The Three Weissmanns of Westport

13

When Nick and Charlie left, the household sank into an even deeper state of misery than it had been in before they showed their young faces. Betty rustled through her papers as if she were preparing a well-padded nest. Miranda had taken to leaving shrill messages on answering machines of former colleagues.

"Aren't you sort of burning your bridges?" Annie said.

"I certainly hope so."

"She's being proactive," Betty said. "That's a sign of self-esteem, you know."

Each day the shower rail separated a little more from the wall of the bathroom. Each night Annie lay in bed and tried not to think of their finances. That was how she began to divide her days: first the aluminum disk pulling away from the dull pink tile, bit by bit, while she showered (she swore she could see it moving), then the rush of panic in the shadowy nighttime room.

"We're running out of money," she ventured at breakfast.

"I was never good at money," Miranda said. "Obviously."

"Joseph always took care of everything," Betty said, shaking her head sadly. "Well, those days are gone."

And so they both, each in her own unassuming way, assumed Annie would somehow take care of the finances.

Her sublet apartment, unlike her current roommates, was rolling up its sleeves, putting its shoulder to the grindstone and earning its keep. But there was still Charlie's medical school and Nick's college tuition, only partly paid for by loans. It didn't leave Annie much. Her mother had even less, with any eventual divorce settlement a long way off. Miranda, meanwhile, saw only an occasional royalty check from her once popular and now disgraced authors, but even her tithe, as she called it, was withheld while the legal cases worked themselves out. She appeared to have otherwise run through every penny she had ever earned.

Sitting at the table trying to make a budget, Annie said, "There's very little coming in and there's way too much going out."

The other two nodded, then continued to read the newspaper.

When Annie said it again, louder, Miranda patiently explained that writing down all their debts did not miraculously supply the family with more money. The point of a budget was not to miraculously conjure up more money, Annie answered. The point was to figure out realistically how much they could afford to spend. Betty said she thought it would be far more practical to have more money, miraculously or otherwise, and Annie gave up, sitting with her pencil and her calculations in lonely, resentful silence.

That night, as every night, the bills rose up in her memory and haunted her. She turned in her bed, twisted in the sheets. The thin moonlight came in through her window. It was cold and white, like a marble tomb. She was hot and flushed and alive with worry.

Her anger and frustration with her mother and sister, however, were just bits of sand caught in the wind of her true rage. That was saved for Josie and, now, Felicity as well. Annie still could not believe that the person behind all their suffering was Frederick Barrow's sister.

"And to think Rosalyn invited that treacherous family to Rosh Hashanah," she said one evening as they sat glumly before the faux fire. "Maybe that's why Frederick was so weird."

"You said he wasn't weird," Miranda muttered.

"Well, he was."

"Listen," Betty said abruptly, "I'll just have to get a job."

"What are you going to do, Mom? Greet people at Walmart?"

Betty leaned toward her, suddenly animated. "Is Walmart as nice as Costco?"

It was therefore with great relief that the three women accepted an invitation to visit Lou and Rosalyn in Palm Springs.

"It's our fiftieth wedding anniversary," Rosalyn said when she called. "Can you believe it?"

Betty congratulated her coldly.

"Against all the odds," Rosalyn said.

"And how is your father?" Betty asked to parry the indelicacy. "How is Mr. Shpuntov?"

"The desert agrees with him."

Betty imagined a towering dune nodding polite assent to Mr. Shpuntov.

"Well," she said more cheerfully, "that's something, then."

"Now, Betty," Rosalyn said in a pedagogical tone that got Betty's back up whenever she heard it. It was Rosalyn's docent voice. "Now, Betty, listen, and don't be stubborn. Lou and I both miss you and the girls."

Betty walked out to the sunporch. There was no sun, just weak, struggling light. The sky was overcast and dull. It had rained the night before and the trees were still dark with wet. She was cold on the unheated sunporch. There was nothing to do there, nothing to see, nothing even to hear, no birds or passing children. She stood suspended in a winter void, only the damp cold and the musty smell of old carpet penetrating the deprivation.

"We miss you, too," she said. And perhaps the girls did miss Lou and Rosalyn now and then, she really didn't know. As for herself, she missed only one person.

"We want you all to come out here for Christmas. Our treat, of course. My father was saying the other day that in all his years he had never seen people who were so generous to their friends, but you know us, Betty — that's just the way we are. And I don't want you to start giving me excuses about why you can't come. A trip will do you good, Betty. Lou and I are worried about you. Even my father mentioned it to me just the other day. Sitting there in that hut, of course you get what you pay for, no disrespect to the landlords. Ha! I make myself laugh. But there you are. No one to talk to. Except your daughters, of course. How lucky you are to have daughters. Still, I manage very well, don't I, even without children? Lou and his Like Family. I have to laugh." And she did.

Betty, who had not been listening but had heard the words lucky and daughters, said, "Oh yes," in an absent voice.

"Now, don't you Oh Yes me, Betty Weissmann. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking we're just making this generous offer because we feel sorry for you, and I can understand that, I really can, but you have to believe me, it's mostly because we love you and want what's best."

Betty moved back to her desk, but she did not look at the mound of papers and bright folders piled high upon it. She was staring at the television set. There, on the soap opera she favored because it was set in a seaside town not unlike Westport, if Westport were inhabited by spies, terrorists, gangsters, and swinging wife-swapping millionaires, which who was to say it wasn't, there on the screen, in the soap opera's popular new art gallery hangout, stood a handsome dark-haired young man facing another handsome blond young man. There was tension, visible tension between them. And tenderness. And longing. Betty had seen that expression before. She had seen Kit Maybank look at Miranda like that. Only now Kit Maybank was on television in an art gallery standing before a reproduction — she supposed it had to be a reproduction — of a Keith Haring (her friends Arnie and Maureen bought one years ago, she hadn't understood it at the time, but it certainly had appreciated) and his, Kit Maybank's, hand shot out and grasped the hand of the other handsome young man, the one with blond hair, and Kit Maybank stepped forward and the other young man stepped forward and Kit Maybank was in the other young man's arms and the other young man was in Kit Maybank's arms and with the Keith Haring reproduction as a backdrop they were kissing, passionately, with their mouths gaping, as people always seemed to kiss on soap operas.

