The mailbox was a fat, new, shiny affair, and on both sides, in bold black letters, it said: the wisemen.
They did not go to dinner that night, despite the imploring swing of Cousin Lou's jowls. They waited for the moving van, then began to unpack the boxes. Annie and Miranda had the two bedrooms on the ground floor, their mother the large attic room upstairs.
"My childhood furniture," Annie said, sitting on the mahogany sleigh bed Betty had gotten her at an auction when she was twelve. "It's much nicer than my own furniture." Still, over the years, Annie had acquired one or two pieces she was fond of. Would the visiting French professor and his wife leave cigarette burns on the arms of her chairs? Already, she could not wait to get back to her apartment.
Miranda, in contrast, was quite giddy. "I feel like we're in a dollhouse," she said. "And we're the dolls."
Annie shuddered.
"It's an adventure," Miranda said.
"An adventure in claustrophobia."
"You'll see."
Miranda often said You'll see. Annie found it oddly comforting, as if Miranda knew what was coming, knew that everything would be all right, knew how to make it be all right.
"Do you think Mom seems a little shell-shocked?" Annie asked.
"We're our own dolls," Miranda said, as if she had not heard Annie. "In our own dollhouse."
Upstairs, Betty was staring out the attic window. She could hear Miranda and Annie talking downstairs. The sound was soft and indistinct, but familiar, like a memory. So much seemed like a memory these days. This blue sky with its banks of white clouds was a memory. And this town: leaning against an old black Buick at the station, waiting for Joseph's train, the girls chattering just as they were doing now, that same sky arched high above them; the train chugging into sight, giving its great slow sigh as it braked. Then, out of its door stepped another memory: her husband. Her husband, Joseph.
"Can you see the water?" Annie asked, clumping up the stairs.
"It's beautiful."
"Oh, look, a sailboat."
"This is my widow's walk," Betty said.
It would be worth everything, Annie thought, if her mother could be happy here. Betty's hair, a very pretty auburn created at great expense by an Italian colorist at Frederic Fekkai, was surrounded by a nimbus of light. Annie put her arms around her and rested her cheek on the auburn head. Outside, in the distance, gulls wheeled in the blue sky. "Don't be sad," she said.
"Oh no." Betty patted her daughter's hand to reassure her. "I'm a merry widow."
This, to Annie and Miranda's surprise, turned out to be all too true. In the days to come, not only was Betty merry, but she insisted that she was, literally, a widow.
"Poor, dear Joseph," she said when they finally accepted Cousin Lou's invitation to dinner. "God rest his soul."
Lou raised an eyebrow and looked at Annie. Annie shrugged. "Mom's a widow," she said. "Didn't you know?"
"Don't be fresh," Betty said, and swept into the living room in her black linen pants and tunic.
Cousin Lou was not one to argue with anyone who was kind enough to accept his hospitality. He took Annie and Miranda, each on one arm, and escorted them into the big living room that overlooked the water. They were on a hill, and their view of the Sound was unimpeded except by the many figures who stood in front of the glass walls. There was an artist and a pianist, a Holocaust scholar, a psychiatrist, a young Internet mogul, several Wall Street people, two surgeons, an architect, and a lawyer--all of them with spouses, all of their spouses with their own careers. Lou introduced all his guests simply by their first names, as if they were family pets, even patting their heads now and then. It was only after he steered Annie and Miranda over to a woman dressed in white and perched on the arm of the sofa who, he reminded them, was his wife, that they learned in great detail the last names and occupations of the guests they had just been introduced to. Annie had half expected Lou to note that his wife was "like family," but instead, he hurried off and left Rosalyn to nod her rather large head in the direction of each specimen they'd just met and relate in a loud, rasping whisper what that person did professionally.
"They seem very distinguished," Annie said, sensing that was what Rosalyn required.
"I am drawn to exceptional people," Rosalyn said. "It is my vice." Then she smiled at the absurdity of someone like herself having something as tasteless as a vice.
"They're like family," Miranda offered.
Rosalyn raised an eyebrow at her. "One cannot choose one's family," she said. "Can one?"