Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney - The Nest

“Jack’s seen Leo quite a bit,” Walker offered, amiably, placing a huge platter of chicken in the middle of the table that Melody looked at mournfully. She was losing her appetite. “Just last week, right?”

“You saw Leo last week?” Bea said.

Jack didn’t know how to respond. Every time he’d met with Tommy or one of the potential buyers for Tommy’s statue, he’d lied and told Walker he was meeting with Leo. “I, uh, I don’t know exactly when I saw him last—”

Before he could assemble some kind of sentence, the buzzer rang. Three short beats, followed by two long, just the way Leo always rang the bell. Jack’s shoulders slumped in relief. Bea stood so quickly she banged into the table and the water glasses rattled. Nora and Louisa straightened and looked at the door expectantly. Walt poured a little more olive oil on his plate for dunking bread.

“Oh, thank God,” Melody said as Walker moved to the door, wiping his hands on his apron. “He’s here.”

When Walker opened the door and Stephanie crossed the threshold, the disappointment on everyone’s face was nearly comical. Jack began blathering immediately, wanting to know where Leo was and saying something about Melody’s daughters running into Leo buying drugs the very first weekend he’d been out of rehab.

“Is he in the park now ?” Jack said, hands on hips, speaking to her as if Leo were her truant child. “Is he buying cocaine this very minute ?”

“Excuse me,” she said. “Where’s the bathroom?”

“Is Leo coming?” Bea asked.

Stephanie covered her mouth with her palm, shook her head and ran to a small wastebasket in the corner, bent over and started retching. The room quieted and everyone reluctantly listened until she was done. She picked up the small container and calmly walked down the hall to the bathroom. Rinsed out the basket. Washed her hands and put a small dab of toothpaste on her finger to freshen her mouth. All the while trying to process what Jack had just said. Leo in the park, buying drugs, the weekend of the snowstorm. She walked back into the living room where everyone was quiet and concerned looking and seated around a long table that looked like something out of a magazine. Walker must have done it.

“The table is pretty,” she said to him with a shaky smile. “Sorry about that spectacle. I usually have time to get to the bathroom.” She sat on the edge of a chair and unzipped her purse.

“Are you sick?” Bea said.

“Not exactly.” Stephanie opened a pack of sugarless spearmint gum. “Happy birthday, Melody.”

“Do you know where Leo is?” Melody asked hopefully.

“Not exactly,” Stephanie said. “That little incident in the corner is because I’m pregnant. Leo’s the father. I haven’t seen him in two weeks.” She placed a crumpled plastic gum wrapper on the table next to her and held the pack of gum out to the table. “Anybody want a piece?”

THE NIGHT HAD DEVOLVED FROM THERE.Melody hustled her daughters away but not before Stephanie got the play-by-play of them seeing Leo in the park. It was hard to fathom how he’d been doing anything else but buying drugs, flat out on his back, way uptown where he didn’t need to be, where — she remembered — he’d always gone to meet some guy named Rico, Nico, Tico, whatever. That very first weekend! The weekend she’d conceived. The weekend she had opened her door to him and asked him not to do drugs.

Stephanie was still sitting at the abandoned table next to Bea, who poured them both champagne. “No thanks,” Stephanie said, pointing to her stomach.

“Really?” Bea said. “A baby?”

“Really,” Stephanie said, not even trying to hide her pleasure. From the kitchen they could hear Walker’s uncharacteristically raised and furious voice, “If you weren’t spending that time with Leo— who were you with ?”

“What’s going on in there?” Stephanie asked.

“I’m not exactly following,” Bea said, “but it doesn’t sound good. Something about Jack lying about seeing Leo. Has Jack been out to Brooklyn?”

Stephanie thought back to the morning she’d stayed home to do a pregnancy test and how when she was standing at her upstairs window, stunned, she’d spotted Jack walking down the street. She’d hidden in the back bedroom and ignored the doorbell. “No,” she said. “I haven’t seen Jack in years.”

More raised voices from the kitchen. A slamming door.

“I guess we should probably leave,” Bea said.

“Yeah.” Stephanie wrapped the baguette she’d been gnawing on in a napkin and put it in her purse. “For the subway,” she explained, apologetically.

THE NIGHT ALL THOSE YEARS AGOthat Pilar had lectured Stephanie about the stages of grief and written them out on a napkin, she’d sat at the bar after Pilar left, moping. She’d drawn a little sad face on the napkin next to acceptance . The bartender, who’d heard it all and more than once from Stephanie, scratched out the sad face and in its place he drew a tiny red bird, wings spread, flying over the ocean, surrounded with glowing marks like one of Keith Haring’s radiant babies.

For a long time she’d kept the napkin in her purse. Then in a kitchen drawer. Then it got put away in a box somewhere and when she’d sealed that box with packaging tape she thought she was through.

Stephanie was thinking about the bird as she disembarked the subway and walked home after the birthday dinner that wasn’t. For years whenever she’d had a pang about Leo she would imagine the napkin and the little red bird packed away in a box deep in her basement. As she strolled down her street among the stately homes and warmly lighted front windows, she thought of the napkin and the meaning she’d always attached to the image: Leo flying away from her, heading straight out to the ocean, unburdened and free. She thought about how grateful she was for her life, her house — emptier now, but not for long. She thought about the small back room that she’d turn into a nursery and how it would be summer when the baby was born and her garden would be in bloom. She’d have to replace the tree that had fallen during the storm so the baby could look out and watch the seasons pass. She thought about the napkin again and realized she’d been telling herself the wrong story all these years. Leo wasn’t the red bird, she was — ecstatically darting over the church spires of Brooklyn, heading home, expectant but unburdened. Free. Her incentives had finally changed.

This time there was no tea or coffee or little butter cookies or imperious Francie (who, upon hearing that Leo had gone missing, sighed and said, “Oh, he’ll get sick of roaming and wander back. He’s a Long Islander at heart.” As if she were talking about one of her border collies). This time, it was just the three Plumb siblings and George, who wasn’t even sitting down, that’s how eager he was for the meeting to be over.

“Even if I knew something,” George was saying, hurrying to add, “and I don’t. I don’t know anything . But even if I did, Leo is my client and I probably couldn’t tell you.”

“But you don’t?” Melody said, surprising herself by hitting what sounded to her like the perfect caustic, disbelieving note. It was so perfect, she tried again. “You don’t, ” she said, drawing out the syllables a bit too much this time. Still. Not bad.

“I don’t. I swear to you, I don’t. But again, Leo is my client—”

“We all understand attorney-client privilege, George,” Jack said. “You don’t have to keep saying it.”