The Three Weissmanns of Westport

10

The first time Kit and Miranda made love, it was late in the afternoon, two days after they met. Henry was asleep in his crib. The light was golden, saturated, and the white curtains on the windows fluttered noisily in the breeze that swept in from the water. Miranda felt the same arms around her, the Adonis arms, the hero arms that had lifted her from the tossing sea. She laughed out loud, thinking what a fool she was to cast her soggy rescue in such epic terms. When she laughed, Kit told her she was beautiful, that he had found her floating in the ocean and that he would keep her, finders keepers, it was only fair. She allowed herself to disappear, to dissolve into his arms. It was a conscious, almost frenzied release. This was another kind of freedom, this letting go. All responsibility, all aspiration, all disappointment, all of life before that moment was left far, far behind. He undressed her, and she felt her jeans and her sweater, her bra, each bit of clothing slip over her skin. He undressed himself, too, slowly, sure she was watching, she noticed, stringing it out.

They spent almost every afternoon like that, she reeling from the heady emotional simmer: her own fierce, demanding extinction, beneath which rested a calm, solid sense that she was as safe as houses.

When Henry woke up, she would leave Kit asleep in the boathouse and take Henry for a walk on the beach. Tide pools glazed the smooth dark sand, and silver flakes of mica reflected the setting sun. When it rained, they squatted in their slickers and watched the raindrops disrupt the surfaces of the shallow beach puddles. They held hands and spoke in undertones. Miranda had never been religious, but she thought that she could worship Henry with fervor and joy. She thought, I already do.

Cousin Lou was not religious, either: he claimed that he would not like to insult the memory of his benefactress, Mrs. H., by worshipping any god but her. This sacrilegious declaration made both Rosalyn and Betty squirm, but Annie and Miranda laughed every time he said it. In spite of his irreligiosity, however, their cousin could not give up an occasion for a large gathering, and he planned to have thirty for dinner on Rosh Hashanah. The three Weissmanns were invited, as were Kit Maybank and Henry. Among the other guests were a woman Cousin Lou had recently become acquainted with at the Westport YMCA pool during free swim who turned out to be a distant cousin of Rosalyn's; Lou's accountant, Marty, with Marty's large family of several generations; a fellow Lou knew from the golf course who had invented a folding six-foot ladder that was only three-quarters of an inch deep; a plastic surgeon who was always very popular at dinner parties for his willingness to put on his reading glasses and take a closer look; the psychiatrist and his wife; the lawyers; the judge; the metal sculptor; a retired factor from Seventh Avenue; and a former cultural minister of Estonia Lou and Rosalyn had met thirteen years earlier at a spa in Ischia.

When Rosh Hashanah came, a bright, clear, unseasonably warm day, none of the Weissmanns went to synagogue. It had not been their custom for many years, and Betty particularly did not want to this year because, she explained, as one so recently widowed, she could not stand the spiritual strain. So the three women sat on the sunporch and enjoyed the warmth and read the newspaper until, around two o'clock, Kit's white MINI pulled into the driveway.

"They're awfully early," Betty said, eyeing the child in the car seat and wondering if her quiet day was about to be invaded.

Miranda gave her mother a look and went to the car. She could barely contain her excitement. She had just gotten a pair of Crocs that were identical to Henry's own tiny pair of rubber clogs. They were not the kind of footwear she would have ever considered before, not even to wear on the beach, but when she saw them in the store, she imagined Henry's amazement, his pleasure. They were still in the box. She couldn't wait to show him.

She opened the car door and reached in to unstrap Henry.

"No," Kit said, putting a hand out as if to protect the child. "I mean, we're not staying. I mean, we're going."

"But dinner isn't until seven. You can hang out here. Or if you have stuff to do, just leave Henry with me. We have important things to discuss, don't we, Henry?"

"Going on a airplane," Henry said. He clapped his hands.

"An airplane?" Miranda said, clapping in response. "When?"

"Today!"

"Wow! Is the airplane going to take you to Cousin Lou's for dinner?"

He shook his head with vigor. His lower lip pushed out. His eyes screwed shut. And he began, like a thundercloud that blows in with a sudden downpour, to wail.

"Baby," Miranda said, squatting beside the car, reaching in through the open door to stroke his hair. "What's wrong? What's the matter?"

