All the Bad Apples - Hardcover

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After the funeral, our mourning clothes hung out on the line like sleeping bats. It had rained in the cemetery and everything was muddy. Wet grass clung all the way up to our knees and clumps of muck stuck to the heels of our best shoes.

“This will be really embarrassing,” I kept saying to anybody who would listen, “when Mandy shows up at the door in a week or two.”

Rachel gave me a pitying look, but my best friend, Finn, was uncertain.

That’s the problem with having a funeral for your sister without really knowing whether she’s dead. Without a body in the coffin, how can you be sure she won’t come back?

1.

A nice, normal girl

Dublin, 2012

On my seventeenth birthday, two things happened.

I came out to my family (somewhat by accident).

And my sister Mandy disappeared.

Died, Deena, Rachel said—our other sister, the middle sister, the one who came between us. Died, not disappeared.

But I knew Mandy wasn’t dead.

It was raining that morning. I’d woken early, surfacing with a shock from dreams of drowning, of cliff faces with sharp teeth and gaping mouths. Rachel was already up when I came downstairs, frowning at her phone.

The table was set with the best china, the plates we saved for Christmas, and on mine were two strawberry Pop-Tarts—the birthday breakfast I’d loved when I was little. They were still hot; my sister must have heard the shower running, timed it perfectly. She had spread the good tablecloth, red with white polka dots, and had set a bunch of violets, my favorite, in a vase in the center. The birthday card beside my plate was the expensive pop-up kind. Rachel was always trying to make up for my lack of a mother by mimicking some ideal fantasy version.

“This is amazing, Rachel.”

But Rachel was distracted, still reading the text she’d just received. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Dad’s on his way,” she said.

“What?”

“He messaged just now to say he’s getting the train. He’ll be here this afternoon.”

“Dad?”

“Yes.” My sister’s mouth was a thin line.

“As in our father?”

“Yes, Deena. Dad as in our father.”

I hovered in the kitchen doorway, watched my sister sigh and tuck a stray red curl—a darker, neater version of mine—behind her ear, rub her forehead with one finger like she was trying to erase the lines there.

“What do you think he wants?”

“Maybe he wants to wish you a happy birthday,” she said with a shrug. “Happy birthday, by the way. Sorry. Should have led with that.”

I couldn’t find the voice to answer. I had a theory as to why our absent father should feel the need to visit this week. I didn’t think it was anything to do with my birthday.

He knows.

My face must have betrayed me. “Is everything okay?” Rachel asked.

I poured myself some tea. “Nothing,” I said. “I mean, yeah, I’m fine. Are you sure Dad didn’t say why he’s coming to Dublin today?”

Rachel sank a mixing bowl into the sudsy sink, wiped at the batter left around the edges. “It’s your birthday,” she said, not quite answering the question.

I gave my sister a come on look. “And when’s the last time he visited for any of our birthdays?”

“I don’t know, Deena.” Rachel sighed. Her impatience was probably more about Dad’s impending arrival than my question. “Maybe he has business in town.”

Or maybe the rumors that had been floating around school recently had somehow gotten back to him and he wanted to come over and confront me about them himself.

Our absent father all but abandoned us—his three mother-less children—when I was less than a year old. He oversaw from afar our education (in the strictest, single-sex Catholic school he could think of); he only called us if he’d heard rumors that we were not upholding the Rys family name; he only ever dropped in on us unannounced, as if to try to catch us out, so determined was he to make sure we were the good, traditional, God-fearing daughters he expected us to be. All the while clearly not caring enough about us to actually stick around.

Which left me with my sisters.

My sisters were fraternal twins. Mandy was older by twenty-four hours, although she neither looked like the eldest nor acted like it. Rachel had always been impossibly adult—practical and mature—and was now positively ancient at thirty-four. But while Rachel raised me, did her best to tame me, Mandy wilded me, carelessly undoing all of Rachel’s work: muddying my shoes, tangling my hair, making me question authority.

Mandy and Rachel were night and day, fire and frost, chaos and logic. They were opposites in so many ways, their few similarities were shocking.

They were my family, these sisters, this strange push and pull.

Our father had long since given up on Mandy, and I knew exactly how he would react if he ever found out about me.

Sitting across from me, Rachel narrowed her eyes. “What is it?” she said.

I attempted a breezy tone. “Nothing really,” I said. “It’s just there’ve been some rumors going around school. For the last week or so. About me. I’m a bit worried they might have come back to Dad. Through one of his friends on the school board or the parents’ association. You know.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“All kinds. You know my school.” I wrapped my fingers around my teacup, made the decision to say it almost before I realized the words were coming. Deep breath, dive in. “But mostly there are rumors that I’m. Um. Gay.”

Rachel squared her shoulders. “Our father would know better than to believe a rumor like that.”

I never understood why nerves were described as butterflies in your stomach. This was more like a prolonged electric shock.

“They’re true,” I said softly. “The rumors. I’m gay, Rachel.”

My body could have set off sparks. Rachel opened her mouth to speak.

It was at that perfectly unfortunate moment that our father walked unexpectedly into the kitchen. Panic rooted me to the spot. I could have been felled by a single ax stroke, falling with limbs askew like branches.

For half a second, I thought he hadn’t heard me, but all the wishful thinking in the world couldn’t change the way his face—neutral, lined, neat red hair gone mostly gray—had twisted in fury.

When he spoke, his voice was low and dangerous. “What,” he said, “did you say?”

My voice froze in my throat.

“Nothing,” I whispered, the word sounding strangled and strange. I could feel the color leach from my face.

“Dad!” Rachel jumped up from her seat. “You’re early! I thought you’d still be on the train.”

Our father ignored her. “What do you mean, nothing?” he said to me. “Nothing what?”

