The Nest Part 1

The Nest.

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney.

DEDICATION.

For my family: my parents, Roger and Theresa.

my sister, Laura; and my brothers, Richard and Tony- who all love nothing more than a good story, well told.

EPIGRAPH.

There was always this dichotomy: what to keep up, what to change.

-WILLIAM TREVOR, "THE PIANO TUNER'S WIVES"

That's how I knew this story would break my heart.

When you wrote it.

That's how I knew this story would break my heart.

-AIMEE MANN, THE FORGOTTEN ARM.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

For so generously offering their support, time, and wisdom (and sometimes letting me borrow from their lives), I owe a million thanks and nearly that many c.o.c.ktails to: Belinda Cape, Madeline Dulchin, Rory Evans, Kate Flannery, Robin Goldwa.s.ser, John Hodgman, Natasha Lehrer, Jenny McPhee, Liza Powel O'Brien, Rebecca Odes, Rachel Pastan, Amy Poehler, Amy Scheibe, Katherine Schulten (who enthusiastically read so many drafts of these pages that I began to fear for her sanity), Jill Soloway, Jen Strozier, Sarah Thyre, Janie Haddad Tompkins, and Paul Yoon. And to the late, great David Rakoff.

The Bennington Writing Seminars is an ideal place to invest two years of your life, and it was there that I found my Nest-true friends, trusted readers-Rob Faus, Erin Kasdin, Melissa Mills-d.i.c.k, Kathryn Savage, and the (sorely missed) Megan Renehan. Thanks to my workshop peers and to the faculty and staff at Bennington, especially Bret Anthony Johnston, who read the first thirty pages of what I thought was a wreck of a short story and told me it was the beginning of a novel. His enthusiasm gave me the confidence to start this book and his advice, insight, humor, patience, and friends.h.i.+p guided me to the finish.

My agent, Henry Dunow, and editor, Megan Lynch, not only made everything in these pages better but are an absolute joy to work with in every way. I don't know what village I saved in a previous life to deserve them, but it must have been huge. Thanks also to Daniel Halpern and everyone at Ecco for working so hard on my behalf, especially Eleanor Kriseman and Sonya Cheuse.

I am grateful to my parents, for reading to me and pa.s.sing along their love of books and language. I am grateful to my children, Matthew and Luke, for letting me read to them until they started staying up past my bedtime, for growing into remarkably interesting, intelligent, and entertaining people, and for filling our house with music.

Finally, and most importantly, a world of love and thanks to my husband, Mike, whose belief in me was so absolute on such flimsy evidence, that this book is my attempt to stop him from looking like a fool. As long as we're making each other laugh, all is right in the world.

PROLOGUE.

As the rest of the guests wandered the deck of the beach club under an early-evening midsummer sky, taking pinched, appraising sips of their c.o.c.ktails to gauge if the bartenders were using the top-shelf stuff and balancing tiny crab cakes on paper napkins while saying appropriate things about how they'd really lucked out with the weather because the humidity would be back tomorrow, or murmuring inappropriate things about the bride's snug satin dress, wondering if the spilling cleavage was due to bad tailoring or poor taste (a look as their own daughters might say) or an unexpected weight gain, winking and making tired jokes about exchanging toasters for diapers, Leo Plumb left his cousin's wedding with one of the waitresses.

Leo had been avoiding his wife, Victoria, who was barely speaking to him and his sister Beatrice who wouldn't stop speaking to him-rambling on and on about getting together for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. In July. Leo hadn't spent a holiday with his family in twenty years, since the mid-'90s if he was remembering correctly; he wasn't in the mood to start now.

Cranked and on the hunt for the rumored empty outdoor bar, Leo first spotted Matilda Rodriguez carrying a tray of champagne gla.s.ses. She moved through the crowd with a lambent glow-partly because the setting sun was bathing the eastern end of Long Island an indecent pink, partly because of the truly excellent cocaine wreaking havoc with Leo's synapses. The bubbles rising and falling on Matilda's tray felt like an ecstatic summons, an invitation meant just for him. Her st.u.r.dy black hair was pulled away from the wide planes of her face into a serviceable knot; she was all inky eyes and full red lips. Leo watched the elegant weave of her hips as she threaded her way through the wedding guests, the now-empty tray held high above her head like a torch. He grabbed a martini from a pa.s.sing waiter and followed her through the swinging stainless-steel doors into the kitchen.