Kit had twisted up his own handsome face uncomfortably. He looked around him, as if searching for reinforcements, then bit his lip, then said, "Look, I'm sorry, Miranda. But we do have to get going... Henry, hush, it will be okay..." He dug in his jacket pocket and pulled out an old, half-eaten Fruit Roll-Up. "Here, Henry. Now stop crying, okay, buddy?"

Henry sucked sadly on the scrap of red fruit leather.

Miranda continued to stroke his head. "My poor little boy," she said softly. "What was all that about?"

Henry kissed her wrist as it passed near his lips. The pressure, so gentle, like a butterfly's wing, seemed to travel through her entire body. She took his free hand and held it against her cheek. This, she thought, is all there is. This little hand. In mine.

Miranda then had a sharp, clear, overpowering vision of holding Henry on her hip while she... well, not while she cooked. No, but while she entered a restaurant. With Kit beside her. She saw them feeding the child bits of California roll, without wasabi, the way Henry liked it. She could feel the bedtime sheets, too, pulling them up as she tucked Henry in at night, could feel his soft, warm breath on her hand as she stroked his cheek. The sweaty, wet sweetness of his body, soggy diaper and all, when he woke up — she clutched that against her; the echoing crunch of Henry eating cereal — she could hear it. Every night, every morning. Then, in a year or so, he would go off to preschool and make wobbly little friends his own age, and she would walk him there, holding his hand, slowing her pace for him, lifting him up when he got tired. Truck, he would call out, pointing at the garbage men rumbling by. He would want to grow up to be a garbage man, and she would look at him proudly and think, You are perfect, Henry. You are perfect, and I belong to you.

When Kit spoke, now standing beside her, she turned a beatific face to him.

"Hmm?" she said. "Sorry..."

"I said we really do have to catch a plane..."

Miranda tilted her head, like a dog, a trusting and innocent dog who has been given a confusing command.

"Plane?" she said, looking up at Kit.

"Listen, I just wanted to say goodbye. It's so sudden and crazy. And I wanted to apologize about tonight..."

"Wait," Miranda said. "What?"

She'd thought for a moment that Kit said he had to catch a plane. Henry's fingers were now splayed out in the air in front of him. She watched them, marveled at them. They were like some glorious, exotic insect. A new species, one she had discovered.

"I got a part," Kit said.

Miranda thought she heard "I've got to part," and wondered why Kit said "I" and not "We," but then realized what he meant.

"Part?" she asked.

"Look, I just found out." Kit was kicking the dirt of the driveway nervously. "It's a real break. I mean, it's nothing, it's tiny, but it's work."

Work, Miranda thought. Work is good. Say something nice. But she felt panicked. Work was what she had loved once. Now she loved Henry. And maybe, just maybe, Kit as well.

"Work!" she said.

Betty observed the threesome from the porch. She thought how much they looked like a family. Perhaps, somehow, against all odds, this improbable arrangement would work for Miranda. If only Miranda could find some kind of domestic peace at last. Betty waved hello to Kit and, followed by Annie, descended the cracked cement steps onto the patchy stubble of lawn.

"Hello, Kit!" they called. "Hello, Henry! What brings you here so early?"

"A part!" Miranda said, trying to smile. "Kit got a part."

"Oh well," Kit murmured. "Small part... Independent film..."

"Kit and Henry are going away," Miranda said in a bizarre sing-song, as if she were addressing Henry, or were insane. "On an airplane."

Betty was visited by the swift, looping nausea she'd had when Joseph announced his departure. She saw Miranda's expression, she heard the loud crashing echo, felt the chill, the vortex. She had been married to Joseph forever, Miranda and Kit had known each other for a month or so. But however long it had been or however short, did it matter? Did it ever really matter? No, Betty thought. A broken heart is a broken heart.

"How long will you be gone?" she asked, though she thought she knew. He had that look about him, that I'm-not-sure-how-long look, that look of goodbye.

"I have to go to L.A.... I don't really know how long," Kit said. He turned back to Miranda. "Look, I'm so sorry about tonight... I mean, I'm sorry period."

Miranda took Henry's hand again. "L.A." She wanted to explain to Kit that L.A. was too far away, that even a short trip was interminable, that one day would be one day too many. She wanted to explain that she had had a vision of their lives together, she wanted him to understand what she had just discovered, that her heart had found a home at last.

