The Nest

by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

  As she turned onto her block, she could see Tommy O’Toole sitting out on their stoop. Oh, good. He’d insist on carrying her bags up the stairs and into the kitchen and she’d be happy to let him. She waved; she wouldn’t mind some help carrying the bags the rest of the way. But he wasn’t facing her; he was looking at a couple walking from the other direction. The woman was on crutches and—shit—it had to be Matilda. And the person walking next to her must be Vinnie. They were early. Oh, well, she’d put them to work chopping vegetables. Maybe Vinnie could carry some bags, too.

  CHAPTER FORTY–ONE

  Even though it was a little chilly to be outside, Tommy and Frank Sinatra were sitting on the stoop, which they both loved to do. Sinatra took up his usual position, on the third step from the bottom, snout high, bulging eyes alert, tail happily thumping the cement riser behind him.

  Next to him, Tommy put his head in his hands and prayed. It had been a while since he prayed to God or anyone. When he was younger, he used to believe he could pray to his missing friends and relatives. He felt envious of his old self, the one who thought someone was listening. At first he’d stopped believing out of laziness and then out of anger and now it was more an apathetic meander. He wouldn’t have called himself an atheist; being an atheist required more belief than he had, a kind of determined certainty about mystery that he didn’t think was feasible or possible, admirable or even desirable. Who could deny a guiding hand of some kind, a design to the world? Calling it science didn’t explain it all to him either. He wasn’t a believer and he wasn’t a nonbeliever. He wasn’t something and he wasn’t nothing. He was a survivor.

  For a long time after Ronnie’s death, he’d prayed to her. Not just those endless months on the pile when he was desperate and lost, but for years afterward. He was embarrassed to think about this, but he’d prayed to the statue, too. It had become a shrine in his house until one day he saw himself, caught his reflection in a window, sitting on a folding chair, talking to the statue and he got scared that he was losing his mind. That’s when he put the thing behind doors in a china cabinet.

  At first he’d been terrified by Jack Plumb’s offer to sell the statue, but once he got used to the idea, Tommy was filled with relief. He’d had some sleepless nights imagining what would happen if he died suddenly—hit by a car, massive heart attack—and his daughters found the statue in the closet. Eventually, they would figure out what it was and what he’d done. Reshaping the story of their hero father would be bad enough, but if they knew he’d stolen from the pile and hidden the contraband, it would change their relationship to the story of their mother, too. He knew, God how he knew, that if your memories of someone couldn’t carry you from grief to recovery, the loss would be that much more incontrovertible. He’d seen firsthand how his children started writing the mythology of Ronnie mere hours after she was dead. If they knew about the statue, her death would become tainted by his actions, and he wouldn’t put his kids through another loss surrounding their mother. He couldn’t leave them with a stolen statue that would become the thing in the closet they had to hide. He’d dump it in the river first.

  He knew there would be complications to the sale. How to move it, where to put the money, but Jack Plumb reassured him he would help with, as he put it, all the particulars. He was full service. But before they’d even gotten into the particulars, Jack had let slip that the London buyer was from Saudi Arabia.

  “An Arab?” Tommy said to Jack, clenching his fists, not believing what he was hearing.

  “A Londoner,” Jack said, clearing his throat. “Everyone in the Middle East isn’t a terrorist, for heaven’s sake. He’s a finance guy. Very successful businessman and a very successful collector. Highly respected.”

  Tommy was enraged. “But he came from oil money, right? And don’t tell me he didn’t because you’ll be lying.”

  “I have no idea,” Jack said. “That’s irrelevant. You want to sell on the black market you don’t get to run a credit check and an employment history. He’s rich and he wants the statue and he’s discreet. Bingo.”

  Tommy had practically carried Jack out the front door. Not even giving him the courtesy of a lecture about why he—someone who’d lost a wife and countless friends and fellow firefighters on 9/11—couldn’t possibly take Middle Eastern oil money in exchange for a ground zero artifact from anyone, anytime, ever.

