The Three Weissmanns of Westport (13 page)

Henry woke up, and Kit put him down on the sand. Miranda and Kit stood together and watched Henry dig a hole. It seemed to Miranda that this must be the most beautiful time of the year, the air cool, the light soft and clean.

But I'm too old, she thought, and Kit's too young.

Then Kit took her hand and put it to his lips.

Now,
Kit's
parents, of course, were
older
, she remembered, definitely older than she was, Kit very presciently being the youngest of four children, each three years apart. And how well they all got along, the three of them, she and Kit and Henry.

Miranda dropped suddenly down on one knee and patted some sand into a pile. "Castle," she said.

Henry nodded vigorously. "Yes," he agreed. "Castle."

Miranda wondered what life would be like with this small, busy person at her side, day in and day out, waking her in the middle of the night with a bad dream and a soggy diaper, banging a gummy spoon on the kitchen table, crying in wild, piercing simian shrieks in the grocery store while grabbing at boxes of cereal. When Henry cried, his face crumpled so immediately, so completely. He was not crying now, though she was sure he soon would be, and for some reason she could never have anticipated--an ice-cream cone dropped yesterday, suddenly recalled; a filthy cigarette butt found in the sand and confiscated; the sand itself, suddenly deemed itchy and hostile; the wind, the sound of the waves, a gull swooping low? It could be anything, it would be something. But right now Henry was sitting on his heels poking holes in the wet sand with a stick. The yellow light held him in an embrace. His face was serious and beautiful.

She felt a hand on her hair and looked up. It was Kit, smiling down at her. She had almost forgotten he was there.

Once, Miranda asked Kit why he didn't return to his apartment in the city or move into his Aunt Charlotte's big house.

"I know this place is adorable and picturesque and all," she said, looking around at the boathouse. There were three rooms, all painted a glossy nautical white--a living room containing two Adirondack chairs, a rag rug, a tiny two-burner stove, and a half-size refrigerator; a small bedroom with a maple dresser and a brass bed from the time when people were apparently shorter and thinner; and an even smaller room with an ornate and old-fashioned crib. "But it's all sort of built for hobbits."

"Or Henry."

"But even little Henry needs screens. What do you do, pull out a mosquito net at night? Do you have a fan? Do you have heat? It's not winterized, is it? I hope you have hot water. You do, don't you?"

Kit laughed and nodded.

"But seriously, wouldn't you two be more comfortable in that big rambling mansion? . . .
Manderley
," she added in a thirties movie voice, suddenly self-conscious, worried she had crossed some sort of line.

"Aunt Charlotte would like nothing better, believe me, and I love Aunt Charlotte to death, and I'm really happy to stick around for a while to help her out with a few things before Henry and I go back to New York, but live with her? In the same house? No, thank you. And don't worry, my little homemaker. We not only have hot water, we have heat, don't we, Henry?"

That night when she returned home, Miranda told her mother and sister about this conversation.

"No screens? Feh," said Betty.

Miranda imagined Aunt Charlotte as someone like Big Edie from
Grey Gardens
.

"I lean more toward Miss Havisham," said Annie.

But they were never able to discover which one was closer, for none of them, not even Miranda, could ever think up a reason to meet the reclusive Miss Maybank, and Kit never offered to introduce the old lady.

On the days Kit needed to go into the city, he left Henry with Miranda.

"Now, don't let your friend take advantage of you," Betty said, thinking of the talk show she'd seen about grandmothers stuck raising the toddlers of young, irresponsible parents. She was not technically Henry's grandmother, and she liked the little tyke well enough, but if there was one thing she had learned from the many therapists adorning television's daytime couches, it was the need for boundaries. She had grown up thinking one was supposed to transcend boundaries in life, but it appeared she had been wrong.

Miranda laughed. "No, no," she said. "This is just what the doctor ordered."

And it did seem to do her good, the days spent on the beach searching for shells and sticks, digging saggy tunnels and building uneven, lumpy mounds. Her life in the city, her love affairs, even her work, seemed to fade. The agony of failure rose up and clutched at her still, but less often, with less force. She woke in the morning eager to get out of bed, to bathe with the lavender soap that Henry said smelled like tea. She and Henry had tea parties, just like the ones she had had as a child, with the exception of the fireplace ladies, who were invited, Miranda told Henry, but could not attend due to a previous engagement. She told him all about the fireplace ladies. He nodded sagely and poured his tea, which was really apple juice, on the floor, watching the puddles with scholarly absorption. When she gave him bubble baths, he took the plastic measuring cups and bowls provided for him and imitated her ritual of tea preparation. She was touched, to a degree that surprised her.

