Apples

Russet apples were the jewels of my grandfather’s garden. They came in the autumn and left him poor in the winter – a feeble caretaker of hollow timber. My grandfather was a jovial man, as men often are when they grow old and bury their wits. He would mumble and grumble with the airs and graces of an inventor or a prophet, despite inexperience in either profession. There was wisdom to him though – wisdom that comes from dead acquaintances that whisper memories in his ear and goad his tongue to flick and click and speak truths. He would look upon us with eyes that were not his own and stone us with old wives’ tales and stoic idioms.

He died of heart failure amidst the junipers; cold, strong hands embedded with needles and misty berries. There were only a dozen of us at the funeral. A handful were neighbours, one was his nurse, and the rest were family crowding the front row.

“Barty was a man weathered by suffering, who never bowed before the trials his life held for him…”

I watched my mother with great interest – I was only twelve – yet even then, I could notice the tic which trembled above her left eye. I never saw my mother cry. She possessed an austerity unbecoming for her age, revealed only through grey streaks and sage commentary. My younger sister was chewing the starch from the collar of her new yellow dress. I doubt she understood why we were there, and I envied her for that. My father was miles away, his glazed eyes sweeping the chapel for distraction. He had never liked nor trusted my grandfather, and the feeling had been mutual.

In the distance, a chorus of sparrows reminded the congregation of a less quiet, less holy world filled with songs that did not emerge on cue from an organ but followed their own program apart from the ceremonies of men.

“And now we must let him go, and be thankful, for Barty’s story may have finished on our own fragile earth but shall be continued in that which lies beyond.”

He didn’t say Heaven.

I remember thinking.

Why didn’t he say Heaven?

We sold the house and with it went the russet apples. My mother kept a box of scribblings, and we dumped the rest of my grandfather’s worldly possessions in a thrift shop two streets away. He had left me only one thing; a rumpled copy of Tanizaki’s ‘In Praise of Shadows’ which I lost a few months later.

I didn’t think of him much. We had been introduced when I was eight and he had died only a few years after. However, I remember the day I met him. We were on our way to the airport and through much bartering and whispered barbs my parents had come to an agreement.

My father waited in the car, watching fat raindrops splatter and slide with dull consistency against the window. Mother hastened me through a cosy front porch and stood awhile under the awning, shaking rain from her coat.

She was breathing very heavily – too heavily for someone who had been sat down the past three hours. I slipped a small hand into her own, more for my comfort than hers, and she smiled.

The house smelt funny; cloying and dusty and threatening, like an old sentient book which despised to be opened. My grandfather was in the sunroom, flicking through a faded newspaper. He had tried to get to his feet when we walked inside but mother waved him back down.

“Margaret,” he croaked, hesitated, and then, “Margaret.”

I hid behind my mother, afraid of this new decrepit apparition. He noticed.

“This your little one?”

“This is Teddy,” she said and tried vainly to push me forwards.

He extended a hand, and I found the courage to approach and shake it. The thing was roped and calloused and blackened but gentle in its grip. He winked at me and I blinked back.

“It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”

“We only stopped by for a moment – Richard is in the car with Jess.”

“I understand.”

I was fascinated by this man before me. I had never seen someone so old yet so unsure of himself. He was blushing, and his small eyes darted to various objects in the room, frightened to take us in except in small, careful glances.

“I’m…” he began, and then stopped.

My mother’s left eye had begun to tic.

“We have to be going…”

“I know.”

“I’ll call you,” my mother said, and then with more determination, “I want you to meet Jess too.”

The old man moved his mouth silently, and then nodded.

I can’t remember the journey back to the car, only that my father had put on some music and was tapping his fingers against the steering wheel to the staccato tempo.

My father died last week. Jess was in New York; she was sorry she could not make the funeral. It was up to me and my wife to clear the family home and begin the uncomfortable process of moving my mother to a retirement facility across town.

I had volunteered to go through my mother’s office. She had been a therapist and the room was filled with files on clients long dead, lingering on shelves containing irrelevant secrets.

My grandfather’s box was at the bottom of a cupboard, buried under tattered works of Jung. I recognised its chequered pattern and broken lock and brought it home with me for closer inspection.

Through the corpus of notes, clippings and poems, I pieced together a story.

