Bad Apple

by Laura Ruby

  Mom takes pity on Pib, shredding a few bits of bacon and putting them on the table in front of him. “He had some late appointments,” Mom says. “He’ll be back later.”

  “He couldn’t cancel them to go with us to the hospital?” Madge says. “What kind of husband is he?”

  Mom pushes her plate to the center of the table, stands, and walks out of the room. Upstairs, we hear the bathroom door close and then the water pouring into the tub.

  I stand up, too, and start clearing the plates.

  “I’m not done,” Madge says.

  I take her plate. “Yeah, you are.”

  Most of the food gets dumped into the garbage, and the plates and platters loaded into the dishwasher. By the time I’m through, I’m the only one left in the kitchen; even Pib has found some new haunt. The water is still running. I examine my fingernails, which are stained with paint and ink. I should take a bath when Mom is finished. Wash it all away.

  In the family room, I flip on the TV and try to find something to kill time. Reality show, reality show, reality show. Singing, dancing, dog grooming. I pick dog grooming. A vicious white poodle terrorizes a groomer with a pink mullet. Pink Mullet Woman doesn’t have a chance. She’s booted from the competition after she’s bitten repeatedly, and the dog is criticized for the uneven puffball that is now his head. In her parting interview, Mullet Woman cries, her face going as pink as her hair. She looks stupid. I decide that it might be a good time to dye my hair back to its original brown. Plus, her mullet reminds me of Chelsea Patrick, and I want a bath more than ever.

  I go upstairs to check if Mom will be out of the tub sometime this century. I find Madge sitting in the hallway next to the bathroom door, Pib stretched across her knees.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shhh!” she says.

  “What?”

  “Mom’s crying.”

  “I thought she was taking a bath.”

  She rolls her eyes. “She turned the water on so we couldn’t hear her.”

  “And I guess you’re here to remind her that water is a precious natural resource that shouldn’t be wasted?”

  I expect her to glower at me again, but, like Mom, Madge isn’t always so predictable. Her lips curl up in a ghost of a smile and she scratches Pib behind the ears. “Getting sassy in your old age, aren’t you?”

  “That’s my cat.”

  “And?”

  “He hates you.”

  “Funny way of showing it.”

  I slide down the wall and sit next to her. Behind the crash of the water, I hear the faint sounds of weeping. I haven’t heard my mother cry in a long time, not since we watched a special on Animal Planet about the melting ice caps and the plight of polar bears.

  “I don’t like it when she cries,” Madge says.

  “Me neither.”

  “What should we do about it?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “No, I’m asking the bloody cat.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” I say. “I don’t know what to do about anything.” I bang the back of my head against the wall. “You know what I did? I actually went to see Chelsea Patrick. Confront her. Like that was going to serve an actual purpose. She’s twice my size. She could eat me for a snack.”

  “Wait,” she says. “Chelsea Patrick? The one you were friends with in middle school?”

  “She’s the one who spread the rumors. She’s the police’s ‘witness.’ She’s the one who put up the stupid video. What was I supposed to do? Let her get away with it?”

  “You knew who posted that thing? Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I thought you knew,” I say. “And, besides, you never asked.”

  “You mean I wasn’t interested.”

  “That, too.”

  “Well,” she says. “It’s not surprising.”

  “That you weren’t interested?”

  “That Chelsea put up the video.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Because she’s a sociopath, maybe? She freaked me out whenever she came here. Always talking about her creepy online friends. I didn’t know what you saw in her. I thought she was a freak.”

  “If she wasn’t then, she is now.”

  “And isn’t her mom that nutball who’s trying to get the books banned?”

  “That’s her. She was at the school-board meeting when they talked about Mr. Mymer. I think she got cheek implants or something. She sort of looks like one of those decorative masks they put up at Chinese restaurants.”

  “Nice.”

  We’re quiet for a minute. The faucet is still running full blast. Pretty soon Mom will have depleted the stores of potable water for the entire tri-state area.

  “Do you think she’s going to be in there for a long time? I have something I want to tell her.”

  “I don’t think she’s in the mood to talk right now,” Madge says.

  “Mr. Mymer resigned ’cause of that video. I heard it on the news. I’m surprised Mom hasn’t said anything yet.”

  “I think she’s more worried about Grandpa.”

  “I know. But that video proves I didn’t tell the truth. At least, I didn’t tell the whole truth. We bumped into each other at the museum and he sat with me for a while. I always had a little crush on him—”

  “Oh, Tola,” she says, covering her face.

  “And he was sitting so close to me. I grabbed his hand. I just wanted to hold it.”

  “What did he do?”

  That part wasn’t on the video. “He pulled away. And then he got up and left. I think he was disappointed in me.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it,” I say.

  “Why didn’t you just tell Mom what happened in the first place? Don’t you think it would have been easier?”

  “I was embarrassed about it. I was so stupid. And then I was angry that she didn’t believe me when I said he didn’t hurt me. This is all my fault.”

  “Oh, it is not. So you touched the guy’s hand. So what? You didn’t rip off your clothes and run naked around the museum.”

