Ivory Apples

by Lisa Goldstein

“Right. You never want to help me with anything. Remember what Philip used to say about sharing?”

  “It isn’t about that. I just don’t think I can do it, or Piper can.”

  “But you said he left you, that one time in the warehouse. So if he can leave, he can visit someone else. Right?”

  “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “So find out how it does work. And you said you’d do anything I want, when you saw me at the theater.”

  “If the child wants to see what it’s like, maybe we should help her,” Maeve said.

  I turned to her, startled. Amaranth’s eyes lit up. “Help me how?” she said.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’d give you Willa, if I still had her.”

  “Could you, well, call her back?”

  Maeve said nothing, though I thought I saw the shine of tears in her eyes.

  “Maeve nearly died,” I said. “I don’t want her to take any more chances.”

  “All right, then, you do it,” Maeve said.

  Oh, God, I thought. But Amaranth spoke up before I could say anything. “That’s what I said the first time. You’re pretty healthy, aren’t you?”

  I was more worried about Piper, though. The sprites were tricksters, tricky. They liked us, maybe even loved us, but they would mislead us for a good laugh.

  Still, I didn’t want Maeve to put herself in danger. And if I agreed, it would placate Amaranth, would keep her from running away again.

  Piper danced within me, excited. I tried to ignore him. “Well, maybe we should, I don’t know, go to the grove or something,” I said. “Maybe that would be a better place for it.”

  Amaranth was grinning. “Come on, we don’t have time for that,” she said. “And it’s raining outside. Just do it.”

  We had plenty of time. She was thrumming with impatience, though, and for the first time I let myself understand how she felt. I might have felt the same, if I didn’t have Piper.

  “All right,” I said. “Just for a minute, though. Piper, go to Amaranth.”

  He left before I finished speaking. I didn’t even see him go; one minute I felt him within me, and the next Amaranth changed subtly, her eyes bright, her head raised to greet him.

  “Hi there, Piper,” she said. She looked around at the rest of us and said, “Good evening!”

  “Did it work?” I asked. “How are you?”

  “Or is it morning?” she asked. “They shouldn’t look so much alike—it throws you off. Maybe it’s fireplace. Or herring.”

  “Rantha?”

  “I think it’s herring, don’t you? Good herring—that sounds right. And here I’ve been saying it wrong all these years.”

  “Rantha, stop it. Look at me.”

  “No, what am I saying?” Her head lurched back and forth, her eyes wide. Her mouth worked, and she said, “Evening, morning, morning, evening . . .”

  “Amaranth! Piper, come back! Come back, do you hear me?”

  “Piper says to say goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye. The moon jumped over the cow.”

  Semiramis looked at her, worried. “Rantha, what’s going on? Can I get you something?”

  “The moon. The moon and some rubies. And a good pair of socks, and a bus pass. No, I need to sleep.”

  I looked at Maeve. “Oh, God. What do I do now?”

  Her hands were pressed against her mouth, and she took them away to speak. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “If she wants to sleep, I suppose we could put her to bed.”

  “I can’t sleep, though,” Amaranth said. “My heart’s racing so fast. If my heart raced your heart, my heart would win.”

  “She’ll have to sleep sometime,” I said.

  God, I was talking about her as if she wasn’t there. “Piper!” I said again. “Piper, come back!”

  The understanding of what we’d done washed over me in waves, one after the other, each more terrible than the last. She’d lost touch with reality. Her quickened heartbeat might kill her. She’d die anyway, if she couldn’t get to sleep. And I’d lost Piper. My muse, my lodestar, my friend.

  I had some sleeping pills left over from when I’d taken care of Maeve, and I suggested that we give her one. No one else had a better idea, so Semiramis and I took her hands and walked her to bed, while Maeve got a pill and a glass of water.

  “Here, take this,” Maeve said.

  “I want a piccolo, not a pill,” Amaranth said. She sat up straight in bed, showing no signs of sleepiness. “Didn’t I say so? Maybe not. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled piccolos.”

