Ann Beattie - What Was Mine

Unaccustomed to wearing jewelry, she rubbed the band of the ring on her finger as she began to fall asleep. Although it was not a conscious thought, something was wrong — something about the ring bothered her, like a grain of sand in an oyster.

In time, his breathing changed, and hers did. Calm sleep was now a missed breath — a small sound. They might have been two of the birds she so often thought of, flying separately between cliffs — birds whose movement, which might seem erratic, was always private, and so took them where they wanted to go.

Elizabeth’s next-door neighbors were having a barbecue. Though Elizabeth and Henry had lived in the house since his retirement three years before, they had only once eaten dinner next door, and the neighbors had only once visited them. After Henry’s car accident, the Newcombs had called several times, but when Henry returned from the hospital, they again only silently nodded or waved across the wide expanse of lawn when they caught sight of one another through the scrub pines that separated their property. Mrs. Newcomb was said to be an alcoholic. The boys, though, were beautiful and cheerful. When they were not joking with each other, their expressions became dreamy. The way they wore their hair, and their direct gaze, reminded Elizabeth of Clark Gable. She often saw the boys in Bethel. They were inseparable.

Though Elizabeth was repotting geraniums, her mind was partly on the boys next door, partly on her daughter, Louisa, who lived in Atlanta and who had had a baby the week before, and partly on Z, who had phoned that morning to say that he would stop by for a visit on the weekend. Her thoughts seemed to jump between those people in time with the slap of the softball into the catcher’s mitt next door. As they tended the barbecue grill, the brothers were tossing a ball back and forth. The air smelled of charred meat.

The day before, backing out of a parking space next to the market, Elizabeth had hit a trash can and dented the side of Henry’s car. Louisa had not wanted her to come to Atlanta to help out. Z’s fiancée drank a bit too much.

Elizabeth forced herself to smile so she would cheer up. Wind chimes tinkled and a squirrel ran across a branch, and then Elizabeth’s smile became genuine. It had been a month since Z’s last visit, and she knew he would be enthusiastic about how verdant everything had become.

Verdant? If a dinosaur had a vocabulary, it might come up with the word “verdant.” She was almost forty-five. Z was twenty-three. After Z’s last visit, Henry had accused her of wanting to be that age. She had gotten a speeding ticket, driving Z’s convertible.

Henry suspected the extent of her feelings for Z, of course. The attachment was strong — although she and Z never talked about it, privately. She often thought of going to see the remake of Reckless with Z at a matinee in New Haven. They had shared a tub of popcorn and licked butter off each other’s fingers. Another time, they brown-bagged a half-pint of Courvoisier and slugged it down while, on the screen, Paul Newman drove more crazily than Elizabeth would ever dare to drive.

A few days ago, returning from the train station, Elizabeth had come to an intersection in Weston, and as she came to a stop, Paul Newman pulled up. He went first. Rights of the famous, and of the one who has the newer car. Although convertibles, in this part of the world, were always an exception and went first.

Next door, the boys had stopped playing ball. One probed the meat, and the other changed the station on the radio. Elizabeth had to strain to hear, but it was what she had initially thought: Janis Joplin, singing “Cry, Baby.”

The best songs might be the ones that no one could dance to.

On Saturday, sitting in a lawn chair, Elizabeth started to assign roles to her friends and family. Henry would be emperor … The lawn sprinkler revolved with the quick regularity of a madman pivoting, spraying shots from a machine gun.

Henry would be Neptune, king of the sea.

A squirrel ran, stopped, dug for something. It seemed not to be real, but the creation of some animator. The wind chimes tinkled. The squirrel ran up the tree, as if a bell had summoned it.

Ellen, Z’s fiancée, was inside, on the telephone, getting advice about how to handle Monday’s follow-up interview. She was leaning against the corner of the bookcase, drinking bourbon and water. Z detoured from the kitchen to the dining room to nuzzle her neck. He had come in to help Elizabeth, when she left the yard to get trays. One tray was oval, painted to look like a cantaloupe. The other was in the shape of a bull. She had bought them years ago in Mexico. Deviled eggs were spread out on the bull. The cantaloupe held a bottle of gin and a bottle of tonic. A lime was in Z’s breast pocket. A knife was nestled among the eggs.

Elizabeth held the back door open, and Z walked out. Henry’s friend and lawyer, Max, was there, and a friend of Max’s named Len. Dixie had stopped by for a drink, en route to her new house in Kent. Dixie was in the process of ending an affair with her architect. He had gotten religion during the building of the house. He had put skylights everywhere, so that God’s radiance could shine in.

Z and Max were discussing jade. The man who used to deliver seltzer to Max was now smuggling jade into the country. Max was saying that people were fools to swallow prophylactics filled with drugs; look at the number of deaths. If jade spilled into somebody, it would just be like jellybeans that would never be digested.

Ellen came out of the house. She had had several drinks and, chin up, trying to look sober, she looked like a stunned soldier. She called out to Elizabeth that Louisa was on the phone. “The minute I put it back in the cradle, it rang,” Ellen said.

Elizabeth thought: the cradle of the phone; the cradle she had ordered for Louisa’s child … She was smiling when she picked up the phone, so it came as a surprise that Louisa was angry with her.

“I offered to come,” Elizabeth said. “You said you had enough people underfoot.”

“You offered ,” Louisa said. “You never said you wanted to come. I could hear it in your voice.”

“I wanted to come,” Elizabeth said. “I was quite hurt you didn’t want me. Ask your father.”

“Ask my father,” Louisa said. She snorted. “So who’s there today?” she said. “Neighbors? Friends from far and wide?”

In recent years, Elizabeth had begun to realize that Louisa was envious of her knowing so many people. Louisa was shy, and when she was a child, Elizabeth had thought that surrounding her with people might bring her out. When she taught, she did seem to find many interesting people.

“Oh, go ahead and go back to your party,” Louisa said.

“Please tell me to come to Atlanta if you want me,” Elizabeth said.

“Yes, do conclude this foolishness,” Louisa said.

Sometimes Louisa was so good at mocking what she thought were her mother’s attitudes that Elizabeth actually cringed. As they hung up, Elizabeth said a silent prayer: Please let her have had this baby for the right reason. Please let it not be because she thinks that if someone needs her, he loves her.

Z was in the doorway when she opened her eyes. She looked at him, as startled as if the lights had just come up in the movies.

“Headache?” he said.

She shook her head, no.

“Your eyes were closed,” he said. “You were standing so still.”

“I was talking on the phone,” she said.

He nodded and left the room. He opened the refrigerator to get more ice. She heard the cubes cracking as he ran water, then twisted the tray.