The Poison Apples (13 page)

She stopped playing with the radio dials and started fingering the leaves of this little green plant next to her bed. Then she started pacing all over the room and touching everything—the knobs on the closet door; the TV antennae; our jackets hanging on the wall.

“Mom?”

“I'm fine.” Now she was rubbing the wallpaper with her forefinger, her brow furrowed, like she wanted to see if it would rub off.

“Are you sure?”

She whirled around to face us. “Yes,” she snapped. “But can you stop breathing down my neck for
one
minute?”

I stared at her. I stared at this new, unfamiliar person, standing in front of me in a white gown, hair disheveled, face red with anger.

There was a loud knock on the door.

“Lunch!” called someone gaily from the hallway.

Mom looked at us.

“I think,” she said after a long pause, “that I probably should eat alone.”

Spencer bolted up out of her chair and ran out of the room. Mom sighed. Then she moved toward me and embraced my neck with her soft, bony arms. Her cheek pressed against mine.

“Come back next Saturday, okay?” she said.

I extricated myself from her arms and turned away.

“Good-bye, Mom,” I whispered, and hurried out the door, brushing past a smiling woman in a white uniform carrying a steaming tray of food.

*   *   *

Spencer and I stood
at the bottom of the long driveway that led to Silverwood and waited for the Chesterton County bus in silence. When it finally came, Spencer immediately dropped down into a seat, took out her new nano iPod (a birthday present from Candy, she'd informed me), and stared out the window. I couldn't see the nano itself, just its little white wires extending out from under her head of blond hair and into the pocket of her jeans.

I took out my worn copy of
Zen Ventura
and tried to start reading it for the fourth time.

But I couldn't really focus.

I looked over at Spencer. The trees we passed along the side of the highway made an orange-and-red stream behind her head.

“Spence,” I said. I wasn't sure she could hear me.

“Leave me alone,” she muttered.

“Why are you ignoring me?” I asked

“You think you're so much better than us,” she murmured, still not looking at me.

“What?” I exclaimed. “I do not! Better than who?”

The bus pulled into the parking lot of the North Forest post office. Spencer tore off her nano and started putting on her jacket.

“There's Candy,” she said, and pointed through the bus's dirty window at a little figure in a huge pink ski jacket waiting next to our Dad's old Chevy.

Just the sight of her made me shiver involuntarily.

The bus cranked to a stop and Spencer ran down the aisle (cutting in front of several old ladies) and down the steps. I peered through the window and watched her bound over to Candy and embrace her. The two of them started gabbing immediately. Spencer said something into Candy's ear and then pointed in the direction of the bus. Candy started laughing.

Great. My little sister, who'd always seemed somewhat foreign to me, even when she was baby, had now officially gone over to the Dark Side.

Sighing, I gathered up my things and disembarked. It was Saturday. I'd agreed to spend the night in North Forest before returning to Putnam Mount McKinsey. But suddenly twenty-four hours seemed like an unbelievably long amount of time.

“Hi, Molly,” said Candy as I trudged over to the car, slouching under the weight of my backpack.

“Hi,” I said.

We gave each other long, stony stares while Spencer did a little dance, shifting her weight back and forth between her right and left feet.

“I'm cold!” she yelped. “Let's go home!”

I spent the car ride sitting silently in the backseat while Spencer and Candy discussed the junior high's new cheerleading uniforms.

Candy didn't ask either of us how the trip to visit Mom had gone.

What actually bugged me more was that Spencer didn't seem to mind.

We pulled into the driveway. Spencer immediately leapt out of the car and disappeared into the house. Sandie and Randie were running through the front yard, waving strange yellow foam swords around in the early evening light. The second I stepped out of the car they descended upon me and started stabbing random parts of my body.

“Agh,” I said, and tried to push them away as gently as possible.

“Your stepsisters are happy to see you, Molly,” said Candy pointedly.

“Mmhm,” I muttered, and tried to wrench Randie free from my knee, which she had managed to wrap herself around.

