The Poison Apples, page 10
I took out my worn copy of Zen Ventura and tried to start reading it for the fourth time.
But I couldn’t really focus.
I looked over at Spencer. The trees we passed along the side of the highway made an orange-and-red stream behind her head.
“Spence,” I said. I wasn’t sure she could hear me.
“Leave me alone,” she muttered.
“Why are you ignoring me?” I asked
“You think you’re so much better than us,” she murmured, still not looking at me.
“What?” I exclaimed. “I do not! Better than who?”
The bus pulled into the parking lot of the North Forest post office. Spencer tore off her nano and started putting on her jacket.
“There’s Candy,” she said, and pointed through the bus’s dirty window at a little figure in a huge pink ski jacket waiting next to our Dad’s old Chevy.
Just the sight of her made me shiver involuntarily.
The bus cranked to a stop and Spencer ran down the aisle (cutting in front of several old ladies) and down the steps. I peered through the window and watched her bound over to Candy and embrace her. The two of them started gabbing immediately. Spencer said something into Candy’s ear and then pointed in the direction of the bus. Candy started laughing.
Great. My little sister, who’d always seemed somewhat foreign to me, even when she was baby, had now officially gone over to the Dark Side.
Sighing, I gathered up my things and disembarked. It was Saturday. I’d agreed to spend the night in North Forest before returning to Putnam Mount McKinsey. But suddenly twenty-four hours seemed like an unbelievably long amount of time.
“Hi, Molly,” said Candy as I trudged over to the car, slouching under the weight of my backpack.
“Hi,” I said.
We gave each other long, stony stares while Spencer did a little dance, shifting her weight back and forth between her right and left feet.
“I’m cold!” she yelped. “Let’s go home!”
I spent the car ride sitting silently in the backseat while Spencer and Candy discussed the junior high’s new cheerleading uniforms.
Candy didn’t ask either of us how the trip to visit Mom had gone.
What actually bugged me more was that Spencer didn’t seem to mind.
We pulled into the driveway. Spencer immediately leapt out of the car and disappeared into the house. Sandie and Randie were running through the front yard, waving strange yellow foam swords around in the early evening light. The second I stepped out of the car they descended upon me and started stabbing random parts of my body.
“Agh,” I said, and tried to push them away as gently as possible.
“Your stepsisters are happy to see you, Molly,” said Candy pointedly.
“Mmhm,” I muttered, and tried to wrench Randie free from my knee, which she had managed to wrap herself around.
“Stupid sister!” yelled Sandie, and shook a marker-stained forefinger in my direction.
Candy laughed. “They just missed you a lot.”
“I’m not stupid,” I informed Sandie.
She seemed to consider this possibility, then shouted: “You’re made of poop!”
This made Randie laugh so hard that she loosened her grip on my knee, and I managed to wiggle free of both of them and run toward the back door.
Dad was standing in the kitchen, stirring a boiling pot of pasta. When the door banged behind me, he lifted his eyes up and gazed at me, a vague, pleasant smile on his face.
“Hi, Dad,” I said.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he said, and then went back to stirring the pot.
I moved toward him, stood on my tiptoes, and awkwardly kissed his grizzled check.
“That’s nice,” he murmured.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Fine. Just fine.”
I leaned against the refrigerator and waited for him to ask me how I was. He didn’t. There was just the sound of his spoon scraping against the bottom of the aluminum pot.
“I really, really like Putnam Mount McKinsey,” I announced.
“Aw, that’s great.”
“It’s like: I never want to leave!”
I watched him carefully to see his response. I don’t even know what kind of response I wanted, to be honest. I think maybe I wanted him to wish I would come home—but because he missed me, not because Candy needed a caretaker for Sandie and Randie. And even though I wanted him to wish that I would come home, I didn’t want him to make me come home.
My feelings were kind of complicated.
But I got no response from him at all. He just stared down at the stove, moving the spoon around in concentric circles.
Candy and Sandie and Randie all came crowding in through the back door, and Randie scored one final sword jab in the small of my back.
“WASH UP FOR DINNER!” yelled Candy, and after they skittered out of the room she moved behind my father and put her arms around his waist.
“Mmm,” she murmured. “Cuddle-duds.”
Involuntarily I snickered.
Her arms still around Dad, Candy whipped her face in my direction.
“What’s funny?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“I’m glad you think you’re so much better than your family already, Molly. That’s nice. That’s really nice.”
“I don’t think I’m better than anyone. I just thought I heard you say, ‘Cuddle-duds.’ But apparently I was mistaken.” I smiled triumphantly at her. Saying “but apparently I was mistaken” made me feel smart. Like I had the upper hand.
“Cuddle-duds is my nickname for your father.”
“Uh-huh…”
“What’s so funny about that?”
“Okay, okay,” my father finally said, and turned around to frown at us. His glasses were all steamed up from the pasta. “Quit it, you two.”
“You two?” asked Candy incredulously. Her eyes suddenly filled up with tears, and covering her face with her hands, she ran out of the room.
