Cathleen Schine - The Three Weissmanns of Westport

This seems as good a place and time as any, she thought, better than most, to search my soul. But what will I find there? A lint-covered Altoid? Suddenly, alone, slapping among the whitecaps, she recoiled at the thought of introspection. As a girl, she had affected despair and emotional pain in an attempt at depth. Now she had no need of affectations. The despair was real, the pain was real. And depth? It no longer beckoned, that rich, worldly dimension of sophistication, of adulthood. Depth spread itself out before her instead, a hole, a pit, a place of infinite loss.

She thought sadly of her disgraced clients. She had listened to them so attentively for so long. Listening was her gift. She had listened and heard such extraordinary things. And yet she had really heard nothing but tall tales. Was that really a fault? she wondered. To hear stories when people told lies? How brave they had seemed. So much suffering. No wonder they made it all up.

Her arms were starting to hurt. Funny how she had started out so vigorously, hardly noticing the effort of each stroke, as if paddling were as natural to her as walking. Yet she had never kayaked before in her life. She had canoed as a kid at camp. It had been a clunky, achy affair, with a great deal of portage. She remembered it distinctly now as her shoulders throbbed with pain. Her hands, clasped around the little paddle, were stiff and cold, even with the special kayaking gloves she had purchased. Surely the sun would come out soon and warm her up. It was time for the sky to become pale, then to color slightly, then to pale again to a weak blue, then to deepen into the bright daylight sky. She looked ahead. She was facing east, where all this coloring and deepening and brightening ought to have been taking place. No sign of color, no sign of light. Just more clouds, darker clouds. Perhaps she should have checked the weather before heading out. But she had recited the poem Joseph once taught her on a trip to Maine: "Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning." And as there was no red sky that morning, she had believed she was safe.

She concentrated on keeping the kayak steady. The galling picture of the doleful lawyer she had tried to avoid, the image of him coming to her rescue in spite of her snub, kept appearing. Annie claimed he was interesting in spite of his shyness. If Annie liked him so much, she didn't see why he couldn't have come to Annie's rescue. Miranda simply found him dull. As dull as ditchwater. Or was it dishwater? She had no idea which was duller or even why either would be considered dull to begin with. She would have to ask Annie. That was just the kind of thing Annie would know.

She tried to return to the subject of her soul, but was obstructed by an anguished inner dialogue regarding the publishers who had stopped calling her long ago in March and were always "out" when she called them. One voice within her cried, After all these years! The other tried to counter with It's August-they're all out of town.

Miranda realized that with all her paddling she had not moved any closer to the marsh. In fact, she was skimming along the coast, past Burying Hill beach, past an enormous house, a mansion, even bigger than Cousin Lou's house, and far older. It was beautiful, stone, in the Tudor style of the nineteenth-century robber barons. It went on and on. The road that ran along the shore was named Beachside Avenue, not very inspired, but accurate. The houses there were separated from the road by great stone walls. On the water side, too, stone walls ran their length, dropping from lush sweeps of lawn down to the crusty little beach below.

Here was another house, not as old, quite hideous really, Palladian style, was that what you'd call it with those awful columns? Yes, but what a view it must have. And its bit of beach curved out in such a way that she might just be able to land there. She really would have to try. The current was being extremely uncooperative. And it had started to rain. She lifted her face to the stinging drops. It was sublime, the cold wind and rain, the physical exhaustion. If she had time, she was sure she could search her soul quite successfully now. She rested her paddle for a moment, breathing in the wild air and the wetness. The kayak swayed and slapped in the dark water between agile, aggressive whitecaps. This is magnificent, she thought, but even as the words came into her head, the sentiment was pushed aside by a realization that it would not be at all magnificent to end up dumped in the water of Long Island Sound or rushing past Rhode Island, which seemed to be her two alternatives, and she began to paddle rather frantically toward the spit of land belonging to the ugly Palladian house. It was tantalizingly close. She was almost there. She was there. But the waves were larger now. They were actually crashing against the beach, against the rocks that jutted out into the water. Not as grand as the waves on Cape Cod, of course, not even close, but quite big enough to keep her from paddling ashore.

And, as it turned out, quite big enough to capsize her. She felt the kayak rolling, felt the smack of the cold water, saw the gray of the sky swivel into the gray of the sea, felt the water lock above her, felt her legs thrashing to free themselves from the red kayak. Her body twisted, her face plunged down into darkness, her arms flailed, she kicked and scratched at the eerie silence. Her feet were caught and useless, her hands farther and farther away, clawing water, her lungs empty, bursting with emptiness.

And then, suddenly, astonishingly, Miranda felt solid human warmth. She felt strong arms reaching around her, pulling her out of the boat, out of the choking water, onto the heavy wet sand, strong arms lifting her up and holding her close.

Miranda sputtered. Miranda opened her eyes. Miranda smiled.

Her rescuer's hair was dripping wet, his long, dark eyelashes sparkling with drops of water. He was as pale as the morning sky, his high, pronounced cheekbones washed with the blush of youthful exertion. She felt his chest heaving. Oh Lord, she thought with fervor that bordered on delirium, I am saved, I am saved! She imagined herself waving her arms in the air like a congregant at a revival meeting and, amused at the thought of a God with the imagination to drop her into the embrace of an Adonis, Miranda relaxed, enthusiastically, into the young hero's arms.

An hour later, they pulled up into the dirt driveway beside the cottage, which looked even more decrepit than usual in the rain, dripping and homely as an abandoned cabbage. Betty heard the soggy crunch of the wheels in the drive. She went to the window, where with a flutter of expectation she saw a pretty white MINI Cooper. In the passenger seat was the radiant face of her younger daughter. On the roof, strapped by bungee cords, was the bright red kayak. Something had happened!

Betty ran to the door in time to see a handsome young man dashing through the rain toward the house beside her daughter, both of them in pants embroidered with sea creatures-blue whales on his yellow pants, pink lobsters on her ill-fitting brick red pants-and matching pastel green cotton sweaters. When did Miranda buy such odd clothes? She imagined the two of them spotting each other somewhere, kindred spirits, and starting up a conversation about their shared hobby of Extreme Wasp Attire. What a handsome boy he was.

"This is Kit," Miranda said when they had run into the house and shaken the rain off like two big colorful dogs. "I almost drowned in that thing." She pointed to the kayak on top of the little car. "Kit pulled me out of the water. And took me to his aunt's boathouse. He's visiting her and staying in the boathouse. It's adorable. He was fishing, and he happened to see me go under…" She opened her eyes as wide as they would go, threw her arms out in one of her characteristic dramatic gestures, and said, breathlessly, "Kit Maybank saved my life!"