Ivory Apples

by Lisa Goldstein

  So I snatched moments here and there to catch up. I went deep into the archives and started from the time I ran away, 2002, on my fifteenth birthday. The posts had slowed even more in the years I’d been gone, when it looked as if the letters from David had stopped for good. But people still wrote about other things, and about their concern, even distress, over what might have happened to Adela Madden and/or the letter-writer.

  Then, when I took over the task of answering the mail, the site exploded with activity. People wrote excitedly about getting answers to letters they had sent years ago, and they speculated about what had happened during all that time. Had David been ill, or had he become exhausted from the amount of writing he’d had to do? Watchmaker wrote an essay claiming that he’d lived in Pommerie Town for those years. And of course there were endless arguments over whether David and Dave were the same person, just as I’d hoped there would be.

  I came closer and closer to the present day, reading posts from three months before, two months before I stopped at one from Eliza Woodbury, who wrote about how much she’d enjoyed the letter she’d gotten from Dave. I was pleased to see it; I’d had a soft spot for her ever since she’d spoken up for me at the Adela Madden Conference, and when I found a letter from her I’d spent more time on it than usual.

  After Eliza’s post came a message from someone with the name Seeker After Truth, asking Watchmaker to get in touch with them. I frowned. Philip had called one of my sisters by that name, but I couldn’t remember which one. Someone who had asked question after question, trying his patience . . . Amaranth?

  That’s right, it was Amaranth. And I remembered I’d thought that Watchmaker was Ms. Burden, but only because they seemed obsessed with the muses, with inspiration and creativity.

  If both these things were true, then it meant that Amaranth wanted to find Ms. Burden. And she’d written her post in January, a few months before she’d run away, so she’d been looking for her for a while.

  I didn’t see any more posts from Seeker After Truth, but ivoryorchard had an internal mail service and the two of them could have gotten in touch that way. But why would Amaranth want to talk to Ms. Burden, after everything she had done? Was it because she knew that Ms. Burden was also looking for muses, because they’d both been disappointed in their quests?

  I showed the post to Beatriz and asked her what she thought of it, but she shrugged and didn’t answer. Still, I made time to look at the site every day, but Seeker After Truth never came back.

  CHAPTER 22

  I STARTED having nightmares about Amaranth. I had a dream where she met Ms. Burden, ran into her on the streets of Eugene somewhere, and that Ms. Burden imprisoned her in the deadening fog again. And then somehow I was there too, trying to rescue her and failing.

  I woke from these dreams fighting my sheets and blankets, certain that I was still trapped with her. I lay there until my pulse slowed and my sweat cooled, trying to convince myself that Amaranth was all right. But even when I woke up completely, when I was cooking or cleaning or paying bills, I felt apprehensive, as if something was about to happen, some catastrophe lying in wait just around the corner.

  A month after Amaranth left, I picked out a private investigator at random from the phone book, someone named Judith Reinhart. I called her and gave her a few details about Amaranth’s disappearance, and we made an appointment. She had trouble spelling Amaranth, like everyone else.

  I drove to Eugene on a pleasant day in May. The sky was the color of my old math teacher’s hair, a pale white tinged with blue. I felt a little foolish going to a private detective, as if I’d wandered into a cheap mystery novel. I’d been reading a lot of mysteries lately, though I’d never liked them before. Then I realized that mysteries, unlike other fiction, give the reader an explanation for death.

  The office didn’t look like any of the ones in the books, though. The waiting room could have belonged to a lawyer, Mr. McLaren for example, though it was smaller and didn’t have a receptionist.

  A woman came out of another room. Her hair was somewhere between blond and brown, and her eyes, unusual for her coloring, were a dark brown, almost black. She was about my height but thinner, almost gangly. She wore a light tweed jacket, a white button-down blouse, jeans, and, incongruously, red high-top tennis shoes. At first glance she seemed only a few years older than me, much too young for her job.

  The room she led me into was just as dull as the outer one, with a desk and a computer, a couch, and a chair. A door to a closet stood half open, and I could see some books and filing cabinets inside. A Matisse print hung over the couch, some women dancing in a ring.

  We shook hands. The handshake was brisk, her hand dry. For some reason I felt reassured, as if this firm, businesslike gesture extended to her working habits as well.

  Judith Reinhart sat behind the desk and I took the chair. “So,” she said. “You want me to find your sister.” She looked down at some notes on her desk, her straight hair falling over her face. “Amaranth, is that right?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you bring a photo?” she asked.

  I took out the picture I’d brought. Judith had also asked for lists of Amaranth’s friends and of places she liked to go, and I gave her those as well.

  She studied the photo a while and then said, “How old did you say she was? Fourteen?”

  I nodded again. Why wasn’t I saying anything? I cleared my throat and said, “That’s right.”

  “She looks older than that.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Well, people remember young kids on their own, but she could be sixteen or seventeen. Still, I don’t think it matters.”

  We went over some of the details of her disappearance, and then she said, “I’m going to have to ask you some questions, painful questions, maybe. How sure are you that she ran away, that she wasn’t kidnapped?”