  Together we managed to get the pill into her mouth and the glass up to her lips. “Drink some water,” Semiramis said, her voice gentle. “Go on.”

  “Peter Piper wants to play,” Amaranth said. She took a sip, then another. “He wants to play but he can’t. He’s trapped in here forever.”

  I felt a horrible shivering sorrow. Piper was caught, lost. Was he terrified, hurt, angry? Did he hate me for asking this of him? I’d never sensed anger from him, could barely imagine it.

  “Forever and ever and ever and ever . . .” Amaranth said. Finally the stream of words slowed, then stopped. She closed her eyes and fell back against her pillow.

  Sometime during the night I heard a voice from the study, and I dragged myself out of bed to check on my sisters. Amaranth had woken up and was talking nonsense again, her voice loud in the darkness.

  Beatriz had come home, and both she and Semiramis were awake now. “God, this is horrible,” Beatriz said.

  “Did Ramis explain what happened?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Beatriz said. “Can you—can you help her somehow?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I hate to say it, but I have to get to sleep. Can’t she go to another room?”

  “What room? We’re already using every room in the house.”

  “Well, you can change places with her. She goes on the couch and you come sleep with us.”

  I didn’t want to do that, though. I was still struggling with this strange new place I occupied, not a parent but more than a sister. “I’ll go to the dining room,” I said.

  “Where? Under the table?”

  “Why not?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  Amaranth showed no signs of slowing down. I moved her to the living room and changed the bedding on the couch, then gave her another pill. We’d need a new prescription at this rate, but I wasn’t going to worry about that now.

  Then I dragged my blankets into the dining room and spread them under the table. This responsibility thing was the pits, I thought, crawling into the blankets and lying down.

  CHAPTER 24

  ANARANTH ATE AND SLEPT VERY LITTLE, and she grew thinner than ever. Her eyes turned a hectic traffic-light green, and she talked and talked, a nonstop babble of nonsense.

  Even this stream of words was better than the times when she seemed to come to herself. Then her eyes would grow wide, and she’d make a heartwrenching effort to break out of her madness. It was never enough, though, and she would sink back helplessly into gibberish.

  The worst for me was when she talked about Piper. “He misses you,” she said once. “He wants to know why it’s so dark where he is.”

  I missed him too, terribly. I missed his observations, his strange, funny way of looking at things. The world was uninteresting without him, and my poems seemed uninspired, like ads for toothpaste or cell phones.

  I tried to ignore Amaranth’s prattle, to let it flow over me like background noise. But just when I managed to stop listening she’d come up with a startling word or turn of phrase, and I’d find myself paying attention again. I renewed Maeve’s prescription for sleeping pills, but I felt horrible every time I gave her one, as if I were sedating her for my own convenience, just to keep her quiet.

  I did everything I could think of to help her. I wrote Craig for advice, and searched the ivoryorchard website. I went back and forth to the grove, though the ground had become muddy
with rain and was once covered by a thin layer of snow. The sprites no longer talked to me, though. Maybe they couldn’t, without Piper there. Maybe they didn’t even recognize me.

  I took Amaranth to the grove, choosing a day when she seemed more docile than usual. “Who’s there?” one of them asked as we stepped out of the forest.

  “It’s Piper!” said another.

  A crowd flew over and formed a circle around Amaranth, two or three deep, and looked at her solemnly. She seemed more serious as well; her eyes had a pinprick of intelligence within them, and she was silent for the first time in days.

  “It’s Piper’s knot,” someone said.

  “He’s caught fast,” another said.

  “And slow, too.”

  “She’s quick, though. Or at least not dead.”

  “Not yet, anyway.”

  Finally the flow of nonsense ended and I could ask my question. “What can I do for her?” I asked. “How can I help her?”

  “Do?” one of them asked. Unlike most of the others he had a long white beard, with twigs and leaves and even a green caterpillar caught within it. “You should never have allowed it.”

  “How was I supposed to know?” I asked angrily. “Even Piper didn’t know. You should have warned me.”

