Ivory Apples

by Lisa Goldstein

  “And you, Ivy?” she said, turning to me.

  I blinked. “You only sent us three of them.”

  “Really? Honestly, I meant to send you more. I certainly would have, if I’d known you’d each take one.”

  Didn’t she know how many she’d sent? She hadn’t seemed to have put a lot of thought into them, just picked up a generic postcard from every city she passed through.

  We went to dinner and ate in silence for a while. Finally Amaranth said what we were all thinking: “Why didn’t you say goodbye to us?”

  “And why didn’t you write us sooner?” Beatriz said. She was looking at Ms. Burden intently now, adding this new fault to her scorecard. Ms. Burden seemed to have lost a few points, I was pleased to see. “We were worried—we didn’t even know where you were.”

  “Well, but I did write to you,” Ms. Burden said.

  “Not for a long time,” Amaranth said. “A year.”

  “Not that long, surely. I left at the end of January, and it’s September now, so”—she counted on her fingers—“only eight months. And I sent you those postcards a few months ago.”

  Esperanza came out of the kitchen with two bowls of noodle soup and set them down in front of Philip and Ms. Burden. Ms. Burden blew on hers to cool it and then spooned out a sip. “Mmmm, this is wonderful,” she said.

  “Last month,” Beatriz said, her jaw tight. “I can show you the dates on them.”

  “The dates on what, dear?” Ms. Burden said, taking another sip.

  “On the postcards.”

  “Oh, dear.” Ms. Burden put her spoon down. She frowned. “Well, the truth is that I was swept away. By a—a man, someone who seemed wonderful, maybe the love of my life. Well, I thought so at the time, anyway. He told me he wanted to take me to Europe, but he was leaving the next day and I had to give him my answer right then. So of course I said yes.”

  “And then what?” Semiramis asked. She seemed already won over.

  “Well, we got along famously for the first few months or so. But he was always hurrying me along, never staying in one place for more than a day or two. I didn’t have time to write, or do much of anything else. And then, well, he left me. Right in the middle of Spain, and of course I didn’t speak the language, or have a lot of money—he’d always taken care of our finances. And he’d carried my passport in his backpack, too, though I don’t think he meant to take it with him. It took me a while to sort all of that out.”

  “Oh,” Beatriz said. We were silent for a while, thinking about being dropped in a foreign country without money, without knowing anyone.

  “Why did he leave you?” Semiramis said.

  “Ramis!” Beatriz said. “You can’t ask someone that.”

  “Oh,” Semiramis said. “Well, I wouldn’t have left.”

  Ms. Burden smiled sadly.

  “How did you get back?” Beatriz asked.

  “Through the American embassy. And thank God for them—I’d probably still be in Spain if it wasn’t for their help.”

  “What was your favorite place?”

  Ms. Burden seized the change of subject gratefully. “You know, I think it was England. Well, except for the food. There was this one pizza place in London—my God, it was horrible. I don’t think you’re supposed to put warmed-up peas and carrots on pizzas, but maybe that’s how they do it there.”

  She talked about her travels all through dinner. Then she excused herself, saying that she’d learned a little Spanish and wanted to thank Esperanza for the meal. Philip went to put Amaranth and Semiramis to bed, and only Beatriz and I were left at the table.

  After a while I realized that Ms. Burden hadn’t come back. I remembered her looking through my things, and a small cloud of suspicion formed in my mind. I went into the kitchen and saw that she was helping Esperanza with the dishes. She dried a fork and then opened a drawer in front of her.

  “No, they go over there,” Esperanza said.

  “Oh, lo siento,” Ms. Burden said. She looked up and saw me. “Did you want anything, Ivy?”

  Just making sure you don’t steal the silverware, I thought. “No, it’s okay,” I said.

  CHAPTER 6

  I CAME BACK TO THE HOUSE one afternoon to see my sisters standing on the doorstep. “I lost my key,” Beatriz said.

  “Again?” I asked.

