Apples Never Fall

by Liane Moriarty

  But then he remembered that Hien believed his six-year-old son was the next Nadal, and he wanted Logan to coach him, and he didn’t care that Logan hadn’t coached since he was a teenager helping out at Delaneys. Logan had preferred coaching to all the other jobs they had to do, but he didn’t need to do it now.

  “I told you already, I don’t coach,” said Logan. “I gave you a list of names.”

  “Just see him play,” said Hien. “Just once. I used to come to all your matches.”

  “You did not.”

  “I came to one,” said Hien. “You were good.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” said Logan. “I ranked—”

  “Yeah, whatever, mate, I don’t care what you ranked, your time is done, but my kid is the future and he could be your future. You’ll see. You and Indira come for lunch, and then we’ll head down to the local courts and see what you think.”

  “Hien,” said Logan.

  “I want you to coach him. No one else. Not even your dad. I’m doing you a favor. You think about it. Gotta go.”

  Logan tossed the phone aside on the couch and laughed a little. Even hard-nosed Hien had turned into a typical tennis parent, blinded by love for his kid.

  Hien’s wife and Indira were good friends. But Indira must not have told her yet about the breakup.

  His friends would react in the same way as his family had on Father’s Day. People liked Indira more than him. He’d always known this, and this was the first time he’d cared. He felt unfairly maligned. Even bloody Troy had looked at him like he was a fool for letting her go.

  He remembered his mother’s words just before her dramatic collapse: Did your father and I not set a good example to you? Of a good marriage?

  He’d never considered his parents’ marriage something that could be rated. In his mind it didn’t exist relative to anything else. It just was. He guessed that he had an unconscious, childish belief that his parents were not really two individuals but one unit. They had been together for half a century, after all, and they worked together, played tennis together. He rarely saw them apart. Had they set a good example of a good marriage? For the first time he truly considered the question.

  He liked the way his parents teased each other. It was like watching them play a game, and when he and his siblings were little they hadn’t understood the rules but they’d known it was a fun game. He obviously preferred to know nothing about their sex life, but he liked that they’d always touched and hugged and kissed: more than other people’s parents. His father was so large and his mother so small, he could lift her up under her armpits and put her down somewhere else when he chose, and even as a child Logan could tell his mother liked it when he did that, even when she pretended to resist, which was part of the game.

  Logan would never attempt to do that to Indira. She was violently ticklish. She would probably have head-butted him if he ever tried to pick her up. She also believed herself to be too heavy for him to lift. She had issues with her body. He loved her body but he had to be meticulously careful about what he said. Indira preferred to pretend she didn’t have a body at all. In the beginning he used to compliment her, and she’d turn on him: You’re lying, you’re just saying that, how could you say that, I know you don’t mean that, my legs are revolting, my arms are disgusting. Suddenly he would find himself in the position of defending her body against a cruel attacker, and he didn’t know how long or how vigorously he was meant to fight back when she was the attacker, so eventually he surrendered. He stopped saying anything at all. Every relationship has its quixotic rules. You just had to follow them. Only his hands could talk, and he tried to let his hands say everything he wasn’t allowed to say out loud. Theirs was a relationship with a lot of touching, not just in the bedroom: they held hands in the street, they lay side by side on this couch when they watched TV. He’d thought all that touching meant that everything that needed to be said was being said.

  If he’d thought about it, and now he was thinking about it, he might have realized that growing up he hadn’t liked certain aspects of his parents’ marriage. He’d hated it when his mother made faces behind his father’s back and muttered bitter remarks, so low that only her children could hear: Well, I TOLD him that was going to happen, and did he listen? No, he did not listen.

  He hadn’t liked it when his father used to get the final word in an argument not by yelling but by leaving.

  I hated it when my father left.

  He felt a rush of memory as if he’d smelled a long-forgotten scent from his childhood. There was a dropping-away sensation in his stomach like tripping in a dream. He hadn’t thought about that in years. Maybe he’d never really thought about it. At some point his father had stopped doing it, and the memory had vanished, the way old clothes vanished and you forgot they had ever existed until an old photo reminded you: I loved that T-shirt.

  One day his father came back and never did it again, and years and years piled on top of those particular memories, obliterating them from view. His mother no longer pulled faces or made bitter asides, and his father no longer left.

  His phone rang and he jumped. He picked it up, saw it was Indira. He studied her name, considered putting his thumb on “Decline.”

  Indira was determined to “stay friends.” She had this new way of talking to him now, without a trace of emotion. She sounded like a friendly customer service representative. She was a nearly perfect clone of his Indira, except that something essential and beautiful was missing.

  He muted the television, answered.

  “Hi, Logan,” she said in her friendly telemarketer voice. “How are you?”

  “I’m well, Indira. How are you?” He didn’t quite imitate her tone, but close.

  She paused and in a slightly less friendly but more normal tone said, “I thought I’d just call to check if your mum has been discharged from hospital.”

  She could have texted: How’s your mum? That’s what he would have done. Or she could have just disappeared from his life like other ex-girlfriends, but she was staying in touch, remaining dutifully apprised of family news. He wanted to tell her this wasn’t necessary. If he wasn’t getting her warm body next to him in bed, he didn’t want her cold friendly voice in his ear.

