“Help us with these.”
I vacated my usual post at the landing to drudge another grocer’s special of anaphylaxis through the door.
With a series of heavy sighs, my aunt unloaded several more blocks of cheese.
Joseph frowned at the loot.
“Aren’t you allergic?” He mouthed the words, and I nodded.
But Adelle cared only about her thwarted entrance. “I can’t find my key,” she said and inspected me. “You don’t know anything about that, do you?”
I stared at her, employing as vacant an expression as I could muster.
She sniffed. “What is that disgusting odor?”
Before I could block her, Adelle ascended the stairs. I didn’t pursue her. Perhaps if I pretended not to care, she’d conduct a brief search and return to the first floor, filled with nothing more than complaints of my poor domestic skills.
Then I heard her open the bathroom door.
I braced for the inevitable scream while Joseph grinned with an almost endearing innocence.
“Oh my God!”
I sighed.
“Adelle?” Joseph rushed up the stairs, and I followed placidly behind.
By the time I arrived in the bathroom, they were already gaping at my sister. I parted my lips to tell them she didn’t appreciate their gawking when my sometimes lover interrupted.
“Is that—” But the smell recalled the rankest of summertime carrion and inspired Joseph to abandon his question and blot out the stench with his sleeve.
“Savannah,” I said to assist him.
My aunt gagged. “This is madness.”
She reached toward the plug, but I lunged before she could disturb the water. We toppled to the tile, and I hoped she might strike her head against the edge of the tub, inducing a temporary—or permanent—stupor.
Unfortunately, my gambit simply annoyed her.
“What is wrong with you? Have you lost your mind?”
“Sabrina.” Joseph took my arm and helped me to my feet. He tried to cradle my face in his hands, but I pushed him toward the sink and turned to my aunt.
“You won’t touch her.”
“Her?” She stared at me. “It’s dirty bathwater filled with rancid blood. There’s no one in there!”
“You can’t take her away from me.”
I charged, ready to add more red décor to the room, but Joseph caught me midair. He wrapped his arms around my waist as I flailed toward the water, desperate to destroy my aunt before she could hurt Savannah.
“This is for your own good.” Adelle speared her fake nails through my sister’s core and removed the colorless plug. For a moment, she even permitted the chain of the would-be life preserver to dangle from her fingers, just so I would know the deed was done. My body pulsed forward, but Joseph pinned me against his chest.
The water gurgled as it disappeared.
“She’s screaming!” I wept.
My aunt rolled her eyes. “It’s only the drain.”
In under a minute, my sister had departed.
“Savannah.” I panted, swallowing my tears. “Please forgive me.”
“She has nothing to forgive you for. She needs to be the one asking for forgiveness.”
Joseph adjusted his grip on my now limp body. “Because she committed suicide?”
My aunt fluttered her eyes and moved away from the bathtub. “Because she had too many secrets.”
He inched toward her. “Like what?”
Impatient to play Greek chorus, the drain emitted a final rattle.
“The man at the funeral,” my aunt said, lowering her voice, “was carrying on with Savannah. His wife told me so.” She shrugged. “My niece was a sinner. And I made sure she knew it.”
I heaved, remembering the message on the mirror. “Did you happen to mention hell in the conversation?”
“I told her the truth. By having that dalliance, she damned herself.” Adelle shrugged. “Simple fact.”
As he recognized the murderer sharing the room with us, Joseph shifted his stance, and this time, his grasp around my waist began to slack. “How could you do that?” he asked.
Sensing his waning resolve, my body seized into tight stillness. One calculated thrust would shatter Joseph’s bones and free me to eradicate the inhuman thing standing near the sink, acrylic caressing her pancake face.
But the unexpected calm belied my intentions.
“Leave,” he said to her. “Now.”
She exhaled, one eyebrow lifted. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll let her go.”
Adelle’s gaze flitted from Joseph to me and back again. Her masterfully feigned empathy melted away, and without
another word, she exited the room.
