The Three Weissmanns of Westport

18

On one of the afternoons when Leanne was working in the library of the big house on Beachside Avenue, Miranda and Henry were searching for worms on the lawn in back. Long Island Sound stretched out before them. The sky was a vibrant blue and the wind was brisk. Aunt Charlotte had recovered enough from her surgery to be steered outside in a wheelchair. She was wearing one of the fleece blankets with arms that Betty had ordered from TV. "The second one was half-price," Betty had explained to an outraged Annie. Then she had given it to Charlotte Maybank, who wore it at all times, inside and out.

Henry curled his fingers in the bright grass and damp sod. The earth was dark and rich, almost black. A pink worm slithered out from the trench he had carved.

"Look!" he said.

"We can go fishing," Miranda said.

Henry's brow wrinkled. Miranda knew by now that this was the cloud before the storm.

"The worm will die," he said in the tremulous voice that preceded a wail. "The fish will die..."

Miranda quickly picked up the worm and took Henry's hand. She placed the worm in his palm. She said, "See that brown part? That's dirt. It eats the dirt and then the dirt comes out the other end and the dirt that comes out is better for growing things."

"Worm poop," Henry said, mollified.

As Miranda breathed a sigh of relief, she saw Roberts coming out of the house and walking down the flagstone path toward them. He wore his habitual dark suit. His shoes gleamed in an old-fashioned way. He looked even more grave than usual.

"Roberts?" she said, standing up. "Everything okay?"

He gave Miranda a halfhearted wave, turned to the old lady and said, "Charlotte, we really have to talk," then began to wheel her inside.

"Housewares, durable goods, knickknacks..." Charlotte Maybank's wavering voice came back to Miranda on the wind. "Oh yes, they'll all have to go!"

Later, Miranda asked Leanne if anything particular was up. "Roberts looked pretty spooked."

Leanne pursed her lips, then gave a quick shake of her head and said, "Just my aunt's nonsense. You know how she is."

On top of the dunes, Frederick stood with his bare feet in the cold sand. He was thinking about the night he gave the reading at the Furrier Library in Manhattan. He could picture Annie Weissmann, her eyes shining, a little imperfectly hidden smile of pride on her personable face. Cape Cod in the winter, his daughter had said with disdain. Annie's sister had said something nice but odd, some nonsense about paragliders, but also something about her feet in the cold sand. Gwen had never understood things like feet in cold sand. Neither, it appeared, did Amber. He leaned into the wind coming from the water. It was almost strong enough to hold him up. He felt it against his face, in his hair, on his scalp. His hands were red and cold. He never wanted to move. With the hollow rumble of the waves and the wail of the wind in his ears, embraced by the gusts of sea air, his feet planted, aching in the cold of the packed sand, Frederick felt safe from the life he led and alive in the life he truly lived. He stood on the edge of the dune until the light began to dim. His joints were stiff. He was refreshed.

When he drove home, he got a call on his cell.

"Where have you been?" Amber said. "I've been calling for over an hour. I thought you had a heart attack or something."

"I hope you're not disappointed. I was on the beach. I left the phone in the car."

"Listen, we're staying in the city a little longer. You don't mind, do you?"

Amber and Crystal had stayed on at Joseph's apartment, even after Frederick came back to the Cape. It had been over two weeks now. It seemed to Frederick that Amber had become quite indispensable to his sister and daughter, a kind of in-house house sitter. She ran errands for them. She babysat for the twins, took them to puppet shows and to the pediatrician. Felicity often asked Amber to run out to the market, to the butcher. They all three (Crystal seemed to bow out of a lot of these activities) would take the little girls to the park and then cross to the East Side to go shopping. Frederick tried not to think about any of them too much. He spent an hour or two each morning walking on the beach, then worked, then took another walk in the evening, then drank himself to sleep. He was a solitary person and was not unhappy with the way things were, only with how they would be.