Sometimes she would sit Henry atop the ceremonial cannons at the beach and listen to him talk. He would tell long tales about a fox named Higbee.

"And then?" she would say, not paying attention, closing her eyes against the dying autumn sun and the sharp wind, her arms around Henry's waist, her shoulder against his leg. The joy of not listening--why had she never tried it before? Henry's voice was like music, a pretty little piccolo, the chant of a boy in his own boys' choir. No wonder people had children, she thought. A child replaced art and work and culture. A child, so small, so loud, took up all the time, all the energy, all the love. It was so easy: just give in, just let your life be ruled by this simple and tender embodiment of need. No choices, no decisions except those that related to one person, one little demanding Napoleonic person. She felt relief flood through her body: being with Henry was so clear-cut, so obvious, so essential, so undeniable and absolute.

When the stories got too boring even to ignore, Miranda took Henry down and they walked slowly home, stopping to examine the offerings of low tide--mussels, the abandoned, upturned armature of a horseshoe crab, a white pebble, a tangle of russet seaweed, a smell of salt and brine and smooth, sparkling muck.

One evening, Annie caught sight of Kit on the train coming home from the city, pushing the strands of boyish hair back from his face, smiling a rather dazzling smile. Seated in the back of the train car, she watched him walk past her, down the aisle, and she saw heads swivel to look at him, one, then another, as he passed by. He actually turns heads, she thought, amused. Annie could understand it. He was a magnificent creature to look at, a peach ripening on a branch. Annie caught herself noticing his strong young arms beneath his shirt. Even his wrists looked young and manly to her. For years, Annie had been aware of the physical beauty of her sons' friends. They would come and stay during college vacations and sleep piled in their rooms like a pack of dogs, then wander into the kitchen shirtless and sleepy, their hair tousled, their torsos long and smooth as ancient Greeks'. They would blink and stretch and eat, unconscious of their beauty, of the limber physical eloquence of youth. Annie had anesthetized any simmering physical response as quickly and thoroughly as possible. But you could admire them. In fact, how could you help but admire them?

Remembering those shaggy morning parades of boyish beauty, Annie found it natural to fall into a state of admiration for the handsome young Kit, and would have felt no unease if Miranda had done the same. But Miranda's reaction to Kit was not what Annie expected. First of all, Miranda rarely spoke of him, never extravagantly extolled the virtues that would later be cataloged as vices. Nor did she call him on the phone at short, regular intervals. She did not buy him absurdly expensive presents. She did not loudly announce her intense happiness, at last!, to salesgirls and crossing guards and the man behind the meat counter at the grocery store. This one time, Miranda did not fall impetuously in love, announcing that here at last was the one and only man for her. She did not spend every waking minute with him for four weeks and then weep her eyes out when she discovered that he was a fundamentalist, a lush, a Republican, whatever it was that rose up and disappointed her. This time, Miranda, depressed and disoriented by the collapse of her life of the past couple of hard-earned decades, had apparently not had the energy to throw herself into one of her accustomed ferocious love affairs. Her relationship with Kit was different, more even, more peaceful, more plain. Miranda seemed happy, which made Annie happy. But there was something worrisome, too. For who'd ever heard of a temperate Miranda? Without her cloak of extravagance, Miranda seemed so unprotected. She had let down her guard: her gaudy, frenetic, romantic guard. Which meant, Annie thought with dread, that anything could happen now.

The first time Kit and Miranda made love, it was late in the afternoon, two days after they met. Henry was asleep in his crib. The light was golden, saturated, and the white curtains on the windows fluttered noisily in the breeze that swept in from the water. Miranda felt the same arms around her, the Adonis arms, the hero arms that had lifted her from the tossing sea. She laughed out loud, thinking what a fool she was to cast her soggy rescue in such epic terms. When she laughed, Kit told her she was beautiful, that he had found her floating in the ocean and that he would keep her, finders keepers, it was only fair. She allowed herself to disappear, to dissolve into his arms. It was a conscious, almost frenzied release. This was another kind of freedom, this letting go. All responsibility, all aspiration, all disappointment, all of life before that moment was left far, far behind. He undressed her, and she felt her jeans and her sweater, her bra, each bit of clothing slip over her skin. He undressed himself, too, slowly, sure she was watching, she noticed, stringing it out.

They spent almost every afternoon like that, she reeling from the heady emotional simmer: her own fierce, demanding extinction, beneath which rested a calm, solid sense that she was as safe as houses.

When Henry woke up, she would leave Kit asleep in the boathouse and take Henry for a walk on the beach. Tide pools glazed the smooth dark sand, and silver flakes of mica reflected the setting sun. When it rained, they squatted in their slickers and watched the raindrops disrupt the surfaces of the shallow beach puddles. They held hands and spoke in undertones. Miranda had never been religious, but she thought that she could worship Henry with fervor and joy. She thought, I already do.

