I have a little repertoire of things I know how to make when my mom gets like this, which seems to be always. It’s easy, and my dad won’t get angry when he gets home and finds that my mother’s been sitting here doing nothing, and there’s no dinner on the table. Besides, my grandfather needs his dinner, too. My grandfather and Becky.
Becky.
Becky is my sister—sometimes. Today she’s Not-Becky—a shrieking, wailing thing in the basement, screaming incoherent obscenities between bouts of almost lucid, maniacal banter.
Becky used to be my sister all the time. She used to have long red hair and bright blue eyes that sparkled when she laughed. Her cheeks used to be ruddy and covered with freckles. She used to be fun, and I wanted to be around her all the time.
She used to be my big sister, but today Becky’s not my sister at all. Today she’s something else.
I take another sip of the flat soda before getting up and walking into the pantry. I pull a pot out from one of the cupboards while scanning the shelf for a box of macaroni and the three cans that have become all-too-familiar to me—peas, tuna, and cream of mushroom soup. It’s amazing what you can do with cream of mushroom soup. It’s amazing how that little can of processed goop can help you masquerade as your mother so your father doesn’t need to acknowledge how bad things really are.
It’s amazing that he knows anyway, but won’t, or can’t do anything about it.
In minutes, I have the water boiling on the stove and the three cans mixed together into a sloppy mess so I can add it to the macaroni and pop it all into the oven.
More wailing comes, and my mother shifts her eyes to the basement door.
“Mom?” I say to her. “Why don’t you go take a shower and get dressed?”
She slowly pivots her head and stares at me with red-rimmed eyes that are all but uncomprehending. I sigh, open the cabinet above the sink, and reach for the little orange bottle with the white top that says “Jolly’s Pharmacy” on it. I twist the cap until it snaps open, shake out two capsules, and hand them to her along with my glass of flat soda.
Slowly, very slowly, my mother peels them off of my palm and puts them on her tongue. She takes a long swallow of the sugary water without any fizz and forces them down.
“I suppose you’re right,” she says.
“Good. Dinner will be ready soon,” I tell her. “It smells really good. You must have been cooking all day.”
Laughter, like crazy wildfire, runs up the stairs and floods the kitchen, so I close my eyes and wait for it to stop.
I help my mother to her feet and gently turn her toward the hallway. She shuffles forward into the darkness, and I walk behind her, making sure to flip the hall light on so she can see where she’s going.
“You’re such a good boy, Jackson,” my mother whispers softly as I guide her down the hallway. When she gets to the door to her bedroom, she stops, her thin fingers holding the doorframe so she won’t fall over right on the spot. “I’ll be okay,” she says to me. “I’ll be okay.” That’s another lie, like the one about the cigarettes. How many lies can someone tell before the difference between what’s true and what’s not becomes blurred?
She steps into the darkness of her bedroom, which always has a vague odor of my father and dirty clothing. I’ll have to strip their bed tonight and maybe do a wash. I can probably get to that between dinner and homework, although homework is rapidly falling down my list of priorities. It’s disappearing into the abyss of my youth. Every time I skip an assignment or forget to hand in something, a little bit of my future gets erased.
All I can see in front of me is Apple, and it makes me sick.
With my mother safely in her room, hopefully getting into the shower instead of under the sheets in her unmade bed, I jog back down the hallway, through the kitchen, and up the back staircase. I take the steps two at a time, ignoring the piles of newspapers climbing the treads.
“It’s a fire hazard,” my dad used to tell my grandfather.
“Then don’t light a match,” my grandfather would say back, but my grandfather doesn’t say much anymore. He’s locked in a prison inside his head, much the same way as my mother, but I have to believe that my mother still has a chance for a “Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.”
I think my grandfather’s done playing that game. Most eighty-five-year-olds are probably done playing any kind of games.
At the top of the stairs, I rap once at the open door and call out into the gloom. “Old man? You hiding on me? I can hear your dentures chattering from here.”
