The Nest(73)

Melody knew Walt was also annoyed at how giddy she was being about the birthday celebration. Easy for him to say, he had forty-five years of wonderful birthdays behind him. Easy for him to be all blasé and world-weary, but she was turning forty and this was the first real birthday celebration she’d had, well, pretty much ever.

Melody’s first and last birthday party happened the year she’d turned twelve, a rare capitulation on Francie’s part. Walking home from school that day with her three closest friends, Melody could barely contain her excitement—while repressing the distant drumbeat of concern. She’d asked her mother to buy a variety of foods, to set the table, to organize games. Francie had waved off her instructions, saying “I think I know how to keep people entertained.”

But the only party Melody remembered having taken place at the Plumb house was a birthday party for Francie the previous summer that had become so raucous and gone on so late that the neighbors had complained to the police. The cops, all friends of Leonard and Francie, joined the festivities and sat in the back sipping beer. Melody watched from the upstairs bathroom window as her mother gently bounced on the lap of the policeman who showed up at her school every year to talk to them about stranger danger; he called himself “Officer Friendly.” Officer Friendly’s hands rested easily on either side of Francie’s waist, right above the swell of her hips. “Hands up!” he kept saying and Francie would raise her arms high above her head and laugh as his open palms slid up her torso, stopping when his fingers grazed the underside of her breasts. Melody was certain there hadn’t been any games at that party. Or gift bags. Just a cake and music and lots of cigarettes and cocktails.

Francie greeted Melody and her school friends at the door wearing a silk kimono and holding a martini. Melody’s heart sank. The robe this early in the day was a very bad sign. As was the cocktail.

“Welcome, ladies, welcome.” Francie waved the group through the front door. Melody could see the girls looking around the Plumb house and then eyeing each other, warily but with interest. The Tudor house was stately from the outside, but the inside was worn and neglected, chaotic. The foyer where the girls stood in their winter coats was a muddle of outerwear from all seasons. Coats were piled on a bench, hats and mittens spilled out of baskets on the floor, there were shoes everywhere—broken flip-flops, evening sandals, insulated boots, snowshoes.

“You’re right on time,” Francie said. “I admire punctuality in guests.”

“We came straight from school,” Melody’s friend Kate said. “It’s a quick walk.”

“So you did. So you did,” Francie said, focusing on Kate, looking her over. “Are you the logical one, the A student?”

“Mom,” Melody said. She wanted her mother to stop talking to her friends. She especially wanted to stop this line of inquiry, one of Francie’s favorite gambits, assigning people a descriptor based on her first—often uncanny—impression. Melody wanted Francie to go upstairs and put on a pair of pants and a sweater and pull her hair back with a black velvet headband like Kate’s mother, or to carry cookies and hot cocoa out on a tray like Beth’s mother and ask about their homework, or to burst through the door after a day spent working at an office in the city like Leah’s mother and hustle straight to the kitchen saying, in her thrilling Irish timbre, “Supper soon, loves. You must be starved!”

“Logic is an underrated attribute,” Francie said, continuing to address Kate. “Logic goes a long way in life, longer than lots of other things.” She turned to the other two girls and squinted a little as if bringing them into clearer focus, plucking a cocktail onion from her martini. “You’re the pretty one,” she said, pointing a gin-dampened finger at Beth who was, in fact, the prettiest girl at school; Melody had been quietly thrilled when Beth started chatting with her after French class one day, telling Melody what products to use to get her bangs to stick up higher and sharing her glitter mascara.

“And you,” Francie said, eyeing Leah, who took a step backward and clenched her fists, almost as if she knew to brace herself for Francie’s reductive assessment, “must be the lesbian.”

“Mom!”

“What’s a lesbian?” said Kate.

“Never mind,” Melody said, grabbing Leah by the arm and motioning for the other two to follow her. “She’s kidding. It’s a family joke. I’ll explain later.”

It was a kind of family joke, although not one Melody could explain. Leah was Melody’s oldest friend, a nondescript blurry kind of girl whose most noticeable feature was a persistently runny nose from year-round hay fever. Leah tended to moon a little while following Melody around school, sniffling and sneezing.

“How’s your lesbian lover?” Bea would ask Melody, referring to Leah. “You guys going steady yet?”

“Shut up,” Melody would say. She didn’t even know at first what lesbian meant. She sneaked into Leonard’s study one day to look it up in the dictionary and then had to look up homosexual and although she knew right away that the word didn’t describe her, she knew who it did describe: Jack. She pictured Jack and his friends sitting in the summer sun, lounging by the pool at the club, rubbing baby oil on each other’s shoulders. Homosexuals, she thought, slamming the book closed.

Melody had led everyone to the kitchen at the back of the first floor. There were no streamers, no balloons, no festive paper plates and matching cups or shiny cardboard letters spelling out Happy Birthday strung above the breakfast nook, but there was a cake box. Melody was hugely relieved to see that there would, at the very least, be cake.