Bad Apple 1: Sweet Cider

by Barbara Morgenroth

  The way families were, I felt put off of the whole idea of ever having children.

  Maude told me Paul had bought the small house just down the road when he was still employed at a Westchester hospital in an administrative position. This house was a retreat. Maude didn’t know how much of a retreat it was until she figured out that Paul was a homosexual, she found it hard to remember the term was now gay and I thought that was endearing. He had kept it quiet. Sometimes he had men friends up for the weekend. Maude didn’t ask, didn’t want to know. They were pleasant when they saw her. Waved, chatted about gardening, later these meetings grew into having a cup of coffee together.

  Well before my father married us into the Kent family, Paul retired and moved to Acre full time. Sometimes he still had friends come up for visits, I saw them once in a while, but he was in his sixties and everything slows down with time. I didn’t feel that I knew him, he didn’t say much about his personal life past or present, but then he wasn’t obliged to tell me anything. I was glad he taught me to play the fiddle and gave me books to read. He was all about improving my future chances to get away from this place, I thought, but he never put it in those words.

  Now he was dead.

  A newish SUV drove up and stopped by the ramp.

  “This is getting busier than downtown Albany at rush hour,” Maude commented as she went out back with a couple of cardboard boxes.

  A young man got out of the truck and came up to the deck. “I’m looking for Neal Marchal.”

  “You found her.”

  He came up the steps with his hand held out. “I’m Truly Lambert.” He had gray eyes, and long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  We shook hands. It wasn’t something I particularly liked doing, the touching of strangers. I didn’t want to touch anyone I didn’t want to touch and I didn’t want anyone to touch me if I didn’t want it. Sometimes it couldn’t be avoided.

  “Is that your real name?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of name is that?”

  “My great-grandfather’s. I live in Jericho Valley.”

  That was about fifteen miles away in a direction I rarely went.

  “Someone said you sing.”

  “Someone was wrong.”

  “It was my father.”

  “I thought I recognized the name.”

  “He’s never wrong.”

  “Never?”

  “Rarely.” He smiled. It was bright and sunny. This was a person who didn’t feel like he had big problems.

  He looked to be a couple years older than me. Tall and lean. Nice looking. Black jeans, a tee-shirt. Boots.

  “Neal,” Maude said.

  “I sing a little,” I admitted. “Why?”

  “I have a four person band. Lambert and Luton we call ourselves. We usually play traditional music at whatever gigs we can get.”

  I shifted my weight to rest my leg.

  “Ed decided to go to Canada and we have a show booked at the Enchanted Garden Canoe Rental. A harvest festival.”

  “With canoeing,” I said with a straight face.

  He smiled. “Canoe races will be held in the afternoon. We’re supposed to perform in the evening after the pumpkin judging.”

  “And?”

  “I need someone to take Ed’s place. Permanently is how I feel about it.”

  “I don’t know anyone.”

  “He means you,” Maude called out as she moved five gallon plastic buckets.

  “Me?”

  “Ma’am, let me get those for you,” Truly offered and went to take the plastic buckets from one spot to another. “I heard you were good. You do the kind of music I do,” he called out so he could be heard from a distance.

  “I’ve never sung in public. I’m not...” I didn’t want to be seen. I didn’t want to be noticed or remarked upon. I wanted to be invisible. “An exhibitionist.”

  He laughed. “You could make an exception this time.”

  I shook my head. “Are you going to tell your father about the cidering?”

  He shook his head. “Can you at least sing something so I know what I’m missing?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m not a performer. I just sing for myself.”

  “Neal. Sing that little lullaby thing you do.”

  “Maude,” I complained back at her.

  “Sing me the little lullaby thing,” Truly said with a grin.

  My handsome, winsome Johnny, as the song went, and it fit. I could see I wouldn’t be able to get rid of him until I did.

  The bed is too small for my tiredness;

  Give me a hillside with trees.

  Tuck a cloud up under my chin.

  Lord, blow the moon out, please.

  Nodding, he was silent for a moment. “You’re better than I was told and I hope you change your mind.” He handed me a business card and then, with a wave, drove away in his truck.

  Maude came up alongside me and gave me a little shove of disapproval. “You just made a mistake, foolish girl.”

  Chapter 3

  All the next day I thought about Truly Lambert and his unexpected visit. Why did I keep thinking about it when appearing in public was something I would never feel comfortable doing? Getting on stage in front of people? I couldn’t even picture it.

  It was after three in the afternoon by the time Maude and I sat down at her kitchen table with two cups of tea and pieces of apple cake. We had spent the day getting ready for winter, covering delicate plants outside with burlap, mulching others, cutting back the perennials to the ground. The winters in Acre were too severe to leave anything fragile unprotected. The first year of my father’s marriage to Janie, the temperatures had regularly dropped to twenty degrees below zero in the morning, sometimes never rose above zero all day. Of course, all the windows inside the house were covered in ice. I wondered if it was a prelude to the future. It was.

