Apples Never Fall

“What do you mean by that?” said Joy. “You all did extremely well!” She was surprised and disappointed to find an intense wave of irritability sweep over her, washing away the wonderful sense of well-being she’d been experiencing since she woke up this morning. She could feel her bad mood like a physical sensation: an actual fever of aggravation heating up her face.

Amy raised a single eyebrow in a condescending manner. “I mean exactly that, Mum, we never quite got there, we all got close enough to make you think it was going to happen, and then one by one, we crashed and burned.”

This was technically true, in fact, it was distressingly accurate, but there was no need to say it in that hard, bitter tone. Joy and Stan had never revealed their disappointment to their children, only their pride. It was something they hadn’t even properly admitted to each other.

Joy remembered their trip to Wimbledon last year. Their first time. Their lifelong dream. They’d been giddy with anticipation. This was the point of their big trip: not seeing Buckingham Palace or the Tower of London or riding that overpriced London Eye. The point of the trip was Wimbledon. After all these years, they finally had the time and the money and they were there. Their kids and their friends had been texting: Send us photos!

She’d seen the moment it hit Stan: the realization that they should never have come, not like this, not as ordinary fans, as ordinary people, because Stan had never really believed they were ordinary when it came to tennis. If he couldn’t play at Wimbledon then he should be there as the coach for one of his kids, and if not one of his kids, then one of his students, and if none of the above, then he should be watching from his armchair at home with his chili crackers and cream cheese and his dog.

“I don’t feel great,” he had whispered, his face pasty-white. It was the men’s semifinals. The tickets had cost them six thousand dollars each. She thought: Heart attack. Like poor Dennis Christos. He said, “You stay.”

But, of course, she didn’t send him off to have a heart attack on his own.

She’d dreamed of playing at Wimbledon too, and she’d dreamed of seeing one of her children or one of her students play at Wimbledon, and she’d dreamed, far more reasonably and feasibly, of one day being a spectator at Wimbledon, but her dreams didn’t have the same ferocious entitlement as Stan’s, because she was a woman, and women know that babies and husbands and sick parents can derail your dreams, at any moment they can drag you from your bed, they can forestall your career, they can lift you from your prized seat at Wimbledon from a match later described as “epic.” She thought she’d need to call an ambulance or take him to a hospital. She was thinking about travel insurance and telling the children, and how would they transport his body home?

But it wasn’t a heart attack. He said it was something they ate. She didn’t believe it.

Joy watched the match on television, and sent fraudulent texts about how Wimbledon was wonderful, “like a dream,” “they couldn’t believe they were there,” while Stan lay curled on his side in their king-sized bed, his eyes closed, forehead creased, so much like Brooke with a migraine that Joy had wondered if she should do the same as she once did with Brooke and press her hand to his forehead, firmly, the way Brooke wanted, Harder, Mummy, harder, except it was never hard enough to make it go away.

Stan got up the next day and said, “I’m so sorry,” and couldn’t meet her eye.

She said, “You don’t have to say you’re sorry,” because he didn’t. If they started saying sorry, where would it begin and where would it end? They went down to the hotel buffet breakfast, silent in the lift, and never spoke of it again.

“We were always so proud of you!” said Joy now to her children. “You were all incredibly talented and you all did your best … and that’s all we could ask for!”

Troy snorted. Joy glared at him.

Stan said to Savannah, “Every single one of my kids was good enough to play on center court at Wimbledon—”

“Except clearly we weren’t,” interrupted Amy.

“You were!” Stan pounded his fist on the table, so hard that the crockery rattled. The Happy Father’s Day balloon spun frantically.

Joy looked at her children: Brooke had her elbow on the table, her forehead rested on her hand, Logan lifted his eyes to the ceiling, Troy grinned that inane grin, and Amy pulled a strand of blue-dyed hair across her face and sucked it, a childish habit that made Joy want to scream.

Was it because none of them had partners with them today that it felt like she’d hurtled back through time to the dinner table of their childhoods? Or was it the sudden explosive sound of Stan’s fist on the table? He had no right. They were grown-ups. Didn’t the stupid man realize that he no longer had the power to send anyone to their room? They could stand up and leave whenever they liked. They could move interstate or overseas. They could choose to never visit, to never call, to never have children

.

The children had all the power now.

And how inappropriate to behave like this in front of Savannah. Stan’s fist on the table might remind her of previous foster placements with abusive fathers. No one knew what that child might have suffered.

Stan leaned forward on the table, his shoulders huge and muscled in the shirt that Amy had given him, a size too small.

“This one was a beautiful player.” Stan pointed at Amy, his eyes on Savannah. “Impeccable ground strokes. The ball just fizzed off her racquet. It was a pleasure to watch her play.”

Oh, it was true. It had been a pleasure to watch Amy play. Joy and Stan used to exchange smiles as their ponytailed daughter glided back and forth across the court, when she was maybe eight or nine, back when she had a “funny little personality” not “a possible mental illness.” (Joy never forgave the GP who wrote that particular referral letter.)

“We used to call her the Comeback Queen,” reflected Stan. “Remember?”

He looked down the table at Joy.

“I do remember,” said Joy carefully, because that was much later, and that wasn’t such a good memory. She’d suspected that as Amy got older she began to deliberately lose points or games just so she could claw her way back to a win. Amy loved being the underdog. It was a dangerous, stupid strategy against the better players. The better players gripped that lead between their teeth and ran with it. Amy had lost matches she should have won because she’d mounted her comeback too late.

“Once she lost nine games in a row and still went on to win the match,” reflected Stan. “Incredible.”

“But?” said Amy airily.