Cathleen Schine - The Three Weissmanns of Westport

Then she noticed that both her daughters were staring at her.

"What?"

"Buried alive better than being buried dead?" Annie said. "Hardly, Mother."

"Oh, wait until you're my age."

"God, I hope we're not still in this dump when I'm that old," Miranda said.

"Amen."

Betty looked stricken.

"Not that you're old," Miranda quickly added.

Betty was old and she knew it. That was not the issue. She put both hands down on her pile of legal documents. "Are you so unhappy here, girls?" she said. Her voice was earnest now. "I feel terrible. I thought the change would be so good for you. I'm so sorry, my darlings. I know you came out here for me, and I'm so grateful, but look what it's come to. Oh dear. I've completely disrupted your lives, and for what? I'm afraid I've been very selfish. But I honestly thought…"

"No, Mom, it's great, it's fine," Annie interrupted. "It's so beautiful here, it's almost like a vacation for us." She made a face at Miranda-Come on, agree, make Mommy feel better, hurry up…

But Miranda was sulking, staring at the floor. "Well, I'm glad someone is enjoying themselves," she said. She rose from the table, gave Annie a sour look, grabbed her coat from the closet, and headed toward the door.

Annie examined her hands. They were clasped tightly. She wanted to use them to murder her sister.

"I'll go with you," she called. Her voice took on a tone she recognized from child-rearing days: rage altered by the alchemy of necessity into enthusiasm. Perhaps outside in the air she would somehow be able to speak to Miranda, really talk to her. "A walk!" she said, in consequence. "What fun!"

"A picnic," Betty muttered darkly. "Everything a picnic." And she turned back to her documents.

They walked to the end of the little street, and there before them stretched Compo Beach. The sand was brown and coarse, the sky blowing layers of dark clouds above the rough gray water. There were a dozen or so people out, couples mostly, with their dogs.

"Miranda, talk to me."

"I'm going crazy here, that's all. Crazy, crazy, crazy."

Three grown women, three independent, bossy women in a tiny ill-equipped house? Three unhappy women… Annie was about to expound on this, to say how natural it was to go stark, raving mad, how temporary this situation was, please God, when the sun suddenly appeared through a crack in the slate sky.

"My God," Annie said, stunned by the beauty.

"My God!" Miranda echoed her. But she was not gazing at the illuminated gash in the clouds. She was staring at an approaching figure outlined by the sudden glare. The figure was waving.

"Oh, Annie," she cried. "It's him! It's Kit! He's back."

"No, I don't think…" But Miranda was already running toward the man.

"Miss!" he called, his voice muted by the wind and the slap of the waves. "You dropped your scarf!"

Miranda stopped, all the energy drained from her form: it wasn't Kit, after all.

Then, abruptly, she squealed with joy. "Nicky!" she cried. "It's Nicky!"

But Annie, recognition of that unexpected voice coming upon her headlong, was already running to throw her arms around her younger son.

"If it was anyone else," Miranda was saying, "but it's not, it's you, oh little Nicky, you're gigantic…" And she was hugging him, too, all three of them jammed together as the wind whipped the sand around them.

Annie was so happy she felt ill. Her son had been away for more than six months, and now he had come home to surprise her for Thanksgiving.

"Of course, there's the, um, plane fare," he said later when they were sitting on the couch together. "I kind of put it on the credit card…"

"Don't you worry," Annie said. He could have put all of South Africa on her credit card at that moment and she would have paid the bill somehow. How? she thought for an instant, but such a fleeting instant, for then she rested her head against his shoulder and forgot credit card bills and money and everything but the familiar smell of his skin.

"I'm sorry you had to bounce from the apartment, Grandma."

"Bounce," Betty said. "I like that. I bounced." She smiled.

Nick looked around him at the little living room. "It's very…" He paused. "It's very cozy here, that's for sure."

The mood of the cottage had changed completely with Nick's arrival. The Costco fire cast a yellow glow on the small room. The tea Betty had poured was fragrant and hot. Nick's voice was young and loud as he laughed and told his traveler's tales and made them laugh with him.

"You knew he was coming," Annie said suddenly to her mother. "You did, didn't you?"

"She did," Nick said. "She planned the whole thing."

"How could you keep it a secret, Mom?"

"I have many secrets," Betty said. And Annie realized that she did, that her mother to whom she condescended, at whom she rolled her eyes, her mother whom she adored and admired even as she felt the superiority of a younger generation toward her, this woman whom she thought she knew so well had secrets, had an inner life Annie knew nothing about.

Within its corny hearth, the gas fire from Costco flickered; the teacups clattered musically on their saucers. Outside, a crow cawed from somewhere in the silver sky. Miranda observed her nephew, the large male movements, the deep voice, his cough, loud and rough. He stretched his legs out, and she had to climb over them to get past him.

"I remember you when you were a little boy," she said, so softly he almost didn't hear her. She stroked his hair thoughtfully. "Just a little, little boy." There were tears in her eyes.

"What's up with Aunt Miranda?" Nick asked Annie later. "She seems a little emotionable."

Annie laughed at the word, then said, "She's missed you, that's all," and Nick, in the blissful narcissism of youth, nodded his understanding.

Thanksgiving was a frenetic and happy event in the little household. Charlie came in from Chicago, and Annie was so flooded with feeling that she recognized for the first time the drought she had been living through. It was difficult for her to resist pulling her sons onto her lap. They were affectionate boys, always had been, but they were now so old, she reminded herself. She waited, as if they were yearlings in the forest, for them to come to her.

Betty went all-out for their Thanksgiving dinner. "I haven't cooked turkey in so long, it seems," she kept saying. "I wonder why."

"You wonder why it seems that way, or you wonder why you haven't cooked one in so long?" Annie asked.

"Oh, Annie," said Betty and Miranda.

"Oh, Mom," said the boys.

"I don't know how you did it with this stove," Annie said to redeem herself.

"I got the recipes from Martha. On her show. I liked some of the recipes from Lydia better, and that girl with the awful voice had a few that seemed interesting. But I wanted to be loyal."

"To Martha?"

"She's been through so much. And she used to live in Westport."

"So did the star of Behind the Green Door. Maybe we should rent it on DVD."

"One of my favorites, dear," Betty said.

The others stared.

"Katharine Hepburn," Betty continued. "' The calla lilies… Such a strange flowuh'… She grew up in Westport?"

No one corrected her. She was so happy cooking her dinner, serving it on her good plates, clearing the table with the boys.

"Now for our traditional Thanksgiving family walk," she announced after Annie and Miranda had done the dishes, and though they had never in anyone's memory ever taken a walk on Thanksgiving before, they got their coats and scarves and gloves and followed her out to the beach.

Charlie and Annie walked hand in hand, a little behind the others.

"Grandpa Josie called me," he blurted out, darting a questioning look at her.

Annie said only, "Did he?" in as neutral a tone as she could muster, but she was furious. How dare Josie go behind her back?