My mother will occasionally tell stories with her eyes closed.
“That skinny cowboy danced with me the whole night. A real cowboy, boots, hat, bolo tie, the whole package. Mustache. He even called me little lady. I was fourteen. Where did he come from? He was as handsome as his horse, and he wore leather gloves and carried a rope.”
It’s kind of spooky and funny at the same time.
Occasionally, we go back and forth. Like last week, she said, “Nest, sweetie, help me load that app on my phone.”
“What app?” I said.
“The scale. So I can weigh myself.”
I started laughing.
“I’m serious,” she said. “I can stand on my phone and—”
She overheard herself, some hidden part of her with ears, and she laughed. “I’m so ridiculous.”
The weirdest thing is she had no memory of anything the next morning, none of it, not even laughing with me.
I hear very little of what my mom says Between. That pleasure goes to my father, and he tells me only what makes him laugh, the sweet things, or the childlike, never what upsets him: my mother’s confessions, her fears or disappointments or sadness.
I sometimes hear the sadness.
“I’m very sad,” she’ll say.
“Why are you very sad?” I’ll say.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Are you sad about me or Dad?”
“Yes. But I have to sleep.”
Nothing more.
Sometimes, she’ll cry Between, and I’ll be the one to wake her and hold her until the sadness falls asleep with her.
My mother and her Between.
“You’ll always love me, won’t you, Nest?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Just say yes.”
“Yes.”
“And your father, too?”
Or “Julius always smells pretty after a bath.”
“He hates it,” I say. “He gets embarrassed.”
“He’s neutered, right?”
“Yup.”
“Dumb dog.”
Or “Dad will get home safe. Nothing can hurt him. He’s so handsome and crazy and—.”
Long pause.
“And?” Me again. “Mom? He’s so handsome and crazy and?”
She says something I don’t catch, and I’m scared the thread’s cut. “Mom? Dad’s so handsome and—?”
“And he’s a physicist.”
The next day, I have to remind her. “Mom, last night you said—,” and she rolls her eyes.
“It’s embarrassing.” She shakes her head. “What was it this time?”
She never remembers.
“Today, a man in the grocery store asked me why I let your father talk to me so harshly.”
I’m uncomfortable, a little afraid.
“I don’t know what he heard. I was surrounded by misted vegetables and ten thousand apples. Your father had walked off without me, upset. Trembling and haunted.”
“He does that,” I said. “He’s trying to protect you from the Angers.”
“He was a good-looking man, younger than me. He had a cabbage in his hand, or a couple of yams. And I thought, Maybe a guy like this wouldn’t talk to me the way my husband sometimes does. He’d never scare me or make me worry all night.”
I couldn’t know where this would go. What would my mother confess Between?
“But your father was suffering. He didn’t mean to hurt me, and he was only gruff, not insulting. I smiled politely at the man and turned to the bananas or the tomatoes or whatever.”
“Did Dad catch any of—?”
“No. That would’ve been it for the buttinsky.”
“Buttinsky?”
“With his dimples and his bok choy. If he thought I was in danger from your father, wouldn’t he have defended me? If he were brave? But he waited until I was alone before planting his seed. Trying to steal a little ground, right? Dad’s alpha. And this guy, with his coward’s heart, this beta, didn’t know anything about my Vladimir, his trouble, his love for me, or my love for him, or about you, or all our love.”
And that was it. The end.
Sleep came down.
It doesn’t sound like this exactly, my mother’s Between talk. She’s mushy, and her tongue’s not really into it. Her gentle voice is softer than—I don’t know—. Her voice is baby’s breath. You have to imagine her sleepslur, the pauses, my having to ask her a hundred times to repeat herself, hoping she won’t go to sleep or fully wake in the middle. But all that doesn’t translate to good storytelling. I have to stitch it together a bit. And I have to—elaborate.
I know, my first name. We’re getting there.
So. The day’s done, everything’s behind her, and my mother closes her eyes. She’s still and quiet. Then, Between, she gets chatty.
I have a theory about it. It started when she was a girl. Being the youngest and on the quiet side, Martha didn’t talk much and was heard even less. My aunts and uncles, they’re all loud and. No one ever really listened for the runt. At night, after the crowded family shut up—finally, thank God—Martha talked maybe a whole day’s worth as she fell asleep. To no one in particular, only herself.
That’s my theory.
Everybody needs to talk and be heard. Even if you’re the only one listening.
My mother gave me the name Nest. My parents have told me this a thousand times. It came to her a week before I was born. She was in a motel bed with my father, Between, and:
“We have to name her Nest.”
She was talking straight into my father’s chest, and he didn’t think he’d heard right.
“What was that?” he said and lifted her head a little. A very bright and shocking moon slashed through the curtains, marking the bed and floor and my mother’s cheek.
“We have to name her Nest.”
“You know we’re having a girl?”
“I want her to have the name of a princess-mother.”
“Nest?” my father said.