  He was relieved by the turn of events because it snapped him out of his funk. He’d been crazy to think selling the statue was possible, or ethical. He’d meant it when he’d told Jack that it wasn’t about money. All he cared about was where the statue ended up because he needed to honor Ronnie’s memory. But if he exposed himself—accidentally or on purpose—he’d harm her memory for his kids. And that was the never-ending loop he’d been caught in for weeks. He yawned. He hadn’t been sleeping. How to get the statue somewhere safe? For days Jack had called him hourly wanting to reopen negotiations until Tommy finally threatened to call his friends in the police department and turn them both in. “I’ll do it, asshole,” he told Jack. “Don’t think I won’t.” At least there’d be some honor in being honest.

  Sinatra lifted his head and whined a little. “What do you say, Mr. S.?” He rubbed a few knuckles across Sinatra’s head, the place where his skin was a little slack and the fur soft. The dog panted with pleasure. From down the street he could see Stephanie waving at him. She probably wanted help with her bags. Sinatra started barking at something in the opposite direction.

  “Shush, boy,” Tommy said, looking to see what was agitating the dog. It was a couple. The woman was on crutches and there was something uneven about her companion’s profile. They were walking slowly and looking at house numbers. As they got closer, Tommy couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A tall muscular man with one arm and a long-haired woman with a missing foot walking together down his street. It was his statue come to life. He stood and Sinatra’s barks turned to a menacing growl.

  “Shhhh.” He picked the dog up and tucked him under one arm to keep him calm. He really needed to get some sleep. He blinked and shook his head a little, looked again but his vision hadn’t cleared. The statue was still there and it was coming toward him. He felt light-headed and looked up at the sky. He didn’t know why, what he expected to see up there. He thought for a minute he might faint. What was happening couldn’t be happening. He could feel his breaths becoming shallow and then a constriction around his chest, like someone was tightening a belt. The dog scrambled out of his arms and down the stoop and turned to face Tommy, barking in earnest now, scared.

  Oh, please, Tommy thought, not now. Not the heart attack he’d feared, not while that statue was still in the house. He put a hand on the iron railing to try to steady himself. If the statue was in his house, how was it also walking down the street? Stephanie was yelling his name from one direction. From the other direction, the statue-come-to-life was getting closer. Sweat streamed down his back, and his palms were clammy. Sinatra was barking even harder. Holy Jesus, he was dying. He was having a stroke or a heart attack or both. He tried to take a deep breath, but couldn’t.

  “Quiet,” he said to Sinatra, but he wasn’t sure anything came out. His throat was tight and dry.

  “Excuse me.” Now the statue was in front of him, talking, wanting to climb the stoop.

  Tommy tried to speak but his lips wouldn’t work. They were coming for him, that’s what he was thinking even though he didn’t really understand what he meant. Coming for him? Who?

  “Hey.” The man stepped closer and reached out with his one arm. “You okay, buddy? You don’t look so good.”

  “What’s wrong, baby, why are you so upset?” Tommy thought the woman was talking to him, but she’d leaned her crutches against the stoop and was trying to soothe Sinatra who was barking at her outstretched hand. Tommy stared at her missing foot and then back at the man with one arm. He couldn’t tell in that moment if he was hallucinating or if he was dying, but whichever it was he knew it wa
sn’t good. Ronnie, he thought. Help.

  “Call 911,” Tommy heard the man say. “Do you need a hand there, mister? What’s your name?” Vinnie’s voice sounded like it was coming through a long tunnel or across a static-filled connection. He couldn’t make out the words, but he heard the man say something about 9/11. Fuck. And right before Tommy pitched forward, he looked at them both beseechingly, his hand at his heart, his mouth a tight slash of pain.

  “What?” Matilda said, her voice thick with concern and fear. “What is it, Papi?”

  “Forgive me,” Tommy said. And then he fell, landing at Matilda’s missing foot.

  CHAPTER FORTY–TWO

  Tomorrow was Mother’s Day and Melody would wake up and spend the last day in her beloved house. Monday morning, the moving truck would come and load all the boxes and wrap their furniture in quilted moving blankets and they would get in their car and follow the van to their temporary condo on the other side of the tracks.

  And then the bulldozers would arrive.

