The Nest

by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

“Your scarf,” Melody said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” Francie looked surprised. She fingered the cloth a little and then unwound the scarf, folded it into a neat square, and pushed it across the conference table until it was in front of Melody. “Here,” she said. “Take it.”

  “Really?” Melody, in spite of herself, was thrilled. She had never owned anything quite so delicate. It had to be expensive. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Francie said, pleased to see the appreciation on Melody’s face. “It’s your color. It will brighten the pallor a bit.”

  “Have you spoken to Leo lately?” Bea asked Francie.

  Francie watched Melody wrap the scarf around her neck. It wasn’t her color, but it still looked nice. She motioned for Melody to come closer and she adjusted the ends of the scarf, tucking them into place. “There,” she said. She turned to Bea. “I spoke to him last week. Briefly.”

  “Is he okay?” Bea said.

  Francie shrugged. “He’s Leo. He sounded perfectly fine, considering.”

  “Does he understand your intentions?” Jack said. “That your incredible generosity on our behalf is not a gift but a loan?”

  “I’m sure Leo doesn’t need to be told to be accountable for the money; he’s not dumb.” Francie was pulling on her gloves now.

  “But he’s Leo,” Jack said. “He’s supposed to magically start caring about what happens to us?”

  “We should give him a chance,” Bea said.

  “You’re all delusional,” Jack said. He sounded more tired than angry now.

  Francie’s brief sense of accomplishment over gifting Melody the scarf evaporated. She gave no one in particular a brittle flash of smile. “I’ll make sure he gets in touch with you as soon as he’s back in the city,” Francie said. “I can do that.”

  “And then what?” Jack asked.

  Francie shrugged. “Invite him to lunch.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Meeting at the Grand Central Oyster Bar was part convenience—Melody disembarked at Grand Central, which was halfway between downtown where Jack and Leo lived and Beatrice’s place uptown—and part nostalgia. On the rare occasion when the elder Plumbs had brought all four children into the city, they had always dined at the Oyster Bar, summoning plates of oysters with exotic names—Chincoteague, Emerald Cove, Pemaquid—and steaming bowls of oyster stew. The Plumb siblings loved the bustle of the dining room (where they never sat) and the ordered efficiency of the sprawling, no-reservations needed, sit-down counter (where they always sat). They loved the dramatically vaulted ceilings covered in ivory Gustavino tiles and the strings of white lights that managed to make the space feel both lushly romantic and slightly antiseptic.

  Melody had arrived early to intercept her brothers and sister before they found seats at the counter. She’d made the bold move of reserving them a table in the dining room. She was sick of the counter; it was hard for a group of four to talk when sitting in a row unless they got an end spot, which rarely happened. They needed to talk today, and she’d always wanted to eat in the dining room, sitting around a table, like civilized New Yorkers would. But Leo was late and the maître d’ would only seat a complete party. They’d ended up at the counter fending off the waiter with orders of shrimp cocktail and Coke.

  “We could have just said we were three and then pulled up a chair when Leo comes,” Jack said. “If he comes.”

  “He’ll be here,” Bea said.

  “You’ve spoken to him?” Jack asked.

  “No, but he’ll be here.”

  Melody was glumly opening another pack of oyster crackers. The maître d’ had snapped her head off when she’d asked if he’d save them a corner table. “Madam,” he’d said, sourly, “please enjoy yourself at the counter seats.”

  “Have you spoken to him?” Jack asked Melody.

  “Me?” Melody said, surprised. “No. Leo never calls me.”

  “I got an e-mail from him at work on Friday,” Bea said. “But since he’s not here yet, maybe we should talk about what to say when he does get here.”

  The three of them squirmed on their stools a bit, eyed one another warily.

  “Well,” Melody said. “I—”

  “Go on,” Bea said.

  “I think we should, obviously, make sure he’s okay.” Melody spoke haltingly; she was unaccustomed to going first. Jack looked dubious. Bea smiled encouragingly. Melody sat up a little straighter. “I think we inquire after his health. Find out where he’s staying. Offer our support.”

