Nesting
March 10
Dear May,
Just want to say again that I’m sorry things were so bumpy with Sara. She’s only four, but strong-willed and opinionated, as you know. I imagine she’s missing the feeling of her mom and dad together and found the presence of another adult, in what must have seemed to her like her dad’s space, very threatening. He’s been sleeping in the guest room for some time.
But I’m writing to let you know that Sara loves the bumblebee you brought her! We play a game to remember where it came from, and when I name you, she laughs. So in spite of all the difficulties, you clearly made a good impression.
I hope we can plan another visit again soon. I’m glad you reached out; it was great to see you. Next time I’ll show you more of Seattle.
Love, Neera
P.S. I’m enclosing a postcard that came for you just after you left.
NEERA LIVED IN the suburbs of Seattle and had given me directions for a taxi from the airport. My flight was delayed by thunderstorms, so while the plans had originally involved my getting there in time to go with Neera to pick up Sara from preschool, I ended up arriving after dinner. Neera answered the door in a wooden mask, which was, she explained, part of the bath-time routine. I was a little disappointed. In accordance with epic tradition, someone was getting a bath, but it wasn’t me and I’d been on a plane for five hours. She handed me another mask, which was held in place by biting on a little ledge at the mouth, rendering conversation difficult. I asked after Adam and Neera removed her mask to say he was out. Then Sara streaked down the center hall and Neera went after her, leaving me in the hallway with my mask.
It was one of the more unusual arrivals I’ve experienced, and I’m not sure I’d recommend it, but it did break the ice. Neera and I hadn’t seen each other since before Sara was born, and within minutes I was helping to carry the child to the tub.
“Hi,” I said to her. “I’m May.”
“I know,” Sara said. Then she whispered something to Neera. When neither of them filled me in, I asked what she said.
Sara shook her head, but Neera told me anyway. “She said you have more starlight in your hair than I do.”
So Penelope had Athena boosting her beauty at opportune moments; I had a four-year-old telling me I was grayer than her mother.
I assumed Adam would be returning later, but after Sara was tucked in and we’d eaten dinner and Neera started to open a second bottle of wine, I asked after him again. Neera, Adam, and I met in the first month of college, during those anxious weeks of new friend making that most seemed to enjoy and I survived. When Adam and Neera started dating in our second year, I wasn’t surprised. When they got married after graduation and Neera asked me to be her maid of honor, I was. I’d assumed she had closer friends.
Neera put down the bottle and looked at me across the kitchen table. I held my breath and thought, until she spoke, that Adam was sick, or in the hospital, or that something awful had happened. She’d always kept her hair in a short, neat bob, which was now ragged and grown out to her shoulders. This suddenly seemed like a bad sign.
She said, “Adam and I are nesting.”
Unfamiliar with this term, yet painfully aware from Neera’s expression that this was not good news, I didn’t say anything. When it was clear that it would have to be explained to me, Neera resumed her work with the wine bottle.
“We’re getting divorced,” she said. “Nesting is when you keep things as stable as possible for the children. They stay in the nest, while Adam and I rotate in and out.”
Fly seemed the better verb, but I didn’t say anything. “What happened?”
“He had an affair. Twice, actually. We got through the first time, started counseling, then he started seeing her again.”
“I’m so sorry, Neera.”
Neera shook her head and poured us more wine. “I know you’re friends with us both, and if you want to see him, you can. I’m not interested in sides. I just want this whole thing to be over.”
“No, that’s okay. I came to see you.”
Neera burst into tears.
When a friend is suffering, it seems you have three options: You can sit silently with her, you can make suggestions, or you can share heartache from your own life. None of the three is as simple as it sounds. I knew someone in college who was so full of advice it was exhausting to share problems with her. You left with a small treatise of self-improvement ideas and the urge to lie down. Share too many of your own stories and tragedy starts to feel competitive. I opted for the first approach and put my hand on her warm back while she sobbed.
