The Three Weissmanns of Westport

7

The months of struggling against the ruin of her business had taken a toll on Miranda. She had phoned and cajoled and browbeaten and pleaded. She had called in every chit. But there was the stink of failure clinging to the Miranda Weissmann Literary Agency, and neither authors nor editors liked that odor much. No matter what she did or said, she could not seem to keep everything she'd worked so hard to build from washing away like sand beneath her feet.

The appearance on Oprah had been the final humiliation. Miranda was defeated at last, and she was exhausted. So perhaps what happened to her was inevitable, especially while she was living in the same house with her sister and mother, eating her mother's cooking, listening to her sister's indolent scolding. Or was it obligatory for someone about to turn fifty? Maybe it was a simple case of pent-up energy — she was not someone who liked to stand still, even if that meant spinning in circles. Whatever the reason, Miranda found herself embracing a new, a second, a rediscovered adolescence. Because her first adolescence, the stormy drama of which she had rather enjoyed, had been marked by a resolution to, whenever possible, examine her soul, Miranda decided in this new iteration to reexamine her soul. It was possible that this time, at least, she might get results.

Miranda determined that the best place to reexamine her soul was on the beach at dawn. It was unfortunate that Compo Beach was so small, perhaps a half mile from end to end. She found that just as she thought she might be getting somewhere, striding along on her reexamination, she would reach the jetty and have to turn back. Then she would be distracted by the sky, turning from purple darkness to its milky violet morning wash, then bursting into bright pink streaks. Each day the sky was a little different, and therefore that much more distracting. Some days she would see an unlikely flock of green parrots in the parking lot, a convocation so odd and busy and noisy that any examination, or even recognition, of the soul was rendered temporarily impossible. And then, just as she was passing the playground, her feet in the cool sand, the salty air in her lungs, gaining just a little ground on her elusive soul, Miranda's cousin's big Cadillac Escalade would pull up and Cousin Lou would roll down the window and holler hello, frantically waving a pink palm, he was just on his way out and wondering if she would like a lift anywhere.

"No," she would say. "Thanks so much, but I'm just taking a walk." As you see. As we discussed yesterday morning, when you stopped to ask me the same question.

"Walking!" Cousin Lou would exclaim. "Such good exercise." And he and his big black car would purr off into the dawn.

Miranda tried to avoid Cousin Lou as much as possible. It was not that she disliked him. It was not possible to dislike Cousin Lou. He lived to be likable. But he was not introspective, and Miranda was engaged in a course of introspection that required not only her own attempt to examine her soul but an assumption, typical of her, that, therefore, everyone must of course be examining, if not their own souls, then at least hers. Cousin Lou, however, was not interested in her soul any more than he was in his own. As he explained to Miranda, "If Mrs. H. had wanted immigrant children to examine their souls, she would have withheld the funds required for them to do so."

After a week or so of these aborted soul-searching walks, Miranda hit on a new idea. Walking on a suburban beach was insufficiently lonely. There were far too many interruptions. She must go out to sea to be truly contemplative. As she realized this, she was watching a yellow kayak slide across the horizon. That was the answer, of course. In a kayak she could be alone, undisturbed. A sea kayak could take her all along the shore. She could explore the tidal areas at Old Mill, at Burying Hill beach, all along the Gold Coast to Southport, where one of her writers, the radio talk-show host who had been fired two months ago for referring to a female African American Cabinet member as Little Black Bimbo, had once lived.

On Craigslist, Miranda found kayaks for sale from the sailing school at Longshore, Westport's public country club, for $395.

"Is that a bargain?" Betty asked. "I'm sure it must be."

"On the other hand, hand-me-downs never fit well, do they? Perhaps a new one would be safer."

"Shouldn't you rent a boat first?" Annie asked. "Take lessons? You've never been in a kayak in your life."

"I thought you wanted to save money! Lessons are expensive."

"Lessons! It's not as if your sister's training for the Olympics, Annie."

But Betty could see Annie was upset, and at the first opportunity she took her aside and placed her hand firmly on Annie's arm, as she had always done when the girls squabbled as children.