  “Well, she talked about running away a lot,” I said. “And we would have gotten a ransom note if she’d been kidnapped, right?”

  “Not necessarily. People take girls like her for all kinds of reasons, I’m sorry to say. Sexual slavery, or sex trafficking.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Well, but you said she talked about running away, so let’s concentrate on that for now. Why would she do that? What’s going on at home? Why didn’t your parents come talk to me, for one thing? Are they too busy, or not involved in your lives?”

  I sighed and told her about our parents, about living with Maeve. “But really, there’s nothing like what you said at home. Amaranth was just—she was just unhappy with her life.”

  She’d been writing something on a yellow pad of paper, but now she stopped to look up at me, her dark eyes steady. “There’s usually something more, in my experience,” she said. “Did she have a boyfriend that you know of? Or girlfriend?”

  Why had I come here? I’d been warned all my life to keep my family’s secrets, and now I was spilling them to a complete stranger.

  “Well, there was this woman,” I said cautiously. “Ms. Burden. She—she forged my father’s will and made herself our guardian.”

  “Wow.” Judith seemed startled, diverted from the well-worn path she’d been following. And I have to say I liked it, liked her looking at me as if I was something different from her usual run of clients. Maybe she’d put more effort into searching for Amaranth. “Why did she do that?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, coming up with the lie as I spoke. “She wanted a family of her own, maybe. Anyway, Rantha might be trying to find her.”

  “Okay. What’s Ms. Burden’s first name? And do you know where she lives?”

  “Kate. Katherine, maybe. I don’t know her address—she used to live with us, in our old house, but she’s not there anymore.”

  I felt a brush of fear at the thought that we might find Ms. Burden along with Amaranth, and I pushed it away. I’d deal with that if it happened.

  “Okay. I’d like to have a look at your sister’s b
edroom, if I can.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I might find something there that could tell us where she went. Some notes or a journal, maybe.”

  “We live pretty far away.”

  “Okay, maybe we’ll do that later. What have you done so far? Did you print up posters with her picture on them, saying that she’s missing? And what about going to the police, talking to her friends, things like that?”

  “No on the posters. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I don’t want Ms. Burden to know she’s gone. But I did talk to the police, and they looked for her for a while and didn’t find anything. And I called her friends—I’ve been calling—but they haven’t seen her. They’re on that list there.”

  She picked up the lists I’d given her and studied them, then looked up at me. “Okay, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll follow up on these lists, of course, and check with shelters and programs for runaway kids, things like that. And bus stations and train stations, in case she left town. And, well, I have to bring this up—there’s always a possibility she’s in the hospital, or the morgue. I have her picture now, so I can show that around.”

  I nodded, trying not to show any reaction to that dreadful word “morgue.” I signed a contract, using the post office box as my address, and gave her a retainer. There was enough money in the bank to cover it, though just barely.

  She led me back to the waiting room and opened the outer door. Please shake my hand again, I thought. The room grew hotter. No, I was blushing. Oh, God, I was interested in her. I told myself to cut it out. I had to find Amaranth; I didn’t have time for this.

  I tried to put Judith out of my mind as I went about my other errands. I kept seeing her face in front of me, though, that final smile as she held the door open.

  I’d had the idea that I’d slept with women because of Piper, that he was the one interested in them, not me. Piper grinned at that thought. We like them all, you and I, he said. Men and women both.

  I scowled. I already felt so different from other people that this seemed like the final straw. Still, I wondered how long it would take before she got back to me.

  She called three weeks later. During that time I wrote a poem about Amaranth’s disappearance, and then felt guilty about using her troubles this way, for my own benefit. I learned later that every writer did this with people they knew, that we were all vampires, feeding on other people’s experiences. I never felt good about it, though.

  “Hello, it’s Judith,” she said when I answered the phone.

  “Hi!” I said, not sure if my excitement came from hearing her voice or from the thought that she might have learned something. I decided to pretend it was the latter. “Any news?”

  “Nothing yet, unfortunately. Some people thought they saw her but they weren’t sure. That’s the way it goes, though. People are pretty unobservant, most of the time. Most of the answers came from downtown, so I’m going to keep trying there.”

  “So you think she’s still in Eugene?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know, Ivy. I’m sorry, I wish I had more to tell you. I can’t guarantee anything, though.”

  I thought I felt Piper frolicking. Then I realized it was me, my first experience of that old cliché—my heart was dancing. Or maybe all my organs were dancing together, standing face to face and skipping toward each other. And all this just because she’d said my name.

  The next instant, of course, I felt disgusted with myself. Amaranth was missing, and here I was thinking about myself. “Okay, Judith,” I said, trying out her name in return. “Let me know if you find anything. And thanks for calling.”

