All the Bad Apples Read online

  Goodbye and God’s blessings be on you. Provided you aren’t wearing a rainbow pin.

  The two seniors stood at either side of the assembly hall doors as the school trickled out, proud sentinels handing out printed leaflets calling for a student protest.

  I hung back. One of them beckoned me over. Her earrings had just been confiscated and she kept reaching up with her free hand, feeling their absence.

  “You joining the protest?” she asked. I wondered if she could sense it on me. “The details are on the event page.” She pointed to a link printed on the flyer.

  I couldn’t join the protest. It would be like painting a big rainbow target on my back. Still, I felt my cowardice like a toothache, sharp and constant.

  “I’m sorry your earrings got confiscated,” I said to the girl instead. “They were awesome. It’s completely unfair.”

  The girl looked surprised for a moment, then smiled, as if she was pleased I had noticed. “Thanks,” she said. “I made them myself.”

  “What? Really? They’re amazing.”

  She pushed the flyer into my hand and I took it automatically, grinning stupidly.

  “Monday morning,” she said. “Scheduled walkout. See you there.”

  She turned to wave her leaflets at a group of sophomores behind me and I carried my flyer and my smile halfway down the corridor, thinking that maybe things could be okay, that maybe I could even talk to pretty older girls who made their own earrings, that maybe if I joined the protest nobody would suspect a thing.

  Until I slowed by the bathroom and overheard four girls from my class talking about me in front of their lockers.

  “Oh my God,” one of them was saying. “Did you see Deena Rys drooling over that senior? Scarlet for her.”

  A flurry of whispers erupted in the wake of her words. I shoved through the door toward the bathroom, to splash cold water on my burning face.

  When the door closed behind me, I thought I could hear one of them saying, “Okay, you win. I’m changing my vote.”

  * * *

  —

  I didn’t wonder long what vote she meant. When I walked into French, before the teacher but after most of the other girls, it was right there on the whiteboard at the front of the class.

  It said, in glaring bold black letters:

  IS DEENA RYS A LESBIAN?

  Underneath the words were three columns. The first said Yes. The second said No. The third said, in somewhat squashed writing, She’s too ugly to get a boy so she may as well try dykes.

  In the first column there were ten votes. In the second there were three. In the third there were twelve.

  It was every nightmare I’d never even thought to have, and I was so mortified I didn’t even feel it. I stared at the board for a long moment, loaded silence coming from the desks behind me.

  I could have said something. I could have gone to the vice principal with her “zero-tolerance bullying policy.” Instead, I walked out of the classroom and nobody stopped me. Tears trailed hot and shameful down my cheeks, but still I slammed the door so hard the crucifix above it fell off the wall and crashed to the floor.

  3.

  The Rys family curse

  Dublin, 2012

  Without it being a conscious decision, I walked all the way to Mandy’s, crying, in the rain, my umbrella forgotten under an assembly hall chair.

  Mandy had never lived with Rachel and me—not since a little after I came along anyway. I, the afterthought, the accident, the small slip of the tongue, born seventeen whole years after my sisters, the final straw that killed our mother. At around the same time that our father left, Mandy and Rachel fell out, loudly and dramatically—at our mother’s funeral, no less, or so the family always said. Mandy had left Dublin, to who knows where and doing who knows what, but she came back after I’d started school. Since then, she’d lived in a dingy flat in Fairview with two friends and a revolving cast of couch-surfers with varying degrees of personal hygiene. As far as I was aware, she’d given back her key to the family home. Whenever I asked what they had fought about so seriously, my sisters were uncharacteristically united in their silence. But there was nobody else to ask; the rest of our family had had very little to do with us since that very fight.

  Mandy had quit school at sixteen, told me she’d learned everything she knew from the Marino public library. She had once been fired from a job in a bar because she had punched a man who’d groped her. She’d had a scandalous affair with a married banker, spent two weeks in his penthouse apartment in Marbella. She’d toured with a punk band for a few months in her teens. She’d joined a cult, briefly, in her twenties, had lived off the land with other white-clad, barefoot women, until she grew weary of their rules, said they were just as bad as the church she’d left as a girl.

