The Nest Part 19

"If Leo hasn't been around for weeks, how have you been meeting with Leo?"

Jack equivocated, but that only made Walker a.s.sume he was covering up an indiscretion, an affair. Jack had no choice but to explain, and as he watched the color drain from Walker's face, he almost wished he'd made up some kind of flirtation to confess instead.

Walker had slowly removed his ap.r.o.n and folded it into a neat square. "What you are doing is not only against the law, it's completely unethical," Walker said, practically spitting out every syllable.

"I know how it sounds," Jack said.

"Don't," Walker said. "Please. Please do not try to justify what you're doing right now."

"But if you could see this guy," Jack said, "you might understand. He's a complete wreck about having that thing in his house. He needs to get rid of it. I'm doing him a favor."

"Do you even hear yourself?"

"Walker, he lost his wife when the towers fell."

"What does that even mean?" Walker was shouting now. "I'm sorry about his wife, but how on earth does that justify what you're doing? Aiding and abetting a black-market art sale." Walker was pacing now and he stopped and slammed his fist on the counter. Jack was scared. This was worse than he expected. "When the towers fell? Jesus Christ. What else, Jack, what else? If you don't help, the terrorists win? These colors don't run? Never forget? Am I ignoring any other pat jingoistic sentiments that you've previously reviled but might now summon to defend your abhorrent greed?"

"It's not greed. It's, it's-"

"It's what?"

The last thing Jack wanted to do at that moment was confess the home equity scheme, but he didn't see how he couldn't. If he waited, it would just be worse. "There's something else," he said.

Walker listened to Jack without saying a word. When Jack was finished, Walker walked to their bedroom and closed the door behind him. All their communication since then had been through terse e-mails. Jack learned from Arthur that Walker had put the summer property on the market. He sent Walker a series of imploring e-mails begging to talk, however briefly. They all disappeared into the great abyss of Walker's fury and silence.

WALKER HAD SURPRISED HIMSELF. It wasn't like he didn't know Jack; he did. He knew exactly what Jack was-and was not-capable of. It wasn't as if Jack hadn't done dumb things over the years and tried to hide them. (G.o.d, where to begin with the dumb s.h.i.+t Jack had done over the years-always failing, always, he was terrible about covering his tracks.) Walker realized that he'd tacitly agreed to subsidize Jack's failing efforts years ago. He pretended optimism every time Jack had a new trick up his sleeve, quietly paying off lines of credit that never materialized into revenue because that was what you did when you loved someone, when you were building a life together. Your strengths compensated for their weaknesses. You became the grounding leverage to their impulses, ego to their id. You accommodated. And if Walker got impatient, if he sometimes wished things were a little more balanced, he would just imagine his life without Jack and recalibrate, because he couldn't imagine life without Jack.

But something inside him had snapped the night of Melody's birthday. He was genuinely horrified when the story came pouring out of Jack about the illegal sale of the Rodin. It was illegal! Whatever stupid things Jack had done over the years, breaking the law was a first (he a.s.sumed, he hoped). If he'd gone ahead with the ridiculous scheme and gotten caught, Walker couldn't even bear to imagine what they'd be facing and not just personally-for him the repercussions would be professional. It was beyond imagining.

As he'd stood in their kitchen that night, watching Jack try to explain himself and toggle between evasive and indignant, Walker's years of resigned tolerance evaporated. In the coming weeks, he would spend a lot of time trying to unpack that moment, not understanding himself how years of commitment and love and tolerance could just vanish. But they did. As he stood and watched Jack, he realized that for more than twenty years he had parented his partner. And on the heels of that debilitating thought, a brief flash of insight that leveled him: The reason they'd never had a child, something Walker had dearly wanted but had never been able to persuade Jack to want, was because Jack was the child-and Walker had let him be the child, enabled him. His husband was his forty-four-year-old petulant, needy, responsibility-avoiding son, and now it was too late for other children, and with that realization Walker was undone.

He thought he'd come to peace with the child decision years ago; it didn't bother him that much anymore, just the occasional twinge. But seeing Melody's daughters-so lovely, so sweet-had set something off and then when Stephanie said she was pregnant, he was overwhelmed by such a sudden and unexpected melancholy that he had to leave the room to breathe. Then the confessions, forcing Walker to stop ignoring Jack's careless, greedy heart. It was as if on the night of Melody's birthday a yawning creva.s.se had opened beneath him and he couldn't clamber up the side to safety. Every day, all day, he felt a kind of vertigo, as if there were nothing holding him up, just a dangerous looming beneath, a valley of regret and waste.

