The Poison Apples (2 page)

Before long the two of them were Officially Dating. It started with Dad coming home late a couple of times a week with red wine on his breath, humming songs from different musicals. Then one Saturday morning I stumbled out of bed, walked into our kitchen, and there was R. in a purple satin bathrobe, flipping pancakes on the stove.

“Hello, darling!” she sang out, and gave me a perfumed kiss on the cheek.

Let me remind you that the last woman who'd stood at our kitchen stove flipping pancakes was my mother, Susan Beckerman. And Susan Beckerman is—was—not the type of woman who wore satin bathrobes and called people “darling.” Mom liked sweatpants and her nickname for me was “Crinkle.” Her nickname for Dad was “Gherkin.”

Dad walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table in his pajamas, smiling bashfully. All of a sudden it seemed like the three of us were a
family
. And the truth was, I didn't know R. at all. I just knew that her passions were food, acting, and sex, and that she played a cancer patient in my father's Broadway show. Also she wore a lot of perfume in the morning. But what was I going to do? Things were out of my control.

“Those pancakes smell great,” I said, and sat down at the table. Dad reached over and squeezed my hand.

*   *   *

A couple of months
went by. It was the spring of my freshman year. I wanted a boyfriend, and I didn't get one, and I wanted a best friend, and I didn't get one (I only had
kind-of
best friends, girls who considered me their
second
- or
third
-best friend after their
real
best friend), and I wasn't chosen to sing a solo in our school's April Chorale Concert. Dad and R. kept seeing more of each other, and I was invited along less and less. Sometimes R. would come over and cook us dinner, but more often I'd come home from school and there'd be a note stuck to the microwave saying: “
Went to movie with R. Back before 11.
” Sometimes I heard them giggling in Dad's bedroom at night. Once I even heard bedsprings squeak, at which point I shoved my fingers in my ears, covered my head with five different pillows, and hummed the national anthem. Still, Dad was happy, and I was glad he was happy.

Then came the Announcement.

One afternoon I came home from school and there was a bottle of champagne on the coffee table in the living room. R. danced out of the kitchen and embraced me even more enthusiastically than usual.

“HELLO MY DARLING,” she bellowed.

“Hey, R.,” I said. “What's the champagne for?”

She widened her eyes, her spiky eyelashes almost reaching her eyebrows, and put a finger to her lips. “Wait until your father comes in,” she whispered.

A second later, Dad came in from the kitchen. “Hey, baby,” he said.

“Hi,” I said. Then I realized he was talking to R.

“Hey, baby,” she murmured, and they put their arms around each other and kissed. I didn't even bother to look away. In the beginning I would turn around when they kissed in an attempt to seem respectful (also it was gross to watch), but eventually I realized that they didn't even care. Or notice. Finally Dad broke away from R.'s embrace.

“Hi, Alice,” he said. “We have a very exciting announcement.”

I tried to smile. This little voice inside my head piped up:
What if they get married?
but I quickly told it to shut up, that was absurd, they'd only been dating for three months.

Dad and R. sat down on the couch and held hands. “Alice,” said Dad, “R. and I are getting married.”

I blinked. I swallowed. I pinched the inside of my palm to make sure I wasn't dreaming.

“What do you think?” asked R. “Are you happy?”

That was an interesting question. Am. I. Happy? I didn't even know how to begin to form an answer. No, R., I'm not happy. My mom is dead, and you're sleeping with my father and filling the house with your perfume, and the longer you're around the less interested you seem in me, and you've only been around three months.

“You've only been around three months!” I blurted out.

The smiles on their faces kind of wobbled and disappeared. I could tell they were shocked. Why? Because I'm Alice. I'd been nothing but
sweet
and
nice
. I'd been nothing but
supportive
and
wonderful
. But no. Not anymore. Marriage? After three months? That was crazy. Mom and Dad had dated for six years before they got married.

“Alice,” said Dad, “try to sound at least a little excited.”

“I'm not excited,” I said. “I'm infuriated and irate.” (I'd been studying vocabulary words for the PSATs.)