Cousin Lou was not religious, either: he claimed that he would not like to insult the memory of his benefactress, Mrs. H., by worshipping any god but her. This sacrilegious declaration made both Rosalyn and Betty squirm, but Annie and Miranda laughed every time he said it. In spite of his irreligiosity, however, their cousin could not give up an occasion for a large gathering, and he planned to have thirty for dinner on Rosh Hashanah. The three Weissmanns were invited, as were Kit Maybank and Henry. Among the other guests were a woman Cousin Lou had recently become acquainted with at the Westport YMCA pool during free swim who turned out to be a distant cousin of Rosalyn's; Lou's accountant, Marty, with Marty's large family of several generations; a fellow Lou knew from the golf course who had invented a folding six-foot ladder that was only three-quarters of an inch deep; a plastic surgeon who was always very popular at dinner parties for his willingness to put on his reading glasses and take a closer look; the psychiatrist and his wife; the lawyers; the judge; the metal sculptor; a retired factor from Seventh Avenue; and a former cultural minister of Estonia Lou and Rosalyn had met thirteen years earlier at a spa in Ischia.

When Rosh Hashanah came, a bright, clear, unseasonably warm day, none of the Weissmanns went to synagogue. It had not been their custom for many years, and Betty particularly did not want to this year because, she explained, as one so recently widowed, she could not stand the spiritual strain. So the three women sat on the sunporch and enjoyed the warmth and read the newspaper until, around two o'clock, Kit's white MINI pulled into the driveway.

"They're awfully early," Betty said, eyeing the child in the car seat and wondering if her quiet day was about to be invaded.

Miranda gave her mother a look and went to the car. She could barely contain her excitement. She had just gotten a pair of Crocs that were identical to Henry's own tiny pair of rubber clogs. They were not the kind of footwear she would have ever considered before, not even to wear on the beach, but when she saw them in the store, she imagined Henry's amazement, his pleasure. They were still in the box. She couldn't wait to show him.

She opened the car door and reached in to unstrap Henry.

"No," Kit said, putting a hand out as if to protect the child. "I mean, we're not staying. I mean, we're going."

"But dinner isn't until seven. You can hang out here. Or if you have stuff to do, just leave Henry with me. We have important things to discuss, don't we, Henry?"

"Going on a airplane," Henry said. He clapped his hands.

"An airplane?" Miranda said, clapping in response. "When?"

"Today!"

"Wow! Is the airplane going to take you to Cousin Lou's for dinner?"

He shook his head with vigor. His lower lip pushed out. His eyes screwed shut. And he began, like a thundercloud that blows in with a sudden downpour, to wail.

"Baby," Miranda said, squatting beside the car, reaching in through the open door to stroke his hair. "What's wrong? What's the matter?"

Kit had twisted up his own handsome face uncomfortably. He looked around him, as if searching for reinforcements, then bit his lip, then said, "Look, I'm sorry, Miranda. But we do have to get going . . . Henry, hush, it will be okay . . ." He dug in his jacket pocket and pulled out an old, half-eaten Fruit Roll-Up. "Here, Henry. Now stop crying, okay, buddy?"

Henry sucked sadly on the scrap of red fruit leather.

Miranda continued to stroke his head. "My poor little boy," she said softly. "What was all that about?"

Henry kissed her wrist as it passed near his lips. The pressure, so gentle, like a butterfly's wing, seemed to travel through her entire body. She took his free hand and held it against her cheek. This, she thought, is all there is. This little hand. In mine.

Miranda then had a sharp, clear, overpowering vision of holding Henry on her hip while she . . . well, not while she cooked. No, but while she entered a restaurant. With Kit beside her. She saw them feeding the child bits of California roll, without wasabi, the way Henry liked it. She could feel the bedtime sheets, too, pulling them up as she tucked Henry in at night, could feel his soft, warm breath on her hand as she stroked his cheek. The sweaty, wet sweetness of his body, soggy diaper and all, when he woke up--she clutched that against her; the echoing crunch of Henry eating cereal--she could hear it. Every night, every morning. Then, in a year or so, he would go off to preschool and make wobbly little friends his own age, and she would walk him there, holding his hand, slowing her pace for him, lifting him up when he got tired. Truck, he would call out, pointing at the garbage men rumbling by. He would want to grow up to be a garbage man, and she would look at him proudly and think, You are perfect, Henry. You are perfect, and I belong to you.

When Kit spoke, now standing beside her, she turned a beatific face to him.

"Hmm?" she said. "Sorry . . ."

