The Nest Part 16

"I'm thirsty," said Leah.

"We could have cake?" Kate suggested. The other two girls nodded eagerly.

Melody knew that cake was the last thing to happen at a birthday party. After all the games and snacks, the birthday cake was cut and everyone grabbed their gift bag and went home. Melody did not want to cut the cake. As she stood there with the broken Twister spinner in her hand, trying not to surrender to the tears that had been threatening to spill forth with humiliating force since her mother had greeted them, the front door opened. Leo.

Leo had taken pity on Melody that day. He made huge bowls of b.u.t.tered popcorn for the girls. He went up to his room and brought back a deck of cards and taught them how to play blackjack with pennies; he played the dealer. He brought down the vinyl records he kept under lock and key in his room and let them dance and lip-synch behind his air guitar version of "Start Me Up." Just when things were looking up, Francie reappeared, ushering the girls-sweaty and breathless and all a little in love with Leo-into the living room for cake, a cake she'd clearly forgotten to order in advance. "Congratulations, Betty!" the cake said, with a little frosting stork underneath, carrying a folded diaper in its beak.

"Who's Betty?" Beth asked.

"That's another family joke," Melody said, enjoying the versatility of this new excuse, tucking it away for future use. The cake tasted delicious, though, and the girls all took huge pieces and moved to the sofa, where Francie made them sit and listen to her play Harold Arlen songs on the piano. At first it was fun and watching her mother's fingers almost dance above the keyboard, Melody thought that if the party ended right then, right after the rousing version of "If I Only Had a Brain," everything would be fine. The party would be dubbed a success the next day at school. Her reputation saved.

But then Francie started singing "Over the Rainbow" and only a few verses in she started to weep. "Mom?" Melody said, weakly.

"It's just so, so sad," Francie said. She turned to them. "The studios killed Judy Garland. They killed her. That voice and what a tragedy. They made her and then they killed her." The girls were sitting quietly, nervously giggling. "Uppers to work all day. Downers to sleep at night. She was just a kid." Francie stood now, facing them, her robe gaping a little in front. "I wanted to be an actress. I could have gone to Hollywood."

"You could have been a real contender, Fran," Leo said, leaning against the doorjamb, amused.

"Why didn't you?" Beth said, brightening a little. She wanted to go to Hollywood, talked about it all the time. Her parents had taken her on a family trip to Universal Studios the previous summer and she'd loved every minute of it, talked about the studio tour like she'd flown to Los Angeles for a screen test.

"My father wouldn't let me." Francie sat on a large enormous club chair across from the girls. "He thought it was unseemly. He insisted I go to college, stay home. Then I met Leonard and got knocked up and that was that."

"Mom!"

Francie scowled at Melody and waved her hand like she was waving away tiny gnats. "Oh, relax, Emily Post." She closed her eyes and put her feet up on an ottoman and started to nod off. From across the room, Leo shrugged at Melody. The shrug was more resigned than sympathetic. See? the shrug said. Remember this the next time you want to invite friends over.

When Beth's mother arrived to take the girls home, she surveyed the scene-the baby-shower cake, Francie lightly snoring in a robe, the empty martini gla.s.s on the piano-and quietly closed the pocket doors between the living room and the front hall. As she helped the girls b.u.t.ton their coats and locate mittens, Melody heard Beth tell her mother, "She said I was the pretty one. Why did she say Leah was a lesbian?"

Melody had been scared to show up at school the next day, worried about what her friends would say about her weepy, inebriated, odd mother. But all they talked about was the extremely cool birthday party where Leo Plumb, a high school senior, had sung and danced with them and taught them how to gamble.

"Hey, Betty!" the three girls would say-with affection, not mockery-when they saw Melody in the hall. She'd never been happier than those weeks and months at the end of sixth grade.

So Melody had been stunned-and thrilled-when Jack and Walker offered to host a fortieth birthday dinner in her honor. Every year she told Walt that all she wanted was a quiet birthday celebration at home with her family and she was always, always disappointed when he believed her.

"I really think Leo is going to come through tonight," she said, flipping down the sun visor and applying lipstick in the tiny mirror. "I think he's going to surprise everyone with good news."