IT WOULD SEEM TO MATILDA (nineteen, aspiring singer, diffident waitress) that one minute she'd been pa.s.sing champagne to seventy-five members of the extended Plumb family and their closest friends and the next she was barreling toward the Long Island Sound in Leo's brand-new leased Porsche, her hand down the front of his too-tight linen trousers, the fat of her thumb inexpertly working the underside of his p.e.n.i.s.

Matilda had resisted when Leo first pulled her into a side pantry, his fingers cuffing her wrists while he pelted her with questions: Who are you? Where did you come from? What else do you do? Are you a model? An actress? Do you know you're beautiful?

Matilda knew what Leo wanted; she was propositioned at these events all the time, but usually by much younger men-or ludicrously older men, ancient-with their a.r.s.enal of lame pickup lines and vaguely bigoted attempts at flattery. (She was constantly being called J. Lo in spite of looking nothing like her; her parents were Mexican, not Puerto Rican.) Even in this moneyed crowd, Leo was unreasonably handsome, a word she was quite certain she'd never employed for someone whose attention she was almost enjoying. She might think hot, she might think cute or maybe even gorgeous, but handsome? The boys she knew hadn't grown into handsome yet. Matilda found herself staring up at Leo's face trying to determine which variables added up to handsome. Like her, he had dark eyes, dark hair, a strong brow. But where his features were angular and sharp, hers were round and soft. On television he would play someone distinguished-a surgeon maybe, and she would be the terminally ill patient begging for a cure.

Through the pantry door she could hear the band-orchestra, really, there had to be at least sixteen pieces-playing the usual wedding fare. Leo grabbed her hands and pulled her into a little two-step. He sang close to her ear, above the beat, his voice pleasantly lively and rich. "Someday, when I'm awfully low, when the world is cold, I will dah-dah-dum just thinking of you, and the way you look tonight."

Matilda shook her head and laughed a little, pulled away. His attention was unnerving, but it also made something deep within her thrum. And fending off Leo in the pantry was marginally more interesting than wrapping asparagus with prosciutto in the kitchen, which was what she was supposed to be doing. When she shyly told him she wanted to be a singer, he immediately offered that he had friends at Columbia Records, friends who were always keen to discover new talent. He moved in again and if she was alarmed when he stumbled a little and seemed to need to keep a palm on the wall to maintain balance, her worry evaporated when he asked if she had a demo, something of hers they could listen to in his car.

"Because if I like it," Leo said, taking Matilda's slender fingers in his, "I'd want to get on it right away. Help you get it to the right people."

AS LEO DEFTLY MANEUVERED MATILDA past the parking valet, she glanced back at the kitchen door. Her cousin Fernando had gotten her this job, and he would be furious if he found out she'd just up and left. But Leo had said Columbia Records. He'd said, Always looking for new talent. When did she ever get opportunities like this? She would only be gone for a little bit, just long enough to make a good impression.

"Mariah was discovered by Tommy Mottola when she was a waitress," she said, half joking, half trying to justify her behavior.

"Is that right?" Leo hustled her toward his car, scanning the windows of the beach club above the parking lot. It was possible that Victoria could see him from the side terrace where everyone was gathering and quite probable she'd already noticed his absence and was stalking the grounds looking for him. Furious.

Matilda stopped at the car door and slipped off her black-canvas work shoes. She took a pair of silvery stilettos from a worn plastic shopping bag.

"You really don't need to change shoes for this," Leo said, resisting the urge to put his hands around her tiny waist right then and there in plain sight of everyone.

"But we're getting a drink, right?" Matilda said.

Had Leo said something to her about a drink? A drink was not possible. Everyone in his tiny hometown knew him, his family, his mother, his wife. He finished off his martini and threw the empty gla.s.s into the bushes. "If the lady wants a drink, we'll find the lady a drink," Leo said.

Matilda stepped into the sandals and gently slid one slender metallic strap over the swell of her left heel, then her right. She straightened, now eye level with Leo. "I hate wearing flats," she said, tugging her fitted white blouse a little lower. "They make me feel flat all over." Leo practically pushed Matilda into the front seat, out of sight, safely behind the tinted gla.s.s.

SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT OF THE CAR, Matilda was stunned to hear her tinny, nasal voice coming through the car's obscenely high-quality speakers. She sounded so different on her sister's ancient Dell. So much better.

As Leo listened, he tapped his hand against the steering wheel. His wedding ring glinted in the car's interior light. Married was most a.s.suredly against Matilda's rules. She could see Leo struggling to summon an interest in her voice, searching for something flattering to say.

"I have better recordings. I must have downloaded the wrong version," Matilda said. She could feel her ears flush with shame. Leo was staring out the window. "I better get back," she said, reaching for the door handle.

"Don't," Leo said, placing his hand on her leg. She resisted the impulse to pull away and sat up a little straighter, her mind racing. What did she have to sustain his attention? She hated waitressing, but Fernando was going to kill her for disappearing during dinner service. Leo was boldly staring at her chest. She looked down at her lap and spotted a small stain on her black trousers. She sc.r.a.ped at the spot of balsamic vinaigrette with a fingernail; she'd mixed gallons of it. Everyone inside was probably plating the mesclun and grilled shrimp now, squeezing the dressing from bottles around the edge of each plate into a pattern that was supposed to approximate waves, the kind a child would draw to indicate a sea. "I'd like to see the ocean," she said, quietly.

And then, so slowly she wasn't sure what was happening at first, Leo took her hand in his (for a foolish moment she thought he was going to kiss it, like a character in one of her mother's telenovela shows) and placed it on his lap. And she would always remember this part, how he never stopped looking at her. He didn't close his eyes or lean his head back or lunge in for a sloppy kiss or fumble with the b.u.t.tons on her blouse; he looked hard and long into her eyes. He saw her.

She could feel him respond beneath her hand and it was thrilling. As Leo held her gaze, she applied a little pressure with her fingers and the balance of power in the car abruptly s.h.i.+fted in her favor. "I thought we were going to see the ocean," she said, wanting to get out of sight of the kitchen. He grinned and put the car into reverse. She had his pants unzipped before his seat belt was fully fastened.

YOU COULDN'T BLAME LEO for the rapidity of his climax. His wife had cut him off weeks earlier, after she caught him fondling a babysitter in the back corridor of a friend's summerhouse. Driving toward the water, Leo hoped the combination of booze, cocaine, and Wellbutrin would stall his response, but when Matilda's hand tightened with resolve, he knew everything was happening too fast. He closed his eyes for a second-just a second-to collect himself, to stop the intoxicating image of her hand, her chipped blue fingernails, moving up and down. Leo never even saw the SUV barreling down Ocean Avenue, coming from the right, perpendicular to their car. Didn't realize until it was too late that the screech he heard wasn't Matilda's voice coming from the sound system, but something else entirely.

Neither of them even had time to scream.

PART ONE.

SNOWTOBER.

CHAPTER ONE.

Because the three Plumbs had agreed on the phone the previous evening that they should not drink in front of their brother Leo, they were all-unbeknownst to one another-sitting in separate bars in and around Grand Central, savoring a furtive c.o.c.ktail before lunch.

It was a strange kind of autumn afternoon. Two days earlier, a nor'easter had roared up the mid-Atlantic coast, colliding with a cold front pus.h.i.+ng east from Ohio and an arctic ma.s.s dipping down from Canada. The resulting storm had dropped a record-breaking amount of snow in some places, blanketing towns from Pennsylvania to Maine with a freakishly early winter. In the small commuter town thirty miles north of Manhattan where Melody Plumb lived, most of the trees were still shouldering their autumn foliage, and many had been destroyed or damaged by the snow and ice. The streets were littered with fallen limbs, power was still out in some towns, the mayor was talking about canceling Halloween.

In spite of the lingering cold and spotty power outages, Melody's train ride into Manhattan was uneventful. She was settled in at the lobby bar of the Hyatt Hotel on Forty-Second Street where she knew she wouldn't run into her brother or sister; she'd suggested the hotel restaurant for lunch instead of their usual gathering spot, Grand Central's Oyster Bar, and had been mocked by Jack and Beatrice, the Hyatt not landing on their list of venues deemed acceptable by some arcane criteria she had zero interest in decoding. She refused to feel inferior to those two anymore, refused to be diminished because she didn't share their veneration for everything old Manhattan.