My father sighed and looked at me.
“What?” I asked. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Be nice to Candy, Molly. Please. Okay? She’s having a hard time.”
“I’m having a hard time, too, you know!”
He sighed. “You get to live at your fancy boarding school and do whatever you want, and Candy has to—”
“You think that’s what it’s like? I get to do whatever I want? You don’t think I work hard or—”
“That’s not what I’m saying. Just … please. Be sensitive, okay?”
I couldn’t believe it. He was even crazier than Mom. At least she knew she was crazy.
“Mol?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure. Okay. I’ll be sensitive. Whatever that means.”
He turned back to the stove. “Will you set the table? We don’t need knives. Just forks and spoons tonight.”
I gazed at his stooped shoulders and the fuzzy gray nape of his neck. It was strange. I missed him terribly, even though he was standing right in front of me.
“Yeah, fine,” I said. “Whatever.”
I grabbed a handful of forks and spoons from the silverware drawer and headed out into the little dining room, where Sandie and Randie were already sitting at the table, drinking juice from plastic glasses decorated with pictures of Scooby-Doo.
“Hey, dudes,” I said, trying to sound cheerful, and plunked down the silverware in front of them.
“Mom is crying,” announced Sandie.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I know, I know.”
“She’s sick,” said Randie.
I looked at her. “Sick?” I asked. “What kind of sick?”
“No,” said Sandie, shaking her head emphatically. “Not sick. Prenant.”
A spoon fell from my hands and clattered down on the table. “What?”
“Prenant.”
“Pregnant?” I desperately tried to think of another word that sounded like “prenant,” but couldn’t. Where was the OED when I needed it?
Sandie nodded. “Yup.”
“Yup in a cup,” added Randie, and they both giggled.
I pulled out a chair and sat down in it with a thud.
“Great,” I told my stepsisters. “Now I feel sick.”
Spencer walked into the room, her nano firmly lodged in her ears, and slunk into a chair at the table, her eyes lowered.
A minute later Dad came into the room carrying a big bowl of pasta, and Candy came in from the other room, wiping her eyes and sniffling. They both sat down at the table and looked at me.
“Um,” I said, “I’m sorry I laughed at you, Candy.”
Somehow Sandie and Randie found this hilarious and started laughing themselves.
“Shh!” hissed Candy. They fell silent.
We all started to spoon out the pasta and pour drinks. I was barely able to form a coherent thought in my mind.
Pregnant?
Impossible.
“So does this food seem pretty boring to you, Molly?” asked Candy after a long silence. “Since you get to eat fancy gourmet food at boarding school?”
“Um,” I said, “I actually don’t to get to eat fancy gourmet food at boarding school. I get to eat really disgusting Sloppy Joes and this totally gross vegetable mush they recycle every night. This is much better,” I added, and tried to smile.
Candy smirked. “So now she’s complaining about boarding school,” she commented to my father across the table.
“I’m not complaining!” I said.
“Do you want them to serve you champagne in teacups or something?” asked Candy. “Filet mignon?”
Spencer giggled.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said. I glowered down at my plate and thought about what it would be like to punch my fist through the bay window in the hallway.
Pregnant?
“Have you thought any more about what we discussed at the nurse’s office, Molly?” Candy asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, come on. Yes, you do.”
“I don’t.” Without being too obvious, I tried to glance under the table to see if her stomach was bulging beneath her stirrup pants. It was kind of hard to tell.
“We discussed the fact that your father and I would like you to come back home and start helping out a little.”
I looked at my father. He looked out the window.
“Oh,” I said finally. “Yeah. I have thought about it. Not a chance.”
Candy stood up. My father reached out and grabbed her arm.
“Candy…,” he said.
“Ungrateful,” she said to me. “You’re ungrateful.”
“And you’re crazy.”
Randie started crying, softly.
“Tell her,” Candy said to my father. “Tell her now.”
My father sighed and rubbed his temples with his fingers.
“What?” I said. “Tell me what? That you’re pregnant?”
They both stared at me, shocked.
“How did you know?” Candy asked. “Did Spencer tell you?”
“I didn’t say a word!” shouted Spencer, and she pushed back her chair and ran upstairs.
Candy’s eyes slid accusatorily in Sandie and Randie’s direction. They both became very interested in eating their vegetables. Randie sniffed back her tears.
“I could just tell,” I said.
Candy sat back down in her chair, patted her hair nervously, and gazed at me. “Are you happy about it?” she asked.
I sighed. “Sure,” I said. The truth was, I was absolutely terrified.
“Doesn’t that make you want to move back in?” Candy asked.
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”
“Herb,” said Candy, the color rising in her cheeks, “tell her she has to. We need the extra set of hands.”
My father opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, I rose from my seat and ran out of the dining room and into the kitchen. The door swung behind me. I stopped at the sink and stood there, breathing heavily, trying to figure out what to do next.