"Oh my God," she heard Miranda gasp from the doorway behind her.

"Betty?" Rosalyn was saying into the phone. "Betty, are you there?"

"I can't believe it!" Miranda said.

"Now, Miranda, it's just a role," Betty said.

"Betty?" Rosalyn said again.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Rosalyn. Miranda's young man just kissed another young man on television."

"What young man? Kit? Kit's gay?"

"Just on TV."

Miranda, moving closer to the TV, said, "Kit's in Los Angeles!"

"Los Angeles?" Rosalyn said, overhearing Miranda. "I hope he got his marriage in before they changed the law."

"Kit's married?" Betty asked.

"Kit's married?" Miranda said. She grabbed the phone from her mother. "Kit's married?" she asked Rosalyn.

"He is? Well, you live long enough, you see everything."

On the plane ride to Los Angeles, Miranda gazed impatiently out the window. Although all of them were thrilled to be liberated from what Miranda called cottage arrest, it had still not been easy for her to convince the other inmates to make the trip. It was a challenge, but Miranda had always liked a challenge in the good old days before her life had collapsed, and this one had energized her. It was a pleasure to have a goal again, to work her mother and sister the way she used to work publishers and editors. She snapped back into that alert, predatory sentience of her occupation not with pleasure so much as exasperated fondness — this was something she knew, an old fawning pal. She had been forced to campaign using both subtlety and aggression, sweetness and sour-tempered sarcasm. Of course, she had prevailed. She could not recall a time when she had not prevailed within her family. Betty had hesitated, not relishing the role of beggarly relative in two different geographical locations. But she had caved fairly quickly. The holdout, as usual, was Annie.

"They're paying for it, so you can't use that as an excuse," Miranda said. "The library is giving all of you a forced two-week unpaid vacation, so you can't use that."

"Go by yourself," Annie had said. "If you want to go so badly."

Only when Annie found out that neither Charlie nor Nick could make it to Connecticut for Christmas did she give in.

"I'm sorry we won't get to see them," Miranda said to Annie.

But she wasn't sorry. She was exhilarated. The nose of the plane was pointed toward the West Coast. Somewhere on that coast were Kit Maybank and Henry Maybank. Somewhere between Los Angeles, where Kit now lived, and Palm Springs, where he spent his weekends in a rented house he shared with a friend. She had read all about him on a soap opera fan blog. Kit's disappearance made sense to her now, his silence. He was not on a little independent movie at all. He was a soap opera regular. No wonder he had been so uncommunicative, so distant. He who had dreamed of Shakespeare was now playing Zink Lattimore, gay graffiti artist. Poor Kit was mortified, that was all. That was why she hadn't heard from him. He had hoped to slink away into daytime TV obscurity, leaving her with her exalted vision of him, with her memories intact.

"Funny about memories," she said to Annie, who had, as usual, volunteered to sit in the middle seat.

"Useless author trivia," Annie said. "That's the kind of memory I have: today is Rex Stout's birthday. For example."

"What street did his detective live on? It seemed an odd address even at the time," said Betty.

"Thirty-fourth Street. 918 West Thirty-fourth Street, sometimes 922, 904. Once it was 918 East Thirty-fourth Street. It was always the same brownstone, though."

"You were always like that, even as a child," Betty said, patting her arm proudly.

"Memories," Miranda said irritably. "Not memory."

"Memories are like fish," Betty said. "Isn't that the expression? After three days they stink."

A layer of white clouds lay beneath them, occasional openings affording quick glimpses of the United States with its crop circles and ribbons of rivers and faded, flat winter landscape. Annie looked past her sleeping sister at the greasy window and the blue sky beyond. That she had agreed to follow Lou, Rosalyn, and Mr. Shpuntov to Palm Springs was still sinking in. But there had been no resisting Miranda. Miranda was more animated than she had been since Kit Maybank left Westport. Annie assumed Miranda and Kit had been in touch. Were they getting back together in some way? She wondered if that was a good thing. Her sister smiled dreamily as she slept, forehead on the window, white billowing clouds beyond. Yes, it would be good. If it made Miranda happy, it would be good. As for Betty, although she hated to fly, although her relationship with Rosalyn could charitably be called prickly, although she loved having Christmas in her own house, once she had given in to Miranda, she had taken up the cause like a true convert. Christmas in the desert! Palm Springs! So mid-century! So Rat Pack!

"J. Smeaton Chase lived in Palm Springs," Annie had offered. "He wrote a book about it."

"Celebrities, etc.?" Betty asked.

"No. More like cactuses, etc."

When they arrived at the airport, they picked up their rental car. It was the only expense they would have for their entire two-week stay. Cousin Lou had insisted on paying for the plane tickets. They had refused until Rosalyn explained that he would use frequent-flier miles that were about to run out.

"Don't be proud," she said. "It is no longer appropriate."

Betty was too proud to respond.

Now she drove along the windy highway, the little Ford Focus shaking from side to side. Her daughters had each offered to take the wheel, saying what a long flight it had been, how tired she must be. Meaning, of course, how old she was. It was an ugly road, but the sky was vast and blue, the malls gradually gave way to cactus, and the snowy mountains crept closer and closer. Betty tried to enjoy the view as the car shuddered through a forest of tall white windmills.

"Wow," Miranda said. "Try tilting at those."

They pulled up into the driveway of a one-story house among other one-story houses. Its roof was shaped like a nun's hat, wings swooping up on either side. Standing at the front door were two men: Rosalyn's father, Mr. Shpuntov, and Roberts, the semiretiree.

Annie rolled down her window and called out a hello.

"Huh," Miranda said. "Codger talk, poor old souls."

"Your soul certainly isn't old," Annie said. "Infantile perhaps, but not old." While my soul is quite thoroughly middle-aged, she thought.

"There is no soul," Betty said suddenly, with unexpected force. "Everyone knows that."

Roberts and Mr. Shpuntov had indeed been indulging in codger talk. Mr. Shpuntov found it warm for December in the Bronx, while Roberts agreed that the dry, bright winter heat was not usual for the Bronx at this time of year and left it at that. Then the old man lurched toward the door and began violently ringing the bell. When his daughter answered, he barked out a cross "Who's there? What do you want here? Go away," then slammed the door in her face, muttering something uncomplimentary about Jehovah's Witnesses.

