Apples Never Fall

“Never,” he said. “I’m sorry if I’ve made you think that, because that is so wrong. Dad could just be … moody. That’s all I meant. He shut down when he was upset. Like a lot of men of his age. But he adored my mother.” He muttered something inaudible.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

He smiled uneasily. “I said, he adores my mother. He still does adore my mother.”

In a moment he was going to shut down himself.

Christina changed direction. “What can you tell me about this woman who lived with your parents for a while, last year, was it? Both your sisters mentioned her.”

“Savannah,” he said heavily. “Yeah, well, speaking of complicated. That got complicated for a while there.”

“In what way?”

“In every way.”

Chapter 13

LAST SEPTEMBER

“So it’s just until she finds somewhere to live,” said Joy to Brooke, the cordless phone cradled between her ear and her shoulder as she dusted the living room with a green “microfiber dusting cloth” she’d bought at one of those unbearable parties where she’d had to endure various “product demonstrations” by a very nice woman whose three children Joy and Stan had privately coached for many years without improvement, and therefore Joy had felt obligated to buy three dusting cloths, one for each kid.

Joy had a rule that whenever one of her children telephoned, she dusted (even if it was Logan calling, whose calls lasted an average of thirty seconds).

She was in a good mood today. Last night she and Stan had sex. Surprisingly excellent sex. If she could still get pregnant, last night would have got her pregnant. (She always used to say that Stan only had to look at her to get her pregnant, which had caused a very embarrassing misunderstanding with Brooke when she was six and one day accused dear little Philip Ngu of trying to get her pregnant at recess.)

It had been the first time in months. Joy had actually been wondering if they were done with it, and she hadn’t even been upset about it, which was upsetting in itself. She suspected it was somehow related to Savannah. Maybe it was as simple as the fact that they were closing the bedroom door again, which used to be the signal for sex, or maybe Stan’s libido was helped by the sight of a pretty young girl flitting about the place?

Joy honestly didn’t care if that was the case. She had on occasion found excuses to wander around her own front yard while Caro’s grown-up son Jacob did the gardening with his shirt off. She’d known that boy since he was a child, but he’d grown up to look like a young Robert Redford and Joy was not dead yet.

It really had been very good sex for people of their age, Joy thought. She had to suppress the urge to tell Brooke about how well her parents had performed in the bedroom last night, as if they’d won a particularly tough match.

“Why are you laughing, Mum?” asked Brooke.

“I’m not,” said Joy. “I’m dusting. It’s tickling my nose.”

Brooke had left two voicemail messages today. She’d learned about Savannah firstly from her sister, and then apparently Logan had called the moment he left the house this morning, so she was now in a fine state. Joy knew that not calling Brooke earlier was an error of judgment. Brooke expected to be the first to find out about significant family developments. The truth was that Joy had put off calling her, because she knew Brooke would react to the news of their houseguest with incredulity, disapproval, and anxiety, and this was proving to be correct.

“Logan said he and Troy are helping this girl move out of her apartment tomorrow.” Brooke was talking on the speaker phone as she drove home from work. It was irritating. Her voice kept fading in and out.

“Yes, Logan insisted on it,” said Joy. “He didn’t want your father doing it on his own. He and Troy are going to drive Savannah to her apartment tomorrow and move her out. Then she’ll never have anything to do with that vile man again.”

She moved into the living room, holding her cloth aloft, and started on the tennis ball collection. Stan owned forty-three signed tennis balls contained in small glass boxes, and it was amazing how the glass containers collected a thin layer of dust in such a short amount of time. When he died the signed balls would be the first thing to go. Some of them were probably fake. She’d read somewhere once that sports memorabilia fraud was booming.

“What if the boyfriend turns up?” asked Brooke.

“It will be two against one,” said Joy. “Your brothers can take care of it.”

“What if he has a … I don’t know, a knife?”

Joy paused. Surely he wouldn’t have a knife! “Should they take knives too?”

“Oh my God, Mum!” Brooke exploded. Her excessive reaction calmed Joy. She wasn’t sending the boys into an active war zone. Savannah was quite positive that the boyfriend wouldn’t be there, and even if he was, Troy and Logan were very big, strong, intimidating men. Everyone said so. They’d be fine. She wouldn’t let them take knives. To be honest, part of her still didn’t trust the boys with knives, as if they were still little kids who might cut themselves or each other. She knew there was a very significant contradiction in her thinking right now.

“He’s not going to be there,” said Joy. “He’s a graphic designer, apparently. Like Indira. I wonder if Indira knows him? I guess that’s unlikely. Indira gave me a lovely new fridge magnet, did I tell you?”

She kept telling people about how much she loved the magnet to hide the fact that she couldn’t stand to look at it, because she’d been so crushed when she opened it. She’d been idiotically convinced it was an ultrasound picture and that Indira was hiding somewhere in the garden, watching her reaction. Mortifying.

“No, Mum, you didn’t mention that Indira gave you a lovely fridge magnet,” said Brooke. Joy recognized the tone. She used to speak to her own mother with the same forbearance.