  I asked Maude if there was a way to tell if it would be a hard winter and she said had given up looking for signs long ago. Some said if the caterpillars were very woolly it would be a cold winter. But she was never able to tell the difference in their coats one year to the next. After all these years in Acre, Maude said she just knew that winter would be hard enough and each year seemed longer.

  Maybe it was better not to know.

  “You should think twice about that offer to sing with that handsome young man, Neal,” Maude said as she stirred some sugar into her tea.

  “You think he’s handsome?”

  “Yes, Neal, and so do you.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I do. I can’t get up and sing.”

  “Why not?”

  I didn’t want to say the words.

  “Yes?”

  “Limp up onto the stage. Stand there unable to jump around and dance like performers do. People feeling sorry for the damaged girl.”

  “They will see your leg until they hear your voice,” Maude said.

  “It would be nice to believe that,” I replied. I didn’t trust people. In general, they proved to be untrustworthy, although there were exceptions to that rule.

  Maude looked at me evenly. “Then you would like to sing for people. If you do, you better do it.” She put the phone down in front of me with a thud. “Do you still have his phone number?”

  I had the card in my back pocket and pulled it out.

  “Call him.”

  “What do I say?”

  “You say yes.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Then say you want to talk about it.”

  She picked up the phone and handed it to me. “I’m going to go out and check the birdfeeders.”

  I keyed in the number. It rang twice.

  “Truly Lambert.”

  “Neal Marchal.”

  “Did you change your mind?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do I have to do to get you a hundred percent of the way there?”

  ***

  Later that afternoon, w
e were in the Maude’s abandoned barn.

  “You’re right. We should see how we sound together before making any decisions,” he said taking the guitar out of its case. “Although, let me just say in advance of any testing, I have a pretty accurate take on you. So I guess it’s all about you approving of me. I hope I make the cut.”

  “That’s not it at all. I’m sure you’re very...”

  “What?”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll take that as a tentative vote of confidence.”

  “I don’t see how this works,” I replied. “Who would want to listen to us?”

  “You’d be surprised. A lot of people pay to hear me now.”

  Pay. That was a new and interesting aspect to this situation. “What are we going to play?”

  “You know Now That I’ve Found You.”

  “Well, sure, but that’s not a folk song.”

  “I heard you sing a traditional song. Let’s start with this because we have a guitar and a fiddle.”

  “And two voices.”

  Truly sat on an old bale of hay. “Start anytime.”

  I began the first few bars with my fiddle.

  “Wait. Do you think you can do it a little slower than the version we know?” He tapped his finger on the guitar indicating the beat.

  “Okay.” I had to think for a moment to rearrange things after playing it many times just the way it had been recorded.

  I started again, slower, drawing my bow across the strings so that each note hung in the air like a lament. Three minutes later the music had stopped and we were left looking at each other.

  “This could be a moment when we look back from some future time and say that’s when our lives changed,” Truly said as he put his guitar back in the case.

  “Are we done?” I was surprised. I thought we were going to be doing this for the rest of the afternoon.

  “It’s all up to you.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s go get something to eat.”

  “Not in Acre.”

  “There’s a burger place out on the Jericho-Kanah Road. Dick and June’s?”

  I shook my head.

  “You’ll like it. It’s better than it looks.”

  “I should tell Aunt Maude.”

  He handed me his cell phone.

  ***

  On the way out of town, he told me how his mother’s family was from New Jersey. His father had been in the military then became a state trooper. They met when her truck broke down on the road. Neither side of the family was musical, but Truly had been playing and singing since he could reach the keys to the piano.

  He made it seem like he had an idyllic family life, no one screaming, or crying or building shrines to Elvis in the closet.

  He spoke of going hunting and fishing with his father.

  I could picture that.

  Most kids around these parts grew up knowing how to handle a rifle. Hunting wasn’t a sport as much as it was a supplement to the freezer to get people through the winter.

  My father would have started me with a shotgun but that plan ended when he passed. My stepmother, Janie, wasn’t about to touch a gun, they terrified her as everything terrified her. Maude came from a time when everyone knew how to handle a gun, whether it was a rifle, a shotgun or a pistol and, preferably, all three because a farmer never knew what varmints would come into the yard. She drilled me with the shotgun and rifle until I was as good a shot as she was. Maude said it was basic education for a country girl.

  We reached the roadside stand and ordered hamburgers and milkshakes then found a picnic bench by the stream out back.

  Truly took a drink of his shake. “I know what happened to your neighbor.”

  “Your father?”

  “It was on the news.”

  “I don’t watch TV or listen to the radio very much. They didn’t...”

