“It’s totally him,” Louisa said.
“Should we say something?” Nora asked.
Louisa hesitated. She wanted to approach Leo, too, but thought they shouldn’t. “He’ll tell Mom,” she said. Nora nodded, mouth drawn tight, disappointed. They both held still, barely breathing, and watched Leo for a few minutes. He stood and brushed off his pants. He sat on a large boulder. “What is he doing?” Nora whispered as Leo stared up at the sky. She wished they were a normal family. She wished she could run down the path, waving, and he’d smile and laugh and they could spend the day together. Instead, here they were, cowering behind a tree. They didn’t have all the details of his trip to rehab, but they knew there was some kind of accident and that it was bad and involved drugs. “Who does blow anymore?” Louisa had heard her mother say to their father one night last summer.
“He might be buying drugs,” Louisa said, looking at Nora, worried. “Why else would he be all the way up here right before lunch?”
LEO SIGHED AND HOISTED HIMSELF UP, brushing twigs and dirt off his pants. He sat on a nearby rock, assessing the damage to his scraped palms. Something nagged at him, something about the girls. He’d really spooked them. He assumed his fall was inelegant, but couldn’t imagine that he looked dangerous. Why had they been so spooked? Kids probably weren’t allowed anywhere in the park without a parent these days—not even teens, not even boys. Those girls were probably already looking for a cop.
Dammit, Leo thought. What if they were looking for a cop? What if they thought he was drunk or worse and gave his description to the police who were patrolling for him right now? He couldn’t be caught with drugs. His lawyer had been crystal clear: Keep your nose clean until the divorce decree comes down. No travel. No suspicious spending. No trouble. Leo stood and headed toward the sound of traffic. At the top of the path, he turned a corner and finally knew exactly where he was. Central Park West was straight ahead. He could hail a taxi and go directly to Grand Central and not be late for lunch. If he made a right, he’d be at Strawberry Fields within two or three minutes.
He hesitated. Above him, an ear-splitting screech. He looked up to see three enormous crows, perched on one of the few trees that had already dropped its leaves. They were all squawking at once, as if they were arguing about his next move. Directly beneath, in the midst of the stark and barren branches and at the base of a forked limb, a mud-brown leafy mass. A nest. Jesus.
Leo checked the time and started walking.
CHAPTER TWO
Nobody remembered who started calling their eventual inheritance “The Nest,” but the name stuck. Melody was just sixteen when Leonard Plumb Sr. decided to establish a trust for his children. “Nothing significant,” he would tell them repeatedly, “a modest nest egg, conservatively invested, dispersed in time for you to enjoy but not exploit.” The funds, Leonard Sr. explained, would not be available until Melody, the youngest, turned forty.
Jack was the first to argue vociferously against this distribution, wanting to know why they all couldn’t have their share sooner and pointing out that Melody would get the money earlier in her life than everyone else and what was fair about that? But Leonard had given the distribution of funds, how much and when, a great deal of thought. Leonard was—and this was quite literally how he thought of himself, several times a day—a self-made man. It was the organizing principle of his life, that money and its concurrent rewards should flow from work, effort, commitment, and routine. At one time, the Plumbs of Eastern Long Island had family money and a decent amount of real estate. Decades of behavioral blunders and ill-conceived marriages and businesses run amok had left next to nothing by the time Leonard was in high school. He’d wangled himself an engineering scholarship to Cornell and then a job with Dow Chemical during a time he referred to, reverently, as the Dawn of the Absorbency Revolution.
Leonard had lucked onto a team working with a new substance: synthetic polymers that could absorb three hundred times more liquid than conventional organic absorbents like paper and cotton. As his colleagues set to work identifying potential uses for the new superabsorbers—agriculture, industrial processing, architecture, military applications—Leonard seized on something else: consumer products.