  “Hey. I only did it once before.”

  “Twice,” I said. “At least.”

  I let them in, and Beatriz and I went to the junk drawer in the kitchen to look for the spare key. We piled things around us on the kitchen floor—twine and a box of matches and playing cards and an old ashtray from back when Philip smoked—until we reached the bottom.

  Beatriz sat back. “I don’t see it here,” she said.

  Suddenly I had a horrible thought. “What if Ms. Burden took it?” I asked. “She was here, remember, helping Esperanza do the dishes.”

  “Oh, God, Ivy,” Beatriz said. “First you think she’s snooping around in our room, and now she’s stealing things . . . Why would she take our key, anyway?”

  “To get inside the house. Duh. To snoop some more.”

  “And why would she do that?”

  “Because—because she’s looking for something.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Something about Maeve, maybe.”

  “Oh, come on. She said once that she likes Ivory Apples, and you just made up this whole story about her . . .”

  I stopped listening. I felt cold suddenly, my skin prickling with static. She might have been here, might have looked through our things. Might have found out who Maeve was, and gone over to her house to do something terrible. To put a dead rat in her mailbox, or worse.

  I stood up. “I’m calling Philip,” I said.

  “You can’t. Only if it’s an emergency, he said.”

  I went to the phone and dialed his office number. But Philip, too, thought there was nothing to worry about, and told me we could talk about it when he got home.

  How could I not worry, though? There was plenty of evidence around the house—the letters Philip answered, for one thing, and the listing in our phone book. I paged through the phone book and saw that Philip had just written Maeve’s first name and phone number, not her address. Well, all right, but no doubt there were other clues scattered around, things I hadn’t thought of.

  I paced through the house, jittery and anxious. A key sounded in the lock at the front door but it was only Esperanza, come to clean and make dinner.

  Beatriz and the others had gone, probably to the park to talk to Ms. Burden. I could head over and confront her, but I was sure she’d deny everything. Then she’d put on that hurt expression I’d seen before, heartbroken that I could even think such a thing. For now I could do nothing to do but wait.

  Philip came home a few hours later. He took one look at me and ushered me into the living room. “What about our phone book?” I said, even before I sat down. “Her name’s in there, and her phone number.”

  “Only her first name, Maeve,” he said. “And Kate would think of her as Adela Madden, wouldn’t she?”

  That much was true. I relaxed slightly. “Well, but—”

  “Let me explain a few things, and then you can ask me whatever you want,” he said. “I have an office where I take care of Maeve’s business. Well, she rents it for me, really—I told you she’s paranoid. Everything connected to her and her book is over there, nothing’s at our house. Except that one listing in our phone book, but I’m sure that’s okay.”

  I hadn’t known any of this—though, to be fair, I wasn’t all that interested. I hadn’t even realized that Philip didn’t write the letters at home. “Seems like a lot of work,” I said.

  He laughed, a tired laugh that sounded like he’d thought the same thing, many times. “Well, I’ve streamlined it—I use form letters a lot. But I promised your mother I’d do it. She was worried Maeve would starve to death up there on her own.”

  “So there�
��s nothing to connect you to Ivory Apples?”

  “Nothing.” He smiled. “Your mother signed the letters with my middle name, David, and said she was Adela Madden’s secretary. I use the same name, but I dropped the secretary part—it made me feel like an imposter. If I gave some of these people my real name they’d track me down at the U and I’d never get rid of them. Do you feel better now?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do. Could you call her, just to make sure she’s okay?”

  “She won’t answer the phone. I’ll try, though.”

  Philip did call Maeve once or twice, but, as he suspected, she didn’t answer. I couldn’t shake the idea that something had happened to her, and when it came time to visit her I ran for the car.

  It was October, cold and clear, and leaves skittered along the highway. I fidgeted with impatience as we drove, unable to settle until we got to Maeve’s house.