It began in 1962, with a series of love letters each more passionate than the last. My grandparents’ writings contained the verve and audacity which every younger generation believes they invented. Amidst nature metaphors and well-meaning haikus, I was given an insight into what seemed a short-term love story, littered with the usual platitudes. This changed with a short note from my grandmother, scrawled in red ink.

I’m pregnant. Come home.

Then there was a photograph of a young couple, bleached into blurry greys, and then more photographs – yellowed and peeling – showing a little girl playing amidst the apple trees.

In the box were various documents. A psychological evaluation citing post-traumatic-stress-disorder, and a long letter from a forgotten friend advising patience.

My grandfather’s own writings were much more interesting. He had started and given up on three different journals in three different decades. The first was the bored drawls of a man filled with regret, the second a series of business transactions. The third was a relentless diatribe against my grandmother, hard to read not just for its contents, but also for the untidy script which hinted at a hurried hand.

Called me a coward today. Better than wishing I was dead yesterday. She knows me too well and hates me for it. I know she’s been seeing that man again. I know she has. I know it.

Turning several pages, I found something else.

Bashing the pans around – she knows that sets me off. Nasty woman. Foul woman. Evil woman. Why did I ever marry her? She doesn’t understand. She never could.

A few days later, the journal stopped sharply, and I remembered an evening many years before, when the phone rang, and my father cried.

He had been the one to take the call. I was in the living room, balancing blocks and humming my favourite radio jingle. Jess hadn’t been born yet and my mother lacked the streaks of grey which followed her the rest of her life.

There had been shouting and crying.

“That bastard… I swear to God, I’ll kill him myself.”

“Richard, please!”

I heard the noise of my mother falling over and my father rushing forward.

“I… I can’t… I don’t know what to…”

I’d never seen my mother cry, but that evening I heard it. It trickled through the drainpipes and under the shutters of my window. A throbbing sound, like a wounded animal, punctuated by reassuring murmurs from my father.

That was when I found my grandfather’s first poem which wasn’t about juvenile love.

Today, I saw a butterfly

bloodied upon the water.

Crimson-membraned wings,

like folded veins in exotic paper.

It quivered, tethered, then span

a lone, pulsing blossom.

It saddened me to see it there

exiled from the firmament.

I raised it to the air

the sun slipped through

a lantern, blinding me,

I peeped through flesh

to witness it crumpled between nail.

Squeezed and pulped.

One wing ripped, the other floating

trailing, bloody, seeking the water.

He wrote more poems, most about nature, many about sin. With his words and my memories, I threaded a tapestry of a life half-lived, one entwined by such loss and such hate that I myself could barely imagine it existing outside a newspaper article.

At the bottom of the box was a flattened paper swan. I recognised it from a far-gone summer’s afternoon.

My mother’s client had needed an emergency meeting and my father was away on business. I had been left for the day at my grandfather’s and he had shown me origami.

“Real art is always better than words, Ted, you remember that.”

He was showing me how to do the folds again, several previous attempts littered the carpet.

“This here is real art. Skill with one’s hands, something physical, something that will always be there.”

“Don’t words last?”

“No. They are at best forgotten, and at worst twisted into something else entirely.”

“I don’t understand.”

He had sighed at that and plucked an apple slice from a platter. All old people chew a certain way, with an effort that suggests they are crunching and digesting memories rather than the soft flesh of a russet.

“Take an apology,” he said finally. “If you did something wrong, would Marg- would your mother prefer you to just say sorry? Or to do something about it? To wash the dishes or get her a present.”

“Probably to do something.”

“Exactly. Words are wonderful things, but they’re a poor man’s craftsmanship. They cost nothing, and thus leave nothing behind.”

Something else had occurred to me, however.

“Do adults ever need to apologise?”

My grandfather continued chewing, but he had already swallowed the apple.

“Yes, Ted. Yes, we do.”

To my embarrassment, my grandfather’s eyes had begun to redden.

“I’m gonna go climb,” I announced, jumping up to leave the room.

Before I left, I glanced behind me. My grandfather had picked up my completed swan and was holding it up to the window, allowing the light to slip through the purple tissue paper. That was my clearest memory of my grandfather, amidst the dust and pain which I associate with his name. A man holding a swan to the light, feigning interest, while tears coursed down his cheeks.