Roberts paid no attention. He had turned his back on the shouting and slamming and was striding over to the white rental car. He gave a short wave and a quick flicker of a smile. He did not smile much, but when he did, his face was animated. Annie noticed, to her surprise, how strong he was — his arms in their short-sleeve polo shirt were surprisingly thick for such a tall, slender man. As he carried all their suitcases into the house, she gave Miranda a poke in the back.

"What was that for?"

Annie shrugged. She really didn't know. "You underestimate Roberts," she said.

"Oh, that again," Miranda said, shaking her head and walking off into the house.

But you do, Annie thought. You're unfair. Roberts is pensive, a man of calm surfaces and immeasurable depths, while all you notice is the chop and spray of windswept waves. It's a pity. For both of you.

"Are you staying with Cousin Lou and Rosalyn, too?" Annie asked him when they were all inside.

"No, no. I have a condo here. Just down the street."

"You people move in a pack," Miranda said, laughing.

Roberts smiled. "All the old snowbirds. Yes, we do. Not much imagination, I guess."

"You ladies will stay in the guesthouse," Rosalyn said. "Your mother will stay in the house with us. That way you will all have your privacy."

She managed to say this in a way that suggested both that the daughters wanted urgently to get away from their unpleasant mother and that the mother wanted urgently to get away from her unpleasant daughters.

"We are indebted to you and will be happy wherever you put us," Betty said with narrowed eyes.

"It's beautiful here." Annie looked out the windows. Across the street was a pink stucco house with an incongruous rich green lawn. Beyond it, the desert, purple in its shadows, reached out to the snow-capped mountains.

In the back of the house, a large patio surrounded two sunken areas, one containing what seemed to be a kind of outdoor kitchen with refrigerator, grill, and bar, the other centered on a fire pit. Beyond that was a pool, a golf course, and then more mountains and the wide Western sky.

"We practically live outside," Rosalyn said proudly, seeing Betty staring out.

"No, but look at that scrawny dog," Betty said. "Just sunning himself on the golf course. It's so sweet."

"Lou!" Rosalyn cried. She began waving her arms. "Shoo! Shoo! Lou! The coyote!"

The animal rose lazily to its dainty feet and loped away across the green, turning its head once or twice to look back at the small, wildly gesticulating woman.

"You did it!" Lou said proudly. "My little frontier woman. You bow to no coyote!"

But within seconds they beheld another reason for the coyote's rapid departure: a golf cart, its fringed canopy bumping jauntily, carrying two girls, rattling across the exact spot where the coyote had lain.

"Oh, look!" Rosalyn said. "It's Crystal and Amber!"

For a moment Annie wondered if Rosalyn had spotted mineral deposits in the rocky mountains above them. Then she realized she was referring to the golf cart girls. They were both in their twenties, tanned and fit and wearing shorts, their identically pretty bellies exposed below tiny stylish polo shirts. They resembled each other so much they had to be sisters, but one, the younger, was dark and bright, her eyes sparkling with certainty, while the older had a fair, indefinite smoothness. Neither was beautiful, but they both conformed to the rules of fashion and gave off a vague sense of beauty anyway, like a fire that burns bright but has no heat.

"Did you see the wolf?" the older one, who was Crystal, said. "Oh my God, I was freaking out."

"It was a coyote," said Amber. "Don't you ever watch Nat Geo?"

"Well, whatever," said Crystal, her face glowing with excitement.

Amber and Crystal were in Palm Springs house-sitting. They did not call themselves house sitters, though. They were "home sitters," they said. Rosalyn had met them on the golf course and they had "adopted" her. Accustomed to standing by as people made a fuss over her husband as he made a fuss over them, Rosalyn had, not surprisingly, grown fond of the two girls. They had arrived now to take her around the golf course and drop in on any neighbors who happened to be sitting out on their patios having cocktails.

"Don't the neighbors mind?" Annie asked. "I mean, if you're not invited?"

The girls looked at her as if she were the middle-aged librarian she was.

"Oh, Annie, don't be such a stick in the mud. You're in Palm Springs now! You're on vacation," Rosalyn said, climbing aboard the golf cart and waving gaily as it trundled off across the bright green turf.

Annie waved back, chastened. She and Miranda proceeded to the guesthouse, a little miniature of the main house. Miranda was almost giddy with pleasure. She spun around the small patio facing the mountains.

"I love it here!" Miranda shouted. "The sky. The mountains. The froufrou minimalism of the houses. The lawns in the desert. The coyotes on the golf course. It's so wild and dowdy at the same time. I just love it!"

She stretched out on a chaise. "Sun!"

"Don't get a burn," Annie said, more because she felt it was somehow expected of her than because she worried about the late-afternoon rays.

But Miranda, eyes closed, just shook her head and smiled.

Annie sat outside that night missing her children. Christmas holidays without them were a sickly, hollow time. She had spoken to them earlier, using the computer and seeing their faces, distorted by the angle of their laptops. Nick had wanted her to send him the shampoo he liked and more contact lenses. Charlie was too old to ask her to do long-distance errands. That was a blessing, but it made her sad, too. Everyone grew up, it seemed. Except perhaps Miranda.

Annie went to the bathroom and held up her traveling magnifying mirror and gave a few desultory plucks where needed, then went back to the bedroom, where Miranda was in bed intently studying something on her laptop. The room was cool, and outside, the world ended in abrupt black night. Annie moved closer, but Miranda moved her cursor across the screen and the windows swept themselves away, leaving behind nothing but an expanse of digital blue.

So, Annie thought, Kit Maybank? Maybe Henry would appear in the morning and moo like a cow and quack like a duck to the amazement of his elders. Miranda and Kit could walk and talk and admire the sunset, bound by the little boy between them, swinging from their hands. Or not. Miranda had confided nothing to Annie. For all Annie knew, she had met a new suitor online and was going to meet him at midnight in Joshua Tree National Park. Probably turn out to be a serial murderer. Oh God... Annie looked over at her sister, safe in the next bed, to reassure herself. I wonder, she thought, if Miranda ever worries about me.