Instead, controlling her voice as well as she could, she asked if Kit would like to leave Henry with her. "Won't that make it easier for you? I mean, if it's a short time..."

Kit drummed his fingers on the roof of the car. "Look, Miranda, I don't know how long it will be. And his mother will be back soon, so she can get him, right?"

His mother. Miranda held Henry's hand against her cheek, pressing it there, absorbing the touch of each small finger.

"I'm really sorry about all this..." Kit was saying. "I'll miss you, Miranda. We'll both miss you."

"Hey, don't be sorry," she forced herself to say. "A part in a movie! It's great, Kit."

"Yeah." He shrugged and looked miserable.

"What?"

"No 'what.' It's great."

"Jesus, cheer up, then. Right, Henry?" She leaned farther into the car and pressed her face against Henry's. He made kissing, smacking sounds, then pushed his sugary lips on her cheek. "I love you, Henry," she whispered.

"I love Randa," he shouted.

Miranda stood up. She felt off balance, disconnected from the little car, the man in front of her, her mother, her sister. How silly of her. They were just going away for a while. She had no claim on either of them. Visions were dreams. Dreams were fiction. Fiction was lies. "Break a leg," she said to Kit with her big public smile.

"Yeah. Thanks. Well, I'll call you." He gave her a quick hug. "I really will."

Betty noted the "really." She reached out for Miranda's hand and squeezed it.

Miranda pulled her hand away. "I'm fine."

"Randa!" Henry cried with sudden desperation as they pulled out of the driveway. "Randa! Randa!"

"Oh God," Kit was saying. "Not now, Henry, please."

Miranda waved and called goodbye to Henry, who waved a chubby hand as his father reached back and shoved a pacifier in his mouth.

Miranda stood in the driveway beneath the dying pine tree. Her smile faltered, sagged into heavy, slack resignation.

"I realize he just found out and he had a plane to catch. But, boy, that was so sudden," said Annie.

"We'll miss Henry," Betty said. She could not bring herself to say anything about Kit. "Cute little fellow."

Miranda said simply, "They're gone."

Betty tried to ignore the visceral, light-headed wave of empathy. Emptiness was so unexpectedly heavy, so solid and massive. So pervasive and muffled. So hateful. "Well," she said, trying to shake herself out of it. "We all must have boundaries, and we all must learn to separate. All the therapists on television agree on that. Anyway, the boys will be back soon. And L.A. is not very far away, is it?" The clatter of her own voice rang unconvincingly in her ears. "Not in this day and age."

"That's true, Miranda," Annie said.

"Oh Christ, what do you know about it?" Miranda snapped. "Either of you?"

When they arrived for Rosh Hashanah dinner at Lou's big house overlooking Long Island Sound, Miranda was quiet and subdued. She had barely spoken a word to her mother and sister since the departure of Kit and Henry. Annie was surprised Miranda had even agreed to come with them. There had been a moment when, after coming out of her room dressed and made up and looking beautiful, if a little grim, Miranda's hand had gone to her forehead and her eyes had closed and Annie had braced herself for some sort of histrionic display. But Miranda had merely pushed her hair back, opened her eyes, and said, "Oh, let's get it over with." Perhaps with the real difficulties that had befallen them, Miranda had finally grown out of her stormy theatrical fits. Annie decided to take Miranda's passivity as a good sign. Yet when she stole a glance at her sister's face, colorless, expressionless, she almost wished Miranda would give a good rant, would fume and tear out her hair.

"It won't be as much fun without little Henry here," Annie said, looking around at the crowd of senior citizens, most of whom continued to refer to themselves as middle-aged. She did miss the presence of the little boy, but she also meant to convey some kind of sympathy — although Miranda did not always appreciate sympathy from her sister, usually interpreting it as pity or criticism. "I'll miss him."

"You have your own children."

"Well, yes, but..."

"But nothing," Miranda said savagely, then turned on her heel and stalked off, leaving Annie and Betty nonplussed and, both, somewhat embarrassed.