“Nest.” Then my pregnant mother went to sleep. And the next morning, for once, she remembered.
There was a Princess Nest, only one in the history of the world, not counting fairies. In Wales, right after the Norman Conquest. The name Fitzgerald—son of Gerald—follows a line all the way back to Nest and her husband. All the British royal Tudors and Stuarts, all the poor and rich Irish with that name, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and my father, Vladimir Fitzgerald, come down from Nest, all of them cousins—.
You have no idea what I’m saying.
The human genome, Q. I’m your cousin, in a way, and we’re both cousins to Einstein, Nat Turner, Cleopatra, Susan B. Anthony, Ashoka, Tecumseh, Moses, Amelia Earhart, Shakespeare, the Dalai Lama, Old Stern, his rabbi, and his rabbi’s wife and son, if the rabbi even had a wife and son—how should I know? We’re related by chromosome to Athena, the Sun King, Shaka, Quetzalcoatl, Saint Dymphna, Saladin, Genghis Khan, the lady who just walked by, and.
Nest.
Everyone thinks my parents were high or hippies. I don’t think my mother’s ever been high in her life, but she is a history buff. High on history, like me.
You keeping up, honey?
God, the air’s heavy. Do you feel it? There’s a cloud like a bag of hammers on my back. It’ll rain, for sure, but we’re close to the university—.
And here it comes. Huge drops, almost like water balloons.
How fast can you walk a half mile?
Nest is my middle name.
“We can call her Nest,” my dad told my mom in the hospital. “At home, if you like. But she might want a more common first name. For official purposes. Or in school.”
Until he grew ten feet tall, until the Angers and Minotaur, my father had been bullied for hi
s name and for everything else. He’d been named for Lenin by two deeply committed American Communists, and, well, he grew up during the Cold War. He worried for me. He didn’t want me to suffer. And my mother, still kind of drunk after giving birth, agreed.
She regrets it Between. “I never should have let that happen,” she’s said with her eyes closed, all her dreams sneaking up. “You’re Nest.”
“Yup. I’m Nest.”
“Princess-mother Nest.”
I’m sure she says the same thing to my father: “She’s Nest, the mother of generations.” My father, I’m sure, clenches his teeth and feels ashamed again and again. He’ll never live it down.
But they named me after a powerful and beautiful queen, a second mother of generations.
I’m Eleanor.
Pleased to meet you.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was born forty years after Nest. Queen to Louis VII of France and Henry II of England. She was beautiful and survived everything the twelfth century could throw at a woman: disease, childbirth, war, prison, betrayal, and widowhood. A kiss if you can tell me the names of Eleanor’s two most famous sons, both kings of England.
—?—
Think Robin Hood.
—??—
Lionheart—? The Magna Carta—?
—???—
No kiss for you.
Oh, Q. I know what will keep your mind off the rain and rush.
Wait for it—.
Trivia. You know, like Jeopardy! You’re not allowed to talk. Answer, if you can, with your eyes.
— . . . —
Let’s start with this. Easy. The category is Music.
Who’s missing from this list of the original members of One Direction: Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and?
—?—
Hint: I hate them all together.
—!—
I can see the gleam in your eye. It’s right there, tip of the tongue, but—.
—?!—
Nope. Not quite. You know, but you don’t know.
I think that sums up the fun and unfun of trivia: the knowing and not knowing. It feels good when you have the answer. Sometimes, though, you really don’t know or you’re totally off the mark, and sometimes, you know—you really, really know—but you just can’t quite get there. You can’t scratch the itch. Like you, right now.
Not everybody likes trivia. They’re the well-adjusted. They’re the people who won’t let a little thing like the names and order of First Ladies, or the literal meaning of the word yuan, or the particulars of New York City’s pneumatic mail service stand in the way of their peace of mind. I envy them, I envy you, every day.
I won’t torture you very long. Just until we get to the university, a center of learning, after all.
The wind, Q. Hold my hand—.
Question two: Science. Ready?
Chinook, mistral, haboob, williwaw, sirocco, and Santa Ana are all names for different kinds of what phenomenon—?
The goofy smile gives you away. Total, happy unknowing.
Next.
Thinking, thinking—.
American History. You’re tall, Q, but you’re not quite Abe Lincoln. Not yet.
Everybody knows Lincoln was the tallest president. Who was second tallest? Or, if you don’t like that one, who was the shortest president?
I’m not so sure I want to be tall. Short people live longer than tall people. I think life insurance companies charge higher premiums if you’re higher off the ground, but I could be making that up. For sure, without their wealth and health care, Norwegians would die younger than the Sherpa, not counting avalanches, K2, and falling a thousand feet through a crevasse. Maybe. I don’t know. I’m guessing.
You look nervous. I’m not saying you’ll die young, Q. I’m—. Listen. It’s just you might live longer if you were a fisherman from Okinawa instead of a linebacker from the United States.