When he was certain she had gone, Joseph released me.
I kneeled before the pink stain left in my sister’s wake.
“Sabrina,” he whispered, “she wasn’t in there anymore.”
I glared at him. “What do you know of souls? How can you be sure she wasn’t there?”
Quivering, he gaped at me, yet his face again assumed the look of a stranger.
My fingers pressed into the porcelain tub, searching the invisible pores for any trace of my sister.
At some point, Joseph vanished. I thought of checking the driveway to ensure he’d gone, but there in the bathroom, I was already alone.
***
A stream of pleading messages coalesced into static.
“Forgive me.”
“I was wrong to hold you back.”
“I love you, Sabrina.”
“Please call me. Please.”
I unplugged the archaic answering machine and flung it against the wall. The consequent shards sprang apart like glints from a Fourth of July sparkler.
A week later, Adelle returned to the house and knocked unabated for ten minutes. I cracked the door but left the chain in place.
“I talked to my friend,” she said as though she possessed only one acquaintance. “He’s a lawyer. He told me I could get power of attorney over you.”
I scoffed. “Not without Joseph’s testimony. And now he loathes you too.”
“I won’t go away.” She crossed her arms. “I’ll keep knocking until you let me in.”
“I’ll call the sheriff and tell him you’re trespassing.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I won’t call the police. I’ll put you in that bathtub instead.”
She stiffened on instinct. “I could have you committed.”
“You could try.”
Her car departed the driveway, and I waved goodbye.
In the afternoon, my sister called to me. The voice in the bedroom beckoned softly in a lilt no longer her own. In lieu of words, this new Savannah used a singular code of floorboard creaks and white noise purrs that only I could understand.
“Don’t worry,” I said to assuage her latest fear. “She’s gone now. And I don’t think she’ll come back again.”
I moved to the dresser and, with a careful hand, slipped open the top drawer. Tucked between a lacy camisole she hadn’t worn since high school and an armory of colorful underwear, Savannah waited inside the leftover Mason jar.
“You were right,” I said. “This was the safest place for you.”
I positioned Savannah on the nearby vanity and watched as graceful waves rippled through her.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save all of you,” I said. “They didn’t give me enough time.”
My ring finger caressed the glass barricade that estranged us. And for the first time since my sister swapped shells, I smiled.
A motorcycle whirred past the house, and Savannah hummed in reply.
“But we fooled them all,” I said. “Didn’t we, darling?”
Giggling, Savannah smiled back at me.
ALL THE RED APPLES HAVE WITHERED TO GRAY
One bite is all it takes. That is—and always has been—the rule.
***
I’m five years old, and the world is still gossamer and strange, my fragile memories like a soft cake that’s not yet risen, so part of me is almost certain that finding a girl one morning, sleeping where she doesn’t belong, must be the most ordinary thing for those who have lived long enough.
I plod behind my father as he carries her to the barn. “What happened?”
“A witch, no doubt,” he says, but I don’t believe him, because he blames witches for everything. A thunderstorm on the day of harvest, dark spots on the flesh of Cortlands and Braeburns, a splinter in his palm from an apple crate—always the work of a spell, according to him. Yet this blighted land, faded and cruel, seems more like magic has forgotten us entirely. Of the whole village, only our orchard retains a speck of color, and with the crop waning, bushel by bushel, each year, even that won’t last.
My father places the girl in a pile of wilted straw, away from the wind and the sun, and she curls up, crumpled and lifeless, like an origami swan crushed beneath a heavy boot. In her knotted hand, she cradles a tiny red apple. There’s barely a blemish on the skin. A single taste bewitched her.
“I’ll go into the village.” My father shrugs on his seam-split jacket. “Whoever she is, her family’s probably looking for her.”
He hesitates, then adds, “You stay here.”
He says it as though I long to be near him, as though we’re a proper father and daughter, good and whole, not the broken pieces of something ugly and aching.