"Miranda needs to search her soul," Betty then gently explained. "Now, sweetheart, how is she supposed to do that without a nice new kayak?"

What Betty didn't explain was that she would have paid almost any sum of money, whether she had it or not, to get Miranda out of the cramped bungalow for at least part of the day. It was true that she was happy to spend time with Miranda. It had been a lifetime, it seemed, since she had been able to say good morning to her daughters and to say good night, too. And Miranda was good company. It was a miracle at this age to have her talented, interesting, grown-up daughter there, every day, in the house, to share a pot of coffee, a salad for lunch, a pot of tea in the afternoon. On the other hand, Betty had noticed that it was invariably she who made the coffee, the salad, and the tea. Miranda, once so capable and busy in her life in New York, still so energetic about her soulful walks, was limp and helpless around the house.

Betty would never let her daughter see her concern. Miranda needed her to be strong. But her heart went out to Miranda, and she lay awake at night wondering what would become of her pretty, vivacious, irresponsible daughter, so alone in the world, no husband, no children. And now, no authors either.

She knew Miranda was broke or, as Miranda preferred to put it, "temporarily unable to access funds," which must be terribly frustrating considering all her success. There was an awful, endless, complicated lawsuit that had frozen all of Miranda's assets. As if they were so many lamb chops, Betty thought, imagining the assets wrapped in aluminum foil and coated with a white film of ice.

Poor Miranda had never been very good with money. Joseph had always been telling her to save more. But Miranda would just laugh and say that money was not the goal, it was the means, then set off on another eco trip, spending tens of thousands of dollars to go someplace whose claim to fame was that it had gray shower water and you had to put your toilet paper in the wastebasket... Oh, it was all incomprehensible. If Joseph had been alive, he would have explained it to her, but since Joseph had died so tragically, Betty was left in ignorance to watch with a broken heart as her daughter worried about money. Miranda had never worried about it before, and now that it was all gone, it seemed doubly unfair to have to worry about something she no longer had.

A kayak might be just the thing to cheer her up. At the very least, it would get her out of the house, leaving Betty a moment to search her own soul without having to jump up to make her forty-nine-year-old daughter tuna fish sandwiches "just the way I like them, Mom!"

Miranda had gotten a call from her former assistant. Out of the goodness of her heart and a residual, reflexive terror at the sound of Miranda's voice, this young woman was still handling Miranda's health insurance from her busy desk at a rival agency, filing Miranda's claims, and she had called to report on a wayward dental bill. Miranda had taken the opportunity to ask her if she could help arrange parking for the new kayak.

"They must have parking lots for these things."

The girl — so well trained in her two years with me, Miranda thought with satisfaction — had found a place right at the beach's marina. There was a fee, but what in life did not have a fee of one kind or another?

The new kayak itself was a bright, shiny red. Miranda's life vest was orange, and the black of the clingy kayaking clothes she'd gotten contrasted nicely, giving the whole, according to an admiring Betty, the appearance of a tropical fish.

That semiretired lawyer, the friend of Cousin Lou's, was at the water's edge fishing "with zero environmental impact," he assured her, showing his fishless basket. She had initially tried to ignore him, but as soon as he saw her struggling with the kayak, he lowered his fishing pole and helped her get the boat into the water.

She shot away from the shore, a streak of color against the slate gray water of Long Island Sound in the early dawn. The wind was cold. Bracing, she thought as she paddled into it, passing Compo Beach. How insignificant the beach looked from the water, even smaller and slighter than from the curve of sand itself. She had Googled some maps of the coast. Coming up was Sherwood Island, which was not an island at all but a state park. She had never been there. But she had driven to Burying Hill beach, the minuscule bit of sand up ahead on her left. There were wetlands there, enfolding several large architecturally uncertain houses that had somehow been allowed to spring up in the last twenty years. She headed her little craft toward the inlet that led to the pretty marsh.

This seems as good a place and time as any, she thought, better than most, to search my soul. But what will I find there? A lint-covered Altoid? Suddenly, alone, slapping among the whitecaps, she recoiled at the thought of introspection. As a girl, she had affected despair and emotional pain in an attempt at depth. Now she had no need of affectations. The despair was real, the pain was real. And depth? It no longer beckoned, that rich, worldly dimension of sophistication, of adulthood. Depth spread itself out before her instead, a hole, a pit, a place of infinite loss.

