The Nest: A Novel by Sweeney Cynthia D'Aprix

Author:Sweeney, Cynthia D'Aprix [Sweeney, Cynthia D'Aprix]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2016-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Behind the wheel of her parked car and in spite of the cold Melody had fallen deeply asleep. She was dreaming about her babies, how solid and steadying their weight was against her chest, on her lap, in her arms. Tap, tap! Tap, tap! Someone in her dream was tapping on a window, wanting to come in. Tap! Tap! Melody jerked awake and as the two figures standing outside the car lowered their grinning faces down to hers, she drew back, embarrassed and confused.

“Too early for naptime!” one of them said. Melody smothered a groan and tried to smile. It was Jane Hamilton, another mother she knew from school, laughing as if she’d just told the world’s most hilarious joke. This she did not need today.

“Save the disco naps for the weekend!” the other woman said. Melody could never remember her name, the one with the oddly shaped curly hair she thought of as the Poodle. Jane and the Poodle were part of a clique (she’d resisted using that word at first but, incredibly, there was no other designation that fit the social stratifications of school parents) who occasionally included Melody in a monthly Mom’s Night Out. The evenings were usually at someone’s house (when Melody would go because the drinks were free) or sometimes at a local bar (when she would not go and hope nobody noted the distinction). Everyone would swill Chardonnay and the conversation would invariably turn into wine-lubricated screeching about sex and how the husbands wanted it too often and bargaining tips for blow jobs.

Melody didn’t want to hear about anyone’s sex life, much less drunk suburban mothers who didn’t even seem to like their spouses—or their children—all that much. Apart from the indecorousness of it all (which horrified her, she would never talk about Walt that way, she would never think about him that way), she thought the women were willfully shallow and tedious. Melody tended to sit through those evenings nearly silent, occasionally laughing along when everyone else laughed or nodding her head in agreement with some of the milder declarations about school: The kids had too much homework; the assistant principal was a bitch; the eleventh-grade English teacher was hot, but definitely gay.

Melody removed her keys from the ignition, grabbed her handbag, and opened the car door, bracing herself against the chill winter wind.

“We missed you at the meeting,” the Poodle said.

“What meeting?” Melody asked, alarmed. She never missed school meetings.

“Oh, she didn’t need to be there,” Jane said. “Plus, it was boring.”

“So boring,” the Poodle said.

“What meeting?” Melody asked.

“The college financial aid thing,” Jane said. “The forms and the requirements, blah, blah, blah.”

Oh. Melody realized with a sinking feeling that when she’d dutifully copied all the parent gatherings from the college counseling calendar into her own at the end of last summer, she’d ignored the workshops about financial aid. How had things changed so quickly? And how had she not remembered that pompous bit of editing sooner.

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Melody said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.