“MOLLY!” bellowed my father from the dining room. “GET BACK IN HERE! WE NEED TO FINISH THIS CONVERSATION!”
Quickly I considered every possible outcome to the conversation in my mind. And then I realized there was just one thing I had to do.
Never come home again.
“MOLLY!” my father yelled again.
I snatched my jacket off the coat hook, flung the back door open, and started running. I figured that if I ran until I reached the highway, and then hitched a ride, I could be back in time for Agnes and lights out.
As I sprinted past the dimly lit-up houses of North Forest, the chilly autumn wind blowing my hair back and the dried leaves skittering around my feet, I felt a smile spread across my face for the first time all day.
TEN
Alice
We were both standing by the WELCOME, PARENTS sign, waiting. He looked as anxious as I felt.
Did he even realize I was there?
At first there had been about a hundred of us waiting around near the entrance to campus, chatting among ourselves, peering over one another’s heads to see if the station wagon approaching was the station wagon that contained our parents.
Except Dad and R. didn’t drive a station wagon. They drove a 1956 gold Cadillac, a gift from Andre Blackmun, the famous theater director who had taken R. under his wing when she was just seventeen.
Anyway. Station wagon after station wagon drove onto campus, and normal-looking, ruddy-cheeked parents leapt out and embraced their normal-looking, ruddy-cheeked children, and then everyone piled back into their cars to go get ice cream before the afternoon’s activities began. The crowd of students began to dwindle. After a while, there were about thirty of us. Then a dozen. Then five. Then Judah Lipston the Third, my silent friend from the Boston van ride, fell sobbing into the arms of a plump middle-aged woman and a tall emaciated man (I could only assume he was Judah Lipston the Second), who had just emerged from a parked car, and suddenly it was just me.
Me and the Guy.
I hadn’t seen him since the night of the fall commencement ceremony.
I was pretending to find the grass at my feet extremely fascinating.
It was strange. I’d been thinking about him for almost a month. His face—or what I could recall of his face—had been my constant companion. It floated above me when I lay in bed at night. It stared back at me when I looked at my reflection in the mirror. It hovered between the peaks of distant hills when I sat with Molly Miller outside Middleton and watched the sun set every evening.
Now he was standing right in front of me, in the flesh, and I couldn’t even bear to look at him.
In fact, his presence was so overwhelming that I forgot—briefly—how much I was dreading seeing R. again. Although, all things considered, I was pretty lucky; that morning Reena had brusquely informed me that she was meeting her parents in the town of Putnam itself for lunch. That meant that she wouldn’t be waiting at the station wagon parade with me. And that meant maybe, just maybe, I could successfully avoid having her see or meet my father and R., period. The goal was to show them my dorm room when I was sure she wouldn’t be there, quickly usher them out, and then avoid her and her functional family for the rest of the weekend.
“She’s late,” the Guy said.
I nearly jumped a foot in the air. Then I turned and looked at him. His hands were stuffed into his pockets, and he was staring off into the distance.
“Yeah,” I said.
I prayed that I would think of something else to say. But nothing came to me. So I closed my eyes against the midafternoon sunshine and just … waited.
“She’s always late,” he said. “My mother, I mean.”
“What about your father?” I asked, and then instantly regretted it. I sounded too curious.
I felt him turn and look at me. After a second, I turned and looked at him. I wanted to faint. It felt like his brown eyes were boring a hole into my forehead. But I forced myself to keep making eye contact. And there was something about him that made me want to tell him … everything.
“My dad is gone,” he said.
“My mom is dead,” I blurted out.
He looked shocked. I clapped a hand to my mouth.
“Aw, man,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Jamal?” someone asked.
I whirled around. A petite woman in sweatpants and a Yankees baseball cap was standing in front of us.
“Mom!” said the Guy, and then he and the little woman embraced each other. I tried not to stare.
“I got lost,” she said, “and then I parked in the wrong lot, and then—”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Let’s go get lunch.”
They slung their arms around each other and started to walk away. He glanced over his shoulder at me, smiled, mouthed, “Good luck,” and then turned back to his mother and began talking to her. Something he said made her giggle, and then they rounded a bend and were gone.
I took a deep breath.
His name was Jamal.
Jamaljamaljamaljamal.
We had actually spoken to each other.
He knew my mother was dead.
He was a Yankees fan.
I was a die-hard Mets fan.
It was like Romeo and Juliet.
Suddenly I heard the whirring and clanking of an ancient engine. I squinted into the sunshine, and saw R.’s gold Cadillac come rushing in my direction. It was unclear whether or not she could see me. In fact, as the car approached, it kind of looked like she was going to run me over. I waved my hands in the air and yelled. When it was about two feet away from me, the Cadillac screeched to a dramatic stop.
My family had arrived.
* * *
“It’s so windy,” R. moaned.
The three of us were sitting on a picnic bench in front of the ice cream stand in Putnam’s town center. There was a pleasant breeze wafting through the branches of the trees and rustling the red and yellow leaves.
