Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney - The Nest

Paul would be lying if he said that he didn’t estimate — as Bea was talking — how the depth of her relief and gratitude 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 God,” 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 .

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 assembled 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 glasses 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 petite, 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 apron over his gently protruding middle. The only unsurprising presence in the room was their father, who sat at the table, reassuring 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 cocktails 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 assumed 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?”