A knot of people were already gathered in the living room and engaged in fervent conversation. The surgeon had complimented the cultural minister of Estonia on breaking away from the Soviet Union thereby escaping socialized medicine, because just look at Canada, to which the lawyer responded that Canada had no privacy laws. At this, the woman from the YMCA pool said that if you have nothing to hide, privacy should not be an issue. The metal sculptor pointed out that you could still live a bohemian life in Montreal, what with cheap rents and government grants, even without privacy and a falling U.S. dollar, to which the surgeon replied that a government grant would not be much solace if you had to wait six months for a knee replacement by a doctor who spoke only French, which caused the inventor to lament that French President Sarkozy's flamboyant behavior was perhaps not as good for the Jews as he had at first hoped.

"President Bling-Bling," Cousin Lou said, savoring the sound of the words.

"Oh, Betty!" cried Rosalyn. Seeing her cousin and suddenly reminded by the word "bling," she waved her wrist with its heavy gold-and-emerald bracelet. "What do you think?"

"Beautiful. Beautiful."

"Not too much? I don't want to look gaudy. The economy is so bad, it could be offensive. I try to be sensitive to these things."

"They're cabochon, that tones it down."

"I'm a limousine liberal," Lou said. "Why not be comfortable?"

"You were always an iconoclast, dear," said Rosalyn, patting his arm indulgently.

There was very good wine. Rosalyn had tried, in the early years, to economize by serving lesser wines to the constant flow of guests, but Lou had prevailed.

"But they're here every night," Rosalyn had said.

"And so are we," Lou had explained.

Rosalyn bowed to what she understood to be self-interest, but in fact Lou would have served his guests good wine even if he'd been a teetotaler. He enjoyed raising a glass of the good stuff with his guests, however, then raising another. On this Rosh Hashanah night, he held his third up to the light to watch the liquid cling to the sides as he gently swirled it. It has legs, he thought happily. Like a play that is a success. Like a showgirl. Like a table. Lou loved the English language. English was part of his American identity, and so he cherished it. He had been told that when he left a message on an answering machine, you could hear his German accent, but he dismissed that information as complete nonsense, making sure however, from that moment on, if someone did not pick up their telephone themselves, to hang up and try again later.

"Beautiful," he murmured now, meaning the wine, its legs, the word "legs," legs of all kinds, the room, the people in it drinking wine, and always, the view of the water, over which an enormous harvest moon rose in slow, round orange motion.

Annie, seated on a low bench, also looked out at the moon and wondered what Frederick was doing.

"Why is he always talking to me?" Mr. Shpuntov was saying in a loud angry voice. "Why does he bother me?"

"He's your daughter," Cousin Lou yelled into his ear.

Miranda, pacing nervously in front of the picture window, did not hear Mr. Shpuntov or Cousin Lou or Rosalyn's cry of "Good Gawd!" Kit was gone. Henry was gone. Her little pretend family had driven away in that miniature car and boarded a plane for Los Angeles. She clenched her hands and opened them, clenched them, opened them, unaware that she was doing so. We could still be a little pretend family, she told herself. Kit could return in a week, two weeks. It was a small part, he had said so. Of course, it could be a small part that popped up frequently. He might be there for months. Who would take care of Henry? It was outrageous. A form of child abuse, really. Poor Henry, locked in a hotel room with some undocumented babysitter yakking in a foreign language on her cell phone. He would never learn to speak properly at this crucial juncture in his development. She had been online for hours last night reading about the progress of a two-year-old's speech. She would have to call Kit and explain it all to him. She checked her watch. They would be on the plane now. She hoped Kit had taken Henry's car seat on the plane and strapped him in. It was so much safer.

Miranda sat down with a small internal groan and began chewing on her thumbnail.

Betty wished Miranda wouldn't bite her nails. It was unattractive, and she was such a beautiful girl.

"That little Henry and his father were very taken with your sister," she said to Annie, who was slumped on a bench. "Are very taken, I should say. I wish they hadn't rushed off like that. It's lovely that Kit got some work, but Miranda seemed to be settling in to such a nice routine with them. Sit up straight, sweetheart."

"Mmm," Annie said. Frederick's children were not very taken with her, she thought. Though they clearly revered him. Perhaps that was why they seemed so possessive. Or did it have to do with their mother? Annie never asked what had become of Mrs. Frederick Barrow, but she did wonder. Had she died recently? Or was she, like Betty, dumped and destitute? What had she been like? What had she looked like? Did they still see each other? Or did he carry flowers to her grave and lie on the grass beside it and whisper to her? It was difficult to picture any of it, as she knew nothing at all about the wife and not much more about Frederick, but she pictured the two of them anyway, blurry, indistinct, far away.