  “She’s back home,” he said. “They only kept her two nights.”

  “Oh, good. That’s good. And is that girl still staying with them?”

  “Yeah,” said Logan. “She is. She cooks for them. Mum loves it. It’s…” It’s strange. It’s nice. It’s comforting. It’s kind of frightening. He didn’t know what to say or feel about Savannah. She seemed to make both his parents happy. How could he complain about that? He looked at the blank spot above the television. “How are you?”

  Indira was in Perth, where her parents had relocated a year ago. She did not get on with her parents. Yet she was prepared to stay with them on the other side of the country. That’s how badly she no longer wanted to be in a relationship with Logan.

  “This morning my parents yelled at each other for ten minutes about a water glass,” she said, and she forgot to use her clone voice. “They don’t even seem to be aware they’re yelling. That’s just their default position.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. Why did you leave me?

  “Anyway, I’m checking out a place this afternoon that looks promising.” Back to her friendly clone voice.

  “We never yelled at each other,” said Logan, and he held his breath because talking about their relationship was against their unspoken rules of engagement. Come home. Please put your god-awful painting back up on the wall.

  There was a long pause.

  “We never really argued,” said Logan. “Did we?” Why did you leave? Can you come home now please?

  “There’s no point talking about this now,” said Indira. “I’ve got to—”

  Logan spoke fast. “On Father’s Day, just before Mum collapsed, she was getting really upset about you and me breaking up, and Brooke and Grant breaking up�
�”

  “Brooke is well rid of him,” said Indira, who had taken against Grant in a way that Logan had never really understood.

  Logan barreled on. “And anyway, she asked if she and Dad had not set a good example to us. Of a good marriage.”

  “Your mum and dad have a great relationship,” said Indira. “They’re so cute together. I’ll call your mum today.” He could hear pain in her voice. She loved Logan’s parents. She’d probably talked more to them in the past five years than Logan had. Talking to his parents was like a domestic duty he’d handed over to her because she was so good at it, like she’d handed over bathroom cleaning to him because he was so good at streak-free shower screens.

  “They do have a great relationship,” agreed Logan. “Although, it’s funny, when you called I was thinking about how my dad used to…” He couldn’t find the right word for what his dad used to do and he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to talk about it anyway.

  “How your dad used to what?” said Indira, as if she wanted to know, and if this was a way to keep her on the phone and hear her normal voice, then he would take it.

  “He used to do this thing when we were kids … maybe three or four times a year. Not that often. It wasn’t a big deal.” Except that it was kind of a big deal. “I’m sure I told you,” he said.

  “You never told me,” said Indira. Her voice sounded a little louder in his ear, as if she’d just sat up, and so he sat up straighter too.

  “Oh,” said Logan. “Well. If my dad got angry enough about something, he’d just … walk away.”

  “You mean he avoided conflict,” said Indira. There were certain syllables where he could hear the trace of her long-lost English accent. Just on the “con” in conflict.

  “I guess that’s what he was doing,” said Logan. “It didn’t feel like he was avoiding conflict, it felt like a punishment. Because you never knew how long it would be before he came back.”

  “But—I don’t quite get it. Where did he go?”

  “We never knew.” What would happen if he asked now? Where did you go, Dad? What was that all about?

  “So he didn’t just leave the room. He left the house?”

  “Yeah,” said Logan. “Once Troy and I were fighting in the back of the car on the way to a tournament, and Dad stopped the car on a six-lane highway, got out, walked off, and we didn’t see him again until the following night.”

  “The following night!” screeched Indira.

  It did sound quite strange now that he said it out loud.

  He remembered how they had all sat in the car watching their father walk away: his pace unhurried, as if he were right on time for an important appointment. The car had felt hot and stuffy and airless, the only sound the whoosh of passing traffic and the monotonous tick, tick, tick of the turn signal that their father had left on when he pulled over.

  That was the day Brooke got her first migraine, or the first one that Logan remembered anyway, the day their mother said, flatly, after twenty minutes, “He’s not coming back,” and got out of the car and went around to the driver’s seat and drove them to the tournament, where Logan lost 6–2, 6–1 against that troll of a kid from the Central Coast with no technique. He didn’t remember how the others went in their matches.

  Dad must have hitched a ride, Logan thought now, for the first time. Obviously that’s what he did. There was no Uber to call back then. No mobile phones. Not that his dad had a mobile phone now.

  He must have stuck out his thumb, hitched a ride, and spent the night in a cheap hotel. No great mystery. It had all seemed so terrifyingly mysterious when they were children, like he’d vanished into thin air.

  He thought about ringing up his dad now and saying, “So what? You stayed at a Travelodge? Good on you, big man. Big deal, Dad.”

  “The longest time he was away was five nights,” said Logan. He’d counted the nights. It was after Troy jumped the net and beat up Harry Haddad, so the whole family was angry with Troy.

  “Five nights! But your mother must have been in a state!” said Indira. “Didn’t she call the police?”