  Bea was nodding along to everything Melody said. “Agreed,” Bea said.

  “And then?” Jack said, pointedly.

  “And then I guess we ask about The Nest,” Melody said. “I don’t know. How would you like to start?”

  “I’d like to hand him an invoice and ask him when he’s paying it,” Jack said.

  Bea swiveled on her stool to face Jack. “Are you guys in some kind of financial trouble? Is Walker not working or something?”

  Jack let out an exasperated puff. “Walker is working. Walker is always working. I would like to offer Walker the opportunity to not work for a bit. Eventually. As in next year, which was our plan and has been our plan forever—that Walker could cut back and we’d spend more time in the country …” Jack trailed off. He was not comfortable talking to his sisters about any of this. He wanted to get Leo alone and make his pitch for payback priority without the other two interfering.

  “I’m worried, too, you know,” Melody said. “Soon we’ll be paying college tuition. You can’t imagine what it costs now. And the house—”

  “What about the house?” Bea asked.

  Melody didn’t want to talk about her house, about Walter’s completely insane and unacceptable idea about her house. “It’s expensive!” she said.

  Bea waved at the waiter and gestured for drink refills. “I get that this stinks for all of us,” she said, “but I also know Leo. If we go on the offensive today—” She shrugged and looked back and forth at Melody and Jack. “You know I’m right. He’ll just avoid us.”

  “He can’t avoid us forever,” Jack said.

  “What are we going to do?” Bea said. “Stake him out? Garnish his nonexistent wages? Beg?”

  “I think Bea’s right,” Melody said.

  “Since when has being nice to Leo worked?” Jack said. “Since when has anything successfully forced Leo to not put Leo first?”

  “People change,” Bea said, opening up another pack of oyster crackers.

  “More often, people stay exactly the same.”

  “I still don’t understand why he didn’t fight Victoria on the apartment and everything else,” Melody said. “Why he didn’t try harder to recover something.”

  “You don’t?” Bea had a flash of that night in the ER, Leo’s face, his sutured chin, the whispers and moans on the other side of the curtain, the sobbing parents in the hallway, the mother quietly keening and fingering a rosary. “I do,” she said. “You would, too, if you’d been there.”

  Melody became very invested in fishing a wedge of lemon from her soft drink and not thinking about the waitress. They’d been out of town the weekend of the wedding and had missed the entire mess. Jack had missed it, too; he never attended family functions. Melody needed to keep her energy focused on where it mattered: her daughters, her husband, her home.

  “Oh, please,” Jack said. “That’s hardly the whole story. Something else is going on.” He was creating tiny origami-like folds on one corner of the paper placemat. “This is Leo we’re talking about. He’s got money hidden away somewhere. I know it.”

  “What do you mean you know it?” Melody said. “You have proof?”

  “No, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. I know it in my bones. Think about it. Since when has Leo been afraid of a fight?”

  “Bea? What do you think?” Melody said.

  “I don’t know,” Bea said, but the same thought had occurred to her. “How would that even work?
”

  “Oh, there are ways,” Jack said. “It’s surprisingly easy.”

  The waiter was circling them now, annoyed. They’d decimated countless packs of oyster crackers, and empty cellophane wrappers and crumbs littered the space in front of them. Bea started gathering the crumbs into a small pile and brushing them onto a bread and butter plate.

  “He’s not coming,” Jack said.

  Bea checked her phone. “He’s just on Leo time.”