  Walt had kept that piece of information from her until he couldn’t any longer: The person who bought their house was a developer who planned to raze the entire thing and build a spanking new monstrosity. She moved through the rooms now with a fresh sorrow; soon they wouldn’t even exist.

  Today, they were waiting for a salvage firm to show up. The developer was not only going to demolish her house, but he was going to strip it first—the wood, molding, the oak banister, her painstakingly cared for heart pine living room floor—and sell it all to an architectural salvage firm. Walt tried to get Melody to leave, but she wouldn’t. She wanted to look the asshole in the eye who was dismantling beauty and reselling it at a profit. She and Nora and Louisa were in the living room packing up the last of the books when the doorbell rang. When Walt opened the door, she thought she was seeing things. It was Jack.

  She wanted to pummel him at first. She was outraged. He was the salvager? He was going to rip out the soul of her home and sell it? It took a few minutes for Jack and Walter to calm her down and help her understand: Jack was salvaging what he could for her.

  “I don’t get it,” she said.

  “I know people,” Jack said, gesturing to the crew with him. “These guys will take what you want and store it.”

  “For what?”

  “To use again, Mom,” Nora said. She and Louisa were expectant, excited. They’d known about the plan for weeks as Jack and Walt conspired to figure out the details. “If you build your own house someday. Or to put in one that’s already built. You can keep the best things and reuse them.”

  “Keep them where?”

  “I have a storage unit,” Jack said. “A place for backup inventory. If it turns out you don’t want the stuff, we can always sell it.”

  “You guys did this for me?” Melody was dazed and grateful.

  “We can only keep what you really want,” Jack said. He started organizing everyone. They needed to make a list, figure out what was worth storing. Choose the most important things.

  “Why don’t you guys start upstairs,” Melody said. “I’ll make us some tea. The kettle isn’t packed yet.”

  Nora and Louisa ran up the stairs with Walt. “How about the stained-glass window in the hall?” she could hear Louisa say. “Mom loves that window.” Jack followed her into the kitchen. He looked around the room.

  “I don’t think there’s much in here to keep,” he said. “These cabinets are from the ’70s.”

  “Jack.” Melody stood at the sink, filling a kettle with water. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said. “This is—”

  “It’s what I do. It’s easy. But we’re paying this crew by the hour so we should move quickly.”

  “It won’t take long,” she said. She put the kettle on the stove, lit the gas. “What’s going on with Walker?”

  Jack shrugged. “Things are getting settled. I handed over my share of The Nest and he made up the difference to pay off my debt. We’re selling the house. He’s being generous. I won’t get half, but I’ll get enough to keep the store afloat for a bit while I figure out whether to sell it or not. He’s letting me keep the apartment.”

  “But what’s going on between you? Other than business.”

  Jack sat down at the kitchen table. Melody thought he looked thinner than usual but he seemed better than the last time she’d seen him. “How old were you when you got married?” he asked.

  “Barely twenty-two. A baby.”

  “I was twenty-four when I met Walker. Do you know I’ve never lived alone? I’m forty-four years old and I’ve never lived alone. The first few weeks Walker was gone, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d stay in the store until late, pick up some takeout, and just watch television until I fell asleep.”

  Melody looked around the kitchen. She’d spent every night for weeks dismantling their lives and wrapping it in newspaper for packing. Her nails were ragged and black with newsprint; her arms and shoulders were sore from heaving boxes around. “Sounds kind of great right now.”

  Jack looked at her and nodded. “It is kind of great. That’s my point. I miss Walker. I miss him terribly and I don’t know what’s going to happen. But for the first time ever, I’m only accountable to myself and I like it. I’m not proud of why I’m at this point, but I’m doing my best to figure it out, and I’m kind of enjoying it, parts of it anyway.”

  Melody wondered what it would be like to live alone—to come home every night and turn on the lights of a darkened house and have nobody waiting to hear about your day or eat dinner with you or argue about which show to watch or help clear the table. She wouldn’t tell Jack how sad it sounded to her. Upstairs, she could hear an electric saw.

  “I’ll be sorry if you and Walker don’t get back together,” she finally said.

