Apples Never Fall

Her first murder case involved a man making authentically frantic-sounding calls to over twenty friends and family members, but not a single call to his supposedly missing wife. Why would he call her? He knew she wouldn’t answer.

“You’ll have to ask him about that,” said Logan.

“So where do you think your mother is, Logan? What do you think is going on here?”

Logan continued his previous line of thought, as if trying to work it out himself. “So he sends the fake text, and then he hides the phone under their bed? Of all places? Wouldn’t he destroy it? If he’s capable of murdering someone, don’t you think he’s smart enough to destroy a phone?”

Christina said, “Perhaps he wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“I don’t know where she is, and you’re wrong, I am worried, because you’re right, it is strange, and it is out of character.” Logan shifted about in his seat and gave a distracted wave to someone who had walked out of a classroom. “But at the same time, I feel like maybe she needed to get away for a while, or maybe she’s making a point.”

Christina said, “Why would your mother need to make a point?”

He lifted his hands.

“What point would she be making?”

He shook his head. He looked at a spot on the wall and blew air out of his mouth as if it were a long, thin stream of cigarette smoke.

She allowed a hint of aggression to come into her voice. The obfuscation was starting to annoy her. “That doesn’t make sense. You say your parents had a perfect relationship and now you’re saying maybe your mother has disappeared to make a point.”

“I never said it was a perfect relationship. There were issues. Like every relationship. Like you said.?

?

“Can you be more specific about those issues, please?”

“Not really.” He sighed. “How well could you analyze your parents’ marriage?”

“My parents are divorced,” said Christina shortly.

She could be very specific about the issues. They divorced over a plate. After he retired, her dad got into the habit of making himself a hummus and tomato sandwich every day at eleven a.m. Christina’s mother suggested he rinse the plate and put it in the dishwasher. He refused. It somehow went against his principles. This went on for years until one day Christina’s mother picked up the plate from the sink, threw it like a frisbee at her dad’s head, and said, “I want a divorce.” Her father was baffled and wounded. (Not physically wounded. He ducked.) He finally concluded that Christina’s mother was “deranged” and remarried within the year. Meanwhile Christina’s mother got into hot yoga and The Handmaid’s Tale. “Under his eye,” she said darkly, each time Christina rang her to talk about her wedding arrangements. She said she was very happy for Christina’s dad’s second wife to be at the wedding just as long as she was “never within her line of sight.”

“What about housework?” she asked Logan. “Any issues there?”

“Housework?” Logan blinked the way that men tended to blink when women brought up frivolous domestic issues in serious settings. It was just a plate, her father kept saying to Christina. He never understood what that plate represented: Disrespect. Disregard. Contempt.

“My mother did the housework,” said Logan. “That was never an issue between them. It was a traditional marriage in that way. She’s … of that generation.”

“But didn’t she help run the tennis school as well?”

Logan looked impatient. “I’m not saying it was fair.”

She waited.

He said, “I’m telling you I never once saw them argue about housework.” Was that an unconscious curl of his lip on the word housework? Did his eyes just flick over to Ethan for masculine support? Can you believe this chick? Or was she projecting her own unconscious biases? She never saw her parents argue about housework either, and yet that plate in the sink ended their marriage. He just ignores me, Christina. I ask so nicely and he just ignores me. No one was too old or well mannered for the sudden snap of rage.

“So what did they argue about, then?”

He looked away. “My dad wasn’t always an easy man. He’s different now.”

And now we’re getting somewhere. “Was he ever violent towards your mother?”

“Jesus. No. Never.” He looked back up at her, seemingly appalled. “You’re getting the wrong impression.”

Yet she saw a flicker of something: a question, a thought, a memory. It was gone before she could grab it.

“Never?” she probed.