Cathleen Schine - The Three Weissmanns of Westport

Finally, Miranda got hold of herself. She had come here to say something, not to listen, not to sympathize. But disaster had struck. What she had to come to say would have to wait. Leanne was in trouble. She needed Miranda. Miranda would speak to her, patiently, gently, discover the parameters of the disaster, offer advice and hope. "What the hell happened?" she snapped. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Don't blame me," Leanne prattled on. "I told her not to trust him, I told her not to give him a penny, and she didn't, she says-not a penny."

"Give who a penny?" She saw just how far gone Leanne was. She moved the bottle to a distant table, then came back and sat beside her. "Who?" she said again, curious now, impatient. "Who?"

"No, not a penny, not one penny," Leanne was saying. She shook her head triumphantly. "Not one penny- every penny." She took no notice of Miranda. "Not to him, she says. No, not to him, just into an investment he told her about, a nice, safe fund, a friend of his on Wall Street, and he would take only a finder's fee sort of thing, which would all be used for Henry, anyway, and not from her, but from the fund manager…"

A light dawned. Miranda, with foreboding, said, "Kit?"

"And it was a closed fund, but he could get her in, this friend of his. The manager's nephew could get her into this closed fund. She never could resist anything exclusive, the idiotic old bat."

"Leanne, get up." Miranda pulled her to her feet. "You're kind of hysterical, right? So take a deep breath or something."

"She wouldn't let him stay in her house, even to take care of Henry when I was away, locked him away in the boathouse like Mr. Rochester's mad wife-and now it's all gone up in flames. She couldn't bear him, thought he was a fraud, and then suddenly she gives him all her money, and then suddenly, more suddenly, it's gone. It's all gone… I was away for six weeks, and look what happened…" She grabbed a pillow and threw it.

Miranda wondered if this was what she was like when she ranted and raved.

"Stop it!" she said. "You're acting just like me!"

She grabbed Leanne. Leanne struggled. Just for a minute. Then collapsed, sobbing, in Miranda's arms.

Miranda buried her face in Leanne's hair. "That's better," she said.

"Better that I'm sobbing?" Leanne said, her voice muffled in Miranda's shoulder.

"Better for me. I can hear myself think."

"Go to hell."

"Let's take a walk, okay? Outside. Fresh air."

"Fresh air," Leanne repeated dully.

They walked to the water's edge, then up and down the little beach. There was a moon, a sliver of a moon low in the black sky.

"Sober yet?" Miranda asked. But it was she who felt drunk. Drunk with confusion, with need, with impatience.

"Yeah, yeah. That's where you met Kit." She pointed to the spot on the beach Miranda had shown her. "The financial wizard." She took a deep breath. "What am I going to do?" she said softly. "What am I going to do with her? Maybe she'll die before she has to move out, before she realizes what's happened."

"Maybe." Miranda tried to listen, but it was difficult for her to focus. She had come to the house that night with a purpose. It had taken all her resolve to drive up the long driveway, to ring the bell, to follow Hilda into the living room. And now, a catastrophe. "I'm sorry, Leanne," she remembered to say. "I'm really sorry about all this."

Leanne kicked at a pile of shells. "Why are you here anyway?"

The moon was sharp above them, a slash in the velvety black sky. The smell of the sea hung in the cool air. Miranda threw a rock into the water. She stared stupidly at Leanne. She took Leanne's hands in hers. She felt Leanne tremble. Miranda looked at her in surprise. Leanne moved a step closer. Miranda wondered if she was trembling, too. Yes, she was. She was trembling, too. She watched herself from far away, from another life, and thought, This is it, it's all over, over a cliff, feet still running, thin air, high above the hard, jagged earth.

"I wanted to talk to you," she said again. But she didn't talk. She let her fingers move across Leanne's lips, the top lip, the bottom lip. She let her hand move across Leanne's cheek, past her ear, until she held Leanne's head cupped in her hand. She let her hand pull Leanne's head toward her. She let her face move in to Leanne's face, let her lips press against Leanne's lips.

Betty died the next week. The infection had gone to her heart. The cottage, so small, loomed huge and empty around Annie and Miranda. The sky lowered.

Miranda wandered from room to room in the cottage in the night, the moonlight tinny and weak. She made her way up the stairs. She remembered the night she had stood at the top of the steps and watched her mother sleep. The night of cicadas. There were no cicadas now.

Her mother had been so small and pale.

She looked at the bed, her mother's bed, empty of her mother.

"Oh, Mommy," she said out loud.

Or was it Annie who had said it? Annie was somehow beside her. They were lying in their mother's bed clinging to each other.

"Mommy," they said. "Oh, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy."

"Now, you see?" said Felicity. "You have provided for your stepdaughters very generously."

Joseph said, Yes, that was true. Betty had left them everything. The apartment and the settlement would all go to Miranda and Annie.

"As it should," he said.

"Well, should, could, would-it's all thanks to you. Thanks to you and your sense of what's right and just, Annie and Miranda are heiresses now," Felicity said. "God bless them."

Joseph nodded. His girls would be very comfortable, it was true.

"I'm so glad I was able to be supportive of you and your relationship with them. Family first, I have always said."

Even so, he asked Felicity not to accompany him to the funeral.

"Family first," she had repeated rather severely, but Joseph did not answer. He poured his own drink that night and took it with him into his study and closed the door.

Annie and Miranda took a break from crying for a cup of coffee. Annie noticed the coffeepot in her hand, the cups she put out, the good ones, the ones Betty liked. She tipped the pot and the coffee flowed in an arc to the cup. Why? she wondered. Why did the coffee bother? The phone rang. It was a cousin from Buffalo. She gave the information: Tomorrow. Riverside. My apartment after. Yes, thank you so much. She really was. I know you do. I love you, too. Her coffee was cold.

"We're orphans," Miranda said. She began to cry again.

Oh, Miranda, must you? But Annie cried, too, and held her sister tight.

They had done nothing that morning but call people on the phone, informing, arranging, crying. They had slept all night curled together in Betty's bed.

They drank their coffee and sat quietly, worn out.

"I'll sort of miss this place," Annie said after a while.

Miranda scratched her head with both hands, pulled her hair violently away from her face, made a peculiar half-sigh, half-groan, and said, "I'm staying."

And then she told Annie.

"And Leanne felt the same way for months, but she didn't say anything, either, because, really, it's, well…"

"Embarrassing?" Annie was shocked. Did things like that happen, just like that? "Just like that?" she said. "Just like that?"

"You think I should have done an apprenticeship? Yes, just like that, just like that, the way any change happens, any realization, any… well, any falling in love."

"I don't do things just like that," Annie said. "I do things gradually."

"Good. Then you can fall in love with a wonderful woman gradually."

"Oh, Miranda, you know what I mean. It's just… well, I'm surprised, that's all. And I guess I feel a little betrayed."

"It's not like I joined the Confederate Army."