  She was out working in her garden again. I was so relieved that I let go of my hold on Piper, and I felt him leap sharply at the thought of freedom. I tugged him back and got out of the car.

  “Something very disagreeable has happened,” Maeve said when we reached her. She wiped her hands on an old shirt. “A woman keeps calling me.”

  I glanced at Philip. “What woman?” he said, though I was sure he knew as well as I did.

  “I don’t know what woman, do I? She called me Adela, my first name, if you please, and said she wanted to visit me. And when I demanded to know why, she said that she had something to tell me, something I’d like to hear. But I already know I won’t like anything she says, that I don’t even like her. Have you told anyone about me, let anything slip?”

  I looked at Philip again. “Yes, Ivy?” Maeve said. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “Ivy—well—has a theory,” Philip said, and he told Maeve about the missing key.

  “Well, for God’s sake, change the locks!” Maeve said.

  “We already did. Ivy wanted to.”

  “Good for her,” Maeve said. “Tell me about this woman, this Kate.”

  “She didn’t do it!” Beatriz said loudly.

  We rehearsed all the old arguments again. Maeve said nothing, just studied us, expressionless.

  “Well,” she said finally. “I changed my phone number. And this time, Philip, you memorize it. Don’t write it down anywhere.”

  “All right,” he said. “Why did you answer the phone in the first place?”

  “Well, she kept calling. Finally I thought it might be you, that there might be an emergency. How did she know who I was, though?”

  “We don’t even know if it was her. It could be someone just dialing randomly.”

  “Someone who knew my name? My old name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “All right. Well, let’s go in and start on the mail. You did bring the mail, didn’t you?”

  That seemed to end it. Philip would deal with Maeve, and I could stop worrying about her. So I thought, anyway.

  We usually ate out on Tuesdays, Esperanza’s day off. A few weeks after our visit to Maeve we were sitting in a restaurant when I noticed Amaranth and Semiramis whispering together and pointing.

  I don’t remember what restaurant it was, only that, since Philip wasn’t great on fine cuisine, we’d probably gone to some kind of diner. It was dim and a little dingy, so I had a hard time making out what they were looking at. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Amaranth said, trying not to laugh. Semiramis giggled.

  “Well, it has to be something. You wouldn’t be laughing so hard if it wasn’t.”

  “Oh my God,” Beatriz said. “It’s Kate.”

  “What?” I said. “Where?”

  Finally I saw her too, at a table against the wall. She looked very strange, out of place, as if a gazelle had wandered in out of the jungle to order a hamburger.

  “Oh, my God,” Beatriz said again.

  “What?”

  “She has a boyfriend.”

  I looked closer and saw a man at her table. The first thing I thought was that he was nowhere near good-looking enough for her. He had curly, mouse-colored hair, already receding from his forehead, thin lips, a boxy chin.

  Amaranth stood up, eager to join them. “Wait a minute, Rantha,” I said. “I want to watch them for a while.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. See what she does when she isn’t with us.”

  “She isn’t doing anything.”

  “Maybe she wants to be alone,” Philip said. “Have a vacation from you kids, for a change.”

  Semiramis squealed in laughter at something Beatriz said, and Ms. Burden turned toward us. It was hard to tell in the murky light, but I thought I saw her frown.

  Then, very quickly, she smiled. “Well, hello!” she said.

  She got up as though to come toward us. I darted over to her and caught her at her table before she could move.

  “Hello, Ivy,” she said. Papers were scattered all across the table. She swept them into a briefcase, then closed it with a click like a knuckle cracking, a sound of finality. “Does your family come here a lot?”

  My sisters had followed me over. “Sometimes,” Beatriz said. “What about you?”

  “This is my first time, actually. I’ve already eaten, or I’d ask you what’s good here. Oh, where are my manners?” She turned to the man with her and said, “These are my friends, Ivy, Beatriz, Amaranth, and Semiramis.”

  “And what’s your name?” Beatriz asked him, sounding very much like Ms. Burden.

