Cathleen Schine - The Three Weissmanns of Westport

It was at this time, when the weather was dismal and the sky dingy and mean, that Cousin Lou and Rosalyn made their yearly migration to Palm Springs, bringing a peevish Mr. Shpuntov along with them. Betty and her daughters stood in the light rain beneath their umbrellas as the Cousin Lous, as everyone called that family, followed a large number of suitcases into the Escalade and decamped for the dry, sunny heat of California, where Lou and Rosalyn had a house on a golf course.

"The desert beckons," Rosalyn said from the car as her cousins stood in the driveway beneath their umbrellas. She threw the three women a magnanimous kiss. "We must follow the sun!"

"That's French for 'So long, suckers!'" cried Cousin Lou.

Mr. Shpuntov, his voice harsh and unnaturally high, said, "What's going on? What's going on here?" He was in the front seat beside the ancient driver, a retired police officer, who would bring the car back and lock it up in the garage. The retired police officer's hand trembled as he adjusted the rearview mirror. Annie wondered if it wouldn't be safer to let Mr. Shpuntov drive.

"You'll have to visit," Lou was saying.

"Of course, our house there is much smaller," Rosalyn quickly added.

"Always room for family," Lou said, and the car backed down the long driveway.

The Cousin Lous planned to be gone until April. To her surprise, Annie found that she missed them. The dinners at their house had often been tedious, it was true. And after a long day at work and a bumpy commute home, making small talk was the last thing she wanted to do. She looked forward to getting into her pajamas and watching American Idol or Project Runway or the show about the family with dwarfism. Annie had never been a social person, and over the years she had gotten used to filling up the blanks of her evenings. But surprisingly quickly she had also gotten used to Lou and Rosalyn's dinners. Now her cousins were gone, and the nights in the cottage were long and disagreeable. She stayed in town to have dinner with friends once a week or so, but she didn't like to leave Betty and Miranda too much. Her mother and her sister both seemed so fragile, so bare, stripped of everything that had given them joy, like two gray brittle branches rattled by the wintry beach winds.

In New York, Joseph walked from his apartment to the office in the morning, from the office to the apartment in the evening, every day just as he had always done, except now, Felicity walked beside him. She was such a vigorous woman, breathing in the cold air with such determination, exhaling like a thoroughbred about to thunder down the track. Just standing next to her on the elevator thrilled Joseph. His routine was no longer routine. The elevator man who had gathered him up from his apartment for decades now gathered him up with this sturdy little blonde by his side. Good morning, Mr. Weissmann, the elevator man said, as he always had. But it was all different now. All new. Good morning, Miss Barrow, the elevator man added.

Felicity had formally moved into the Central Park West apartment a few weeks before Betty's call. On her first proprietary tour, she saw that the sofa from the study and the chairs and coffee table from the living room were gone and said, "I hope all that furniture won't be a burden for poor Betty, out there in her cozy little hideout." She walked through the rooms noting empty spaces and lighter patches on the walls that told of former household treasures now relocated to Connecticut. "So much stuff," she said. "Material things… people get so attached…" She wandered into the kitchen, opening and closing drawers. "Still, I don't think taking the silver was a good idea. There's absolutely no security in those little beach places."

They had come straight from the office, and it was six o'clock. She pulled out the bottle of Scotch and thought, I am giving Joseph his drink in our apartment. She filled a glass with ice. "Lucky Betty, living in a resort," she said as she handed Joseph his drink. She rubbed his tense, tired shoulders. "A permanent vacation. Not like us wage slaves!" Then she laughed and settled in next to Joseph on the living room sofa, which Betty had, remarkably, left behind. That beach cottage must be the size of Versailles, she thought, judging from how few things remained in the apartment.

"Here we are," Joseph said. He put his arm around her. Here we are, he thought uncomfortably. Here we are.

"Home at last," said Felicity. She turned her round blue eyes to his.

Unblinking, Joseph thought. He kissed her head. She was a tough little nut. "Here we are," he said again, more cheerfully.

"She started out being pretty reasonable," he told Felicity the night Betty called. Why had Felicity answered the phone? he wondered. It made everything so much more complicated.

They sat at the dining room table eating Chinese takeout with plastic forks. Felicity, still a little shook up after hearing Betty's voice, eyed the bare wood floor (hadn't there been a gorgeous Oriental here?) with grim neutrality.

"Of course, now that she's found out about us, all bets are off," he said.

"Betty ought to be happy that you're happy," Felicity said. "After all, you're happy that she's settled in such a snug little cottage with her loving daughters by her side. She owes you that much, after all these years. It's true she's become difficult, but she can't be completely unfeeling."

Joseph poured himself another drink and breathed in the perfume of the Scotch, so familiar, yet so full of promise. He remembered the glass Betty had thrown at him, the golden liquid pooled on the floor, the heady alcohol vapors floating up through the angry silence. Betty could indeed be difficult. He patted Felicity's hand.

"We'll get some new silver," he said.

"Oh no, that sort of thing is not important to me at all. Though why she needed the silver and the Dansk stainless, I have no idea."

"Wedding present from her parents, I think."

Felicity, on consideration of this information and where it might lead the surprisingly nostalgic Joseph, consoled herself with the knowledge that although she could not erase the fact of his wedding to Betty and the existence of those in-laws, the in-laws were by now dead and, regarding the nature of their gift, Joseph was, at least, not sure.

"Here," she said, and she shoveled more sesame noodles on his plate. "You finish these up, darling."

Betty, meanwhile, spoke to the divorce attorney frequently-daily, really-and though she told Miranda and Annie very little of what transpired, her phone conversations were so long and so loud, conducted in Betty's fluty voice of determination, that they were able to piece together a few things. Because Betty would not agree to Josie's terms, Josie would not go ahead with the divorce, leaving Betty in a kind of limbo, legally and financially. She, therefore, had to sue for divorce herself on the grounds of abandonment. This she seemed, surprisingly, to relish. She quit her painting, sparing two of her bedroom walls the sad gray color. Daytime soap operas and talk shows still blared from the TV, but Betty no longer sat on the couch to watch. She established herself formally at her desk each morning and pored over the most recent papers her lawyer had FedExed. She provided herself with a large collection of exquisitely designed folders and file boxes. She referred lovingly to her Case with nearly Dickensian reverence. Because of the Case, she explained, she could no longer do the cooking or the marketing, she was much too busy. In fact, she seemed to have little time left even for eating, living on saltines smeared with almond butter.

"I feel like I'm buried alive," Miranda said one morning.

"Better than being buried dead," said Betty, looking up from her papers. She smiled encouragingly, hoping to cheer Miranda up. Miranda occasionally executed a round of unanswered phone calls, she read the odd manuscript that some memoirist in the boondocks who had not heard of her disgrace still sent in. But she was fading, detaching, disappearing in front of their eyes. All for that young actor? Betty wondered, then answered her own question. No, not for him. For a dream, a dream most women her age had already dreamed and either lived or forgotten. Why had it taken Miranda so long? she wondered.