All the Bad Apples

by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

  Yet already Mary Ellen felt a strange connection to the half-dead, drooping sapling that sat inside the main door of the Big House in its round clay pot. And that night, wrapped up in rough blankets and in her lover’s arms, the scent of apples still sharp on her skin, she dreamed only of the sapling. In her dream, it broke through the clay of its pot and laid down roots that ripped up the foundations of the Big House. It grew taller than the house by half, rained down apples like grenades that broke the windows and the roof, let in the rain and the harsh sea air that mingled with the apples’ sweet, sharp smell.

  Mary Ellen woke to hailstones tearing through the overhanging leaves of the hawthorn tree, hitting the blankets hard enough to bounce back off again, sending shivers through her bones. She was alone.

  When she threw off the blankets, she found long silvery gray hairs tangled around her fingers. Strands were caught between the stones of the broken walls, were fluttering in the empty windows. A noise like a fox’s scream sounded in the night. Mary Ellen shivered without quite knowing why.

  And, at that moment, she felt something moving, deep inside her. Not her usual pangs of hunger, knots of muscle from working the land. This was a stirring, a quickening.

  It did not take her long to understand what it was.

  * * *

  —

  While Mary Ellen waited impatiently for her love to return so that she could tell him of her fate, Gerald was lost in preparations. He did not know how the excitement of her new knowledge thrilled her, filled her mind during long days toiling on the hard land and longer nights waiting for him.

  For a whole week, Gerald did not leave the Big House to see Mary Ellen, only busied himself with making this inhospitable place as pleasing as possible for his sweetheart and his mother. He ordered new linens, washed and starched; he sent the servants for fresh flowers, fruit, fish.

  Each night Mary Ellen sneaked out of her home and went to the cottage, and each night she waited alone. In the morning, when she untangled herself from the dew-damp blankets, rearranged her wrinkled clothes, she noticed raised red lines like scratches running over her legs and arms. She trembled in the morning light, told herself it was nothing but the brambles, twigs caught in her clothes that had marked her skin without her knowledge. She went back to work and returned again to the cottage after nightfall, when her family slept.

  The night before his guests were to arrive, Gerald met Mary Ellen one final time at the cottage on the cliff.

  “My mother is coming,” he told her, still unable to speak of the woman who would soon be his wife. “I won’t be able to sneak out like this. Things will have to change.”

  Mary Ellen took his hand and placed it on the slight, tight mound of her belly. “Things are already changing,” she said.

  When Mary Ellen told him, Gerald smelled apples. A rotten, mulchy, sickly sweet smell. He shook and shook his head. He backed out of the cottage, coat sleeves catching in the hawthorn branches, feet slipping in the mud.

  “My love,” said Mary Ellen. “Wait—”

  Our great-great-grandfather turned and fled.

  * * *

  —

  Mary Ellen stood in shock for so long a fox whispered right past her, and when his bushy tail had swished away she shook herself and followed her lover home. She knocked quietly on the back door of the Big House and stood for a long time before it was opened. When the light of the kitchen spilled out into the dark, the cook stood silhouetted in the doorway. She took in the sight of Mary Ellen: her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright, the small mound of her belly barely hidden under her dress. The cook knew that there was only one reason a pregnant peasant girl would come to the landlord’s house in the middle of the night. But she didn’t say anything, only called for the landlord, who wouldn’t even let the girl into the kitchen, but sent the staff away while he spoke to her on the threshold.

  Gerald’s face was livid, scarlet patches on his cheeks and forehead.

  “I told you never to come here,” he said.

  Mary Ellen fought fury with fury. “I’m carrying your child.”

  Gerald could hear rustling by the door that led to the rest of the house, knew his staff were surely listening. Rumors spread on nights like this, under the cold darkness. Who knew what truths could reach the ears of his mother, his future wife? Who knew how long he would have to live out his penance in this godforsaken place if his sins were ever discovered?

  Gerald allowed his voice to rise. “Lying girl,” he spat. “Little slut.”

  Mary Ellen recoiled as if he’d struck her.

  Gerald spoke louder. “How dare you come here looking for a handout? That bastard isn’t mine, and well you know it. How dare you try to ruin my good name?”

  “Gerald,” Mary Ellen said, her voice choked.

  “Do not presume to know me, girl!” Gerald’s voice boomed, his words theatrical, affected. “Now go home and tell your family of your disgrace. You’ll get no charity here.”

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, he evicted her entire family. He sent the constabulary to break the windows and doors of their tiny cottage so they couldn’t come back. There was nothing they could do but watch, shock still thrumming through their bodies.

  When it was done, Mary Ellen’s parents and siblings gathered up their meager belongings and began the long walk south, toward what family they had left, toward survival of a sort. Mary Ellen stayed behind. She was seventeen, unmarried, pregnant; this was clearly all her fault. Her family did not expect her to join them. She was no longer one of them.

  For the second time, she sneaked up to the back door of the Big House. She didn’t know what she would do. She wanted to break the door down, climb the stairs to where Gerald’s guests were sleeping. She wanted to tell them everything. Wanted to hear their cries and curses, wanted her lover to share in her disgrace.