She thought sadly of her disgraced clients. She had listened to them so attentively for so long. Listening was her gift. She had listened and heard such extraordinary things. And yet she had really heard nothing but tall tales. Was that really a fault? she wondered. To hear stories when people told lies? How brave they had seemed. So much suffering. No wonder they made it all up.

Her arms were starting to hurt. Funny how she had started out so vigorously, hardly noticing the effort of each stroke, as if paddling were as natural to her as walking. Yet she had never kayaked before in her life. She had canoed as a kid at camp. It had been a clunky, achy affair, with a great deal of portage. She remembered it distinctly now as her shoulders throbbed with pain. Her hands, clasped around the little paddle, were stiff and cold, even with the special kayaking gloves she had purchased. Surely the sun would come out soon and warm her up. It was time for the sky to become pale, then to color slightly, then to pale again to a weak blue, then to deepen into the bright daylight sky. She looked ahead. She was facing east, where all this coloring and deepening and brightening ought to have been taking place. No sign of color, no sign of light. Just more clouds, darker clouds. Perhaps she should have checked the weather before heading out. But she had recited the poem Joseph once taught her on a trip to Maine: "Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning." And as there was no red sky that morning, she had believed she was safe.

She concentrated on keeping the kayak steady. The galling picture of the doleful lawyer she had tried to avoid, the image of him coming to her rescue in spite of her snub, kept appearing. Annie claimed he was interesting in spite of his shyness. If Annie liked him so much, she didn't see why he couldn't have come to Annie's rescue. Miranda simply found him dull. As dull as ditchwater. Or was it dishwater? She had no idea which was duller or even why either would be considered dull to begin with. She would have to ask Annie. That was just the kind of thing Annie would know.

She tried to return to the subject of her soul, but was obstructed by an anguished inner dialogue regarding the publishers who had stopped calling her long ago in March and were always "out" when she called them. One voice within her cried, After all these years! The other tried to counter with It's August — they're all out of town.

Miranda realized that with all her paddling she had not moved any closer to the marsh. In fact, she was skimming along the coast, past Burying Hill beach, past an enormous house, a mansion, even bigger than Cousin Lou's house, and far older. It was beautiful, stone, in the Tudor style of the nineteenth-century robber barons. It went on and on. The road that ran along the shore was named Beachside Avenue, not very inspired, but accurate. The houses there were separated from the road by great stone walls. On the water side, too, stone walls ran their length, dropping from lush sweeps of lawn down to the crusty little beach below.

Here was another house, not as old, quite hideous really, Palladian style, was that what you'd call it with those awful columns? Yes, but what a view it must have. And its bit of beach curved out in such a way that she might just be able to land there. She really would have to try. The current was being extremely uncooperative. And it had started to rain. She lifted her face to the stinging drops. It was sublime, the cold wind and rain, the physical exhaustion. If she had time, she was sure she could search her soul quite successfully now. She rested her paddle for a moment, breathing in the wild air and the wetness. The kayak swayed and slapped in the dark water between agile, aggressive whitecaps. This is magnificent, she thought, but even as the words came into her head, the sentiment was pushed aside by a realization that it would not be at all magnificent to end up dumped in the water of Long Island Sound or rushing past Rhode Island, which seemed to be her two alternatives, and she began to paddle rather frantically toward the spit of land belonging to the ugly Palladian house. It was tantalizingly close. She was almost there. She was there. But the waves were larger now. They were actually crashing against the beach, against the rocks that jutted out into the water. Not as grand as the waves on Cape Cod, of course, not even close, but quite big enough to keep her from paddling ashore.

And, as it turned out, quite big enough to capsize her. She felt the kayak rolling, felt the smack of the cold water, saw the gray of the sky swivel into the gray of the sea, felt the water lock above her, felt her legs thrashing to free themselves from the red kayak. Her body twisted, her face plunged down into darkness, her arms flailed, she kicked and scratched at the eerie silence. Her feet were caught and useless, her hands farther and farther away, clawing water, her lungs empty, bursting with emptiness.