  “I still can’t understand why she didn’t believe me. It’s like she’s been mad at me for so long. Mad at you, too. Everyone’s so mad all the time.”

  “Yeah, well. That could be my fault.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “As long as we’re confessing and everything…remember the affidavit I wrote for Dad?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “I wrote about us being able to visit who we wanted when we wanted, just like I told you. But I also wrote about Mom kissing Mr. Rosentople. And I said that you saw it, too.”

  “You did what?”

  “I said that she was probably having an affair and that should be taken into account when the custody arrangements were made. I blamed the divorce on her. I thought if she didn’t harass Dad all the time about his work, he wouldn’t have left. Ever since he hooked up with the Saxon She-Beast, he never calls and we never get to see him. I was pissed off.”

  “Did Mom see this affa-thing?”

  “Sure. It’s a court document.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said that Mr. Rosentople kissed her and not the other way around. And it only happened once. And that Dad was already emotionally ‘gone’ from the marriage.”

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  She hesitates. “Dad was, you know, like me. Not really into other people’s problems, thinking about himself a lot. I knew Mom was lonely. Sometimes when Mr. Rosentople came over, she would flirt with him.” Madge shudders, and Pib shifts in her lap, gnawing on one of her fingers. “But now? My therapist says that maybe she wanted a little attention and that’s as far as it went. That Mom didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Huh. What else does your therapist say?”

  Madge gives me a look. “What are you implying?”

  “I think this therapist is gettin
g to you.”

  “Maybe.” She pets Pib, long strokes from head to tail. “You know, I remember everything that happens to me. Since I was two.”

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  “It’s not a gift. It’s a curse. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I feel so crappy all the time, combing through my memories. Like, there must have been some point where I went wrong.”

  “You’re kidding,” I say. “I’ve been thinking the same thing because I can’t remember anything.”

  “Well, it doesn’t help. You read books about girls who are depressed, and a lot of times there’s a certain reason. They were robbed or raped or their fathers beat them or something. So, our parents got divorced. But plenty of people’s parents get divorced and their kids don’t cry all the time. They don’t feel like they’re drowning. And then I realized that it wasn’t any one thing. It was me. It was in me. In my head. What do you do about that?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I remember—I’m sure this is my own memory, that this doesn’t come from some book or movie or whatever—taking baths with my sister when we were very, very small. I remember a yellow plastic fish with a spout in it, a mermaid doll with pink hair. (Tiffany always made me play with the fish.) And that one day, Tiffany-who-was-not-yet-Madge informed me that her imaginary friend Po Po would be joining us to play, and that Po Po would need to borrow the fish. I told Mom that I wanted to take my own baths alone, and my mom said it was time for that anyway.

  I wonder if this means that we left Madge before she left us. I put my hand on her knee.

  “I asked this stupid therapist that question. What do you do if the problem’s in your head? What if you can’t find the exact moment everything turned to shit? And he said forget the past. You start from today. From right now. You say, fine, I’m depressed. And it sucks. So how am I going to help myself?”

  “How do you?”

  She sighs, a sigh so hard that it seems to come from the bottom of her lungs. “I do my therapist’s bloody homework. I keep journals. I started…” She swallows hard. “I started taking medication.”

  “I know,” I say. “I saw the bottle.”

  “It scares me. It might be dangerous. It might not work. But staying the way I was scares me more. Anyway, I’m lucky I’m able to do something about it. Some people can’t even get out of bed.”

  I realize that my mom has turned the water off. Pib meows suddenly, piteously, until Madge rubs his belly.

  “Remember when we were little kids, and Mom was always yelling at us to get out of the bathtub?” Madge says.

  “I remember that you stole my plastic fish. I think that’s the only memory I have of my entire childhood.”

  “I think it’s time to get over the fish,” she says. “But do you remember the way we used to call Mom when we wanted to get out of the tub?”

  “Uh…”

  “God, you are totally hopeless, aren’t you? Can you remember your own name?”

  “Sister of Satan?”

  “We used to call Mom by saying ‘Mommy’ really, really soft. And then again a little louder. Then louder, and louder, and louder until we were screaming.”

  “If you say so.”

  “We should do that now.”

  “What?”

  “Scream ‘Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.’”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just think we should do it.”

  “I’m not doing that,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause it’s stupid.”

  “You weren’t too proud before.”

  “What was I? Three years old?”

  “So?”

  “And people think I’m weird,” I say.

  “Everyone’s weird,” says Madge.

  “If everyone’s weird, then no one is.”

  Madge grins, actually grins, suddenly, mysteriously delighted. “Finally, she’s catching on.”

  “Madge.”

  “What?”

  “You’re smiling.”

  “And?”

  “Well, it’s not something you do very often.”

  “I’m on drugs,” she says bluntly.

  “But…” I say. “It hasn’t been long enough. What if it’s just that placebo effect? What if it’s not real?”

  “As long as it works, it’s real,” she says. “Come on, let’s do the Mommy thing. She’ll like it.”

