Apples Never Fall

She yawned hugely. Don’t fall asleep in the tree, Amy!

Tomorrow was Father’s Day. She needed to sleep. She had to be up early to make chocolate brownies. Her dad loved her chocolate brownies. If she stayed awake all night, which was a real possibility, she’d have dark circles under her eyes and her mother would notice and worry, or perhaps she wouldn’t because she would be so busy noticing and worrying about Savannah, who had proper problems, like homelessness and abusive boyfriends.

She considered her options to make herself sleep:

Sleeping pill.

Hot bath.

Hot milk.

Guided meditation.

Orgasm.

Really boring book.

One of her flatmates read giant, hardback biographies of important men, and they were so boring they made Amy want to weep.

Her dad said he played imaginary tennis in his head when he couldn’t get to sleep. Amy said, “Doesn’t that wake you up?” Her mother suggested doing the ironing.

Amy couldn’t think of anything less restful than playing imaginary tennis and she never ironed. “That’s evident,” her mother said.

Amy rolled onto her side, adjusted her pillow.

She might love this girl who was trying to steal her parents. This Savannah from the savanna where the saber-toothed tiger roamed.

When she asked Troy about Savannah he said she was “fine,” which was the word he used when a waiter asked, “How was your meal?” and Troy thought it wasn’t that great, but it wasn’t bad enough to get all Gordon Ramsay about it.

Logan said he had no opinion on Savannah. She could hear his shrug.

Brooke would be meeting Savannah for the first time tomorrow too, but when Amy last spoke to her, she said that she’d spoken to Mum and she wasn’t worried and Amy shouldn’t worry either, and that their parents were doing something nice for a domestic-violence victim and they should all feel proud.

Amy had never had a boyfriend hit her, although she’d had a couple who fucked her when she was too out of it to consent, but that was before consent got fashionable. Those kinds of incidents used to be considered “funny.” Even “hilarious.” The worse you felt, the louder you laughed. The laughter was necessary because it put you back in charge. You didn’t remember, so you created a memory you hoped was the truth. Sometimes she kept dating a boy, temporarily convinced herself she loved him, just to keep the correct narrative on track. Well. No need to go all the way back there. Her mind was filled with catacombs it was important to keep sealed shut, like the sealed-up fireplace in her parents’ living room. The brick hearth where her grandmother had smashed her face was long gone.

She thought of her grandfather, her father’s father, who nobody talked about because of what he’d done. She would have liked to have at least seen a photo of him. “Why would you want to see his photo?” her younger siblings said, disgusted with her because their grandmother made extraordinary apple crumble and palmed five-dollar notes into their sticky little hands, as if she were tipping them.

He just interested her. Did he regret what he’d done? Did he ever do it to another woman? She assumed her interest in her dead abusive grandfather indicated a pathological attraction to bad men.

Sleep, Amy, sleep.

She heard a door slam downstairs, so that meant one of her flatmates had come home, which was good, no need to imagine robbers in black balaclavas wandering through the place and getting frustrated when they couldn’t find anything to steal except forty-dollar biographies.

Breathe in for four.

Hold for seven.

Out for eight.

Supposedly people in the military used the four–seven–eight breathing technique and got to sleep in under a minute.

“Let’s start with sleep,” her latest therapist had said. His name was Roger, and she wasn’t too sure about his qualifications. He probably read about the breathing technique on the internet. She liked the fact that there was something a bit dodgy about him. She felt more comfortable in his slightly dingy office than she did in the softly lit, plush-carpeted offices of the expensive psychiatrists and psychologists, who she felt were judging her hair and clothes.

She didn’t actually expect Roger to “cure” her. It was just so that when people said to her, as the

y inevitably did, “I think you need to get help, Amy, professional help,” she could answer, “Sure. I’m getting help.”

She moved through therapists like she moved through boyfriends. She dumped both boyfriends and therapists when they offended her, enraged her, bored her.