“Deena was just saying,” Rachel said in Dad’s direction, fast and nervous, “that sometimes girls say the most horrible things. That’s bullying, you know. I’m sure it’s against school policy.”

“Don’t you go covering for your sisters again,” Dad shot back at her. “That school’s feckin’ policy is the reason I’m here in the first place. Getting people in to talk about deviant lifestyles with impressionable kids.” He gestured at me, grimacing. “It encourages this kind of disgusting talk.”

“I’m not—” I said. “I didn’t mean—”

Dad’s voice lowered, had that dangerous edge to it again. “You’re damn right you didn’t mean,” he said. “And you’ll say nothing like that ever again, you hear? I’m giving you one last chance. If I get even a whiff of this off you again, I’m sending you to one of those camps. Sort this nonsense out once and for all. I won’t have another bad apple in this family. Mandy’s bad enough already. No daughter of mine—”

“Dad,” Rachel said peaceably. “This is all just a big misunderstanding. Everyone knows Deena is a nice, normal girl.”

“Then she’d best start acting like it,” Dad said to Rachel as if I weren’t in the room, as though I were a naughty child needing to be taught some manners.

I could neither speak nor stop the tears that had sprung up the moment my sister—the one whose opinion actually mattered to me—had said the words nice, normal girl.

I wanted to speak up, defend myself, tell the truth. Instead, I did the only thing my body seemed capable of doing, something that probably proclaimed my guilt even more than my tears. I turned and ran out the door.

2.

Please stand for morning prayers

Dublin, 2012

The words drummed on my umbrella like raindrops. Nice, normal girl fogged up the air in the crowded bus. Nice, normal girl formed puddles on the school grounds that my shoes threatened to slip in. Nice, normal girl.

I walked into the hall for Friday assembly, drenched despite my umbrella, shivering. I draped my dripping coat over the back of my chair and took two long puffs on my inhaler. They didn’t help unknot the panic in my chest.

The hall filled slowly. Girls in green sweaters and tartan skirts sat in small clusters: the prefects and class reps to the front, the rebels at the back, the popular girls in the exact midpoint of the hall—the center of our small universe. The rest of us branched out from them, groups of friends chatting together or yawning, scrolling on their phones or showing off their renegade nail polish, strictly forbidden by the school dress code.

I sat alone.

My phone lit up with a message from Finn.

Many happy returns on this the day of your birthday which I wish I was spending with you instead of in math test purgatory. Pretty sure Mr. Geary is going to fail me. Approx. 5 hours of homework dished out already and it’s not even 9. Me and some of the lads are considering an uprising. How’s your stats looking?

My best friend, by virtue of being a boy, was unable to attend the same school as me, which would have made the long hours I spent there infinitely easier. As it was, we had to be content with narrating the tedium of our weekdays via text. Finn was smart, and well liked in his school, so his tedium mostly consisted of being overworked by admiring teachers who only wanted the best for him.

Bleak. Stats as follows. Dirty looks received: two. Whispers directed at me: three. Possibility of nasty rumors circulating: mid to high.

I didn’t mention anything about my dad.

Stay strong, Finn messaged, his usual parting words.

I got in a You too before the vice principal called for us to please stand for morning prayers.

I could recite the Our Father in my sleep, so I let my voice go to autopilot and looked around at the other girls, noticing that two seniors a few rows behind me stayed seated, kept their mouths clamped shut during morning prayers in silent protest.

They were stone warriors, chins raised defiantly like statues of queens. One had long earrings, two bright purple plastic Venus symbols. The other wore two pins on her collar: one was a large enamel rainbow flag. The other said don’t hate, educate.

Nobody gave these girls dirty looks. No rumors circulated about them the way they did about me. They were untouchable; they radiated cool. Unlike me—ill-defined and self-conscious, plump, freckled, and bespectacled like the bumbling best friend in an old children’s book—these girls announced themselves, chins high, daring anybody to challenge them. We may have sheltered underneath the same umbrella, but, in the many judging eyes of the school, we were completely different species.

Our prayers ended to a chorus of amens.

“All right, girls.” The vice principal’s voice came through the mic in front of her. “As you all know, there has been some hullabaloo about the cancellation of the Schools Out Loud workshop last week.”

It had been all over local news and radio:

Dublin school calls off LGBT youth group’s anti-bullying workshop.

Sixth-year girls organize protest against school’s cancellation of LGBT group lecture.

Those seniors, soon joined by a couple of the more confident younger girls, had been quick to criticize the school’s decision. When I’d tried to do the same during lunch break on Monday, my classmates’ eyebrows had immediately shot up.

“You have probably seen our statements on school social media,” the vice principal went on. “Our Lady the Mother of Immaculate Grace Secondary School has a zero-tolerance bullying policy. We are proud to have a diverse student body. However, some parents expressed concern over an activist group speaking without a fair and balanced counterargument present. The school board is looking into speakers who can represent the other side of the discussion. In the meantime, the Schools Out Loud workshop has been postponed, not canceled.”

I chanced a glance behind me. One of the two sixth-year girls had bent her head to whisper in the other’s ear. They both rolled their eyes, then glared back at the stage, sitting even straighter. A girl in my class, sitting close by, noticed me looking and elbowed her friend. They both giggled.

There had always been rumors about me, but this week in particular they’d gotten a lot louder. And my father now knew they were true.

Face flaming, heart pounding, I turned to the vice principal again.

“I would also like to remind students of our school dress code,” she was saying. “No pins, badges, or garish accessories will be allowed during school hours and on school uniforms. As always, Our Lady girls are expected to be well groomed, well presented, and uphold the reputation of our school. Slán agus beannachtai Dé oraibh.”

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 droo...