According to Leonard’s oft-repeated legend, the business he and his two partners started, advising larger corporations on how to use the new absorbers, was nearly solely responsible for daintier feminine hygiene products (which he never failed to mention in mixed company, mortifying his children), better disposable diapers (his proudest accomplishment, he’d spent a small fortune on a diaper service when the first three were babies), and the quilted square of revolting plastic that still sits beneath every piece of slaughtered meat or poultry in the supermarket (he was not above rooting through the garbage at a dinner party and hoisting the discarded square triumphantly, saying “Mine!”). Leonard built a thriving business based on absorbency and it was the thing he was proudest of, the fact of his life that lent a sweet gleam to all his accomplishments.
He was not a materialistic man. The exterior of his roomy Tudor house was scrupulously maintained, the interior one tick short of slovenly. He was loath to spend money on anything he thought he could fix himself, and he believed he could fix everything. The contents of the Plumb house existed in varying states of disrepair, waiting for Leonard’s attention and marked with his handwritten notes: a hair dryer that could only be held with a mittened pot holder because the cracked handle overheated so quickly (“Use with Care!”), outlets that delivered tiny electric shocks (“Use Upper, Not Lower!”), leaky coffeemakers (“Use Sparingly!”), bikes with no brakes (“Use with Caution!”), and countless defunct blenders, tape recorders, televisions, stereo components (“DO NOT USE!”).
(Years later, unconsciously at first and then deliberately because it made them laugh and was a neat, private shorthand, Bea and Leo would borrow Leonard’s note vernacular for editing manuscripts—use more, use sparingly, DO NOT USE!)
Leonard was a careful, conservative investor in blue chip stocks. He was happy to set aside some funds to provide a modest safety net for his children’s future, but he also wanted them to be financially independent and to value hard work. He’d grown up around trust fund kids—knew many of them still—and he’d seen the damage an influx of early money caused: abundance proffered too soon led to lassitude and indolence, a wandering dissatisfaction. The trust he established was meant to be a soupçon, a little something to sit atop their own, inevitable financial achievements—they were his children, after all—and pad their retirement a bit, maybe help fund a college tuition or two. Nothing so vast as to be truly significant.
Keeping the money tied up until Melody was forty appealed to Leonard for many reasons. He was realistic about the maturity—emotional and otherwise—of his four children: not commendable. He suspected if they didn’t get the money all at once, it would become a source of conflict between those who had it and those who didn’t; they wouldn’t be kind to one another. And if anyone was going to need the money earlier in life, Leonard imagined it would be Melody. She wasn’t the brightest of the four (that would be Bea), or the most charming (Leo), or the most resourceful (Jack).
On the long list of things Leonard didn’t believe in, near the top was paying strangers to manage his money. So one summer evening he enlisted his second cousin George Plumb, who was an attorney, to meet for dinner and hammer out the details of his estate.
It never occurred to Leonard that evening, as he and George leisurely made their way through two Gibson martinis, a superior Pommard, twenty-eight ounces of rib eye with creamed spinach, cigars and brandy, that in less than two years he would be felled by a massive coronary behind the wheel of his scrupulously maintained fifteen-year-old BMW sedan while driving home from work one late night. He never imagined that the bull market of the aughts, riding on mortgage-backed securities, would balloon the trust far beyond his intention, nor could he have foreseen how the staid but eerily prescient George woul
d providentially transfer The Nest to the safer havens of bonds right before the market’s decline in 2008, protecting the capital that the Plumb siblings had watched, during the decade before Melody’s fortieth birthday, inflate to numbers beyond their wildest dreams. He never imagined that as the fund grew so, too, would his children’s tolerance for risk, for doing the one thing Leonard had repeatedly warned them not to do, ever, in any avenue of life, from the time they were old enough to understand: count the chickens before they hatched.
The only person who could access the funds early was Francie and in spite of her casual allegiance to Leonard while he was alive (or maybe because of it, she married her second husband practically within minutes of shedding her widow’s weeds), she abided by Leonard’s wishes to the letter. Her interest in her children, anemic when she was actually responsible for them, dwindled to the occasional holiday brunch or birthday phone call. Leo was the only one who had never petitioned Francie for a loan using The Nest as collateral. Jack and Melody and Bea had all asked at one time that she consider an earlier dispersal, but she stubbornly refused.
