Cathleen Schine - The Three Weissmanns of Westport

Annie shook Ophelia's sticky hand. "Pretty dress," she said.

"Hot," said Ophelia.

Betty was watching the little group with interest. She was happy that Frederick had come to see Annie. Had Annie invited him? It was not like Annie to go out of her way in quite such a public manner, to show her hand. She must really like the novelist with the sparkly eyes and mellifluous voice. If my children can be happy, I will be happy, Betty thought, squaring her shoulders, though what she felt was the same simmering anger and confusion as always.

"I heard about Joseph," a man next to her said.

She tried to recover herself and remember who he was, gazing with fascinated revulsion at his meaty lips while the general conversation of the people standing around her washed over them.

"Marty," Betty said, finally remembering the man with the liver-colored lips was Cousin Lou's accountant. "Hello."

"I'm so sorry about what happened," he said.

He was eating a piece of dark orange cheese. She noticed it left a narrow oily trail on his lip, like a snail.

"You need a good lawyer, Betty. A shark. I'll give you a name."

"Talk to Annie, Marty dear. I'm in mourning."

"Yeah. They say that's one of the stages, right?"

"I don't believe in stages," Betty said.

"It's not a religion, Mom," her younger daughter said, coming up beside Betty. And because Marty looked a little hurt and her voice had accidentally emerged with a far too haughty timbre, Betty forced herself to smile at Marty and his odious snail-slimed lip.

"Thank you," she said, taking his hand, administering a short shake and releasing it, as if she were in a receiving line. "Thank you for your kind words."

"Shark," he said, repeating the kind word as he went away.

"Dear God," Betty said.

"Who was that?" Miranda asked.

Roberts was a step or two behind her.

"Lou's accountant. He said I needed a shark divorce lawyer."

"A forensic accountant is more like it," Roberts said. "I'm sorry," he added when Betty did not reply. "None of my business." And he hurried off.

Forensic accountant. As a recently converted and loyal member of the daytime television audience, Betty had seen numerous reruns of numerous crime shows and wondered if a forensic accountant was a CSI for divorces. A divorce was surely a kind of death: a murder, in fact. It was the memories, so stubbornly happy and lifeless and useless, stinking with decay, that lay in a putrid heap like a rotting corpse. If only the memories were a corpse, Betty thought, and could be buried under six feet of clotted dirt. But they never really died, did they? They wandered through her thoughts and her heart like scabby zombies. A forensic accountant could never find the murderer if he couldn't even discover the dead body. It was better on television. "I like the one with the bugs," she said out loud.

"What?"

"I don't like the one with the sunglasses."

"What are you talking about, Mother?"

"Television."

"I have a migraine," Miranda said. She stared at Frederick Barrow's granddaughters and felt angry.

Betty put the back of her hand on her daughter's forehead. "Do you have a fever? Do you want to go home? Do you have that medicine? The kind you roll onto your forehead? Maybe you'll feel better if you lie down."

Miranda pulled away from her mother's hand.

"Who is that young woman leading Frederick away from Annie?" Betty asked. "Is that his little doxy?"

"That's his daughter, Mother."

"Well, thank God for daughters," Betty said, giving Miranda's arm a squeeze. "But, I mean, really." And she departed, pulled open the sliding glass door, and stood in the dark, moist air to brood in peace about Joseph and his irreconcilable differences.

At the same time that Betty retreated to the outdoors, Miranda saw Roberts coming toward her again. She gulped down the rest of her Scotch and headed for the bar to refill. Doddery old lawyer-was everyone here two years old or a hundred and one? Roberts wasn't really doddering, to be fair: he had a steady gait; he was tall and straight and had the pleasantly browned, pleasantly leathery skin of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors. He was rather distinguished-looking. A thin beakish nose, the kind that could be acquiline and English or acquiline and Italian or just Jewish. And he had a pretty mouth. Betty had pointed that out-how his mouth was soft and so different from the rest of his face. But Miranda was in no mood to appreciate his handsome mouth or relative good health. Her head was throbbing and her heart was breaking.

Roberts stood beside her and refilled his wineglass. Seeing no escape, Miranda gave a wan smile.

"Is everything all right?" he asked. "Your mother…"

"She's in mourning. It's very tiring for her."

"I like your mother. She's kind of indefatigable. But I suppose even she has to give in now and then. Age is exhausting sometimes, exhausting if you hold it at bay, more exhausting if you give in. My mother used to say you have to be brave to get old." He stopped, as if his flow of words surprised him as much as it did Miranda. "Not that your mother is old, of course," he added. "I was thinking more of myself."

"Oh, you're as young as springtime," Miranda said politely, though she was thinking he had to be seventy if he was a day. And how dreary of him to speak about aging, as if it were synonymous with living. The image of Kit, young and shining with curiosity and hope, his vibrant child at his side, shot into her thoughts almost painfully.

Roberts laughed. "I've seen a few springtimes, anyway," he said. "You, on the other hand, look wonderful. I heard what happened that day you went out kayaking, and I admit I was worried about you. I feel a little responsible. I never should have let you go out on such a rough day."

Miranda wondered if the semiretired lawyer had taken a wee drop too much. Never had she heard such a flow of words emanate from his, admittedly-give the devil his due, as Josie always said-lovely lips. "You're so sweet," she said, thinking, Go away, geezer, please. "But first of all, you couldn't have stopped me. No one can stop me, I'm an absolute nightmare. And, as it turned out, it was a lucky day after all. My kayaking adventure brought us a new friend-Kit Maybank. Have you met him? Kit rescued me from certain near-death. He's an actor. He was supposed to be here, but he just got a part in a film and had to leave. He's extremely talented." She found that once she mentioned Kit, she had a hard time leaving the subject. "He has a child, a beautiful little boy named Henry…"

"Ah," Roberts said in his quiet voice.

"Henry," Miranda repeated, almost belligerently, as if Roberts had snubbed the boy. "Henry looks just like his father."

Roberts mumbled something inaudible and retreated into his customary silence.

As they filed into the dining room, Frederick held one of his rosy granddaughters on his shoulders. The little girl began drumming on his head and singing in a high wail that carried surprisingly well across the large room, then was seated beside her sister, the two of them lolling in their chairs, their heads tilted back, their tongues hanging from their mouths.

Annie was on the other side of the long table, toward the head, sitting in what she hoped was quiet, self-contained dignity. She could sense Frederick across from her, near the foot of the table, but she did not look up to see. If he had not been intimate when they spoke, he had been warm. But at the arrival of Gwen and her entourage, he had become suddenly quite solemn and had melted away with them as if he had never been there at all.

"You shouldn't have," she heard him say, and looked up to see one of the girls-Annie could not tell if it was Juliet or Ophelia, or Medea, for that matter, she thought irritably-press a honey-soaked piece of challah into his hand.