And then, suddenly, astonishingly, Miranda felt solid human warmth. She felt strong arms reaching around her, pulling her out of the boat, out of the choking water, onto the heavy wet sand, strong arms lifting her up and holding her close.

Miranda sputtered. Miranda opened her eyes. Miranda smiled.

Her rescuer's hair was dripping wet, his long, dark eyelashes sparkling with drops of water. He was as pale as the morning sky, his high, pronounced cheekbones washed with the blush of youthful exertion. She felt his chest heaving. Oh Lord, she thought with fervor that bordered on delirium, I am saved, I am saved! She imagined herself waving her arms in the air like a congregant at a revival meeting and, amused at the thought of a God with the imagination to drop her into the embrace of an Adonis, Miranda relaxed, enthusiastically, into the young hero's arms.

An hour later, they pulled up into the dirt driveway beside the cottage, which looked even more decrepit than usual in the rain, dripping and homely as an abandoned cabbage. Betty heard the soggy crunch of the wheels in the drive. She went to the window, where with a flutter of expectation she saw a pretty white MINI Cooper. In the passenger seat was the radiant face of her younger daughter. On the roof, strapped by bungee cords, was the bright red kayak. Something had happened!

Betty ran to the door in time to see a handsome young man dashing through the rain toward the house beside her daughter, both of them in pants embroidered with sea creatures — blue whales on his yellow pants, pink lobsters on her ill-fitting brick red pants — and matching pastel green cotton sweaters. When did Miranda buy such odd clothes? She imagined the two of them spotting each other somewhere, kindred spirits, and starting up a conversation about their shared hobby of Extreme Wasp Attire. What a handsome boy he was.

"This is Kit," Miranda said when they had run into the house and shaken the rain off like two big colorful dogs. "I almost drowned in that thing." She pointed to the kayak on top of the little car. "Kit pulled me out of the water. And took me to his aunt's boathouse. He's visiting her and staying in the boathouse. It's adorable. He was fishing, and he happened to see me go under..." She opened her eyes as wide as they would go, threw her arms out in one of her characteristic dramatic gestures, and said, breathlessly, "Kit Maybank saved my life!"

"Isn't that nice," Betty heard herself say as she realized that the silly clothes belonged to the handsome boy. It began to dawn on her, in a dull sickening rush, that not only had Something Happened but it had been something of a threatening, dangerous nature. The blood began pounding in her ears, and she could no longer hear what Miranda was prattling on about. All she could understand was that Miranda had been in danger and now Miranda was safe. She was vaguely aware of her arms around her daughter, of holding Miranda in a tight embrace, of Miranda's wet, cold cheeks beneath her lips. She understood, next, that she was hugging Kit, the handsome boy with tiny whales on his pants. She realized, after she had done it, that she had already run to the linen closet upstairs for towels, that she had put the kettle on, that she had poured brandy into an orange juice glass, slopping some on the floor, all the while listening to the pounding in her ears and feeling she was far away, as if she were invisible and weighed nothing at all. Once before she had been invisible and weightless and meaningless in this way, when the girls were very young and had disappeared at Bonwit Teller. Betty had turned around and around, as if the next time she turned they would spin back into view. It was Joseph who found them, both staring at miniature blown-glass animals — giraffes and dachshunds, a rooster and a pig within a pig, all in swirling unnatural colors — lined up in a glass case. Betty found herself now on the floor with a paper towel dabbing at the spilled brandy. She thought of Joseph and the whiskey glass she had thrown at him. But Joseph at that moment did not matter. Only one thing mattered. Her daughter had been in danger, and now she was safe.

When she got home and heard what had happened and saw her sister, now in a nightgown, huddled on the couch under a cotton blanket, Annie was tempted to deliver a lecture. She had, after all, warned Miranda not to take the kayak out until she had taken lessons, and just last night she had pointed out that the Sound had been unusually rough lately. "Small craft warnings," she had said. "And your craft is minute." But looking at Miranda now, so fragile and vulnerable in her flowered nightgown and striped socks, Annie could not bear to say a word that might hurt her. Instead, she sat beside her on the sofa and put her arms out. Miranda came to her and snuggled in like a little girl.