Until Leo’s accident.
CHAPTER THREE
The day Leo was released from rehab, a few days before the family lunch at the Oyster Bar, he went straight to his Tribeca apartment hoping to broker some civil temporary living arrangement with his about-to-be ex-wife, Victoria. That she had other plans became clear when his key no longer fit in the lock of the front door.
“Don’t bother fighting this one,” George told him over the phone. “Just find a hotel. Remember my advice. Lie low.”
Leo didn’t want to confess to George that Bea had taken his wallet the night of the accident. He’d arrived at rehab with nothing more than his house keys, his iPhone (which was immediately confiscated and returned to him the day he was released), and sixty dollars in his pocket (ditto). Standing at the Franklin Street subway station, paging through the contacts on his phone, he realized with deflating clarity how few people in Manhattan would be happy to lend him their sofa. How many friendships he’d let wane and diminish over the past few years while he and Victoria indulged each other’s miseries and spent money as if it were somehow magically regenerating. How few people would be sorry to hear he’d had some trouble and would hope for his recovery or return. He’d lived in New York for more than twenty years and had never not had a place to go home to.
The small piece of paper with a cell-phone number on it, pressed on him by his rehab roommate “just in case,” felt like a squirming minnow in his back pocket. He took the paper out, punched the numbers into his phone, and left a message before he had time to think about it, which was exactly the opposite of what he’d been incessantly lectured to do during his stay in Bridges, the recovery center where his family had dumped him for twelve endless weeks. He’d hated every minute of it. Individual therapy hadn’t been half bad; he’d vented practically nonstop about Victoria and had almost exhausted his bitterness over her avarice. He almost felt like getting rid of her was worth the enormous price tag. Almost. But he should have negotiated something about the apartment for the next week or two.
The wool jacket he was wearing was not nearly warm enough. The day was unusually cold for October. He was vaguely aware of an ominous weather report. The New York Post headline at the subway newsstand screamed SNOWTOBER! As Leo stood waiting for a return call on his phone, he watched two panhandlers at the subway entrance compete for change. On one side, an elderly homeless guy was holding a knit cap in his hand and exuberantly addressing passersby with a hearty Hello! Stay dry! Cold one today! And in what Leo thought was a particularly brilliant marketing move, exhorting all the small children to Read a book!
“Did you read a book today, young man?” he’d say. “Don’t forget to read a book!”
The kids would smile shyly and nod, chew on a finger while dropping a parent-supplied dollar bill into the paper bag at the guy’s feet.
On the opposite side, a young bareheaded musical student (smart, Leo thought, his head of streaked blond curls was impressive) had a violin tucked under his elongated chin. He was playing popular classical riffs, lots of Vivaldi, a little Bach, and was very popular with the ladies not pushing strollers; the older ones in their fur coats, the younger ones wearing headphones or carrying reusable shopping bags.
The pelting rain that had been falling all morning was changing over to sleet. Whoever was on the other end of the phone number hadn’t called him back yet. He didn’t have an umbrella, didn’t even have a hat, and the shoulders of his expensive jacket were soaking wet. He paged through the contacts on his phone again, looked at Stephanie’s name for a few seconds, and hit “call.”
“THINGS MUST BE WORSE than I’ve heard if you’re begging to cross the bridge to Brooklyn,” Stephanie said to Leo. She picked up after only the third ring.
“I’m not begging. I need to spend time with somebody normal, somebody I actually like.” Stephanie didn’t respond. She wasn’t going to make this easy. “What have you heard anyway,” Leo asked, “about my situation.” He braced himself. This was another reason he needed to see Stephanie, to figure out how much of the story was out there, see if George had done what he promised.
“Hardly anything,” Stephanie said. “I heard you checked into Bridges. That’s it. Your consigliore is doing a good job. So how was it?”
“How was what?”
“The Carnival cruise,” Stephanie said, trying to decide how far she could push on the phone. Probably not very far.
“You are still not quite as funny as you think,” Leo said, trying to decide how much he’d have to cede before she invited him out. Probably not much.