The night before he moved out, he panicked. What if he was ascribing grief from his own decisions to Jack's behavior? What if he was being unfair? What if he owed both of them another chance? He walked into the apartment after work if not entirely willing to reconsider a separation, at least willing to have a conversation. Jack was in the bedroom with the door partially closed, talking on the phone. He was arguing with someone. He was insisting he could find another "buyer," encouraging the person on the other end to reconsider. He hadn't, as he'd e-mailed Walker repeatedly, called off the sale of the statue. He was still trying to make it happen.

That was that.

Walker would take whatever proceeds he could get from the house on Long Island and buy his own place. He'd help negotiate Jack's line of credit. He supposed they'd have to get divorced, but he was in no hurry to start legal proceedings. He'd probably end up paying for all of that, too.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.

The night of her nonbirthday dinner when she'd found Nora and Louisa in Jack's bedroom and asked them what was wrong and why Louisa was crying, the night she wouldn't let up until Nora finally blurted that they'd seen Leo in the park in a compromising position and then they both (in an effort, Melody now realized, to deflect from what would come out days later, the missing SAT cla.s.ses; Simone) pointed to the wedding photo of Jack and Walker, Melody still believed the evening could be salvaged. Absurdly, she continued to believe it the whole time Jack and Bea were interrogating Nora and Louisa about the day they'd seen Leo in the park, and she'd even held out hope while Stephanie was disgorging the contents of her stomach in the corner of the living room and then the news of Leo's disappearance. It wasn't until Jack and Walker started fighting in the kitchen, hushed voices quickly giving way to shouting, that Melody finally realized dinner was never going to be eaten, the cake never cut, the pretty limoncello never poured.

She'd drained her champagne gla.s.s, removed her dressy sandals because her feet were killing her, and wondered if it would be rude to sneak into the kitchen and grab the remaining champagne from the ice bucket. "Come on, birthday girl," Walt had said to Melody. "Put on your coat and let's get pizza."

In the following weeks, Melody stewed and nursed her disappointment like it was a tiny ember that couldn't die because she was carrying fire for the whole tribe. Then the phone rang one Sat.u.r.day, the SAT place asking if she was willing to fill out an online survey explaining why Nora and Louisa had dropped the program. Had there been a problem with the tutor? Because they'd received other complaints.

It was Walt who finally stepped in and calmed everyone down. It was Walt who negotiated a refund for the tutoring. It was Walt who Nora found in his office one late night when she went to apologize for lying about the SAT cla.s.ses and admitted, eyes apprehensive, smile blinding, that she liked a girl. It was Walt who Louisa and Nora approached together to tell him they didn't care about the college list; they wanted to look at the state schools.

"I'll take a year off," Louisa told him. "I would love to take art cla.s.ses and live here with you guys."

"I can take a year off, too," Nora said. "We can work and save money."

It was Walt who treated each of them with equanimity and grace and pure unadulterated love. Who enveloped them with his comforting arms and said about everything, "Please stop worrying. This is not your problem. We love you so much. Everything will be fine." It was Walt, finally, who put the house back on the market and found them a clean and s.p.a.cious short-term rental. It was Walt who became the General.

The day they accepted an offer on the house, he hustled everyone out for Chinese food.

"To celebrate," Melody said, bitterly.

"No," Walt said, "to eat."

Sitting in a roomy corner booth, Melody was trying to be calm, civil. She was on her second beer and the alcohol was going to her head. The food arrived and it looked wrong. All wrong. The relentless glistening brown of the platter of chicken and cashews offended her. The pink-tinged pork (why was it fluorescent pink?) scattered in the greasy fried rice nauseated her. The steamed dumplings that looked like wrinkled water-soaked fingers made her want to scream. Walt's idle chatter about their new bedrooms and shorter commute infuriated her. (He didn't seem to realize that the apartment being closer to the school was not something to brag about.) "Aren't you hungry?" Walt asked, pointing to an untouched egg roll on her plate. She looked down at the egg roll. It looked fine, plump and crispy. She remembered how much she'd loved egg rolls as a little girl until the night she'd grabbed one and dunked it in the neon-orange duck sauce and took an enormous bite and just as she started to chew Leo had leaned over and said, Do you know what they put in those to make them so good? Dead dog.

It took years for her to believe that he'd been kidding and try an egg roll again. Leo always ruined everything.