  The sprites turned away, losing interest. They dove into the lake in one swift motion, and the one I was talking to followed. “No, wait!” I said, calling after him. “Please! How can I get him back?”

  Finally they were all gone, and we stood there alone. I shouted to them again and again, but no one paid me any attention. I took Amaranth back through the forest, a hundred thoughts flying untethered through my mind.

  It was late by the time we got home. I put Amaranth on the couch and sat down next to her. I’d asked her questions before, of course, and gotten only nonsense, but I wanted to try again.

  “Is there a way to get Piper back?” I asked.

  “Of course there is. You have to wear an apple on your head.”

  “What? What about apples?”

  “No, wait. You don’t wear apples on your head, do you? That’s hats. Or cats? No, I’m pretty sure it’s hats. Oh, I can’t remember. Why do you ask me all these questions if you know I can’t remember?”

  She was growing agitated now, her voice rising. I should stop, I knew that, but I tried one last time. “Think, Rantha, it’s important. Are you talking about Maeve’s apple, the one you stole? Did you give it to Ms. Burden? Kate?”

  “Kate.” She frowned. “I know that name. I have to ask her something.”

  “What?”

  “Garibaldi! That’s the answer. Or is it? I forgot the question.”

  It was impossible. I left her and went to make dinner.

  When I finally got to my nest of blankets that night I was unable to sleep. Was her talk of apples just more foolishness, or did it mean something? Had she given Maeve’s apple to Ms. Burden?

  Of course I could ask Ms. Burden myself. But the idea of talking to her made my heart race as fast as Amaranth’s. Instead I could break into her house; I’d done it before, after all. If she had the apple there I could steal it back.

  My pulse slowed, and I felt myself relax. That’s what my life had come to, I thought—burglary was easier for me than actually talking to someone.

  The whole thing was probably just more of Amaranth’s nonsense. But I had to do something. Amaranth was visibly worse, so thin now that we could see her bones, the hills of her ribs, the knobs of her wrists and elbows. She was getting used to the sleeping pills and woke up earlier and earlier, and she had started hurrying through the house as if searching for something, like a wind-up toy that had lost some important gear and sped up beyond all reason.

  The problem was the same as always: I didn’t know where Ms. Burden lived. How did you go about finding people, especially when you didn’t want them to find you?

  I’d known from the beginning what I had to do, of course. I just hadn’t admitted it to myself. You find people by hiring a private investigator.

  This time, though, I’d have to tell Judith everything, or most things. But I needed Maeve’s permission to do that, and I knew how she felt about giving up her secrets.

  I sat down with her the next day after dinner, prepared with a whole host of arguments. But she ended up surprising me; she understood that we had to do something about Amaranth, and she gave me her blessing.

  I called Judith, trying to ignore the little fireworks of excitement going off within me. “Hi, it’s Ivy,” I said when she answered.

  “Ivy!” she said. I thought she sounded pleased to hear from me, but that could have just been wishful thinking. “What’s new?”

  Now that it came to it, I felt reluctant. Not because I didn’t trust her with our secrets, but because the whole story was so far-fetched. “Listen,” I said. “Could you come over? I have some things I want to show you.”

  “Well,” she said. “I don’t know. Are you going to tell me where you live this time?”

  We made an appointment for the next day. Before she came I folded the sheets and blankets under the table and threw them into the study, then dusted the bookshelves and swept the floor. We’d never had any visitors, and I wanted the house to look its best.

  Then I gave Amaranth a sleeping pill, to keep her from disturbing us. She was becoming so habituated to the pills I thought about giving her two, but I didn’t want to make her even more dependent than she was.

  The bells rang, and I ran to open the door. I’d been so busy I hadn’t noticed that it had rained all morning and then cleared up, so that everything was sparkling with water drops. Even Maeve’s ruined garden shone, as if all the plants had budded with jewels.

  It seemed a good omen. I let Judith in and took her through the living room, to where Amaranth was asleep on the couch. “She came back, then?” Judith asked. “How is she?”

