The Three Weissmanns of Westport (20 page)

"J. Smeaton Chase lived in Palm Springs," Annie had offered. "He wrote a book about it."

"Celebrities, etc.?" Betty asked.

"No. More like cactuses, etc."

When they arrived at the airport, they picked up their rental car. It was the only expense they would have for their entire two-week stay. Cousin Lou had insisted on paying for the plane tickets. They had refused until Rosalyn explained that he would use frequent-flier miles that were about to run out.

"Don't be proud," she said. "It is no longer appropriate."

Betty was too proud to respond.

Now she drove along the windy highway, the little Ford Focus shaking from side to side. Her daughters had each offered to take the wheel, saying what a long flight it had been, how tired she must be. Meaning, of course, how old she was. It was an ugly road, but the sky was vast and blue, the malls gradually gave way to cactus, and the snowy mountains crept closer and closer. Betty tried to enjoy the view as the car shuddered through a forest of tall white windmills.

"Wow," Miranda said. "Try tilting at those."

They pulled up into the driveway of a one-story house among other one-story houses. Its roof was shaped like a nun's hat, wings swooping up on either side. Standing at the front door were two men: Rosalyn's father, Mr. Shpuntov, and Roberts, the semiretiree.

Annie rolled down her window and called out a hello.

"Huh," Miranda said. "Codger talk, poor old souls."

"
Your
soul certainly isn't old," Annie said. "Infantile perhaps, but not old." While my soul is quite thoroughly middle-aged, she thought.

"There is no soul," Betty said suddenly, with unexpected force. "Everyone knows that."

Roberts and Mr. Shpuntov had indeed been indulging in codger talk. Mr. Shpuntov found it warm for December in the Bronx, while Roberts agreed that the dry, bright winter heat was not usual for the Bronx at this time of year and left it at that. Then the old man lurched toward the door and began violently ringing the bell. When his daughter answered, he barked out a cross "Who's there? What do you want here? Go away," then slammed the door in her face, muttering something uncomplimentary about Jehovah's Witnesses.

Roberts paid no attention. He had turned his back on the shouting and slamming and was striding over to the white rental car. He gave a short wave and a quick flicker of a smile. He did not smile much, but when he did, his face was animated. Annie noticed, to her surprise, how strong he was--his arms in their short-sleeve polo shirt were surprisingly thick for such a tall, slender man. As he carried all their suitcases into the house, she gave Miranda a poke in the back.

"What was that for?"

Annie shrugged. She really didn't know. "You underestimate Roberts," she said.

"Oh, that again," Miranda said, shaking her head and walking off into the house.

But you do, Annie thought. You're unfair. Roberts is pensive, a man of calm surfaces and immeasurable depths, while all you notice is the chop and spray of windswept waves. It's a pity. For both of you.

"Are you staying with Cousin Lou and Rosalyn, too?" Annie asked him when they were all inside.

"No, no. I have a condo here. Just down the street."

"You people move in a pack," Miranda said, laughing.

Roberts smiled. "All the old snowbirds. Yes, we do. Not much imagination, I guess."

"You ladies will stay in the guesthouse," Rosalyn said. "Your mother will stay in the house with us. That way you will
all
have your
privacy
."

She managed to say this in a way that suggested both that the daughters wanted urgently to get away from their unpleasant mother and that the mother wanted urgently to get away from her unpleasant daughters.

"We are indebted to you and will be happy wherever you put us," Betty said with narrowed eyes.

"It's beautiful here." Annie looked out the windows. Across the street was a pink stucco house with an incongruous rich green lawn. Beyond it, the desert, purple in its shadows, reached out to the snow-capped mountains.

In the back of the house, a large patio surrounded two sunken areas, one containing what seemed to be a kind of outdoor kitchen with refrigerator, grill, and bar, the other centered on a fire pit. Beyond that was a pool, a golf course, and then more mountains and the wide Western sky.

"We practically live outside," Rosalyn said proudly, seeing Betty staring out.

"No, but look at that scrawny dog," Betty said. "Just sunning himself on the golf course. It's so sweet."

"Lou!" Rosalyn cried. She began waving her arms. "Shoo! Shoo! Lou! The coyote!"

The animal rose lazily to its dainty feet and loped away across the green, turning its head once or twice to look back at the small, wildly gesticulating woman.

"You did it!" Lou said proudly. "My little frontier woman. You bow to no coyote!"

But within seconds they beheld another reason for the coyote's rapid departure: a golf cart, its fringed canopy bumping jauntily, carrying two girls, rattling across the exact spot where the coyote had lain.

"Oh, look!" Rosalyn said. "It's Crystal and Amber!"

For a moment Annie wondered if Rosalyn had spotted mineral deposits in the rocky mountains above them. Then she realized she was referring to the golf cart girls. They were both in their twenties, tanned and fit and wearing shorts, their identically pretty bellies exposed below tiny stylish polo shirts. They resembled each other so much they had to be sisters, but one, the younger, was dark and bright, her eyes sparkling with certainty, while the older had a fair, indefinite smoothness. Neither was beautiful, but they both conformed to the rules of fashion and gave off a vague sense of beauty anyway, like a fire that burns bright but has no heat.