  Mary Ellen had lost everything. Gerald had lost nothing. But breaking into his home would do nothing but land her and her baby in the nearest jail.

  Consumed with grief and frustration and rage, Mary Ellen spat on the ground. She creaked the back door open, crept through the long hall of the Big House, and grabbed Gerald Rys’s precious sapling. Then she ran away, hoisting the tree in her ropy arms with our great-grandfather kicking in her belly.

  * * *

  —

  The night was dark; a closed door. The moon was new.

  Mary Ellen knew the land she walked through. Unlike Gerald with his expensive boots, his hat, his belly full of beer, she had wandered these fields, these rocks and stretches of uncut peat, for years. She knew not to follow the wisps. Her feet found each steady tussock, every gap in stone walls to lead her away from the bog and toward the sea.

  When she reached the cottage at the edge of the cliff where this baby had been made, she stopped and watched the waves crash far below her. Her heart was a jagged coastline. She dropped her pack of meager belongings, what food she had scavenged, her wool shawl. Her grip on the sapling was fierce and furious.

  The wind tried to beat her back. Mary Ellen held the sapling high in her arms and went to throw it into the sea. From somewhere behind her, she heard a woman scream.

  In shock, she dropped the sapling and it landed at her feet. The clay pot cracked and soil spilled out. She turned. Standing on the rocks before her, blurred by the rain and the darkness, blurred by Mary Ellen’s own fear, were three old women, each with gray skin and wild eyes. The first’s mouth was wide, filled with unnaturally sharp teeth. The second had long, matted gray hair with bone combs stuck in the tangles. The third had a wicked grin and pointed nails at the ends of her long fingers. They clustered close.

  The stories said that the scream of a banshee foretold a death in the family. Mary Ellen clutched her belly, but the three banshees shook their heads. Their hair was all gray tangles, but it stuck out the w
ay Mary Ellen’s did. Their fingers were long like Mary Ellen’s. Their cheeks, now sunken, could once have been apples. Their chins were just as sharp.

  As one, the three women reached out their hands. They curled their fingers, beckoned. Mary Ellen’s heart hammered like boots through a cottage door.

  “No,” she said. She bent and gathered the sapling in her arms. “No.”

  She turned to face the ocean, churning dark green below her, so far down she could feel the pull, so stormy she could feel the spray. This cliff, this moment, felt like the end of the world.

  When she threw the sapling down onto the crashing rocks, Mary Ellen heard the banshees scream.

  The wind howled and the spray of the sea flew over the cliff face. Mary Ellen screwed up her eyes against the lashing rain. When she opened them again, the three old hags were gone.

  Mary Ellen’s stomach lurched. Her feet hurt. Her breasts were tender. Her head was tight.

  She had done what she meant to do: She had stolen Gerald’s precious apple tree, the one he carried around with him, the one he kept alive in its clay pot because it wouldn’t take root on his land. It wasn’t much punishment, but it was all she had.

  She had no way of knowing how powerful the tree had been. What magical protection would have been found in its branches, in its fruit.

  Slowly, she turned from the cliffside with her shawl wrapped tight around her and a packet of food in her arms, and she followed the road south.

  And the curse she had unwittingly cast on the bad apples of our family followed her.

  12.

  Fine apple cider

  Galway and Sligo, 2012

  Sometime during the reading—her head so close to mine her hair tickled my cheek—Ida had worked her braid loose, her fingers unconsciously smoothing, untangling, snapping split ends.

  Her teeth worried at her lips. “I just don’t get how we found this,” she said. “Lying there right in front of us.”

  I didn’t say anything. I simply pointed to the Sligo address on the last page of the letter. Ida eyed it suspiciously, then tapped the details into her phone.

  “Two hours north by car. Looks like a house,” she said, her phone on satellite view. She zoomed in closer and read the words next to the little red pin. “Market View Bar. Your sister wants us to go to a pub?”

  “Us?” I said.

  “You don’t honestly think I’d let you keep following these letters all by yourself? I’m coming with you, Deena.”

  Her eyes were the same gray as Mandy’s, but lighter, brighter. “Okay,” I said, my relief like welcome rain on a hot day. “Thank you.”

  “Just let me call my best friend,” she told me. “I definitely can’t tell my dad about this, so I’m going to need an alibi.”

  While Ida called her best friend, I called mine.

  “Don’t move,” was the first thing he told me. “I’m coming to get you.”

  “What? No. No, I have to go to Sligo.”

  “Sligo? Why the fuck do you have to go to Sligo?”

  I took a breath and summarized my day so far to Finn. There was silence for a long time on the other end of the line.

  “Finn?” I said. “You still there?”

  “Yeah,” he answered finally. “I’m just trying to decide if you’re serious or going crazy.”

  “Serious.” I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see me. “Obviously.”

  There were another few minutes of silence, in which I could tell my best friend was wrestling with something. Eventually, he said, “Where in Sligo?”

