Apples Never Fall

She walked the rest of the way home, carrying her helmet by the strap. The car was in the driveway. She would go back and collect the bike once she’d calmed and cooled down. Inside, the house was silent, but she could feel the skulking, sulking presence of her husband. Her shirt stuck to her sweaty body and her mood flared as scratchy and hissy as Caro’s awful thieving cat. She went to the kitchen, got herself a glass of water, and drank deeply.

“You should probably read this.”

Stan’s voice, suddenly so deep and loud behind her, made her jump. The glass banged painfully against her teeth. She turned to look at him. He threw some kind of bound document onto the table.

“What is it?” she said.

“It’s Harry Haddad’s memoir,” said Stan. “This is a preview copy, I think you call it. He’s sent it to us to read. I’m in it. We’re both in it.”

“Right,” she said.

She almost said, “Whatever,” like a teenager. She’d forgotten all about that damned memoir. It didn’t matter now. The ugly little secret was out.

“He admits he used to cheat when he played as a kid,” said Stan. He tapped his finger on the document. She read the title: Game to Harry.

“He admits it?” She put the glass down and slowly sank into a chair at the table, pulling Harry’s life story toward h

er. If Harry was publicly admitting that he once cheated, then it must have been more than a few bad calls.

“Yes,” said Stan. “It’s not that surprising—”

“I beg your pardon?” She looked up at him. She couldn’t believe he would say that. “What do you mean, it’s not surprising? You didn’t believe Troy. You accused him of lying.”

“I did not,” said Stan. “I never said he lied. I told him it was an unfortunate reality of the game. I told him he would sometimes face kids who made bad calls and that he shouldn’t focus on his opponent but on his own game.”

“Rubbish!” She wanted to grab the back of his head and force him to look in the right direction where he could see his past clearly. “You took Harry’s side! You didn’t support your own son!”

“My son assaulted another player! Of course I didn’t support him. Are you crazy?”

“Don’t you dare call me crazy.” She was electrified with rage: against her husband, against those long-ago doctors who couldn’t help her daughters, against the rude mini-mart man. Her hair did not look nice right now, it was all flat and sweaty, and her legs still wobbled from that bike ride up Mount bloody Everest from her failed mission to get apples to make her horrible husband’s nasty mother’s apple crumble. “Troy lost his temper because he didn’t have your support!”

“Troy was given every opportunity. They were all given every opportunity. They have no idea how lucky they were.”

She felt the criticism of her children like a physical blow. “They played their hearts out!”

He didn’t listen. His mind was still on Harry. His mind had always been on Harry: Harry’s talent, Harry’s potential. Harry, Harry, Harry.

“Do you want to know why that poor kid cheated?” he roared. He picked up the bound document and shook it violently at her. “Because his father told him his sister had cancer.”

The words jolted Joy, like a change in direction so sudden it could rupture an Achilles tendon. She thought she already knew everything that Stan had to say in this argument.

She said faintly, “He told him Savannah had cancer?”

“Like father, like daughter.” He smiled with grim satisfaction, as if he’d predicted exactly this bizarre outcome, and pushed the manuscript across the table toward her. “He told Harry that he had to win prize money so his sister could get some kind of lifesaving medicine. Dumb kid thought he was playing to save his sister’s life. No wonder he cheated. If he’d stayed with me, I would have found out and put a stop to it, but I never got that opportunity because you made a unilateral decision to send him away!”

His hands were splayed like claws, like he wanted to strangle her.

She could not think about Harry now. She focused instead on the information she’d had back then.

“Your children needed your support!” she shouted back. “I needed your support!”

“You had no right! Coaching was my profession!” Stan towered over her, and she was not frightened, she was exhilarated, because the fractured shell of their marriage was finally cracking open like a coconut. She wanted it all out. She wanted to finally say everything she’d never said.

“What about my profession?” She banged her chest with her fist. “What about me? What about my career? My sacrifice?”

“Your sacrifice?” His disbelief was like a public shaming. As if she had anything to sacrifice. She wasn’t worth anything: not a smile from the mini-mart man, not a phone call from her children.

“I gave up my tennis for you,” she said. Finally she’d said it out loud. All these years it had been there, never on the tip of her tongue, not at the back of her head, but right at the center of her chest, beneath her collarbone, between her breasts, right where she continued to bang her fist, over and over.