The Nest Part 20

"Exactly. Think of it as a different form of brotherly love. Is that what you've been obsessing about because of Nora? Whether you have some kind of built-in gay repellent?"

"No. I'm just thinking. I want to do the right thing. I want to understand and be supportive, but I'm scared. I don't know what she needs anymore, how she feels."

"Yes, you do."

"I don't, Jack, I don't. I never wanted a girl-"

"You do know," he insisted. He stood and gathered the garbage from lunch and shoved it into an empty grocery bag. "You wish she weren't gay," he said, calmly.

"Yes. I'm sorry. I'm not saying that to be hurtful. I don't want her life to be any harder than life already is. I don't know how to smooth the way for this, make it easier. I don't know what to say or what to think or how to behave and I don't know who to talk to. Except you."

Jack was staring out the window of the shop, tapping his fingers impatiently against a display case. "Walker wanted children," he finally said.

"Really?"

"I was nervous about the whole thing. You know me. He wanted to adopt and all I could think about was how do we know what we're getting? It seems like such a c.r.a.pshoot. How does the kid know? n.o.body signs up for two gay fathers. It seemed like such an easy thing to f.u.c.k up. Walker would always say I was overthinking. He would always say, 'There's a reason they call it giving custody. Parents are temporary custodians, keeping watch and offering love and trying to leave the child better than they found him. Do no harm.' That's what Walker would say anyway. I don't know if it helps."

"It helps a little," she said.

"Just another example of my selfishness, according to Walker as he walked out the door."

"Not wanting to adopt?"

"Yes."

Melody thought for a minute. Why was it so easy to wound the people you loved the most? She pointed to an art deco bar cart a few feet away with crystal bottles filled with a dark liquid. "Is that real alcohol?" she said.

"It most certainly is," Jack said. "Are you suggesting a drink? Because if you are, you are my favorite person in New York right now."

"Yes," she said.

Jack filled half their plastic cups with scotch and they sat and sipped in a companionable silence for a few minutes.

"I don't think you were being selfish," Melody said.

"About adopting?"

"Yes," she said. "I think you were being thoughtful and cautious and honestly airing your concerns. Having kids isn't easy."

"I know!"

"Don't get me wrong; it's great and I think you and Walker would have been great parents-if you both wanted it. But it's not for everyone." She finished her scotch and poured a little more. She was building some alcohol-fueled momentum. "Do no harm." She laughed. "It sounds so, so easy, but do you know what else is easy? Doing harm! Accidentally doing harm is distressingly easy. I don't think you were being selfish. I think you were being realistic."

Jack watched Melody, amused. He wasn't surprised she was a cheap date in the booze department, but what she said also resonated with him-and made him feel better. "Tell that to Walker," Jack said, joking.

"I'll tell him." Melody straightened. "Where is he? He thinks being a parent is so easy, such a cakewalk? Get him on the phone. I'll tell Mr. Attorney just how easy it is. Where is he?"

"I don't know, let's see." Jack took out his phone and she was abashed to see him open the Stalkerville app, the one she'd talked him into using. "Let's take a peek," he said, waiting for it to load. "Here we go. He's at work and, look!" He pressed the "call" b.u.t.ton on his phone and held it up for Melody to see as the screen said "Walker" and the phone rang and rang. He banged the phone onto the counter. Melody picked it up. "What are you doing?" Jack said.

"I'm deleting this. If you want to tell Walker something, you should go find him. This thing?" She raised the phone and shook it a little. "It's not telling you what you need to know. It's one tiny part of the story; it's bulls.h.i.t." She typed in a few commands, and the app was gone. Jack was looking past her lowered head and out the window, watching the pedestrians walking down the street on a heart-wrenchingly perfect spring day. He'd never felt so alone in his entire life. Handing him back his phone, Melody realized that Jack's scattered, slightly unfocused gaze, his too-long hair, and his wrinkled shirt-it all added up to heartbreak. He wasn't mad or blithe; he was empty. She sat with him for a while, wishing she could erase the look on his face, a world of comeuppance and regret.

"Mel?" he finally said. "Nora just needs to know you love her as much and exactly as you did before. She needs to know she's not alone."

"I know," Melody said.

CHAPTER FORTY.