I listen for the squeak of his wheelchair and pinpoint him in the living room. My grandfather’s sitting there with the remote control in his hand and static on the television.
“It’s a piece of crap,” he mutters as I walk in.
“You want me to try?”
“What good are you?” he grumbles. “You’re useless.”
I have to bury his words as quickly as they dance off his tongue. Every once in a while, bad things come out of his mouth, but he almost always forgets as soon as he says them.
“Hey, buddy-boy,” he chirps when he looks up and realizes that it’s me. “Can you help me get this contraption to work?” I walk over and pick up a second remote that’s on the coffee table and change it to channel three. Immediately, a picture springs to life, and my grandfather’s happy again.
“How did you do that?”
It’s useless to try and explain a remote control to him. His ability to understand technology died a long time ago. “Magic,” I say. “It’s all in the wrist.”
“Humpf,” he snorts. “Maybe you got the Devil in you, after all.” He stares down at the larger remote in his hand. I can tell that there are too many numbers and symbols on it for him. No amount of teaching is ever going to help him get it right. He’s too far gone to get things right anymore. He’s just a shell in a wheelchair, living out the remainder of his days in his empty rooms, probably wondering where my grandmother has gotten to.
“Dinner will be soon,” I say to him. “You hungry?”
“I can eat.”
“Okay then. I’ll be back soon with a plate.”
As I turn to leave, he says, “Jackson?” His brow furrows like he is trying to remember something. “Where’s your grandmother?”
My throat tightens, and my heart becomes hard in my chest.
“She not here,” I tell him, trying not to look at the picture on the wall of the woman who has Becky’s eyes. One of my father’s crucifixes hangs above it.
By the time I leave, my grandfather’s probably forgotten he’s even asked.
8
I GO BACK DOWN the stairs, past the piles of moldy newspapers, sure that amongst the fading, yellowed newsprint are stories of the dead—like Ruby or Ralphie Delessio. In the kitchen, I check on the macaroni to see if it’s soft yet, which it is, so I pull the strainer from the pantry and drop it into the sink on top of the dirty dishes. Then I strain the water out and plop the mixture of soup and tuna and peas into it.
As an added treat, I pull a can of processed grated cheese out of the refrigerator and dump a third of it into the pot, stirring the goop until everything is coated in white. I spread the mixture into a casserole dish and put it in the oven to get brown and bubbly.
After I wash the dishes in the sink—the ones that I created and the old ones that have been sitting there since this morning—I dry them with a ratty old dishtowel that used to be decorated with orange flowers and yellow daffodils. The pattern is now all but invisible on the faded cloth.
I do everything possible to avoid my sister, but she’s started to scream again, and I have to go and see her. If I don’t, she’ll never stop.
Finally, I gulp down the last of my flat soda, wash the glass, and put it back in the cupboard. Then I take a deep breath and do what has
to be done. I go to the basement door and swing it open.
Whoops and squeals come from the dankness below, but, as I slowly descend the wooden staircase, they change to a sinister laugh. It smells wet and foul in the basement, and I try to remember if it always smelled like that or only since everything started with her.
At the bottom of the stairs the laughter abruptly stops, and I hear Not-Becky begin to chant.
“Momma had a baby that I killed when it cried.
Momma had a baby so I sliced its neck wide.
Momma had a baby who I stabbed with my knife.
Momma had a baby who must pay with its life.”
Not-Becky goes on and on like that, but I’m not scared. I’m used to it by now. I’m used to the madness and the incessant, never-ending taunts. I’m used to the thing that’s no longer my sister.
The basement is dirty and old like everything else. It seems like a room that is waiting to move on. There are wooden pallets with boxes on them, filled with things that no one wants anymore, but are afraid to get rid of. A single light bulb burns in the middle of the room, hanging from one of the exposed ceiling joists. Straight ahead of me are the washing machine and the dryer. There are clothes on the floor in a pile of mixed colors. That’s my fault. I got as far as bringing the laundry downstairs late last night. I haven’t separated it yet, and I haven’t started a wash.