  Madge unceremoniously shoves a surprised Pib off her lap and crawls to the bathroom. I can’t leave her to make a fool of herself, and I want to keep her happy as long as possible, so I follow. We crouch by the door. She holds up fingers: one, two, three. And together, softly, as soft as we can, we whisper:

  “Mommy.”

  We wait another few seconds, and do it again, just the slightest bit louder: “Mommy.”

  And louder: “Mommy.”

  Louder: “Mommy.”

  And then suddenly something in my moth-eaten memory clicks. I can feel my wrinkled fingertips, the suck of moisture in my chest, and the cooling water on my skin. I can smell the coconut and pineapple of the store-brand bubble bath. I can hear us both, our little voices, starting quietly and then building. I must be smiling, too, because Madge’s grin blazes back. I let myself remember that I once had a mom and a dad, a big sister and a plastic fish, a sunny grandma and a grandpa who would push me on the swings and tell me that one day I would be a great artist. That there was a time before the divorce and sickness and the misunderstandings, a time where nobody told me I was weird and maybe didn’t even believe I was, or if they believed it, they didn’t care. And I’m still screaming—mommymommymommy—but it’s different now. I’m laughing and crying at the same time, because the remembering is so good but so sad.

  The bathroom door flies open and she stands over us, so tall, tall as that mom from a long time ago. She bends and gathers us both in her arms like we’re three years old and six years old, quaking with the cold and the damp and the sudden realization that we’re all alone in the world.

  ( comments )

  “What she did seemed innocent to me. Misguided but sweet. I made it clear that it was unacceptable, made a mental note to confer with the school psychologist in the beginning of the next week. Other students have done similar things over the years, crossed the line a bit, so I never thought to make her action public. It never occurred to me that things would get so out of hand. I didn’t understand the depth of some people’s hysteria. I can’t believe some of the articles and blog postings being written about this. Obscene. It’s almost as if they wanted it to be true.

  “People ask me who is to blame for what happened. I want to say: you. All of you.”

  —Albert Mymer, art teacher

  GLASS SLIPPER

  It takes me a couple of days, but I tell my mom the whole story. That I touched Mr. Mymer, but he didn’t do anything to me. I tell her that Chelsea was the one spreading the rumors. That she posted the video. That she was probably the one who started the Truth About Tola Riley blog, though I didn’t have actual proof of any of it.

  She wants to call the cops. She wants to call the counselors. She wants to call the president. I tell her she should worry about Grandpa. That I’m okay. And that when Grandpa was okay, too, we could go back to the school board. I would tell them the truth. I would tell everyone.

  She’s too tired and too worried about Grandpa to argue.

  And, anyway, I’m lying again.

  I call June. “Hello?” She sounds cautious and hesitant.

  “It’s me. Tola.”

  “Did you call me?”

  “Of course I called you. Your phone rang, didn’t it?”

  “It keeps calling other people.”

  “That’s because it’s alive,” I say.

  “It’s been calling Pete Santorini and Alex Nobody-Can-Pronounce-His-Last-Name.”

  “Ew.”

  “They’re not so bad.”

  “They’re not?”

  “No, the
y can be nice. They send me photos. They have decent bodies.”

  I figure her phone must have shoved some sort of electronic tentacle into her brain and vacuumed out an important lobe. The sanity lobe. The dignity lobe. “Listen, June. You have to meet me at the school on Saturday night. Seven o’clock.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Bring your dad’s tools.”

  “You want me to break into the school?”

  “We might not have to. There’s a football game, and the doors could be open. If not, though, I’ll need the tools. Besides, I need supplies and stuff and the janitors always lock the closets.”

  “Why do you need to get into the school?”

  “Chelsea gave me an idea.”

  “Chelsea? What kind of idea?”

  “She reminded me of ‘The Goose Girl.’ It’s a Grimm’s story where this creepy girl tries to steal the throne by impersonating a princess. But the king finds out. He asks the fake princess how she’d punish a usurper. She says that she’d strip the girl naked, put her in a barrel studded with nails, and drag her through the streets until she’s dead. And the king says, ‘Okay, that’s what we’re going to do to you.’”

  “What a sweet story. I’ll tell it to my children. What does it have to do with Chelsea?”

  “Let’s just say that she’s kind of like the fake princess. She gave me the idea for her own punishment. So, are you in?”

  “I can’t, Tola. I have to volunteer at a soup kitchen on Saturday night.”

  “Would it help if I told you that your phone wants you to meet me?”

  “My mother says—”

  “It will look good on your college applications, I know,” I say. “June, what are you going to study in college?”

  “What do you mean? What everybody studies. Lit, math, science, that kind of thing.”

  “And why are you taking all these AP classes and college courses?”

  “Why are you asking me these stupid questions, Tola? You know why. So I can place out of—”

  “All your college classes. So let me ask you again. What classes are you taking in college? After AP Calculus, AP History, AP English, AP Bio, AP Chemistry, AP Physics, AP AP, the peacemakers seminar, the leadership seminar, the seminar to learn how to take seminars, and ‘Whiteness: The Other Side of Racism,’ what’s left?”