"Now, don't you Oh Yes me, Betty Weissmann. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking we're just making this generous offer because we feel sorry for you, and I can understand that, I really can, but you have to believe me, it's mostly because we love you and want what's best."
Betty moved back to her desk, but she did not look at the mound of papers and bright folders piled high upon it. She was staring at the television set. There, on the soap opera she favored because it was set in a seaside town not unlike Westport, if Westport were inhabited by spies, terrorists, gangsters, and swinging wife-swapping millionaires, which who was to say it wasn't, there on the screen, in the soap opera's popular new art gallery hangout, stood a handsome dark-haired young man facing another handsome blond young man. There was tension, visible tension between them. And tenderness. And longing. Betty had seen that expression before. She had seen Kit Maybank look at Miranda like that. Only now Kit Maybank was on television in an art gallery standing before a reproduction--she supposed it had to be a reproduction--of a Keith Haring (her friends Arnie and Maureen bought one years ago, she hadn't understood it at the time, but it certainly had appreciated) and his, Kit Maybank's, hand shot out and grasped the hand of the other handsome young man, the one with blond hair, and Kit Maybank stepped forward and the other young man stepped forward and Kit Maybank was in the other young man's arms and the other young man was in Kit Maybank's arms and with the Keith Haring reproduction as a backdrop they were kissing, passionately, with their mouths gaping, as people always seemed to kiss on soap operas.
"Oh my God," she heard Miranda gasp from the doorway behind her.
"Betty?" Rosalyn was saying into the phone. "Betty, are you there?"
"I can't believe it!" Miranda said.
"Now, Miranda, it's just a role," Betty said.
"Betty?" Rosalyn said again.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Rosalyn. Miranda's young man just kissed another young man on television."
"What young man? Kit? Kit's gay?"
"Just on TV."
Miranda, moving closer to the TV, said, "Kit's in Los Angeles!"
"Los Angeles?" Rosalyn said, overhearing Miranda. "I hope he got his marriage in before they changed the law."
"Kit's married?" Betty asked.
"Kit's married?" Miranda said. She grabbed the phone from her mother. "Kit's married?" she asked Rosalyn.
"He is? Well, you live long enough, you see everything."
On the plane ride to Los Angeles, Miranda gazed impatiently out the window. Although all of them were thrilled to be liberated from what Miranda called cottage arrest, it had still not been easy for her to convince the other inmates to make the trip. It was a challenge, but Miranda had always liked a challenge in the good old days before her life had collapsed, and this one had energized her. It was a pleasure to have a goal again, to work her mother and sister the way she used to work publishers and editors. She snapped back into that alert, predatory sentience of her occupation not with pleasure so much as exasperated fondness--this was something she knew, an old fawning pal. She had been forced to campaign using both subtlety and aggression, sweetness and sour-tempered sarcasm. Of course, she had prevailed. She could not recall a time when she had not prevailed within her family. Betty had hesitated, not relishing the role of beggarly relative in two different geographical locations. But she had caved fairly quickly. The holdout, as usual, was Annie.
"They're paying for it, so you can't use that as an excuse," Miranda said. "The library is giving all of you a forced two-week unpaid vacation, so you can't use that."
"Go by yourself," Annie had said. "If you want to go so badly."
Only when Annie found out that neither Charlie nor Nick could make it to Connecticut for Christmas did she give in.
"I'm sorry we won't get to see them," Miranda said to Annie.
But she wasn't sorry. She was exhilarated. The nose of the plane was pointed toward the West Coast. Somewhere on that coast were Kit Maybank and Henry Maybank. Somewhere between Los Angeles, where Kit now lived, and Palm Springs, where he spent his weekends in a rented house he shared with a friend. She had read all about him on a soap opera fan blog. Kit's disappearance made sense to her now, his silence. He was not on a little independent movie at all. He was a soap opera regular. No wonder he had been so uncommunicative, so distant. He who had dreamed of Shakespeare was now playing Zink Lattimore, gay graffiti artist. Poor Kit was mortified, that was all. That was why she hadn't heard from him. He had hoped to slink away into daytime TV obscurity, leaving her with her exalted vision of him, with her memories intact.
"Funny about memories," she said to Annie, who had, as usual, volunteered to sit in the middle seat.
"Useless author trivia," Annie said. "That's the kind of memory I have: today is Rex Stout's birthday. For example."
"What street did his detective live on? It seemed an odd address even at the time," said Betty.
"Thirty-fourth Street. 918 West Thirty-fourth Street, sometimes 922, 904. Once it was 918 East Thirty-fourth Street. It was always the same brownstone, though."