Cathleen Schine - The Three Weissmanns of Westport

Miranda said simply, "They're gone."

Betty tried to ignore the visceral, light-headed wave of empathy. Emptiness was so unexpectedly heavy, so solid and massive. So pervasive and muffled. So hateful. "Well," she said, trying to shake herself out of it. "We all must have boundaries, and we all must learn to separate. All the therapists on television agree on that. Anyway, the boys will be back soon. And L.A. is not very far away, is it?" The clatter of her own voice rang unconvincingly in her ears. "Not in this day and age."

"That's true, Miranda," Annie said.

"Oh Christ, what do you know about it?" Miranda snapped. "Either of you?"

When they arrived for Rosh Hashanah dinner at Lou's big house overlooking Long Island Sound, Miranda was quiet and subdued. She had barely spoken a word to her mother and sister since the departure of Kit and Henry. Annie was surprised Miranda had even agreed to come with them. There had been a moment when, after coming out of her room dressed and made up and looking beautiful, if a little grim, Miranda's hand had gone to her forehead and her eyes had closed and Annie had braced herself for some sort of histrionic display. But Miranda had merely pushed her hair back, opened her eyes, and said, "Oh, let's get it over with." Perhaps with the real difficulties that had befallen them, Miranda had finally grown out of her stormy theatrical fits. Annie decided to take Miranda's passivity as a good sign. Yet when she stole a glance at her sister's face, colorless, expressionless, she almost wished Miranda would give a good rant, would fume and tear out her hair.

"It won't be as much fun without little Henry here," Annie said, looking around at the crowd of senior citizens, most of whom continued to refer to themselves as middle-aged. She did miss the presence of the little boy, but she also meant to convey some kind of sympathy-although Miranda did not always appreciate sympathy from her sister, usually interpreting it as pity or criticism. "I'll miss him."

"You have your own children."

"Well, yes, but…"

"But nothing," Miranda said savagely, then turned on her heel and stalked off, leaving Annie and Betty nonplussed and, both, somewhat embarrassed.

A knot of people were already gathered in the living room and engaged in fervent conversation. The surgeon had complimented the cultural minister of Estonia on breaking away from the Soviet Union thereby escaping socialized medicine, because just look at Canada, to which the lawyer responded that Canada had no privacy laws. At this, the woman from the YMCA pool said that if you have nothing to hide, privacy should not be an issue. The metal sculptor pointed out that you could still live a bohemian life in Montreal, what with cheap rents and government grants, even without privacy and a falling U.S. dollar, to which the surgeon replied that a government grant would not be much solace if you had to wait six months for a knee replacement by a doctor who spoke only French, which caused the inventor to lament that French President Sarkozy's flamboyant behavior was perhaps not as good for the Jews as he had at first hoped.

"President Bling-Bling," Cousin Lou said, savoring the sound of the words.

"Oh, Betty!" cried Rosalyn. Seeing her cousin and suddenly reminded by the word "bling," she waved her wrist with its heavy gold-and-emerald bracelet. "What do you think?"

"Beautiful. Beautiful."

"Not too much? I don't want to look gaudy. The economy is so bad, it could be offensive. I try to be sensitive to these things."

"They're cabochon, that tones it down."

"I'm a limousine liberal," Lou said. "Why not be comfortable?"

"You were always an iconoclast, dear," said Rosalyn, patting his arm indulgently.

There was very good wine. Rosalyn had tried, in the early years, to economize by serving lesser wines to the constant flow of guests, but Lou had prevailed.

"But they're here every night," Rosalyn had said.

"And so are we," Lou had explained.

Rosalyn bowed to what she understood to be self-interest, but in fact Lou would have served his guests good wine even if he'd been a teetotaler. He enjoyed raising a glass of the good stuff with his guests, however, then raising another. On this Rosh Hashanah night, he held his third up to the light to watch the liquid cling to the sides as he gently swirled it. It has legs, he thought happily. Like a play that is a success. Like a showgirl. Like a table. Lou loved the English language. English was part of his American identity, and so he cherished it. He had been told that when he left a message on an answering machine, you could hear his German accent, but he dismissed that information as complete nonsense, making sure however, from that moment on, if someone did not pick up their telephone themselves, to hang up and try again later.

"Beautiful," he murmured now, meaning the wine, its legs, the word "legs," legs of all kinds, the room, the people in it drinking wine, and always, the view of the water, over which an enormous harvest moon rose in slow, round orange motion.

Annie, seated on a low bench, also looked out at the moon and wondered what Frederick was doing.

"Why is he always talking to me?" Mr. Shpuntov was saying in a loud angry voice. "Why does he bother me?"

"He's your daughter," Cousin Lou yelled into his ear.

Miranda, pacing nervously in front of the picture window, did not hear Mr. Shpuntov or Cousin Lou or Rosalyn's cry of "Good Gawd!" Kit was gone. Henry was gone. Her little pretend family had driven away in that miniature car and boarded a plane for Los Angeles. She clenched her hands and opened them, clenched them, opened them, unaware that she was doing so. We could still be a little pretend family, she told herself. Kit could return in a week, two weeks. It was a small part, he had said so. Of course, it could be a small part that popped up frequently. He might be there for months. Who would take care of Henry? It was outrageous. A form of child abuse, really. Poor Henry, locked in a hotel room with some undocumented babysitter yakking in a foreign language on her cell phone. He would never learn to speak properly at this crucial juncture in his development. She had been online for hours last night reading about the progress of a two-year-old's speech. She would have to call Kit and explain it all to him. She checked her watch. They would be on the plane now. She hoped Kit had taken Henry's car seat on the plane and strapped him in. It was so much safer.

Miranda sat down with a small internal groan and began chewing on her thumbnail.

Betty wished Miranda wouldn't bite her nails. It was unattractive, and she was such a beautiful girl.

"That little Henry and his father were very taken with your sister," she said to Annie, who was slumped on a bench. "Are very taken, I should say. I wish they hadn't rushed off like that. It's lovely that Kit got some work, but Miranda seemed to be settling in to such a nice routine with them. Sit up straight, sweetheart."

"Mmm," Annie said. Frederick's children were not very taken with her, she thought. Though they clearly revered him. Perhaps that was why they seemed so possessive. Or did it have to do with their mother? Annie never asked what had become of Mrs. Frederick Barrow, but she did wonder. Had she died recently? Or was she, like Betty, dumped and destitute? What had she been like? What had she looked like? Did they still see each other? Or did he carry flowers to her grave and lie on the grass beside it and whisper to her? It was difficult to picture any of it, as she knew nothing at all about the wife and not much more about Frederick, but she pictured the two of them anyway, blurry, indistinct, far away.

It was therefore a shock when she saw her mother rushing enthusiastically away from her toward the door, through which walked a very real and sharply drawn Frederick, the very same Frederick Barrow she had been thinking about, who had just entered the room with the stern young woman Annie recognized as his daughter, Gwen, as well as a man who must have been her husband, and two little girls in matching velvet dresses.