"Oh Christ, what do you know about it?" Miranda snapped. "Either of you?"
When they arrived for Rosh Hashanah dinner at Lou's big house overlooking Long Island Sound, Miranda was quiet and subdued. She had barely spoken a word to her mother and sister since the departure of Kit and Henry. Annie was surprised Miranda had even agreed to come with them. There had been a moment when, after coming out of her room dressed and made up and looking beautiful, if a little grim, Miranda's hand had gone to her forehead and her eyes had closed and Annie had braced herself for some sort of histrionic display. But Miranda had merely pushed her hair back, opened her eyes, and said, "Oh, let's get it over with." Perhaps with the real difficulties that had befallen them, Miranda had finally grown out of her stormy theatrical fits. Annie decided to take Miranda's passivity as a good sign. Yet when she stole a glance at her sister's face, colorless, expressionless, she almost wished Miranda would give a good rant, would fume and tear out her hair.
"It won't be as much fun without little Henry here," Annie said, looking around at the crowd of senior citizens, most of whom continued to refer to themselves as middle-aged. She did miss the presence of the little boy, but she also meant to convey some kind of sympathy--although Miranda did not always appreciate sympathy from her sister, usually interpreting it as pity or criticism. "I'll miss him."
"You have your own children."
"Well, yes, but . . ."
"But nothing," Miranda said savagely, then turned on her heel and stalked off, leaving Annie and Betty nonplussed and, both, somewhat embarrassed.
A knot of people were already gathered in the living room and engaged in fervent conversation. The surgeon had complimented the cultural minister of Estonia on breaking away from the Soviet Union thereby escaping socialized medicine, because just look at Canada, to which the lawyer responded that Canada had no privacy laws. At this, the woman from the YMCA pool said that if you have nothing to hide, privacy should not be an issue. The metal sculptor pointed out that you could still live a bohemian life in Montreal, what with cheap rents and government grants, even without privacy and a falling U.S. dollar, to which the surgeon replied that a government grant would not be much solace if you had to wait six months for a knee replacement by a doctor who spoke only French, which caused the inventor to lament that French President Sarkozy's flamboyant behavior was perhaps not as good for the Jews as he had at first hoped.
"President Bling-Bling," Cousin Lou said, savoring the sound of the words.
"Oh, Betty!" cried Rosalyn. Seeing her cousin and suddenly reminded by the word "bling," she waved her wrist with its heavy gold-and-emerald bracelet. "What do you think?"
"Beautiful. Beautiful."
"Not too much? I don't want to look gaudy. The economy is so bad, it could be offensive. I try to be sensitive to these things."
"They're cabochon, that tones it down."
"I'm a limousine liberal," Lou said. "Why not be comfortable?"
"You were always an iconoclast, dear," said Rosalyn, patting his arm indulgently.
There was very good wine. Rosalyn had tried, in the early years, to economize by serving lesser wines to the constant flow of guests, but Lou had prevailed.
"But they're here every night," Rosalyn had said.
"And so are we," Lou had explained.
Rosalyn bowed to what she understood to be self-interest, but in fact Lou would have served his guests good wine even if he'd been a teetotaler. He enjoyed raising a glass of the good stuff with his guests, however, then raising another. On this Rosh Hashanah night, he held his third up to the light to watch the liquid cling to the sides as he gently swirled it. It has legs, he thought happily. Like a play that is a success. Like a showgirl. Like a table. Lou loved the English language. English was part of his American identity, and so he cherished it. He had been told that when he left a message on an answering machine, you could hear his German accent, but he dismissed that information as complete nonsense, making sure however, from that moment on, if someone did not pick up their telephone themselves, to hang up and try again later.
"Beautiful," he murmured now, meaning the wine, its legs, the word "legs," legs of all kinds, the room, the people in it drinking wine, and always, the view of the water, over which an enormous harvest moon rose in slow, round orange motion.
Annie, seated on a low bench, also looked out at the moon and wondered what Frederick was doing.
"Why is he always talking to me?" Mr. Shpuntov was saying in a loud angry voice. "Why does he bother me?"