“Why?” asked R. “It's very hurtful of you to say that, Alice. Your father and I are in love.”

“I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU!” I yelled.

Then I burst into tears and ran upstairs.

Okay, I admit it. Not the most mature response. But I'd reached the end of my rope. Where had being nice gotten me? I threw myself onto my bed, sobbed into my pillow, and waited for Dad to come upstairs to talk to me. I would reason with him. I would say: “Dad, I'm not saying break up with her, I'm just saying give it a little more time. What's the rush to get married?” We'd hug and he'd stroke my hair.

I kept crying into my pillow. A few minutes went by. I cried a little louder. More time went by. I wailed. I beat the wall with my fists. I looked at my clock. I tiptoed down the staircase and peeked into the living room.

They were gone. Their coats were missing from the foyer. I couldn't believe it. They hadn't even left a note.

I felt pretty bad for myself that afternoon.

But I didn't even know that things were about to get much, much worse.

Have you ever had a nightmare where someone in your life like turns on you? When I was really little, I had these recurring dreams about my mom and dad turning into evil ogres who wanted to eat me. Whenever I woke up I'd feel this flood of relief, like:
Thank God. It was all a dream. My parents are actually not evil ogres who want to eat me.

After I failed to be Ultra-Supportive and Excited about Dad and R.'s upcoming wedding, R. basically turned into an evil ogre who wanted to eat me.

And I never got to wake up.

It's hard to describe. But the woman hated me.
Hated
me. You could see it in her eyes. Maybe she'd hated me the whole time, but in that case my little tantrum gave her permission to hate me openly. I tried to apologize the next day over breakfast (“Um? You guys? Sorry for freaking out yesterday.…”), but she totally ignored me and started babbling at Dad about wedding plans. Dad thanked me with his eyes, but the two of them just talked about chocolate versus lemon wedding cakes until they left the table.

I thought maybe R. would only be mad at me for a couple of days, but instead it only seemed to get worse. She'd walk right by me in the living room without saying hello. She refused to make eye contact at meals. Dad would try to initiate conversation between us, but it never really worked. Sometimes it just made things even more horrible.

“I've been thinking about what kind of bridesmaid dress you'd like to wear at the wedding, Alice,” Dad said over dinner one night, smiling at me across the table.

Before I could even answer, R. shot Dad a death glare. “Alice isn't going to be a bridesmaid, Nelson,” she said sharply.

“She isn't?” Dad asked.

“No. Ruth and Pammy are my bridesmaids. Remember? I want Alice to be the flower girl.”

I looked up in shock. “Wait, what? Isn't the flower girl supposed to be, like, a child?” The second after I said it I regretted it.

“You are a child,” R. said, looking directly at me for the first time in, like, a week. But this time it was an uncomfortable, creepy, piercing stare.

“I'm fifteen.”

“That doesn't sound very old to me. And it's not like you've exhibited the most mature behavior in the world, have you?” She smiled at me triumphantly over her wineglass.

I opened my mouth. I looked to Dad for help. He was staring down at his plate. Coward.

“I just don't know why I can't be a bridesmaid, too,” I finally said.

“Because my sister and my best friend are going to be my bridesmaids,” R. said calmly, “and I need a flower girl.”

I closed my eyes. It wasn't so much the bridesmaid thing as the fact that R. now obviously hated my guts and was totally happy to let me know just how much she hated my guts in whatever way possible. So sitting there at the table, silently, with my eyes closed, I did something I'd never really done before. I prayed.

To whom or what, I'm not sure. My mom? God? I prayed that something would save me from this situation. I prayed that this wasn't actually my life. I prayed the same prayer as that girl at the beginning of
Forrest Gump
(okay, I didn't have a lot of prayer references to draw from. My parents were never that religious):
Let me be a bird and fly far, far away from here.

That prayer was another bad idea. Where was I going to fly?

The answer turned out to be rural Massachusetts.

Because a few weeks later there was another Announcement.