Neera had always been the kind of person who warns you of the mess, then you step into her dorm room or house and it’s immaculate. This time, though, it was not. In fact, it felt a little like a nest. But the only difference between human homes and the homes of the rest of the animal kingdom is compartmentalization. It isn’t warmth or durability or a penchant for decoration that distinguishes our homemaking; it is merely that we organize our space into different areas.
House or nest, I was going to have to get another hostess gift. I’d brought a set of blue nesting bowls, which seemed now a distinctly bad choice.
Before we went up to bed, I asked if she’d like help cleaning the kitchen. Neera looked around, as if surprised to see it wasn’t clean. “Why?” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Some people like the closure.”
“I don’t need closure on the day. There’s just going to be another one in the morning.”
SARA WOKE ME UP by very quietly and very deliberately pulling each of the blankets off my bed. I tried to make a game of it, but Sara was serious. She did not want me in the bed, in the room, in the house. I ended up standing in a corner of the kitchen while Neera made coffee and tried to reason with her. Nothing worked until Neera proposed a walk to the playground. I was genuinely surprised. Sara seemed so adult in her demands. What on earth would she do at a playground?
But she liked to swing. And she specifically liked me to push her on the swing, so that’s what I did, trying all the while to shake the feeling that Sara, as she couldn’t get rid of me, was pleased to be putting me to use.
It was a windy, relatively mild day and everything was wet from the day before. Neera kept a towel in her bag to dry the slides and swings, which I thought was very clever of her. We ran into a couple Neera and Adam knew, but while the woman came over to say hello, her partner stayed on his phone. He looked up once with an irritating half-smile.
Neera introduced me as an old friend from college and the woman said, “Oh, so you must be one of Sara’s godmothers!”
I looked at Neera, who just smiled.
“We love Sara,” the woman said. “She’s such a riot.” We all turned to see Sara getting ready to do a somersault down the slide.
Neera said, “Excuse me,” and rushed to stop her.
“Nice to meet you. Have a lovely visit,” the woman said, steering her daughter to another part of the playground.
“She’s English,” Neera said, returning from the slide. “The godparent thing is a big deal to her.”
“Does Sara have godparents?” I asked.
She hesitated. “Yes. Friends from here.”
I was not hurt, just surprised.
“I really didn’t think you’d be interested,” Neera said, and that did seem fair, though for some reason it made me a little sad.
“Is there somewhere we can get ice cream on the way home?” I asked.
We ate our cones while we walked, and in front of Neera’s house I noticed her garden needed attention. It looked as if the fall cleanup had been aborted. Perennials that should have been cut back before winter were wilted on the ground, several shrubs needed pruning before they started to bud. An eclectic array of ceramic pots lined the front steps, too many for my taste, all of them holding soggy, dead plants.
“Do you have a landscaper?” I asked.
“No, we . . . I do it myself,” Neera said.
“That’s great! I’d love to help. I could do some weeding for you tomorrow.”
Neera stared at me. “You do not need to do that.”
“But I’d enjoy it. I like weeding.”
“May, I don’t want you to weed for me.”
“We could do it together, with Sara.”
Neera surveyed the front of her house. She walked to the steps and straightened a few pots, pulled dead plants out of a couple more and dropped them in the grass. “No, I don’t care and I don’t have the time.”
Just as it is unwise to offer unsolicited parenting advice, so, too, gardening tips. I conceded, but the next morning I couldn’t help myself. I woke up early because of the jet lag, and lying in bed thinking about that neglected garden was torture. I got dressed quickly and went out to do a little work before Neera was awake. I don’t think she even noticed.
FOR SOME PEOPLE, the presence of a visitor acts as a kind of stimulant, inspiring outings and fine meals. Lindy is like this. For others, a visitor registers as grit in the gears, leaving everyone a bit sluggish and on edge.
Neera fell into this category. When the next day dawned overcast and rainy again, I encouraged her to catch up on a few errands while I watched Sara, who’d warmed to me just enough to make this possible. We put on Sara’s favorite show, Angelina Ballerina, and after several episodes, I began to feel the lulling comfort of children’s programming: one problem at a time; you see it coming from a mile away; you watch it rise, evolve, and resolve all in less time than it takes to bake a batch of cookies. And friendship, though it may be challenged during the half hour, is always golden and secure by the end.