  “I don’t think she ever did,” said Logan. He didn’t know if she ever called the police or not. He assumed not. “Because he always came back. She knew he’d come back.”

  He remembered Brooke crying into her spaghetti Bolognese while their mother soothed her, as if this were no more serious than running out of Parmesan cheese. Daddy is coming back, silly girl, stop making such a fuss! He just needs to clear his head.

  There were no bitter asides from their mother about their father when he was gone, just reassurances that he would be back, not to worry, he’d be back “any minute” and they could forget all about it. You just had to be patient.

  “You never asked where he went?” asked Indira.

  “You weren’t allowed to ask. You had to pretend nothing happened. That was like … the rule.”

  “I can’t believe your mother put up with this,” said Indira. She paused. “Surely Amy asked where your dad went.”

  Logan had a sudden distressing flash of memory: Amy running down the hall and launching herself against their father when he came back one time, pummeling his chest with small fists, screaming, “Where did you go, stupid, bad, naughty Daddy, where did you go?” and their mother pelting along behind her, unpeeling her from Stan, who stood as unresponsive and expressionless as a tree.

  Was that the time his dad turned around and left again? Or was that another time?

  “He did it at my ninth birthday party,” said Logan. “Before we sang ‘Happy Birthday.’”

  “That’s awful,” said Indira. “That’s really awful. Stan! Lovely Stan. I thought he was just a big old bear.”

  “Oh, well,” said Logan. “It’s not the worst thing a man can do, and he wasn’t gone for that long that day. He was back in time to put me to bed.”

  That time his dad had bought him a Crunchie bar. He remembered the gold shimmer of the wrapping as his dad put it under the covers next to him. It was the closest he ever got to an apology. And the taste of the illicit chocolate in bed, shared with no sibling, after he’d cleaned his teeth. He knew objectively that his father had behaved badly that day, even cruelly, but still the memory of the Crunchie bar shimmered gold in his memory, evidence of his father’s love.

  “At some point he stopped doing it,” said Logan. “I don’t remember exactly when. Sometime in my teens, I guess. And we all just forgot about it.”

  “Still, that would have been pretty formative,” said Indira. “For you.”

  “No,” said Logan.

  He was suddenly profoundly irritated. Indira’s parents were both psychologists, and he hated it when she attempted to apply this kind of simplistic cause-and-effect psychology to him, because she was a graphic designer, so what did she know, and surely her parents were not good psychologists, because if so you’d think they might have analyzed themselves and diagnosed themselves as awful, and maybe they might have noticed that their gorgeous daughter hated her gorgeous body.

  “It wasn’t formative. It was just a weird habit my dad had, and he grew out of it. It didn’t form me. Did I ever do that to you? Did I ever disappear on you?”

  Indira didn’t answer.

  “Indira. You know I didn’t. I never did.” Something was building in him.

  “You never physically left,” said Indira slowly. “But whenever we had any kind of disagreement, you definitely … checked out.”

  “I checked out,” said Logan. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Now he could hear the echo of his mother, except that his mother would say: What the heck does that mean?

  He didn’t wait for an answer. What did it matter now? Indira was the one who had left, who had “checked out” without an explanation.

  “I’ve gotta go,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Indira coolly. “I expect you do.”

  Now, what the hell did that mean? He didn’t wait to find out. He hung up and sla
mmed down his phone on the wooden arm of the couch. He sat for a moment, his heart beating fast. He remembered times throughout his relationship with Indira when he’d actually felt the desire to do exactly as his father had done, to stand up and leave the room, to go for a drive around the block to calm himself down over a disagreement, an accusation, an issue that seemed to be upsetting her, and he never once had.

  It had taken all his self-control to force himself to remain, and as often as not, Indira had been the one to suddenly throw her hands up, to walk away, to slam the door behind her, and now she was acting as if that demonstrated some sort of character flaw. He hadn’t yelled like his mother. He hadn’t left like his father. He certainly hadn’t done anything unforgivable like his grandfather, whose violent actions hung like a shameful pall over their family. As a child, Logan had once found a tiny black-and-white photo of a man in a fedora and trouser suspenders in the back of a drawer, and when his father caught him studying it he’d snatched it from his hands as if it were porn. Stan didn’t need to say that the man in the fedora was his father. Logan had felt his father’s hot shame, and he shared it, he accepted it as part of his heritage, like his height and hair.

  Whenever there was conflict in his relationships he took immense care not to repeat the mistakes of the past. He clenched his body tight and waited for those potentially catastrophic feelings to pass, which they eventually did. But there was no recognition or praise or approval for what had cost him so dearly.

  It doesn’t matter how hard you try, you won’t ever be good enough.

  It was true about tennis. It was true about everything. He would always be average. Smack-bang in the middle of the bell curve on every scale. Good enough to get a girl like Indira, not good enough to keep her.

  His heartbeat slowed. He was done. He saw it very clearly. He was done with relationships. The relief and absolute correctness of his decision reminded him of when he made the decision to give up competitive tennis. No more striving. No more failing. The absolute bliss of thinking, I will never lose again.