  She called again a few weeks later. All right, it was fifteen days, not that I was keeping track or anything. “Two people told me they saw her at a movie theater, the Four Star, working as a cashier,” she said. “I talked to the manager, someone named Mr. Morris, but he didn’t know Amaranth and he didn’t recognize her from the photograph. What’s so funny?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I used to work there too—that’s why I was laughing. I should have thought of it myself. Mr. Morris doesn’t ask your age, so a lot of kids get jobs there. And he doesn’t answer questions about his employees.”

  “Well, what I thought I’d do is watch the place, see if she shows up. I’ll let you know what happens.”

  Her next call came six days later. “All right, it is her at the movie theater,” she said without preamble. “So what I thought we’d do—”

  “Wait. You found her?”

  “Yeah. Sorry, I should have been clearer. So I thought we could go to the theater together, the next time she’s on, and you can decide where to go from there. I got her schedule from one of the other employees.”

  I didn’t listen to much beyond “go to the theater together.” Put that way, it sounded like a date. I told myself firmly to keep things professional.

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  “Okay. Should I pick you up?”

  “Oh. Um, well, I live pretty far away. Why don’t I meet you at your office?”

  “All right. See you then.”

  We drove together to the Four Star Theater, a large place near downtown showing The Da Vinci Code. She parked down the street, and we sat in her car and waited for Amaranth to start her shift.

  “So,” she said, “where do you live, exactly?”

  “Well, pretty far away.”

  “Yeah, so you said. You know I’m a private investigator, right?” She laughed to show she was kidding, that she wasn’t really planning to track me down.

  I wanted to tell her everything, of course. “Okay, well, we’re sort of in hiding. Me and my family. I didn’t tell you everything about Ms. Burden, what she did to us. And she’s still looking for us.”

  She turned her level gaze on me. “But—I don’t get it. She’s just one woman. Why are you so afraid of her?”

  “It’s hard to explain. She’s sort of, well, obsessed with us.”

  “You can get a restraining order against her, you know.”

  “But they don’t help all that much, do they?” I asked. “They’re just pieces of paper. Husbands still beat their wives, and—and even kill them, even with restraining orders.”

  “You think she’s going to kill you?”

  “No, but she got pretty good at terrorizing us.”

  “Well, but you have two sisters, right?”

  “Three.”

  “Three sisters, and an aunt. So what can she do against all of you?”

  “A great-aunt. She’s pretty old, pretty out of it. And my sisters are too young to take care of themselves.”

  “How long did you live with her?”

  “Two years. Well, my sisters stayed for four years, but I ran away after two.”

  She looked at me with sudden curiosity. “Really?” she asked.

  Then, somehow, I was telling her about my time on the streets. Not only that, I was taking events and spinning them into gold, turning the cold and rain and poverty into stories filled with chases and narrow escapes, dogs and police, terrible jobs and unexpected good fortune. Anything to keep myself in the spotlight of that dark, thoughtful gaze.

  “You should have told me all of this before,” she said when I finished. “It looks like Amaranth’s following in your footsteps.”

  She was right, of course. I nodded.

  “Why didn’t you just go to your great-aunt for help?” she asked.

  “Well, we were too young to remember how to get to her house.”

  “Is she together enough to take care of all of you?”

  “Not really. I’m doing a lot of it, pretty much.”

  She looked impressed. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Really? You seem older.”

  “All right, how old are you?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Really? You seem younger.”

  We laughed. I had a lot more questions, and I expect she did too. And at the same time I was doing subtrac
tion in my head: twenty-five minus eighteen equals seven. That wasn’t too much older, was it? Should I have said nineteen, or twenty?

  “They’re changing shifts now,” Judith said, nodding toward the theater.

  I looked up. A girl carrying a coin tray came into the ticket booth and said something to the cashier working there. The cashier took her tray out of the drawer and left.

  “Is that her? I can’t tell,” I said.

  Judith reached for a pair of binoculars in the back seat and handed them to me, and I put them up to my eyes. “It is—it is her!” I said. “Oh, my God!”

  She’d been gone for only two months, but already she looked different. Her auburn hair had dulled to brown, and her print blouse had wrinkled and faded until it barely looked presentable. Acne had broken out on her cheeks and forehead. The biggest change, though, was in the way she acted. She moved slowly, unsmiling, as if she was working through a heavier gravity. Her great adventure had turned into a struggle just to survive.

  My heart turned over to see her. At least I’d had Piper, to help me through the hard parts.

  We left the car and headed to the theater. Judith got to the ticket booth first. “Hello,” she said. “I’m looking for Amaranth Quinn.”

  “Who’s Amaranth?” Amaranth said.

  “Well, I thought you were,” Judith said. “Your sister Ivy’s been looking for you.”

  I stepped up to the cashier’s window. “Hi, Rantha,” I said.

  “Oh, God,” she said, sounding resigned. “What do you want?”

  “Well, I want you to come home. We miss you.”

  “Yeah, I bet you do.”

  “We do. And this can’t be any fun for you—working for a pittance, living in some god-awful place you can barely afford.”

  “You don’t know anything about me, or where I live. And you have some nerve, talking about work. You left us and had fun for two years—you never did any work in your life. And now you’re sponging off—”