It was therefore a shock when she saw her mother rushing enthusiastically away from her toward the door, through which walked a very real and sharply drawn Frederick, the very same Frederick Barrow she had been thinking about, who had just entered the room with the stern young woman Annie recognized as his daughter, Gwen, as well as a man who must have been her husband, and two little girls in matching velvet dresses.

It is too hot for velvet was Annie's first irrelevant thought, remembering many sweaty holiday dinners from her childhood. Rosh Hashanah is always too hot for velvet.

The night air swept in through the door with Frederick, Gwen, her husband, and the two pink little girls in cherry red velvet, the damp breath of the shore following them across the room like a ghost.

"New blood," Rosalyn whispered hungrily as she hurried toward the newcomers. She frequently experienced a sense of world-weary ennui with her husband's guests. Like many a collector of pottery or butterflies or vintage handbags, Rosalyn cared far more for the act of acquisition than she did for the guests in her extensive collection. Lou provided her with an ever-expanding list of names to remember and occupations to place in her own mental hierarchy, for which she was grudgingly grateful. But this new acquisition was, uncharacteristically, all her own. She had found Gwendolyn Barrow herself at a dreary evening of incomprehensible art and clannish New Yorkers at which the two bored women had fallen into a friendly discussion of Pilates versus Gyrotonic, Rosalyn coming down heavily, if such a slight and narrow person could be said to be heavy in any way, on the side of Gyrotonic, a view to which Gwen revealed she was just coming around. The two women bonded, and Rosalyn rather recklessly invited her new friend to Lou's Rosh Hashanah.

"Gwen!" she said. "Welcome to Westport! And who are these elegant young ladies you've brought with you? They cannot be Juliet and Ophelia?" Gwen and Rosalyn had met just the one time, and Rosalyn congratulated herself on remembering the names of the twins. Her father might be lazily indulging himself in senility, she thought, but she could still hold her head up. "It's not possible, they're so grown up..." she continued, her immense face tilting toward the girls.

Juliet and Ophelia looked up at her with expressions that suggested they would rather have met the fates of their famous namesakes than be standing in Rosalyn's living room beneath the looming face of Rosalyn. Then Juliet and Ophelia began to cry, their little lips quivering a moment in unison before twisting into twin grimaces. They wailed in chorus, and their father squatted down and spoke earnestly to them, his face serious but deferential, as if they were tiny ambassadors from a tiny foreign land.

From her post near the glass doors to the terrace, Annie saw the family's entrance, felt the damp air. Her heart beat faster, and the heat of emotion spread across her face. She concentrated on her glass of wine, the liquid black as a deep, round pond. She waited for Frederick's voice, and when it came, beside her, saying just her name, it sounded soft and rich and aromatic.

"Your voice is like wine," she said, looking up and smiling. "It really is, Frederick."

"Not demon gin?" he said. He took her hand and they stood for a moment, a very heady moment for Annie, her blood coursing through her, drowning out the sounds around her. But Frederick must have heard something, for he glanced quickly, self-consciously, at his daughter across the room, and the spell was broken.

He dropped Annie's hand awkwardly, said, "What on earth are you doing here?" then looked around him as if he weren't sure what he was doing there, either. "What a wonderful surprise!"

"Cousin Lou is my cousin," she said.

"Cousin Lou is everybody's cousin, isn't he? Gwen heard all about him from his wife. They're great friends, I gather. After one meeting. Gwen is a terrible snob, but she's very taken with Rosalyn. Is Rosalyn a terrible snob? It's the only thing I can think of to explain this sudden friendship."

Annie couldn't help laughing. "But Lou's really my cousin," she insisted. "Not by blood exactly, but he really is family."

Frederick nodded enthusiastically. "Right! Just what Gwennie told me — everyone is 'like family.'"

Annie gave up, adding only, "Anyway, I live here now."

"Oh, I remember now... the cottage, your cousin... So Cousin Lou is your cousin and you live in his cottage."

She wondered if he was thinking of her apartment, of her bedroom, of her bed. If he was remembering.

"We live just down the hill."

"By the beach, right? That's fantastic. My house is by the water." He looked suddenly uncomfortable. He tapped his mouth unconsciously with two fingers. "My house..."