Between episodes Sara accused me of liking the color gray. Her evidence: my gray jeans, my pearl-gray scarf, and my steel-gray coat in the hall. I suspect she thought I’d deny the charge, but I didn’t, and she seemed to find this interesting. “My favorite color is pink,” she said.
“You may feel differently when you’re older,” I said.
“No, I won’t,” she said. “I’m not boring.”
Then the dancing mouse show started again.
I needed a break, so I left the family room and wandered through the kitchen and into the formal front room of the house. I don’t understand this kind of room. Houses have had best rooms or front parlors for centuries, but in modern times they seem to have become especially useless. Once reserved for special occasions or holidays or a death in the family, no one ever particularly wants to gather there now. In Lindy’s house, she’d told me, the dog had often pooped in the front room when he was a puppy. When I asked Neera about hers, she waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t have time to spend in there,” she said.
I sat down on Neera’s best couch. It was surprisingly comfortable. There were real curtains in here, ones you might call drapes, and two matching lamps and some expensive-looking candlesticks on a small mantel over a gas fireplace. It was very quiet. I couldn’t hear the television and the traffic outside was muffled. I couldn’t even hear a dog barking. I checked my phone to see if Neera had texted to say when she’d be back, and it felt like the loneliest activity in the world, sitting alone in a formal front room, checking your phone.
When the doorbell rang, Sara came barreling down the hall to answer it. I was right behind her, but she opened the door.
“Daddy!”
Adam didn’t look as miserable as I thought he might. He had a scruffy beard, which suited him, and the same kind eyes I remembered. The only sign of stress might have been that he’d gained some weight.
“May,” he said, as if we’d seen each other last week. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“I didn’t know you were nesting.”
“Neera didn’t tell you?”
“Not before I got here, no.”
“What’s nesting?” Sara asked.
I froze. Adam winced and rubbed his forehead. “Making a cozy home for you, sweet pea,” he said. “I love you.”
“Watch Angelina with me!” She began pulling him toward the back of the house and I stepped out of the way. I knew firsthand how strong she was.
Adam stumbled a few steps forward, then stopped. “I can’t, sweet pea. I just came by to pick up something I forgot. I can’t stay.”
“Why can’t you stay?” Sara asked.
“Neera’s out,” I offered.
“That’s not how this works,” Adam snapped, then looked so sad I tried to help.
“Because I’m taking you to the park!” I said to Sara.
She looked at me skeptically. “That’s not what Mommy said.”
Adam knelt down to her height. “I’m going to see you in a few days and we’re going to do lots of fun things, okay? But right now I have to go.”
“Okay,” she said, and took my hand. “You watch with me.” And so I did.
Adam found the jacket he’d left upstairs and blew a kiss to Sara before he left. He waved to me and I waved back, which felt a little like a betrayal of Neera, but I didn’t know what else to do.
I had a late-afternoon cup of coffee in the hope of staying awake through Sara’s bath and bedtime so Neera and I could talk, but Neera was so tired by the end of the day it felt kinder to let her go to bed than to keep her up with questions. I’m certain Penelope would have done the same, sensing another woman’s home in crisis.
THE LAST DAY of my visit we didn’t have a plan. The rain had stopped, but Sara didn’t want to go to the playground again. Neera and I were lingering over coffee when suddenly Neera jumped up and said, “I know!”
Before I could object, she’d booked three tickets for us to see the flower show in town. Under the circumstances, it seemed like a heroic act of friendship, so I refrained from telling her that a flower show in a convention center is like a ship in a bottle, strange and unnatural. The smells from food vendors often overpower the flowers, and the crowds can be shocking. A flower show is to gardening what the runway is to fashion: beyond the reach of mortals. People go to gawk.
