The Three Weissmanns of Westport (27 page)

Gwen stepped back, viewing him with a puzzled frown. "Are you drunk?" She could think of no other reason that her father, so polite, so gentlemanly, would show up on her doorstep for dinner with two uninvited guests and then stand there and insult them. "You look pale. And you smell like cigarettes."

He was about to take out the red pack and proudly show her the depths to which he had sunk when Amber said, "It's the steps. He needs to do some aerobic exercise. I tell him to go to the gym, but you know how he is."

Gwen did know how he was. But she did not like it that Amber seemed to know, too.

As they set two extra places, Evan said, "Hey there, Freddie." He shook his head and laughed, then turned to Crystal. "So, how's the home-sitting industry?"

"You sit on homes?" one of the twins asked.

"I am a student."

The girl looked disappointed.

"Life coaching, right?" Evan said. "Do you have, like, a whistle? Gatorade?"

"I'd say you could use some coaching yourself, sir. In manners."

"I could use a lot of things." He held an imaginary joint to his lips and inhaled.

Crystal laughed.

"Evan!" Gwen said. "Jesus. There are children here."

"I'll say," Crystal said.

Evan pursed his lips in a pout. "I was just kidding around."

When shall I tell them? Frederick wondered.

"Amber, why don't you sit here, next to Ophelia?" Gwen pointed to a small stool wedged beneath a corner of the table.

"What a quaint little stool. Shaker?" She had been reading up on antiques.

Gwen nodded reluctant agreement with the intruder.

Should I tell them before they eat? Frederick wondered. That will ruin their appetites. After they eat? Then they will feel ill.

"What fun!" Amber had settled herself on the stool. "Don't I look like a little milkmaid, Ophelia?"

"Juliet," the child said petulantly, and gave Amber a kick.

Suddenly it was Frederick who felt ill. The bravado that had started in the bar deserted him. He looked at Gwennie. She had grown up to be a snob, it was true. But she was only protecting what she thought was important. She had been officious even as a child. He had always found it touching, her need to make hierarchical order out of a chaotic world. And Evan, so sarcastic and obnoxious these days. Perhaps he would outgrow it. Whether he did or not, Frederick knew he would always adore him. He watched his son torturing Crystal, playing with her like a cruel cat. Good luck to you, Evan, he thought. Those mouse sisters are cleverer than you think.

"I'm sorry Joe couldn't be here," Ron said.

"The economy." Felicity spoke as if the economy were a traffic jam. "Just terrible. I just barely made it here myself. But then I'm just a VP, and of course my part of the business is going so much more smoothly than the rest."

"I'm glad you're here," said Frederick, "all of you. Because I have something of an announcement to make."

"That's funny," Gwen said. "Because so do I!"

All eyes turned to her.

"I'm pregnant!"

Frederick and Amber exchanged a look as everyone congratulated Gwen and Ron.

"Now, what was your announcement, Dad?" asked Ron.

"Nothing," said Dad. "Nothing that can't wait."

At the apartment on Central Park West, Amber was sharing a room with Crystal, not Frederick. She had been shocked the other night when Frederick almost announced her pregnancy and relieved when Gwen's news made it impossible.

"They have to get to know me better," she explained to Frederick. "But when they do, you'll see. They'll love me. In spite of themselves."

And so, to Frederick's surprise, it came to pass.

"Gwen, would you mind if I took the girls to the Met today? There's a toddler tour of the European paintings . . ." "Oh, Felicity, you have managed to make this apartment both grand and yet so personal. You really used a decorator? It feels so organic to your personality. You must be a fabulous manager . . ." "Gwen, did you hear Juliet singing the Dora the Explorer song? Have you considered voice lessons?"

Amber was blatant, brilliant. Frederick watched with amazement as the flattery did its work on his prickly daughter and pricklier sister. If Amber had been rubbing her hands together and muttering how 'umble she was, she could not have been more obsequious. "I'm sorry--
what
? You made this dinner
and
you worked all day?" she said to Felicity. "If that handsome boss of yours were ever foolish enough to let you go"--and here she simpered at Joseph, who smiled foolishly back--"God, you could so get a job as a chef. I mean, who am I to even say that, just your grateful, useless houseguest, but I can't help it--you should try out for
Top Chef
. You're totally what they're looking for, totally telegenic."

