Ann Beattie - What Was Mine

Stefan takes a sip of beer.

“You wasn’t in Vietnam, I take it,” McKee says.

“No,” Stefan says, shaking his head. He takes another sip of beer. There is a long, awkward silence.

“Let me just say one more time that I wouldn’t care who Mrs. Angawa had any kind of relationship with, but I sure would hate to be dragged into the situation because of my going into her room at night with you, using my key,” McKee says.

“I swear to you,” Stefan says. “There was nothing between us. We’ll go in, and I’ll go directly to the closet.”

McKee laughs. “That sounded funny,” he says. He slaps Stefan on the back. “Hell,” he says. “Let’s not discuss what is and what ain’t the case all night. We’ll go to the school and look in on Bugs Bunny.”

Stefan turns over McKee’s tab and his own. A twenty will more than cover both. He puts a twenty on the counter.

“Should I follow in my car?” Stefan says.

McKee pauses. “You know, that might not be a bad idea,” he says. “I might just continue on from there to somewhere down the line.”

“Right behind you,” Stefan says.

McKee gets in his truck. Stefan gets in his car.

It is so quiet inside the school that Stefan breathes shallowly, hesitant to make a sound. McKee strides ahead, shining the small beam of a flashlight he’s taken from his truck. At the end of the corridor they turn right, then stop at the first door. The light from the streetlamp makes the old glass in the top of the door shine like mirrored sunglasses. McKee unlocks the door. A rectangle of light slants across the floor. Again, the smell of chalk dust is as intense as smoke. Something in the room gives off a faint, burned smell. McKee sniffs also.

“This school ain’t made my allergies kill me, nothin’ ever will,” he says. “Hereditary asthma. Better since the doctor gave me an oxygen inhalor for bad moments.”

The room seems cavernous and mysterious compared with the narrow anonymity of the hallway. McKee sits on one of the desks. He shines the flashlight toward the closet, in the direction where Stefan will walk. Only when Stefan comes close to the closet door does the beam begin to whiten and dissipate. When he opens the door, there is blackness inside, and he can only vaguely make out the shape of the cage and the table it sits on. “McKee,” he says quietly, “would you mind shining that light in, or could I borrow—” He turns and sees McKee opening the top drawer of Mrs. Angawa’s desk. He has opened it with a tiny key on the same keyring he used to open the door.

McKee’s face is lit from below like a jack-o’-lantern’s, as he feels around in the drawer. “I lied to you,” he says. “Wasn’t any secret love but me, as far as I know, but I thought I’d open up and see if you really headed for that closet, or wanted to do what I’m doin’, repossessing some letters you and Mrs. Angawa might have exchanged.” He puts the packet of letters in his inside coat pocket, smiling. “I trust that since I can rely on you not sayin’ we was in here after hours, I can rely on your silence about this little matter as well.”

“Sure,” Stefan says, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice. “Absolutely. Certainly.”

“And now to part two, where we check the bunny rabbit,” McKee says.

When McKee stands close to him, shining the beam into the closet, Stefan can smell the alcohol on his breath.

“When you said that about what I meant to her, I figured you either knew, or you knew without really knowin’, if you know what I mean. Didn’t seem any coincidence you’d call me,” McKee says.

“No,” Stefan says, without being sure what he is denying. “No. I mean, I didn’t know anything but what I said to you. That she said she’d seen you socially, and—”

“Yeah,” McKee says. “She saw me socially.”

A scraping sound makes Stefan whirl around. In the cage, in the pool of light, the rabbit suddenly stands, its bright eyes flashing.

“Looks fine,” McKee says, his voice almost kind. “Let’s see does it have water.”

He stands beside Stefan, moving the light so it shines into the corner of the cage. The dish of water glows much the way the glass pane in the door shone when approached from the corridor.

“One bunny rabbit, perfectly fine,” McKee says.

“Okay, wait a minute,” Stefan says. “Maybe just so whoever comes in here tomorrow can’t possibly overlook it, we should lift the cage out into the room.”

“You think a whole classful of schoolchildren are gonna forget they got a bunny rabbit, when your own daughter can’t sleep, she’s so worried it ain’t got water?” McKee snorts.

“Yes, well, who knows,” Stefan says. McKee continues to shine the light as Stefan lifts the cage from the table and walks with it to Mrs. Angawa’s desk. He puts it squarely on top. The light from the streetlamp streaks through the center of the cage. He moves it back, angling it so most of the cage is in darkness.

“Let’s give it fresh water,” McKee says. He looks around. He dumps Mrs. Angawa’s pencils, all sharpened to a perfect, sharp point, onto the top of the desk and carries the cup into the hallway. Stefan listens while his footsteps recede.

“I had a premonition, too,” Stefan whispers to the rabbit, putting his fingers through the cage until the tips of his fingers touch its white coat. “A premonition that you were dead, which would have been one more thing than the children could stand. But I guess that premonition was wrong.”

He sits on a corner of the desk facing into the empty classroom, legs crossed, chin cupped in his hands.

“Here you go, bunny rabbit,” McKee says, coming back into the room. He has dropped the flashlight through a belt loop. When he gets to the cage, he opens the door carefully and slips his hand in. Slowly, he pours water out of the cup.

“Should have dumped the old water out, but this’ll be good enough,” McKee says, tapping the empty cup several times on the side of the bowl. It is the same sound — or similar to the sound — Francine made recently, standing by the public phone, telling Stefan how her life was turning out.

“Missed my guess about you,” McKee says, slapping Stefan on the back. “What do you say I buy you a beer before you go home. Might take a load off my chest if I could talk about it. She really was a nice lady, you know. Ain’t no story I’d tell that wouldn’t be sure to prove that.”

As McKee closes the door behind them and locks it, Stefan hears the rabbit lapping water.

“McKee,” Stefan says, walking beside him, “all my life I’ve felt like I was just making things up, improvising as I went along. I don’t mean telling lies, I mean inventing a life. It’s something I’ve never wanted to admit.”

“Oh, I knew you wasn’t talkin’ about lies,” McKee says. “I knew just what you meant.”

I don’t remember my father. I have only two photographs of him — one of two soldiers standing with their arms around each other’s shoulders, their faces even paler than their caps, so that it’s difficult to make out their features; the other of my father in profile, peering down at me in my crib. In that photograph, he has no discernible expression, though he does have a rather noble Roman nose and thick hair that would have been very impressive if it hadn’t been clipped so short. On the back of the picture in profile is written, unaccountably, “Guam,” while the back of the picture of the soldiers says, “Happy with baby: 5/28/49.”

Until I was five or six I had no reason to believe that Herb was not my uncle. I might have believed it much longer if my mother had not blurted out the truth one night when I opened her bedroom door and saw Herb, naked from the waist down, crouched at the foot of the bed, holding out a bouquet of roses much the way teasing people shake a biscuit in front of a sleeping dog’s nose. They had been to a wedding earlier that day, and my mother had caught the nosegay. Herb was tipsy, but I had no sense of that then. Because I was a clumsy boy, I didn’t wonder about his occasionally knocking into a wall or stepping off a curb a bit too hard. He was not allowed to drive me anywhere, but I thought only that my mother was full of arbitrary rules she imposed on everyone: no more than one hour of TV a day; put Bosco in the glass first, then the milk.