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll go running and crying back to his capable meaty arms soon enough. But I doubt he’ll have me.”

  Just then, Walt and the girls came into the kitchen. “Look!” Nora said. She had a piece of woodwork in her hand. Melody recognized it immediately. It was from the upstairs hall closet, the piece of wood where she’d recorded the girls’ heights at least once a year: red for Nora; blue for Louisa. “This is the first thing I asked for,” Nora said.

  “You did?” Melody was pleased that Nora thought to take it because Louisa had always been the more sentimental of the two. “What a perfect idea.”

  “We started a list,” Walt said. “Look it over and see if you agree.” Someone above them was hammering; the kitchen light fixture swayed a little.

  Melody looked at the list. It was extensive. She couldn’t imagine all those things—floorboards, windows, banisters, molding—sitting in Jack’s storage space gathering dust. A house but not quite; bits of a building that didn’t add up to a home.

  “I don’t want to keep anything,” Melody said.

  The room went quiet. “Funny,” Walt said, laughing and then stopping when he saw that Melody was serious.

  “I want that.” Melody pointed to the piece of wood in Nora’s hand, marking the years they’d lived there and how much the girls had grown; it was covered with fingerprints and gray with grime because she’d never cleaned that bit, afraid of accidentally smearing or erasing the carefully drawn lines with dates next to them. “That’s the only thing I want.”

  Jack was watching Melody carefully. “I don’t mind storing things for you,” he said.

  “I know,” Melody said. “Let’s get anything out of here you think is worth money and sell it.”

  “Melody,” Walt said, frustrated, “I’m confused.”

  “I’m so grateful to you both for thinking of this. Please don’t think I’m not grateful. But— Let’s sell it. Use the money to fix up our new place.”

  “You’re sure?” Walt said.

  “I’m positive.” She turned to Jack. “You can sell all this and make a commission, right?”

  “If that’s what you want, yes.” He was surprised, but pleas
ed. He didn’t really have the room to keep everything he’d imagined she’d want to keep.

  “And you two are okay with this?” she asked Nora and Louisa. She felt good, lighter, in charge.

  They both nodded. “We just wanted to do something to make you feel better,” Louisa said. “We wanted to make you happy.”

  “I have what makes me happy,” she said. Melody wasn’t even sure she understood the impulse making her want to let go, but she decided not to overthink it for once. Having things from the house wasn’t the same as having the house. Given all that had happened over the past year, nothing was the same, and it was time to stop holding on for dear life. And just like that, she felt like the General again. Their family might look like they were in retreat, but she knew better. She was the General and if anything was an advance, this was it.

  CHAPTER FORTY–THREE

  It was the craziest thing. When Matilda would tell the story later, and she and Vinnie would tell the story a lot in the coming years, the story of The Kiss would be their story and after the tenth, the hundredth, the thousandth time would still be told in almost exactly the same way, always starting with the same sentence, It was the craziest thing. How they went to Brooklyn the day before Mother’s Day, and because some adjustments were being done to Vinnie’s prosthetic arm, he wasn’t wearing it, a rare occurrence. How Matilda had fought him about taking the subway because her stump was particularly painful and she wanted her crutches and was worried about being late, how they’d taken a car service and because there was no traffic had arrived absurdly early. How they’d walked around for a while, admiring the neat blocks of brownstones, the daffodils and pansies in the window boxes, the number of families out on the street pushing strollers, jogging lightly behind kids on bikes with training wheels, planting the tiny garden beds around the tree trunks. How they finally decided to go over to Stephanie’s a little early and see if she was home. How the man on the stoop had stood there and stared at them like he was seeing a ghost. How even with one arm Vinnie had caught Tommy O’Toole as he fainted, preventing him from hitting the sidewalk facedown and God only knows! Matilda would tell their wide-eyed children then, God only knows what would have happened if he’d hit his head. If your daddy hadn’t caught him? He could have been dead. Worse! His brain could have been damaged and he’d never be the same. But no! Your father reached out—with one arm—and caught him around the waist and set him down like he was no heavier than a big bag of rice. A full grown man!