Sitting at a table near the soaring windows on the upper level of the hotel's ma.s.sive lobby (which was, she had to admit, completely unwelcoming-too big and gray and modern, some awful kind of sculpture made of steel tubing lurked overhead, she could hear Jack's and Bea's pointed ridicule in absentia; she was relieved they weren't there), Melody ordered the least expensive gla.s.s of white wine (twelve dollars, more than she would spend on an entire bottle at home) and hoped the bartender had a generous pour.

The weather had remained unseasonably cold since the storm, but the sun was finally breaking through and the temperatures beginning to rise. The piles of snow at every Midtown crosswalk were rapidly melting into unnavigable puddles of slush and ice. Melody watched a particularly inelegant woman try to leap over the standing water and miss by inches, her bright red ballet flat landing squarely in the water, which had to be frigid, and filthy. Melody would have loved a delicate pair of shoes like those and she would have known better than to wear them on a day like today.

She felt a twinge of anxiety as she thought of her daughters heading uptown and having to navigate the treacherous street corners. She took a sip of her wine (so-so), removed her phone from her pocket, and opened her favorite app, the one Nora called Stalkerville. She hit the "find" b.u.t.ton and waited for the map to load and for the dots that represented her sixteen-year-old twins to materialize on the screen.

Melody couldn't believe the miracle of a handheld device that allowed her to track Nora's and Louisa's precise whereabouts as long as they had their phones. And they were teenagers; they always had their phones. As the map started to appear, she felt the familiar panicky palpitations until the tiny, blue pulsating circles and the word Found! popped up at the top of the screen, showing the girls exactly where they were supposed to be, at the SAT tutoring center uptown.

They'd been taking the weekend cla.s.ses for over a month, and usually Melody tracked their morning progress from her kitchen table, watching the blue dots slowly glide north from Grand Central according to her meticulous directions: From the train station, they should take the Madison Avenue bus to Fifty-Ninth Street where they would disembark and walk west to the tutoring center on Sixty-Third just off Columbus. They were not to walk along the park side, but were supposed to walk on the south side of the street, pa.s.sing by the parade of uniformed doormen, who would hear them scream for help if they were in trouble. They were strictly forbidden from entering Central Park or deviating from their route. Melody put the fear of G.o.d into them every week, filling their heads with stories of girls being s.n.a.t.c.hed or lost, forced into prost.i.tution or murdered and dumped in the river.

"The Upper West Side is not exactly Calcutta," her husband, Walter, would gently argue. But she got scared. The thought of them wandering the city without her protecting their flank made her heart thud, her palms sweat. They were sweating now. When they'd all disembarked at Grand Central that morning, she hadn't wanted to let them go. On a Sat.u.r.day, the terminal was full with tourists checking guidebooks and train schedules and trying to find the Whispering Gallery. She'd kissed them good-bye and had watched until she could no longer see the backs of their heads-one blond, the other brunette. They didn't look like visitors; there was nothing tentative about how they moved through the crowd. They looked like they belonged to the city, which filled Melody with dread. She wanted them to belong to her, to stop getting older. They didn't confide every last thought or desire or worry anymore; she didn't know their hearts and minds the way she used to. Melody knew that letting them grow and go was the proper order of life. She wanted them to be strong and independent and happy-more than anything she wanted them to be happy-but that she no longer had a fix on their inner workings made her light-headed. If she couldn't be sure how they were moving through the world, she could at least watch them move through the world, right there in the palm of her hand. She could at least have that.

"Leo's never paying you back," Walter had said as she was leaving for the train station. "You're all dreaming, wasting your time."

Though Melody feared he was right, she had to believe he wasn't. They'd borrowed a lot of money to buy their house, a tiny but historic building on one of their town's most beautiful streets, only to watch the economy collapse and property values sink. The fluctuating interest rate was about to rise on the mortgage they already couldn't afford. With little equity in the house, they couldn't refinance. College was approaching and they had next to nothing in the bank; she'd been counting on The Nest.

