Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney - The Nest

The night before he moved out, he panicked. What if he was ascribing grief from his own decisions to Jack’s behavior? What if he was being unfair? What if he owed both of them another chance? He walked into the apartment after work if not entirely willing to reconsider a separation, at least willing to have a conversation. Jack was in the bedroom with the door partially closed, talking on the phone. He was arguing with someone. He was insisting he could find another “buyer,” encouraging the person on the other end to reconsider. He hadn’t, as he’d e-mailed Walker repeatedly, called off the sale of the statue. He was still trying to make it happen.

That was that.

Walker would take whatever proceeds he could get from the house on Long Island and buy his own place. He’d help negotiate Jack’s line of credit. He supposed they’d have to get divorced, but he was in no hurry to start legal proceedings. He’d probably end up paying for all of that, too.

The night of her nonbirthday dinner when she’d found Nora and Louisa in Jack’s bedroom and asked them what was wrong and why Louisa was crying, the night she wouldn’t let up until Nora finally blurted that they’d seen Leo in the park in a compromising position and then they both (in an effort, Melody now realized, to deflect from what would come out days later, the missing SAT classes; Simone) pointed to the wedding photo of Jack and Walker, Melody still believed the evening could be salvaged. Absurdly, she continued to believe it the whole time Jack and Bea were interrogating Nora and Louisa about the day they’d seen Leo in the park, and she’d even held out hope while Stephanie was disgorging the contents of her stomach in the corner of the living room and then the news of Leo’s disappearance. It wasn’t until Jack and Walker started fighting in the kitchen, hushed voices quickly giving way to shouting, that Melody finally realized dinner was never going to be eaten, the cake never cut, the pretty limoncello never poured.

She’d drained her champagne glass, removed her dressy sandals because her feet were killing her, and wondered if it would be rude to sneak into the kitchen and grab the remaining champagne from the ice bucket. “Come on, birthday girl,” Walt had said to Melody. “Put on your coat and let’s get pizza.”

In the following weeks, Melody stewed and nursed her disappointment like it was a tiny ember that couldn’t die because she was carrying fire for the whole tribe. Then the phone rang one Saturday, the SAT place asking if she was willing to fill out an online survey explaining why Nora and Louisa had dropped the program. Had there been a problem with the tutor? Because they’d received other complaints.

It was Walt who finally stepped in and calmed everyone down. It was Walt who negotiated a refund for the tutoring. It was Walt who Nora found in his office one late night when she went to apologize for lying about the SAT classes and admitted, eyes apprehensive, smile blinding, that she liked a girl. It was Walt who Louisa and Nora approached together to tell him they didn’t care about the college list; they wanted to look at the state schools.

“I’ll take a year off,” Louisa told him. “I would love to take art classes and live here with you guys.”

“I can take a year off, too,” Nora said. “We can work and save money.”

It was Walt who treated each of them with equanimity and grace and pure unadulterated love. Who enveloped them with his comforting arms and said about everything, “Please stop worrying. This is not your problem. We love you so much. Everything will be fine.” It was Walt, finally, who put the house back on the market and found them a clean and spacious short-term rental. It was Walt who became the General.

The day they accepted an offer on the house, he hustled everyone out for Chinese food.

“To celebrate, ” Melody said, bitterly.

“No,” Walt said, “to eat.”

Sitting in a roomy corner booth, Melody was trying to be calm, civil. She was on her second beer and the alcohol was going to her head. The food arrived and it looked wrong. All wrong. The relentless glistening brown of the platter of chicken and cashews offended her. The pink-tinged pork (why was it fluorescent pink ?) scattered in the greasy fried rice nauseated her. The steamed dumplings that looked like wrinkled water-soaked fingers made her want to scream. Walt’s idle chatter about their new bedrooms and shorter commute infuriated her. (He didn’t seem to realize that the apartment being closer to the school was not something to brag about.)

“Aren’t you hungry?” Walt asked, pointing to an untouched egg roll on her plate. She looked down at the egg roll. It looked fine, plump and crispy. She remembered how much she’d loved egg rolls as a little girl until the night she’d grabbed one and dunked it in the neon-orange duck sauce and took an enormous bite and just as she started to chew Leo had leaned over and said, Do you know what they put in those to make them so good? Dead dog.

It took years for her to believe that he’d been kidding and try an egg roll again. Leo always ruined everything.

“I’m not hungry,” Melody said, pushing her plate away. “You can have this.”

“Do you want to order something else? Is something wrong?” Walt asked.

“Is something wrong?” Melody said. She was holding a fortune cookie in her fist and gripped it so hard it shattered and pieces flew across the table. “Yes. Something’s wrong. A million things are wrong. In case you haven’t noticed, Walter, our entire world has recently turned to shit .”

Something hard flashed across his face, an almost subliminal message like the words you were supposed to see spelled out in the ice cubes of liquor ads, something that in this case might say, You’ve gone too far .

“Excuse us,” Walt said to Nora and Louisa. Melody sat and watched Walt stand. “Can I speak with you, please?” he said. Melody looked at Nora and Louisa, sitting wide-eyed, and finally Walt took Melody by her upper arm and half guided, half pulled her to the back of the restaurant, near the restrooms.

“Enough,” Walt said.

“What are you doing? Why are you manhandling me!”

“I’m tired of you insisting on being miserable. Nothing here is ‘going to shit’ to use your charming phrase, including our children who might take your outlook a tiny bit personally. Enough . Get back to the table and apologize to Nora and be the person you’ve always been for them.”

“I wasn’t talking about Nora,” Melody said. Walt walked away in disgust. She was stunned. He’d never spoken to her in that tone or touched her in any way that wasn’t purely affectionate. She stepped into the restroom to compose herself. How dare he! She hadn’t been talking about Nora! (Okay, maybe she had been talking about Nora. A little. God forgive her.) She bent over and washed her face and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked horrible because she was horrible. How had she been so wrong about everything and everyone? Not realizing Nora was gay and not knowing how to talk to her about it and, by extension, about anything; not noticing the girls’ deception; not understanding Leo was a liar and a thief. Not being the type of mother who would sacrifice a house for her daughters’ college tuition — not willingly, anyway, not lovingly.

She didn’t know who she was anymore. She didn’t know how to be the person she’d always been. Besides, that person had been a bit of a chump, hadn’t she? She walked back to the table where everyone was silently chewing, watching her approach with, she ruefully noted, dread. She sat and picked up her egg roll. She tried to say, I’m sorry, but she couldn’t speak. She took a bite and thought, dead dog, and spit out the food in her napkin.