"That certainly would be a surprise."

"I don't know why, but something about birthdays brings out the best in Leo. Really."

"If you say so."

"I do!" Melody turned the radio up and hummed along with a song she sort of knew. Leo's e-mail had been vague, true, but it was also encouraging. She'd nearly memorized the long paragraph, something about an exciting project for Nathan that was coming together "very quickly," how he'd left town to meet with some investors and would be out of touch but back with a progress report in time for her birthday dinner. "I'm very optimistic," he'd written.

Walter raised his voice a little to be heard above the radio. "What I really think," he said, "is the sooner everyone lets go of Leo as their personal savior, the better off everyone will be. Including you. Including us."

Melody turned the radio volume higher. She didn't want him to ruin her hopeful mood. He'd never believed in The Nest and sometimes she thought he was almost enjoying being right. She believed Leo was going to come through tonight. On her birthday! She'd spent the entire day as if she were preparing for a date. Bought a new dress (on the secret card, that's how sure she felt), got her nails done, had dug out the pretty dangly (faux) diamond earrings Walt had bought for her after the girls were born. She checked herself in the mirror again. Maybe the earrings were too much. She shouldn't have used so much hair stuff. She started playing with her bangs. Melody always felt wrong around her siblings, just a little off. She could see them a.s.sessing her clothing, judging Walt. (How dare they! They wouldn't know a kind, good, capable person if-well, if their sister married one.) She shook her head. Tonight was going to be different. It was.

Walter gripped the steering wheel a little harder, biting back his words, dreading the ride home when Melody would be a basket case. He'd give her a day or two to recover from whatever went down with (without) Leo tonight and then the house was going back on the market. He felt sorry thinking about what were surely the difficult weeks ahead, but he was also eager to get the necessary changes under way. They would get through it. Melody would rise to the occasion. She always did. He'd always been able to count on her.

LOUISA WAITED IMPATIENTLY at the front door of the SAT offices on West Sixty-Eighth Street, eyeing the threatening clouds that were moving in swiftly ahead of a cold front bringing weather that was more typical for this time of year. It was going to rain and Louisa wanted to get to Jack's house before it started. She knew Nora was upstairs saying good-bye to Simone for the week. She stood in the foyer of the building that smelled like bleach and rancid mop and tried not to think about what her sister was doing with Simone that very minute.

THREE FLOORS DIRECTLY ABOVE LOUISA, Nora was wis.h.i.+ng she could skip her mother's birthday dinner and spend the rest of the night in the bathroom stall with Simone who was kneeling on the closed toilet lid so none of the other girls in the bathroom knew they were both in there. Simone had a finger over Nora's lips and Nora lifted the hem of Simone's skirt and found skin where she expected to find underwear.

"Oh," Nora said, and Simone mouthed, Shhh, as they gripped each other and swayed to a tinny bossa nova beat that rose from someone's open window up through the back alley and into the tiny stall.

It was so simple, but ever since Simone's easy incantation-you don't have to be anyone's mirror-Nora had felt released, giddy. She loved her family-her father, her sister, her mother; they were so dear to her and she would never hurt them or intentionally disappoint them-but Simone was right. Nora had to stop worrying about what everyone else needed and think about herself. And what she needed was to come clean to Louisa because she hated having a secret from her sister. It made her feel like she was doing something wrong. And she wasn't.

When Nora met Louisa at the front door, she'd run so fast down three flights of stairs that she was dizzy, dry mouthed. When Louisa saw her flushed face, swollen lips, she frowned. They both swallowed hard. "We're going to be late," Louisa said, pus.h.i.+ng through the swinging doors and stepping out into the rain. "Mom is going to freak."

WALKER HAD CANCELED his Sat.u.r.day afternoon clients and left work early to cook. He was standing in his and Jack's tiny but artfully designed kitchen, ebulliently pounding chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s between two slices of parchment paper. He'd planned a spring-themed dinner and even though it wasn't quite spring, the universe had cooperated; it was a beautiful evening, temperate enough to open the windows in the living room and enjoy the faint earthy scent of the softening ground.

