Free While I Was Gone by Sue Miller

everything away.”
    “Come on. Sara’s so out of it she’d never put two and two together.”
    “Besides, red, in Larry’s case, might not be a color but a political persuasion,” I offered.
    “Maybe this person is apparently mysterious while being pellucid, or apparently pellucid while being mysterious.” Larry was smoking cigar, and it chimneyed violently as he relaxed his draw.
    “Did Sara ask for clues?” Dana said.
    “Are we supposed to be giving her these clues?”
    “Well, it doesn’t matter,” Sara said.
    “I know it’s Eli.”
    ‘fesus, the chemically altered brain proves superior after all!” said Larry.
    “How did you know?”
    “I knew. I just knew,” Sara said.
    “No.” She squinted in concentration. There were blurry finger marks all over the lenses of her glasses.
    “No. Because of gray and pellucid. They are… Ies motsjustes.”
    She said it again, contemplatively, “Les mots justes. ” “Who said gray? Was it the same person who said red? Is someone doing colors?”
    “I said gray,” Eli said.
    “Not red, though.”
    “Eli!” cried Dana.
    “Why, why did you say gray about yourself?
    That makes me so sad.” And in fact, her face was angtushed. She was sitting on the floor by the couch Eli was sunk into, and she leaned forward now to touch his knees.
    “I don’t think I’m gray, actually,” Eli said. He was quite serious, and blushing slightly at all the sudden attention.
    “But I was trying to imagine how all of you thought of me.”
    “But we don’t, Eli,” Dana said.
    “Look at your beautiful adjectives.
    I hope I get such adjectives. Read them again, John. All but the gray.”
    “Gentle, quiet, mysterious, pellucid, aloof.”
    “Well, all but the aloof too. The rest are heaven!” Dana said.
    “I’d give my right arm for stuff like that.”
    “Who said mysterious?” Sara asked.
    “I did,” I said. I was thinking of a moment earlier in the week when I’d come out from the living room in my bare feet after two or three of us had sat up late, talking, and I’d nearly smashed into Eli, who was standing utterly immobile in the hall, standing there and, evidently, just listening to us. Before I could speak, he raised his finger to his lips—don’t say a word—and then turned and went upstairs. It was the first time I considered that he might be less comfortable with his role in the house than he’d seemed. More complicated, somehow, than we’d guessed.
    “Andpellucid?” Larry asked.
    “C’etait moi. ” Dana smiled at Eli.
    “Eli the pellucid.”
    “Pellucid is a very interesting word,” Sara said.
    “If you didn’t know what it meant, you’d think it meant, like…” There was a long, long silence. Her eyes had gone out of focus.
    John poked her.
    “Pellucid,” he said.
    “You’d think it meant… ?”
    “Oh!” She giggled.
    “Like really smelly, wouldn’t you?”
    My adjectives were reserved, sexy, curious, fragile, blue, and opaque.
    “Who is it with the colors?”
    “It could be sad,” Sara said.
    “That this person is sad.
    Blue. Not a color.”
    “Who said opaque?” Larry asked.
    “Opaque is hostile.”
    “To be opaque is hostile?” I asked him.
    “To say someone else is opaque is hostile. It’s like saying someone is gray.”
    “No one said that about anyone else. Eli said it about himself.”
    “Sara, I know that. I know that.”
    “It’s either Duncan,” Sara said, “or Licia. Thefragile is confounding.”
    “Confounding.” Larry’s head nodded two, three times in deep appreciation.
    “That’s a great adjective. Someone should have used that on someone else.”
    “I want a clue,” Sara said.
    “It will cheapen your victory,” John said.
    “Still, I want to know who said fragile.”
    “I did,” Eli said. He looked at me quickly and then looked away.
    “Hmm. Well. Well, I’m certain Eli doesn’t think Duncan is fragile, so it must be Licia. Is it?”
    Noises of assent, bobbing heads.
    “Sara,