Cathleen Schine - The Three Weissmanns of Westport

Roberts joined the tea party toward the end. It was not the first time the Weissmanns had seen him since Palm Springs, but it was unexpected to see him in the big house on Beachside Avenue.

"All this time I didn't realize you knew the Maybanks," Betty said, thinking back to what now looked, in retrospect, like coldness to Kit.

"Roberts is very discreet," Aunt Charlotte said. "He handles all my affairs."

"Not quite all, unfortunately," said Roberts.

"He'll be the one auctioning off those chairs, won't you, dear?"

"I sincerely hope not, Charlotte."

Miranda sat on the other wing chair, Henry curled on her lap. She rested her cheek on his head and breathed him in. She had been feeling so ragged, so disoriented, for so long, a woman without a country, and now she was bankrupt as well, but what did any of it matter? Here was Henry, returned like Odysseus from a long, long journey.

When Henry's mother offered her another piece of cake, Miranda said, "You look so much alike." She glanced from Henry's mother back to Henry. "Even though…"

"Even though he looks just like Kit?" Leanne ruffled Henry's hair, accidentally grazing Miranda's cheek. "Sorry," she said, pulling back her hand.

Miranda caught her breath. The closeness of Henry, the touch of the woman's hand, a gentleness meant for her son mistakenly shared with a stranger-she felt somehow moved, on the verge of tears.

Leanne smiled, looking more like Henry than ever, and moved away.

Really, Miranda, you are becoming absurder and absurder, as Josie used to say.

"What's the matter, dear? Don't like cake?" It was the old woman.

Miranda forced herself to smile. "Me? Oh yes. Love it."

"Eat up, then," Aunt Charlotte said, her hungry eyes on Miranda's untouched slice of cake. "Can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."

A month or so after the tea party, Lou and Rosalyn returned from Palm Springs. Lou appeared the very next day, knocking on the door of the Weissmann cottage. He wanted to extend a personal invitation to a welcome-home party.

"All of us together again," he said happily. "What an occasion!"

Annie was embraced by her enthusiastic cousin, from which position she contemplated the prospect of socializing once again enveloped by Cousin Lou's capacious family bosom. In addition to all the people she did not know very well, there might easily be those she wished she had never met-Amber, for example, and Gwen. Would they be at this party? Perhaps they would bring Frederick. Perhaps Frederick would bring his sister, Felicity…

"It's a big tent, your family," she said when Cousin Lou released her.

At that moment, Miranda burst through the door, followed by Henry and his mother, Leanne.

"Cousin Lou! You're back!" Miranda threw her arms around him.

"You're looking well," he said. The last time he had seen her, she had been so drawn. Withdrawn as well. What a surprising language English is, he thought, not for the first time. Drawn. Withdrawn. He would have to draw her out and see what this was all about! "Roses in your cheeks."

Miranda smiled. Why, Miranda is irresistible, Lou remembered suddenly. But she had recently been so, so… negligible. That was the word for the Miranda of Palm Springs. Moody, absent, quiet, irrelevant. But here she was with her old funny, suggestive smile-half a challenge, half a reassurance. He hadn't seen that smile in a long time. He sighed with pleasure. He liked people to be happy.

And yet, how could she smile? He'd heard she'd gone bankrupt. Rosalyn said her business had been dissolved. She had nothing, absolutely nothing.

The thought of bankruptcy made his stomach drop.

What a brave woman she was, putting up a strong front.

She was looking in the mirror. "Hey, I do have roses in my cheeks."

Henry examined her cheeks in his solemn literal way.

"Hello, Henry," Lou said, "remember me?"

Henry ran back to the other woman who had come into the room. He wrapped his arms and legs around her leg, then stared at Lou with an expression of menacing confusion.

"This is Henry's mother, Leanne Maybank."

"Maybank," Betty said. "It is such a pretty name. Every time I hear it."

"It is, isn't it?" Leanne said. "But that's not really why Kit took my name."

"Maybank?" Miranda said.

"Your husband took your name and kept it after you split up?" Cousin Lou swayed from side to side, clearly agitated.

"Lovely name," Betty said again.

"It's a new world, a new world," Lou continued. He emitted a series of unhappy grunts: "Uh, uh, uh. Sometimes I think I'm getting old."

"He just really didn't like his own name."

"Why not?" Annie asked, fascinated by this piece of news. "Was his last name Carson or something?"

"Well… yes."

Kit Carson: there was an appreciative silence.

"He grew up in Wyoming," Leanne said after a while. "I guess that's why his parents thought of it."

"Wait, how old was Kit when he moved to Maine?" Miranda asked. "He told me so much about growing up in Maine. Really, it made me jealous. All those brothers and sisters, the clambakes, the wildflower gathering. Keeping honeybees…"

Leanne gave her an uncomfortable look. "He told you that?"

Miranda immediately regretted her words. She was aware that she occupied a delicate position with regard to Kit and Leanne. Her bitterness toward Leanne's ex-husband must be kept under wraps. She had discovered a long time ago that no one can attack an ex-husband or wife except the ex's ex. You can agree, but you cannot initiate. She had learned this over the years, though she had never really understood it. On the other hand, any positive comments or happy memories about the ex were equally off limits. There was nothing one could say that would not somehow offend the injured party. So one kept quiet. Particularly if one had slept with the ex. Particularly if one valued the friendship of the injured party more every day.

Miranda's friendship with Henry's mother was a revelation to her. She had never had a best friend before, not as an adult. And even as a child, there had always been Annie first and foremost. As she got older, she had friends, lots of friends. But that was the point-there were so many. And then there were the men. So many men. Now there was just this one woman in this suburban town. It was so different here. She was different, too.

Bankruptcy-the bright line between her old life and her new one. To her surprise, her reaction to bankruptcy had not been depression or anger but an overwhelming, sometimes disorienting sense of freedom. She was free of her success, free of her failure. She was… she suddenly remembered a word Frederick had used: she was "unencumbered."

She found herself tenderly protective of this new incarnation, consciously thinking of it as a slender green seedling, perhaps because she had begun gardening a little, an experiment in her new self, fascinated by the arbitrary bits of green that appeared in the yard. At Charlotte Maybank's house on Beachside Avenue, there were gardens galore, and she had begun to spend time in them, weeding and pruning, constantly consulting her laptop, as well as the old gardener who came once a week, to make sure she did not inadvertently kill an unfamiliar infant flower. She also took care of Henry when Leanne went to New Haven to the library to work. When Leanne stayed home to work, Miranda played with Henry, gave him his nap, made lunch for the three of them.

"I feel like I'm taking advantage of you," Leanne said.

"You can give me advice if I ever suffer an epidemic. In exchange," Miranda said, then remembered her mother's warning about Kit taking advantage of her and laughed.

She had begun to cook dinner at the cottage sometimes, too. It was easy to cook, she discovered. Not to cook well, necessarily, but to cook. You read the directions and followed them. How soothing it all was. A teaspoon meant a teaspoon, no more, no less.