The Poison Apples
Authors: Lily Archer
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Contents
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For my mother,
who is also my best friend
And for my best friends,
who are also my family
Prologue
Dear Stepmothers of the World:
As you probably know, more than 50 percent of marriages in America end in divorce. And more than 75 percent of divorced men end up remarrying. That means there are thousandsâmillions!âof stepmothers out there. Stepmothers in North Dakota. Stepmothers in Florida. Thin stepmothers and fat stepmothers. Rich stepmothers and poor stepmothers. Beautiful stepmothers and ugly stepmothers. Good stepmothers and bad stepmothers.
This book is not about the good stepmothers.
We're not saying good stepmothers don't exist. We know they do. We have faith. We know somewhere out there are stepmothers who love and care about their stepdaughters, stepmothers who give good advice and make goofy jokes and play Monopoly and rent slapstick comedies and take their stepdaughters out for Ethiopian food. In fact, there are probably
thousands
of girls out there with
really stellar
stepmothers. Those girls are welcome to write a book about how great their stepmothers are.
We are not those girls.
We are the Poison Apples.
We all happen to have Incredibly Evil Stepmothers.
So. To any stepmothers who may feel that the stepmother population is unfairly represented in our book: We don't know what to say to you. Sorry? Honestly we have no idea why we ended up with such horrible stepmothers. Fate? Karma? Bad luck? In any case, we had enough good fate/karma/luck to meet one another at boarding school and form a family. Because the existence of the Poison Apples helped us realize something: You have to take your fate/karma/luck into your own hands. You cannot let the evil stepmother win.
This is our story.
To the good stepmothers: Keep on keepin' on. We hope to meet you someday.
To the bad stepmothers: You have been warned.
Signed,
The Poison Apples
PART ONE
ONE
Alice Bingley-Beckerman
R. seemed okay at first.
She invited me and Dad over for dinner at her apartment on the Upper West Side, and we spent most of the evening just standing around and watching her cook. R. was mesmerizing: she swept around the kitchen in her silk robe and purple eye shadow, stirring bubbling pots of marinara sauce and bending down every few seconds to kiss Godot, her Yorkshire terrier. I could tell Dad was charmed by her. She was beautiful and funny and she kept singing lines from different musicals. Dad would say, “
The Pajama Game
, right?” and she'd shriek, “YES! EXACTLY!” and then he'd sip his beer in this pleased-with-himself way. And it was nice she'd invited me. I guess it was like their first date, so it was a pretty cool move for her to say, “Why don't you bring your daughter?” It made her seem easygoing, sweet, kid-loving. Not at all like a crazy, jealous psychopath, right?
Wrong.
Dad and I were so innocent and unsuspecting. Probably because it was the first date Dad had been on since Mom died. We had no idea that R. KlausenhookâTony Awardâwinning actress and darling of the New York theater sceneâwould turn out to be a bona fide Evil Person. Actually I think Dad still has no idea that R. is a bona fide Evil Person.
Hence the tragedy of my story.
The whole never-ending suckfest (that's what my friend Reena calls itâyou'll hear about her later) started two years before, when I was thirteen and my mom died. She had cancer. It was pretty much the worst year of my life. Afterward I had to deal with all my classmates saying: “Oh my God, I'm so sorry. My great-grandmother died last year and it was really hard for me. I totally know what you're going through.” I'd want to scream,
Your great-grandmother was ninety-five and living in a nursing home and you saw her three times a year, how could you possibly know what I'm going through
â
my MOTHER died, you idiot
, but instead I'd smile and nod. Because I make a point of not picking fights with people. I'm Alice. I'm the quiet girl in the funky clothes. Everyone likes me. Kind of. I'm everyone's third-best friend. This is what the entire school wrote in my junior high yearbook: “It was great knowing you! You are the sweetest!” Or: “You seem really really sweet! Have a great summer!” Or: “Thanks for being so sweet! You go, girl!” Eventually I realized that “sweet” meant no one knew me, and that (so far) I hadn't done anything to tick off anybody.
I did have it pretty good for my first thirteen years. I was an only child and I lived in this awesome brownstone in Brooklyn with my mom and dad. They were both writers. Pretty famous writers, actually. My dad is Nelson Bingley and my mom is (was) Susan Beckerman. Maybe you've heard of them. They both wrote novels that got a lot of attention before I was born. Once I tried to read one of my mother's books, but it was way too weird. The first sentence had like three words in it that I didn't even know existed. But having two writers as my parents was really nice. They were at home a lot, typing away in their studies, and they always had these bizarro friends staying with us, like famous painters and musicians and movie directors. I still have this real glass eye that an Italian sculptor gave me as a birthday present. Other kids would come over to my house, shake their heads enviously, and say things like: “Your parents are the coolest.” Yup, I was that kid. I had the cool parents.
