The Three Weissmanns of Westport

17

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

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

"Hello, Brian."

"Hello, Miranda," said her lawyer.

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

"Bad news?" she asked.

"Sorry, Miranda."

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

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

"So it's over?"

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

Miranda stopped listening. It was over.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was silence then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Not quite all, unfortunately," said Roberts.

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

"I sincerely hope not, Charlotte."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The thought of bankruptcy made his stomach drop.

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

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

Henry examined her cheeks in his solemn literal way.

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

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

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

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

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

"Maybank?" Miranda said.

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

"Lovely name," Betty said again.

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

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

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

"Well... yes."

Kit Carson: there was an appreciative silence.

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

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

Leanne gave her an uncomfortable look. "He told you that?"

Miranda immediately regretted her words. She was aware that she occupied a delicate position with regard to Kit and Leanne. Her bitterness toward Leanne's ex-husband must be kept under wraps. She had discovered a long time ago that no one can attack an ex-husband or wife except the ex's ex. You can agree, but you cannot initiate. She had learned this over the years, though she had never really understood it. On the other hand, any positive comments or happy memories about the ex were equally off limits. There was nothing one could say that would not somehow offend the injured party. So one kept quiet. Particularly if one had slept with the ex. Particularly if one valued the friendship of the injured party more every day.

Miranda's friendship with Henry's mother was a revelation to her. She had never had a best friend before, not as an adult. And even as a child, there had always been Annie first and foremost. As she got older, she had friends, lots of friends. But that was the point — there were so many. And then there were the men. So many men. Now there was just this one woman in this suburban town. It was so different here. She was different, too.

Bankruptcy — the bright line between her old life and her new one. To her surprise, her reaction to bankruptcy had not been depression or anger but an overwhelming, sometimes disorienting sense of freedom. She was free of her success, free of her failure. She was... she suddenly remembered a word Frederick had used: she was "unencumbered."

She found herself tenderly protective of this new incarnation, consciously thinking of it as a slender green seedling, perhaps because she had begun gardening a little, an experiment in her new self, fascinated by the arbitrary bits of green that appeared in the yard. At Charlotte Maybank's house on Beachside Avenue, there were gardens galore, and she had begun to spend time in them, weeding and pruning, constantly consulting her laptop, as well as the old gardener who came once a week, to make sure she did not inadvertently kill an unfamiliar infant flower. She also took care of Henry when Leanne went to New Haven to the library to work. When Leanne stayed home to work, Miranda played with Henry, gave him his nap, made lunch for the three of them.

"I feel like I'm taking advantage of you," Leanne said.

"You can give me advice if I ever suffer an epidemic. In exchange," Miranda said, then remembered her mother's warning about Kit taking advantage of her and laughed.

She had begun to cook dinner at the cottage sometimes, too. It was easy to cook, she discovered. Not to cook well, necessarily, but to cook. You read the directions and followed them. How soothing it all was. A teaspoon meant a teaspoon, no more, no less.

She began pulling together a resume, which both depressed her and invigorated her. She researched headhunters and began to write the letters she would send out.

"But I was born to be a nanny," she said.

There were evenings when Roberts appeared and Leanne would be locked up with him and her aunt discussing business. Then it fell to Miranda to give Henry his bath. At other times, Aunt Charlotte would want Leanne to attend to her at bedtime, and Miranda would gratefully accept the job of getting Henry to sleep. "That one'll go," Charlotte would say, pointing to a portrait as Leanne helped her up the stairs. "On the auction block for you!" In his bed, Henry would point at his stuffed animals and say, "On the auction block for you! What's an auction block?"

When both their charges were asleep, Leanne and Miranda would sit in the living room and drink. They both liked to drink. Sometimes they polished off a bottle of wine, sometimes they drank bourbon, sometimes gin. They drank and they talked. But they had never discussed Kit. It was an unspoken agreement.

And now Miranda had stupidly mentioned Kit's tales about his childhood. All those sweet and intimate conversations Miranda had had with Kit about his sunny youth — of course, Leanne would resent that.

"Maine, huh?" Leanne said. She seemed as though she had more to say, but she gave a disgusted little sigh, no more.