Walker couldn't remember the last time they'd entertained Jack's family. It had been years. Melody's birthday dinner had been Walker's idea. He'd been itching to get them all together in one room and try to make a tiny inroad into facilitating some kind of agreement about the infernal sum of money they still insisted on calling The Nest, which drove Walker mad. Aside from being infantile, he couldn't fathom how a group of adults could use that term in apparent earnestness and never even casually contemplate the twisted metaphor of the thing, and how it related to their dysfunctional behavior as individuals and a group. Just one of many things about the Plumb family he'd stopped trying to understand.

But Walker did understand conflict resolution, and as an attorney who had to mediate many a divorce, many a broken business partners.h.i.+p, he also understood how money-and the ent.i.tlement that often accompanied just the idea of money-could warp relations.h.i.+ps and memories and decisions. He'd seen it happening with Jack and his family for years, and enough was enough.

He thought Jack was probably right; Leo probably had money somewhere, but chasing Leo was a loser's game. Leo, Walker thought, was a loser. They all mythologized him like he was some kind of brilliant withholding G.o.d who just needed the right sacrifice to let loose his abundant blessings. As far as Walker could tell, Leo was just someone who'd been relatively bold at the right time and had lucked out very young. SpeakEasyMedia was a formula that made him wealthy. He wasn't even rich by New York standards and what had he done since then? Nothing. Blown his wad. Become a leech.

But since Leo's accident Walker had observed an interesting dynamic: The siblings were communicating again, and although the conversations usually began with Leo and the money, something else had started to happen. They were making casual forays into one another's lives. He'd heard Jack and Melody on the phone countless times talking about things other than Leo, other than The Nest. Bea had always been the most amiable and accessible of the bunch; he thought she would welcome some kind of coming together. If Leo could just agree to something tonight, anything, some kind of payment plan, installments, just throw everyone a bone so they could stop gnawing the worn and brittle cartilage of The Nest-maybe they could move on, try to forge relations.h.i.+ps with one another that weren't about that blasted inheritance.

Walker excelled at mediation, delivering people from their own self-inflicted misery. Families were the hardest, he knew, but he also knew how to try to bring adults past their own wounds and help them find their way, if not to affection at least to accommodation. It didn't always happen, but it could. There was no reason the Plumbs couldn't start to accommodate one another and work toward some semblance of family, no matter how tentative or messy.

Walker also suspected that Jack was in some kind of financial pickle. So what else was new? He'd tell Walker in his own time and they'd figure it out. Tonight's plan: Bring them together over food. Stay focused on Melody's birthday at first. A bit of bubbly, a gorgeous chicken scaloppini, the coconut cake he remembered Melody saying she liked once. Then a gentle discussion about kindness. Accommodation. A different and st.u.r.dier kind of nest.

AS JACK LIT THE VOTIVES lining the windowsill, which would lend a warm glow to the whole room, softening its ordinary, postwar architecture, parquet flooring, and flimsy plasterboard, he was also surrept.i.tiously e-mailing his contact for selling the Rodin. The initial interest in the sculpture had been impressive, but Jack had quickly narrowed the field to two buyers and one had dropped out when figures started being discussed. The remaining individual, someone he'd never met but had heard about, was a collector from Saudi Arabia who lived full time in London and part time in New York. He was a frequent buyer of black-market pieces with questionable-or infamous-provenance. What any of these guys did with art they essentially had to keep secret from the rest of the world Jack didn't know. Not his problem or concern.

When Jack first offered Tommy O'Toole his a.s.sistance getting rid of the Rodin, Tommy was under the mistaken impression that Jack could find a way to return the statue to its original owners. "That would be extremely unwise," Jack told him. "You will wind up arrested and on the front page of the paper." He explained about the person he had in mind, a foreigner of vague business pursuits. "We're going to go in high on the price, but even after negotiating, this will be a lot of money," Jack told Tommy.

"I don't care about the money," Tommy said. "I just want it to end up in a safe place, taken care of."

"Of course," Jack said soothingly. n.o.body ever admitted it was about the money. Grandma's engagement ring, Aunt Gertie's emerald bracelet, the Chippendale table that had been pa.s.sed down for generations-it was never about the money. Except that it was always, completely and totally, about the money.

