Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney - The Nest

“Logic is an underrated attribute,” Francie said, continuing to address Kate. “Logic goes a long way in life, longer than lots of other things.” She turned to the other two girls and squinted a little as if bringing them into clearer focus, plucking a cocktail onion from her martini. “You’re the pretty one,” she said, pointing a gin-dampened finger at Beth who was, in fact, the prettiest girl at school; Melody had been quietly thrilled when Beth started chatting with her after French class one day, telling Melody what products to use to get her bangs to stick up higher and sharing her glitter mascara.

“And you,” Francie said, eyeing Leah, who took a step backward and clenched her fists, almost as if she knew to brace herself for Francie’s reductive assessment, “must be the lesbian.”

“Mom!”

“What’s a lesbian?” said Kate.

“Never mind,” Melody said, grabbing Leah by the arm and motioning for the other two to follow her. “She’s kidding. It’s a family joke. I’ll explain later.”

It was a kind of family joke, although not one Melody could explain. Leah was Melody’s oldest friend, a nondescript blurry kind of girl whose most noticeable feature was a persistently runny nose from year-round hay fever. Leah tended to moon a little while following Melody around school, sniffling and sneezing.

“How’s your lesbian lover?” Bea would ask Melody, referring to Leah. “You guys going steady yet?”

“Shut up,” Melody would say. She didn’t even know at first what lesbian meant. She sneaked into Leonard’s study one day to look it up in the dictionary and then had to look up homosexual and although she knew right away that the word didn’t describe her, she knew who it did describe: Jack. She pictured Jack and his friends sitting in the summer sun, lounging by the pool at the club, rubbing baby oil on each other’s shoulders. Homosexuals, she thought, slamming the book closed.

Melody had led everyone to the kitchen at the back of the first floor. There were no streamers, no balloons, no festive paper plates and matching cups or shiny cardboard letters spelling out Happy Birthday strung above the breakfast nook, but there was a cake box. Melody was hugely relieved to see that there would, at the very least, be cake.

“Where’s the party?” Kate said, staring at the kitchen sink full of dirty dishes and the table scattered with catalogs and empty grocery bags.

“The party is wherever you make it, ladies.” Francie had followed the girls to the kitchen to refill her glass, the martini shaker glistening on the butter-and-crumb-streaked counter. “Party is an attitude, not a destination.”

The girls looked at her, confused. Even though it was February, Francie marched the girls outside to the lawn beyond the patio, which was devoid of snow but still frozen and bare, and led an anemic game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. “For God’s sake,” Francie yelled, standing on the patio in a fur coat, smoking, as the girls walked gingerly forward, mittened hands stretched out in front of them, “how hard can it be to locate an enormous tree trunk?”

The Pin the Tail game was old, had been sitting in the storage area under the stairs for years. Melody frantically tried to remember what else was housed in that space overloaded with broken toys and old board games. How could she fake a party for two whole hours?

“I think you girls have the hang of it,” Francie said after bringing them back inside and handing Leah a key chain with a tiny dangling Rubik’s cube from the junk drawer as a prize for pinning her tail closest to the donkey’s ass. “I’ll check back with you in a little bit.”

Melody started sifting through the boxes under the stairs, wondering if she could salvage enough Monopoly money to keep a game going. “I have Twister,” she said to her friends. “The spinner is broken, but we can close our eyes and point to a color and play that way. It works just as well.”

“Maybe I should just call my mom,” Beth said. All the girls were still wearing their coats.

“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 buttered 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 glass on the piano — and quietly closed the pocket doors between the living room and the front hall. As she helped the girls button 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?”