Apples Never Fall

“The following night!” screeched Indira.

It did sound quite strange now that he said it out loud.

He remembered how they had all sat in the car watching their father walk away: his pace unhurried, as if he were right on time for an important appointment. The car had felt hot and stuffy and airless, the only sound the whoosh of passing traffic and the monotonous tick, tick, tick of the turn signal that their father had left on when he pulled over.

That was the day Brooke got her first migraine, or the first one that Logan remembered anyway, the day their mother said, flatly, after twenty minutes, “He’s not coming back,” and got out of the car and went around to the driver’s seat and drove them to the tournament, where Logan lost 6–2, 6–1 against that troll of a kid from the Central Coast with no technique. He didn’t remember how the others went in their matches.

Dad must have hitched a ride, Logan thought now, for the first time. Obviously that’s what he did. There was no Uber to call back then. No mobile phones. Not that his dad had a mobile phone now.

He must have stuck out his thumb, hitched a ride, and spent the night in a cheap hotel. No great mystery. It had all seemed so terrifyingly mysterious when they were children, like he’d vanished into thin air.

He thought about ringing up his dad now and saying, “So what? You stayed at a Travelodge? Good on you, big man. Big deal, Dad.”

“The longest time he was away was five nights,” said Logan. He’d counted the nights. It was after Troy jumped the net and beat up Harry Haddad, so the whole family was angry with Troy.

“Five nights! But your mother must have been in a state!” said Indira. “Didn’t she call the police?”

“I don’t think she ever did,” said Logan. He didn’t know if she ever called the police or not. He assumed not. “Because he always came back. She knew he’d come back.”

He remembered Brooke crying into her spaghetti Bolognese while their mother soothed her, as if this were no more serious than running out of Parmesan cheese. Daddy is coming back, silly girl, stop making such a fuss! He just needs to clear his head.

There were no bitter asides from their mother about their father when he was gone, just reassurances that he would be back, not to worry, he’d be back “any minute” and they could forget all about it. You just had to be patient.

“You never asked where he went?” asked Indira.

“You weren’t allowed to ask. You had to pretend nothing happened. That was like … the rule.”

“I can’t believe your mother put up with this,” said Indira. She paused. “Surely Amy asked where your dad went.”

Logan had a sudden distressing flash of memory: Amy running down the hall and launching herself against their father when he came back one time, pummeling his chest with small fists, screaming, “Where did you go, stupid, bad, naughty Daddy, where did you go?” and their mother pelting along behind her, unpeeling her from Stan, who stood as unresponsive and expressionless as a tree.

Was that the time his dad turned around and left again? Or was that another time?

“He did it at my ninth birthday party,” said Logan. “Before we sang ‘Happy Birthday.’”

“That’s awful,” said Indira. “That’s really awful. Stan! Lovely Stan. I thought he was just a big old bear.”

“Oh, well,” said Logan. “It’s not the worst thing a man can do, and he wasn’t gone for that long that day. He was back in time to put me to bed.”

That time his dad had bought him a Crunchie bar. He remembered the gold shimmer of the wrapping as his dad put it under the covers next to him. It was the closest he ever got to an apology. And the taste of the illicit chocolate in bed, shared with no sibling, after he’d cleaned his teeth. He knew objectively that his father had behaved badly that day, even cruelly, but still the memory of the Crunchie bar shimmered gold in his memory, evidence of his father’s love.

“At some point he stopped doing it,” said Logan. “I don’t remember exactly when. Sometime in my teens, I guess. And we all just forgot about it.”

“Still, that would have been pretty formative,” said Indira. “For you.”

“No,” said Logan.

He was suddenly profoundly irritated. Indira’s parents were both psychologists, and he hated it when she attempted to apply this kind of simplistic cause-and-effect psychology to him, because she was a graphic designer, so what did she know, and surely her parents were not good psychologists, because if so you’d think they might have analyzed themselves and diagnosed themselves as awful, and maybe they might have noticed that their gorgeous daughter hated her gorgeous body.

“It wasn’t formative. It was just a weird habit my dad had, and he grew out of it. It didn’t form me. Did I ever do that to you? Did I ever disappear on you?”

Indira didn’t answer.

“Indira. You know I didn’t. I never did.” Something was building in him.

“You never physically left,” said Indira slowly. “But whenever we had any kind of disagreement, you definitely … checked out.”

“I checked out,” said Logan. “What the hell does that mean?”