"There you are!" Mr. Shpuntov yelled out, spotting Rosalyn. "Highway robbery. I should have been a plumber, I tell you."
"You were a plumber," Rosalyn said drily. "For fifty years."
Miranda watched Cousin Lou lead Mr. Shpuntov into the dining room. She sat as far from everyone as she could. She ate her goose and her duck and her apple pie. She drank eggnog. She offered Annie the occasional sheepish smile, which Annie returned in kind. She participated in the lighting of the Hanukkah candles. Poor Hanukkah, she thought as she did every year, as if it were a bird with a bent wing she'd found on the sidewalk. It was the third night of the holiday. They had completely forgotten the first two.
15
Frederick's house, gray-shingled, late-Victorian, had been in his family for almost a hundred years. He and his sister, Felicity, had both grown up in the warren of oddly shaped bedrooms and parlors and pivoting stairways. When their parents died suddenly (Arthur Barrow in 1980, Mary the year after), the house was all they left behind. It seemed fitting--two sickly, cranky, frail old people, stranded in the wrong era, leaving behind a house as sickly, cranky, frail, and outdated as they had been, a wood-framed earthly shadow, a leaky memorial. On the day of their mother's funeral, Frederick and Felicity had gone back to the house to accept the condolences of the surprising number of people who attended the funeral. Felicity had prepared sandwiches the night before--small, ceremonial, and now quite dried out. She took the tray out, set it down on the mahogany dining table that had always reminded her of an outsized coffin, then returned to the kitchen. She found her mother's big "festivity" percolator, the one dragged out for Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter dinner, turned on the faucet, and tipped the percolator clumsily into the sink.
The ancient pipes hemmed and hawed, then sputtered to life. She heard a toilet flush, loud, surprised, exasperated. A family of squirrels had gotten into the attic and worked their way down the walls. With their tiny, verminous claws, they scratched out muffled, secret sounds. Felicity had never liked the house. She disliked the fog, the mournful foghorns, the sound of the ocean, the smell of the ocean--its filthy odor of rotting seaweed and rotting shellfish. She hated the smug insularity of the summer people, and she hated the mirrored smug insularity of the year-round people. It had not been until she made her college escape from Cape Cod to Manhattan that Felicity experienced what felt like fresh air. In New York, she felt as though she could truly breathe for the first time.
She filled the percolator and turned the water off. The pipes gave a strangled sigh. The house was constantly sighing. Structural self-pity.
She had tried to talk Frederick into selling the house even before their mother died. But he was stubborn in his flimsy, easygoing way. "I love this house," he said in response, as if that were a response.
Felicity lugged the percolator out to the dining room and plugged it in. A spark flew from the electrical outlet.
The house's revenge, she thought. Trying to kill me before I can kill it.
But later, she realized that this had been exactly the spark she needed. The spark of an idea. For there she had stood, looking at the frayed cord of the percolator in her hand, at the yellowed plate that surrounded the outlet, at the wood floor that creaked even when no one stepped across it, as if it were a ship struggling through the sea, and the idea, so simple, so obvious, hit her.
She took Frederick by the arm and guided him back into the kitchen.
"You love this house," she said.
Frederick produced one of his looks, the clear dark-eyed expression of a rogue trapped helplessly in his own sincerity, the look that drew so many women to him.
"I'm agreeing," she said. "Christ. I said, You love this house, okay?"
"Okay."
"And I don't want this house."
He sighed and said, "Felicity, it's the day of the funeral. Can we . . ."
"Buy me out," she said. "It's so simple. Buy me out."
Frederick gave her a fair price, or so she thought at the time. She'd immediately invested the money in the stock market and had done fairly well with it. Still, as time passed and she thought it over, the whole thing didn't seem quite fair. It was almost, well, not exactly shady, but . . . Over the years, the house had increased in value far more than her stocks had, and that value had then fallen far less than her stocks'. If Frederick sold it now, he'd make a fortune. And wasn't half that fortune really, by rights (maybe not by law, but by rights), hers?
