Cathleen Schine - The Three Weissmanns of Westport

They had always come to this restaurant for their birthdays, ever since Annie was ten years old and Miranda eight. It was a grown-up restaurant, and they were each allowed a sip of wine.

"A bottle?" Josie said. "White, right?"

Yes, white wine, Josie, Annie thought. They would come with their mother and settle into their seats, order their pretend cocktails with jolly red cherries floating on top. Then the doors of the restaurant would fly open and there would be Josie, his overcoat and briefcase, artifacts from that exalted, distant place, the office. And he would bring Annie a bouquet of anemones for her birthday, white roses for Miranda. The waiter would fetch a pitcher of water, and the flowers would adorn the table, bright and important.

What would Josie do this year? Send flowers? Forget that he had ever gotten the anemones and roses? Either way, it would be heartbreaking.

Next to Annie, Miranda sighed, wiped away a tear. "Fuck," she said softly.

The food came and the girls picked at their moules frites.

"That's your favorite," he reminded them. He felt sick and barely touched his steak. He ordered another bottle of wine and wondered what he could do to make them understand. It was something that had just happened. One day he had been laughing at one of Betty's comments, walking to Columbus Avenue to get Tasti D-Lite with her, the next he was so in love with Felicity he could hardly speak. He had fallen in love in a way he could barely credit, a heart-pounding, urgent, hopeless way. If they really loved him, these daughters of his, they would rejoice for him, rejoice with him. I am reborn, he wanted to cry out. He wanted to drink champagne and celebrate. He wanted Miranda and Annie to join him in a toast. A toast to life. His life.

But he looked at the girls, and he saw he would have to drink that toast alone. They loved their mother and he had hurt her. But he loved their mother, too. That's what they didn't get. He noted that it was much easier for him to say, even to think, that he loved her when he referred to her as "their mother," rather than Betty, but he did love her, their mother. He would always love their mother. But things change.

He sighed, and both girls glared at him. Well, he didn't really expect them to forgive him. Not in this lifetime. They were hurt, they were angry. Fine. He got it.

"I understand that you're angry," he said. "I'm not a fool. And I'm not perfect. I understand that, too. But I love you both, and I'll always be here for you."

His voice was shaking with emotion. There were tears in his eyes.

Annie shook her head in disbelief. Was he kidding? "You threw our mother onto the street," she said loudly. "With no money. None. Do you understand that, too?"

Joseph looked nervously at the surrounding diners.

"Look," he said, lowering his voice. "There are steps. Steps you take. You know… in a"-he lowered his voice even more-"divorce."

"You can't even say the word? Divorce. Divorce, divorce. Ugly cruel mean-spirited divorce. There. Okay? Clear?"

Annie's face was hard and furious. Joseph glared at her. She had always been so sensible, a calm, rational person-like him. But being reasonable obviously had a cold side to it, too.

Miranda, on the other hand-there had never been anything reasonable or cold about her. She was a flurry of impetuous emotion. She understood love. So he tried his other daughter, he tried Miranda: "It's just unavoidable, honey. I can't help it. It doesn't mean I don't love you both." He attempted a conspiratorial smile. "It will all work out in the end." That was Miranda's saying, her mantra.

"You think so?" Miranda said.

She pushed her chair back violently as she stood up.

The wrath of women, he thought. There was a downside to heat, it seemed, as well as cold. They could all go to hell. He watched Miranda's napkin, which she had thrown from her lap, falling like a white gliding gull. He heard the clatter of Annie's chair echoing Miranda's. He heard his daughters' footsteps. A waiter's hand reached down and whisked the napkin off the floor. When he looked up, Miranda and Annie were gone and he was alone.

One morning shortly after the disastrous dinner with Joseph, Betty waited until both Miranda and Annie arrived at the breakfast table before surprising them with the news that she had received an offer from Joseph's lawyer the evening before.

"You mean our dinner with Josie did some good?" Miranda asked. "I knew it would!"

"Thank God," Annie said. "It's about time he stepped up to the plate."

"Yes," Betty said. "Of course, I can't possibly accept it." She shook her head sadly. "Generous as Joseph is being… Well, it's just that he's offered a settlement of three hundred thousand dollars."

"Oh brother," Annie said.

"Over ten years."

"That's a joke, right?" Miranda said. Then she added thoughtfully, "Except you still have the apartment. That must be what he's thinking. You could sell it and invest, what, three million dollars? Even in this market. And live really comfortably. Not the way you've been living, but…"

"Oh no, dear, the three hundred thousand dollars paid over ten years would be his payment for my share of the apartment. Now that is a decent return on my five-thousand-dollar investment, I guess, although it has been almost fifty years. However, there's an argument to be made for it, I'm sure. But I just don't feel comfortable having Joseph live there with that woman."

Annie and Miranda stood dumbfounded.

"That woman?" Miranda said after a long, uncomfortable silence. " What woman?"

"Vivacity?" Betty said, looking thoughtful. "Something like that. Joseph's middle-aged young woman. Capacity! That's it."

Miranda and Annie never did learn how their mother found out about Felicity. She never mentioned the incident. She had said her piece, made her decision, and the subject of how she learned of the intruder need never be raised. It had been a shock to her when she had called Joseph at the apartment the night before and the woman who worked in his office answered. Betty had recognized the voice-it was quite distinctive, a high, strong voice still carrying a trace of Boston. She saw the woman's face in her imagination, a pale, heart-shaped face with sharp but not unpleasant features and big, unnerving, round blue eyes. She heard the woman's confusion when she recognized Betty's voice. And she knew. She had known all along, she realized. She had known all along.

"Is Joseph in?" she asked.

"Joe!" she heard the woman call.

Joe. It was as if Joseph had cut off not only half his name but half his life. Her half.

"Betty!" he said. "What a surprise."

"I won't do it, Josie," she said, using the children's name for him.

"Won't do what?" he asked.

But she knew he understood.

"Life is not a picnic," she said. "You were right about that." And she hung up.

In the following weeks, it was as if the spirit of the three women had faded with the leaves. It rained day after day, and with the bad weather, the cottage began to feel as small and damp and rundown as it was. Miranda forced herself to make useless phone calls and write useless letters to people in the world of publishing who would have preferred to forget she ever existed. Annie slid into an ennui of routine, terrified that the order of this methodical, meaningless existence would turn out to be her future as far as the eye could see. Betty tried to cheer them up by claiming they were all suffering from cabin fever, a term redolent of the pioneering West, yet even she had to admit the days were long and tempers were short in the Weissmann household. She ordered an infomercial triangular sponge on a stick called the "Point 'n Paint" and began to slather her bedroom walls a modish but vaguely funereal gray.