And on and on it went, this sycophantic barrage. Amber went to Dumbo and found trendy baby blankets and bibs for Gwen. She appeared at Joseph's office with a basket of designer cookies and gave them to Felicity, then helped her pass them out to the employees, all the while giving the impression that it had been Felicity's idea.

"I went all the way to Red Hook for them," she told Crystal that night in a whisper. They lay side by side in twin beds.

"Why? There's bakeries all over this neighborhood."

"But they never leave Manhattan, these people. Red Hook is totally exotic. So that makes it like I made this big effort."

"But you did make a big effort."

"You have to invest in your future, Crystal. Don't you ever watch Suze Orman?"

Perhaps it was the massage that finally turned the tide of Amber's Barrow fortunes, for, as it happened, she was a truly gifted massage therapist, just as her sister had claimed. She offered frequent and free sessions. It was more than either woman could resist. Evan became a regular visitor at the big apartment on Central Park West, too, making faint noises of physical discomfort and twitching his shoulders (once bringing his latest girlfriend, a dancer, as well) until Amber picked up the hint and offered her help.

Both Gwen and Felicity were accustomed to a certain intimacy with the people who tended to their personal and cosmetic needs. The hair cutter, the colorist, the manicurist, the personal trainer--these were all members of a netherworld of women with whom they never would have thought to socialize, yet trusted as confidantes. Amber benefited from that familiarity and comfort. She fitted herself into the family as someone not quite an equal, and so not a threat, but she was not quite a servant, either.

Gwen began to ask Amber to join her for lunch, to go on shopping trips for maternity clothes. Amber stood in for Ron as her coach a few times at her birthing classes. They even went away for a weekend to a spa. Crystal accompanied them sometimes, but she was in hot pursuit of an insurance broker she'd met at a club.

"Crystal, he's very bridge-and-tunnel, okay? Just don't bring him around the Barrows."

"Why? You don't think they would like him?"

Amber laughed.

"Yeah, I know," Crystal said. "Hey, have you noticed that Evan pays a lot of attention to me? I think he might be hot for me."

Amber rolled her eyes. "Dream on. Anyway, you're better off with the B&T guy."

"Yeah. We go to really good clubs. Of course, you don't care about clubs anymore, being engaged."

"True," Amber said. "I have priorities." Then: "Which clubs?"

On a warm spring day when even the hard, cracked earth surrounding the cottage offered itself up as welcoming and full of promise, Miranda received the news that she was officially bankrupt.

The call came from her lawyer in the mid-morning sunlight as she sat on the concrete steps with a cup of coffee. Her cell phone rang, an artificial chirp, a vibration in the back pocket of her jeans.

"Hello, Brian."

"Hello, Miranda," said her lawyer.

Silence. A robin raised its head from a patch of crabgrass and turned one bead of an eye at her.

"Bad news?" she asked.

"Sorry, Miranda."

"The Miranda Weissmann Literary Agency is now in bankruptcy, officially?"

"Again, I'm terribly, terribly sorry."

"So it's over?"

"Well no. I explained this all to you. You still have creditors. Any money you earn from previous properties . . ."

Miranda stopped listening. It was over.

"Thanks, Brian. Thanks for all your help." She hung up and stared, dry-eyed, at the robin. When she was a child, she used to draw robins with bright blue bodies and bright red breasts. But robins were really brown. Their breasts were not red, they were rust-colored. She had never really thought about the discrepancy until just this moment. Where had she gotten the idea that robins were royal blue and red? Some amalgamation of children's book illustrations? Robin redbreast. English robins had red breasts. Bluebird of happiness. Bluebirds were blue. She had never seen either in real life.
She is too fond of books. It has turned her brain.
Well, well. Real life. Time to start a new real life. Time to start over.

She waited for the great flood of self-pitying tears. If I don't pity myself, who will? she thought. If not now, when?

But she didn't cry. She felt only impatience. Time to start over. Off we go. Get a wiggle on. Yes, but as what? She stared unseeing at the brown- and rust-feathered robin. And as whom?