"Well," she was often heard to say to Frederick, "you certainly got a bargain."
"Well," she said to Joseph as they settled into the guest bedroom that had once been her parents' bedroom, "he certainly got a bargain."
The whole family had gathered in the house for Christmas. Gwen, her husband, Ron, and the twins had adjoining rooms on the second floor. Evan was across the hall from them in the smaller bedroom next to Felicity and Joseph. Frederick's room was on the ground floor. He had long ago converted the east parlors, front and back, to his own use--the front parlor with the bow window was where he worked, the back parlor his bedroom. It was there that he stood at the window this Christmas morning watching the insipid winter dawn.
Felicity, lying in bed with a frown on her face, was also looking out the window.
"Joe," she said.
Joseph gave a round, trumpeting snore, followed by a series of liquid burbles.
"Joe," Felicity said again. She turned and pushed his shoulder gently, then more forcefully.
"Sorry," he murmured. The snores retreated for a moment, then came back in force.
Felicity got out of bed, as she had gotten into it, hating the house. The tiny chambers, the sea pounding in her ears--it was like being buried, impotent and rotting, forced to listen to that mocking, immortal sound. And now the snoring. Buried alive with the sea and a snorer. She put on a robe and slippers. Impossible to heat the house. And still it was worth a fortune! She creaked down the stairs.
Frederick heard her. Her tread was instantly identifiable--a quick, sharp step. He met her at the bottom of the stairs.
"Coffee?" he said.
"You're up awfully early." She raised an eyebrow at his rumpled corduroy pants and moth-eaten sweater. He really was absurdly affected.
"I'm not sure I ever went to bed."
"Bad conscience?"
To Felicity's surprise, her brother seemed to start.
"What?" he said sternly. "What do you mean?"
Felicity laughed. "I'm not sure, Frederick. What did I mean? I obviously meant something or you wouldn't look like a dog who's been in the garbage. Have you been in the garbage?"
Frederick considered confessing. Yes, he would say, I have been in the garbage. I have strewn garbage everywhere, and now I must live with it, great stinking mounds of my own garbage, chronic irreversible garbage that I richly deserve and would settle into like Job without complaint, except that it involves an innocent being, a poor wee soul about to be born into a loveless faux family, God forgive me.
"Coffee, yes or no?" he said.
They sat in the kitchen, steam from their mugs rising in the faint wash of white daylight.
"Joe seems like a nice guy," Frederick said. The bland remark expected of him. But Joe did seem like a nice guy. Annie had never told him any particulars about the ongoing divorce, nor did she have to--he had only to look at Betty the two times he'd met her to understand. He had seen a hundred such women, a thousand. They flocked to his readings, to the workshops and classes he sometimes taught. They were an identifiable class of citizens, America's lost souls, like the lost boys of Africa, but they were not boys, they were women, older women, still beautiful in their older way, still vibrant in their older way, with their beauty and vibrancy suddenly accosted by the one thing beauty and vibrancy cannot withstand--irrelevance. Yes, Joseph seemed like a nice guy. And he had done what even nice guys do. Frederick would have liked to feel outrage toward Joseph Weissmann. But he did not dare. His sympathies, he realized sadly, must lie wi
th Joseph now, for they were compatriots, fellows in the fellowship of heels.
"He's a new man," Felicity said. "Thank God."
"You didn't like the old one?"
"Don't be stupid, Frederick."
"Well, you showed great foresight, seeing the new man in the old one."
Felicity gave him a short, searing smile. "We fell in love. He needed me."
"And there, providentially, you were."
Felicity blew her nose. "This house is freezing."
"I like his daughter. Annie. That was a nice gesture, Felicity, getting us together for that reading."
"Oh, that. I thought it might soften the blow. At least you're good for something." She patted his arm affectionately. He was quite a bit older than she was, but he was so unworldly. This frayed wool sweater business, for instance. She picked at a loose thread.
"And what's the other daughter's name?" he said.
