The Three Weissmanns of Westport

immediately inserted into the conversation now, as if both she and the breakup were one of his professional credentials. He looked rather like a model himself, a tall handsome young man, and Annie thought she caught him making a model face in the window's nighttime reflection, pursing his lips, glaring, pulling in his chin just a fraction.

'So you're the famous Annie,' Gwen said with a distinct lack of warmth.

'Dad talks so much about you,' Evan said, and Annie got the impression that, like his sister, he would have preferred that 'Dad' find a new topic of conversation.

'Annie, I was hoping I could take you out to a celebratory dinner tonight,' Frederick said.

'Don't you think you should be getting back, Dad?' Evan said. 'I don't like the idea of you driving so far at night.'

Frederick laughed. 'You guys,' he said.

'It's a six-hour drive,' his daughter said sharply. 'Six and a half.'

'Isn't it lucky I don't have a curfew?'

Even as he said it, Annie could see that although Frederick may not have had a curfew, it would be enforced. She and Frederick were not going out to dinner that night. Children were tyrants.

Felicity had come to the reading to hear her brother, and as Felicity approached the table, her turquoise eyes wide as always, Annie noticed how much Gwen resembled her. Perhaps those eyes remained wide as she slept. Or rolled open like a doll's.

'You mustn't monopolize the star,' she said to Annie.

'No, of course not.'

'I mean, I am his sister.' And she gave Annie a meaningful look, the meaning of which Annie could not make out.

Annie pointed to her own sister, as if that would somehow justify her standing by the table. 'There's my sister,' she said, and she waved Miranda over, signaling desperation by the childhood code of tapping her left eyebrow with her right pinky, a gesture distinctive enough for a trained sister to recognize but not quite awkward enough to arouse suspicion.

'Your father has a beautiful reading voice, don't you think?' Miranda said when she was introduced to Gwen and Evan. 'I think this book is extremely powerful. The prose is so vigorous...'

The pro forma remarks, into which Miranda was politely inserting as much sincerity as she could muster, would have gone on, but Annie interrupted her with a blunt 'My sister's an agent.'

'Oh yes,' Gwen said. 'We know.' She gave Miranda a cold smile.

'Infamy becomes me,' Miranda said.

'Everything becomes you, beautiful Miranda,' Frederick offered, rather gallantly, Annie thought. ''In thy face I see the map of honour, truth, and loyalty,'' he added in the exaggerated way people do when they are quoting.

'Lovely family, too,' Felicity said, with her pie eyes looking almost challenging. 'But then why shouldn't they be?'

'Where are you off to that's so many hours away?' Annie asked Frederick. She did not even bother to add 'after dinner.' Somehow that was settled — there would be no dinner. No discussion, no dinner, just settled.

'The Cape.'

'Why you want to live there I do not understand,' said Gwen. 'The summer, yes. But winter?'

'Your father is sentimental,' Felicity said. 'Not that it has done him any harm. In the way of real estate appreciation.'

'Oh, I love Cape Cod in the winter,' said Miranda. 'To stand high up on one of those dunes, your bare feet numb in the cold sand, the wind blowing, the crash of the waves... It's incredibly romantic.'

'I hope you won't be too disappointed if I tell you that what I like about going up there, especially in the winter, is the quiet. It's so' — he thought for a moment — 'so unencumbered.'

Annie turned that unexpected word over in her mind. Unencumbered.

'Well, that's not romantic at all,' Miranda said, and her voice was equal parts shocked and authoritative, as if Frederick had suddenly lifted his shirt and showed her a bad case of ringworm, for which she just happened to have the right tube of cream in her purse. 'We'll have to do something about that.'

Unencumbered. Why did that sound so ominous to Annie, so bleak?

'Frederick is done with romance,' Felicity said.

'You think I'm too old?' Frederick asked.

'Oh no, age has nothing to do with it. It's temperament, Frederick. And will.' And she smiled a private smile, her lips pulled together in a cupid bow.

Miranda was saying that she had once gone paragliding on the beach in Wellfleet and suggested Frederick might treat his lack of romance by viewing the dunes from so many feet up; then she drifted off to a cluster of people she seemed to know.

'Why don't you just stay tonight?' Gwen said to Frederick. 'With one of us,' she added, glancing at Annie.

'I'm just a homebody, Gwennie. And I've got some kid house sitter I don't altogether trust this week — I have to get back.'

'In that case, you better leave now,' Gwen said. She gave Annie a challenging look. 'Don't you think?'

Frederick also looked at Annie. 'Maybe you'll come up sometime and see the place.'

Evan said, 'You could get three brownstones in Red Hook for that joint.'

'Hardly that,' Frederick said. 'And you'll just have to buy your own brownstones in Red Hook or wait until I'm dead, because I have no intention of selling the house.'

Evan shrugged. 'I was just making an observation.'

'Dad,' Gwen said. She looked at her watch.

And, suddenly, Annie was alone.

She piled up the six or seven unsold books and thought wistfully of her own children. When would her boys start ordering her around, instead of the other way around?

She saw Frederick trotting back through the door toward her. He took both her hands, then kissed her on the cheek. Their noses bumped as he unexpectedly kissed her a second time on her other cheek.

'I had to thank you,' he said. 'I couldn't leave without thanking you.'

'No, no, thank you for bringing in such a crowd.'

'And don't worry about my driving back tonight,' he added as he walked off. 'I could do that drive in my sleep.'

'That's not too reassuring,' she said. 'The sleep part.'

'I'll call you,' Frederick said, and he was gone.

Betty watched her daughter from the other side of the room. How serious she looked. Attractive, in a severe sort of way. Betty remembered giving Annie a sweater with sequins, just a few sequins, very tasteful, very chic. The look on Annie's face — it was so pure, such pure dislike. Betty smiled. It was like the time Annie had wanted a cowboy outfit and they gave her a pink cowgirl skirt. It had offended her, even at five. If she had known the word 'garish' at that tender age, she would surely have used it. How Betty and Joseph had laughed that night in bed, embarrassed that they had so misread their daughter, amused by her sickened expression. And touched, too, for just as she had quickly hidden her dislike of the sequins years later, she had even as a tiny child tried to cover her disappointment as quickly as possible. Annie had such a good heart. It must be a burden to be so critical and so considerate at the same time, Betty thought. She was glad Annie seemed so taken with this Frederick Barrow person. He had a twinkle in his eye. Annie could use a twinkle. Poor Annie. She had always been such a grown-up little girl. It had been touching when she was a child, that worried little face watching her heedless, happy sister roar and sob and spin in circles, and it was touching still. Betty watched Miranda now, striding across the room to wrap her arms around Annie. Annie's expression softened. How lucky I am, thought Betty. She felt the damn tears gathering. I'm so lucky, she repeated to herself. But the tears never listened to her these days. Had they ever? It was hard to remember what she had been like before she was like this.

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