The next day, while Mr. Shpuntov napped in his room, his uneven snores broadcast through the house by a baby monitor, Betty sat on a comfortable mid-century chair trying to read a mystery called Return to Sender she'd found in her room. It was bright mid-morning, but the wall of windows was protected by an overhang of the swooping roof and the living room had a welcome dimness, a soft contrast to the harsh daylight on the other side. The book was frustratingly dull. Most mysteries are, she thought. The mystery of her marriage, for example. She could turn the years over and over again in her mind and they still added up to happiness that had been shredded suddenly and inexplicably into ugly scraps of pain. She sighed, more loudly than she would have liked, for Roberts, who had just come in, looked concerned and sat beside her.

"You're worried," he said.

"No. Not really. That would involve hope."

"Oh dear."

"I just don't understand. Maybe the end of a marriage is like God, and we are not meant to understand."

Roberts nodded in apparent agreement. "My wife died ten years ago. I don't understand that either. I miss her every day. Do you miss your husband?"

"Yes. Every minute. It's easier when I pretend he's dead. I'm sorry — that must sound so callous to you. But if he's alive, if he's alive and behaving like this... well... And he always prided himself on being such a decent man..."

Roberts said, "Sometimes people need some guidance, don't you think? Even decent people, and especially people who think they're decent."

Betty liked the tone of his voice. Not hysterical and fuming like her daughters, not cautious and pessimistic like her lawyers, not numb and beaten down like her own inner voice. Even talking to Cousin Lou, who advised her on some of the real estate aspects of her Case, was trying — his hearty reassurance, so touching, so enraging. Roberts's voice was quiet and determined, as if it were on its way somewhere, someplace it needed to be. He asked her a few questions about her lawyers, about the disposition of the Case. Betty had never discussed her Case with someone who understood the law before, except her lawyers, of course, but they seemed to find the law a constantly surprising series of impediments, as if they were crossing rocky desert terrain for the first time and had forgotten their shoes.

"What fun this has been!" she said. "Odd how a little kvetching can cleanse the soul."

"Well, let's just see what happens," Roberts said with a smile. "Let's just see what happens with the late great Joseph Weissmann."

She smiled back at him. "Let's just see," she agreed.

Cousin Lou came into the room then, his voice booming, "All hands on deck! All hands on deck!" And only when all the inhabitants, including his bewildered father-in-law, had gathered around him did he continue. "Tonight I celebrate fifty years of wedded bliss."

Rosalyn clapped her hands like a girl.

"I am pleased to include all of you, my family, in this great celebration of love."

Annie glanced at her mother and then at Miranda to see how well disposed they were to such a celebration. Betty looked resigned, Miranda tense.

"So, I invite all of you to join us — "

"And Amber and Crystal, of course," Rosalyn interjected.

"And Amber and Crystal, of course," he said, bowing to his wife. "I invite you to join us at the country club's Seafood Night."

"Seafood in the desert!" Rosalyn said. "We've got it all."

"Do we wear costumes?" Annie asked with a worried face, for she was remembering Western Night at the boys' day camps when they wore bandannas and boots with their shorts and T-shirts.

"You eat heaps of seafood piled on silver platters," said Cousin Lou.

"It's all endangered and full of mercury," Miranda said.

Miranda had been agitated and rather sour since she woke up. The eagerness of the past few days had bloomed into something else altogether, like algae. She was so volatile. It was hard to keep up. Betty put her finger to her mouth to shoosh her.

Annie frowned at her sister. Now as usual she would have to work that much harder in the civility department. "Seafood!" she said. "Who doesn't love seafood?"

Roberts looked from Miranda to Annie and back again. "There you go."

Annie thought, Poor, poor Roberts, not for the first time that day, either.

Betty said, "Yum yum," and went back to her book.

That afternoon, when Rosalyn returned from another golf cart "booze cruise" chaperoned by Amber and Crystal, several glasses of wine the merrier, she collapsed onto the sofa and confided to Betty that she had harbored some doubts about Crystal and Amber at first, thinking they were not exceptional enough for her. After all, what had they done in their lives? They moved from house to house like Gypsies, first looking after a house on the East Coast, then the West Coast... It was hardly a recommendation for an extraordinary acquaintance. But then she had gotten to know them, and they were extraordinary, indeed. Just the nicest girls you could imagine, full of fun... They had taught her a delightful game involving Ping-Pong balls and plastic cups of beer... "Amber is a massage therapist, you know. She's not licensed yet, still studying. But, Betty, she has a gift. I mean, it's amazing. My sciatica? Gone! It's almost as good as having a doctor in the family."

The extraordinary girls, meanwhile, after dropping off Rosalyn, had turned the golf cart in the direction of the guesthouse and pulled it up to the edge of the patio there.

"Hello!" they cried. "Hello in there!"

Miranda and Annie both came to the sliding glass door and stepped out. Annie, having just come out of the shower, was wrapped in a towel.

"We wanted to give you a real Palm Springs welcome!" the older one, Crystal, said. "Of course, we're not really from here. Only old people are really from here, and even they are from other places, it's a very unique spot, but since we're officially here and staying in such a super house, the pool is totally unique, a waterfall..."

"Two," her sister Amber said.

"That's what I said. A waterfall, too."

"There are two waterfalls, Crystal." She turned to Annie. "I've trained myself to be very observant, sensitive to my surroundings. I really have to be."

Annie pulled her towel closer around her. Please be sensitive to my dripping hair, she thought hopelessly, and let me go inside.

"She's a healer," Crystal said

Miranda, who had not said a word, now gave a slight, rather dismissive wave and disappeared inside. Again Annie was left to hold down the obligatory chitchat fort. She wondered what would happen if she, too, decided to have no patience.

"That's excessive, Crystal," Amber said, laughing. "I'm just a regular old student of massage therapy."

"No, that's not true," Crystal insisted loyally, impervious to her sister's embarrassed glare. "She works in so many modalities. Like chakra balancing and Inca shamanic healing..."

Amber rolled her eyes. "Annie so doesn't want to hear about all that. Anyway, we just wanted to welcome you. We just love your cousin Rosalyn. She's a total hoot."