I was sitting on the couch after school, reading a celebrity gossip magazine (Dad disapproved of all celebrity gossip magazines). It was early June. The wedding was scheduled for early July. Our house had been overrun with florists and caterers and planners, all displaying photo albums and ribbon cuttings and bouquets for R. to choose from. I usually skulked around the background, waiting for someone to ask my opinion.

No one ever did.

Anyway, this was a particularly quiet afternoon. R. was out tasting hors d'oeuvres at some catering place in Manhattan. I'd taken the opportunity to sprawl out on the couch and just … vegetate. To my surprise, Dad came out of his study, walked into the living room, and sat down next to me.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, putting his arm around me.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, and got this nice warm feeling all over my body. It felt like the old days. The old depressing Mom-is-dead days, but at least not the terrifying, nightmarish, Mom-is-dead-and-R.-is-going-to-become-my-stepmother days.

“What're you reading?” Dad asked.

“Nothing,” I said, grinning, and tucked the celeb mag into the couch pillows.

“I want to talk to you about something,” Dad said tentatively.

I sighed, relieved. Maybe we were going to figure something out. Maybe R. didn't hate me after all. Or maybe they were going to postpone the wedding for a while. Or maybe—at the very least—they'd decided I didn't have to be flower girl.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“Well,” Dad said. “This is kind of interesting. I didn't think this was going to happen, but R. feels very strongly about it, and … it might be for the best.”

The warm feeling was slowly melting away from my body. Was this
more
bad news? Was more bad news possible? I actually couldn't even come up with a worst-case scenario in my head.

I sat up very straight and looked at Dad. “Okay,” I said. “What is it?”

“We're going to move,” he said.

“Out of this house?”

“Yes.”

My body went numb. Okay. Right. The house I grew up in. The living room with the chocolate milk stain on the carpet. The kitchen with the sun coming in through the ivy plants. Mom's shabby study with all her old books. The red staircase with the creaky step. My bedroom with the little stained-glass window. The glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling. Our front stoop. Our backyard. The Fernandez family across the street. Images of my life were flashing in front of my eyes like memories, even though I was still sitting in the middle of the living room.

I breathed deeply.
Act mature
, I told myself. “Okay,” I said. “Where are we moving? Are we staying in Brooklyn?”

“Uh, no,” Dad said. He seemed to be having a hard time getting the words out. “We're moving to Manhattan.”

Okay. Right. No more Brooklyn. More images flashed before my eyes. No more brownstones and cute little streets. No more Brooklyn Heights. No more Park Slope. No more Phil's Diner. No more walking along the East River. No more sledding in Prospect Park. No more Junior's cheesecake. No more living five blocks away from school. Wait. School. I'd been going to the same Brooklyn Heights Montessori school for my entire life. I knew everyone there. I didn't
love
everyone, but I knew everyone. I was supposed to graduate in three years. We'd already started raising money for our senior class trip.

“I can still go to Montessori, right?” I asked Dad, trying to stop my voice from trembling. “It'll just be a longer commute, right? Where are we going to live in Manhattan? Will we be close?”

“Well, that's the thing,” Dad said. He turned away and stared out the window. “That's the thing, Alice. We're moving into R.'s apartment.”

“But that's on the Upper West Side. That's really far away from school.”

“I know.”

“R.'s apartment is also really small.”

“Yes. It is.”

I reached out and shakily grabbed hold of Dad's shoulder. He winced.

“Dad?” I asked.
Act mature act mature act mature act mature.
“Um. I … where am I going to sleep if we live in R.'s apartment?”

Dad finally turned to face me. His eyes were red. He looked guilty and scared. He looked like he'd just done something really bad. Like murdered a kitten.

“It's okay, Dad,” I said weakly. “It's gonna be okay. I'll be okay sleeping in the living room. Or the study. Doesn't she have a study? If I can fit my bed in then I can—”

“Alice,” Dad said suddenly. “You're not going to live with me and R. It doesn't make sense. There's not enough room, and you'd have to switch schools, anyway. In the fall you're going to attend a boarding school in Massachusetts.”