I stare at the straw and say nothing. Without so much as a nod goodbye, my father vanishes through the barn doors, and I watch his figure become smaller and smaller on the horizon, folding in on itself until he’s gone.
There’s one path to the village, and he never ventures off it. It’s safest that way. On the border to the north, the shadows of the forest murmur nonsense and stretch taut fingers toward the orchard. There are the trees here populated with blooms and apples, and the trees there that yield only gloom, and a line in between, our property line, that divides one from the other, shelter from the unknown.
“Ignore the forest,” my father always says. “Only decay lives there.”
As if decay doesn’t live here with us too, our conjoined twin that never rests.
When I’m sure my father won’t double back, I breathe deep and edge closer to the girl. She smells of lilacs and lilies, bouquets that no longer blossom on this land. For hours, I sit with her in silence, because I’ve got nothing to talk about, at least nothing this girl is probably eager to hear. She has plenty of problems of her own. She doesn’t need mine.
Though she has one problem I can help with. I ease the apple from her fingers and drop it in the pocket of my gingham apron. If it was indeed poisoned, there’s no reason for her to embrace it. I’ll keep it for her. I’ll protect her, the best I can. Too late is better than not at all.
A sliver of moon crests above us, and its meager light brings my father home. It brings someone else too. A young man arrayed in handsome silks and fine jewels, clearly a stranger to our province, since no one here can afford bread, much less such glittery baubles.
He kneels to the straw and inspects the girl’s face.
“She’s beautiful,” he says, and my flesh prickles as he forces his mouth over hers.
I part my lips to ask if he even knows her, if he ever saw her before this night, but I exhale instead and my words dissolve like a plume of smoke in the chilled air. It would do no good to speak. Little girls don’t earn the right to question the wisdom of men. We can smile and blush and nod our heads, but we can’t tell them no.
Eyes open, the girl gags, and I wonder whether it’s residual poison on her tongue or the taste of his kiss that nauseates her.
He drapes her, still groggy, over his shoulders and declares her his bride. The next day, they make it official at the sagging chapel in the town square.
We never learn where this prince came from. Even after the wedding, the girl’s family can’t pinpoint his kingdom on a map.
“It’s somewhere to the East,” they say, and that’s precise enough to satisfy them.
The villagers don’t search for the witch who soured the apple. They’re busy cooing over satin and white stallions, and tethering rusted tin to the tail-board of the royal carriage.
The young ladies cry because it’s all so romantic.
“I want an apple and a prince,” they say, and cool themselves with folded fans made of lace, torn and yellowed.
My father’s chest expands with feverish zeal like a hot air balloon inflating for exhibition, and I divine the thought turning over in his mind.
This will be wonderful for business.
After the ceremony’s over and the villagers scatter like dried rice, I remain on the road, my stomach cramping as though I’m the one who consumed poison.
The apple’s still in my apron. I take it home and hide it away.
***
One by one, the girls find their way to the orchard, and once they start arriving, they never stop, like the tide breaking over the shore.
My father makes quiet deals with the families.
“I’ll keep them safe,” he says, and the mothers and fathers agree, because they have nothing else. Their faces, all soiled and sunken, are hungry, a hunger that even a month of hearty meals wouldn’t satiate. This land has been barren so long that the desperation’s in their marrow, deeper than the salt beneath the earth, and they look to us and this orchard and our apples as if their daughters might earn a fate here that doesn’t mean starvation.
“How do you know the prince will come?” they ask.
My father flashes them a serpent’s smile. “Have faith,” he says. “Faith always discerns the believers.”
They pay their gold coins, often a lifelong savings, and in our cottage by candlelight, my father counts the money each night, pacing circles like a vulture that dines on the carrion of frail dreams.
By now, it’s been five years since the first girl, the one who went east and never returned. We never did find her kingdom, but her family claims they receive a letter each spring.