“Stupid sister!” yelled Sandie, and shook a marker-stained forefinger in my direction.

Candy laughed. “They just missed you a lot.”

“I'm not stupid,” I informed Sandie.

She seemed to consider this possibility, then shouted: “You're made of poop!”

This made Randie laugh so hard that she loosened her grip on my knee, and I managed to wiggle free of both of them and run toward the back door.

Dad was standing in the kitchen, stirring a boiling pot of pasta. When the door banged behind me, he lifted his eyes up and gazed at me, a vague, pleasant smile on his face.

“Hi, Dad,” I said.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he said, and then went back to stirring the pot.

I moved toward him, stood on my tiptoes, and awkwardly kissed his grizzled check.

“That's nice,” he murmured.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Fine. Just fine.”

I leaned against the refrigerator and waited for him to ask me how I was. He didn't. There was just the sound of his spoon scraping against the bottom of the aluminum pot.

“I really, really like Putnam Mount McKinsey,” I announced.

“Aw, that's great.”

“It's like: I never want to leave!”

I watched him carefully to see his response. I don't even know what kind of response I wanted, to be honest. I think maybe I wanted him to wish I would come home—but because he missed me, not because Candy needed a caretaker for Sandie and Randie. And even though I wanted him to wish that I would come home, I didn't want him to make me come home.

My feelings were kind of complicated.

But I got no response from him at all. He just stared down at the stove, moving the spoon around in concentric circles.

Candy and Sandie and Randie all came crowding in through the back door, and Randie scored one final sword jab in the small of my back.

“WASH UP FOR DINNER!” yelled Candy, and after they skittered out of the room she moved behind my father and put her arms around his waist.

“Mmm,” she murmured. “Cuddle-duds.”

Involuntarily I snickered.

Her arms still around Dad, Candy whipped her face in my direction.

“What's funny?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“I'm glad you think you're so much better than your family already, Molly. That's nice. That's really nice.”

“I don't think I'm better than anyone. I just thought I heard you say, ‘Cuddle-duds.' But apparently I was mistaken.” I smiled triumphantly at her. Saying “but apparently I was mistaken” made me feel smart. Like I had the upper hand.

“Cuddle-duds is my nickname for your father.”

“Uh-huh…”

“What's so funny about that?”

“Okay, okay,” my father finally said, and turned around to frown at us. His glasses were all steamed up from the pasta. “Quit it, you two.”

“You two?” asked Candy incredulously. Her eyes suddenly filled up with tears, and covering her face with her hands, she ran out of the room.

My father sighed and looked at me.

“What?” I asked. “I didn't do anything.”

“Be nice to Candy, Molly. Please. Okay? She's having a hard time.”

“I'm having a hard time, too, you know!”

He sighed. “You get to live at your fancy boarding school and do whatever you want, and Candy has to—”

“You think that's what it's like? I get to do whatever I want? You don't think I work hard or—”

“That's not what I'm saying. Just … please. Be sensitive, okay?”

I couldn't believe it. He was even crazier than Mom. At least she knew she was crazy.

“Mol?”

I rolled my eyes. “Sure. Okay. I'll be sensitive. Whatever that means.”

He turned back to the stove. “Will you set the table? We don't need knives. Just forks and spoons tonight.”

I gazed at his stooped shoulders and the fuzzy gray nape of his neck. It was strange. I missed him terribly, even though he was standing right in front of me.

“Yeah, fine,” I said. “Whatever.”

I grabbed a handful of forks and spoons from the silverware drawer and headed out into the little dining room, where Sandie and Randie were already sitting at the table, drinking juice from plastic glasses decorated with pictures of Scooby-Doo.

“Hey, dudes,” I said, trying to sound cheerful, and plunked down the silverware in front of them.

“Mom is crying,” announced Sandie.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I know, I know.”

“She's sick,” said Randie.

