Ivory Apples

by Lisa Goldstein

  “No, it’s all right,” Philip said. “It’s a good book.”

  Piper laughed soundlessly. And it was funny, seeing the person who knew Ivory Apples better than anyone except Aunt Maeve, who had answered countless questions about it, acting like just another reader. I felt something rise within me, a hot-air balloon lifting free of its moorings, and I had to quash the urge to laugh out loud.

  I missed some of the conversation, and when I started listening again they’d changed the subject. “Do you ever go into their bedrooms?” Ms. Burden asked. “My mother would have skinned me alive if I’d left my room in that state.”

  “Really?” Semiramis asked, her eyes wide. “Skinned you?”

  Ms. Burden laughed. “No, that’s just an expression. But she did hit me a lot—in my memory I’m always running away from her, and she’s always catching up and slapping me.”

  “What?” Amaranth said. “Why did she do that?”

  Ms. Burden looked flustered. “Because I did something wrong.” She turned to Philip. “Don’t tell me you never punish your children.”

  “Well, sure I do,” Philip said. “I don’t hit them, though.”

  “Oh. Well, she could be pretty harsh sometimes, my mother. She liked things neat—she hated it when something was out of order. Once I put a book in the wrong place on the shelf—they were alphabetized, and I didn’t know that names that started with ‘Mc’ went in with names starting with ‘Mac’—so she took the book out and started hitting me with it. And then later, whenever I looked at that part of the shelf, she’d come up behind me, very quietly, and hit me on the back of the head with another book. And then she’d say, ‘I hope you learned your lesson. ‘Mc’ and ‘Mac’—they’re the same thing.’”

  “That’s—that’s horrible,” Beatriz said.

  “Well, I did learn my lesson. I learned to watch out for her before I went to that part of the bookshelves.”

  She laughed a little, but another expression looked out from behind that one, like a lost child peeking out from behind a curtain. For the first time she seemed vulnerable, exposed.

  My sisters looked shocked—and I did too, probably. Ms. Burden must have noticed our reactions because she said, “Well, we should probably talk about something else.”

  “But it must have been horrible,” Beatriz said again. None of us had ever realized that parents could be cruel; we’d thought, because of our own parents, that they had to love their children. Sometimes they could be absent-minded, like Philip, or gone, like Jane, but that love was non-negotiable, instinctive, built into the contract from the beginning.

  “Well, I turned out all right,” Ms. Burden said. “I was able to move out, finally, and I didn’t see her for years. I didn’t even come to her funeral.”

  Hadn’t she said she’d been with her mother when she died? I was excited to have caught her out in a lie, but at the same time her story had been so terrible that it seemed unfair to press my advantage.

  She was so careful when she spoke, though, that I didn’t think I’d get another chance. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You said—didn’t you say you nursed her until she died?”

  She turned to me. “No, that’s not what I said, Ivy. I did nurse her for a while, but she died much later.”

  “Yes, you did. You said—”

  “I should think I’d know when my own mother died.”

  She had said it—I was sure of it. I opened my mouth to argue, but the rest of them had moved on. I learned something then that I was able to put to good use in later life, that most people don’t want to believe someone is lying to them, that they will make excuses for the most blatant untruths.

  “Anyway,” she said, talking to Philip now. “I still can’t believe you let them keep their bedrooms in that state. I mean, the floor’s just covered with their things, Ivy’s and Beatriz’s. I could barely make it through the room.”

  She was smiling as she spoke; she’d probably say she was just teasing if we became offended. Still, I was furious. I wanted to ask her why she’d gone snooping if it was so crowded in there. What right did she have to criticize us?

  Philip spoke first, though. “You know, I don’t think it matters,” he said mildly. “I just want them to be healthy, and to find what they want to do in life, and be happy doing it. And no matter how messy it gets, they always seem to know where everything is.”

  “Ivy couldn’t find her homework this morning,” Beatriz said.

  “Shut up, Beatriz,” I said. Why did she always have to take Ms. Burden’s part? “I did so.”

  “Yeah, after about ten minutes. You almost missed the bus.”

  Dinner ended soon after that, thankfully. Ms. Burden left, and Philip went to put Amaranth and Semiramis to bed. I sat at the table, waiting for him.

  Finally he came downstairs. “Can I talk to you?” I asked.

  Just for a moment he looked impatient. Then he nodded, and I could tell he was trying to put out of his mind all the things he needed to do, the countless tasks adults busied themselves with, and focus on what I wanted. “Here, let’s go sit down,” he said.

  We went into the living room and sat on the couch. To my annoyance, Beatriz came in and took the chair across from us.

  “I didn’t know Maeve was supposed to be dead,” I said.

  “Well, she isn’t supposed to be.” He paused, as if trying to decide the best way to explain it. “But she—Adela Madden—she doesn’t want anyone to know anything about her. It’s fine with her if people think she’s dead.”

  “Why, though?”

  “She—well, she doesn’t like being bothered. You know that. If her fans knew where she lived they’d eat her alive. They’d come to her house, or follow her around, or call her up—there’d be no end to it. A lot of them want to know why she’s never written another book, and she got tired of answering that question.”