It was the day before Mother's Day and Stephanie was still wearing her down vest. May in New York City was fickle. On Friday she hadn't needed any kind of overcoat, but Sat.u.r.day dawned cloudy and cold, more autumnal than springlike. Still, there were bunches of pink and purple and blue sweet peas at the farmers' market and she splurged and bought four bouquets for herself. She'd scatter them around the house and their heady scent would permeate every room.

Vinnie and Matilda were coming over to her house for lunch. The day when she'd answered Leo's phone, she'd quickly ended the call with Matilda, saying Leo was out. She didn't forget about the call-or the poor girl who'd been in the car with Leo-but there was so much else for her to contend with; weeks later, she'd called back, out of duty more than anything else.

Stephanie knew she wasn't responsible for Leo's mess, but as Matilda nervously and somewhat disjointedly explained why she was calling, Stephanie realized she might be able to help. One of her favorite clients, Olivia Russell, was a hugely successful journalist who had written extensively about artificial limbs, especially the challenges facing Gulf War veterans. Olivia had lost a leg herself when she was young. She knew everyone and how to work every program and now ran a nonprofit that helped amputees navigate the expensive and complicated world of artificial limbs. Stephanie offered to broker an introduction. Matilda asked if she could bring her friend Vinnie. So they were all coming for lunch: Vinnie, Matilda, and Olivia, who'd already agreed to help Matilda as a favor to Stephanie. Then Stephanie's job would be done.

"Happy Mother's Day," the farmer who took her money said. She a.s.sumed he was a farmer anyway; he was scruffy and already sun weathered. His fingers were thick and blunt and dirt stained, and he was wearing a bright blue baseball cap that said SHEPHERD FARMS ORGANIC in orange script on the front. It took Stephanie a minute to realize he was addressing her.

"Oh, thanks," she said. With her height, she was carrying the pregnancy well but at six months her bulge was prominent, unmistakable.

"You have other kids at home?"

"Nope. First and last," she said, employing the emotionally neutered tone that she'd learned usually shut down baby conversation, shifting her bags of spring potatoes and asparagus and strawberries into the crook of one elbow so she could carry the vibrant flowers in one hand, like a spring bride.

"Yeah, that's what they all say," the farmer said, grinning. "Then the kid starts walking and talking. Soon he won't sit in your lap anymore and before you know it"-he gestured toward her middle-"you're cooking number two."

"Hmmmm," she said noncommittally, holding a palm out for her change.

She'd listened to her pregnant friends complain for years about the invasiveness a protruding belly engendered, how even in New York where you could stand inches away from someone's face on the subway secure in the tacit but universal agreement that n.o.body (sane) would engage with you, ever, all bets were off when you were pregnant.

Boy or girl? First one? When are you due? (Stephanie always heard When are you due? as What do you do? Always.) So she had been prepared for the annoying questions, but the thing she found most infuriating was how everyone needed to talk not only about the baby she was gestating, but also about her unplanned, unwanted future children. It was so odd. As if only wanting one child was already undercutting the motherhood that hadn't even officially begun. As if these strangers had something at stake in the process. As if having one baby, alone, was some kind of halfhearted gesture, a part-time commitment. (Oh, they're just jealous, Pilar, mother of one astonishingly charming and erudite nine-year-old son, told her. They want to make sure you're going to be knocked back on your a.s.s as soon as you're sleeping all night. Misery loves company, my friend.) "So do you know what it is?" the farmer said, counting out her ones.

"It's a girl."

"Got your name."

"Yes," she said, smiling thinly. "But that's my secret." She'd learned to keep her counsel on baby names the hard way. When she started mentioning names she was considering, before the obvious one occurred to her, everyone had an opinion based on logic so subjective and personal that it was utterly bizarre: "My first wife was named Hannah and she was a cold b.i.t.c.h." "My daughter has four Charlottes in her cla.s.s." "Natasha is kind of cold war, no?"

It also seemed to Stephanie that like so much else surrounding parenting, naming had become a compet.i.tive sport. Some dude in her childbirth cla.s.s couldn't stop talking about his Lotus spreadsheet for baby names. "We have three priorities," he explained to a bored Stephanie and a bemused childbirth instructor (she'd seen it all). "The name needs to be unique, it needs to reflect the ethnic background of both my wife and me-a little bit Brit, a little bit Jew-and"-he paused for effect-"it needs to be mellifluous. Pleasing to the ear."

"I know what mellifluous means," Stephanie said.

"Sophia is the type of name we're going for," his wife added in her clipped BBC accent, "but it's much too popular these days."