There was a pot of tea at the tea at Aunt Charlotte's, but little else. A few crackers. A small piece of sweaty cheese. Betty was glad she had brought the cake from Balducci's. The goyim, she had explained to the girls, do not feed their guests; it is not their custom, and we must respect the customs of other cultures, but that does not mean we have to starve. She always kept saltines and Life Savers in her bag in case of a blood sugar drop, but she did not think she ought to haul either out at a tea party, even if there had been enough to share. The cake, on the other hand . . . no one could object to guests bringing a nice crumb cake. Miranda and Annie had laughed at her. But now, as she watched Miranda attempting to cut a strip of the rubbery cheese and put it on a limp cracker, she felt vindicated.

Charlotte Maybank seemed pleased with her cake, too. She was a woman of about eighty, small and birdlike except for her teeth, which were rather prominent. She had awaited their arrival in the living room, laid out, quite literally, in a new automatic recliner that looked bulbously incongruous among the eighteenth-century furniture.

When presented with the white box tied up in red string, she activated the chair's controls, which whirred importantly until her head was an inch or two higher. Then she eyed the cake greedily, her teeth bared in a smile. "Well, well. You know, I think I'd better take some cake now, Leanne," she said as if the cake box were a bottle of pills. She handed the box to Henry's mother. "I could
use
a piece of cake."

"Keep up your strength," Leanne said, heading for the kitchen, a smile hidden from her aunt.

"Surgery," the old woman said to her guests. She motioned her guests to a hard, slender, bow-backed sofa and two wooden arm chairs facing her.

"Oh," Annie said, "I hope . . ."

"Successful," the old woman said, cutting her off.

There was silence then.

"These are lovely," Betty said finally, running her hand along the arm of the chair she sat in.

"Want them? Leanne!" the woman shouted, waving a taut little arm toward the kitchen. "Leanne!"

Leanne appeared, followed by Hilda, the ancient retainer, the same old woman who had opened the door for them, carrying a tray. Miranda thought she saw Leanne give her aunt an ironic salute as she approached, but she might just have been pushing the hair from her eyes. She had fine, reddish-blond hair, not at all like Henry's black glossy locks. And yet, there was something, something so Henry-like about her. Miranda smiled as she watched Leanne move across the room, wondering what it was. Her hands? The set of her shoulders, just a little rounded? Maybe. When Leanne caught her staring and smiled back, with a questioning look and slightly tilted head, Miranda quickly averted her gaze to a large painting of some sort of hunting dog. But she had found the answer to her question. The smile. The tilted head. The expression of curiosity.

"Leanne," the aunt continued, "this charming person admired the Hepplewhites. Make sure she bids on them." She turned back to Betty. "When I'm gone. The whole place, you know: up for grabs, on the auction block,
when I'm gone
." She shook her finger at Betty. "Mind, I'm not gone yet."

"Hardly," Leanne said, handing her aunt a plate bearing a thick slice of cake.

"The dishes, too," the old woman said, tapping her fork on the dessert plate, which was exquisite, Betty noticed. But really, Betty had her own chairs and plates. She didn't need this woman's household goods. And where would she keep them, anyway? So little room in the cottage as it was. And of course, even auctioned, these pieces would go for a pretty penny. She began thinking what a lovely phrase that was, "pretty penny," only vaguely aware of the aunt continuing her catalogue: "Forks, knives, spoons . . . the whole shebang. Get out your checkbooks, ladies."

Roberts joined the tea party toward the end. It was not the first time the Weissmanns had seen him since Palm Springs, but it was unexpected to see him in the big house on Beachside Avenue.

"All this time I didn't realize you knew the Maybanks," Betty said, thinking back to what now looked, in retrospect, like coldness to Kit.

"Roberts is very discreet," Aunt Charlotte said. "He handles all my affairs."

"Not quite all, unfortunately," said Roberts.

"He'll be the one auctioning off those chairs, won't you, dear?"

"I sincerely hope not, Charlotte."

