Ann Beattie - What Was Mine

At the shopping center, he parks and walks to the expensive lingerie store that recently opened. There is no one inside except a teenage clerk. He can read her mind, as he walks to a rack of panties and flips through.

Francine wears size five, and because so many are so pretty and he can’t decide, he selects three: black with appliquéd white lace hearts; a pair of sheer pink, with just a string through the crotch; white ones that would be prim except for the low-cut front, with tiny daisies embroidered there.

He pays cash and has the girl cut off the tags. He gives them to her to tear up and puts the pants in his pocket, knowing he’s shocking her. When Francine gets home, he will shock her, too, by giving her the pants. Or maybe he will wait until they are in the bar and have had a few sips of champagne, then pass them to her under the table and ask her to change into a pair in the ladies’ room.

In the skating rink he feels almost heady with the perfection of their marriage. In the wild circling of the ice-skating rink something shakes loose inside him — some fear, or fears, that he had been holding inside, that he suddenly sees he can just banish.

He finds that he doesn’t want to outskate her, but that he wants his arm around her waist; he feels as romantic, amid the flushfaced teenagers, as a figure in a Currier and Ives painting, gliding on a frozen lake with the most beautiful girl in the world. He says to her, making them both smile, that after one more turn around the rink, long scarves will suddenly materialize around their necks to float backward in the breeze. In his mind’s eye, they already exist in perfect miniature: a painting reduced to greeting-card size, or little figures in a snow dome, who appear to be in motion once the flurry of snow begins to sift down around them.

She had told him, in the bar, that she had a real bias against Brits; she had to force herself to act sanely in spite of her embarrassing prejudice, because to her they were always too pale, and stuffy, and stuck in their ways of thinking. She couldn’t believe he’d think she’d be receptive to Nigel Mawbry’s flirting.

They take a breather and drink Cokes from paper cups at the refreshment stand. An older couple, the man with white, wavy hair, his wife with a still-girlish figure, stand sipping hot chocolate from paper cups. There are one or two couples their age, Stefan realizes, once he’s out of the center of action, surveying it.

Francine’s nose is red. Little ringlets of hair lie plastered to her forehead. He touches the rim of his Coke cup to hers, and they both smile. “Maybe bowling would be fun, too,” she says. “I give you credit for coming up with a very good idea.”

“Need me to fix your skate laces?” he says, nodding his head toward one of the tables.

She swats his shoulder. “The place you got the panties,” she says. “Did the girl really blush when you put them into your pocket? How could you do such a thing?”

When she goes to the bathroom, he pretends he is going to follow her in. A teenage girl looks over her shoulder at him. He tells Francine about that, too, when she comes out.

“I remembered my old high school trick of putting my tube of lipstick in my brassiere,” she says, smacking her brightly painted red lips together. “It all comes back to me.”

“Let me see where it is,” he says, touching his fingertips to her breast and moving closer.

“Stop!” she says. “People will look!”

“I can still scandalize you,” he says. “That’s wonderful.”

“I can still kiss lipstick on your cheek and make both of us look foolish,” she says. “Better watch out.”

Again, they glide onto the ice. The music sounds like music from a carousel. She gives him a little hug before they start to gain speed. As they circle the rink, they begin to say which person they’re passing resembles which animal. The old man with white hair they saw before looks, in profile, exactly like a camel.

“That one’s Melanie Griffith!” Francine says, a little too loudly, as they whiz past.

“Melanie Griffith’s not an animal,” he says.

“I don’t care!” she says. “She does look just like Melanie Griffith.”

“She does look just like Melanie Grifith,” he echoes.

“She does,” Francine says.

“She does ,” he says.

She bends forward as he lightly squeezes her ribs.

“I want to come skating all the time,” he says. “Agree, or I’ll never let go of you.”

“Who are you fooling? You know a good thing when you see it. You were never about to let me go. Kissing on the first date!”

“You provoked me.”

“ Fucking on the first date,” she says.

“You asked me up. You were being provocative.”

She looks at him, the smile fading slightly. “Me?” she says. “Provocative?”

“The story you told,” he says.

“What story did I tell? About how boring it was to grow up in Illinois?”

He is panting. A wisp of hair flaps against his wet forehead.

“Not that,” he says. “The story about acting class. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.”

She frowns, slowing the pace. Her nose is bright red. Her cheeks are also flushed. “Oh, yes,” she says. “That’s right. That acting exercise. We were supposed to connect while not connecting. Actually, it was pretty easy material to do that with.”

“You were supposed to not connect?”

“I think so,” she says. “It was years ago.”

“It was something more provocative,” he says. “You said he had been your lover, and that doing the scene, you could feel him really moving away from you. Genuinely moving away.”

She shrugs. “He was my lover, if you call a couple of nights ‘my lover.’ But no: I think it was just that we did the scene very well. I think I was bragging.”

You were telling me that you felt very alone,” he says. “Wasn’t that the point of the story?”

“Subconsciously, it might have been. That would figure, wouldn’t it? That I’d think I was bragging, and you’d see that I was lonely?”

They are skating slowly. Melanie Griffith whizzes by, all smiles, her girlfriend in pigeon-toed pursuit. Their hair is so lacquered it doesn’t move at all. The girl in the rear wears a metal belt that clanks slightly as she makes the turn. He begins to notice that earrings dangle from some of the skaters’ ears, that many of the men have their jaw set a particular way.

“It wasn’t a come-on?” he says. “It seemed … I thought you were admitting you’d been thrown a curve. You seemed so vulnerable.”

She shrugs and smiles. “Is that an awful way to be perceived?” she says. “I really can’t remember the point of the story anymore, but I did think you were cute. You had no idea how to pour champagne, and it foamed over the top of my glass and ran down my fingers.”

He frowns. “Really? I don’t remember that.”

“That’s a good thing,” she says. “Listen. We were both more unsophisticated than we let on.”

“What do you think we are now? Truly sophisticated?”

“I didn’t notice you pouring too fast tonight,” she says, smiling.

“Seriously,” he says. “Is that what you think?”

“I think we both know more than we let on. That’s why you were worried about stupid Nigel — because you knew I wouldn’t let on if we were having an affair. Which we are not. And that’s why I perked up when you talked about what’s her name. The woman who has Julie tonight. Because you said her first name so familiarly.” She tightens her grip around his waist. “There’s no point in pretending,” she says. “Of course we realize that each of us knows more — goes through more — than we care to let on.” She looks at him. “What’s the matter?” she says. “You asked for a serious answer.”