"Did you see the wolf?" the older one, who was Crystal, said. "Oh my God, I was freaking
out
."

"It was a coyote," said Amber. "Don't you ever watch
Nat Geo
?"

"Well, whatever," said Crystal, her face glowing with excitement.

Amber and Crystal were in Palm Springs house-sitting. They did not call themselves house sitters, though. They were "home sitters," they said. Rosalyn had met them on the golf course and they had "adopted" her. Accustomed to standing by as people made a fuss over her husband as he made a fuss over them, Rosalyn had, not surprisingly, grown fond of the two girls. They had arrived now to take her around the golf course and drop in on any neighbors who happened to be sitting out on their patios having cocktails.

"Don't the neighbors mind?" Annie asked. "I mean, if you're not invited?"

The girls looked at her as if she were the middle-aged librarian she was.

"Oh, Annie, don't be such a stick in the mud. You're in Palm Springs now! You're on vacation," Rosalyn said, climbing aboard the golf cart and waving gaily as it trundled off across the bright green turf.

Annie waved back, chastened. She and Miranda proceeded to the guesthouse, a little miniature of the main house. Miranda was almost giddy with pleasure. She spun around the small patio facing the mountains.

"I love it here!" Miranda shouted. "The sky. The mountains. The froufrou minimalism of the houses. The lawns in the desert. The coyotes on the golf course. It's so wild and dowdy at the same time. I just love it!"

She stretched out on a chaise. "Sun!"

"Don't get a burn," Annie said, more because she felt it was somehow expected of her than because she worried about the late-afternoon rays.

But Miranda, eyes closed, just shook her head and smiled.

Annie sat outside that night missing her children. Christmas holidays without them were a sickly, hollow time. She had spoken to them earlier, using the computer and seeing their faces, distorted by the angle of their laptops. Nick had wanted her to send him the shampoo he liked and more contact lenses. Charlie was too old to ask her to do long-distance errands. That was a blessing, but it made her sad, too. Everyone grew up, it seemed. Except perhaps Miranda.

Annie went to the bathroom and held up her traveling magnifying mirror and gave a few desultory plucks where needed, then went back to the bedroom, where Miranda was in bed intently studying something on her laptop. The room was cool, and outside, the world ended in abrupt black night. Annie moved closer, but Miranda moved her cursor across the screen and the windows swept themselves away, leaving behind nothing but an expanse of digital blue.

So, Annie thought, Kit Maybank? Maybe Henry would appear in the morning and moo like a cow and quack like a duck to the amazement of his elders. Miranda and Kit could walk and talk and admire the sunset, bound by the little boy between them, swinging from their hands. Or not. Miranda had confided nothing to Annie. For all Annie knew, she had met a new suitor online and was going to meet him at midnight in Joshua Tree National Park. Probably turn out to be a serial murderer. Oh God . . . Annie looked over at her sister, safe in the next bed, to reassure herself. I wonder, she thought, if Miranda ever worries about me.

The next day, while Mr. Shpuntov napped in his room, his uneven snores broadcast through the house by a baby monitor, Betty sat on a comfortable mid-century chair trying to read a mystery called
Return to Sender
she'd found in her room. It was bright mid-morning, but the wall of windows was protected by an overhang of the swooping roof and the living room had a welcome dimness, a soft contrast to the harsh daylight on the other side. The book was frustratingly dull. Most mysteries are, she thought. The mystery of her marriage, for example. She could turn the years over and over again in her mind and they still added up to happiness that had been shredded suddenly and inexplicably into ugly scraps of pain. She sighed, more loudly than she would have liked, for Roberts, who had just come in, looked concerned and sat beside her.

"You're worried," he said.

"No. Not really. That would involve hope."

"Oh dear."

"I just don't understand. Maybe the end of a marriage is like God, and we are not meant to understand."

Roberts nodded in apparent agreement. "My wife died ten years ago. I don't understand that either. I miss her every day. Do you miss your husband?"

"Yes. Every minute. It's easier when I pretend he's dead. I'm sorry--that must sound so callous to you. But if he's alive, if he's alive and behaving like this . . . well . . . And he always prided himself on being such a decent man . . ."

Roberts said, "Sometimes people need some guidance, don't you think? Even decent people, and especially people who think they're decent."

Betty liked the tone of his voice. Not hysterical and fuming like her daughters, not cautious and pessimistic like her lawyers, not numb and beaten down like her own inner voice. Even talking to Cousin Lou, who advised her on some of the real estate aspects of her Case, was trying--his hearty reassurance, so touching, so enraging. Roberts's voice was quiet and determined, as if it were on its way somewhere, someplace it needed to be. He asked her a few questions about her lawyers, about the disposition of the Case. Betty had never discussed her Case with someone who understood the law before, except her lawyers, of course, but they seemed to find the law a constantly surprising series of impediments, as if they were crossing rocky desert terrain for the first time and had forgotten their shoes.

"What fun this has been!" she said. "Odd how a little kvetching can cleanse the soul."

"Well, let's just see what happens," Roberts said with a smile. "Let's just see what happens with the late great Joseph Weissmann."