“She delivered an heir in December,” they say, but if you ask them, they can’t tell you the child’s name or whether it’s a boy or girl. They can’t tell you if the daughter’s happy in matrimony either, but that seems unimportant somehow. She married a prince. What more could a poor village girl desire?
Before the families leave their daughters to our care, they make special requests. They ask for glass coffins where the girls can slumber, but they forget there is no glassmaker in this town, no artisan of any kind. All we can offer is a pile of straw in our barn. A hideous option, but my father’s clever. He can spin even an unseemly truth into a gold-plated lie.
“It must be straw,” he says. “A prince won’t come otherwise.”
He never asks if they have hay fever. After they’re nestled in beds of fodder, the girls sniffle through hollow dreams, eyes swollen and red welts blossoming like rosebuds on their skin.
“No one will want to kiss them now,” I say, and my father hushes me.
Such talk is bad for business. And business is what keeps us alive, keeps porridge in our bowls, keeps the orchard thriving for the young ladies who wear their best dresses and lace tattered ribbons in their hair.
But a few don’t skip so merrily to the gallows.
“She’s nervous,” one mother says, dragging her heart-faced daughter behind her. “That won’t affect the magic, will it?”
My father regards the girl, who stares at her threadbare shoes. “Not in the case of such a deserving young princess,” he says.
At this, the mother brightens as though she always believed her progeny was royalty-in-waiting, and at last, someone outside the family has confirmed it.
The girl, however, does not brighten. Her skin blanch
es the color of bone, and when I peer into her face, it’s as though I’m looking through the muscle and sinew to see what’s beneath. She’s no more than fifteen. Some families hold on to their daughters longer, clutching them with gaunt hands, delaying the inevitable, always hoping a better option might materialize. But in this place where the land is stained gray and the wheat won’t flower again, there is nothing better, and the longer you wait, the more the girl loses that freshness in the cheeks.
My father makes a deal, a fair one he calls it, and the mother bids farewell to her child.
Except for this ritual, daughters are rarely allowed to be alone. “It’s unsafe,” the villagers say and keep them under brass lock and key. Not until after the price of their future is paid like a macabre dowry are they turned loose to pick the perfect apple.
Their first taste of freedom is their last.
Along the manicured trails of the orchard, I tread solemnly behind the girl. This is against the rules, and if my father catches me, my backside will meet a belt. I don’t care. Like a ghost, I always follow.
It’s only May, a time made for fragile blossoms, not fully bloomed fruit, but that doesn’t matter. The magic here grows stronger each season, and even in the biting cold of winter, these trees now flourish with ready apples in all varieties, including ones that never used to grow on this land. There’s no blush elsewhere in the village—our property has more than enough for everyone.
After the first girl, we were sure the nearby forest cursed our land, but we need no witchcraft to cast this spell. The apples do the work for us, the poison readymade and choosy. The men can eat any of the varieties—Jonagolds, Golden Delicious, Galas—no problem. It’s the girls who take one bite and slumber. They don’t get to savor the whole thing. What if the second taste is sweeter than the first? They’ll never know.
Sobbing, the reluctant girl closes her eyes, and fumbles blindly for a branch. She chooses her apple—her fate—and succumbs to the dirt. I collapse cross-legged beside her, and the tears streak down my face like wax from a flame. Though she can’t hear me, I tell her I’m sorry.
The apple, plump and rosy, droops from her fingers, and I pry it free and preserve it in my pocket.
When my father comes to claim her, his temporary property, I hide behind green leaves the shape of giant hands, always reaching to the sky. This is the edge of the world, and the dark forest unfurls beyond, calling in a voice sweet and clear as a cathedral bell. With fingers buried in both ears, I do my best not to listen. The forest is known for its tricks. That’s what the men from the village say. It devours the living like a blackened sea. It devoured my mother—or maybe my mother let herself be devoured—that honeyed evening the summer before the first girl came to us.
And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe Page 5