And the money, the vast sum, was causing Jack concern. They were going to have to find a way to handle the amount without attracting the wrong kind of attention. He was going to get Leo alone tonight and ask for specific advice, which would satisfy him on two fronts: how to handle his and Tommy's windfall, and determining exactly how familiar Leo was with concealing funds.

Jack could hear Walker in the kitchen, whistling off-key along with the cla.s.sical music station. Schubert something. Walker was always happiest when he was entertaining. Jack sent a little plea out to the universe. If he could sell the statue, pay off the loan, he would be a changed man. He wouldn't even care about The Nest. If he could save the summerhouse, he would forgive Leo about the accident. Tabula rasa and so on. He would be a better person, a kinder and more responsible person, a person of integrity and honesty-the type of person Walker deserved.

BEA WAS STANDING CLUELESSLY in front of the office espresso machine, a ridiculously elaborate Italian contraption that required setting pressure gauges and estimating water flow in relation to espresso grind and examining steam thermometers clipped to milk pitchers. Bea was a tea drinker but every once in a while she wanted, needed, coffee. Every time she approached the gleaming machine she wound up timidly turning a few k.n.o.bs, peering at its undercarriage, and then just walking downstairs to the corner deli. But today she didn't feel like going back outside.

She was in the office on a Sat.u.r.day trying to catch up, and she was exhausted from a series of insomniac nights and near constant worry about Leo who had been completely incommunicado since she delivered her new story to him. She hadn't been able to get back in touch with Stephanie either to ask about the strange e-mail from Leo about being "off the grid" that sounded like complete Leo bulls.h.i.+t or to find out if they were going to show up for Melody's birthday dinner as planned. She didn't even know what to hope for: Leo or no Leo; furious Leo or indifferent Leo-given his silence, enthusiastic Leo didn't seem remotely possible. If Leo didn't show, all h.e.l.l was going to break loose.

"How much did this dumb machine cost, anyway?" Bea asked Paul. Technically, office expenses were her domain, but she barely paid attention.

"I paid for it," Paul said. "It was my gift to the office. Would you like me to make you something?"

"Yes, please." Bea sat on the couch opposite the coffee machine. It was low to the ground, and the cus.h.i.+ons were stiff and covered with a nubby fabric. She was wearing one of her favorite outfits in an attempt to lift her mood. A bright red jumper with knee-high patent-leather boots. The back of her legs were exposed and the sofa was scratchy.

"Why can't we have a comfy sofa?" she said. She knew she sounded like an ent.i.tled and petulant teenager but didn't care. "Something you can sink into and maybe read and hang out."

"Because this is an office and I want people doing the opposite of getting comfy and hanging out." Paul liked to see everyone sitting upright at their desks, good posture, intently looking at computers and pecking away at their keyboards in the center of their otherwise orderly desks.

She checked the e-mail on her phone again as the espresso machine started to thump and hiss like a steam engine. If Leo was truly gone, Stephanie either had helped him and was covering it up or Leo was duping her, too. Bea moved from the sofa and sat at the office communal table. Lowered her head onto her crossed arms and felt the cool of the wood against her cheek. She felt like crying. She felt like screaming. She just wanted to be able to hear Leo's voice and try to figure out what was really going on. She wanted to know what Leo thought about the story. She wanted her lucky leather bag back.

PAUL WOULD CREDIT his nearly perfect cappuccino (the foam could have been a little brighter but the richness of the coffee itself was superb) for working its magic on Bea, loosening her tongue, as he'd been patiently waiting for her to do. She'd taken two long sips and smiled, feebly but genuinely, and said, "This is exactly what I needed."

He asked if something was wrong and it all came out in one breathless stream. She thought Leo was on a bender. Or that he'd skipped town. She told him about the accident, about the night in the hospital and how she'd become complicit in silencing the poor girl who had gone to work one night and ended up minus a foot. She told him about her story and how she'd given it to Leo and then he had, essentially, vanished. She told him about the Tuck nightmares. She finished pale and depleted. The quick pulse at the corner of her eye was beating as if there were tiny wings trapped beneath the skin.

