Bloody Bloody Apple

by Howard Odentz

  I heard the quiet clinking of chains, so I knew it retrieved the plate. The fact that my sister’s finally quiet means she’s doped up. Hopefully it’ll work and keep her calm for the night. It usually does, but not always.

  As I rearrange the plates and silverware on the dinner table, like my mother always did, my dad comes in the back door, his face pale.

  “Jackson,” he says, almost in a whisper, and motions for me to come out onto the back porch.

  I glance down once more, to make sure that everything’s set properly for dinner, before following him into the night.

  “Hi,” I say. That’s an epic monologue for me. We don’t talk much. We used to talk more, but lately, there doesn’t seem to be anything left worth sharing.

  My father rubs the stubble on his face. “Chief Anderson called me,” he says. “He told me what happened.”

  “Oh,” I say. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

  “Does your mother know?”

  I shake my head no. “Becky’s been screaming.” Our unspoken conversation is filled with subtext. No, I didn’t tell my mother about Claudia Fish. I didn’t want to upset her. She already has too much on her plate. Eventually everyone has a breaking point.

  My father licks his lips. “Becky?” he whispers.

  I know what he means, so I shake my head again. “Not-Becky.”

  It’s funny how we talk about the other one as “Not-Becky.” I suppose that makes my sister’s illness easier to understand.

  Becky was always different, but she managed to hide most of the differences for years. I remember her coming into my bedroom when we were little and talking in a strange voice.

  “My name is Suzie Zickle,” she would say. “I like to play games.” I used to love playing with Suzie Zickle, until she would abruptly stop, mid-checkers or crazy eights, and say something like, “Why are you in my room?” even though we were in mine, then storm out like I had done something wrong.

  Other times, she would spend hours up in my grandparents’ apartment, then come downstairs and read the Bible like an obsessive nun, rocking back and forth, her lips mouthing every word.

  When the shit really hit the fan two years ago—when Not-Becky appeared—a doctor in Boston diagnosed my sister with that disease that used to be called multiple personality disorder but now has a fancy new name—dissociative identity disorder—DID.

  My mother and father probably nodded their heads like they always did and stared at their hands in their laps, instead of at the doctor.

  When they came home from Boston, they got on their knees and prayed, right there in our living room. They made me pray, too, although I’m not sure that what I was doing could be called praying. When we finished, my father got his tools and started building my sister a duplicate bedroom in the basement.

  My parents don’t think that Becky has dissociative identity disorder at all. They think that she has something else—something evil.

  They think she’s possessed.

  That’s all a bunch of horseshit to me. Becky’s nuts—plain and simple. Her disease is something in our genes—nothing more—or at least, that’s what I believe.

  The alternative is too messed up and sideways. That’s someone else’s life in a Stephen King movie, not mine.

  “Where’s your mother now?” my father asks.

  “Inside,” I say. I’m not sure why he’s asking. Where else would she be?

  “Okay,” he says. “Good.” He leans against the porch railing, pulls out a cigarette, and lights it. The pack, one of the cheap, new ones that isn’t a name brand, gleams in the light of the porch bulb. He sees me staring at it and offers me one. I shake my head. I don’t want to tell him that smoking a cigarette would take me one step closer to being just like him. He shrugs, puts the cigarettes back in his pocket, then breathes sweet, acrid smoke into his lungs as he stares at the rough floor boards.

  Finally, I turn to head back inside. “Dinner’s ready,” I say as I pull open the door.

  “Jackson?” my dad croaks, as I’m about to close the screen. I turn and look at him. “You fine with everything?”

  I don’t know how to answer him. I’m not sure what he’s even asking. Am I fine that my mother’s almost catatonic? Am I fine that I have to take care of the demented old man upstairs? Maybe he means about Becky. Am I fine with the responsibility of having a psycho for a sister? Am I fine with mashing her drugs into her food like an orderly on a mental ward?

  “What do you mean?” I ask him. My voice is coated with something sticky—maybe anger or sarcasm. Maybe indifference.

  He shifts his feet and takes another drag on his cigarette. “About the body in the woods—you okay with all that? The chief told me it was pretty bad.” He spits off the porch and shrugs, as if to say there are worse things in the world.

  I look at him for a moment, a sad middle-aged man living a sad middle-aged life. “Oh, that,” I say in all seriousness. “I almost forgot.”

  10

  THANKFULLY, MY mother is dressed for dinner—nothing too fancy, just a pair of jeans and a light fall sweater. She’s even put a little bit of makeup on. It’s all part of the fantasy that there’s nothing wrong with our lives, but that’s okay. Whatever works is better than something that doesn’t work at all.

  While my mother pulls the casserole out of the oven, I walk quietly down the hall into my parents’ musky bedroom, strip their bed, and throw everything into a laundry basket. I fold their blanket at the foot of the mattress, walk back down the hall, open the basement door, and softly tiptoe down the stairs.