"Daddy?" Henry said, pointing to the television screen. Kit was against a brick wall, a look of horror and fear on his face, a gun to his head. Henry started to cry.

"Baby, it's not real," Leanne said. "It's make-believe. That's Daddy's job — pretending."

Henry sobbed and wailed, his little body shaking.

Betty said, "Get a cookie. Get the child a cookie." It had never worked with the girls when they were little, but you never knew. Did they even have any cookies?

Leanne and Miranda took Henry into the kitchen and sat him on the counter.

"I'm really sorry, Leanne. My mother should not have been watching that while you were here."

Leanne was opening cabinets. "Where do you keep your cookies? Don't worry about it, Randa. Right, Henry? Mommy and Randa are right here. And Daddy is just fine. So try to shape up, sweetheart," she said to Henry, kissing his forehead.

"I don't have any shape ups left in me," he sobbed.

Miranda opened a cabinet and stared at the boxes of whole-wheat pasta, the saltines, the can of chickpeas, and the jar of almond butter. "How about sort-of peanut butter on a cracker?" Henry nodded solemn agreement. "Good," she said. "And don't cry about Daddy. He'll come back from the TV and see you really soon, right?" She looked at Leanne. "Right?"

Leanne shrugged.

"Right," Miranda said. "I know he will. Let's call him. You know, you can call him up on the telephone and you can see him at the same time talking to you on the computer."

Henry ate his cracker while he contemplated that.

"Okay," he said finally.

Leanne looked relieved. "Thanks," she said to Miranda. "It's so difficult sometimes with Kit in California."

"I understand. It's all been so painful and awkward."

Leanne nodded. "I guess." She stroked Henry's hair.

Miranda watched Leanne's hand. How easily it shaped itself to that beautiful head. She felt a confused stab of jealousy and looked away.

"Painful subject," Leanne said very softly.

Miranda took a deep breath. She exhaled slowly. It was going to rain. She gazed out the window at the putty-colored sky. Then she said what she had wanted to say for a long time, a simple sentiment, a statement of friendship and solidarity, but it had until now always seemed so presumptuous. "I'm so sorry he made you so unhappy."

There was an awkward pause, and then Leanne said, "Me?"

"Well, me too. And I know how weird it is coming from me, but when your husband leaves you... I mean, look at my poor mother... You feel so abandoned. So hurt..."

Leanne was staring at her. "Kit didn't leave me," she said.

"More?" Henry asked, pointing to the crackers.

Miranda spread more almond butter on another cracker, then absentmindedly ate it herself.

"More please?" said Henry.

"I kicked Kit out."

Miranda picked up Henry and set him on his feet on the floor. "Go ask Betty if she wants a cracker, okay?"

She licked almond butter off her fingers as he scuttled away.

Finally, she said, "Ah."

In an irrelevant echo, a crow outside gave a hoarse caw.

The faucet dripped hollow, portentous plunks.

"Also, about Maine?" Leanne said at last.

"Look, I'm really, really sorry I mentioned that. I know it was awkward. I mean, even if you left him," she added. She got up and tightened the taps, first the hot, then the cold. The dripping continued. "It's a tricky subject. Especially between you and me."

Leanne produced an uncomfortable laugh and turned away.

"Okay, I know it's unlikely, our friendship." Miranda felt almost elated, declaring friendship, just like that. "Bizarre that Kit brought us together..."

"Henry brought us together," she heard Leanne say.

Miranda had never really discussed Kit with anyone, but now she found herself compelled to talk about him to the last person in the world she should. "I guess I just needed you to understand about Kit. Because you're the only one who really can." She heard how ungainly she sounded, on and on in an inappropriate, breathless rush, yet she couldn't stop. "All those stories from Maine, they meant so much to me; I was just so happy to be around someone who had such an idyllic childhood, especially after all my Awful Authors and their gruesome stories of childhood, which all turned out to be fake anyway; it was just so comforting, and inspiring, actually, to meet someone normal, someone who didn't have anything to hide, whose childhood was so real, and so real to him..."