Paul watched her as she spoke, enjoying-perhaps more than he should have-the slow realization that he had the thing she was looking for. The natty leather folder had been sitting in his office for days, ever since he'd seen Leo saunter away from the waterfront bench with some woman who wasn't Stephanie. He a.s.sumed the leather bag belonged to one of them and had put it in his office for safekeeping. He'd left a message for Leo saying he had it, but Bea's recent report explained why Leo wasn't responding to-or maybe even getting-his messages.

Paul would be lying if he said that he didn't estimate-as Bea was talking-how the depth of her relief and grat.i.tude toward him would increase in direct proportion to her visible distress. He could have stopped her, but he let her go on. He wasn't even listening to what she said as much as watching her lips move, eyeing the pink flush that crept out the top of her white blouse and worked its way up her neck, watching her furiously fight off tears and try to steady her chin.

"What do you think?" she finally said. He realized she had stopped talking and was staring at him staring at her.

"Think?" he managed.

"Where do you think he is? What he's doing?"

"I don't know where Leo is or what he's doing," Paul said, walking over to his office and coming back with Bea's satchel. "But is this what you're talking about?" He handed it to her and she gasped.

"Oh my G.o.d," she said. "How do you have this? Did Leo leave this for you?"

Had Leo left it for him? "Maybe?" Paul said to Bea.

Bea was loosening the straps and she pulled out the stack of pages. "They're marked up," she said. "He marked them up."

"Leo?"

"Yes, this is Leo's writing." Quickly flipping through, she saw scribbling on almost every page in the blue pencil Leo favored and in his tiny crimped hand and in their shared and peculiar vernacular (use, use with caution, do not use).

"He read it," she said, not really believing it yet. The pages in her hands, marked with Leo's edits, had to be his way of giving her-if not approval-permission. Because she knew Leo. If he wanted the story to go away, he never would have taken the time to sit and make it better. He would have burned the pages in Stephanie's hearth. He would have deposited the entire bundle into a trash can on the street. He would have dumped the whole thing into the river. If she knew anything, she knew that. But he hadn't. She looked for a longer note on the last page that might offer some kind of explanation, a clearer benediction, but there wasn't one.

She flipped back to the beginning. "What?" Paul said, seeing the look on her face, the wonder and relief. It was right there, right on the first page where Leo had crossed out the name she'd chosen for her character, "Marcus," and in its place wrote "Archie" and in the left-hand margin, underlined twice: use.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

Nora and Louisa were not used to being the center of attention at a family gathering and they liked it. When they arrived at Jack and Walker's place, their parents and Bea were already there. As they entered the living room, folding their rickety black street umbrellas, all motion and conversation stopped. The girls, at sixteen, were mesmerizing to the a.s.sembled crowd in a way they hadn't been when they were shy little girls who buried their faces in their father's meaty thigh at the occasional family event.

Louisa was the spitting image of Melody as a teenager, so much so that Jack was staring at her uneasily, atavistically braced for the familiar visage from the past to crumple and weep over some imagined slight. Instead, Louisa's version of Melody's face smiled at him, curious and warm and sweet. He felt like running his hand over her hair to feel the shape of her skull. Unnerved, he squeezed her upper arm a little too hard and she winced.

Bea hugged both girls tightly and then held them at arm's length, exclaiming over their hair, their height, their identical smattering of freckles on unidentical faces. "You are such beauties!" she kept saying, pulling them close to her and kissing them on both cheeks, making them both think of a word they'd never had occasion to use before: continental. "How have you grown so much since last summer? You're young women."

Nora and Louisa beamed with pleasure. Walker filled everyone's gla.s.ses with champagne and offered Nora and Louisa flutes of lemonade. His spirits were high and so was the color in his cheeks. Jack watched him appraising the room and the table, eyes darting, making sure everything was perfectly in its place, before bustling back to the kitchen.

Nora and Louisa were fascinated by everything: the apartment, the table, their mother's unlikely flirtatious demeanor ("Appetizers! Plural? More than one?" Melody was nearly giddy); their uncle Jack who was a more pet.i.te, elfin version of their uncle Leo; their high-spirited aunt Beatrice who they both reticently realized was a slightly prettier version of their mother. They both instinctively gravitated toward Walker, who was wearing a chef's ap.r.o.n over his gently protruding middle. The only unsurprising presence in the room was their father, who sat at the table, rea.s.suring and solid, tearing into a piece of bread, sniffing one of the runny cheeses, and winking at his girls as if to say, This is something else, isn't it?

