The Nest Part 17

"I don't know," Nora said. She sat down on the bed next to Louisa. "I like Simone. That's all I know. I like her."

"She intimidates me."

"I know she does."

"She's so sure of herself."

Nora nodded. "She is. But she's also smart and funny and nice. And I really like her."

The rain was coming down harder. Jack and Walker's bedroom faced an inner courtyard. People coming home from work were running to get inside, holding briefcases and coats over their heads. "Do you think I'm gay?" Louisa said. Nora laughed, relieved they were finally talking. "Please don't laugh at me," Louisa said, covering her face with her hands, trying not to cry.

"Do you like boys or girls? You know what you like."

Louisa spoke into her hands. "Boys."

"Okay."

"I don't think I can be a lesbian."

"Okay." Nora was grateful that Louisa wasn't criticizing Simone or freaking out in some other way. Louisa lowered her hands. Her face flushed in the same exact way Nora's did, two vivid red patches right in the middle of each cheek.

"Are you mad at me?" Louisa asked.

"Why would I be mad? I thought you'd be mad at me."

"I'm mad you didn't tell me."

"I tried. I just- I didn't-"

"I know," Louisa said. They sat for a minute, both staring out the window. The thunder and lightning had pa.s.sed, the clouds were moving swiftly, and the rain was tapering off. It still smelled like spring outside the bedroom window. "It's a little weird, right?"

"Me being with a girl?"

"No, not that. Well, maybe a little that. Mostly it's strange not being the same."

"I'm just me," Nora said. "I'm here. I'm the same." Now she was afraid she was going to cry.

Louisa shook her head. "I'm not saying it right. It's like we used to want the same things and see the same things and now we don't and it feels strange. Lonely almost. Almost like I'm doing something wrong because I don't want the same thing as you."

Oh, Nora thought. This part is going to be easy. She knelt on the floor in front of Louisa and took her hands. "It's not your job to be anyone's mirror," she began.

WHERE HAD THE GIRLS GONE? Melody looked everywhere before she thought to check the bedroom. She opened the door slowly and saw them sitting on the bed. "Did you ask Jack if it was okay to be in here?" She stepped inside and, just like Nora and Louisa had, started looking around, interested.

"We were just about to come out," Louisa said, blowing her nose and trying to collect herself. Melody saw that Louisa was crying.

"Oh, no." She rushed over and knelt in front of them. "What happened? Oh my G.o.d, did something happen on the street? Did someone hurt you?"

"No," Nora said. "Nothing's wrong."

"I want to know the truth!" Melody grabbed each of their hands and shook them a little. "If someone hurt you, you have to tell me. I don't want you keeping things from me."

Louisa started to laugh. "Mom. G.o.d. n.o.body hurt us. We're completely fine."

"We were just talking about school," Nora said.

Melody looked back and forth at both of their faces. Louisa was staring at her lap. "Is she telling the truth," Melody asked Louisa. Louisa shrugged. Nora looked worried. Melody held Nora's gaze, trying to spot any tiny sign of deception. "What's going on in here? What are you not telling me?" Louisa fiddled with the tissue in her hand. Melody put a finger under Louisa's chin and lifted it until Louisa looked her in the eye.

"We're not leaving this bedroom until you two tell me what's going on."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE.

You're so beautiful," Leo had said to Stephanie the first night they'd slept together in her dingy apartment on the ground floor of an even dingier building. It was late August and air-conditioning was a luxury she couldn't afford. The box fan, which made an aggressive click with every full rotation, whirred and rattled in the bedroom window, m.u.f.fling the sounds from the street: the teens across the way who hung out on the stoop blaring a car radio and arguing until sunrise; the bleating taxi horns three blocks over where traffic backed up from the entrance ramp to the Manhattan Bridge. But that night, the night Leo told her how f.u.c.ked up he was, the cacophony that usually made her grind her teeth in frustration had seemed romantic, urban and wild, the perfect sound track for her l.u.s.t.

