The Nest(95)
“You’re sure?” Walt said.
“I’m positive.” She turned to Jack. “You can sell all this and make a commission, right?”
“If that’s what you want, yes.” He was surprised, but pleased. He didn’t really have the room to keep everything he’d imagined she’d want to keep.
“And you two are okay with this?” she asked Nora and Louisa. She felt good, lighter, in charge.
They both nodded. “We just wanted to do something to make you feel better,” Louisa said. “We wanted to make you happy.”
“I have what makes me happy,” she said. Melody wasn’t even sure she understood the impulse making her want to let go, but she decided not to overthink it for once. Having things from the house wasn’t the same as having the house. Given all that had happened over the past year, nothing was the same, and it was time to stop holding on for dear life. And just like that, she felt like the General again. Their family might look like they were in retreat, but she knew better. She was the General and if anything was an advance, this was it.
CHAPTER FORTY–THREE
It was the craziest thing. When Matilda would tell the story later, and she and Vinnie would tell the story a lot in the coming years, the story of The Kiss would be their story and after the tenth, the hundredth, the thousandth time would still be told in almost exactly the same way, always starting with the same sentence, It was the craziest thing. How they went to Brooklyn the day before Mother’s Day, and because some adjustments were being done to Vinnie’s prosthetic arm, he wasn’t wearing it, a rare occurrence. How Matilda had fought him about taking the subway because her stump was particularly painful and she wanted her crutches and was worried about being late, how they’d taken a car service and because there was no traffic had arrived absurdly early. How they’d walked around for a while, admiring the neat blocks of brownstones, the daffodils and pansies in the window boxes, the number of families out on the street pushing strollers, jogging lightly behind kids on bikes with training wheels, planting the tiny garden beds around the tree trunks. How they finally decided to go over to Stephanie’s a little early and see if she was home. How the man on the stoop had stood there and stared at them like he was seeing a ghost. How even with one arm Vinnie had caught Tommy O’Toole as he fainted, preventing him from hitting the sidewalk facedown and God only knows! Matilda would tell their wide-eyed children then, God only knows what would have happened if he’d hit his head. If your daddy hadn’t caught him? He could have been dead. Worse! His brain could have been damaged and he’d never be the same. But no! Your father reached out—with one arm—and caught him around the waist and set him down like he was no heavier than a big bag of rice. A full grown man!
Matilda would tell how Stephanie had dropped her bags and flowers and started running down the street when she saw Tommy fall, how she’d sat and cradled his head in her lap and held his hand and made him stay still until the paramedics came and told them he was going to be fine. How they’d finally gotten him to his feet and helped him inside and then they knew why Tommy had fainted, why seeing Vinnie and Matilda on the street had made him dizzy and confused.
It was a statue of Mommy and Daddy! As soon as Vinnie junior was old enough to know the story, he’d always interrupt and say that part. It was a statue of you guys!
That’s right. Matilda would run her hand over his head, his glossy hair dark like his mother’s, curly like his father’s. It was a famous statue from France. The lady was missing a foot and the man was missing an arm, just like your mommy and daddy. I took one look at that statue and I knew.
Here, if Matilda and Vinnie were in the same room, she would always pause, always give him the look, a look like she’d given him that day brimming with awe and revelation, a look that fixed his world and made him whole and filled him with such unbearable desire and hope that he was always the first to turn away because the look was almost too much, a virtual sun flooding his world with light.
I saw that statue, Matilda would say, smiling at her boys (first Victor Jr., then little Fernando, then Arturo for Vinnie’s grandfather), and I knew. That statue? It was my sign.
CHAPTER FORTY–FOUR
Nearly ten months after the unexpected nor’easter blew through Manhattan in late October, freezing branches, killing 185 stately trees in Central Park, destroying nearly all the autumnal foliage of the five boroughs, including the colorful mums that lined Park Avenue and the decorative pots of kale the denizens of Brooklyn favored for their front stoops while trying to effect a kind of incongruent country gentility, the birthing centers of New York City were hit with a miniature baby boom. As spring turned to summer and the days grew longer and the humidity crept northward and eastward, slowly making its way up the Jersey shore until it settled over the city like a clammy, uninvited embrace, the citywide birth rate for July nearly doubled, forcing doctors and nurses and midwifes and anesthesiologists to work double shifts, cancel vacations, operate on zero sleep.
“Snowtober babies” they started calling them, the Ethans and Liams and Isabellas and Chloes that appeared in late July in place of the corn, which had failed to thrive because after that early snowstorm the rest of the winter was dry as a bone and the winter’s drought extended into spring and summer. But the babies came—their hair as abundant and soft as corn silk, their new bodies unfurling to expose tiny grasping fingers and clenched toes that looked as sweet as newly bared kernels of corn.