Cathleen Schine - The Three Weissmanns of Westport

"How come people call you by your last name?" Annie asked him. "Why does everyone just call you Roberts?"

He smiled modestly. "It's kind of a rock-star thing."

The weeks passed and the days began receding, becoming shorter and darker, drawing themselves in, curling in on themselves like sleeping animals. Crows dozed among the turning leaves. Fatter and fatter credit card bills arrived in the Wisemen mailbox, but still Betty and Josie had not ironed out the wrinkles in their separation, still Annie heard nothing from Frederick Barrow, and still Kit spent almost every day, and evening, with Miranda.

Kit joined Miranda on her morning walks, with Henry, sleeping or singing or whining from an olive-green backpack, coming along for the ride. They walked slowly and watched the sky expand into the silver light, and they talked.

After the initial days of questioning Miranda, Kit had begun at last, as expected, to talk about himself. Miranda dutifully prepared herself to listen, as she always listened to everyone, waiting for the confidences she knew would come.

But instead of describing sexual abuse at boarding school or stepfathers who beat him or a sordid struggle with crack cocaine, Kit talked about his happy boyhood in Maine, the walks through the woods digging up rare wildflowers with his parents and brothers and sisters; the evenings on the rocky beach splashing and digging for clams in the frigid water. The picture of this group of beautiful human beings-for surely they all looked like Kit-plunging headlong through the verdant Maine woods beneath the cheerful songs of warblers or standing windblown knee-deep in the surf made Miranda long to be in Maine herself. The smell of the pines. The breeze hurrying the bright white clouds through the infinite blue of the sky. It was true that Miranda could smell pines perfectly well right where she was, and that the breeze was hurrying just the kind of bright clouds through exactly the infinite blue sky she imagined right there on Compo Beach, which was probably what made her think of pines and clouds and infinity in the first place, but still she longed for Maine, the land of Alex Katz and E. B. White.

"I thought lobster at a bar mitzvah was totally normal…" Kit was saying.

Miranda smiled at him. She looked at Henry, asleep at the moment, his pink mouth pressed into his father's shoulder. She listened intently to Kit, not hearing him. What a luxury his stories were, like a vacation. No tortured memoir here, no Lite Victory. Just tender reminiscence. She had never seen eyes like Kit's, she thought. His best friend, Seth, he was saying. His words passed over her like a silky breeze. Bright, pale gray eyes as deep and translucent as air-look at them-the lashes thick and dark, above and below, like a horse's lashes. His eyes were as dramatic as the eyes of a silent-film star. Oh, she could go on and on about Kit's eyes. At Seth's bar mitzvah, Kit said. Bar mitzvah, Miranda thought, trying to pay attention. Seth's bar mitzvah. She was probably the same age as Seth's parents. But surely she was better preserved than Seth's parents, whom she envisioned as a weathered couple in matching track shoes and kelly green fleece jackets. Appetizers of oysters and chopped liver, said Kit.

Henry woke up, and Kit put him down on the sand. Miranda and Kit stood together and watched Henry dig a hole. It seemed to Miranda that this must be the most beautiful time of the year, the air cool, the light soft and clean.

But I'm too old, she thought, and Kit's too young.

Then Kit took her hand and put it to his lips.

Now, Kit's parents, of course, were older, she remembered, definitely older than she was, Kit very presciently being the youngest of four children, each three years apart. And how well they all got along, the three of them, she and Kit and Henry.

Miranda dropped suddenly down on one knee and patted some sand into a pile. "Castle," she said.

Henry nodded vigorously. "Yes," he agreed. "Castle."

Miranda wondered what life would be like with this small, busy person at her side, day in and day out, waking her in the middle of the night with a bad dream and a soggy diaper, banging a gummy spoon on the kitchen table, crying in wild, piercing simian shrieks in the grocery store while grabbing at boxes of cereal. When Henry cried, his face crumpled so immediately, so completely. He was not crying now, though she was sure he soon would be, and for some reason she could never have anticipated-an ice-cream cone dropped yesterday, suddenly recalled; a filthy cigarette butt found in the sand and confiscated; the sand itself, suddenly deemed itchy and hostile; the wind, the sound of the waves, a gull swooping low? It could be anything, it would be something. But right now Henry was sitting on his heels poking holes in the wet sand with a stick. The yellow light held him in an embrace. His face was serious and beautiful.

She felt a hand on her hair and looked up. It was Kit, smiling down at her. She had almost forgotten he was there.

Once, Miranda asked Kit why he didn't return to his apartment in the city or move into his Aunt Charlotte's big house.

"I know this place is adorable and picturesque and all," she said, looking around at the boathouse. There were three rooms, all painted a glossy nautical white-a living room containing two Adirondack chairs, a rag rug, a tiny two-burner stove, and a half-size refrigerator; a small bedroom with a maple dresser and a brass bed from the time when people were apparently shorter and thinner; and an even smaller room with an ornate and old-fashioned crib. "But it's all sort of built for hobbits."

"Or Henry."

"But even little Henry needs screens. What do you do, pull out a mosquito net at night? Do you have a fan? Do you have heat? It's not winterized, is it? I hope you have hot water. You do, don't you?"

Kit laughed and nodded.

"But seriously, wouldn't you two be more comfortable in that big rambling mansion?… Manderley," she added in a thirties movie voice, suddenly self-conscious, worried she had crossed some sort of line.

"Aunt Charlotte would like nothing better, believe me, and I love Aunt Charlotte to death, and I'm really happy to stick around for a while to help her out with a few things before Henry and I go back to New York, but live with her? In the same house? No, thank you. And don't worry, my little homemaker. We not only have hot water, we have heat, don't we, Henry?"

That night when she returned home, Miranda told her mother and sister about this conversation.

"No screens? Feh," said Betty.

Miranda imagined Aunt Charlotte as someone like Big Edie from Grey Gardens.

"I lean more toward Miss Havisham," said Annie.

But they were never able to discover which one was closer, for none of them, not even Miranda, could ever think up a reason to meet the reclusive Miss Maybank, and Kit never offered to introduce the old lady.

On the days Kit needed to go into the city, he left Henry with Miranda.

"Now, don't let your friend take advantage of you," Betty said, thinking of the talk show she'd seen about grandmothers stuck raising the toddlers of young, irresponsible parents. She was not technically Henry's grandmother, and she liked the little tyke well enough, but if there was one thing she had learned from the many therapists adorning television's daytime couches, it was the need for boundaries. She had grown up thinking one was supposed to transcend boundaries in life, but it appeared she had been wrong.

Miranda laughed. "No, no," she said. "This is just what the doctor ordered."

And it did seem to do her good, the days spent on the beach searching for shells and sticks, digging saggy tunnels and building uneven, lumpy mounds. Her life in the city, her love affairs, even her work, seemed to fade. The agony of failure rose up and clutched at her still, but less often, with less force. She woke in the morning eager to get out of bed, to bathe with the lavender soap that Henry said smelled like tea. She and Henry had tea parties, just like the ones she had had as a child, with the exception of the fireplace ladies, who were invited, Miranda told Henry, but could not attend due to a previous engagement. She told him all about the fireplace ladies. He nodded sagely and poured his tea, which was really apple juice, on the floor, watching the puddles with scholarly absorption. When she gave him bubble baths, he took the plastic measuring cups and bowls provided for him and imitated her ritual of tea preparation. She was touched, to a degree that surprised her.