But then one day I just had one cool parent.
It was rough for a while. Our house felt really big and empty, and there was a lot of me and Dad sitting silently in our dark living room every night and watching stupid TV programs that Mom would have hated. It also took me a whole year to stop myself from thinking,
Wait till Mom hears this
, whenever something interesting or cool happened. But then the day I stopped thinking,
Wait till Mom hears this
, was pretty horrible, too. Because there's forgetting your mother is dead, and then there's realizing that you're used to your mother being dead. The second feeling is actually worse.
Things went on like this for about a year and a half, until Dad wrote a play. It was his first play, and it was about a woman dying of cancer. Big surprise, right? But everyone
loved
it. Dad's agent called in the middle of the night and said she couldn't finish reading it because she was crying so hard. Three weeks later a Broadway theater picked it up and R. Klausenhookâthe best actress in the city, the actress who guaranteed sold-out houses and Tony Awardsâwanted to star in it. Six weeks after that, it opened and
The New York Times
gave it a rave review, and Dad was smiling in a way he hadn't smiled since, well, since Mom, and three weeks after that, R. Klausenhook invited us over to her apartment for dinner. And I was happy for Dad. I truly was. I thought that maybe if he stopped being so sad all the time, I would stop being so sad all the time.
Dumb theory.
Anyway, R. really laid on the charm that first night. And the woman was an incredible cook. She made endive salad and garlic-roasted hen and baked eggs with tomato and basil sauce and this amazing raspberry tart sprinkled with fudge. Dad and I totally pigged out.
“Mmrf,” Dad said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “This is the best meal I've had in I don't know how long. Alice and I usually just microwave frozen fish sticks for dinner.”
Now this is true. Dad and I did eat a lot of fish sticks. But somehow Dad's saying this to R. Klausenhook made me feel just a wee bit defensive. We were trying, you know? We were doing okay for ourselves.
“Oh no,” said R. “That's awful. Food is unbelievably important to me. I believe that every meal should be its own sensual experience.”
I didn't really know what she was talking about, but Dad listened intently and nodded his head like three times in a row.
R. reached across the table and placed her bejeweled fingers over mine. “What about you, Alice?” she asked. “What are your passions?”
“Umâ¦,” I said. I looked to Dad for help. He just smiled blankly at me.
“You know,” said R. “My passions are acting and food. And sex, of course. What are yours?”
I almost choked on my mouthful of baked eggs. “Uh⦔
Dad jumped in. “Alice really loves snowboarding. Don't you, Alice?”
I nodded, relieved. “Yeah. Sure. I like snowboarding.”
The truth was, I'd snowboarded about twice in my entire life. But okay. You could call it my passion. Whatever. I would have
liked
sex to be one of my passions, but I hadn't been given the opportunity to have it yet. I'd made out once with Keaton Church (this jerko senior) at a party on the Lower East Side during my freshman year, but he was just using me to make his ex-girlfriend jealous (they got back together the next day). That was the range of my experience. The only person who seemed interested in me was my second-cousin Joey Wasserman. Joey lived in Philadelphia and had a beard and smoked like six joints a day and tried to mack on me every Thanksgiving.
As Reena would say, my life was a real suckfest. I was fifteen, my mom had been dead for almost two years, and I'd never even had a boyfriend.
But things were about to get a lot worse.
Dad and I took a cab home that night after dinner at R.'s place, and he couldn't stop smiling. We didn't say anything for a while as we cruised down Madison Avenue, past all those fancy stores with their glowing storefronts. I breathed on the cab window and then absentmindedly drew a little
R
in the fogged-up glass.
“What does R. stand for?” I asked.
“Rachel,” Dad said, this moony grin still plastered across his face.
“Then why doesn't she just call herself Rachel?”
He put his arm around me and kissed the top of my head. “I really like this woman, Alice. In addition to being wonderfully talented, she's very sweet and giving. She's not crazy like most of the actresses I meet.”
I nodded. There was an awkward pause. Dad cleared his throat.
“Did you like her?” he asked.
Looking back on that evening, it probably wouldn't have made any difference if I'd said, “No, Dad, I didn't.” Things probably would have turned out the same. But I still think about it a lot. Because back then I just wanted Dad to be happy, and not miserable like he'd been since Mom died, and I wanted to be a good daughter, and R. seemed nice enough, even if she was a little ⦠eccentric.
So I looked Dad in the eye and said: “She was fantastic.”
And, to tell you the truth, he looked so thrilled and relieved that I felt like it would have been cruel to say anything else.