I wasn’t optimistic, but touring a flower show with an eager four-year-old in a ballet skirt turned out to have some advantages. The lines around the gardens were long, but someone would notice Sara trying to see on tiptoe and wave us in. Was it the well-dressed ladies in hats and feathers who smiled at us and let Sara cut the line? Not at all. It was the men in jeans, the landscapers, the real-life installers, I guessed, of gardens like the ones we were looking at, who moved aside and said, “Go ahead. Absolutely. Let her see.” A few older women told Sara she looked as pretty as a flower in her pink dress. Sara mostly remained mute, which I admired.
Twice Neera and I were reminiscing about college when she thought she spotted the woman Adam was seeing in the crowd. Her face went white and she grabbed my arm. Both times she was wrong. “Same posture,” she said once, shaking her head. And, “She has that coat.” Both times we lost the thread of our conversation and couldn’t recover it.
After lunch, which was dominated by what Sara would and wouldn’t eat, we saw a few more gardens, then headed briefly to the window-box competition, where I would have lingered, but one look at Neera’s face told me we were done. I made an exception to my cut-flower rule and bought Neera and Sara each a posy of pink and yellow Ranunculus asiaticus before we left. Sara accepted hers with gratifying solemnity, quite taken with the tight folds of concentric petals. On the drive home, she fell asleep holding her flowers.
“Thank you,” I said to Neera. “That was a lovely afternoon. You didn’t have to do that for me.”
“I wanted to. And, really, it was something for Sara and me to do, too. I worry about not doing enough fun things with her. Somehow Adam is the fun parent.”
I knew that as soon as we got back to the house we’d begin the evening routine, so I whispered, “Neera, how are you doing?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t answer that. But today is a good day.”
“What happens after nesting?” I asked. “Do you know what you’re waiting for?”
She glanced at Sara in the rearview mirror. “Things to get easier.”
“I understand that,” I said. “Me, too.” I thought she might ask me to explain, but she didn’t.
“Did you know people will underestimate the weight of a heavy backpack before climbing a steep hill if they’re standing next to a friend?”
“Aww,” Neera said. “That’s nice.”
I looked out my window. Every stripped tire looked like roadkill.
After a minute Neera said, “Actually, that really is something.”
“I thought so,” I said.
That night I packed up my things and so did Neera. She would be staying with local friends until her next turn nesting. In the morning, I left the guest room exactly as I’d found it. We dropped Sara at her preschool on the way to the airport; Adam would pick her up in the afternoon and for the next week and a half, Sara and the house were his.
When Neera hugged me good-bye, she said, “I’m here if you need me.”
“Me, too,” I said.
I knew we both meant it, but on the other hand, we would make each other ask.
March 14
Dear Neera,
Our notes must have crossed in the mail. I hope by now you’ve received mine and know what a lovely time I had. Please don’t worry: I proposed the visit on short notice and you were brave to take me up on it. You shared your home, which is never easy, no matter the circumstances, and were a gracious host. Thank you for a wonderful, memorable weekend. I only wish I could have helped you more.
Yours, May
P. S. Tell Sara I’m reconsidering pink. She’ll understand.
ALLEGEDLY WARMTH, cheeriness, friendliness, and strength are distinct from one another and your likability is largely determined by how much of each you project. The definition of warmth is how easily you convey you have something in common with another person. Rereading my note, I worried I was better at being warm in writing than in person.
The Steiff bumblebee I brought Sara had been mine as a child. Most of my Steiff collection is boxed up in the basement, but I keep a few of the bees nestled into the African violets on the windowsill behind my kitchen sink. They’re black and yellow, about two inches long, with two pieces of felt for wings and black yarn antennae. I have two left, and they sit there with the pink tape measure and now also a little stone bird paperweight. It did not occur to me until I was flying home that a stone bird from a place where a broken family is trying hard to make a nest is a little grim. But what’s grimmer than the bumblebee? Her stinger is barbed so it will stick under the skin after it has pierced you. When she attempts to fly off, her intestines are pulled out and she’ll die, unless you can find a way to dislodge the stinger gently.