  The man cleared his throat and said, “I’m Ned.”

  “Are you the man she went to Europe with?”

  Ms. Burden laughed. “No—we’re just discussing some business.”

  “What kind of business?” I asked. “What do you do, Ted?”

  “Ned,” he said. The mistake had been Piper’s, I realized, but I thought it was pretty funny anyway. “I’m a legal aide, I guess you’d say. I fill out forms, things like that. Dot the t’s and cross the i’s.”

  “No, it’s the i’s that are—” Amaranth started.

  “It has to be done, unfortunately,” Ms. Burden said. “And there’s a lot to do, so we need to get back to it.”

  “Forge ahead.” Ned chuckled.

  I knew enough to realize that she wanted us to leave, but my sisters were still staring at Ned. We weren’t used to seeing her with anyone else, or being told to go away, and I think they felt jealous—especially after she’d been gone for so long.

  “I’ll come talk to you when I’m done here,” she said.

  “Okay,” Beatriz said.

  We went back to our table. “He isn’t her boyfriend,” Beatriz said to Philip, sounding disappointed.

  “No? Who is he?”

  “He’s helping her with business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “She never told us anything about a business,” I said.

  “Well, she doesn’t have to tell us everything, does she?” Beatriz said. “What are you thinking—that her business is breaking in to people’s houses and stealing their keys?”

  I laughed. I imagined a chain of keys around her neck, chiming softly, taken from houses all over town. “Yeah, maybe,” I said.

  We left before she did, so we never got a chance to ask about her business, or Ned. And somehow, when we sat together in the park and talked, it never seemed the right time to bring it up.

  CHAPTER 7

  THIS NEXT PART is hard to write, hard to live through again. For a while we continued as we always had. We visited Maeve, and I tried to figure out the answers to her riddles; we saw Ms. Burden in the park; I tried to keep Piper under control. I turned thirteen in November, and in December we all stayed up for the new year again.

  Then it was January 15, a date I’ve never forgotten. Ms. Burden had joined us at dinner again. She had been doing that more since she’d returned, to the point where she no l
onger needed an invitation, just asked if she could come back with us when we walked home. She didn’t impose overmuch, though, maybe once or twice a week.

  This time she told us about some noises she’d been hearing from her basement. “It sounds like there’s something down there, or someone,” she said. “Sometimes I hear crying, or—or howling. And then things start to bang around, or make a loud crashing noise, like they’re falling down.

  “It only happens at night,” she went on. “I looked down in the basement a few times during the day, but nothing seemed out of place or fallen over. So I knew I had to check it out at night, but the thought of going down there in the dark just terrified me. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore—I wasn’t sleeping, just waiting for something to happen. So I bought the biggest flashlight I could find, and then when I heard the noises again I went down the stairs, and I turned on the light . . .”

  She paused for a long time. I was just about to ask what had happened when she went on.

  “And then I saw . . .” she said, “. . . I saw absolutely nothing. I’d cleared out a lot of the basement, all the heavy stuff, so if anything fell over it wouldn’t make much of a noise, but everything was exactly where I’d left it.”

  “And then what?” Amaranth asked.

  “That’s it. That was last night, and I haven’t been down there since.”

  I’d noticed before that she wasn’t a very good storyteller. A long pause like that should be followed by something dramatic, at the very least.

  “Could it be a cat?” Philip asked. “That would explain the crying noises, and maybe it knocked something over.”

  “Well, I thought that too. I even looked for paw prints, but I couldn’t find anything. But honestly, I think you’re right, that’s what it is. I hope that’s what it is, anyway. Everything else I can think of is, well, it’s sort of terrifying.”

  “Like what?” Amaranth asked.

  “I don’t know.” She laughed shakily. “Maybe I’m being haunted.”

  Philip looked at her, a stern gaze that I had seen from him before. He was telling her not to frighten the children, to keep the conversation light. And she seemed to get his point, because she put her hands to her mouth briefly, as if to take back her last words.