Apples Never Fall

That’s real good quality.

The phrase had snagged in Joy’s consciousness. It sounded incongruous from a girl of Savannah’s age. Like something Ma from Little House on the Prairie would say. And yet it was one of those moments where Joy felt she was seeing the real Savannah, as if her interest in the dress made her forget herself for a moment and a veil was lifted. Savannah was so ready to serve, like a hotel concierge, unfailingly courteous and warmly interested in your plans, that Joy sometimes had to remind herself not to bask in that interest, just like a self-absorbed hotel guest. It was an effort to make Savannah talk about herself, but she was chipping away at it. She’d noticed it helped if it was a bit later at night, and just the two of them, especially if Joy suggested a nice little glass of brandy. That was when Savannah had told her about her “highly superior autobiographical memory.”

They’d been talking about Joy’s memoir-writing class and how there were some periods of Joy’s life that were just a blur.

“I wish my memories would blur a bit,” Savannah had said, looking into her glass. “I remember everything. The details never fade.”

Now Joy pushed aside the cutlery on the café table to lean forward, chin resting on her hands, to properly examine Savannah. She definitely looked better than when she’d arrived on her doorstep. Joy wished she could say it was because she’d done such a good job looking after her, when in fact the opposite was true: Savannah had done such a good job looking after her.

“Are you feeling tired?” Savannah asked her.

“Not at all,” said Joy, although she was a little. “Thank you for convincing me to get that dress.”

Savannah smiled. “I bet Stan will love it.”

“He’ll love the discount,” said Joy.

“It’s a good dress,” said Savannah.

Joy’s mother would have appreciated Savannah getting on her knees to check the dress’s lining. She used to do that sort of thing: check the stitching of the seams, tug at the hems. Sniff contemptuously if it wasn’t to her liking.

Joy had loved a long, lingering day of shopping with her mother. It had been hard when the children were little and their tennis was all-consuming, but once every year she and her mother would have a day just like this. It was so satisfying, so pleasurable, going from shop to shop, hunting out bargains, accessorizing an outfit, realizing that the blue in that new blouse was a perfect match for the blue in that skirt, and then sitting down for a break at a café like this to rest your aching feet and discuss what else you needed.

Joy’s daughters both hated shopping. Amy began to mutter about commercialism and bright lights and “feeling like a rat trapped in a maze,” or some such nonsense, while Brooke was so task-focused, tapping her feet, her hand on the small of Joy’s back, hurrying her along: “Chop, chop, Mum, a fast shop is a good shop.”

Brooke only ever shopped online these days (“You should try it, Mum, click, click and you’re done!”) and Amy apparently got her clothes by scrounging through charity bins, so Joy had given up suggesting shopping excursions.

But when Joy had suggested she treat Savannah to a day at a fancy shopping mall to thank her for everything she’d done while Joy was in the hospital, Savannah’s face had lit up even as she quickly said, “Oh, that’s not necessary.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Joy had said, truthfully, because today had been like rediscovering a forgotten part of herself, the part that perhaps only existed when she was with her mother, who had no interest in Joy’s tennis, or even, to be honest, Joy’s children, but did have passionate opinions about the right colors and necklines to flatter Joy’s body. Joy had assumed her daughters would at least have a passing interest in fashion, but they both found it frivolous and irrelevant, almost contemptible, like playing with dolls, which neither of them had done either. Joy had spent hours playing with dolls as a child.

“I know exactly the right necklace to go with your shift dress,” said Joy to Savannah. “A long kind

of heavy, chunky pendant that sits right here.” She pointed at her collarbone. “Although I’ve noticed you nearly always wear that key necklace, don’t you? Is it sentimental?”

Savannah’s young face became momentarily rigid and jaded, as if she were thirty years older. “A friend gave it to me for my twenty-first birthday.” She lifted the key from her neck and tapped it against her chin. “She said it symbolized ‘doors opening for a brighter future.’” She smiled cynically at Joy. “I’m still waiting for those doors to open.”

“I’m sure lots of doors are about to open for you!” said Joy. She recognized the rousing tone she used to employ to little avail when Amy got “the bad feeling.”

“Well, you opened your door to me.” Savannah’s face softened. “So that’s a start! Maybe I could get a green pendant.” She bent toward the shopping bags, pulled out a corner of the dress, and pointed at the fabric. “To pick out the green color of those little squares? What do you think?”

“Perfect,” said Joy, and her eyes filled with unexpected tears as she felt a thin, sharp, strangely pleasurable piercing of grief for her mother, who would have loved this day so much, who might have found it so much easier to bond with a granddaughter like this. Her mother had died over twenty years ago, and Joy’s grief at the time had been so complicated and strange. Her mother hadn’t been an especially good mother, and she was an even worse grandmother: she found her grandchildren too loud and too large, and so excessive in number. “Why would you want more?” she’d said to Joy when she told her she was pregnant with Brooke.

When she died, just three months after Stan’s mother had died, Joy kept spinning in the opposite direction when faced with her grief, which was hers and hers alone, because she had no siblings, and her children much preferred their other grandmother, because of the secret cash handouts and that damned apple crumble.

It was perfectly possible to avoid grief when you have four children who all play competitive tennis, and nearly one hundred more tennis students requiring your attention, and one husband grieving his own mother and dealing with his own mid-bloody-life crisis, and when your relationship with your mother had always been entangled in disappointment and love, so Joy spun and she spun until one day her grief caught her, in the laundry, as she pulled a ruined blouse out of the washing machine, a blouse that her mother had told her to only ever wash by hand in cold water.

It was as though Joy’s subconscious had only just that moment caught up with what she rationally understood: that she truly wouldn’t see her mother again. Her mother would never again phone at an inconvenient time with an unreasonable request. She would never again tell Joy that she hated February. Or that she hated August. Or that she hated November. (She only liked April.) Pearl Becker never would find the happiness that had continually eluded her, and their relationship would remain a puzzle forever unsolved. That day Joy had lowered herself to the floor with her back against the washing machine, the sodden ball of her ruined blouse dripping all over her skirt, and sobbed, violently and shockingly, and then, shamefully, she’d shouted at a tennis kid who unexpectedly opened the laundry door and caught her there. (It was a wonder she hadn’t got a complaint from that kid’s mother.)

But this sadness she was feeling now felt natural, wholesome and uncomplicated, as if finally, after all these years, she was grieving the way normal daughters grieved for their mothers: the way she’d like her own daughters to grieve for her one day, not coldly stuffing their mother’s clothes into a big black garbage bag, the way Joy had done, the day after her mother’s funeral, without a single tear, or even a tender thought, but also not crying on the laundry floor weeks later in that strange paroxysm of grief that would have so mortified her mother. (“Get up!” Pearl would have cried, yanking Joy up by the elbow. “Someone might see you!”)

“Thank you.” Joy leaned back as the waitress delivered their apple crumble. She said to Savannah, “I know just the shop for that necklace. We’ll go there straight after this.”

“Well, only if … if that’s okay,” said Savannah, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “You’ve already spent quite a lot on me. Your children might not approve.”

“Darling, I should be paying you a salary,” said Joy. “You are like a full-time chef! And housekeeper! This is the least I can do.”

“Well, but don’t forget I’m getting free rent,” said Savannah.