"That's really nice of you," Annie said. It was nice of them, actually. And there was something open and jolly about them. If only they would go away. "I gather we'll see you at Seafood Night."

"Sometimes there are spottings," Crystal said. "I live for spottings. We saw Orlando Bloom once. And of course Barry Manilow. On Cape Cod, we saw Gwyneth. That was really unexpected. I hope we have a spotting for you tonight. You must miss the spottings in New York. I mean, there can't be many good spottings in Westport now that Paul Newman is gone."

Annie, surprised that Crystal seemed to know so much about where she lived and where she had lived, said nothing.

As though she sensed that her sister might have caused offense, Amber quickly added, "Phil Donahue! Don't forget Phil Donahue."

"Who is Phil Donahue?" Crystal asked.

"I told you, you have to watch the History Channel, Crystal."

The girls then reversed the golf cart with much waving and excited demands to meet up later, and they were gone.

That night, as they walked to the clubhouse, across the deepening green of the evening grass, as smooth as a carpet rolling out before them in the dusk, Rosalyn strode ahead, her silver leather jacket shining in the evening gloom.

"What if the coyote comes back?" Betty said.

"He only comes to that spot to bask in the sunlight, poor fellow," said Roberts, who was also with them. "He's there almost every day. A man of habit."

"That I am," said Mr. Shpuntov.

Seafood Night was the first of several Nights at the country club. The clubhouse was a circular modern affair, all curves and brass railing, like a cruise ship. By the time they got there and claimed a big oval table by the windows overlooking the darkened golf course, the first round of oysters and clams and shrimp had already disappeared, leaving only big silver platters of shaved ice on the buffet tables. But new trays quickly appeared, and then lobster and crab as well.

"It's like a bar mitzvah," Miranda said mournfully, remembering Kit's story of his friend Seth.

Annie had always wanted a bat mitzvah, but Betty thought they were vulgar and Josie thought all religious ceremonies were primitive, so Annie had waited until college to study Hebrew. That had been her prime reason for wanting the bat mitzvah. Her parents thought she wanted the party and the presents. But it was the lure of a dead language. To speak a language that had begun so long ago — it was like knowing a secret. She had taken Latin in high school for the same reason. Both her sons went to Hebrew school, though neither seemed excited by learning the secret language. Nevertheless, when they turned thirteen they chanted their Torah portions and took their places in the ranks of Jewish manhood. Betty and Josie didn't seem to mind a bit. Funny about grandparents and their grandchildren.

"I wish I had grandchildren," Annie said as they settled around the big round table.

"Yes, you do wish that," Betty said, smiling.

"You're too young," Miranda said.

"Anyway, my kids are too young."

"You're too influenced by Palm Springs," Rosalyn said. "You just want to retire with the rest of the oldies."

"Oldies but goodies," Lou said, kissing her.

The room was filled with the elderly, it was true — women with leathery brown skin and skinny arms and legs, men with bellies and big, red, veined cheeks. How crisp they all looked and prosperous in their white slacks and bright tops. Betty knew she was elderly, too, but still she felt left out of the relaxed affluence of this group. She was elderly and she was poor. How had that happened? She longed to join these athletic oldsters, to belong among them, and at the same time she despised them with their preposterous desert lawns and short-sleeve shirts and fringed golf carts. She was wearing black, and she was glad of it.

There were others in the dining room, younger people walking down the wide, curved ramp from the upper level entrance to the tables with their white cloths, young men and women carrying plates laden with oysters and lobster and asparagus salad.

"The gays," Rosalyn whispered. "They keep the place going. The rest of us are dying off," she explained. "New blood. I always like new blood."

There was a three-piece band on a small raised platform, a keyboardist, guitarist, and drummer. They began to play "YMCA," and Annie had to agree with Miranda that it was the very image of a bar mitzvah.

"One of the New Bloods is coming our way," Miranda said.

"Nice boys. They like to dance," said Rosalyn.

And, indeed, the young man asked Rosalyn to dance.

"They know the husbands don't like to," Cousin Lou said, watching his little wife glide around the parqueted dance floor. It was then that the Weissmanns noticed that each of the other couples were also made up of one scrawny, elegantly decked-out older woman and one fit, elegantly decked-out younger man.

Miranda turned away from the dancers. The anomaly of their ages did not make much of an impression on her. Cousin Lou might tease her about the vast expanse between her age and "young Kit's," but she in no way identified with the sinewy old birds being waltzed around by their youthful partners. She was going to be fifty, but even fifty, gargantuan and massive, seemed vague and distant, like the mountains outside — looming, jagged, threatening, inevitable great humps of stone and earth made soft by the pastel light, made invisible by the dark, made irrelevant by miles and miles of suburbs and dust. It was difficult to imagine a young man being so very much younger when you could never quite see yourself as old. She ordered a martini, drank it, and ordered another.

She perused the room, patient, alert.

Somehow, she knew he would be there. She couldn't have told you how, and like so many premonitions, this one could so easily not have been true, in which case she would have forgotten that she ever had had a premonition. But she did have one, and it was sure and accurate; she was a sybil, a prophetess, a seer, for there, marching down that ridiculous brass-railed red-carpeted gangplank, was Kit Maybank.

She downed another drink. He was here, as she had foretold.

"He's here," she said to Annie, casually.

"Hmm?" Annie followed her sister's gaze. "Oh my God, so he is." She raised an arm and waved heartily in the direction of Kit, but Kit did not see her. "I thought that's why you were so cheerful the past few days."

Miranda had not taken her eyes off Kit. Nor did she make a motion toward him. "Yes."

A number of young men clustered around him asking for his autograph. "Jesus, I didn't realize soap stars were such big deals," Annie said. "Must be all those gay kisses."

"Yes," Miranda said again.

She still hadn't moved. Annie wondered if she was too tipsy to get up. She waited, but Miranda stayed put.

"Miranda, what's going on?" Annie said. "Are you okay?"

"Oh yes."

"Seafood Night. How funny. Did you know Kit was coming here tonight?"

"Oh, I knew." She began to examine herself in the butter knife, then looking resolutely over the glint of the blade at her sister, as if daring Annie to contradict her: "I had a premonition."

"Wait... you and Kit haven't been in touch? Except by premonition?"

