Free The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine Page B

and ironed them into crisply folded rectangles. When they first came to the cottage, Betty had suggested sending them to the dry cleaner, or at least the fluff-and-fold laundry downtown called the Washing Well, but Annie had put her foot down.
    "We have a washer and a dryer. It's about the only thing that works in this house, so we might as well use it and not waste money."
    She was, therefore, responsible for the napkins herself. They had acquired a few yellow stains, she noticed, and she certainly was not going to stand around for hours watching soap operas and ironing them the way Jocasta had. She placed the rumpled stained cloths beside her mother's good china. The napkins looked disgruntled, rebellious, like a crowd of disheveled revolutionaries. Maybe they should use paper towels, after all.
    "Wash your hands before dinner, girls," Betty said.
    Girls again. Could you re-create your childhood in a new place at an advanced age and without one of the key players? Annie wondered. For better or for worse, that's what they seemed to be doing. Oh, Josie, what were you thinking, leaving us here to play house, three place settings instead of four? "The Odd Trio" Miranda had dubbed them, but it was clear from the outset that they were, all three, the fussy one, each pursing her lips in disapproval of the other two, each missing the man who was not there.
    "I can't imagine what all the neighbors think we're doing here, three old broads in this ramshackle house," Annie said as she watched a woman walk a big galloping black dog down the street.
    "Oh, they think we're Russians," Betty said.
    "Why?"
    "Because that's what I told them."
    Annie pressed her forehead against the window. Russians?
    "Refugees!" Miranda said, delighted. "Cousin Lou must like that."
    "Yes. I said we had all lost our poor husbands."
    "How?" Annie asked.
    "KGB, dear. How else?"
    Those first few weeks of the Weissmanns' sojourn in Westport had about them both a reassuring and a festive air. The weather was holiday weather--unusually cool for late August, the blue of the sky clear and deep, a few bright clouds rolling by. There were ferocious showers in the afternoons now and then, as if they were in the tropics. Then the rain would pass, leaving the air fresher than ever, the light golden, clean, and rich. In addition, Betty was a wonderful cook in a traditional way that Annie and Miranda both associated with holidays, and it was Betty who did most of the cooking on the old stove. None of them was sure how this had happened--it had never been discussed or formalized in any way. But somehow, Betty was cooking for her children as she had done so many years before. The only exceptions came when the three women were commandeered for dinner at Cousin Lou's. Betty said it was cruel to deny him their company, particularly when he was being so kind about the cottage. She did not say that she was seventy-five years old and sometimes cooking dinner was tiring. Nor did anyone ask.
    At one of these Cousin Lou dinners, Miranda was seated next to a tall, serious man, as stately as a house in his dark, smooth suit. He might have been nice-looking if he hadn't seemed quite so formal and hadn't been wearing a bow tie. But he was formal, he was wearing a bow tie, and after releasing the information that he was a semiretired lawyer, he said very little else. Miranda, who liked to listen and was so good at it, tended to interpret reticence as a personal insult. However, she was always willing to give people a second chance.
    "What do you do now that you're retired?" she forced herself to ask. "Or, I should say, semiretired?"
    "Fish."
    "Really? Fish has become so stressful."
    He gave her a perturbed look. Has they? he wanted to ask.
    "Ordering it, I mean."
    "Ah. It."
    "Aren't you worried about global warming and overfishing and mercury?"
    "Oh, I never catch any."
    After this, the conversation refused to take even one more ungainly step, and Miranda, defeated, turned to the person on