but feel a mixture of both would benefit all involved parties," Johnny points out, and ducks Sue's attempt to flick him between the eyes.