  Then, as if on cue, Bea saw Melody sit up a little straighter and raise her left hand and nervously fluff her too-blonde bangs. A tentative smile lifted the lower half of her face. Jack straightened, too. His jaw slid forward the way it did when he was feeling defensive, but then he stood and gave a beckoning wave and before Bea could turn around, she felt a hand on her shoulder, its familiar heft and quiet preferential squeeze, and her heart did a tiny two-step, a little jig of relief, and she turned and looked up and there he was: Leo.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The day Leo landed on Stephanie’s stoop, she immediately put him to work moving firewood from the half cord piled in her backyard to a smaller area on the deck off her kitchen and under a plastic tarp, in case the storm turned out to be as nasty as the weather report was predicting. As Leo stacked wood, his phone buzzed. It was his slip of paper calling back and, lo and behold, the voice on the other end was an old, familiar dealer, Rico. They exchanged quick pleasantries and hurriedly arranged to meet at their usual spot—in Rico’s car parked off Central Park West, near Strawberry Fields, three days hence, immediately before the family lunch. Nothing major, a little weed to relax; maybe some Vicodin. Maybe he wouldn’t even go. Maybe he’d try to stay clearheaded for a few more weeks, see what that was like. Leo liked options. Stephanie stuck her head out the door and asked him to bring some wood into the living room. As he moved through the parlor floor, he admired what she’d done to the house, how she’d preserved everything old but also made it feel modern, entirely her own.

  Stephanie’d had the foresight to buy at the end of Giuliani’s reign as mayor, only weeks after 9/11 during what would turn out to be the tiniest of real-estate dips. When she moved to the block on the wrong side of Flatbush Avenue, the non–Park Slope side, everyone—including Leo—thought she was crazy. One of the houses on the corner was occupied by a thriving drug business. Her house had ugly metal gates on the front and back windows. The door off the kitchen, leading to an unused and rotting deck, had been cemented shut with concrete blocks. But the day she looked at the building, she noticed city workers planting cherry trees along her side of the street, which she knew signaled an active neighborhood association. There was a decent garden floor rental beneath the owner’s triplex. And then there was the sheer size of the place—she could fit three of her Upper West Side studios into the first floor. As she wandered the neighborhood that day, she counted three couples with strollers. Her agency was thriving, and she’d always lived frugally, saving as much as she could. She offered the asking price.

  “When did you get such good taste,” Leo asked her. “Where’s all that crap from IKEA I had to help you put together.”

  “You aren’t the only one who grew up and started making money, Leo. I haven’t had that IKEA furniture for years.” She walked into the living room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, happy to admire her house along with him. She loved her house; it was her baby.

  “Italianate, right?” Leo said, examining the ornate marble mantelpiece. The center medallion of the mantel was a carving of a young girl. Marble curls of hair fell around her face, her nose was long and straight, her gaze direct, her lips full. He ran his thumb over the mouth, feeling the hard edge of a tiny chip at the center of the lower lip; the imperfection made the young woman’s mouth both damaged and oddly alluring.

  “Isn’t she perfect?” Stephanie said. “Most mantels I’ve seen have carved fruit or flowers. I’ve never seen another face. I like to imagine she meant something to the person who built this house. Maybe she was a daughter, a wife.”

  “She reminds me of someone.”

  “Me, too. I can’t ever think of who.”

  “She has nice tits.”

  “Don’t be gross.” Stephanie knew Leo was provoking her.

  “Sorry.” He moved over to the fire and threw more wood onto the flames, watching it flare as he agitated the embers with an iron poker. “She has a lovely décolletage. Better?”

  “Stop staring at defenseless Lillian’s breasts.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’ve given her a name,” Leo said, shaking his head. “Please tell me someone else named her Lillian.”

  “I named her Lillian. Sometimes we chat. Don’t touch her breasts.”

  “Truly, I’m not that hard up.” He sat on one of the sofas flanking the hearth, scanning the room for signs of a male presence. “No more Cravat?”

  Stephanie couldn’t help smiling a little. Cravat was Leo’s nickname for one of her post-Leo boyfriends, a guy who’d lived with her once and briefly and had made the unfortunate choice one evening of wearing a velvet jacket and a silk cravat to a book party. “He hasn’t lived here in years.”

  “Not enough room for all his smoking jackets?”

  She shook her head. “Do I really still have to defend one bad wardrobe choice from years ago?”

  “I also recall a summertime straw fedora.”

  “You always did have great recall for anything that made you feel superior.”

  “What can I say? I’m not a hat and cravat guy.”

  “Turns out we have that in common.”

  Leo removed his damp shoes and put them close to the hearth to dry a little. He put his feet up on the coffee table. She sat down opposite him. “You always knew how to pick them,” Leo said.