But Miranda was no longer listening to her sister. The musical trio had begun to bang out a rendition of "Love Shack." Miranda could see the top of Kit's head across the room. She rose to her feet. Everything would be fine now. It was a wonderful world, a world full of premonitions and seafood and bar mitzvah music, a world in which you could walk across a dance floor, dodging old ladies and young pansies, and rest your hands on a man's shoulders and lean forward and give him a friendly kiss on the head and watch him turn toward you in a flutter of confusion and then smile.

Smile awkwardly.

And stand up and shake your hand.

And say, "Miranda! What are you doing in Palm Springs?"

In a cold, cautious voice.

"Kit!" She heard herself laugh nervously. Kit released her hand. She noticed the hand, free, pale, floating in the air like a bird. It flew to her face. "It's so good to see you," she said. "Where's Henry? I hope I get a chance to see him, too." She was speaking too fast. She took a breath.

"Henry?" Kit said, as if they were talking about some acquaintance.

Again she laughed nervously.

"Henry's with his mother."

"Oh."

"So that's that," Kit said.

"Oh," Miranda said again. Little Henry. Little Henry had a mother.

"Henry?" asked the woman sitting in the chair next to him. She turned her beautiful face to Miranda for a second. Not quite as young as the others at the table, she thought. Why was she so familiar? College? An editor? Then Miranda thought, She is an actress. A famous actress.

Kit bent his head toward the woman and smiled as if to say, Nothing, nothing.

Miranda glanced around for an empty chair she could pull up. She saw Kit's fingers curl around the back of his own chair protectively. She caught his eye, about to be amused, to make a joke about stealing his chair, but his expression told her this was not a funny moment. His face was rigid with effort. Effort at what? He took a breath, slanted his head away from her; his eyes flickered shut, open, shut, back toward her. Something was very wrong. Something was very important. She had a premonition.

Kit took the hand of the famous actress and drew her to a standing position.

"Miranda Weissmann, I'd like you to meet Ingrid Chopin..."

Miranda smiled and held out her hand and felt the woman's cool fingers as Kit finished his sentence, ". . . my fiancee."

The woman smiled back at her, a gorgeous, ravishing, impersonal smile, then gracefully withdrew her hand. Miranda's hand was suspended in the air. Kit was saying, "Well, it really was lovely to see you." Later, she noted the past tense, the dismissal. Now, as if she were operating in slower motion than the rest of the room, she noted only that she had already opened her mouth, about to speak, the words all assembled, ready to go: God, I'm so happy for you, all your success... and now this wonderful news...

But those words, like people loitering in a line, were pushed aside by other words, nasty pushy little words that could not wait their turn.

"You little fuck," she said.

It must have been quite loud, for heads turned.

She was aware of her own stillness, standing as if posed, as if thinking, her hand now again lightly resting on her cheek. She began to pivot slowly away, then pivoted slowly back again. I forgot something, she thought. There's something I forgot. She moved the hand that had been resting on her cheek, lifted it high in the air, then brought it across Kit's face with a loud whack. That was better. That was much better. As she walked deliberately away, her face shone above the room as white as the cold moon.

"Oh Jesus," Annie said when she heard Miranda shout at Kit. "Oh Jesus," she said when she saw Miranda give him a crack across the face.

"What, dear?" her mother asked, turning from an animated conversation with Lou. "Is something the matter?"

"No, no," Annie said, standing to block her mother's view.

Roberts, who had clearly seen the contretemps, looked up from his chair at Annie standing above him, a pained expression on his face.

The band broke into a rousing rendition of "That's Amore."

"Oh, I love this song," Betty said. "Where's Miranda?" she added, looking around.

Miranda was standing very still beside a glistening cliff of oysters, weeping.

Roberts hopped to his feet. "Would you like to dance, Betty?" And he swept her safely away into the tightly packed crowd of couples.

Kit had whispered to his astonished fiancee, given a bemused smile to his table of gawking friends, and then walked quickly after Miranda, his head lowered the way men walk when they're being arrested. When he reached her, he put his hand on her shoulder. She was crying without moving a muscle, as if she were not personally involved with the tears at all, standing quietly while they made their way of their own accord down her cheeks.

"Miranda, I'm sorry. I should have told you. I know I should have. It's just that things happened so fast. And what you and I had together... it was so much of the moment, wasn't it? But still, I know I should have, well, warned you. But it's been a total whirl." He gave a swift little boyish smile. "I'm going to be in her next movie. Did I tell you that?"

Miranda shook her head.

"You know what that means to me, you of all people. You understand me so well, Miranda. A feature film? After all these years?"

The tears had stopped. Miranda neither spoke nor moved.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

They were blocking the mountain of ice ornamented with its large silver oysters in their large iridescent shells. Several people approached, shifted their feet a bit, then gingerly reached around them to scoop oysters onto their plates.

"I love oysters," Miranda said.

"I know."

She shrugged.

"I'm so sorry, Miranda."

"I know."

Miranda's progress toward her own table was slow, violent, and almost magisterial, her stride measured and regal, her head held high as she pushed aside stray chairs that lay in her path with unthinking, clattering nobility. Annie saw the other diners turning their eyes away, trying not to stare. When she reached her own chair, Miranda kicked that aside, too. It tipped, fell listlessly on its back, and lay with its legs sticking up. Miranda, silent and ashen, was trembling.

Annie took her sister's hand, as much to prevent her from making a further scene as to comfort her.

"Darling, what's happened?" Betty said, returning with Roberts from the dance floor. "Are you all right?"

"Food poisoning," Annie said. The first thing that came to mind. What a Jew I am, she thought, seeing a tray of clams go by.

"Seafood in the desert," chirped Rosalyn. "It's unnatural. Just what my father was saying."

Her father wagged his finger at her. "It shouldn't stink of herring," he said.

Roberts and Annie took Miranda back to the house in Amber and Crystal's golf cart. Miranda got into bed and fell asleep almost immediately. Annie came back to the main house to find Roberts smoking a smelly cigar outside by the pool.

"Does this bother you?" he asked.

Annie shook her head, but he put it out anyway.

"Thank you," she said.

"Bad habit."