Out on the street, Melody watched people tug off their gloves and unwind scarves, lift their faces to the sun. She felt a tiny surge of satisfaction knowing that she could spend the entire afternoon indoors if she wanted. The main reason Melody loved the bar at the Hyatt was because she could access it through an underpopulated, nondescript hallway connecting the hotel to Grand Central. When it was time for lunch, she'd return to the terminal through her secret corridor and head downstairs to the Oyster Bar. She would spend hours in New York City and not have to step one sensibly shod foot onto pavement, could entirely avoid breathing the Manhattan air, which she always pictured as rife with gray particulate. During her and Walt's brief stint living in Upper (upper) Manhattan where the twins were born, she'd waged a ferocious, losing battle with the city's soot. No matter how many times she wiped the woodwork with a dampened cloth, the flecks of black would reappear, sometimes within hours. Minus any verifiable source, the residue was worrisome to her. It felt like a physical manifestation of the city's decay, all the teeming ma.s.ses being worn down to grimy, gray window dust.

She caught sight of another woman across the room holding a winegla.s.s, and it took a moment for her to recognize her own reflection. Her hair was blonder than usual-she'd chosen a lighter shade at the drugstore and hoped the color would soften the elongated nose and strong chin both she and her sister, Beatrice, had inherited from their father's New England ancestors. Somehow, the strong features that worked in Bea's favor (Madam X, Leo used to call Bea, after the Sargent portrait) just made Melody look unintentionally dour. She particularly resented her face around Halloween. One year when the girls were little and they were out shopping for costumes, Nora had pointed to an advertis.e.m.e.nt featuring a witch-not an excessively ugly one, no warts or green face or rotten teeth but still, a witch-standing over a boiling cauldron and had said, "Look! It's Mommy!"

Melody picked her bar bill up from the table and handed it to the waiter with a credit card. He's never paying you back, Walt had said. Oh yes he is, thought Melody. There was no way that one night of Leo's stupidity, his debauchery, was going to ruin her daughters' future, not when they'd worked so hard, not when she'd pushed them to dream big. They were not going to community college.

Melody looked at the map on her phone again. There was another private reason she loved the blue dots with their animated ripples so much; they reminded her of the very first ultrasound where she and Walt had seen twin heartbeats, two misshapen grayish shadows thumping arrhythmically deep inside her pelvis.

Two for the price of one, the cheerful technician had told them as Walt gripped her hand and they both stared at the screen and then at each other and grinned like the starry naifs they were. She remembered thinking in that moment: It won't ever get better than this. And in some ways she'd been right, had known even then she would never feel so capable, so stalwart a protector once she pushed those vulnerable, beating hearts out into the world.

The waiter was coming toward her now with a worried look on his face. She sighed and opened her wallet again. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, handing her the Visa she'd hoped had a little more juice on it, "but this was declined."

"It's okay," Melody said, digging out the secret card she'd activated without telling Walt; he would kill her if he knew. Just as he'd kill her if he found out that even though the SAT place in the city was cheaper than the suburban private tutor she'd wanted to hire, it was still twice as much as she'd admitted, which was why she needed the extra card. "I meant to give you this one." She watched the waiter back at his station as he swiped, both of them holding perfectly still and only exhaling when the machine started spitting out a receipt.

I like our life, Walt had said to her that morning, pulling her close. I like you. Can't you pretend-just a little-to like me, too? He smiled as he said it, but she knew he sometimes worried. She had relaxed then into his rea.s.suring girth, breathed in his comforting scent-soap and freshly laundered s.h.i.+rt and spearmint gum. She'd closed her eyes and pictured Nora and Louisa, lovely and lithe, clothed in satiny caps and gowns on a leafy quad in a quaint New England town, the morning sun illuminating their eager faces, the future unfurling ahead of them like an undulating bolt of silk. They were so smart and beautiful and honest and kind. She wanted them to have everything-the chances she'd never had, the opportunities she'd promised. I do like you, Walter, she'd mumbled into his shoulder. I like you so much. It's me I hate.

AT THE OPPOSITE END OF GRAND CENTRAL, up a carpeted flight of stairs and through the gla.s.s doors that said CAMPBELL APARTMENT, Jack Plumb was sending his drink back because he believed the mint hadn't really been muddled. "It was just dumped in there as if it were a garnish, not an ingredient," he told the waitress.