Annie said, "It all sounds very dramatic." She kissed Miranda on the forehead. Did it feel warm? She laid her cheek against Miranda's forehead. "You have a fever."

"You don't catch cold from being in the cold," said Miranda irritably. "They proved that."

"You still have a fever."

Betty began to bustle in earnest now, throwing another blanket over Miranda and attempting to spoon chicken soup into her mouth. "I read that they did an experiment in Scotland with students. They put their feet in buckets of cold water and exposed them to germs."

"What happened?" Annie asked.

"Well, I really can't remember. But it sounds so unpleasant. I've never liked Scotland. Here," she said, putting a thermometer in Miranda's mouth.

"You just gave me soup." Miranda tried to hand the thermometer back to her mother. "My temperature will be 110 after soup."

"All the more reason," Betty said firmly. And she replaced the thermometer in her daughter's mouth, where it belonged.

When Cousin Lou came by on his customary evening walk, something prescribed by his doctor for his heart which he converted into a promenade from neighbor to neighbor to chat and invite them to his house for various meals, he discovered Betty fussing over a feverish but contented patient while Annie washed the dishes.

"She was rescued by a young fisherman," Betty said.

Annie, listening from the kitchen, just able to hear her mother over the running water, smiled to herself. Betty made the young man sound like a Scandinavian in a cable knit sweater crashing about in the Barents Sea.

"By my friend Roberts? Ah ha! I saw him out with his fishing gear this morning. I knew he had eyes for you, Miranda. And now he is your hero. Although I don't think I would call him young."

"Eyes for me?" Miranda said. "He was practically mute when I sat beside him at dinner, if that's who you mean."

"Mute, but not blind to your charms," Cousin Lou said.

"Well, whatever his disabilities, poor man, it wasn't him, anyway," Betty said. "It was a young man who spoke very nicely and didn't even need glasses, unless he wears contacts, which is possible, you never know. His name was Kit Maybank, isn't that right, Miranda? A pretty name. Maybank. Like a pile of dirt in spring."

Miranda, the thermometer again in her mouth, nodded.

"Maybank." Lou sniffed. "Hoity-toity goity and moity." He wore his Mrs. H. expression, and Miranda steeled herself for a chechtling parable, but he just patted Miranda affectionately on the head and said, "Well, well, never mind. Oh, poor unsuspecting Roberts. Forgotten so soon for young Maybank."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Cousin Lou," Miranda mumbled, the thermometer wiggling absurdly. "Roberts is old enough to be my father."

"At least someone is," Betty said. "Now that Josie has dropped the ball."

Miranda went to bed feverish and flushed, her hair flat against her head, her eyes swollen with fatigue. The next morning, however, she emerged from the bathroom brisk and freshly showered, looking and feeling like herself — her pre-Oprah self. When Kit Maybank came up the dirt path to the ramshackle cottage, he was not prepared for the radiant woman who met him on the sunporch. He remembered a gasping, pale, wet, older woman from the day before, not this vibrant being with the mocking smile and deep, avid eyes.

After pushing the screen door open, Miranda looked down from her vantage point atop the concrete steps. There was the Adonis, a hank of his dark silky hair falling across his forehead. And there beside him, his little hand clutching the larger hand, was an identical tiny Adonis, a boy of two or three, she guessed. They both smiled at her. Then the child put his hand in his mouth. Miranda watched, fascinated, as his fist twisted until it disappeared completely into the little mouth and the child blinked contentedly.

Kit had returned out of an agreeable feeling of importance and friendly condescension toward the lady he had rescued. But now, facing this surprisingly attractive woman who had darted out the door and given him a long, assured, assessing look, he was, for a moment, as mute as Roberts. Then she looked at Henry, his little boy. He saw the quizzical expression, the swipe of her hand in front of her face, as if wiping away an unexpected drizzle of rain.

"Henry," he said. "This is my son, Henry."

