Work Text:
The wildest thing is this: Peter thinks his feelings for John Carter are a secret.
Jackie knows he does, because he's spent six months carrying on about his latest girlfriend, only for her to completely disappear out of his life the minute that John Carter needed a trip to rehab.
Allegedly, there had been some discussion about Peter's priorities during the surgery and after John Carter came back to County General, and as a result, Jackie and Walt haven't seen Cleo at all in the past three months. Which is an odd way to treat a woman who is good to and for you.
She's a good woman.
But Jackie's brother isn't interested in a good woman tonight. Because next to him is John Carter, fresh from rehab and looking like he hasn't been fed in a year. Jackie isn't shocked by that; John Carter is not the first person in Chicago to go through opioid withdrawal. It's a look she' seen before, more times than she's cared to; she'll see it again.
She gives him an extra helping of mashed potatoes and potato salad. The humble potato is good enough to give Walt the energy he needs for the day, and it had been good enough for Daddy - it's good enough for John Carter.
He looks up at her with his too thin cheekbones - they used to be more plump, those years ago, when he'd came to Thanksgiving - and smiles gratefully. "Thank you," he says. "This is all so delicious. Better than anything I ever had growing up."
"Aren't you sweet?" she says, sitting down to her own plate, while privately thinking that her sidewalk out front probably had better seasoning than the Carter household. She's watched what they make on Food Network and their favorite pantry staple is salt.
"Of course it's better than anything you had growing up," Peter tells Carter. "You grew up in a house that let you think it was okay to put cheese on a Polish dog."
Carter's eyes spark with the kind of fire that had been missing from them since he walked in. "First of all, cheese absolutely belongs with the spices of a Polish dog."
"No," Peter says severely, as if this is a matter of national importance.
But she sees the fondness on his face. It is a fondness he didn't have a few months before, when he had been talking about his girlfriend.
Being impressed isn't the same as having fondness. Jackie knows what it looks like when her brother has fondness. She's seen it in the women who have come before.
She'd also seen it the night he came back from Atlanta, swearing the man he'd dropped off there "Is the best man I know," and "he'll get better; I know he will."
He dropped everything to fly that boy to Atlanta before catching a red eye back to Chicago, and yet he persists in thinking that his feelings for John Carter are a secret.
She doesn't know whether he is foolish or he thinks they are.
"This is good, Jackie," Peter says.
So polite. That's why he was mama's favorite. Well, that and he was the baby - being the baby gets you out of all sorts of trouble.
"Mm," she says. "It's not bad." It's definitely not as good as it would be if Peter ate more animal products, but sometimes you make compromises for your family.
Sometimes you don't reach across the table and shake them, nice and hard, to tell them that it's obvious.
"It's fantastic," Walt says, because he's a good husband.
"Yeah, you made the relish from scratch like Mom used to," Peter notes, because surgeons pay attention to the small things.
"You know, growing up, Mrs. Wallace down the street used to hate Mama's potato salad," Jackie says.
"Oh yeah? Mom was always sending us over there with a batch," Peter says.
"Well, Mama was of a different generation," Jackie answers. "She tended to believe that everybody loved the same way as she did."
Across from her, Carter looks up abruptly from his plate, his mouth full of potato product of some sort. He looks for all the world like a startled chipmunk.
Ah. So he's under the impression it's a secret too, then.
They are both hopeless. They might be more hopeless than the time that Peter chose to date a married woman. Is it as hopeless as the white lady Peter had "been friends with," until their own ambitions had gotten in the way?
Well, at this point it looks like an even draw to Jackie. She wonders if her brother will let his own feet get in the way of this, too.
Walt is giving her a look. Well, let the man look.
About the time that there's been long enough of a pause in the conversation for Walt to get another biscuit - not the good kind, because of Peter and his dietary requirements, but they're still alright, if Jackie does say so herself - Jackie adds, "Now, Mrs. Wallace liked what she called the German potato salad. I don't know that Germans actually had anything to do with it, but it lacked mayo and relish. An oil and vinegar concoction. She was never going to love Mama's potato salad."
"I had a roommate at Penn," Carter says, a little reluctantly, as if he's still getting used to the idea that his words might not be a mistake; Jackie knows that has nothing to do with them. "His parents came from two different parts of Germany. His mom came from the Southern part, where it was considered a culinary war crime to eat mayo on the potato salad. But his dad was from Northern Germany, and his family always put mayo on the potato salad. So they always put a big bottle of Duke's Mayo on the table. As a compromise."
"Duke's is the only mayo worth having," Walt says, and he kind of chuckles, which tells Jackie just fine and well that he knows they are not having a conversation about potato salad. "We could use some Duke's in this potato salad, actually."
"No, because Peter doesn't eat real mayo anymore," Jackie says pointedly, slicing into the pork chops that Peter is missing out on, but that Carter has eaten two servings of - which is good, the poor boy needs it. "Now there's room in the world for all sorts of kinds. Mrs. Wallace's potato salad, mama's potato salad, and lord knows whatever kind of salad that … Mrs. Wallace's lady friend enjoyed."
Peter, bless him, finally stops alternating between looking at Carter like he's hung the moon and shoveling the potato salad into his mouth like a starving man.
He narrows his eyes. "What are we talking about, Jackie?"
Carter very devotedly cuts into a potato that really is too big of a piece - she must have been distracted by one of the kids being foolish when she was cutting it up.
There's a lot of that running around in this family today.
"I'm talking about preferences," Jackie says easily. "Lots of people have them, and lots of people don't mind that."
Peter looks at her long and hard. She expects him to deflect and say something about Cleo, maybe. But instead, he says "I didn't know Mama associated with anyone with … lady friends."
Peter's face is carefully blank, the way Joanie's does gets when she's fixin' to tell a fib. Habits do run in the blood sometimes.
Carter, on the other hand, looks like he got a hold of too much relish. Poor boy. Maybe those rich white folks don't have conversations about their feelings over their dinner.
Well, their family hasn't always done so either.
"Well," Jackie says. "Mama loved a lot of people. She didn't always agree with 'em, but she loved me. Now, me? I don't see that it's any of my business what type of dressing you put on your potato salad. I don't got to eat it, do I?"
"Lord," Walt mutters under his breath.
Peter shakes his head as he goes back to eating his potato salad. "Mama wasn't as nosy as you are," he tells her.
"No," Jackie agrees. "But I come from a different generation. I'm allowed to be nosy and love people. At the same time."
"These biscuits are exceptional," Walt says, as if anybody was talking about biscuits.
"Definitely," Carter says, his voice all tender in soft in a way that distracts Peter's attention away from her and from his plate.
If Jackie happens to notice the way Peter reaches over and squeezes Carter's shoulder, or the way his hand lingers there… well. She lets him think it's a secret.