In our house, laundry magically gets done. It’s too bad that I’m the one providing the magic.
“Stab it, slice it, scoop it out,” Not-Becky laughs from behind the door at the far left of the basement. There’s a window in it with heavy bars that break the small opening into a vertical mosaic. Underneath the window are the locks—three of them in all. One is a chain, another is a dead bolt, and the third is meant for the key which hangs on a nail, sticking out of the railing at the bottom of the stairs.
My hands curl around the toothy piece of metal, and I palm it carefully in my fist.
“Becky, it’s Jackson,” I say to the door.
“I know who you are,” it hisses back—Not-Becky—the one who stole my sister from me. I take a deep breath, walk across the basement, and stand in front of the door. Light pours through the barred window, and I can see most of the room from where I’m standing. It’s painted pink, with nice white furniture and a rocking chair in one corner. Becky’s teddy bear, Rusty, is sitting on the cushioned seat, wearing a little red cap that’s sewn to his head. My sister’s had Rusty since she was a little girl. I feel sorry for him and his beady glass eyes. If they could show absolute, abject terror, they would.
On her bed lie a lacy quilt and about a dozen different-sized pillows. Becky made them after taking a sewing class in eighth grade. She became obsessed, for a time, with pillows, and that year, everyone got one as a gift from her. I have a Patriots pillow up in my room that she sewed for me. My father put some chicken-shaped ones in the farmer’s co-operative where he works in Haddonfield. He manages the warehouse there and sometimes handles the ordering—mostly grain and stuff. That’s why he was able to put Becky’s pillows in the store. He’s kind of in charge of what goes on the shelves. I remember when her first chicken pillow was sold, and he handed her ten dollars over dinner that night. Her eyes sparkled with happiness.
I miss that Becky—the one with the happy eyes.
As I peer through the bars, I see the dog chain attached to a thick metal ring that’s bolted to the wall behind her bed. The chain trails over the headboard, across the lacy coverlet, and off the side of the mattress. It snakes across the carpet toward the door.
“Where are you?” I say through a mouthful of cotton. I hate Not-Becky for making me scared.
“Where are you?” the thing that’s not my sister mocks me with a voice that sounds like it’s buried in gravel. It’s deep and guttural and slimy.
Not-Becky is right below the window, huddled against the door, waiting for me to come—waiting for its chance to scare me because it knows it can.
Tonight I’m not in the mood.
I hold my head back as I undo the chain and twist the dead bolt until I hear it click. It’s become deathly quiet on the other side of the door. Not-Becky must be holding its breath in anticipation. It’s waiting for me to play the game—for me to slide the key into the tumbler, turn the lock, and twist the knob so it can come charging out at me, only to get yanked back inside by the chains around its manacled wrists.
This is the jewelry it’s worn since my sister failed to graduate Apple High two years ago—two long years ago.
Still, I slide the key into the tumbler, turn the lock, twist the knob, and open the door, because that’s what brothers do for their sick, sick sisters.
Thankfully, it’s Becky sitting there after all, cross-legged on the plush burgundy carpet that my dad bought from the carpet outlet in Three Rivers and meticulously cut and installed with care—to make an exact duplicate of her room upstairs.
Her red hair sprouts out of her head in sparse clumps. The rest of her scalp is bare and scabbed over. She looks like an old doll that’s lost the little knotted horsehair strands used to craft its silky locks. Today, Becky’s drawn big circles around her eyes with a makeup pencil in broad, black strokes. My sister’s skin is pale white—so white that it’s almost blue, but that can’t be helped. Becky hasn’t felt the sun on her face in forever. I feel as though I’m looking at a dead thing instead of my sister.
“How was school?” Becky asks, like she truly is my big sister and not some sort of monster we hide away in the bowels of our house.
“Good,” I say as I walk past her into the room with an almost audible sigh of relief, because when my sister is Not-Becky, it can be dangerous. It can scratch and bite. It can say awful things.
