What Was Mine: & Other Stories by Ann Beattie

coaxing her, I get up and put some things on two plates, put one plate on a table by my chair, and hand the other plate to her. I pour her another glass of wine.
    “He has a studio next to the ceramics factory,” she says. “That big building with the black shutters. In the afternoon he calls me, and I take over a picnic basket and we eat lunch and make love.”
    I break a cracker in half with my thumb and first finger and eat it.
    “That’s not it, though,” she says. “The thing is, it’s always something like Wonder bread. It’s real kinky. I trim off the crust and make bologna sandwiches with a lot of mayonnaise. Or I’ll make Cheez Whiz sandwiches with Ritz crackers, or peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwiches. And we drink Kool-Aid or root beer or something like that. One time I cooked hot dogs and sliced them to go on crackers and squirted cheese around the circles. We had that and Dr Pepper. The thing is, the lunch has to be really disgusting.”
    “I got that,” I say. “I guess I got it.”
    “Oh,” she says, dropping her eyes. “I mean, I guess it’s obvious. Of course you figured it out.”
    I wait to see if she’s going to ask me to reveal something. But instead she gets up and pours the last of the wine into her glass and stands with her back to me, looking out the window.
    I know that ceramics factory. It’s not in a good part of town. There’s a bar just down the street from it, and one night when I was coming out of the bar a kid jumped me. I remember how fast he came at me on his bike, and the screech of tires, as if the bike were a big car. Then he was all over me, half punching and half squeezing, as if my wallet would pop out of hiding like a clown’s head spinning out of a jack-in-the-box. “It’s in my back pocket,” I said, and when I said that he jammed his hand into the pocket and then slugged me in the side, hard. “Stay down!” he said in sort of a whisper, and I lay there, curled on my side, putting my hand over my face so that if he thought about it later he wouldn’t come back and make more trouble because I’d gotten a good look at him. My nose was bleeding. I only had about twenty bucks in my wallet, and I’d left my credit cards at home. Finally I got up and tried to walk. There was a light on in the ceramics factory, but I could tell from the stillness that nobody was there—it was just a light that had been left on. I put my hand on the building and tried to stand up straighter. There was a point when a terrible pain shot through me—such a sharp pain that I went down again. I took a few breaths, and it passed. Through the big glass window I saw ceramic shepherds and animals—figures that would be placed in crèches. They were unpainted—they hadn’t been fired yet—and because they were all white and just about the same size, the donkeys and the Wise Men looked a lot alike. It was a week or so before Christmas, and I thought, Why aren’t they finished? They’re playing it too close; if they don’t get at it and start painting, it’s going to be too late. “Marie, Marie,” I whispered, knowing I was in trouble. Then I walked as well as I could, got to my car, and went home to my wife.

I ’ll get to the point and describe the installation as best I can: it is a manhole cover, and from somewhere—maybe underground, maybe above our heads, but not clearly visible—comes the song “Only Make Believe.” The song is a duet, for those of you who aren’t old-timers or old-movie buffs, sung by Irene Dunne and Allan Jones, I think. In any case, it is a quite romantic song, and the woman’s voice soars convincingly.
    I’ve been called in to do the lights for this- installation. “Called in” makes it sound too businesslike. My brother, the artist of the piece, called me at home and asked if one more time, as a personal favor, I’d do the lighting. I’m retired, out on disability. Actually, they paid me to go, but this isn’t a story about me. I’m