“How was rehab, Leo? What else would I be asking about?”
“It was fine.” Leo’s fingers were starting to go numb in the cold.
“Are you all beholden to your higher power? Working through the steps?”
“It wasn’t really that kind of place,” Leo said.
“What kind of place was it?”
“Steph, I don’t know if you’ve looked out the window recently, but I’m standing outside in a monsoon of freezing sleet. I’m soaking wet. It’s really cold.” He stomped his feet a little to try to warm his toes. He wasn’t used to being in this situation, waiting on a request.
“Come out. You know where I live.”
“What subway do I take?” He cringed, hearing himself sound so eager and grateful.
“My lord,” Stephanie said, laughing. “Brooklyn and not via town car? I guess the mighty really have fallen. You know there aren’t tokens anymore, right? You have to buy something called a MetroCard?”
Leo didn’t say anything. Of course he knew about the MetroCard, but he realized he’d probably never bought one.
“Leo?” Stephanie asked. “Do you have enough money for a MetroCard?”
“Yes.”
“Come then.” Her voice softened a bit at the edges. “Take the 2 or 3 to Bergen Street. I’m roasting lamb.”
WHEN STEPHANIE’S PHONE RANG THAT AFTERNOON, she’d been throwing fistfuls of rock salt down her front stoop ahead of the purported storm. She knew before she answered that it was Leo. She was not a superstitious person, did not believe in second sight or premonitions or ghosts, but she’d always had an intuition around all things Leo. So she wasn’t surprised when she heard his voice, realized that some part of her was waiting for him to call. She’d run into his wife some weeks prior at a bistro in Soho and found herself on the receiving end of Victoria’s vituperative torrent—light on details, hard on recriminations.
“Good riddance to that narcissistic sociopath,” Victoria had said, sliding her arm through her apparent date’s, a television actor Stephanie recognized from one of those police procedurals. Victoria was vague when Stephanie asked why Leo was in rehab.
“Because he’s a coward?” she said. “Because he’d rather sleep it off in Connecticut and hope everyone forgives and forgets? As usual.”
“Forgives a
nd forgets what?” Stephanie’d persisted. The bar was overflowing and the three of them, gently jostled by the crowd, were swaying as if standing on the deck of a boat.
Victoria stared hard at Stephanie. “You never liked me,” she said, crossing her skeletal arms and giving Stephanie the self-satisfied smile of someone who’d just realized the answer to a riddle.
“I don’t dislike you,” Stephanie said, which was untrue. She very much disliked Victoria or, rather, all Victoria represented, everything about Leo that was superficial, glib, careless. Everything about him that had gone so wrong once he sold SpeakEasyMedia and left everyone behind, including her. “I don’t even know you.”
“Well, know this, for when Leo inevitably reappears,” Victoria had said, leaning so close that Stephanie could smell garlic and shellfish and cigarettes on her breath, could see a tiny smear of dragon-red lipstick on one of her preternaturally bleached front teeth. “I’m getting everything, every last cent. Leo can rot in rehab or in hell for all I care. Pass it on.”
So when Leo called from the subway, sounding sheepish (by Leo standards) and needing shelter, she was curious. Curious to see if rehab had rendered him even the tiniest bit transformed—sober or renewed or regretful. She knew he was probably just the same old Leo, working an angle. Still. She wanted to see for herself.
And if she was being perfectly honest—and she was because she’d fought hard to value honesty above nearly everything else—she was flattered Leo had turned to her when he needed help. Grateful she was still on his list. And because of that, she’d have to be very careful.
LEO DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST BROOKLYN, he just preferred Manhattan, and he believed anyone who said they didn’t was lying. Still, as he walked from the Bergen Street stop into Prospect Heights and down Stephanie’s block, he had to admit that the rapidly falling snow did something decidedly romantic to the streets lined with nineteenth-century brownstones. The cars on the block were already hidden under a sodden layer of white. People were shoveling their walks and front stoops; the scattered rock salt looked like white confetti against the bluestone slate sidewalks.
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