The child, removing his hand from his mouth, said, "Henry" in a slurred child voice.

"Henry, this is..." He forgot her name, then quickly, but not quite quickly enough, remembered. ". . . Miranda."

She gave a short, sardonic laugh, from deep in her chest, peering down at them from the cracked concrete pedestal. "How do you do, Henry?" She came down from the steps.

"Henry," the child said again, throwing a quick glance at his father, as if confirming the fact.

"Mini-me," Miranda said. Henry was wearing a petite version of his father's outfit: miniature khaki pants, Top-Siders that might have been made for a doll, a madras belt the size of a dog collar, and a postage-stamp-size pink oxford shirt.

Kit handed Miranda the enormous bouquet of wildflowers he had picked from the meadow behind his aunt's house.

"You're awfully dry today," he said.

"I try not to drown more than once a week."

Miranda invited them in. She arranged the flowers in a vase and placed it on the sunporch. "I love wildflowers," she said. "But I should be the one bringing flowers. And burnt offerings." She put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot, staring at the little boy, who had one small arm wrapped around his father's calf. "Cookies," she said.

She left them, and Kit watched her go, trying to ignore her tight, quick, sexy walk. When she returned, she was carrying a plate of cookies in one hand and the pants and sweater he'd lent her the day before in the other.

"This is the only tribute I have to pay at the moment," she said.

They sat on the wicker furniture in the sunporch and watched Henry eat cookies.

"He's two," Kit said. "His mother..."

Miranda was suddenly alert. His mother was... institutionalized? Dead? She felt a confession coming, a story, a tale of misery transcended...

"His mother is in Africa doing research for two months. It wouldn't have been safe to take him. She's an epidemiologist."

The child sat down heavily on the floor, then popped up and spun around, his arms out, his fingers splayed.

"We're divorced," Kit added.

She saw him blush. Or was she the one who blushed?

"So I've got him all to myself for a bit, don't I, little guy?" Kit continued quickly. "With a little help from Aunt Charlotte and her indomitable housekeeper, Hilda. Who might as well be named Mrs. Danvers. Henry, what does Hilda say?"

"'No, no, no,'" said Henry, shaking his finger.

He then ran from one end of the room to the other and came to a sudden stop in front of where Miranda sat.

He climbed into her lap and held a soggy, ragged remnant of a cookie up to her mouth.

Miranda felt the cookie on her lips, like damp, sweet sand. An oatmeal cookie. When they were children, they called oatmeal cookies "Josie cookies." She could not remember why. She looked at the big pale gray eyes of the child. His mouth was crusted with cookie detritus. His nails, dug into the cookie, seemed no bigger than five little kernels of corn. She nibbled at the cookie and saw his face light up and held him, suddenly, close to her breast.

"Thank you," she said softly. "Thank you, little Henry."

When Kit was strapping Henry into his car seat, he was aware of Miranda behind him. He turned and saw her, those remarkable eyes aimed right at him.

"I owe you," she said.

He shook his head, all the time watching her watch him. She took his hand. He heard himself suck in his breath, stirred, and wondered if she heard it, too. She was far too old for him, though he suddenly could not tell how old that actually was. Nor, he realized, did he care. He had fished her out of the sea. He could still feel the weight of her wet body. He quickly turned back to Henry. There was something depraved about even thinking of such things in front of one's son. And yet one did. The sky had cleared overnight, and the late-summer sunlight was deep and slanted and warm. She was wearing some kind of scent. Henry was kicking his feet against the car seat. Bing bang, bing bang.

"You have paid your debt with cookies," he said.

"No, no. Here's what I'll do," she said. "I'll take you out to dinner."

Her voice was low and straightforward. She was clearly used to people doing what she told them to do. He wanted to do what she wanted him to do.

Henry was singing now. Something from a cartoon show. Kit said, "Henry, say goodbye to Miranda."

An obliging child, Henry waved his small hand. He called her Randa, and she smiled and waved back.

"Tomorrow at seven," she said to Kit. "Pick me up here."

He nodded, watching her walk back toward the dreary little house.

"And," she added, turning around and flashing her smile, "make sure to bring your friend."