"I didn't mean the cigar." She stared up at the bright pulsing stars. Why had she allowed Miranda to talk them into coming to Palm Springs? Why had she allowed Miranda to talk them into going to Westport in the first place? Why did she ever listen to Miranda about anything at all? Her job as the reasonable older sister was to protect Miranda, not to indulge her.

"I'm a lousy sister," she said.

"I don't think this really has much to do with you," Roberts replied softly. "You can't do everything, Annie."

Then the others trooped out from the house through the sliding glass doors, noisy with wine and dancing.

"My housekeeper's nephew was killed by a coyote," Rosalyn was saying. "In Mexico, crossing the border."

"They attack people?" Crystal said. "Oh my God, Amber..."

"Not the animal coyote. Don't you watch CNN? God."

"How is my baby?" Betty asked Annie, looking around for Miranda. Her voice was a little thick.

She must have had quite a few glasses of wine. Just as well, Annie thought. "She's better. She went to bed, though."

"You won't believe who we saw," Rosalyn said. "At Seafood Night, too!"

"Zink!" cried Crystal. "We saw Zink! Kit Maybank, the actor! He's even better-looking in person. I can't believe you know him. Did you see who he was with? Ingrid Chopin? He's moving up in the world. I knew he wasn't gay. In real life, I mean."

"She's about ten years older than he is," Amber said.

"She is not. Jake Gyllenhaal just dropped out of the project she's doing. Maybe Kit Maybank will be her co-star."

"This is so Palm Springs," Rosalyn said happily. "I expect Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford to come through the door any minute."

"Well, there is someone coming," Lou said. "But it's Mr. Shpuntov. Not the Rat Pack exactly."

"Just the rat," Rosalyn muttered.

Roberts gave a short laugh. "Plenty of rats to go around out here."

"There are rats everywhere," Betty said, thinking of Joseph.

"So," Annie said. "And how is our friend Kit?"

"I wish Miranda had been there. He must have been so confused to see us all out of context. I told him Miranda went home with a headache — I didn't want to say food poisoning, it's so unappetizing, and there they all were looking so healthy and sporty and glamorous..."

"What did he say, though?"

"He didn't say much of anything."

"Do you think he's shy?" Crystal asked. "A lot of actors are shy."

"Rats are shy, too," Annie said.

"I just don't care for rats," Betty said, and the party broke up.

"Pssst!" Amber said, waving Annie over, looking furtively around as she did so, then repeating the comic-book sound: "Pssst!"

Amused, Annie walked the three steps to her side.

"Yes?"

"We have to talk," Amber whispered.

"We do?"

"Tomorrow. Ten a.m. Fifth hole. Come alone."

"But what... ?"

"Tomorrow," Amber hissed, then squeezed Annie's arm with sober urgency and was out the door.

Miranda's breathing rose and fell with an easy regularity that belied the crumpled figure arranged across the bed in a tangle of legs and arms and sheets, an arabesque of despair. Alas, this was a world in which a kind and generous and fiery woman could not love in peace. It seemed neither fair nor natural. Then again, when had Miranda ever chosen to love in peace? Miranda found peace banal.

Annie allowed herself to imagine a peaceful love. Two people in a bed. Lovemaking had taken place, of course, wonderful love-making. But that was a while ago. That morning, perhaps. Now it was night. Two people, their heads propped up on pillows. They each read a book. Now and again, one would glance at the other and smile, reach out, perhaps, lay a hand on the other's hand.

Perhaps that was banal. But how luxurious, then, was banality! thought Annie, who had spent so many nights alone in her bed with just the book. To love enough and be loved enough, to love and be loved in such quantities, such abundance that you could squander whole nights in simple companionship — that was a richness she could hardly fathom.

The man in the bed next to her in her imagination was Frederick Barrow, of course. He turned to her with that almost amused blaze of desire, as if he had surprised himself with his own need and intensity, and he took hold of her arms, pinning her to the bed, as he had done in the dark in New York, the smoke detector blinking overhead.

Women in love, Annie thought as she climbed into bed. She gave a rueful smile, thought how little she liked D. H. Lawrence, wondered what Frederick thought of him and if she would ever have an opportunity to ask him. An owl hooted outside the window. Another owl answered it. Annie realized she had never heard an owl in real life before. Was this real life, though? Sometimes her life struck her as a mistake, not in a big, violent way, but as a simple error, as if she had thought she was supposed to bear left at an intersection when she should have taken a sharp left, and had drifted slowly, gradually, into the wrong town, the wrong state, the wrong country; as if she returned to a book she was reading after staring out the window at the rain, but someone had turned the page. The owl hooted again, one owl. It was a beautiful nighttime sound, and she fell asleep.

In the morning, Cousin Lou wanted to take them all out for pancakes. Annie could not imagine how she would escape and be able to keep her secret assignation with Amber until Miranda refused to get out of bed.

"Should I stay and keep an eye on her?" Annie asked her mother. "I think maybe I should."

"Poor bunny," Betty said, kissing Miranda before she left with the others.

If Miranda looked like a bunny, it was the road-kill variety, Annie thought. Overnight her lithe frame seemed to have become merely angular, skeletal. Her cheekbones appeared to have sharpened, to jut coarsely from a gaunt face, while her eyes, her remarkable eyes, sagged with apathy where they once had curved, enigmatic, playful.

"Oh, just please go away," Miranda said to her.

"I'll take a little walk?"

Miranda gave a barely perceptible shrug.

Annie was no golfer and had to Google the country club and study a diagram of the golf course in order to figure out where the fifth hole was and how to reach it from Lou and Rosalyn's house. It was uncharacteristically hot for December. She walked along in the crisp winter sun, the desert outline distinct, legible against the hard blue sky, and wondered what Amber could want.

She did not have long to wait to find out. At the crest of a little green golf hill, as prominent as a general on his magnificent stallion, Amber sat in the yellow golf cart surveying her domain.

The general wore a pink floral-print blouse; nevertheless there was something warlike about the girl's bearing. She dismounted and strode over, her carefully tapered eyebrows drawn together in a purposeful frown. "You're the only one I can trust," she said.

"Thank you," Annie said uncertainly. She wished she had worn a hat. She put up a hand to shade her eyes. "Can we sit in the golf cart? Out of the sun?"