"I'm not hungry," Melody said, pus.h.i.+ng her plate away. "You can have this."

"Do you want to order something else? Is something wrong?" Walt asked.

"Is something wrong?" Melody said. She was holding a fortune cookie in her fist and gripped it so hard it shattered and pieces flew across the table. "Yes. Something's wrong. A million things are wrong. In case you haven't noticed, Walter, our entire world has recently turned to s.h.i.+t."

Something hard flashed across his face, an almost subliminal message like the words you were supposed to see spelled out in the ice cubes of liquor ads, something that in this case might say, You've gone too far.

"Excuse us," Walt said to Nora and Louisa. Melody sat and watched Walt stand. "Can I speak with you, please?" he said. Melody looked at Nora and Louisa, sitting wide-eyed, and finally Walt took Melody by her upper arm and half guided, half pulled her to the back of the restaurant, near the restrooms.

"Enough," Walt said.

"What are you doing? Why are you manhandling me!"

"I'm tired of you insisting on being miserable. Nothing here is 'going to s.h.i.+t' to use your charming phrase, including our children who might take your outlook a tiny bit personally. Enough. Get back to the table and apologize to Nora and be the person you've always been for them."

"I wasn't talking about Nora," Melody said. Walt walked away in disgust. She was stunned. He'd never spoken to her in that tone or touched her in any way that wasn't purely affectionate. She stepped into the restroom to compose herself. How dare he! She hadn't been talking about Nora! (Okay, maybe she had been talking about Nora. A little. G.o.d forgive her.) She bent over and washed her face and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked horrible because she was horrible. How had she been so wrong about everything and everyone? Not realizing Nora was gay and not knowing how to talk to her about it and, by extension, about anything; not noticing the girls' deception; not understanding Leo was a liar and a thief. Not being the type of mother who would sacrifice a house for her daughters' college tuition-not willingly, anyway, not lovingly.

She didn't know who she was anymore. She didn't know how to be the person she'd always been. Besides, that person had been a bit of a chump, hadn't she? She walked back to the table where everyone was silently chewing, watching her approach with, she ruefully noted, dread. She sat and picked up her egg roll. She tried to say, I'm sorry, but she couldn't speak. She took a bite and thought, dead dog, and spit out the food in her napkin.

Without a word, she grabbed her purse and went and sat alone in the car. Through the large restaurant window, she could see Walt and Nora and Louisa. They were eating, but not talking. All of them silently pa.s.sing platters and chewing while looking down at their plates. She tried to imagine she'd gone somewhere, just disappeared without a trace, and this was their life now. A husband without a wife, daughters without a mother. The tableau was so unbalanced and incomplete and sad.

Walt said something and the girls shook their heads. They each took a little more food from the big platter in the center. They kept looking over at the other side of the room, away from the window, all of them. She wondered if someone they knew was sitting over there or if they needed the waitress for drink refills or take-out cartons. The staff at this place had a habit of disappearing when you needed something. Nora probably wanted more fortune cookies. Walt leaned across the table and took one hand of each daughter. He said something to them. She squinted and leaned forward, as if she might be able to read his lips. She wondered what he was saying. The girls were looking at him and nodding. Then smiling. Then they all turned and looked across the room again and she realized what they were doing; they were looking toward the door. They were looking for her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.

It was a Tuesday, which meant Jack opened the shop a little early after having been closed on Sundays and Mondays. Tuesdays were the days that most of the decorators made their rounds because the stores weren't full of weekend amateurs or tourists, but the morning had been slow. So what else was new? Jack was sitting at a small desk in the back of the shop. He'd been making a few calls, writing e-mails. The front door opened and the little bell rang announcing someone's arrival. Jack stood and couldn't quite make out the person in the door; the sun was s.h.i.+ning through the transom and hitting him square in the eyes.

"Jack?"

"Yes." He squinted and moved out of the light and let his eyes adjust. "Melody?"

"Hi," she said, a little meekly. "I brought you some lunch."

"SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT," Jack said. "You've brought me these delightful sandwiches and cookies and even an overpriced bottle of sparkling water because you want my advice on having a lesbian daughter?"

Melody sighed and picked some kind of dark wilted lettuce off her sandwich. Why was it so hard to find just a plain turkey sandwich? "What is this stuff?" she said, sniffing it. "Arugula. Ugh. Whatever happened to good old iceberg lettuce?" She put the sandwich down and looked at Jack. "I don't want advice exactly . . . I just . . . I don't know what I want, to be honest. I guess I'm a little scared."