  I leave the basket on the bottom step, not even bothering to chance a glance at Becky’s door. Sometimes Not-Becky is there, holding onto the bars with its thin fingers and staring at me like it wants nothing more than to make me hurt. Other times, it’s only Becky, and she wants a book or something from up in her bedroom, because this room isn’t her bedroom, at all. It’s a doppelganger. It’s a copy that looks like the real thing but isn’t. Just like Not-Becky isn’t my sister. It looks like her, but it’s only a cheap imitation.

  Back upstairs, my father’s still hiding on the back porch, finishing his second cigarette. I’ve never asked my parents why they don’t smoke in front of each other. My mother will only light a cigarette when my father’s at work, and only when she slides into darkness. My father favors the back porch. It’s outside of the house, which he prefers. His ritual is to smoke at least two cigarettes after he pulls into the driveway, but before he comes inside.

  Maybe he does it to wind down from the day. Personally, I think he does it to mentally prepare himself for what he has to walk into.

  Like I said, I don’t smoke cigarettes, so I don’t know.

  When he finally comes in, my mother has a smile plastered on her face. It’s as though she’s pulled it out from a cupboard and pinned it to her skin. My father kisses her on the cheek—a fake and automatic gesture that makes me wonder why he does it at all—then walks into the living room to hang his light jacket on the coat rack he made.

  “What’s for dinner?” He doesn’t look at me when he asks. He looks directly at my mother.

  “Tuna noodle casserole,” she says. “With extra parmesan.”

  “Great,” says my father, as though he’s reciting lines in a play where the actors all suck on stage, and every word they utter is stilted and boring. My mother puts the casserole on the table, but I can’t help noticing the two hunks I scooped out of it for my grandfather and the thing in the basement.

  Our dinner’s not whole anymore, like our family—like Claudia Fish.

  How does Becky know about Claudia Fish?

  I close my eyes and bite down hard on the inside of my lip. We clasp our hands together, and my father says, “Before we eat, we turn our attention to the bountiful harvest bef
ore us.” I hope I draw blood. I want to taste copper and salt. I want to feel alive. “We are truly thankful for this meal and for the richness of our lives. May this food nourish the bodies of all who partake in this meal.” I press my teeth down harder, until I feel my eyes burn from the pain. Somehow, I feel like I can’t stop until my father finishes talking. I have to endure the pain until he shuts up for good. “Finally, dear Lord, please nourish our spirits.”

  It’s over. I relax my teeth and rub my tongue along the inside of my mouth, tasting for blood, but there isn’t any. We all say, “Amen,” and pull our hands away from each other and back into our own private Hells.

  I’ve noticed that my father has changed the prayer that he usually recites. I’ve heard it all my life. He’s supposed to ask that this food nourish all those that we love instead of just all those who partake in this meal. Maybe he forgot, or maybe what Chief Anderson told him has shaken him, and his mind is preoccupied in thought.

  I don’t say anything, and my mother doesn’t seem to notice.

  A thought scurries through my head. It leaves a residue that hints to the unspeakable idea that maybe my father doesn’t love us anymore, but I brush it away and quickly forget it was ever there.

  As we eat, my mother takes her food in delicate bird bites. My father wolfs his down and scoops a second helping onto his plate before I’ve made a dent in my first.

  As he shovels forkfuls in his mouth with a vengeance, I tentatively break the silence. “I have to do my laundry tonight, and Mom’s been washing and folding all day,” I say. “I’ll finish up for her. I’ll have your sheets ready before nine, if that’s okay?”

  He tilts his head to the right, to let my words funnel down into his ear, before quickly nodding and continuing to eat. When he’s done, he gets up and puts his plate in the sink. “I’m working out in the garage tonight,” he mumbles.

  “What are you working on?” my mother whispers, without lifting her eyes. She asks the same question every night.

  “The Lord’s work,” my father answers. “I won’t be in until late.”

  “Okay, dear,” my mother says, as she takes another little bite of tuna, peas, and macaroni.

  My father walks out the back door, reaching in his pocket for his cigarettes as he goes. As I push mush around my plate, I realize that this is a good night. There isn’t any craziness coming from the basement, probably because Becky is flying high on whatever I mashed into her food.

  My mother’s medication doesn’t seem to have kicked in. She’s only a shadow of herself. My dad is no different than always. Sometimes I think he hates us, but I know that’s not true. I think he’s damaged inside, so he hides in the garage every night to tinker on himself with rusty tools and prayer.

  He’ll never get it right, though. Some things are just too damaged to be fixed. No matter how normal they appear on the surface, they’ll always be broken underneath. I think my dad is like that.

  He’s broken underneath.

  I clear the table after dinner and wash the dishes. My mother sits on her green vinyl chair, staring at nothing. When I remove her half-eaten plate, she suddenly brushes my arm and catches me with glassy eyes. “You’re such a good boy, Jackson,” she says for the second time since I got home. I stop and search her face to see if there’s anything in there that’s still my mother. Her hand falls away, and her eyes go dim.

  Nope. Not a damn thing.

  11

  “IS THE CHIEF home yet?” I ask Newie, as I separate clothing in the basement while talking to him on my cell. I know we’re poor, but phones are the one thing we all splurged on with the dough we got from picking tobacco all summer.

  It makes us feel less alone.