Becky’s bathroom light is on, and I notice that her makeup kit is out, and the light around her small, round mirror is on.
“Good good or just good?” she asks. My sister always asks me the same questions. She knows that I hate chemistry and that I’m having a hard time in math. When Becky was in school, she was in all the advanced placement classes. She knows that she can help me with my homework if I ask, and I guess that makes her feel good.
“Good good,” I say and plop down on her bed. Becky stands, and her chains fall to the floor. She softly pads across the carpet, her long toenails curling into the sea of burgundy, and sits down next to me, one leg folded under the other.
I don’t want to look at her, so I stare at my feet. My sneakers have been getting tight, and I’m going to have to get a new pair soon. I’d ask Newie if he has any hand-me-downs, but he hasn’t worn my size since the seventh grade.
“I was bad today, wasn’t I?” Becky asks. She won’t look at my face, either.
“Yeah,” I say to her. There’s no reason to lie. “Mom’s upset.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Becky reaches up and pulls at the tatters of her scalp. “I wish she’d come and brush my hair. I used to like it when she brushed my hair.”
I don’t know what to say, so I change the subject. “We’re having tuna noodle casserole for dinner. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” she says. “That’s fine.” She unfolds her leg, gets up, and walks across the room. Her back is to me, and I can’t help noticing how thin she’s gotten. Part of it’s her medication. I know it makes her not want to eat—but part of her deterioration is the thing inside of her that’s wearing her skin like a costume.
Two years. It’s been two long years since Not-Becky came to roost inside my sister’s head like a rabid bat. It’s been two years since my life took an unexpected turn to the left, and my older sister went mad. Sometimes I fantasize about something horrible happening to Becky, like what happened to Ruby or Ralphie. I’m not sure if that would fix everything that’s wrong with my family, but it would be a start.
A
s I begin to spiral into the toilet bowl of my own sick thoughts, I almost miss Becky’s shoulders slump. I almost miss her head droop down and forward.
Immediately, I’m off the bed and bolting for the door, the key in my hand.
“Of course,” Not-Becky chortles, its scratchy, grating voice returning to invade my sister’s mouth. A sinister tone colors its speech. “We could have Crawdaddy Fish instead.”
Crawdaddy Fish. What the fuck? How does she . . . ?
I’m up the stairs and out of the basement before its crazed laughter has a chance to grab hold of my heels.
9
IT’S AFTER SEVEN before my father comes home. I hear the rumbling of his car, with the Jesus-fish sticker on the bumper, pull into the driveway. He needs a new muffler but is avoiding getting one. There are so many other things we need that a new muffler has fallen close to the bottom of his list.
Now, the list is filled with things like medication for Mom, Becky, and my grandfather, oil for heat, electricity, and gas to go back and forth to work.
Food is on the list, too. It’s way above where a new muffler sits.
My father bought the car from a huge fat guy named Mr. Howard, who used to squeeze himself into one of the back pews at church. He carried a handkerchief with him and constantly mopped the sweat off his forehead. People avoided him on Sunday mornings because he sort of smelled. I know that’s an un-Christian thing to do, but people do a lot of un-Christian things, then think that praying their sins away will erase away what they’ve done.
I’ve already brought a plate of dinner up to my grandfather and put it on a TV tray in front of his television. He doesn’t say anything to me when I bring it to him, but a confused look comes over his face, because I think he’s still expecting my grandmother instead of me. I tuck a napkin into his shirt and kiss the top of his bald head before going back downstairs.
My sister’s finally stopped screaming. I mashed the contents of her medicine capsules into a plate of food about thirty minutes ago and brought it down to her. She doesn’t get a fork or knife with dinner—only a spoon. As I held the tuna-noodle goop and peered through the barred windows on her door, Not-Becky was still there, glaring at me from the bed. I performed the ritual of the locks, opened the door, and slid the plate of food inside before quickly locking up again.
Bloody Bloody Apple Page 4
