Apples Never Fall

These centerpiece chapters function in two ways. First, the darker implications of Savannah begin to emerge, as her behavior with the Delaneys begins to betray her base motivations and her unpredictable—perhaps even sociopathic—behavior. Second, each of the Delaney siblings, motivated by different impulses and working through different memories and levels of guilt, begin the work of restoring their relationships, tapping into the imperfect wonder of love. In short, these chapters lay the foundation for the novel’s uplifting ending.

Savannah begins to reveal unsavory, even nefarious, elements in her character. Logan begins the siblings’ investigation into who the young woman in their parents’ home really is. While thinking about how much misses Indira, Logan happens to catch a documentary in which a woman who has experienced domestic abuse tells a story remarkably similar in its details to Savannah’s sob story—“virtually word for word” (239)—that she told his parents the night she showed up on their doorstep. When Amy and Logan confront their mother with their suspicions, Joy reveals how deeply she’s involved with the young woman by rejecting the idea that Savannah callously stole another woman’s horrific story domestic abuse.

Evidence begins to pile up when Logan and Amy drive out to visit Savannah’s ex-boyfriend and get the particulars of exactly how Savannah came to be bleeding from the head. More tellingly, however, the boyfriend assures Logan and Amy that a sports news story about an ex-tennis great making a comeback was the real reason that Savannah suddenly bolted, saying cryptically, “I’m going back there” (287). The sudden tie of Savannah to Harry Haddad, who was associated with an emotional tipping point in the Delaneys’ tempestuous marriage, signals a disturbing sense about the young woman. Savannah’s venality becomes even clearer when she appears at Troy’s swanky home and shakes him down for cash in return for not telling his mother that Stan came on to Savannah while Joy was hospitalized. The calculating, mercenary tone, which Savannah’s doll-like porcelain eyes suggest, reveals that Savannah now represents a credible threat to the Delaney family.

Even as Savannah’s actions begin to reveal her as a threat, the Delaney siblings begin to reconsider their casual abandonment of love and the emotional catastrophes of their relationships. However, this novel doesn’t suddenly morph into a fairy tale, happily-ever-after-at-last-I found-my-soulmate hokeyness. During Savannah and Joy’s lunch, when Savannah describes Stan as Joy’s soulmate, Joy quickly scoffs at the idea. “He’s not perfect. I’m not perfect” (252). This a perfectly segues into chapters in which her kids begin reclaiming their loves, not because they’re perfect but because they’re splendidly, unapologetically imperfect.

Thus begins the novel’s movement toward the affirmation of love in all its imperfection. After the catastrophe of Fathers’ Day, Logan can’t stop thinking about Indira—her exotic looks, her idiosyncratic quirks, and the sound of her laughter. He stares at a “blank rectangle” on his living room wall where Indira had hung one of her original paintings, which Logan recalls as “god-awful.” Now, alone, surrounded by a careless toss of pizza boxes and empty beer bottles, his life in a sudden tailspin, he misses the painting, which suggests that Indira’s absence (the space on the wall) has become a presence for Logan. Even though she’s more than 4,000 miles away, his conversation with himself is the first indication that the sibling known for casual indifference and emotional drift is evolving.

Similarly, Amy, plagued by an assortment of real and imaginary mental health conditions—and always on guard against the trespass of another (her dyed blue hair intended to be something of a put-off for potential suitors)—begins to see that Simon, the nerdy roommate who is himself recovering from a breakup, means more to her than what she has pretended he is: a casual, meaningless hook up. He’s no soulmate, to be sure, and he’s 12 years her junior (his friend warned him about “cougar types who dressed like twenty-somethings” [242]). However, his soft Irish brogue and his awkward social gracelessness make him a goofy and sweet friend. More importantly, he cares about the messed-up and broken Amy and is willing to devote time to her efforts to sort through the mess her parents have gotten into by taking in a stranger.

Troy, the “playboy,” the glitzy and flamboyant player, lives a careless emotional life that his credo as an investment trader reflects: “Never waste time thinking about what could have been” (268). However, despite his fabulous townhouse apartment surrounded by the material accumulations of his wealth, Troy confronts the reality of his shabby existence. He’s moved to a singular act of unexpected generosity when he phones his ex-wife, now remarried and struggling to have children—the woman whom he so casually destroyed after six years of marriage through his meaningless seduction of a woman he met in an airport lounge. He calls her to give his consent for her to use the embryos they froze during their marriage—in effect to have his child with another man—in “the most unselfish act of his life” (270).

Even as Savannah begins to reveal her threat and even as the detectives sort through theories of Joy’s disappearance (whether she was depressed or suicidal, whether she had a lover, whether she had early-onset dementia), the novel lays the foundation not for the solution to that mystery but for the resolution to the family’s dysfunctionality. To paraphrase Stan’s wedding toast, if love means nothing in tennis, it means everything in life.