As she was speaking, Leanne leaned toward her across the table in an almost menacing posture. After every few words she would try to interrupt Miranda, but Miranda stumbled on. She felt like a broken-down racehorse who has to reach the finish or his heart will break. It was suddenly urgent that she explain herself. "My whole career was built on cheesy lurid tragedy. Cheesy lurid tragedy that turned out to be fake cheesy lurid tragedy. Think how that felt. It felt like shit, okay? So think how refreshing it was to talk to someone who grew up in a family full of love and fun and birds and wildflowers..."

"Jesus!" Leanne said. "Stop! I can't stand it anymore. Love and fun and birds and wildflowers? I'm going to puke. Christ almighty..."

Miranda did stop. She became very serious. In a firm voice she said, "Look, whatever Kit did to me, or to you, it's crazy the way we never mention him. I've been worse than you, I know. But I was wrong, okay? We should be able to speak honestly about Kit."

"Honestly? About Kit? Really? Okay. For starters, Kit did not grow up in Maine," Leanne said. "Okay? Got it? He's never even been to Maine. And he didn't have any brothers or sisters. Not a one. He was an only child, okay? And his father? Left when he was two, never showed his face again. The mother? The mother was a drunk who barely knew he existed..."

Miranda sat down heavily at the kitchen table. "Gosh. Really?"

"It's a performance, Miranda. Kit pretends," Leanne said. "That's what he does."

Leanne was on a tear now — how Kit had usurped her Waspy name "because he's a snob, do you get that? Because it made him sound East Coast Waspy"; his pretensions in dress and speech; his irresponsible spending on clothes and cars and boats they could not afford in order to impress his friends; the grandiosity; the selfishness, the lying — always, first, last, and in between, the lying. "You found him boyish. I get that. But there's another side to boyish when the boy lives off credit cards he can't pay, when the boy is thirty-five years old and has never had a job..."

"He's thirty-five? He said he was thirty."

"Too old for you?" Leanne gave Miranda a sharp look, then her face softened into affection. "Poor Miranda."

Maybe it was the gentleness of Leanne's voice, maybe it was simply the last straw, the final example of her own inability to see what was in front of her, but the tears, the bankruptcy tears, the Kit tears, the self-pity, stupidity, whirling queasy exhaustion tears were coming; she could feel them welling up, weeks', months', worth of tears. "Not very good at telling fact from fiction, am I? No wonder I went bankrupt. I'm such an ass. Such a fool... How pathetic..."

Oh, she was feeling sorry for herself now. The shrill insistence of her voice — that always came first. That was the warm-up. Soon the games would begin in earnest, she thought, the Olympic tantrums, the dramatic flinging of arms, the cries of despair. Leanne had never seen her in full sail.

Leanne stood up, moved toward Miranda. "You like a happy ending, Miranda. Nothing wrong with that."

"Except they're not real," Miranda said, her voice rising, tangled in the words. "There are no happy endings."

Leanne stood beside her now. From her chair, Miranda pressed her face against Leanne's waist and began to sob. Leanne held her close and stroked her head until the storm subsided.

Embarrassed at her outburst, Miranda tried to laugh. "Drama is draining," she said.

Leanne sat back down, tilted her head, like Henry.

Miranda reached out and poked her cheek. "You're real, right?"

With a little grimace, Leanne said, "I'm not very good at pretending, if that's what you mean."

There was a heavy, tense moment of silence between them.

Leanne reached across the table and took Miranda's hand. "Not for very long, anyway."

As Leanne's fingers closed over Miranda's, there came a jarring sound, a little shout from the doorway, a sudden shrill "No!"

Miranda jumped. Leanne pulled her hand back. They both turned to the door.

Henry stood there staring at them.

"We were just..." they both began, then stopped. They were just what?

"No!" Henry said again. "Betty says No, she does not want a cracker." He turned and ran back to the living room calling, "I told them! I told them!"