Amber nodded gravely and led the way to the cart.

"Now," Annie said, noting Amber's determined little frown. She thought of her heartbroken sister, her heartbroken mother, her own heartbroken self, and she felt a rush of sympathy for this girl, whatever the problem might be. She put her hand on Amber's tanned arm. "What is it?"

Another golf cart, bearing an older man and woman, puttered by. The couple were pretending to argue, laughing and pointing their fingers at each other.

"We have a friend in common," Amber said.

"We have several."

"I mean another one."

The grass shimmered in the light. Annie waited. Amber had beautiful hands, a short shapely manicure. Annie looked down at her own blunt nails.

"Do you know Gwendolyn Barrow?" Amber asked.

"Gwendolyn Barrow?" What could Frederick's daughter have to do with Amber? "Well, yes, I've met her. Once or twice."

"What do you think of her?"

"I don't really have an opinion, Amber. As I said, I met her just a couple of times. Do you know her?"

"No, not her, but I know someone very close to her. And I know him very well." She pursed her lips and gave Annie a sly look.

"Oh," said Annie. "You're friends with her brother Evan?"

"No, no, not Evan," Amber said. "Freddie."

Amber had rather humid eyes, Annie noticed. Big, moist brown eyes. Like an animal, a hooved animal. "Freddie?"

"The father. Frederick, Freddie."

Annie willed the blush away. "Ah, Frederick. Yes, I know him. I didn't realize you did, too."

Amber pulled her mouth again into the little simpering smile. She tilted her head and, from that angle, caught Annie's eye. "I know him, all right," she said.

Heat radiated down from the canvas roof of the golf cart. The clarity of the air was unrelenting. Even billowing clouds looked hard, sharply outlined against the blue sky.

"I knew I could trust you. He speaks so highly of you."

"Does he?" Annie felt Amber watching her, scrutinizing her, looking for clues. She breathed as regularly as she could and looked Amber in the eye. Freddie, indeed. "Well, I think very highly of Frederick, too."

Amber bit her plump lower lip and nodded. It was a proprietary gesture, an acknowledgment that others might well admire what was hers. She offered Annie a piece of gum from a blister pack and, when Annie refused, popped three pieces into her own mouth. The smell of artificial fruit, which Annie associated with air fresheners in public bathrooms, wafted over from the gum.

"How do you know Frederick? If you don't mind my asking."

"Oh no, I totally don't. It's one of the things I really need to share with you. So, Crystal and I were home-sitting for him. He has this gorgeous home in Massachusetts. On the water and everything. But then Crystal was at this seminar."

Amber stopped and looked uncomfortable.

"She's a student, too?" Annie asked. She had no idea where this private meeting under the blazing sun was going, but she wanted to move it along.

"Crystal? Yeah. She's going for her certificate to be a life coach. And so she was gone, right? And then Freddie came back unexpectedly, and well, it just sort of happened." She paused and assumed a dreamy expression.

Annie listened in a fog of abstracted fascination. She could scarcely understand the words formed by Amber's pretty lips, much less believe them, yet of course she heard and of course she knew it was absolutely true. Frederick, her Frederick, though he was hers only in her imagination and her memory, her Frederick and this girl. "I'm not sure why you're telling me this," she said as politely as she could. Although she was quite sure of one reason. Amber was staking her claim, planting her flag, and at the same time doing a little reconnaissance of the enemy lines. You really are a general at war, Annie thought. But I am not your enemy. I'm the war-torn village, the smoking rubble abandoned by all but the crows.

"It was such a coincidence when I saw you here! I feel this heavy burden, in more ways than one, believe me, and there you were. It just seemed so perfect. Like, ordained almost. I super hate having this secret."

"But why is it a secret at all?"

Amber gave a bitter sigh. "His family."

Annie almost laughed. Yes, they would be a problem.

"I've never met them, right? But I can tell already that Gwendolyn is very possessive. Very, very possessive. And controlling. Freddie practically told me. And the son — he just wants Freddie in New York. They both do."

"But there's nothing wrong with wanting to be close to your father."

"They just want him at their dinner parties to impress their friends. Believe me, I know the type. He's a celebrity, you know. In that world, anyway. You have to have an artistic sense to get what I mean. Have you ever read any of his books?"

Annie nodded.

"Oh. Well, I haven't. Yet. They're not my thing, instinctively, if you know what I mean, but they're very impressive. I mean, he's won prizes. His children treat him like a trophy." She laughed: "'Trophy Dad!' I never thought of that one before."

Annie did not laugh. She wondered if the night Frederick came home unexpectedly was the night of the library reading. I had to thank you, he'd said, coming back to her. I'll call you, he'd said. No wonder he had never called. This girl had been there, at his house, waiting for him like a girlish spider. Annie gave Amber a new appraisal — the perfect, slender curves, the young vibrant skin, the almost pretty face, the general overwhelming aura of youth and health and life. And how astute Amber turned out to be, as well. Trophy Dad. Yes, she was dead on about that, this formidable bimboesque person.

"Those kids of his take him for granted. They're after his money, too, trust me. And free babysitting. I've seen it before."

As Amber seemed to have finished, Annie parted her lips in preparation for speech, but what was there to say? What was there, even, to think? Frederick was the man who turned to her in bed and recited all of Sonnet 116. Frederick was the brother of the woman who had stolen her mother's life. Frederick was the lover of this coy yet oddly earnest girl.

"They would never approve of me," Amber resumed, very agitated now. "I'm only twenty-two years old!"

More like thirty, Annie thought uncharitably. Either way, she was far too young for Frederick Barrow. She could just picture Gwendolyn's tight, suspicious face at the sight of Amber and the panda tattoo on her arm. She felt suddenly sorry for Amber.

"But, I mean, he is a grown man," Annie said, finding her voice at last. "He certainly doesn't need his children's approval to have a" — she stumbled, looking for the right word — "girlfriend," she said.

"But don't you see?" Amber took both of Annie's hot swollen hands in her own young smooth ones. "It's different now. I mean, because, you know, we're engaged."

Annie did a double take. She couldn't help it.

"You and Frederick are engaged?"

"We are. You see..." Amber leaned close to Annie now and whispered shyly in her ear: "I'm pregnant."