"Stepdaughter. And even so, the man is absolutely devoted to them. As if they were, well, you know, his real daughters. Indulged them, spoiled them. But you just have to be firm as they get older. Strong. When it matters. I think he sees that now, poor, sweet, generous man. Of course, it's all very painful for me, in particular. The stepmother and all."
"And all," Frederick agreed absently.
The day after Christmas, Crystal and Amber were to fly back East. Their Palm Springs home-sitting was over, the house on the golf course reclaimed.
"Like two Gypsies, you girls," Rosalyn said with envy. "Or two birds, migrating here and there. Always on the wing."
Annie entertained the unworthy thought of an albatross. Didn't they stay aloft for a year at a time? Among other things.
They were returning to an earlier home-sitting location: the house on Cape Cod. "We feel so at home there," Amber said. She glanced at Annie. "It's such a beautiful old house."
"A little too old if you ask me," Crystal added with a snigger.
"But no one did ask you, did they, Crystal?"
Nor me, Annie thought as she waved goodbye to the two young women. The yellow golf cart trolled off among the verdant golf hills, its fringe giving a jaunty shake in the desert breeze.
"My new home," Amber whispered to Crystal as they drove their rental car up the driveway. "Summer home, I should say. No way I'm living here all year around."
Felicity was the first to hear the car.
"Who's that, I wonder." She drew aside the curtain.
"Oh," Frederick said as nonchalantly as he could, "some friends. Coming to stay for a few days. The girls who sometimes house-sit for me."
"Your house sitters?" Evan said. "At Christmas?"
"When we're all here?" Gwen said.
"Well," said Frederick, "I wanted you to meet them."
Evan and Gwen looked at each other.
"Are you trying to fix me up or something, Dad?" Evan said. "Because, really, I can find my own girls, and I mean, your loser house sitters?"
"No, Evan, I am not trying to fix you up, believe me."
"It's so nice to meet you," Amber said when Frederick introduced the sisters to his children. "Freddie talks about you all the time."
"Freddie?" said Evan.
"She means your father," Crystal explained confidentially.
Frederick said, "Never mind, never mind. Here's my sister, Felicity. And this is her friend Joe."
"Freddie?" Evan was saying in astonishment to his sister.
The sisters moved into the attic bedroom and, they pointed out, would make themselves at home, no one needed to bother about them, since the house was practically their home; after all, they had spent so much time home-sitting in it.
Amber knew she had a high hill to climb, and she knew, too, that the going would be tough. She squared her pretty shoulders. Might as well get started at once. She had exaggerated only slightly to Annie: there had definitely been talk of marriage, or at least living together. But it was clear to her that she would have to neutralize Gwen and Evan first.
"What a great home," she said to Gwen. "So much history. I found a picture of it from, like, over a hundred years ago. On the Internet. It took me weeks, but . . . Here."
She had actually called the town museum and talked to an archivist who e-mailed it to her a few days before. She handed Gwen the copy she had printed out on thick matte photographic paper.
Gwen looked pleased in spite of herself. "Thanks." She examined the photo. "I've never seen this one. It looks so bare, doesn't it?"
"Your family obviously did a lot with the grounds."
Gwen nodded. "The rosebushes."
"Heirlooms." Then feeling a little more comfortable, Amber said, "Speaking of heirlooms, did your dad ever get that bathtub drain fixed? I reminded him about it a thousand times. That dad of yours, head in the clouds, right? Artists, right?"
Gwen looked at her blankly.
Amber, sensing she had gone too far too fast, tried to shift into reverse. "Such a beautiful old tub. With those claws? I brought some new bath salts. Perfect for that luxurious antique tub. I got them on a professional massage-therapy website. They're organic. They even have hemp in them." She bent down and unzipped her bag, pulling out a jar. "Would you like to try them?"
"No," Gwen said, her voice cold again. "I have no interest in hemp, thank you very much."
"I do," Evan said. "Just not in my bath."
"Oh yeah?" Crystal said. "Well, I have some really good weed . . ."
