Apples Never Fall

She replaced the fridge magnet and council notice and thought about how she should really throw away the London Eye magnet and use Indira’s lovely flower magnet, but she was holding an unreasonable grudge against that magnet for not being the ultrasound picture she’d expected. She’d hidden it in a drawer so it wouldn’t hurt her feelings every time she looked at it. She planned to tell Indira the magnet was far too pretty for the fridge and that she had it sitting on her dressing table. Joy was an excellent liar when feelings were at stake. Indira would never check.

She opened the fridge once more and stared without recognition at its contents. Everything was unfamiliar because Savannah had gone to the shops yesterday afternoon and done all the grocery shopping for today. Joy had been feeling a little off, and it had been such a relief when Savannah suggested it, although she said she wasn’t comfortable taking Joy’s credit card, but Joy knew she could trust her, and just to be very sure, she’d already had a quick look at her balance online and Savannah had not bought herself tickets to France.

She closed the refrigerator and pivoted to face Savannah. “Actually, we might have quite an abundance of chocolate brownies today, because Amy always brings brownies for Stan. They’re his favorite … and they’re kind of Amy’s signature dish.”

“Oh no!” Savannah’s face fell. “Her signature dish?” She lifted the sheet of aluminum foil and considered her brownies. They were neat little rectangles. Amy’s brownies were always misshapen and lumpy, and were actually a bit too sweet for Joy’s taste, although she joined in the family chorus of approval.

“That’s okay. I’ll freeze them,” said Savannah decisively. “No problem! Keep them for a rainy day.”

“That might be best. I feel terrible after all that work,” said Joy. “But—”

“Absolutely not,” said Stan.

They both turned to look at him.

“You can never have too many brownies,” said Stan.

You most certainly can, thought Joy.

“We’ll have a taste test—see which ones are best.” He grinned. He was in an excellent mood. “Isn’t that Amy’s chosen profession? Taste testing? We’ll have a bake-off!”

“You are kidding,” said Joy.

Stan gave a one-shoulder shrug that reminded her of Logan. “Why not?” he said.

“Because we’re talking about Amy.”

“I don’t want to rock the boat.” Savannah wiped her hands on her clean apron.

Oh, she was so mature. So much more mature than Joy’s own daughter, who was older than Savannah, who had grown up with all the privileges.

“You won’t rock the boat,” said Stan.

“Well,” said Joy.

“Amy is thirty-eight years old,” said Stan. “Not eight years old.”

“She’s thirty-nine,” Joy corrected him.

Stan ignored her. “So two people made chocolate brownies. This is not a crisis.”

Joy wavered. Maybe it was silly to make Savannah hide her freshly baked brownies. Amy would understand. She might even laugh at Joy for worrying about it.

“We can’t pander to Amy’s moods,” said Stan. He spoke lightly, but Joy had spent fifty years forecasting his moods. She knew his patterns. She could see the tight clench of his teeth in the line of his jaw. He’d decided he wanted to make a point of this, as if he were still a young father and this was a parenting decision he’d made, and as the man, the father, the head of the household, his word was law, as if there was still a possibility of shaping their children’s behavior like they’d shaped their tennis, with the correct combination of rewards and punishments, and appropriate bedtimes, when in fact Joy had long ago come to the realization that all her children’s personalities were pretty much set at birth.

Stan had always fought so hard against Amy’s mental health issues. He thought he could just make her stop and be normal through sheer force of will. “I just want her to be happy,” he’d say, as if Joy didn’t want the same. “We don’t tell Brooke to just stop having a headache,” she said to him once, but he didn’t get it.

She remembered how Stan used to admonish Amy to “Wrap it up!” when she was a little girl and took too long to get to the point of a rambling, senseless story, or “Slow it down!” when she became so deliriously excited her words ran together. Amy’s face would fall, her mood would crash, and she’d abruptly stop talking, like a tap had been turned off.

“She sounded like a crazy person, I couldn’t understand a word she said,” Stan would say afterward, defensively, guiltily. Joy hadn’t understood a word either, but she didn’t care, she didn’t try to make sense of it, she just enjoyed watching Amy’s animated face as she talked her nonsense and enjoyed the fact that she was happy for a change.

But Amy was doing well right now. There hadn’t been any “troubles” for a long time. She was “in a good place,” as people said. Joy liked the sound of this new counselor. Roger. Joy had been to school with a nice boy called Roger.

Anyway, the truth was that Joy could neve

r accurately predict what would upset Amy. Joy had often got herself tied up in knots over some issue she thought might set off Amy, and been completely wrong. The trick with Amy was to go along for the ride with her. Let her talk crazy-fast when she was happy. Let her be sad when she was sad, and resist the urge to list all the reasons why she should not be sad.

“It will be fine, Savannah,” said Joy. “The more brownies the better!”