Miranda sat on the other wing chair, Henry curled on her lap. She rested her cheek on his head and breathed him in. She had been feeling so ragged, so disoriented, for so long, a woman without a country, and now she was bankrupt as well, but what did any of it matter? Here was Henry, returned like Odysseus from a long, long journey.

When Henry's mother offered her another piece of cake, Miranda said, "You look so much alike." She glanced from Henry's mother back to Henry. "Even though . . ."

"Even though he looks just like Kit?" Leanne ruffled Henry's hair, accidentally grazing Miranda's cheek. "Sorry," she said, pulling back her hand.

Miranda caught her breath. The closeness of Henry, the touch of the woman's hand, a gentleness meant for her son mistakenly shared with a stranger--she felt somehow moved, on the verge of tears.

Leanne smiled, looking more like Henry than ever, and moved away.

Really, Miranda, you are becoming absurder and absurder, as Josie used to say.

"What's the matter, dear? Don't like cake?" It was the old woman.

Miranda forced herself to smile. "Me? Oh yes. Love it."

"Eat up, then," Aunt Charlotte said, her hungry eyes on Miranda's untouched slice of cake. "Can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."

A month or so after the tea party, Lou and Rosalyn returned from Palm Springs. Lou appeared the very next day, knocking on the door of the Weissmann cottage. He wanted to extend a personal invitation to a welcome-home party.

"All of us together again," he said happily. "What an occasion!"

Annie was embraced by her enthusiastic cousin, from which position she contemplated the prospect of socializing once again enveloped by Cousin Lou's capacious family bosom. In addition to all the people she did not know very well, there might easily be those she wished she had never met--Amber, for example, and Gwen. Would they be at this party? Perhaps they would bring Frederick. Perhaps Frederick would bring his sister, Felicity . . .

"It's a big tent, your family," she said when Cousin Lou released her.

At that moment, Miranda burst through the door, followed by Henry and his mother, Leanne.

"Cousin Lou! You're back!" Miranda threw her arms around him.

"You're looking well," he said. The last time he had seen her, she had been so drawn. Withdrawn as well. What a surprising language English is, he thought, not for the first time.
Drawn
.
Withdrawn
. He would have to
draw
her out and see what this was all about! "Roses in your cheeks."

Miranda smiled. Why, Miranda is irresistible, Lou remembered suddenly. But she had recently been so, so . . . negligible. That was the word for the Miranda of Palm Springs. Moody, absent, quiet, irrelevant. But here she was with her old funny, suggestive smile--half a challenge, half a reassurance. He hadn't seen that smile in a long time. He sighed with pleasure. He liked people to be happy.

And yet, how could she smile? He'd heard she'd gone bankrupt. Rosalyn said her business had been dissolved. She had nothing, absolutely nothing.

The thought of bankruptcy made his stomach drop.

What a brave woman she was, putting up a strong front.

She was looking in the mirror. "Hey, I do have roses in my cheeks."

Henry examined her cheeks in his solemn literal way.

"Hello, Henry," Lou said, "remember me?"

Henry ran back to the other woman who had come into the room. He wrapped his arms and legs around her leg, then stared at Lou with an expression of menacing confusion.

"This is Henry's mother, Leanne Maybank."

"Maybank," Betty said. "It
is
such a pretty name. Every time I hear it."

"It is, isn't it?" Leanne said. "But that's not really why Kit took my name."

"Maybank?" Miranda said.

"Your husband took your name and kept it after you split up?" Cousin Lou swayed from side to side, clearly agitated.

"Lovely name," Betty said again.

"It's a new world, a new world," Lou continued. He emitted a series of unhappy grunts: "Uh, uh, uh. Sometimes I think I'm getting old."

"He just really didn't like his own name."

"Why not?" Annie asked, fascinated by this piece of news. "Was his last name Carson or something?"

"Well . . . yes."

Kit Carson: there was an appreciative silence.

"He grew up in Wyoming," Leanne said after a while. "I guess that's why his parents thought of it."

"Wait, how old was Kit when he moved to
Maine
?" Miranda asked. "He told me so much about growing up in Maine. Really, it made me jealous. All those brothers and sisters, the clambakes, the wildflower gathering. Keeping honeybees . . ."