The Three Weissmanns of Westport

by Cathleen Schine

  "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 dism
issal. 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.