"Your house..." she said, the way you would to encourage a child who was trying to tell a story.

"Hmm?"

"Your house? The water?"

"My house," he said again, more to himself than to Annie. "My house by the water. Dark and treacherous..."

"Your house or the water?"

". . . Darker and more treacherous by the day..."

"You sound like my sister!"

"Yes, but she finds darkness and treachery beautiful."

"And you?"

"I find it dark and treacherous..." He trailed off, then said, suddenly, with a rather forced grin, "Well! Enough of that. So you're here because you live here, and I'm here because Gwennie met Mrs. Cousin Lou at the Whitney. They're bosom buddies." He smiled, more pleasantly now. "That's an expression that doesn't really work anymore, does it? Pity. It conveys so much if you're a man's man of a previous century. I can't quite carry it off."

Annie felt herself relax. She liked him, she just did. Whether Frederick wanted to remember what had happened between them or not, she did remember, and she would continue to remember — why not remember something so pleasurable? But that did not mean she would look back. At her age, she found that it was better to keep her eyes facing forward.

"Isn't Westport where Peter DeVries lived?" Frederick asked. "I miss his presence. How does that happen, I wonder? His books still exist, they're still just as wonderful as ever, but he has no presence. Do you know what I mean?"

Annie said she did know what he meant and wondered if what he really meant was: When will I have no presence? Frederick was sixty or thereabouts. Was he feeling that shift, too, the way she was? The cresting of the hill? Down, down, down we go from here...

"Lucy lived in Westport," she said, shaking herself from what was threatening to become full-blown melancholy. "On TV after Little Ricky was born. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit lived here, too."

"And now you: Annie Weissmann."

"An unbroken line of unrelated people."

Annie began to enjoy herself. She described the nostalgia her mother and sister had expressed for the local lunatic asylum.

"And my sister almost drowned in a kayak and was rescued by a young actor," she continued. They proceeded to discuss kayaks and boats in general for a while, the conversation then veering inexplicably to a shared appreciation for the actor James Mason, whom they both occasionally confused with Dirk Bogarde.

"I was once thinking about that scene, that wonderful, ghastly scene in Death in Venice in which Gustav von Aschenbach's makeup begins to run," Frederick said. "Then, days later, I realized that the entire time I had been picturing the makeup running down James Mason's face."

From across the room came a shout: "Dad!"

It was Frederick's son-in-law. Annie felt a stab of pity for Frederick: his son-in-law called him "Dad."

I often think about Gustav von Aschenbach when I put on my own makeup, she thought, though she might have said it aloud, for Frederick stared at her.

"Dad! There you are," said Frederick's daughter, arriving beside them with her husband and little girls. "Oh, hello," Gwen added hastily to Annie. "You're the librarian, aren't you? Ann, is it? How nice to see you here of all places." Gwen was holding one daughter who chewed dreamily on a cracker.

"Of all places," Annie repeated.

"This is Ron, my son-in-law, and this small person," Frederick said, reaching for the child, "is Ophelia."

Annie shook Ophelia's sticky hand. "Pretty dress," she said.

"Hot," said Ophelia.

Betty was watching the little group with interest. She was happy that Frederick had come to see Annie. Had Annie invited him? It was not like Annie to go out of her way in quite such a public manner, to show her hand. She must really like the novelist with the sparkly eyes and mellifluous voice. If my children can be happy, I will be happy, Betty thought, squaring her shoulders, though what she felt was the same simmering anger and confusion as always.

"I heard about Joseph," a man next to her said.

She tried to recover herself and remember who he was, gazing with fascinated revulsion at his meaty lips while the general conversation of the people standing around her washed over them.

"Marty," Betty said, finally remembering the man with the liver-colored lips was Cousin Lou's accountant. "Hello."

"I'm so sorry about what happened," he said.

He was eating a piece of dark orange cheese. She noticed it left a narrow oily trail on his lip, like a snail.

"You need a good lawyer, Betty. A shark. I'll give you a name."

"Talk to Annie, Marty dear. I'm in mourning."

"Yeah. They say that's one of the stages, right?"

"I don't believe in stages," Betty said.

"It's not a religion, Mom," her younger daughter said, coming up beside Betty. And because Marty looked a little hurt and her voice had accidentally emerged with a far too haughty timbre, Betty forced herself to smile at Marty and his odious snail-slimed lip.