"It's popular because it's pretty," Stephanie said. "A cla.s.sic old-fashioned name."

"Too popular, I'm afraid, and the cla.s.sic tips to trendy," the wife said, putting a sympathetic palm on Stephanie's arm, who she clearly thought was hapless and uninformed.

"In addition to the top three priorities," the husband continued, "we have subset qualifications." He ticked off the items on his fingers. "What happens when you Google the name? How many syllables? Is it easy to understand over the phone? Is it easy to type on a keyboard?"

The last one was too much; Stephanie burst out laughing. The couple hadn't really spoken with her again.

"Good luck," the farmer said, waving his hand as she walked away. "This will be the only quiet Mother's Day you have for a long time. You let your husband pamper you."

This was another thing that surprised Stephanie, although she supposed it shouldn't. How everyone a.s.sumed because she was pregnant that she was also married. She lived in New York City, for Pete's sake. Not just New York, Brooklyn! She wasn't the first fortysomething woman to have a baby alone, but even if she was having the baby with someone, who said she was married? Who said her someone wasn't another woman? She wasn't only offended by the near unanimous conventionality of everyone's automatic a.s.sumptions, she was unsettled because she knew her daughter would eventually face the same kind of cavalier reasoning about a father who-well, who knew what the story with her father was, what it might be when the baby was old enough to ask.

Stephanie redistributed the shopping bags so her shoulders and arms were evenly weighted and started to walk home. It was downhill from the park to her house, thank goodness. Her legs felt strong, but her center of gravity was shifting and her back hurt if she walked too far while carrying packages. She should get one of those shopping carts on wheels, but she'd be pushing a stroller soon enough.

Stephanie was still annoyed about the farmer's husband comment. There wasn't much about having a baby alone that stymied her except what to tell people about Leo-whether to tell them about Leo. Her closest friends and coworkers knew the story, sort of. They all knew about Leo and their past, how he had briefly resurfaced and that she'd been surprised but happy to find herself pregnant and now he was no longer in the picture.

It was harder with the casual acquaintance or the out-and-out bold and nosy stranger. Many people were stopped with a curt, "I'm a single mom." But many weren't. She was going to have to come up with something specific enough to shut everyone up but not intriguing enough to encourage questions.

She also hated the looks of pity and concern that accompanied her deliberately upbeat clarification that she was having the baby alone. Pity was such an absurd sentiment to be on the receiving end of because all she felt was lucky. Lucky to be having a baby, lucky to be forming slow but encouraging bonds with Leo's siblings and their families, which she was doing specifically for her daughter so that she would have a sense of her extended family.

Stephanie was the only child of a widowed mother who had died years ago. She'd loved her childhood and her doting, accessible, smart, and funny mom. The only regret she had about not having a baby sooner was that her mother was gone and her mother would have been an amazing grandmother. But Stephanie had been lonely sometimes as a girl, too, so she hoped the Plumbs would embrace her and Leo's baby and so far, they had.

If Stephanie was perfectly honest with herself, she knew that the particular family configuration hers was about to take was her preferred configuration because it was what she knew. If she was being scrupulously honest, one of the reasons she'd never had a kid was because having a father in the picture was something she didn't know what to do with. It wasn't really something she'd missed. Her mother and her cousins and summers in Vermont with her beloved uncle satisfied her craving for family. In the middle of the night, in the dark, where n.o.body could see the satisfied smile on her face, her hand on her rising belly, she recognized that although this baby hadn't been premeditated (it hadn't, Leo had shown up at her door), the night of the snowstorm she didn't insist on a condom, something she had, quite literally, never done before-not during the most inebriated hookup, not during the most spontaneous erotic moment.

She hadn't planned the pregnancy (hadn't), but she hadn't prevented it and if she was being brutally honest, deep in the night in the privacy of her room, her room, hand on her belly gently rising and falling with the undulating motion of her rolling, kicking, hiccuping baby, listening to the quiet of her creaky house under the duvet arranged exactly as she liked, she could admit the truth about the night of the snowstorm: that she'd let a tiny aperture of possibility open to something that was of Leo but wasn't Leo. And that she liked it that way.