"Maine? Maine has nothing we don't have right here in Westport," said Cousin Lou. "Forget about Maine. You come to our party, too... After all, you're Henry's mother... you're like family..."

"The Season," Annie said wearily after the third dinner in a row, "has begun."

Betty often begged off this new rash of meals, waving her daughters out the door with a sense of relief. "Find nice, rich husbands," she would always call after them, just for the pleasure of hearing their ritualized outrage. Then, at last: privacy. Alone to rest, to order interesting inventions that were advertised on TV. It had begun with OxiClean, which even Annie admitted worked wonders. But since then Betty had gotten a fleece blanket with arms, which you wore like a backward robe; a portable steam cleaner; and a wonderful brush that worked for both dogs and cats and came with a free bonus attachment that cut off burrs and tangles.

"But we don't have a dog," Annie said when it arrived in the mail.

"Or even a cat," Miranda added.

"Unpredictable times, my darlings," said Betty. "Unpredictable times."

She turned the TV on now and found the channel that reran soap operas. She liked to watch Kit sometimes. It excited her that she knew someone who was on television. She wouldn't have admitted it to her daughters, however. They were so cavalier about things like that. Growing up in New York had done that, she thought. Nothing impressed them.

"But it's wrong," Kit was saying to his handsome lover.

Wrong, Betty thought. So much was wrong in this world. Why did those two beautiful, healthy young men worry about a little thing like a kiss? She remembered the first time Joseph had kissed her. It was as clear as if it had happened that morning. It had been on a morning, too, but so long ago. They had met at a party a week earlier and he had asked her to come to see an exhibit at the Metropolitan. She couldn't remember what the exhibit was. Spanish paintings, perhaps? Afterward, they had gone for a walk in Central Park. Her children, her babies, were home with the teenage girl from the apartment next door. She remembered wondering if the girl was ignoring them, talking on the phone with some pimply boyfriend instead of playing dolls and peek-a-boo. That wouldn't be so bad, she had thought, as long as the girl didn't let them drown in the bathtub somehow... Then, suddenly, Joseph had taken her hand and led her to a thicket of trees and bushes. She heard the traffic on Fifth Avenue; she heard a dog barking and a mother telling her children not to go too far ahead of her, a siren in the distance, a squirrel scurrying through the leaves, or was it a rat... And then Joseph looked down at her with half-closed eyes and kissed her.

Her heart fluttered even now, remembering. She had fallen in love with him the first time they spoke at that awful smoky downtown party. Sometimes people are mistaken when they fall in love at first sight, or even second or third sight. But I was right, Betty thought. Pity he had to ruin everything.

She turned off the TV and sorted through some papers. When the phone rang, she saw on the caller ID that it was her lawyer and eagerly picked it up.

"How's my Case?"

"You won't believe this, Betty, but I think... well, I think we're making progress! Suddenly Joseph Weissmann's lawyers, who refused to even refuse my calls, are calling and asking for meetings to 'clear this all up.'"

Betty felt a sickening surge of relief, sickening because it forced her to acknowledge how frightened she was, how precarious, how vulnerable. Then, a blind flash of rage. Then, oddly, a pang of sorrow for Joseph.

"I don't know what happened. Maybe you've just successfully waited Joseph out. Not all women have the resources to do that," the lawyer said. "They settle because they can't buy groceries."

"Joseph would never do that," Betty said.

"Only because you haven't let him. You can thank your family for that."

Joseph is my family, she wanted to explain.

"We did it, we did it!" Miranda cried, dancing around the cottage, when she told them the news.

"Maybe!" Annie joined in. "Maybe we did it!"

Betty found the possibility of victory painfully anticlimactic. What on earth were they dancing for? She looked around the little cottage, at her furniture and rug, her paintings and vases, and tried to remember them in their original setting. If she really went back to her apartment, would she miss the cottage? She wasn't sure. She hoped so. She didn't like to think of these past months as wasted. But for her, there was no joy in the thought of return. Living alone in the apartment would be like drifting on an ocean in a tiny boat. Nowhere to go, and no real hope of getting there.