Miranda noticed the top of the almond butter jar on the table. She automatically began to screw it back on.

At Cousin Lou's, the dinners had become somewhat less elaborate. There was a downturn in the real estate market, which did not affect Lou too much. He had made his bundle, as he liked to say, thinking of a package shaped something like a baby, wrapped in cloth and cradled in his arms. He had made his bundle and taken it out of real estate some years ago. Unfortunately, he had put the helpless little bundle into the stock market, and though it lived, it suffered, and so did Lou's parties, causing some of the hangers-on to let go. Annie was glad to see that Roberts was not one of them. It did pain her, though, to imagine what he felt when he saw Miranda so often, for he saw her at the Maybanks' house on Beachside Avenue as well as at Lou's. He turned up frequently at the cottage, too. People should not retire, she thought. They should not even semiretire. Obviously Roberts had nothing better to do than follow Miranda around.

But Annie was glad to see him for her own sake. He was quiet and restful as a companion. Annie could sit beside him at dinner, notice the elegance of his long, slender hands as he held a glass or passed her the salt, and still never leave her own thoughts, which were so sad, but somehow almost dear to her. Thoughts of Frederick. Poor man. Foolish man. Poor, foolish, weak man. She could not help but worry about him. They had heard nothing, though, not a word, not about Amber or a marriage or a baby, not about anything. Even Betty had stopped mentioning him, stopped insinuating that there was anything between him and Annie. As for Miranda, she had, at Annie's insistence, never mentioned Amber, Frederick, or the pregnancy again. She had been, briefly, more gentle with Annie, which Annie found both touching and cloying. But now, thankfully, Miranda was off on a cloud as usual.

Off on a cloud as usual, though the cloud itself was new, different. No man, no love affair, no histrionics. Just... friendship? Babysitting? A tremendous amount of amateur gardening, certainly. The front yard was all dug up. She had become like some Victorian companion or maiden aunt. Annie did not understand any of it. But Miranda was happy, and that was all that mattered. Although how she would earn a living now that her agency had really disappeared altogether, Annie had no idea. Perhaps she could hire her at the library. The library that was cutting staff...

"I saw your sister today," Roberts was saying. He had brought her a glass of wine, and they stood before Lou's big windows. The moon was exceptionally bright. They could see the Sound spread out beneath it. "She was weeding at the Maybanks'."

"Maybe they'll hire her as their gardener."

"I don't think so. She was digging the weeds up very carefully and putting them in a basket. She plans to replant them. In the woods."

"Miranda likes to rescue things." She sighed.

"So do you," said Roberts.

They were silent. The wind was driving silver clouds across the face of the moon.

Annie thought, What a polite man he is.

Roberts swirled the wine in his glass. "Miranda's lucky to have you."

"Oh, what is Miranda going to do?" Annie said, half to herself.

"And what is Charlotte going to do?"

It was only as she walked home in the moonlight that she wondered what he had meant. Perhaps all that talk about putting the ancestral portraits on the auction block was true.

"Roberts is there so often," Miranda said that night when Annie recounted her conversation. "How much business can they have?"

"He's here a lot, too," Betty pointed out.

"I'm sure he goes there to see you," Annie said.

"Maybe Henry is his love child," said Betty.

On one of springtime's bright afternoons, Betty stood in the kitchen of her bungalow and watched a small yellow-and-black bird flitting through the new leaves of a maple tree. Birds were meant to be free, one always heard that. Because they could fly. She remembered Rosalyn comparing Amber and Crystal to birds because they flew from nest to nest, but what did that really mean except that they had no home? Free as a bird. But how free were you if you were required to fly up and down the coast of the same continent, year after year, just as your father and mother did before you, just as your sons and daughters would do after you? That bright little bird — a goldfinch? — was not free at all. It was just another prisoner. With no home.