  She’d let me smoke a joint with her last year, laughed when I told her that her gray eyes were exact mirrors of mine, fed me chocolate cookies until I fell asleep. She snuck me into concerts and burlesque shows, convincing the bartenders I was over eighteen, slid sugary cocktails across the table to me. She let me borrow books that Rachel would undoubtedly have considered unsuitable, which I read curled up wherever I could find a clear bit of space in her bedroom, sipping coffee, listening to the rain.

  I had never come out to Mandy, but I had long suspected I didn’t have to.

  “Our family tree blew down in a gale and we are the bad apples it shook off,” Mandy said, the moment she opened the door of her flat.

  “What?”

  “Bad apples,” Mandy repeated. “Isn’t that what Dad always says?”

  I stood openmouthed and dripping in the hallway, unable to tell my sister that Dad had used those exact words that very morning, that her saying this, specifically, right at that moment, was eerie.

  “Bad apples don’t have history,” she went on, handing me a towel. “They don’t have roots. They just sit in the grass where they fell, rotting alone.”

  Or they walk all the way to Fairview in the pissing rain without an umbrella to knock at their sister’s door.

  “Speak for yourself” was all I could say, but I knew she already was. Mandy was the baddest apple in our bunch, and I loved her for it.

  Drying my hair, I followed my sister through the dusty, dimly lit flat into her bedroom. The floor was covered in notebooks and folders and library books about nineteenth-century landed gentry. She flopped cross-legged onto her unmade bed and gestured at her cluttered bedside table, upon which was a fresh mug of coffee, perched next to a pink-frosted cupcake topped with a flickering candle.

  “Happy birthday,” she said, cigarette-scratchy. “I hear Dad’s in town. Have my coffee—you look like you need it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, warming my palms on the full mug, still thinking about her saying we were bad apples. “So Rachel called you? What did she say?”

  Mandy threw an arm over her eyes. Her hair, the signature Rys red, more auburn than my orange, fell in messy curls halfway down her back, several strands, once bleached and dyed purple, now faded to a dusty lavender, red at the roots. There were shadows of sleepless nights under her eyes. “Not much over the phone. She says she wants to see me later, to ‘have a chat,’” she said. “I need a drink.”

  “You’re not the only one,” I muttered.

  My sisters had very different reactions to meetings with our father, but both seemed to come from the same place. Rachel’s mouth would tighten so much her lips disappeared, and by evening the house would be spotless, sparkling, and her hands rubbed raw from scrubbing traces of dirt from the bathroom walls. Mandy’s mouth would only tighten when it was around a bottle and she’d be messy drunk by evening. If the interaction was particularly bad, she might disappear for a few days.

  “Did Rachel say what she wants to talk about?” My heart beat in my throat.

  “No, but don’t worry
about it.” She pushed the cupcake across the bedside table. “Make a wish.”

  My stomach tightened. I made a wish and blew out the flame.

  “Do you feel different?” my sister asked me.

  “What? Because of the wish?”

  Mandy barked a laugh. “If you like,” she said. “But I meant now that you’re seventeen.”

  Seventeen was hardly the age of spindles and spinning wheels, but to Mandy it seemed to still mean something. I wanted to lie, tell her I felt no different than I had the day before, assure her that there was nothing unusual about this day, no pivotal moment that had sent me running to her. I was suddenly unsure I could tell even her, could risk saying the words again.

  “A bit, yeah,” I said.

  “Your present’s on the floor beside you,” my sister said.

  I pulled a heavy box wrapped in newspaper and kitchen twine onto my lap. When I opened it, it was filled with books.

  “Mandy! Thank you!”

  “Have a look,” she said.

  I took the books out one by one, stacked them on Mandy’s overflowing little desk with her library books and refill pads and folders full of who knew what. After I’d taken the third book out, I understood my sister’s present.