"I said we really do have to catch a plane . . ."

Miranda tilted her head, like a dog, a trusting and innocent dog who has been given a confusing command.

"Plane?" she said, looking up at Kit.

"Listen, I just wanted to say goodbye. It's so sudden and crazy. And I wanted to apologize about tonight . . ."

"Wait," Miranda said. "What?"

She'd thought for a moment that Kit said he had to catch a plane. Henry's fingers were now splayed out in the air in front of him. She watched them, marveled at them. They were like some glorious, exotic insect. A new species, one she had discovered.

"I got a part," Kit said.

Miranda thought she heard "I've got to part," and wondered why Kit said "I" and not "We," but then realized what he meant.

"Part?" she asked.

"Look, I just found out." Kit was kicking the dirt of the driveway nervously. "It's a real break. I mean, it's nothing, it's tiny, but it's work."

Work, Miranda thought. Work is good. Say something nice. But she felt panicked. Work was what she had loved once. Now she loved Henry. And maybe, just maybe, Kit as well.

"Work!" she said.

Betty observed the threesome from the porch. She thought how much they looked like a family. Perhaps, somehow, against all odds, this improbable arrangement would work for Miranda. If only Miranda could find some kind of domestic peace at last. Betty waved hello to Kit and, followed by Annie, descended the cracked cement steps onto the patchy stubble of lawn.

"Hello, Kit!" they called. "Hello, Henry! What brings you here so early?"

"A part!" Miranda said, trying to smile. "Kit got a part."

"Oh well," Kit murmured. "Small part . . . Independent film . . ."

"Kit and Henry are going away," Miranda said in a bizarre sing-song, as if she were addressing Henry, or were insane. "On an airplane."

Betty was visited by the swift, looping nausea she'd had when Joseph announced his departure. She saw Miranda's expression, she heard the loud crashing echo, felt the chill, the vortex. She had been married to Joseph forever, Miranda and Kit had known each other for a month or so. But however long it had been or however short, did it matter? Did it ever really matter? No, Betty thought. A broken heart is a broken heart.

"How long will you be gone?" she asked, though she thought she knew. He had that look about him, that I'm-not-sure-how-long look, that look of goodbye.

"I have to go to L.A. . . . I don't really know how long," Kit said. He turned back to Miranda. "Look, I'm so sorry about tonight . . . I mean, I'm sorry period."

Miranda took Henry's hand again. "L.A." She wanted to explain to Kit that L.A. was too far away, that even a short trip was interminable, that one day would be one day too many. She wanted to explain that she had had a vision of their lives together, she wanted him to understand what she had just discovered, that her heart had found a home at last.

Instead, controlling her voice as well as she could, she asked if Kit would like to leave Henry with her. "Won't that make it easier for you? I mean, if it's a short time . . ."

Kit drummed his fingers on the roof of the car. "Look, Miranda, I don't know how long it will be. And his mother will be back soon, so she can get him, right?"

His mother. Miranda held Henry's hand against her cheek, pressing it there, absorbing the touch of each small finger.

"I'm really sorry about all this . . ." Kit was saying. "I'll miss you, Miranda. We'll both miss you."

"Hey, don't be sorry," she forced herself to say. "A part in a movie! It's great, Kit."

"Yeah." He shrugged and looked miserable.

"What?"

"No 'what.' It's great."

"Jesus, cheer up, then. Right, Henry?" She leaned farther into the car and pressed her face against Henry's. He made kissing, smacking sounds, then pushed his sugary lips on her cheek. "I love you, Henry," she whispered.

"I love Randa," he shouted.

Miranda stood up. She felt off balance, disconnected from the little car, the man in front of her, her mother, her sister. How silly of her. They were just going away for a while. She had no claim on either of them. Visions were dreams. Dreams were fiction. Fiction was lies. "Break a leg," she said to Kit with her big public smile.

"Yeah. Thanks. Well, I'll call you." He gave her a quick hug. "I really will."

Betty noted the "really." She reached out for Miranda's hand and squeezed it.

Miranda pulled her hand away. "I'm fine."

"Randa!" Henry cried with sudden desperation as they pulled out of the driveway. "Randa! Randa!"

"Oh God," Kit was saying. "Not now, Henry, please."

Miranda waved and called goodbye to Henry, who waved a chubby hand as his father reached back and shoved a pacifier in his mouth.

Miranda stood in the driveway beneath the dying pine tree. Her smile faltered, sagged into heavy, slack resignation.

"I realize he just found out and he had a plane to catch. But, boy, that was so sudden," said Annie.

"We'll miss Henry," Betty said. She could not bring herself to say anything about Kit. "Cute little fellow."