  * * *

  —

  The bus from Galway to Sligo took almost three hours, stopping at every small town along the way. The countryside was green and gray outside the window, with the kind of sunlight that cuts through underneath the clouds, sharpens each blade of grass until the whole landscape is shining.

  I took pictures of both of Mandy’s letters and sent them to Finn, who was on a different bus, from Dublin, coming to meet us in Sligo. We would arrive at about the same time. He kept up a steady stream of exclamation marks to my messages as he read them, echoing my and Ida’s feelings succinctly.

  “I would have told on Gerald,” Ida said as a quick pattering of light rain danced across the bus window behind her head. “I would have hammered on the door until he came down, told his whole family.”

  “You’d’ve ended up in jail, like she said.”

  To me, Mary Ellen’s revenge on Gerald made sense. She knew she couldn’t hold him to account, couldn’t tell his family the truth. She knew it would be her word against his, and that he held all the power. So instead she did the only thing she knew would really hurt him. She couldn’t have known that by destroying his prized possession, his precious apple tree sapling, she had cursed the lot of us—her own unborn baby included.

  Ida was clearly somebody whose father had taught her from the moment she showed up on his doorstep that she deserved respect. Somebody who could speak out, speak her truth without repercussions. Somebody not accustomed to secrets, or to shame. She might look like Mandy, but there was something straightforward about her that put her in direct contrast to her mother.

  Maybe I was more like Mandy than I thought.

  “I still don’t understand,” she said, “what exactly the curse is supposed to be. You know? Like, okay, at the turn of the last century an unwed teenage girl getting pregnant and being abandoned, I get that. But I don’t understand why Mandy thought something bad was going to happen to you. You seem perfectly normal to me.”

  A nice, normal girl. I winced.

  “I am perfectly normal,” I said. “I just . . .” An errant raindrop raced down the bus window. “I suppose not everybody is of the same opinion.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The faces of the girls in school floated past my eyes like disembodied talking heads. Then Rachel’s. Our father’s. “Like . . . my dad. He’s very . . . traditional. Very religious, conservative. He still believes that a woman’s place is truly in the home. Which is actually backed up by our constitution, you know, so he clearly isn’t alone.”

  Ida rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but nobody actually thinks that anymore.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Ida said, “Deena, if your family is like that, they sound like the bad fucking apples, not you”—and I finally heard my sister in her words.

  “And yet we’re the ones who are cursed.”

  “Do you really believe in this curse?” There was no trace of ridicule in Ida’s voice.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But Mandy would have researched all this meticulously. When it comes to finding answers, she’s relentless. She said Mary Ellen heard the banshees scream. Found their gray hairs tangled around her things. Woke up with their scratches on her skin. And look what happened to her.” I tapped Mandy’s letter, making it flutter.

  “But she got pregnant before her seventeenth birthday,” said Ida. “And from Mandy’s story it sounds like she wanted the baby. Loved it. Kept it safe.”

  “But it was illegitimate. Back then that was a huge deal. Enormous. You read what happened, how her whole family was evicted. How they just left her.”

  “I know.” Ida pushed her hair behind her ears. “But I’m just saying it sounds like that was the curse. Not that she got pregnant—that was before her birthday, with someone she loved—but that her lover rejected her and her family wouldn’t have anything to do with her. Do you know what I mean?”

  Her hair fell back across her cheeks. She looked so like Mandy. “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” I said, a strange lump forming in my throat. “But you’re right.”

  Ida touched her hair, straightened her necklace. “What do you really think we’re going to find at the end of this . . . journey, treasure hunt, whatever you want to call it?” she aske
d.

  I watched the fields roll by, sharp and bright. “I think we’re going to find Mandy,” I said.

  “But what if—”

  “I think we’re going to understand the curse properly. If there even is a curse.”

  “But—”

  “I think she’s gone to break it. At the end of the world. I think the end of the world is somewhere real, and she’s gone there to break the curse.”

  Things were beginning to make sense, slot into place. Mandy’s reaction to Dad having overheard my coming out to Rachel, so uncharacteristic, was because of the curse. She didn’t think I was a bad apple because I was gay. She thought I was cursed because of how our father reacted. On the morning of my seventeenth birthday.

  That was why my sister disappeared so suddenly. She left to break the curse.

  She was doing it for me. Before anything terrible happened to me.

  * * *

  —

  We arrived at the end of the market, stalls shutting down for the evening, the scent of soap and seafood still in the air. Children fished the last sweets from deep buckets set out in rows while dogs lapped fallen ice cream from the pavements. There was a match showing in one of the pubs and every so often the sound of rowdy cheers spilled out of the open doors into the street.

  We stepped into the dark interior of the pub, a wash of barley and hops hitting our nostrils. There was a girl pulling pints behind the bar, chatting animatedly to some tourists. She was our age maybe, wearing a gray tweed vest over a pale pink shirt. She had short, choppy brown hair, dramatic eyeliner, and an electric smile that I could only look at out of the corner of my eye.

  When we walked in, her eyes swung from me to Ida and back again. “I know you two,” was the first thing she said.

  “I . . . don’t think so.” Ida’s expression was bemused.