Jack was sitting with his partner of two decades and legal husband of nearly seven weeks. He was confident the other Plumbs wouldn't know about this place, which was the former office of a 1920s tyc.o.o.n, restored and reimagined as a high-end c.o.c.ktail bar. Beatrice might, but it wasn't her kind of spot. Too staid. Too expensive. There was a dress code. At times the bar could be annoyingly full of commuters who were in mercifully short supply on this Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

"Version 2.0," Walker said as the waitress placed the remade drink in front of Jack.

Jack took a sip. "It's fine," he said.

"Sorry for your trouble," Walker said to the waitress.

"Yes," Jack said as the waitress walked away, under his breath but loud enough for Walker to hear, "terribly sorry for making you do your job."

"She's just delivering the drinks. She's not making them." Walker kept his voice amiable. Jack was in a mood. "Why don't you take a nice generous sip of that and try to relax."

Jack picked a piece of mint from his gla.s.s and chewed on it for a second. "I'm curious," he said, "is telling someone to relax ever helpful? It's like saying 'breathe' to someone who is hyperventilating or 'swallow' to a person who's choking. It's a completely useless admonition."

"I wasn't admonis.h.i.+ng, I was suggesting."

"It's like saying, 'Whatever you do, don't think about a pink elephant.'"

"I get it," Walker said. "How about I relax and you do what you want."

"Thank you."

"I am happy to go to this lunch with you if it helps."

"So you've said. About a thousand times." Trying to provoke Walker was mean and pointless, but Jack was trying anyway because he knew that snapping at Walker would briefly loosen the spiraling knot of fury at his core. And he had considered inviting Walker to lunch. His family preferred Walker's company anyway; who didn't? Walker with his rumbling laugh and kind face and bottomless bonhomie. He was like a clean-shaven, slightly trimmer, gay Santa Claus.

But Jack couldn't invite Walker because he hadn't told the other Plumbs yet about his early September wedding to Walker, the wedding to which they hadn't been invited because Jack wanted the day to be perfect and perfect for Jack meant Plumb-free. He did not want to listen to Bea's worries about Leo's accident or hear Melody's lumbering husband telling everyone who might listen that his name was Walter-not-Walker. (That Jack and Melody had chosen partners with almost the exact same name was something that still rankled both of them, decades on.) "I'm sorry I snapped at you," Jack finally said.

Walker shrugged. "It's fine, love."

"I'm sorry I'm being an a.s.shole." Jack rotated his neck, listening for the alarming but satisfying little pop that had recently appeared. G.o.d, he was getting old. Six years until fifty and who knew what fresh horrors that decade had in store for his slender-but-softening physique, his already-fraying memory, his alarmingly thinning hair. He gave Walker a feeble smile. "I'll be better after lunch."

"Whatever happens at lunch, we'll be fine. It will all be fine."

Jack slumped deeper into the leather club chair and proceeded to crack the knuckles on each hand, a sound he knew Walker loathed. Of course Walker thought everything would be fine. Walker didn't know anything about Jack's financial straits (another reason Jack didn't want him at lunch, in case the opportunity arose to tell Leo exactly how much the little escapade on the back roads of Long Island was costing him). Their retirement account had taken a terrible hit in 2008. They'd rented the same apartment on West Street since they'd been together. Jack's small antique shop in the West Village had never been hugely profitable, but in recent years he felt lucky to break even. Walker was an attorney, a solo pract.i.tioner, and had always been the wage earner in their partners.h.i.+p. Their one solid investment was a modest but cherished summer place on the North Fork that Jack had been borrowing against, secretly. He'd been counting on The Nest, not only to pay off the home equity line of credit but because it was the one thing he had to offer Walker as a contribution to their future. He didn't believe for a second that Leo was broke. And he didn't care. He just wanted what he was owed.

Jack and Leo were brothers but they weren't friends. They rarely spoke. Walker would sometimes push ("you don't give up on family"), but Jack had worked hard to distance himself from the Plumbs, especially Leo. In Leo's company, Jack felt like a lesser version of his older brother. Not as intelligent, interesting, or successful, an ident.i.ty that had attached to him in high school and had never completely gone away. At the beginning of ninth grade, some of Leo's friends had christened Jack Leo Lite and the denigrating name stuck, even after Leo graduated. His first month at college, Jack had run into someone from his hometown who had reflexively greeted him by saying, "Hey, Lite. What's up?" Jack had nearly slugged him.