Betty laughed to herself. How macabre she had become. A pretty bird on a pretty day! She should be outside in the fresh air marveling at all of nature's wonders, not condemning innocent birds to the diaspora. She put on her sneakers, a jacket, her dark glasses and wide-brimmed sunhat, took a deep breath, and ventured forth.

The waves were uniform and hushed, each gentle white hiss followed by another. She saw some sea glass, a nice large piece, beautiful muted green, but she was too stiff to bend down and pick it up. In the distance she could make out the white sail of a little boat. Perhaps that was Miranda, out sailing in that peculiar Charlotte Maybank's boat with Henry and his mother. Betty had warned her to wear a sweater under her jacket. It was so breezy, and the sun was deceptive. There was still a chill in the air. A few years ago, Betty would not have thought of a sweater. She would have thought only of the exhilarating snap of the sail. She would have been on the boat herself. But those days were gone. Perhaps she would drive downtown and get a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Annie would not approve. Annie thought Betty should make coffee at home and bring it with her in a thermos, but where was the fun in that? Soon the concession would be open at the beach and Betty would be able to get coffee there. It would be summer again, and children would descend on the sand, their mothers, on cell phones, trailing after them laden with beach chairs and buckets. Now, though, there was only a man with an Irish setter whose coat gleamed in the sun. Perhaps she would get her hair colored to match the dog's. She could ask the man for a hank of dog hair and bring it to her colorist.

Slowly, Betty walked back to the house. She had made it a home, with the help of her girls. She had always made a home for them, one way or another, and they for her. But they couldn't live with her forever. They were grown women. And so was she. She wondered if and when she would be going back to her apartment. A woman alone. Homeless as a bird.

She felt awfully tired. Her head began to hurt. Her neck was so stiff. Her head was pounding now. She saw the little cottage and wondered if she would be able take the steps necessary to reach it. One step. Two. She counted. Ten. She was at the cracked concrete stoop. The pain in her head shot into the sky, exploded there, hurtled back down at alarming speed; and again, like the little waves. Step. Step. Thirteen, her lucky number, for she had reached the couch in her house. The couch was beneath her. The pain in her head screamed out loud. There was no one to hear. No one, Betty thought, except me.

Miranda was the one who found her and called 911. She and Leanne had not sailed that day. First they had called Kit using Skype and watched Henry chat with his father. Miranda had worried a little over how she would respond to seeing Kit again, even if it was only through a video chat on a computer. Leanne told him she was there, and he looked a little taken aback, then recovered and said in his typically jaunty way, "A conspiracy. Don't believe everything you hear."

Miranda thought, No, I guess not, but she said nothing, stood out of range of the camera, and watched.

He was just as good-looking as ever, she thought, though his manner, so easy and free, now struck her as fraught with new meaning — it was as if Henry were his nephew or younger brother, a little kid he liked, for whom, however, he had little or no responsibility.

"I was scared," Henry said about seeing a bloody Kit held at gunpoint on TV.

"It was catsup," Kit said. "Isn't that funny? Catsup all over Daddy's face?"

Henry thought that was funny. Then: "Come home," he said.

"Okay, buddy," said Kit. "I will! As soon as I can."

Leanne, standing behind Henry, gave Miranda a significant look.

"I saw that," Kit said. "Listen, I'm working, okay? That's what you were always on me about, so now I'm working, okay?"

"Okay," Leanne said. "Fair enough. Sorry."

Kit sulked for a moment. Was he really thirty-five? Miranda wondered. She looked at Leanne. How old was Leanne? It had never occurred to her to ask or even to wonder.

"As a matter of fact, I have to leave for work right now, okay? It's like an hour drive to the studio..."

Henry threw his father a kiss, and the screen went black.

"How old are you?" Miranda asked suddenly.

"Thirty-eight," Leanne said. "Why?"

"Eight," Henry said, holding up all his fingers.

"I'm forty-nine," Miranda said.

Leanne tilted her head thoughtfully, then said, "So that's all right, then."