  “Why hasn’t she?”

  He didn’t seem to have heard me. “And some people can be obsessive—do you know what that means?”

  I nodded.

  “They might threaten her, or—or hurt her in some way. Someone sent a dead rat to her publisher once.”

  “Uck,” Beatriz said.

  “I still don’t get it, though,” I said. “Other people have fans, and nothing ever happens to them. People want fans, I thought.”

  He shook his head. “Well, part of it is that she’s become more of a hermit. She used to go out sometimes, go into Woodbine instead of paying people for deliveries, but she stopped doing that a while back. She even sold off her car, though I told her she should keep it for emergencies.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But there’s another thing, too. Ms. Burden, when she went to the bathroom—I found her in my room, looking through my stuff.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, remember? She said something about all the books I read.”

  He sat up, looking worried. Finally, I thought. Finally he understands, he sees it too. There’s something wrong with her.

  Everything I wanted to say seemed to burst out at once, like opening an overstuffed closet. “She’s—she’s obsessed, like you said. She keeps talking to us, trying to get to know us, and then it turns out that Ivory Apples is her favorite book, and she wanted to know, she asked me about Aunt Maeve—”

  “Really? What did she say?”

  “She wanted to know where I got my books. The ones Aunt Maeve gave me.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That I got them from a teacher.”

  Philip nodded, looking relieved. “Good. I don’t like you to lie, you know that, but I suppose in this case you didn’t have a choice.”

  “What if she already knows about Aunt Maeve, though? And that’s why she’s interested in us?”

  “How could she? Maeve’s been very careful when it comes to her privacy, very smart. The book came out in 1957 and pretty much disappeared, and then in the mid-sixties or late sixties, somewhere around there, people started re
ading it and it got rediscovered, it became very popular. They did a paperback edition and Maeve—well, she was still Adela then—she started getting a lot of money, and fan letters, and people around the world were reprinting it. And then one day her sister Lydia—that was your grandmother, Jane’s mother—she came to visit and found all these unopened envelopes with checks in them, and she started taking care of Adela’s finances. They got a bank account together and Lydia deposited all the checks. And she answered the mail too—there wasn’t that much of it then, and she thought the fans would like it, that it would help sales of the book. Then she died, and your mother took over. So the last time anyone dealt with Maeve, the last time they saw her in person, was around 1960, like Kate said.”

  I’d thought it had been Jane who’d started answering the fan letters, but it had been going on longer than that, for two generations. It seemed ages ago. No computers, black and white television, diseases with ancient names, like polio . . .

  “Well, she still could have found out,” I said. “Ms. Burden. Someone could have told someone else. The thing is, I just don’t trust her. There’s something, well, off about her. Something wrong.”

  He got that look, the one where he knew he had to say something but felt embarrassed about it. “Did she—has she ever done anything inappropriate?”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant. “Like what?” I asked.

  “We talked about this, remember? If someone tries to touch you where you don’t want to be touched, or says something that makes you uncomfortable, or—or grabs you—”

  “She does touch us a lot.”

  “She pats us on the arm!” Beatriz said, her voice scornful. “That’s not what he means.”

  “Does it bother you when she does that?” Philip asked.

  “No!” Beatriz said.

  “Okay, look. Probably she’s just trying to be friendly. Could you, I don’t know, give her a chance? She’s doing her best.”

  “What if she asks us about Aunt Maeve again?”

  “Well, then, you come talk to me.”

  He studied me, his eyes clear and steady. And that was the way I’d remember him later, that sincere, slightly puzzled expression. That look of his that said he was trying, that he really did want to understand.

  CHAPTER 5

  A FEW DAYS LATER it seemed I got my wish, and Ms. Burden disappeared. We didn’t know she had gone at first; we just noticed that she hadn’t come to the park for several days, and we thought that she must be busy with other things.

  The days turned into weeks, then months, and I began to hope she would stay away forever. It seemed that I had never taken a full breath around her, that I was always worrying about what she wanted, whether I might give away something by accident. Now I felt myself stretching out luxuriously, filling all the spaces she had occupied.

  The others wanted her back, of course, and they looked for her at our usual spot every day after school. After a few weeks they started going through the rest of the park and even beyond, to the surrounding neighborhood.

  “What if—well, what if something happened to her?” Beatriz asked once, after another unsuccessful day in the park. “Do you think we should check the hospitals, or the police?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  “I wish she’d given us her phone number.”

  “Yeah—it’s weird she didn’t.”

  “It’s not that weird.”

  “Really? She keeps telling us how much she likes us, what great friends we are, but we don’t even know how to get in touch with her? She never even told us where she lived.”

  Beatriz couldn’t say anything to that. But I saw I’d made her unhappy, and from then on I tried not to criticize. After all I’d won—she was gone.

  My sisters started going to the park every few days, then every week, then only a few times a month. But after about six months they seemed resigned to her absence, saying “if she comes back” and not “when.”