"You're more like a guy than a girl," Will Peck had said to her once when they were together and she suggested he might want to sleep at his place a little more often. He didn't appreciate her love of solitude. She supposed that was true in a way. Although she didn't buy the stereotype of women being the needy ones. It seemed wrong. Sure there were women h.e.l.l-bent on getting married, but men were just as bad once they decided they were ready to pair off. Wasn't it the divorced or widowed men who always remarried right away, who had to be taken care of? Wasn't it the elderly women who reinvented their lives alone? Of all her friends whose marriages had split up-and by now there were quite a few-it was usually the woman who had the courage to step away from something broken. The men held on for dear life.

You'll be beating the divorced Brooklyn dads off with a stick, Pilar warned her. That was the last thing she needed! A guy with his own kids. She'd dated and dismissed a number of divorced men she suspected were mainly on the prowl to have someone around every other weekend to help with their kids. They didn't particularly charm her, the men she thought of, collectively, as "the dads." She had to admit, though, that there was something captivating and even a little s.e.xy about a man fumbling to pin back his daughter's curls with a barrette or braid a ponytail.

As she turned onto her block, she could see Tommy O'Toole sitting out on their stoop. Oh, good. He'd insist on carrying her bags up the stairs and into the kitchen and she'd be happy to let him. She waved; she wouldn't mind some help carrying the bags the rest of the way. But he wasn't facing her; he was looking at a couple walking from the other direction. The woman was on crutches and-s.h.i.t-it had to be Matilda. And the person walking next to her must be Vinnie. They were early. Oh, well, she'd put them to work chopping vegetables. Maybe Vinnie could carry some bags, too.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE.

Even though it was a little chilly to be outside, Tommy and Frank Sinatra were sitting on the stoop, which they both loved to do. Sinatra took up his usual position, on the third step from the bottom, snout high, bulging eyes alert, tail happily thumping the cement riser behind him.

Next to him, Tommy put his head in his hands and prayed. It had been a while since he prayed to G.o.d or anyone. When he was younger, he used to believe he could pray to his missing friends and relatives. He felt envious of his old self, the one who thought someone was listening. At first he'd stopped believing out of laziness and then out of anger and now it was more an apathetic meander. He wouldn't have called himself an atheist; being an atheist required more belief than he had, a kind of determined certainty about mystery that he didn't think was feasible or possible, admirable or even desirable. Who could deny a guiding hand of some kind, a design to the world? Calling it science didn't explain it all to him either. He wasn't a believer and he wasn't a nonbeliever. He wasn't something and he wasn't nothing. He was a survivor.

For a long time after Ronnie's death, he'd prayed to her. Not just those endless months on the pile when he was desperate and lost, but for years afterward. He was embarra.s.sed to think about this, but he'd prayed to the statue, too. It had become a shrine in his house until one day he saw himself, caught his reflection in a window, sitting on a folding chair, talking to the statue and he got scared that he was losing his mind. That's when he put the thing behind doors in a china cabinet.

At first he'd been terrified by Jack Plumb's offer to sell the statue, but once he got used to the idea, Tommy was filled with relief. He'd had some sleepless nights imagining what would happen if he died suddenly-hit by a car, ma.s.sive heart attack-and his daughters found the statue in the closet. Eventually, they would figure out what it was and what he'd done. Reshaping the story of their hero father would be bad enough, but if they knew he'd stolen from the pile and hidden the contraband, it would change their relationship to the story of their mother, too. He knew, G.o.d how he knew, that if your memories of someone couldn't carry you from grief to recovery, the loss would be that much more incontrovertible. He'd seen firsthand how his children started writing the mythology of Ronnie mere hours after she was dead. If they knew about the statue, her death would become tainted by his actions, and he wouldn't put his kids through another loss surrounding their mother. He couldn't leave them with a stolen statue that would become the thing in the closet they had to hide. He'd dump it in the river first.

He knew there would be complications to the sale. How to move it, where to put the money, but Jack Plumb rea.s.sured him he would help with, as he put it, all the particulars. He was full service. But before they'd even gotten into the particulars, Jack had let slip that the London buyer was from Saudi Arabia.

"An Arab?" Tommy said to Jack, clenching his fists, not believing what he was hearing.

"A Londoner," Jack said, clearing his throat. "Everyone in the Middle East isn't a terrorist, for heaven's sake. He's a finance guy. Very successful businessman and a very successful collector. Highly respected."

Tommy was enraged. "But he came from oil money, right? And don't tell me he didn't because you'll be lying."

"I have no idea," Jack said. "That's irrelevant. You want to sell on the black market you don't get to run a credit check and an employment history. He's rich and he wants the statue and he's discreet. Bingo."