"Thank you," she said, taking his hand, administering a short shake and releasing it, as if she were in a receiving line. "Thank you for your kind words."

"Shark," he said, repeating the kind word as he went away.

"Dear God," Betty said.

"Who was that?" Miranda asked.

Roberts was a step or two behind her.

"Lou's accountant. He said I needed a shark divorce lawyer."

"A forensic accountant is more like it," Roberts said. "I'm sorry," he added when Betty did not reply. "None of my business." And he hurried off.

Forensic accountant. As a recently converted and loyal member of the daytime television audience, Betty had seen numerous reruns of numerous crime shows and wondered if a forensic accountant was a CSI for divorces. A divorce was surely a kind of death: a murder, in fact. It was the memories, so stubbornly happy and lifeless and useless, stinking with decay, that lay in a putrid heap like a rotting corpse. If only the memories were a corpse, Betty thought, and could be buried under six feet of clotted dirt. But they never really died, did they? They wandered through her thoughts and her heart like scabby zombies. A forensic accountant could never find the murderer if he couldn't even discover the dead body. It was better on television. "I like the one with the bugs," she said out loud.

"What?"

"I don't like the one with the sunglasses."

"What are you talking about, Mother?"

"Television."

"I have a migraine," Miranda said. She stared at Frederick Barrow's granddaughters and felt angry.

Betty put the back of her hand on her daughter's forehead. "Do you have a fever? Do you want to go home? Do you have that medicine? The kind you roll onto your forehead? Maybe you'll feel better if you lie down."

Miranda pulled away from her mother's hand.

"Who is that young woman leading Frederick away from Annie?" Betty asked. "Is that his little doxy?"

"That's his daughter, Mother."

"Well, thank God for daughters," Betty said, giving Miranda's arm a squeeze. "But, I mean, really." And she departed, pulled open the sliding glass door, and stood in the dark, moist air to brood in peace about Joseph and his irreconcilable differences.

At the same time that Betty retreated to the outdoors, Miranda saw Roberts coming toward her again. She gulped down the rest of her Scotch and headed for the bar to refill. Doddery old lawyer — was everyone here two years old or a hundred and one? Roberts wasn't really doddering, to be fair: he had a steady gait; he was tall and straight and had the pleasantly browned, pleasantly leathery skin of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors. He was rather distinguished-looking. A thin beakish nose, the kind that could be acquiline and English or acquiline and Italian or just Jewish. And he had a pretty mouth. Betty had pointed that out — how his mouth was soft and so different from the rest of his face. But Miranda was in no mood to appreciate his handsome mouth or relative good health. Her head was throbbing and her heart was breaking.

Roberts stood beside her and refilled his wineglass. Seeing no escape, Miranda gave a wan smile.

"Is everything all right?" he asked. "Your mother..."

"She's in mourning. It's very tiring for her."

"I like your mother. She's kind of indefatigable. But I suppose even she has to give in now and then. Age is exhausting sometimes, exhausting if you hold it at bay, more exhausting if you give in. My mother used to say you have to be brave to get old." He stopped, as if his flow of words surprised him as much as it did Miranda. "Not that your mother is old, of course," he added. "I was thinking more of myself."

"Oh, you're as young as springtime," Miranda said politely, though she was thinking he had to be seventy if he was a day. And how dreary of him to speak about aging, as if it were synonymous with living. The image of Kit, young and shining with curiosity and hope, his vibrant child at his side, shot into her thoughts almost painfully.

Roberts laughed. "I've seen a few springtimes, anyway," he said. "You, on the other hand, look wonderful. I heard what happened that day you went out kayaking, and I admit I was worried about you. I feel a little responsible. I never should have let you go out on such a rough day."

Miranda wondered if the semiretired lawyer had taken a wee drop too much. Never had she heard such a flow of words emanate from his, admittedly — give the devil his due, as Josie always said — lovely lips. "You're so sweet," she said, thinking, Go away, geezer, please. "But first of all, you couldn't have stopped me. No one can stop me, I'm an absolute nightmare. And, as it turned out, it was a lucky day after all. My kayaking adventure brought us a new friend — Kit Maybank. Have you met him? Kit rescued me from certain near-death. He's an actor. He was supposed to be here, but he just got a part in a film and had to leave. He's extremely talented." She found that once she mentioned Kit, she had a hard time leaving the subject. "He has a child, a beautiful little boy named Henry..."