"You're so beautiful," he'd said to her, as she slowly undressed in front of him and he watched, still and admiring on the edge of her unmade twin bed. His voice held such a rare note of wonderment that her throat tightened. And then he covered his face with his hands.

"Leo?" she whispered.

"I'm so f.u.c.ked up," he said into his palms.

Oh G.o.d, not now, Stephanie thought. Not a precoital unburdening, a completely unnecessary recitation of all the ways he was so f.u.c.ked up. Hadn't she seen him in action for years already? Didn't she know his flaws? She looked down at the curve of his back, the thread of his spine, how his dark curls, on the long side then, rested against his almost feminine neck. His skin glowed in the moonlight, like the l.u.s.trous surface of a pearl.

He looked back up at her. "I'm really f.u.c.ked up, Stephanie."

She understood with complete lucidity what he was offering her in that moment-not a confession or a plea, but a warning. He was offering her an elegant escape. In those days, one of Leo's gifts was an uncanny ability to predict how things would play out. His favorite expression was from a speech he'd heard some king of finance give once: If you want to predict a person's behavior, identify his or her incentives. Leo wasn't saying, I'm so f.u.c.ked up, he was saying, I'm going to f.u.c.k this up. He knew something about his incentives that she didn't.

But there he was, s.h.i.+rtless, on her bed. Leo, whom she'd been a little in love with for always, and all she cared about in that moment was the length of his body against hers.

"Everyone's f.u.c.ked up," she said, even though she didn't believe that for a second. She wasn't. Most people she knew weren't. But she also knew this: Nothing was a sure thing; every choice was just an educated guess, or a leap into a mysterious abyss. People might not change but their incentives could.

So the first time she and Leo combusted she'd practically been poised for the breakup. In some inexplicable way she'd been looking forward to it and all its attendant drama, because wasn't there something nearly lovely-when you were young enough-about guts churning and tear ducts being put to glorious overuse? She recognized the undeniable satisfaction of the first emotional fissure because an unraveling was still something grown-up and, therefore, life affirming. See? the broken heart signaled. I loved enough to lose; I felt enough to weep. Because when you were young enough, the stakes of love were so very small, nearly insignificant. How tragic could a breakup be when it was a part of the fabric of expectation from the beginning? The hackneyed fights, the late-night phone calls, the indignant recounting for friends over multiple drinks and in earshot of an appropriately flirtatious bartender-it was theater for a certain type of person, a certain well-educated New Yorker, and it was, then, for Stephanie, too.

Until it wasn't. Until she stopped being young enough. Until, like an allergic reaction, every time she exposed herself to Leo, the welts rose more rapidly, itched more intensely, and took longer to go away.

She didn't remember which time (second? third?) she'd caught Leo cheating and kicked him out and he was apologizing and begging and she was mustering her reinforcements (whose patience was almost gone, strained to the limit, incredulity replacing empathy, what did you expect? why would this time be different?) and her a.s.sistant, Pilar, wrote the Kbler-Ross stages of grief on a c.o.c.ktail napkin to chart her breakups with Leo: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

"You get exactly forty-eight hours for each," Pilar said. "It's all you need, believe me." She opened her Filofax. "That puts you smack at acceptance next Thursday at six in time for c.o.c.ktails. See you then."

"Don't act like I'm the most pathetic person on earth," Stephanie had said to Pilar. "Because I'm not, not by a long shot."

"I'm acting like you're the most pathetic version of you. Because you are, times a million."

And that was finally what she had to ask herself, Did loving Leo make her a lesser version of herself?

WHEN LEO LEFT HER HOUSE IN BROOKLYN, he left almost everything behind, including his cell phone and wallet, which was a nice touch, a convincing feint. When he didn't come home the first night, Stephanie vowed to kick him out the minute he was off his bender and reappeared contrite and exhausted.