  These were more than just the kind of books I couldn’t find in my school library. Than those I’d read, illicitly, at Mandy’s since I was little. These were books I would never have had the courage to let anybody but Finn see me read.

  There were silhouettes of girls holding hands on a couple of the covers, and on one—a shiny, hardback American edition—two girls kissing. I shook my head at the audacity of my sister, at my own embarrassment, at the sheer perfection of both her timing and her gift. From Tipping the Velvet to Cameron Post, an entire library of girls like me.

  “You can keep them here if you like,” she told me. “If it’s easier.”

  I didn’t want to put the books back in their box.

  Mandy was watching me carefully. “Was I wrong?” she asked gently.

  I felt strange, nervous, choked up, tearful. “No,” I croaked. “You’re not wrong.”

  “I have another present for you,” she said, brushing aside my garbled thanks. “But it isn’t ready yet.”

  “This present is perfect,” I said, voice shaky, still overwhelmed. “You don’t have to get me something else.”

  “I want to,” said Mandy. “It’s just not quite finished.”

  “That’s okay. It can be a surprise.”

  “I’m shit at surprises,” said Mandy. “So I’ll tell you. I thought we could take a little vacation, just the two of us. A road trip. What do you reckon?”

  On my tenth birthday, Mandy had picked me up from school unexpectedly. We drove to the westernmost part of Donegal with a tent, two sleeping bags, a backpack full of books, enough candles to light a small church, and the horned skull of a bull. (Even at ten, I was aware that Mandy was a little eccentric.) We set up our tent in a campsite on the dunes facing the ocean and we spent our days reading on the windy beach, talking to the cows in nearby fields, and going for long walks upon which Mandy always seemed to be looking for something. We were constantly covered in sand and salt that scratched when we slept, we’d forgotten to bring a brush, so our hair was all tangles, we washed our underwear by hand in the sink of the camping-ground bathroom—and I’d never had so much fun in my life.

  At night we’d howl at the waves and when we got tired Mandy would wrap us up in blankets with a thermos of tea and tell stories about Tír na nÓg, the fairy land far west across the water—to which the poet Oisín was carried on the back of a white horse in the myth everybody knew—where nobody gets old or sick and no one ever dies.

  On the last night she drew a large circle on the sand with salt from a shaker she’d stolen from the local pub. She sat me in the middle with the bull skull and the candles, which didn’t blow out even in the strong sea breeze.

  “He’ll protect you,” Mandy told me. “Keep you safe.”

  But I always felt safe with Mandy anyway.

  It was only when we returned to Dublin a week later, barefoot and dirty, bright-eyed, windswept, and tangle-haired, that I learned Mandy hadn’t told anyone else she was taking me on our camping trip.

  After several days without a word from Mandy, Rachel had called our father. At the time I thought Rachel had overreacted, had betrayed us by involving him, but, now that I’ve thought about it, she must have been so worried. That she hadn’t called the police meant she’d trusted Mandy that much at least.

  When we returned, there was all manner of uproar. Dad called constantly for the next few days with criticism and unsolicited advice. I sat on the stairs in the hall and listened to Mandy and Rachel argue, listened to Mandy shouting at our father on the phone before storming out, then listened to the phone ring and ring unanswered when his number kept coming up.

  I’d snapped and snarled and told Dad those seven days had been the best in my life, and he told Rachel, “She’ll turn out just like her if you don’t do something.”

  “What is it?” Mandy’s eyes now searched my face like spotlights, illuminating all the hidden corners. She’d started doing that. For weeks, I’d catch her watching me, as if she was waiting for something. As if I would break out in blisters, spontaneously combust, disappear.

  “Nothing,” I said, my traitor cheeks flushing the same pink as my cupcake. “A road trip sounds brilliant. Where will we stop along the way?”

  “That’s why it isn’t ready yet. I’m still working out the route.”