"Ah," Roberts said in his quiet voice.

"Henry," Miranda repeated, almost belligerently, as if Roberts had snubbed the boy. "Henry looks just like his father."

Roberts mumbled something inaudible and retreated into his customary silence.

As they filed into the dining room, Frederick held one of his rosy granddaughters on his shoulders. The little girl began drumming on his head and singing in a high wail that carried surprisingly well across the large room, then was seated beside her sister, the two of them lolling in their chairs, their heads tilted back, their tongues hanging from their mouths.

Annie was on the other side of the long table, toward the head, sitting in what she hoped was quiet, self-contained dignity. She could sense Frederick across from her, near the foot of the table, but she did not look up to see. If he had not been intimate when they spoke, he had been warm. But at the arrival of Gwen and her entourage, he had become suddenly quite solemn and had melted away with them as if he had never been there at all.

"You shouldn't have," she heard him say, and looked up to see one of the girls — Annie could not tell if it was Juliet or Ophelia, or Medea, for that matter, she thought irritably — press a honey-soaked piece of challah into his hand.

Miranda came up behind him and pointed to the empty chair beside Annie.

Annie quickly looked away.

"There's a seat beside Annie," Miranda said shrilly to Frederick. "Go, go!" She put her hand in the small of his back and gave him a little shove.

What is wrong with her? Annie thought, coloring.

What is wrong with him? Miranda wondered. Carpe diem, carpe, carpe, carpe! she wanted to cry out. She felt quite heroic, facilitating her sister's romance when she herself was so leaden and alone. She had checked her cell phone several times, retreating to the powder room to do so, but Kit had not so much as texted her. Of course, he was still on the plane, she knew that, but that did not make her sense of abandonment any less painful. She would have thought he could send her just a few words from the airport before he left, or e-mail a picture of Henry strapped into his seat. She longed to check her phone again, but would have to wait until they were sitting down. Then she would surreptitiously remove it from her jacket pocket, hold it on her lap, and glance at it, the way Annie's boys were always doing, the way she had done when she still had a real life with real work. The thought of her smashed career came back, after leaving her alone for the last few peaceful weeks, searing and bitter, rising like bile. Furious, she nudged Frederick again. If she had lost everything and everyone, then at least Annie should have her novelist.

Frederick hesitated, then murmured that he ought to stay close to his granddaughters, and slid into the nearest chair. Juliet and Ophelia, the smocking of their red velvet dresses now smeared with a layer of golden honey that was studded with yellow challah crumbs, smiled at Miranda and licked their fingers.

In the background Annie heard a man's voice, a singsong voice mottled with static. It was Rosalyn's father, Mr. Shpuntov. He was in his room now, his words reaching the dining room through the intercom that had been installed to keep track of him and was kept on at all times.

"He sold bananas," said the voice. "Hung them in the basement to ripen. Have you ever seen bananas in the Bronx, Mr. Eight-o-seven? A basement full of bananas in the Bronx..."

Mr. Eight-o-seven? Annie looked at her watch. Ah. Mr. Shpuntov was telling stories to the clock.

"It was wonderful seeing all of you ladies," Frederick said to Annie and Miranda and Betty at the end of the evening.

Miranda looked at him scornfully.

"Oh dear! Mother!" she then said. "Mr. Shpuntov is drinking the dregs." And she purposefully dragged her mother off to stop Rosalyn's father in his procession down one side of the table and then up the other, raising half-finished glasses of wine to his lips and draining them.

But she saw, as she relieved Mr. Shpuntov of a goblet, that Frederick had not lingered to exchange an intimate goodbye with Annie as Miranda had hoped. He had simply nodded his head, said, "Well, bye," turned on his heel, and walked out the door to wait while Gwen held up the girls, one by one, to be kissed by Cousin Lou.

"What was wrong with Frederick?" she asked Annie as they walked home.

"How do you mean?"

"How do I mean? You know perfectly well how I mean. He was so odd and cold and standoffish."

"Frederick was perfectly pleasant," Annie said. But in her room, later, she silently echoed her sister's words: What was wrong with Frederick?