Tommy had practically carried Jack out the front door. Not even giving him the courtesy of a lecture about why he-someone who'd lost a wife and countless friends and fellow firefighters on 9/11-couldn't possibly take Middle Eastern oil money in exchange for a ground zero artifact from anyone, anytime, ever.

He was relieved by the turn of events because it snapped him out of his funk. He'd been crazy to think selling the statue was possible, or ethical. He'd meant it when he'd told Jack that it wasn't about money. All he cared about was where the statue ended up because he needed to honor Ronnie's memory. But if he exposed himself-accidentally or on purpose-he'd harm her memory for his kids. And that was the never-ending loop he'd been caught in for weeks. He yawned. He hadn't been sleeping. How to get the statue somewhere safe? For days Jack had called him hourly wanting to reopen negotiations until Tommy finally threatened to call his friends in the police department and turn them both in. "I'll do it, a.s.shole," he told Jack. "Don't think I won't." At least there'd be some honor in being honest.

Sinatra lifted his head and whined a little. "What do you say, Mr. S.?" He rubbed a few knuckles across Sinatra's head, the place where his skin was a little slack and the fur soft. The dog panted with pleasure. From down the street he could see Stephanie waving at him. She probably wanted help with her bags. Sinatra started barking at something in the opposite direction.

"Shush, boy," Tommy said, looking to see what was agitating the dog. It was a couple. The woman was on crutches and there was something uneven about her companion's profile. They were walking slowly and looking at house numbers. As they got closer, Tommy couldn't believe what he was seeing. A tall muscular man with one arm and a long-haired woman with a missing foot walking together down his street. It was his statue come to life. He stood and Sinatra's barks turned to a menacing growl.

"Shhhh." He picked the dog up and tucked him under one arm to keep him calm. He really needed to get some sleep. He blinked and shook his head a little, looked again but his vision hadn't cleared. The statue was still there and it was coming toward him. He felt light-headed and looked up at the sky. He didn't know why, what he expected to see up there. He thought for a minute he might faint. What was happening couldn't be happening. He could feel his breaths becoming shallow and then a constriction around his chest, like someone was tightening a belt. The dog scrambled out of his arms and down the stoop and turned to face Tommy, barking in earnest now, scared.

Oh, please, Tommy thought, not now. Not the heart attack he'd feared, not while that statue was still in the house. He put a hand on the iron railing to try to steady himself. If the statue was in his house, how was it also walking down the street? Stephanie was yelling his name from one direction. From the other direction, the statue-come-to-life was getting closer. Sweat streamed down his back, and his palms were clammy. Sinatra was barking even harder. Holy Jesus, he was dying. He was having a stroke or a heart attack or both. He tried to take a deep breath, but couldn't.

"Quiet," he said to Sinatra, but he wasn't sure anything came out. His throat was tight and dry.

"Excuse me." Now the statue was in front of him, talking, wanting to climb the stoop.

Tommy tried to speak but his lips wouldn't work. They were coming for him, that's what he was thinking even though he didn't really understand what he meant. Coming for him? Who?

"Hey." The man stepped closer and reached out with his one arm. "You okay, buddy? You don't look so good."

"What's wrong, baby, why are you so upset?" Tommy thought the woman was talking to him, but she'd leaned her crutches against the stoop and was trying to soothe Sinatra who was barking at her outstretched hand. Tommy stared at her missing foot and then back at the man with one arm. He couldn't tell in that moment if he was hallucinating or if he was dying, but whichever it was he knew it wasn't good. Ronnie, he thought. Help.

"Call 911," Tommy heard the man say. "Do you need a hand there, mister? What's your name?" Vinnie's voice sounded like it was coming through a long tunnel or across a static-filled connection. He couldn't make out the words, but he heard the man say something about 9/11. f.u.c.k. And right before Tommy pitched forward, he looked at them both beseechingly, his hand at his heart, his mouth a tight slash of pain.

"What?" Matilda said, her voice thick with concern and fear. "What is it, Papi?"

"Forgive me," Tommy said. And then he fell, landing at Matilda's missing foot.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO.

Tomorrow was Mother's Day and Melody would wake up and spend the last day in her beloved house. Monday morning, the moving truck would come and load all the boxes and wrap their furniture in quilted moving blankets and they would get in their car and follow the van to their temporary condo on the other side of the tracks.