"Of having a gay child?"

"No! Of being a c.r.a.ppy parent."

"Because she's a lesbian?"

"I'm not trying to be an a.s.shole, Jack. I've never cared that you were gay. You know that. None of us did. You were the one who didn't invite anyone to your wedding, which is a shame because we all would have liked being there. It might have been nice for your nieces, too, to see their two gay uncles marry."

"Well, now they have a front seat for the groundbreaking divorce."

Melody put her sandwich down. "Seriously?"

"I'm afraid so."

"But why? There's no chance of putting things back together? What happened?"

"I did a very dumb thing. Can we talk about something else?"

"Sure." They were sitting at the counter at the front of the shop, next to the jewelry display. "This is nice," Melody said, picking up a red leather box with a vintage watch inside.

"Yes, it is nice. It's the watch I gave Walker as a wedding gift."

"He gave it back?"

"Actually, he sold it back to the person I bought it from who alerted me and I reacquired it."

"I'm sorry. That sounds upsetting."

"It was. Very. Especially since he sold the watch to buy combs for my long hair and without knowing what he had done I sold my hair to buy a leather case for this watch."

Melody smiled at him and put the watch back on the counter. "We're selling our house." She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. She really didn't want to cry again in front of Jack.

"Our house is on the market, too."

"They say it's picking up, the market," Melody said, mouthing Walt's words.

"f.u.c.k the market," Jack said.

"Yeah." They both sat chewing their turkey sandwiches for a few minutes, avoiding looking at each other. Then Melody said, "Remember those friends you had in high school?"

"G.o.d, is this going to be a lunch of examination and remembrances? Because I'm not in the mood."

"No. I have a point."

"Which friends?"

"All those boys."

"Again, I'll need you to be more specific."

"All those boys that summer. The ones from the pool club. Remember? You'd bring them home and hang out in back under the trees."

Jack's eyes lit up. He did remember. The summer before he left for college, he'd brazenly brought home a series of beautiful boys from the family beach club, all of whom worked at the restaurant, clearing tables and refilling water gla.s.ses. (The coveted waitstaff jobs in the dining room were doled out to the collegiate sons and daughters of the members.h.i.+p who pocketed the tip money they didn't really need to fuel their alcohol or drug habits-or both.) Even then, Melody knew there was something different about how Jack and his friends would pull their chaise longues to the far end of the yard and slather each other's backs with Hawaiian Tropic, misting themselves occasionally with her mother's little plant atomizer, the pretty bra.s.s one meant for the African violets on the sill of the summer porch. Melody would try to find an excuse to wander over whenever she could, offering gla.s.ses of lemonade or Fudgsicles from the freezer. The boys would stop laughing and talking as she made her way across the lawn, squinting to see what she had in her hands.

"Want one?" she'd ask. She always brought an extra for herself, hoping to be invited to join them. But Jack always grabbed whatever she had and shooed her away.

"I remember very well," Jack said to Melody. "The good old days under the pine trees. When life was so much simpler and merry and gay."

"They were gay, right."

"Not all of them. Some of them. Enough."

"Why didn't they like me?"

"What?"

"They never liked me, those gay boys." Melody was trying to keep her voice light, casual. "I was always trying to hang around and you all were always trying to get me to go away."

"You were a little girl."

"So? I brought you guys stuff. I brought you drinks and ice cream and all I wanted was to maybe play cards or listen to you talk or anything. But you and your friends never liked me. So I was wondering why. If it was something specific."

Jack sat back and crossed his arms, grinning at Melody like she was telling a particularly excellent joke. He started to laugh, but her expression became so raw, so Melody-walking-wounded that he stopped. "Mel," he said, putting a hand over hers. "They didn't hate you. You were adorable, stumbling over the gra.s.s in your saggy two-piece bathing suit, carrying a pitcher of warm lemonade or melting Popsicles that tasted like freezer burn. You were adorable."

Melody stared down at her half-eaten sandwich. She couldn't look at Jack. She was mortified now that she'd brought the whole thing up and mortified to hear his take on her pilgrimages across the gra.s.s and particularly mortified that hearing him say "you were adorable" made her so happy.

He continued and his voice lost its usual sardonic edge. "Whatever happened-under the pines-it wasn't about you or liking you or not liking you. That's just crazy. I was seventeen. I didn't want to have you around because I had a twenty-four-hour erection. I didn't want my little sister there."

"Gross."