  “I had some great picks.”

  “Like who?” Leo said, encouraged by what could have been a slightly flirtatious turn in her tone.

  “Will Peck.”

  “The firefighter?”

  “Yes, the firefighter. That guy was great. Easy.”

  Leo was genuinely stunned. He’d met the firefighter once, remembered him as being disturbingly good-looking and fit. An ex-marine or something equally stalwart. “Setting aside physical strength, which I will cede to the marine—”

  “Don’t be such a snob. Will’s an intellectual, a Renaissance man.”

  “A Renaissance man?” Leo couldn’t keep the mockery from his tone.

  “Yes. He traveled. He read. He cooked. He made things.”

  “What? He whittled? No, no, I forgot, we’re in Brooklyn. He knitted? Did he knit you that sweater?”

  “Hardly,” Stephanie said. “This sweater is Italian cashmere.” She pointed to a custom bookcase lining the opposite wall, one Leo had admired earlier for its graceful economy. “He built that.”

  “Okay. I give,” he said. “It’s a nice bookcase.”

  “It’s a fantastic bookcase.”

  “So why isn’t he here if he’s so great?”

  “Probably because his wife hasn’t kicked him out of his apartment yet.”

  “Right,” Leo said. He deserved that one. He couldn’t stop looking at the bookcase, which was, he had to admit, pretty fantastic.

  “And he wanted other things.” Stephanie was quiet for a minute, thinking about what good company Will was and how she hadn’t been able, ultimately, to make him happy. She still ran into him sometimes with his new wife. She didn’t think they had kids, yet. She looked up and thought: Leo!

  And then, Careful.

  The storm outside was intensifying. The streets were quiet, devoid of pedestrians and traffic. The whole city seemed to be huddling against the weather. The fire cracked and hissed and warmed the room. Leo started to relax for the first time in weeks, for the first time since the accident, really. He missed Stephanie, the ease between them, her solid and comforting presence. Sitting across from him, in the light of the fire, she blazed with health and well-being and good hu
mor.

  “I can’t believe you sold your business,” he said.

  “I can’t believe what a hypocrite you are.”

  “I’m not a hypocrite, I speak from experience. I never should have sold out.”

  “You’re just saying that now. I remember those days. You were thrilled by that fat check. Also, I’m not selling out. I was acquired. My life is just going to get a lot easier. I can’t wait.”

  “I’m telling you,” Leo said. “That was the start of the end for me.”

  Stephanie shrugged and took a clementine from a bowl on the table, started peeling it. “You could have stayed. Nathan wanted you to stay.” Nathan Chowdhury had been Leo’s business partner at SpeakEasyMedia. He’d worked behind the scenes, running the money side of things, and had stayed after the acquisition; now he was CFO for the entire conglomerate. As far as Stephanie was concerned, the beginning of the end for Leo wasn’t selling SpeakEasy, it was acquiring Victoria and all that came after—namely, nothing.

  She still remembered the day he’d told her he was planning to sell, the day she’d visited him at work during a period when they were trying—and nearly managing—to be “just friends.” Victoria had walked into his office. “Hey,” she’d said to Leo, lifting her eyebrows a bit, her smile even and smug. Stephanie heard it all in that one word: hey. The intimate monotone of Victoria’s low register. A kind of hey that said they’d woken up in the same bed that morning, probably could still smell each other on their hands. The hey wasn’t inquisitive or demure or apologetic; it was territorial. Stephanie had heard that hey before, coming from her very own foolishly cocksure mouth. After Leo sold SpeakEasy and married Victoria, he’d practically fallen off the face of the earth. The last thing in the world she needed from him was life—or business—advice.

  “You should have called me,” Leo said.

  “Why would I have called you, Leo? When was the last time we spoke?” Stephanie wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of telling him that she had called. She’d left a message on his cell and someone identifying herself as Leo’s personal assistant had called back. “Assisting what exactly,” Stephanie had asked the girl, who sounded sixteen. “Does Leo have a job?”