Cathleen Schine - The Three Weissmanns of Westport

"I will never take another day for granted," she told Annie the next day when the antibiotics had begun to take effect and the pain had lessened, "and neither should you."

"Have you suddenly seen God?" Annie asked.

"Goodness, no. Why, have you?"

When Annie called Josie to tell him that Betty was sick, she had to fight off an irrational sense of I-told-you-so justification. How awful to celebrate your mother's pain because it shamed someone, even if that person deserved to be shamed. Yet when she said to Josie, "Mom is in the hospital with meningitis," she felt a distinct shiver of satisfaction.

Betty came home after six days, but she was very weak. After a few days in the cottage, she was even weaker, and Annie and Miranda took her to the doctor's office, each holding an arm.

"What a fuss," Betty said. "I just need rest."

But the doctor said she had caught a staph infection when she was in the hospital, and he put her on heavy doses of various antibiotics.

She insisted on getting out of bed each morning, however, and her daughters would settle her, in her sunglasses, on the living room couch when it was chilly and on the sunporch chaise, in her sunglasses, when it was warm. The sunglasses helped with the headaches.

"You look very glamorous," said Cousin Lou on one visit.

"It's my own private sanitorium." Her legs were covered with a blanket, a cup of broth in her hands.

Lou caught sight of the broom in the corner, grabbed it, and began to sweep absentmindedly.

"How is Mr. Shpuntov?" Betty asked.

"He hit his caregiver yesterday."

"Uh-oh."

"She hit him back. So that was fine. I wonder when the word went from caretaker to caregiver." He stood at the foot of Betty's chaise. She looked chalky and thin-her wrists protruded from her sweater, tight veined sinews. "How are you?" he said, suddenly serious.

Betty said, "I never hit my caregivers. Or my caretakers."

Annie came out with her mother's pills.

"Do I, Annie?"

"Hardly ever."

"Sit down, Lou," Betty said. "It's very pleasant, just sitting. I had no idea I would like being a patient so much. I highly recommend it. I think I have found the career at which I excel. Of course, I am still a widow. I won't give that up."

"Multitasking," Annie said. She was worried. Betty really did seem to like reclining on her chaise, staring out at the trees and the sky. She was dreamy and faraway, preoccupied.

"There's a goldfinch here," Betty was telling Cousin Lou as if it explained everything. "A goldfinch I see when I'm very quiet and patient."

Roberts came that evening and brought bunches of daffodils for Betty.

"This one is for you," he said, handing a stem to Annie.

He came almost every day now. Poor man, Annie thought. Miranda was hardly ever there, yet he sat so patiently, entertaining Betty with stories of some of his greediest clients and their twisted estates, often staying for dinner.

"Do you miss it? Do you mind being retired?" Betty asked. "Because we can get another chaise and you can come to my sanitorium. It keeps me busy."

"Oh, I keep my hand in. I have a few clients still."

"Like Charlotte Maybank? She seems very excited about her posthumous financial dealing."

Betty expected Roberts to smile as he did when regaling her with the eccentricities of clients and the absurdities of cases over the years. Instead, he set his jaw and said nothing. Betty said, "Sorry. None of my business."

Annie often came home from work to find them sitting in silence, the lengthening day casting a pale light on their faces. How tiny and frail her mother looked in her wispy black outfits beside Roberts, who was tan, almost ruddy, a tall, lean man in a tall, lean suit.

His face would crease into a smile when he saw her. He would rise from the invalid's side and lean over to kiss Annie's cheek. She would compliment his bow tie. And they would have cocktails.

"Miranda didn't pick you up at the station?" he asked on the first of these evenings, when Annie arrived alone.

Poor Roberts, she thought. "No Miranda. Just us chickens tonight, I'm afraid."

"Ah." He took a martini from her. "Did you walk from the station? You know, I could always come and get you, Annie, if Miranda's busy."

Annie smiled. Gallant Roberts. Very old-school. Like me, she thought. "I dropped Miranda off after she picked me up. At Leanne's. But how thoughtful of you."

He nodded. "Miranda's been a blessing to Leanne. Charlotte is a handful. But…" He paused here, then said, "Well, Charlotte's been going through so much."

Miranda was not coming home until much later, so Annie didn't ask him to stay for dinner. He joined them anyway.

Lonely, she thought. Not like me. What was the opposite of "lonely"? The word to describe someone who could not stand to be around people? "Togetherly"? "Loneless," she decided. Yet she found that he was one of the few people she did not feel like running away from. No hiding in the attic from Roberts. In fact, he rather reminded her of an attic, the air soft, the light filtered, the contents dusted with recognition or obscurity or gentle surprise.

Felicity decided to treat the girls, by which she meant Gwen, Amber, and Crystal, to lunch at Cafe des Artistes. Amber was such a… she smiled… she had been about to use the word "treasure," as if Amber were an exceptional maid of long service. There was something a little servile about the girl, in an ambitious way that Felicity recognized. Crystal was a silly nonentity, but Amber… even with her aging teenager slang… there was something about her. She was so attentive, and yet one felt the steel behind her acquiescence. She reminded Felicity of… Felicity. Which intrigued her. And then, all those free massages. Felicity was the envy of her friends.

She had never been to Cafe des Artistes, but it was an Upper West Side institution, and as she planned on becoming a proper Upper West Side institution herself, she thought she and Cafe des Artistes should meet. She had made a reservation for 1:00, and she left the office with plenty of time to get there, even with traffic. Taking cabs was a new luxury, taking cabs even when the subway ran directly to her destination. Her life had changed in many small ways like that, she thought with satisfaction. She had worked hard for these little luxuries, worked hard at the office, worked hard at making Joe happy. She did not begrudge either the office or Joe her sweat equity, she loved both her work and Joe, but sweat equity it was, and now she was getting her returns.

She walked into the richly dim restaurant, and a courtly man led her to her table. The silver glistened, the napkins and tablecloths were stiff and formal and white, like dress shirts, she thought. She looked up at the murals. They were famous, she knew. Redheaded women, nude, swinging from vines. Those redheads never had to work in an office, she thought. They didn't have to save and save to buy a boxy one-bedroom apartment in an unfashionable building in a huge unfashionable complex that might just as well have been in New Jersey as on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Felicity pursed her lips, then smiled. The fleshy naked women in the old-fashioned paintings would be scrawny ancient crones by now. Not to mention dead.

Rich soil for a rich house, Miranda thought, digging in the rose garden behind the Beachside Avenue house. House? It really was a mansion, there just was no other name that fit. It had been built as a show of wealth, not as a shelter. The rose garden had been neglected for years, but the tendrils and vines still crawled vigorously over the trellises. Miranda pulled at the weeds. Henry was taking his nap inside, Leanne was working on the paper she would soon have to present at some epidemiology conference. Miranda, who had no paper to write, no nap to take, was weeding. She did not know how to garden. But she could weed. Anyone could weed. Even a failure, even a bankrupt, even a woman who was silently, odiously betraying her best friend.