  “No,” he says. “How’s it over at your place?”

  I look over at Becky’s door. “Same shit, different day,” I tell him. “Becky was flipping out when I came home, so I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t come over, anyway.”

  “No kidding, dude. I’ve had enough creepy-ass shit for one day. As it is, I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” I look at the piles of laundry. “Listen, I’m going to be up late tonight, so if you get the willies, just text me or something.”

  “Thanks,” he says. “I appreciate it. Really.”

  I hang up and finish stuffing a load of whites in the washer, along with my parents’ sheets. As I turn the machine on and get ready to leave, I hear crying coming from the bedroom in the basement. It’s Becky, not the other one. Over the past two years I’ve learned to tell the difference. There’s something menacing behind Not-Becky—something corrupt. No matter how well it thinks its hiding, I can hear the evil in its voice.

  I leave the empty laundry basket on top of the dryer and cautiously walk over to the barred window. Becky is sitting on her bed with her bony knees drawn up to her chest and her head down.

  “You okay?” I ask her.

  She nods as she stares at the floor.

  “No, you aren’t,” I say. “You’re crying.” Becky rubs her face against her folded stick arms but still doesn’t look up at me. It’s hard for me to see her like this. It’s hard to realize that two years ago my mother was happy, my grandmother was alive, my grandfather wasn’t nearly as far gone as he is now, and my sister was still crazy but somehow normal.

  Normal—I hardly remember what the word means.

  The first time Becky really went off the deep end was after Margo Freeman was murdered. That was two years ago, but it seems like yesterday. Margo was Becky’s best friend. She was this little mousy thing with buck teeth and long brown hair—definitely not a looker—but Margo Freeman was one of the most popular girls in town. Newie said it was because she’d put out for almost anyone. She even screwed him one day after school. That was before the chief started dating Mary Jane, and Newie was alone in his big, empty house. He told me he lay back on his dad’s bed and let her go to town, with her buck teeth and long brown hair.

  “Christened Asshole’s sheets,” he said the next day. “I christened the shit out of them.”

  After he told me that, I couldn’t help but notice Margo every time she was over at our house doing homework with Becky or goofing off.

  That last day—right before everything happened, she caught me staring at her as she and Becky were watching TV in the living room, and I was sitting at the old oak desk in the corner doing homework. That was back when I still cared about school—when I still thought working hard was my ticket out of Apple.

  They were both wearing their varsity cheerleading outfits and going on about which guys on the football team they’d like to bone.

  Margo kept saying, “Check, check, double check,” and Becky kept saying, “Slut, slut, you’re a slut,” like I wasn’t even in the room.

  As they were talking trash, I caught a glimpse of Margo’s legs out of the corner of my eye. They were long and shapely, and her skirt barely covered what was supposed to be covered.

  I guess she caught me staring, so I glued my eyes to my book. It didn’t matter.

  “Hey, Jackson,” she said. “You still a virgin? Because, you know, if you are, maybe you don’t like girls at all.” I could feel my face burning hot. Becky was in hysterics. I guess she thought Margo was funny or something. I didn’t think she was funny at all. Besides, I was already dating Annie by then, and we’d fooled around—not that it was any of her business.

  “Shut up, Margo,” I said—big words that meant nothing.

  Becky could hardly breathe, because she was laughing so hard. I turned around. Margo was sitting on the floor with her legs open wide and her arms stretched out behind her so I could see everything.

  “Slut,” giggled Becky as she watched me squirm.

  Margo just grinned. “Maybe I’ll show Jackson the ropes. What do you th
ink about that, Jack-off?”

  I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to say. So, I left my homework on the oak desk and walked out. I spent the next twenty minutes in the bathroom trying desperately to ease the itch that burned in me, fueled by an image of Margo Freeman’s open legs.

  That was the last time I saw her alive. Somewhere between our house and hers, which was about a mile away from us, someone had counted her as number three and the last one to die that year.

  Her murder was gruesome. Bits and pieces of her were left on porches and in gardens all over town, fashioned into horrific scarecrows.

  On Mikey Boutin’s front stoop was one of the straw-stuffed bodies. It was wearing a gore-splattered letter jacket that Margo had scored from an upper classman named Charlie Farga. I think Charlie banged her once or twice before letting her wear it, along with his class ring. Margo’s head was shoved rudely onto a sharpened branch, and dried blood was clotted in her hair.

  Another scarecrow was found on the porch of Foster Crudup, one of the nicest guys in town. That one was wearing Margo’s knit sweater. It had a stuffed head and stuffed legs and Margo’s bloody torso, complete with Charlie’s class ring still on her dead white finger.

  Mr. Crudup ran Toys-for-Tots around Christmas and can drives for the poor nearly every other month. He even organized a blood drive along with that lady, Sandy something-or-other, who worked for the Red Cross. I guess the shock of finding only a chunk of Margo was too much for him. He ended up at a hospital out in Redding. When he finally came home, which was about six weeks after Margo Freeman’s body parts had been laid to rest, he hid inside his house with the shades pulled down and the drapes hanging loosely in the upper windows.