She lifted Henry up, gave him a twirl, and said they should go on an adventure, a bike adventure to Devil's Den.

They pedaled along the winding, hilly roads that led to the nature preserve in Weston. Henry was strapped in his seat behind Leanne. Rushing down a hill, Miranda passed the other two, stood on the pedals as she had as a child, and coasted. Speed, she thought, is the glory of going forward.

"Bankruptcy definitely agrees with you," Leanne said, laughing, when they reached the bottom of the hill.

The papers from the lawyers had arrived the day before. "Belly up," said Miranda. "That's me."

Henry looked curiously at her belly.

"I'm free," Miranda said.

They followed the steep path to a leafy spot closely sheltered by tall skinny birch trees. Miranda put her hand on the white trunk of one of them. "The most beautiful tree." She felt a surge of emotion, this same surge she felt so often now. Maybe it was menopause.

"I wonder if I'm starting menopause. Everything makes me want to..."

"What?" Leanne asked.

Miranda threw herself to the ground and rolled in the leaves, breathing in the damp of spring, the dust of last autumn. She lay on her back staring up at the blue sky just beyond the lacy canopy.

"Everything makes me want to weep with happiness," she said.

Would that it were menopause, she thought. She could sweat it out and emerge in a few years a calmer person with somewhat brittle bones. But this? This calm, deep satisfaction? This was madness. This sharp, painful sense of joy, of gratitude that felt like an inhalation of fresh, cool air. This soft exhalation that felt like peace.

Leanne swept a leaf from Miranda's face.

Peace? Miranda bit her lip. If peace burns, this is peace, she thought. If peace makes you tremble, this is definitely peace. If peace is feeling calm one minute, tortured the next, if peace is war, then, then, and only then is this peace.

She stared up at the canopy of leaves, the sun drifting down in dappled warmth. Why couldn't she just have a friend like everyone else? Maybe Annie was right — she was just a drama queen, couldn't live without it.

"Randa?"

She turned to Leanne and opened an eye. Oh, what a mess. "Yeah?"

Leanne twisted a stick in her hands as if she were about to start a fire. "Oh, nothing," she said.

Miranda rolled onto her back again. Leanne had called her Randa.

Suddenly a large little face hung over Miranda, its cheeks streaked with dirt.

"Now you're belly up," the little face explained.

When Miranda got back to the cottage late that afternoon, she found her mother writhing in pain on the couch.

"I can't turn my neck," Betty whispered. "My head is exploding. It keeps exploding."

The EMTs were volunteers. She recognized one — a blond girl she sometimes saw running on the beach. She followed the ambulance in the Mercedes, though later she had no memory of the drive.

"It's meningitis," Miranda told Annie over the phone.

"What?"

"No, it's okay, it's not the kind that kills you."

"Just the kind that makes you wish you were dead," Betty whispered from her hospital bed. "Please stop talking, darling."

But she did not want to be dead at all. She wanted to go back in time, not very far, not to when she was young, not to when she was still happily married to Joseph, just back to that afternoon before she went for a walk on the beach, to that moment when she stood looking out the kitchen window and saw the goldfinch fluttering through the maple leaves. She had been so unfair. She wanted to go back in time, to look out her kitchen window, to see the movement of the little bird, the flash of yellow and flash of black, as it rustled among the leaves, and she wanted to apologize. To the bird. It had been a pretty bird on a pretty day. She should never have doubted either one.

"I will never take another day for granted," she told Annie the next day when the antibiotics had begun to take effect and the pain had lessened, "and neither should you."

"Have you suddenly seen God?" Annie asked.

"Goodness, no. Why, have you?"

When Annie called Josie to tell him that Betty was sick, she had to fight off an irrational sense of I-told-you-so justification. How awful to celebrate your mother's pain because it shamed someone, even if that person deserved to be shamed. Yet when she said to Josie, "Mom is in the hospital with meningitis," she felt a distinct shiver of satisfaction.