Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney - The Nest

“Some of the schools we’ve looked at have excellent art programs,” Louisa said.

“How many have you looked at?”

“Fourteen,” Nora said.

Simone burst out laughing. “You’ve looked at fourteen colleges already?”

“It’s fun. We like it,” Louisa said. She knew she sounded defensive, and in truth she’d be happy to never look at another college again. “It’s good to be able to compare, so we know which ones are the right fit.”

Simone shook her head and snorted a little. “Wow. You all are seriously drinking the admissions Kool-Aid.” She plucked one of the drawings from the pile and handed it to Louisa; it was one of her favorites, a soft pastel of the front of the museum at dusk. She’d done it quickly and kept the rendering loose; the museum looked more like a mountain than a building, and the street beneath with its streaming cars resembled a rushing river of movement and color. “This is really beautiful,” Simone said, sounding more sincere than Louisa had ever heard her. “I know exactly what it is, it’s realistic in that way, but it’s also kind of abstract.” She turned the page vertically. “Look, it even works from this angle — the perspective, I mean.” Louisa was surprised and pleased to see she was right. Simone handed the drawing back to Louisa. “This is tight. Frame it. You should do more like that one. And you should really look at Pratt and Parsons. RISD, too. I’ll think of some more places for your list.”

LOUISA CHECKED HER WATCH.It was late and she had to find Simone and Nora who always seemed to lose track of time. They’d agreed to meet in the Hall of Pacific Peoples, which appeared to be empty except for a French family gathered around the fiberglass replica of an Easter Island head that loomed over one end of the room. As Louisa approached, they asked her to take their picture with one of their phones and thanked her profusely when she showed them a shot where everyone was smiling, eyes open. She decided to take a quick look at the Margaret Mead display, which she loved. As she headed toward the glass cases, she passed by a small dark corridor and then backed up, embarrassed, because she’d interrupted a couple in an intimate embrace, only to register before she turned around that one of the couple was wearing red Swedish perforated clogs just like hers. And Nora’s.

Louisa felt her neck and face become feverish. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t move. Nora was leaning against the wall and her shirt was unbuttoned to the waist. Simone’s hands were moving under the shirt. Nora’s eyes were closed, her arms limp at her sides. Louisa could see Simone’s hand moving up toward Nora’s white utilitarian bra. “Please,” Louisa heard Nora say and then watched as Simone’s thumb stroked Nora’s nipple through the worn cotton. Both women groaned. Louisa turned and ran.

Corporal Vinnie Massaro knew that the kids who came into his father’s pizza place called him Robocop. Whatever. One of these days he was going to reach out and grab one of them with the claw at the end of his terrifyingly complicated prosthetic arm, probably the chubby redhead; he’d wipe the smirk off that kid’s face. Maybe he’d grab him with his good arm, his flesh-and-blood arm, and let the kid dangle a few inches off the ground while he stroked his fat, freckled cheek with one steel finger, making him cry and beg for mercy, apologizing through heaving sobs. Vinnie could see the bubbles of snot now.

Stop.

Rewind.

This was not the type of imaginary scenario Vinnie was supposed to indulge, it was not positive or affirming, it was not how he’d been instructed to manage his anger . Stop and rewind was one of the techniques he was supposed to employ, according to his anger therapist, who shouldn’t be confused with his physical therapist or his prosthetic therapist or the occupational therapist who had been the one to suggest anger management when Vinnie used the metal pincers of his brand-new government-financed limb to eviscerate a toy duck into a million bits of foam the day he couldn’t manage to lift and lower the yellow duckie even once.

Vinnie took a deep breath. Closed his eyes. Rewind. Rewind. Rewind. He pictured himself walking over to the table of kids and laughing along with them, showing them his arm, genially explaining how sophisticated the technology was, how certain of his nerve endings had been surgically regenerated so that he could actually control the artificial limb with his brain. I guess I am Robocop, he’d say, part man, part robot .

Wow, the kids would say. Can we touch it? Sure, Vinnie would reply, then laugh and cuff one of them lightly on the shoulder (with the real arm). Go ahead, he’d say, touch it. It’s as good as my old arm. It doesn’t get hot or cold or cut or bruised. It’s better than the old arm!

Better, that is, unless you were Amy, Vinnie’s ex-fiancée, in which case the new arm was definitely not better than the old arm. If you were Amy, you’d pretend to be fine with the new arm, plaster a grim smile on your face, spout platitudes like “It’s what’s on the inside that counts” until the day when Vinnie, finally starting to feel at ease, casually put his arm around her waist and she flinched. Vinnie didn’t feel the flinch, of course ( Hey, kids! The new arm doesn’t feel betrayal! ), but he saw it; he wasn’t blind. Worse, because he’d unthinkingly touched her with the robot arm, he didn’t even get the pleasure of feeling his fingers sink a little into the soft ribbon of flesh above her hips that he loved so much, didn’t get to feel anything before he saw her recoil and then look at him, petrified and—

Stop. Rewind.

In his mind he went back to talking to the kids at the table and imagined how even the redhead would stop snickering. How they’d all be impressed when he picked up the tiny, plastic, greasy saltshaker. Not the bigger cardboard container of garlic salt, whose mere presence he found offensive. Don’t get him started on how the Mexicans in the neighborhood covered their perfectly seasoned pizza with the garlic salt and sometimes even hot sauce that they’d take out of their pockets in little travel bottles, as if his grandfather, whose recipe Vinnie and his father, Vito, still followed, hadn’t learned to make tomato sauce in Naples where they fucking invented tomato sauce.

Stop.

He’d pick up the real saltshaker and daintily shake a few grains into his fleshy palm, throwing them over his left shoulder to thwart the devil like his nonna taught him. The kids would applaud.

Yeah, Vinnie would say, winding up his demonstration with something positive and forward looking, trying to avoid bitter and self-loathing. I’m one of the lucky ones, he’d say, winking at them like he was a goddamn movie star.

HERE WAS THE THING:Vinnie was one of the lucky ones and he knew it. He could have lost more than one limb. He could be dead. When the IED exploded, he could have been walking on the left side of the path instead of the right like his buddy Justin who was alive but not. Traumatic brain injury they called it, instead of what it was, fucking retarded. Justin, back home in Virginia sitting and drooling in front of a television set all day, every day, bathed by his mother, spoon-fed by his father, wheeled out onto the porch for a little sun and fresh air so the neighbors could peer out their windows and feel blessed, shake their heads and say, There but for the grace of God . Justin, carried to bed by his brother every night, only to wake up the next day and start the whole depressing regimen all over again until he finally did kick it and was out of his misery for good. Justin, who had been five measly days away from completing his tour and going home — whole.