I looked at her. “Sick?” I asked. “What kind of sick?”

“No,” said Sandie, shaking her head emphatically. “Not sick. Prenant.”

A spoon fell from my hands and clattered down on the table. “What?”

“Prenant.”

“Pregnant?” I desperately tried to think of another word that sounded like “prenant,” but couldn't. Where was the OED when I needed it?

Sandie nodded. “Yup.”

“Yup in a cup,” added Randie, and they both giggled.

I pulled out a chair and sat down in it with a thud.

“Great,” I told my stepsisters. “Now
I
feel sick.”

Spencer walked into the room, her nano firmly lodged in her ears, and slunk into a chair at the table, her eyes lowered.

A minute later Dad came into the room carrying a big bowl of pasta, and Candy came in from the other room, wiping her eyes and sniffling. They both sat down at the table and looked at me.

“Um,” I said, “I'm sorry I laughed at you, Candy.”

Somehow Sandie and Randie found this hilarious and started laughing themselves.

“Shh!” hissed Candy. They fell silent.

We all started to spoon out the pasta and pour drinks. I was barely able to form a coherent thought in my mind.

Pregnant?

Impossible.

“So does this food seem pretty boring to you, Molly?” asked Candy after a long silence. “Since you get to eat fancy gourmet food at boarding school?”

“Um,” I said, “I actually don't to get to eat fancy gourmet food at boarding school. I get to eat really disgusting Sloppy Joes and this totally gross vegetable mush they recycle every night. This is much better,” I added, and tried to smile.

Candy smirked. “So now she's complaining about boarding school,” she commented to my father across the table.

“I'm not complaining!” I said.

“Do you want them to serve you champagne in teacups or something?” asked Candy. “Filet mignon?”

Spencer giggled.

“That's not what I meant,” I said. I glowered down at my plate and thought about what it would be like to punch my fist through the bay window in the hallway.

Pregnant?

“Have you thought any more about what we discussed at the nurse's office, Molly?” Candy asked.

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Oh, come on. Yes, you do.”

“I don't.” Without being too obvious, I tried to glance under the table to see if her stomach was bulging beneath her stirrup pants. It was kind of hard to tell.

“We discussed the fact that your father and I would like you to come back home and start helping out a little.”

I looked at my father. He looked out the window.

“Oh,” I said finally. “Yeah. I have thought about it. Not a chance.”

Candy stood up. My father reached out and grabbed her arm.

“Candy…,” he said.

“Ungrateful,” she said to me. “You're ungrateful.”

“And you're crazy.”

Randie started crying, softly.

“Tell her,” Candy said to my father. “Tell her now.”

My father sighed and rubbed his temples with his fingers.

“What?” I said. “Tell me what? That you're pregnant?”

They both stared at me, shocked.

“How did you know?” Candy asked. “Did Spencer tell you?”

“I didn't say a word!” shouted Spencer, and she pushed back her chair and ran upstairs.

Candy's eyes slid accusatorily in Sandie and Randie's direction. They both became very interested in eating their vegetables. Randie sniffed back her tears.

“I could just tell,” I said.

Candy sat back down in her chair, patted her hair nervously, and gazed at me. “Are you happy about it?” she asked.

I sighed. “Sure,” I said. The truth was, I was absolutely terrified.

“Doesn't that make you want to move back in?” Candy asked.

“No,” I said. “It doesn't.”

“Herb,” said Candy, the color rising in her cheeks, “tell her she
has
to. We need the extra set of hands.”

My father opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, I rose from my seat and ran out of the dining room and into the kitchen. The door swung behind me. I stopped at the sink and stood there, breathing heavily, trying to figure out what to do next.

“MOLLY!” bellowed my father from the dining room. “GET BACK IN HERE! WE NEED TO FINISH THIS CONVERSATION!”

Quickly I considered every possible outcome to the conversation in my mind. And then I realized there was just one thing I had to do.

Never come home again.

“MOLLY!” my father yelled again.