The second night, she started poking around the house and realized certain things were missing: a small duffel of hers and a few of his nicer clothes. The shoes he'd had custom made in Italy. The shoes were the tip-off; he treated those f.u.c.king shoes like they were infants, wrapping them in burgundy-felt swaddling clothes. Also gone: a small picture she'd taken of the two of them with her iPhone one night, a picture of her laughing while he was playfully biting her left ear that she'd printed out and tucked into the corner of a mirror above her dresser. The one thing she hoped he left behind, the thing she searched the house from top to bottom looking for, wasn't there: Bea's leather bag with the new story inside. Later, she would realize it never even occurred to her to look for a note from Leo. That he might leave Bea's story seemed possible; that he would leave Stephanie an explanation, an admission of wrongdoing in and of itself, did not. And she would be more stung than she'd ever admit to discover he'd taken the time to send his siblings the decoy e-mail buying himself the s.p.a.ce to flee.

Tonight was Melody's birthday dinner and Stephanie had told herself all day she wasn't going, but then finally felt obliged to tell his family in person that Leo was missing. Missing was probably too optimistic a word, she knew. Missing implied something accidental might have happened, that Leo had run up against some trouble, was trying to get home and was somehow being prevented. And although those things could have been true, Stephanie knew they weren't. As she headed toward Jack's place, she decided she would be brief. Say what she knew and then quickly leave. She wouldn't stick around for the likely hysteria.

Acceptance. She had to be honest with herself; she hadn't told anyone about Leo's disappearance and the pregnancy because she was holding on to a sliver of hope, and hope, when it came to Leo, was a one-way ticket to despair. She would go to the dinner, tell the truth, and unburden herself, because that's what someone would do who was not Leo, who had moved beyond anger-and hope-to acceptance.

Standing in the rain in front of Jack's apartment building on West Street, she steeled herself and rang his buzzer.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR.

Nora and Louisa were sitting toward the middle of the long table and Melody was standing over them, livid.

"Tell them," she said, gesturing around the table where everyone was seated. "Tell them what you just told me."

"Jack got married," Nora said.

"Not that!" Melody said. "Tell them about seeing Leo."

"You're married?" Bea said to Jack and Walker. Walker raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and shook his head, absolving himself. He'd wanted to invite them all.

"When did you see Leo?" Jack asked Nora, ignoring Bea.

"Last October," Nora said.

"Tell them the other part," Melody said.

"He was in Central Park. Flat on his back," Louisa said.

"In the park?" Bea turned her attention to Louisa now. "He was on his back in Central Park?"

"Drugs," Melody said, biting off the word. "He was buying drugs."

"I didn't say that!" Louisa said. "I said he could have been buying drugs."

"But you didn't see him with drugs?" Jack asked.

"We just saw him on his back," Nora said. "It was after that snowstorm, it was super icy. I think he just slipped."

"It was the day we all met him at the Oyster Bar," Melody said. "He supposedly came straight from Brooklyn. Remember? He said he was late because of the subway, so why was he up in Central Park?"

The three Plumbs sat, thinking. Why had Leo been in the park?

"Even if he was in the park to buy something," Bea said, "what does that mean?"

Melody snorted. "Seriously? He'd been out of rehab for all of three days."

"Okay," Bea said. "But what does that have to do with us?" She was already tired of this conversation, tired of talking and thinking about and waiting on Leo, and also feeling secretly relieved and pleased about the stack of pages in her bag, the ones with his notes on them.

"When did you see Leo last?" Jack asked Bea.

Bea cowered a little in her chair; she'd hoped not to have to answer that question tonight. "I haven't seen him in a few weeks," she said, pouring herself more champagne.

"I thought he'd been hanging around your office. That's what Jack told me," Melody said.

"He had been," Bea said. "But he hasn't been around lately."

"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 appet.i.te. "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 a.s.semble 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 gla.s.ses 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 G.o.d," Melody said as Walker moved to the door, wiping his hands on his ap.r.o.n. "He's here."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.

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.