  I was in middle school then, in a school near the park in fact, so I walked the few blocks there and back. Beatriz and Amaranth and Semiramis still went to grade school on the school bus. Whoever came home first was supposed to get the mail, so I was the one who ended up finding the postcard.

  It had a picture of a fountain the size of a building, with statues of horses and men cavorting through the water. A caption underneath said, “Trevi Fountain, Rome.” I was turning it over idly, wondering who we knew in Rome, when I saw her name.

  A few months ago I would have been shocked to hear from her, and alarmed that she might come back. Now I felt only curiosity, a desire to know where she’d been. “My dear Ivy, Beatriz, Amaranth, and Semiramis,” the postcard said. “I am so sorry I haven’t been in touch with you. I had an opportunity to travel through Europe, and I couldn’t possibly turn it down. I’ve been to England, Spain, Italy of course, Greece, and Turkey. Today is the first day I’ve been able to finally sit down and write you. I wish you could be here with me and see all the wonderful places I’ve seen. Much love, Kate.”

  I was still standing by the mailbox when the school bus pulled in at the curb, and my sisters came clattering down the stairs. “We got a postcard,” I said.

  “Yeah?” Beatriz said. “Who from?”

  “Ms. Burden.”

  “What? Really?”

  Her face opened up, like an empty house filling with life and light and conversation. She grabbed the card from me and read it aloud to Amaranth and Semiramis.

  I couldn’t help but think, my second time through it, that Ms. Burden wasn’t a very good writer. “Wish you were here” was the worst kind of cliché, and if you traveled to all those places you should at least describe some of them.

  For just an instant Beatriz looked disappointed, as if she’d expected more as well. Then Amaranth said, “Let me see, let me see,” and Beatriz passed her the card.

  “When is she coming back?” Semiramis asked.

  “She doesn’t say,” Beatriz said.

  “She might not be,” I said.

  “Of course she is—she says—” Beatriz took the postcard and read it again, then looked up at me, doubtful. “What, do you think she’s going to stay in”—she turned the card over—“in Rome?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think she misses us. Look—it says ‘Much love’ here.”

  I didn’t think that proved anything, but I kept my opinion to myself. We got a second postcard about a week later, this one with a castle in Germany on the front and another vague message on the back. And then a third one, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, where Ms. Burden had written, “I miss all of you very much. I think it might be time to come home.”

  “See?” Beatriz said, as triumphant as whoever had built that arch. “She’s coming back.”

  She’d said she might come back, I thought. But even I was starting to think Beatriz was right. And my worry, that nagging feeling that Ms. Burden had something wrong with her, began to slither back.

  Still, so much time had passed that I wondered if I had exaggerated the menace I’d sensed from her. I even felt a small excitement, thinking about those meetings in the park. What would she come up with next? Would she bring us something from Europe?

  Piper jumped up and down in extravagant disgust, though, saying as clear as words that he wanted her to stay away for good. Could he have been the one who’d distrusted her all this time, and not me? After all, he’d been there when I’d met her—could he have influenced me somehow?

  But what if he was trying to warn me about her? Well then, I thought, he should come right out and say it. I was tired of being crabby and cynical, the one who let the air out of everyone’s balloons. I wanted to set down the load of my suspicions, to walk on lightly without them.

  We saw her sitting in the park the next day, as if she’d never left.

  “Is that—?” Beatriz said, but before she could finish the sentence Amaranth and Semiramis were racing across the grass.r />
  “Kate!” one of them shouted, and the other one said, “We missed you!”

  She lifted Semiramis into the air. “Look at you, Ramis, you’ve grown so much,” she said, putting her down. Semiramis beamed, and Amaranth scowled when Ms. Burden didn’t pick her up as well. And I was scowling too—when had she started using our nicknames?

  Beatriz and I had come up by then, and she drew us all into a hug. When we pulled apart I saw that she looked tired, and the lines on her face had deepened; she could have been gone years instead of months. She was still thin, though, still wearing all those loose light-colored clothes. Her scarf was pale green and something I thought might be called charcoal, and I wondered if she’d picked it up on her travels.

  We sat down around her and she told us about the places she’d visited, the adventures she’d had. She was still talking by dinnertime, and of course my sisters invited her back to the house.

  “Kate!” Philip said when he saw her. “Where have you been? Everyone’s missed you.”

  “Didn’t you get my postcards?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes, of course. Europe somewhere, wasn’t it?”

  I looked at him in amazement. Hadn’t he seen how closely my sisters had studied the postcards?

  “We each got one of them, to put up in our room,” Amaranth said. “I took the Paris one.”

  “The Arc de Triomphe, of course,” Ms. Burden said. “You know, it’s right in the middle of a traffic circle, with all these cars driving around it. And there are these people standing under it, looking at it up close, and I just couldn’t figure how they’d gotten there. It looked like they’d all run out into traffic, but I didn’t think so many people would risk death just for a tourist attraction. I must have stood there for, oh, five, ten minutes, watching them. And I was just about to throw myself in front of all the cars when I saw some people go into a tunnel.”

  We laughed. “Which one did you get, Beatriz?” she asked.

  “The fountain in Rome,” she said, and Semiramis said, “I have the castle!”