Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney - The Nest

“We’re following the terms,” Francie said.

“Your mother is right about that,” George said. “Leo can refuse his share, but we can’t refuse to give it to him.”

“ Un- believable,” Jack said.

Melody wanted to speak up, but she was stuck on how to address her mother. Her older siblings had started calling Francie by her first name in their teens, but she’d never been able to do it and something about saying “Mom” in front of Jack and Bea embarrassed her. Also, she was a little scared of her mother. Her mother was a little mean. For years, the Plumbs had told one another that their mother was just a mean drunk. If she would just stop drinking! they’d say, She’d be fine! Shortly before Leonard died, she developed some out-of-the-blue alcohol intolerance and did stop drinking. Cold turkey. (Years later, they would realize Francie’s sudden sobriety had to do with Harold, the conservative, teetotaling businessman and local politician she swiftly married after their father died.) They eagerly awaited her transformation only to discover that they already knew her true nature: She was just a little mean.

“Here’s the thing,” Melody said, clearing her throat and waving a little in Francie’s direction to get her attention. “We’ve been counting on the money and have made plans and—” Melody hesitated. Francie sighed and clanged her spoon around her coffee cup as if she were stirring in sugar or cream. She let the spoon drop and rattle a little on the saucer.

“Yes?” Francie said, gesturing for Melody to wind up. “You’ve made plans and—”

Melody froze, unsure of what to say next.

“This is a blow,” Jack said. “This is a financial blow on top of several financial hits over the past few years. Is it unreasonable to expect you — as Leo’s parent and given your means — to absorb some of this financial loss?”

Melody was nodding as Jack spoke and trying to gauge her mother’s reaction. There was a part of her, a tiny, contracted part of her, that thought maybe she could get her mother to help with college tuition.

“Leo’s parent?” Francie said, nearly looking amused. “Leo is forty-six. And you’re not the only one who has taken a financial hit over the past few years. Not that any of you bothered to inquire after us.”

“Why?” Bea asked. “Are you and Harold okay?”

Francie had folded her hands in front of her and was looking down at the table. She started to speak and then stopped. Bea and Melody and Jack looked at one another nervously. “Harold and I are fine,” she finally said.

“Well, then—” Jack started, but Francie put up a hand.

“We will be fine, but most of Harold’s money is tied up in commercial real estate, which is a soft market right now. Obviously.”

“And the money Dad left for you?”

“It’s long gone. We used it to shore up Harold’s business until we’re on an upswing.” Francie straightened her shoulders and raised her voice a little, like a teacher reassuring a room of students during a fire drill. “Everything will be absolutely fine when the market corrects the way it always does. In the meantime? We’ve had to cut back, too. Harold has his own children to consider. At the moment, our liquid assets are negligible, and that will be our situation for quite some time. We’ve all had to readjust our expectations and plans given the recent economy.” Francie leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, appraising her offspring. “Besides, Leo is your brother. It never occurred to me that you would not help him out of this dire situation—”

“A situation entirely of his own making,” Jack said.

Francie pointed a finger at Jack. “Your father set the conditions of the account so that I could tap into it in case of an emergency for this exact reason. This was a family emergency.”

“Which part qualifies as an emergency?” Jack said. “Leo’s years of no work and all play? His marriage to a world-class spendthrift? Crashing a Porsche he couldn’t afford because his dick was in a waitress’s fist?”

Across the table, Francie put the tips of her unsteady fingers to her eyelids, which were creased with a violet shadow making the lids look more bruised than anything else. “I don’t want to have this conversation again.” She opened her eyes and looked around the table, surprised, as always, when face-to-face with her children.

Francie knew she wouldn’t win any prizes for motherhood — she’d never aspired to any — but she hadn’t been this horrible, had she? What had Leonard wrought with the money he thought would just be a small dividend later in their lives? How had they raised children who were so impractical and yet still so entitled? Maybe it was her fault. She’d wondered that often enough, what mother hadn’t? She’d been twenty-five and married less than a year when Leo was born, and Jack and Bea had followed so quickly. She’d been overwhelmed to the point of being listless. And just when she felt she was coming back to her old self, gaining control of the situation — Leo was six, Jack four, Bea months away from three — everyone finally sleeping — and surprise! Melody. She was bereft when she found herself pregnant with Melody and for many years after, counting down the hours of the days until she could have a drink to dampen her anxiety. These days, she supposed, she’d be diagnosed with postnatal something and given a pill and maybe it would be different. Harold — solid, confident, reassuring Harold — had rescued her.

Maybe the fault was with her marriage to Leonard; their relationship had been fraught, disconnected (except for the sex, she still thought about having sex with Leonard, his unlikely voracious exuberance, her ability to be yielding and attentive in bed in a way she wasn’t anywhere else; if only they’d been a little more careful about family planning), and probably their parenting had suffered as a result, but had they really been different from anyone of their generation? She didn’t think so.

“Mom?” Francie was jolted back into the conference room by Melody’s voice, away from the pleasant memory of Leonard and the unlikely places they would couple when the children were little and everywhere and wanting her constantly. The laundry room with its locked door had been a favorite, the whirring and thumping of the washer and dryer giving them a certain auditory privacy. She still had a Pavlovian type of arousal when she smelled Clorox.

And here they were — her children. Three of them, anyway. Jack, who had emerged from the womb aloof and self-contained. He was always trying to sell Francie some inferior kind of antique for her house, something from his shop that was overvalued and overpriced. She didn’t know if he was dumb or if he just thought she was.

Beatrice had seemed like the easiest of the four, but then she wrote those stories. Francie was proud when the first one was published, ready to buy dozens of copies and show them to her friends — until she read the story with a character who was meant to be her, a mother described as “distant and casually cruel.” She’d never mentioned the story to Bea, but she still remembered bits — a woman who “viewed the world through a prism of bottomless desire; her sole fluency, disappointment.” Luckily, her friends didn’t read those kinds of magazines anyway; they read Town & Country, they read Ladies Home Journal . Bea’d always had her secrets, always. Francie wondered what was going on in that bowed head now as her hands flew with needles and yarn.

And Melody. Maybe she would slip Melody some cash, enough for some Botox or a facial or something to brighten her pallor. She was the youngest and somehow the most faded, as if the Plumb DNA had thinned with each conception, strong and robust with Leo and each child after being — a little less . She couldn’t claim to be close to Leo, but he was the least needy and, therefore, the one she thought of with the most fondness.