Believe me. I want you around my whole life, but that’s unlikely. Sorry. Unless my Chimaera kills me young, I’m short enough to live to a hundred.
I can see the clock tower and quad. I’m so tired.
We need a question—. Literature. Books. Something about books—.
You read Harry Potter. Of course you did. All seven? Just nod.
I think our whole generation’s read it. Everybody. But J. K. Rowling is not the best-selling woman of all time. Not by a lot. What woman—she’s dead now, but not murdered—has sold the most books?
—?—
Here’s another hint, in case you missed the first. My mother loves her.
—?—
Just as I thought.
In some book I read, the author described the sound of cars on wet pavement: like eggs frying in a pan. I can’t remember who wrote it. Pretty good, right?
We have time, lucky you, for a couple more questions.
Let’s try—Family History.
My grandmother—my father’s mother, Gloria Fitzgerald, née Luz—suffered her whole life. I don’t know how often, but at least once, if not a hundred times, she received shock treatment. Name one psychiatric illness this therapy was, and is, used to treat.
I think you’d get this right if I let you answer.
My grandmother never went very long before her mind would give out. Splat, boom, pishh. A scream or a whimper or a long howl. In tears or silence. She disappeared before I was born. My father told me she got on a plane without telling anyone where she was going, one way.
Good-bye, Gloria.
We’re kind of wet, but it’s the last question. The subject is Astrology.
We’re exactly between our birthdays today. I was born the end of July. You were born mid-December. According to our sun signs, are we compatible?
—?—
Please don’t tell me you have to think about this.
—??—
You’re going to break my heart now? Because of trivia? Because I said you might die young? Are we compatible or not?
All I could do was smile and nod.
The rain on our faces.
We landed inside Ford Hall, out of the rain. My head was nearly bursting. At some point, I’d have to Google the answers to Nest’s questions: Harry Styles from the boy band; the names of winds; Lyndon Johnson and James Madison; Dame Agatha Christie; and electroconvulsive therapy, ECT, was used to treat severe depression, catatonia, schizophrenia, and mania.
We can watch the weather from here. It’s only a shower. Enough to wet our faces and hands half cold, and to make the ends of our shoes dark, and. Then it ends. Then comes the beautiful light after the sun smashes through the clouds. Your eyes are the color of that light ten minutes from now.
I want the rest of this walk with you—I want everything to happen—in dry, gold air. I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
Yeah, I don’t think I’ll go to college. Why would I want to waste what sanity I have left in classrooms? As it is, I’m pretty good at reading and learning on my own.
I’ve always liked the tile floors in this old hall, though. My father, the professor: I’ve been coming here, trying doors and kicking back in these ancient armchairs, my whole life. I’ve imagined living inside the stained-glass windows and in the giant clock fifty feet over our heads, and. The forests carved into columns: bears and birds; caterpillars, millipedes, and beetles; vines and mice and owls. A fox or two.
Inside one of these columns, a woman reads novels and nibbles on sticks. In another column, a scrimshander sings to his ivory and bones every song that has ever made it into the world, even the songs the earth sings, the eerie songs that come up through oceans and animals and the miles of rock. The quartz and iron songs. The river and maple and snake—.
Whatever. Let me have my ideas.
A long time ago, one of the
university presidents kept a pair of peacocks—.
Oh God. Peacocks. I can’t get started on peacocks, Q. I can talk for a day just about peacocks. Believe me.
What do you think? Should I use up the rest of my mind in a university? Right here, in the middle of the mosaic, oak, and stone? There’s still chalk and paper, right? For those of us who are old-fashioned? Maybe?
We’re standing where the school is best. It weighs the most right here. It smells like ninety-nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration, and you can hear the peacocks calling.
Time for Darwin—.
Survival of the fittest and natural selection: adapt or die. It’s cruel, but.
Am I fit for survival? If I end up all Chimaera, if I bend over to tie my shoe and stand up completely insane—that fast—and if I’m locked up forever in an asylum, die there, then I will not have adapted to the world. Nobody could call me fit for anything. Nest Fitzgerald would be worthless, evolutionarily speaking.
“We can understand why—.” I can quote Darwin, too: “We can understand why, when a species has once disappeared, it never reappears. . . . For the link of generation has been broken.”
What dies, stays dead. And it’s better off gone, since it didn’t earn its place in the world. Or it gave up its place—slow, slow, slow, over a long time—to something better.
But what if my Chimaera lets me survive everything? What if she helps me climb up into the world?
What if I go to clown college and become a very successful mime? Or what if I make something of myself, whether or not I go to college? What if I end up like my grandmother Gloria, wandering in and out of her mind, but a mother? What if I die at one hundred, as I hope, a grandmother and great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother, even if my trick mind tricks me forever? I’m named for two very fit women who lived a thousand years ago. Will I give birth, like my namesakes, to royalty and generations? Will I pass on my Chimaera to heroes and heroines? Will the world owe its survival, at least a little of it, to a mind that has feathers and claws and trouble sleeping?
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