  “They didn’t say your name or give any details.”

  “That’s good.”

  “It must be tough. My father did say Paul, was it, taught you how to play the fiddle.”

  I nodded.

  “So you’ll miss him in your life.”

  I nodded.

  “He taught you for a reason. It was a gift.”

  “That’s what your father said. It was something that would last my whole life.”

  “Don’t you think so?”

  “Yes.” I took a bite of the hamburger. “You remind me of your father.”

  “How so?”

  “While he was questioning me, I knew he was leading me somewhere. He did it really well.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You do the same thing.”

  “What am I doing?”

  “You’re trying to lead me to a place where I’ll admit, or agree, that I have this gift and wouldn’t it be miserly not to share it.”

  “Wouldn’t it be?”

  “I don’t think I can take that step.”

  “Because of your leg?”

  “It makes a difference to people.”

  “Does it make a difference to me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If this is what’s stopping you, start with me. Have I done or said anything, looked at you funny, that would make you think...you must have a phrase for it. What do you say? What do you call yourself when you don’t have any use for yourself?”

  “Truly. I don’t want to go there.”

  “Crip?”

  I didn’t look up.

  “Gimpy. That’s it.”

  I sighed.

  “Yeah, you’re really weird. Around here everyone’s perfect. No one even wears glasses. You belong on the island of misfit toys.”

  “I saw that cartoon.”

  “It was like a homecoming for you, then. All the broken toys.”

  I crumpled up the wrapper from the burger.

  “Is that it? Trashcan...something.”

  “You’re not going to leave it be until I tell you.”

  “No.”

  “Damaged girl.”

  “Is that all you could come up with?”

  I threw the wrapper at him.

  I knew what he had been doing with the gimp thing. He was trying lessen its weight in my life. He was trying to put some perspective on it. I thought it was a gesture that came out of his kindness.

  After years of watching and studying them, I had gotten good at reading people. In the Kent family it was necessary to figure out what people really meant, otherwise years back, I figured I would have descended into the same chasm they inhabited.

  Truly wasn’t mean.

  “And I’m the son of a cop. How popular does that make me?”

  “I don’t fit anywhere. My so-called family is insane. I mean it. They’re not interestingly eccentric, they’re out of their minds. Aunt Maude is the only one who shouldn’t be in an asylum. They would hate it that I’m thinking about this.”

  “Start planning your escape.”

  Now he was being serious.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The seeds of the future are planted today.”

  “You mean the music?”

  “Yeah.”

  “For how long?” What was I going to commit to?

  “For as far as we can push it. I’m in this for the long haul. This is my life. I think we have something together.”

  “Lambert and Marchal?”

  “We don’t have to go alphabetically.”

  I thought for a moment. “Why do I have to be named at all?”

  “You want to call the band Lambert?” He grinned.

  “Must we decide right now?”

  “No. You can think about it for as long as you’d like.”

  He drove me home and parked the truck down the road a bit. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  “Ask, but I don’t know if I’ll answer.”

  “What did happen with your leg?”

  “Why? Why are you interested? Why is it important to
you?”

  “We’re going to be spending a lot of time together.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe.”

  I had never told anyone. I always thought if I told the truth and he found out, Joe would make sure it happened again but the next time I wouldn’t be dragging myself out of the dirt.

  Truly waited in silence for me to think it over.

  “What’s the upside if I tell you?”

  “You get to stop dragging that bad leg around with you forever.”

  “Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

  “Your metaphorical bad leg.”

  “I was eight. My stepbrother pushed me under the wheels of a tractor.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Joe.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Last we heard New Orleans.”

  “Do you have a cell phone?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t have anyone to talk to.

  Truly nodded as he leaned over to the glove box, opened it and pulled out a phone. “I keep a spare in the truck for emergencies. Take it so you can call me. Anytime. My house is the first on speed dial. My cell is the second.”

  “Your girlfriend’s number is the third?”

  “Neal. What would I be doing with a girlfriend?”

  “Maybe you don’t like girls.”

  “What made you come up with that?”

  “Paul didn’t.”

  “He never tried anything with you?”

  “No. What made you come up with that?”

  “Old guy, pretty girl like you.”

  “You think I’m pretty?”

  “Don’t make it sound like an insult. Sorry. Yeah, I think you’re real easy to look at. The cute freckles on your nose. Yeah.” He started the truck and drove into the driveway. “We need to rehearse. A lot.”

  I was free from then until the end of my life as far as I could tell, rehearsing wouldn’t get in the way of anything else. “Okay.”

  “Talk it over with Aunt Maude. Take a day or so. I’ll call you to get your answer.”

  “On this?” I held up the phone.

  He nodded.

  I opened the door and stopped. “Tru?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there a point beyond which you don’t want to hear about these people anymore?” I pointed at the house.