Golden Delicious

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That afternoon I took the Reader to see the Memory of Johnny Appleseed. We left right after school on my customized Bicycle Built for Two, the Reader on the backseat and me on the front. We pedaled through the paragraphs of downtown and across Highway Five to the deadgroves near the west margin, where I figured we’d find the Memory planting stories in the soil.

That was the year that my Mom left us — sharpened the blades in her skirt, winged up her blouse, and flew off — and it was just me, my father, and my sister in our home in Appleseed. It wasn’t a surprise when she left; she’d been planning to leave, telling us she was leaving, for months. And everything else that she’d predicted had come true — the blight, the loss of meaning, all of it.

Even so, we were shocked when she actually went through with it. There was no official goodbye, no pep talk. My sister and I were in the TV room that afternoon when my Mom appeared in the doorway, wearing her flightskirt and goggles, a suitcase at her feet. “Well, I’m all packed,” she said.

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