The Three Weissmanns of Westport Page 16

  "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.