Walker beckoned the girls into the kitchen and they eagerly followed him. He topped off their flutes of lemonade with a generous glug of champagne. "Don't tell your mother," he said. "And I'm not keeping track of how much is in this bottle." He plunged the champagne into a sweaty copper ice bucket and headed back to the living room. Louisa and Nora drank their c.o.c.ktails quickly and made new ones, adding just enough lemonade to not have the contents look suspicious.

Out in the living room, Walker announced they'd give Stephanie and Leo ten more minutes and then dinner would be served. Walker had lined the table with platters of bread and cheese, tiny ceramic bowls with olives. He'd scattered lemons and twigs of rosemary down the center. Melody's admiration was worth the extra effort.

"It looks just like Italy," she said to Walker.

"And when have you been to Italy?" Jack asked.

Walker threw Jack a look that said don't. Melody was too pleased to even notice. "Oh, I haven't, but I watch the Travel Channel all the time. Right, Walt? Don't I watch the Travel Channel nonstop? They just did a piece on Sorrento, all the lemons, so pretty. Limoncello."

"Don't say another word." Walker ran to the kitchen and returned seconds later waving a bright bottle of unopened limoncello in his hand. "For dessert!" Melody actually jumped up and down a little and clapped her hands. Jack reluctantly recognized that this was nice: his family admiring Walker's exquisite taste. Wait until dinner, they were all going to be blown away.

On the other side of the river, lightning was illuminating the New Jersey skyline. Everyone moved to the window to watch the storm make its way across the Hudson. Nora slipped away, unnoticed, down the hall. She couldn't have named the impulse that made her want to see Jack and Walker's bedroom, she just wanted to see it. The door was closed and she gently knocked even though she knew everyone was still in the living room. She opened the door, crossed the threshold, and quickly closed the door behind her. She felt against the wall for the light switch, flipped the light on.

She didn't know what she expected to see, but it wasn't the room she found herself standing in-an entirely ordinary bedroom housing what she a.s.sumed was an antique bed and rocker, a long dresser with lots of framed photos on top. The bed looked small to Nora, especially for Walker who was-well, he was substantial. The bed was neatly made. There were no clothes scattered around like her parents' room. It was just a tidy bedroom.

She walked over to the dresser and started looking at the pictures. The biggest one, the one in the center, was of Jack and Walker. She picked it up to take a closer look. They were both wearing tuxedos and boutonnieres and both holding their left hands up to the camera and showing off wedding bands. As she was putting the picture back, the door swung open and Louisa came in. "There you are!" she said. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Nora said. "Looking."

"Snooping," Louisa said.

"Look." Nora pointed to the photo. "They got married."

Louisa walked over and stared at the photo. "Wow," she said. "I wonder if Mom knows."

"It would kind of suck if she knew and didn't go."

"Maybe she doesn't even know. Maybe she wasn't invited."

"That would kind of suck, too."

"Yeah," Louisa said. She stood and took in the bedroom as Nora had been doing minutes before. "I didn't expect it to look like this," Louisa said.

"What does that mean?" Nora said. Even though she knew exactly what Louisa meant; she'd had the same reaction. She'd expected the room to be more-something.

"I just mean, it's so-" Louisa was trying not to use the word normal, she knew that wasn't right, but it was all she could think of. "It's so plain," she finally said.

Nora and Louisa stood quietly. They were both a little light-headed from the champagne on an empty stomach. Outside the window, a sharp crack of lightning. They jumped. A deep roll of thunder. They looked at each other, the air stormy between them, charged. Louisa sat on the bed. Her head was starting to throb. She suddenly wanted to go home.

"I have to talk to you about something," Nora said. She hadn't been planning on having this conversation now, but the champagne loosened her tongue.

"I know," Louisa said. "I saw. You and Simone. At the museum one day."

"You did?" Nora was embarra.s.sed, trying to think of what Louisa might have seen. G.o.d, what if she had been at the IMAX.

"Are you-?" Louisa said. "Are you-?"