"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.
Annie watched them trail away, her mother to bed; Mr. Shpuntov escorted to his room by the attentive Cousin Lou; Rosalyn off to make sure all the windows were locked against the
local coyote; Roberts, shooting her a quick but piercing look of concern, to make his long-legged way down the street; and Crystal to bounce toward the golf cart. Only Amber was left, lingering by the door.
"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, An
nie 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."
14
Beneath a garish blue sky, Annie made her way quickly across the synthetic golf-course terrain. It was unimaginable, this story of Amber's. She, at least, had never imagined it. In what world could Frederick, her Frederick, even Felicity's Frederick, be the father of Amber's child?
In this world, this very one, the one with clean-shaven lawns and exaggerated sunlight. It was unimaginable, and yet it was true. Like so many stories, the stories she never read, the stories Miranda liked so much. Palm trees spread out before her, their tall, curved trunks and symmetrical spray of fronds, such platitudes, like cartoons, like doodles, like a neon sign.
Frederick was going to marry Amber.
Annie had been so careful these last months to view her relationship with Frederick in the clearest light of the clearest day: he was drawn to her, he liked her; he was a man who had lived alone for a long time and seemed to like it that way; his children wanted him unencumbered by a wife, by a rival for their affections, their control, their inheritance; his wide-eyed sister had torn apart her mother's life. Annie had shone the light of reality on what she knew was an unlikely match, Annie Weissmann and Frederick Barrow. She had talked to herself and explained the situation in all its unpromising detail. She had also, she now knew, fallen in love.
Perhaps, she thought, it would be more accurate to say that love had fallen, fallen like a log in her path. And she had tripped over it. Still, she'd landed on her feet, hadn't she? In an attempt to illustrate how much better suited for sorrow her sister was than she, Miranda sometimes dismissively declared that Annie always landed on her feet, like a cat. Annie sighed and thought of a cat's pretty little feet, so dainty and treacherous. She did not feel like a cat. Her feet did not feel like a cat's paws. They felt flat and enormous and abused, the dead feet of an old and weary waitress.
The Three Weissmanns of Westport Page 18