  “Well, that’s part of what I have to tell you. Come on, let’s go to the dining room.”

  She kept looking around her, though—at a painting of the town founders and their dog Oscar from Ivory Apples, at all the bookshelves, at a four-foot-high coach someone had built, with a little man made out of stuffed cloth on the driver’s seat. “I remember him from the book,” she said, talking quietly so as not to wake Amaranth. “God, this is amazing. Do you think—can I meet your great-aunt?”

  I’d never seen her so impressed. Part of me was enjoying it, preening under her interest, but another part was anxious to talk to her. “Maybe,” I said. “It depends on her.”

  We came to the dining room. I made some tea and sat down with her, then took a deep breath and started in on the story. As I talked I stared at the table or gazed out a window, holding my tea mug for comfort. I wasn’t ready to find out if she believed me, didn’t want to see her look incredulous, or worse, pitying.

  When I reached the end I gathered up my courage and looked straight at her. Her expression gave nothing away. “Well,” I said, “what do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I saw what Amaranth did at the theater, so I have to believe some of it, at least. But it doesn’t really matter what I think. If you’re hiring me to find Ms. Burden”—she raised one eyebrow in a question, and I nodded—“then I can do that without having an opinion on the rest of it.”

  I wanted her to believe me, of course. If she didn’t, there were only two choices left to her: I was either a liar or deluded. Neither one put me in a very good light.

  “Although, you know, Ivory Apples is so good it only makes sense that there was a muse involved,” she said, smiling.

  I tried to smile back. “How would you find her?” I asked. “Ms. Burden.”

  “Well, it’s different for an adult. There’s more of a paper trail—drivers’ licenses, work histories, credit cards, mortgages. Do you have anything from the time you spent with her? Any photographs?”

  I shook my head. Ms. Burden had removed everything that could identify her from the
house, and I’d never had a reason to take a picture of her. “One of my sisters might be able to draw her,” I said, thinking of Semiramis and her reams of paper.

  “All right. And I’ll see what I can do. I brought another contract—”

  Amaranth came running into the room, then stopped when she saw us. “Who are you?” she asked Judith. “Are you here to teach the rabbits to read? A is for Apple, B is for Broccoli, C is for Carrot, that kind of thing? You have to use fruits and vegetables, otherwise they won’t get it.”

  Judith looked at me, uncertain. No one knows how to respond to ment. “How are you?” I asked Amaranth.

  “I’m fine. Well, fine except for Piper. He keeps twisting and poking and kicking and trying to get out. Okay, not fine. Not fine at all.”

  “Do you want to go back to sleep?”

  “But I’m asleep right now, aren’t I? And I’m dreaming that I’m in the dining room, but there’s a stranger there. And you know what’s funny? When you give me a pill, I don’t dream at all. So I know I’m not sleeping then. Only now.”

  “This is Judith Reinhart. She’s going to help us.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, then ran away into the kitchen. I got up, sighing. “Sorry, I have to keep an eye on her,” I said to Judith. “Make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.”

  Judith followed me. Amaranth was opening and closing all the cabinets. “Is this what it’s like all the time?” Judith asked softly.

  “Yeah, more or less. Except when she’s sleeping.”

  “Have you tried, I don’t know, taking her to a doctor?”

  “And saying what, exactly? That she’s been infected by a muse?”

  “No, I thought—”

  “You think she has mental problems.” I was speaking louder now, not caring if Amaranth heard me. “You think I should take her to a doctor, that I’m in denial and made the whole thing up.”

  “No. No, wait. Look at me.” I’d been avoiding her eyes, and now I looked directly at her. “I’ve learned a lot about people over the years, and I don’t think you’re making this up. And I can tell other things about you—that you face problems head-on, not just your problems but other people’s. You could have given up, moved away and left all of this for someone else to deal with, and instead you took on this huge job, looking after your aunt and your sister, and your other sisters too. That’s why I accepted you as a client. Like you said to Amaranth, I think I can help.”