  I smudged a finger into the icing, licked it. “It’s a great birthday present,” I told my sister. “Thank you. And for the books.”

  “I’m glad you like them.”

  I puffed out my cheeks and said, “Your timing is kind of spooky, actually, because I kind of accidentally came out to Rachel this morning.”

  Mandy’s face went through several expressions that I couldn’t read before settling on a sort of resignation. “Don’t worry, Deena,” she said. “Whatever she said, Rachel will come around eventually.”

  “Mandy, Rachel didn’t—”

  “She’s just still trying hard to hold on to her plan for you, but she’ll understand it’s changed soon enough.”

  “Her plan?” I repeated.

  “You know,” Mandy said. “She likes to think of you as the perfect blank slate for everything she never got to be. A wife and mother with a worthwhile career. She’s probably planned your and Finn’s wedding and picked out your babies’ names already. She just wants you to get the life she couldn’t. As a nice, normal girl.” Mandy made air quotes; these were Rachel’s words, not hers. A lump formed in my throat at hearing, for the second time today, the very phrase I couldn’t get out of my head.

  Mandy brushed her hair behind her shoulders with one sweep of her arm and said, rather grudgingly, “It’s because she loves you, you know.”

  “I know she does. It’s just I am a nice, normal girl, you know?”

  Mandy laughed. “If you say so, kid.”

  “I do.” I stroked the spines of the books. “Although—I’m not sure Dad does anymore.”

  Mandy stared at me. “What do you mean?”

  The fury on my father’s face flashed into my mind. “He heard me,” I said, the words heavy. “He came into the kitchen as I was telling Rachel.”

  She sat up abruptly. “He what? Are you sure?”

  Our father’s words echoed around my skull. Deviant lifestyles. Disgusting. No daughter of mine.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “I’m sure.”

  Suddenly Mandy’s face was stricken. “No. No. No, no, no. Deena, you can’t tell anyone else. Nobody else can find out.”

  “What?”

  She clutched her head, shook it, her hair tangling in her fingers. “If it were just me and Rachel .
. . but if Dad knows—” Mandy took a breath. “Do you remember when we went up to Donegal for your tenth birthday?” she asked.

  “Of course. Our infamous road trip. I was just thinking about that a few minutes ago, actually.”

  Mandy sat forward, hands on her knees, bracing. “Do you remember what I told you on the last night?”

  Sand and salt, fire and bone.

  “No?” The word was a question. I remembered the bull skull. I remembered her telling me the bull would protect me, keep me safe. I remembered feeling enchanted, but mystified.

  “Do you remember what I told you about our family?”

  “Not really. Sorry.” But a memory was dredging itself from my unconscious, ringed in salt. “Yes,” I said. “Sort of. Did you tell me some kind of story about a family curse?”

  Mandy nodded deep. “The Rys family curse.”

  We knew next to nothing about the Rys side of the family because Dad never talked about them. When we spoke about our family, my sisters and I, we meant the MacLachlans, our mother’s kin. We rarely saw them—each as self-righteous, pious, and judgmental as the last. They’d taken Dad in with approving, welcoming arms.

  I shrugged, bemused. “The Rys family curse. Remind me.”

  “Bad things happen to the bad apples in our family,” Mandy said, her eyes unfocused, her voice trance-like. Small pinpoints of unease prickled along my skin.

  “You were saying something about bad apples when I first got here, right? What was it again?”

  “You know the kind,” she went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “You’d know them a mile away. The ones who don’t look like the others, don’t act like the others. The ones who don’t conform, don’t follow the rules, don’t go to church on Sunday. The ones who run away, make their own lives. The ones who drink too much, talk too much, don’t work enough or at the right things. The ones who dress differently, love differently, think differently. Our family tree protects its good seeds, keeps them safe. But the bad apples get shown the door. Shunned, ignored, talked about in hushed whispers. They get pushed off the tree, breaking every branch on their way down. And once they’ve fallen, once they’ve been cast off the family tree, that’s when the curse comes to them.”