And so it was Crystal, not Amber, who chiseled the first real social chink in the Barrow family wall. Amber felt the victory had practically been handed to Crystal on a silver platter, and that it wasn't such a very big victory anyway, and she watched with a mixture of pique and gratification as Crystal and Evan retired to the back porch.
16
The winter blew through Westport, hard and fast, as if it were a season in a hurry, ready to get the whole messy business over with and move on. There was just one big snowstorm, which dissolved in the bright yellow sun of the following morning, and one ice storm that brought with it a townwide loss of power as branches fell to the ground, hundreds of them, sheathed in frozen rain, heavy and ornate as French mirrors. Some gray skies hovered, some wind blew through, a fair amount of rain fell. And then, suddenly, in February, deep blue heavens and gentle breezes and mud.
When the Weissmanns returned from Palm Springs at the beginning of January, the snow had just come and gone and the ground was oozing. Betty decided to take up online poker in an attempt to supplement the family income. Annie and Miranda had forgiven if not forgotten what each had said to the other and were on precariously good terms, but Annie tried to spend as much time as possible at the library. Even there, however, she felt the need to escape. When she could no longer stand the part of her job that required her to speak to board members and ask bibliophilic rich people for money, she would retreat to the library's attic and putter. She told the staff she was looking for artifacts, and she did discover a discolored letter from George Washington in a frame with cracked glass, as well as the first volume of the two-volume first American edition of Sense and Sensibility. But the main reason she dug through piles of broken chairs and abandoned space heaters was to be alone. It had become an aching, physical need. The beach in Westport, where once she had felt so free, now seemed to her to be teeming with the presence of other human beings: they were behind her in their houses, they were across Long Island Sound in other houses, they were a mile away on I-95, whizzing past her in cars. They flew above her, back and forth, in planes in the sky. They were even buried beneath her, or close enough, deep and silent, in the earth. Wherever she went, they followed. They spoke to her on telephones and wrote to her on computers. They sang from radios and hailed cabs and demanded she hold the elevator. It was not their fault, of course, they were only doing what people were meant to do, yet she found herself despising them.
But in the attic, there were just the things people had discarded, not the people themselves. A bulky electric typewrite
r. A framed diploma from Barnard College for Mildred Peacock Winship, 1927. Engravings, photographs--it was like picking up seashells. She was alone, blissfully alone. Who was Mildred Peacock Winship? Perhaps she had been a devoted member of the library's staff, a middle-aged unmarried person who typed and filed, collected her meager paycheck, and went home to a big frame house in the Bronx to make supper for her aging parents. Perhaps she was a trustee who had bequeathed to the library thousands of dollars as well as her treasured editions of Emerson and Hawthorne. Annie thought vaguely that she should find out. At the same time, she blessed Mildred Peacock Winship, for, whoever she had been and whatever she had done, she was now, blissfully, absent.
The attic was safe. It was quiet and remote. Like me, Annie thought. She was walking to the subway after a particularly tiring board meeting.
"Aren't you just so bwack and bwown?" a woman cooed to a dog tied to a parking meter.
When Annie emerged in Grand Central, a homeless man holding a battered coffee cup said, "Hello there, beautiful lady," and she was wondering whether to smile politely without making eye contact or just hurry past, when she realized he was talking to the woman behind her. On the train, she walked through the first couple of cars looking for a seat facing forward. She spotted a likely prospect--the back of a single well-groomed female head sticking up from the three-person bench--but when she got up to the female head and was about to heave her bag onto the middle seat, she saw it was occupied by a small child.
There was an awkward moment when, even as she drew back her bag, determined to avoid what could only be a very loud and very dull young companion on an evening when she wanted peace and solitude, she caught the mother's eye and wondered if she had already somehow committed herself to join the duo and if it would now be insulting to this doubtless doting parent to continue on her way. But even as she quickly and decisively decided in favor of insult over boredom and annoyance, the child in question spoke.
The Three Weissmanns of Westport Page 20
