What Was Mine: & Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

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.
    Outside, Dixie was volunteering to go into town and get movies. Henry told her to get one serious one and one funny one. Most people did that when they went to Videoville, to allow for the possibility that they might want to be silly, after all. Elizabeth realized that it was harsh of her to judge Henry—it was overreacting to think of his insisting that Dixie get