Set Me Free (11 page)

H
ere is where I, Calbert Fleecing, begin to break my promise. I promised you the honest, albeit subjective, truth. You knew
that would be hard to deliver. But you believed I would try. But the stories have begun to merge. It’s hard to stay out of
them, because I was in them.

I also told you I wasn’t going to speak to you anymore. That was when I thought that “you” could be only “Elliot.” Now I see:
“you” is other people too. Every story needs a reader. And Elliot Barrow doesn’t have eyes anymore with which to read. In
order for this to be a story, someone else needs to read it. Someone who isn’t in it. You.

H
ELEN’S PLANE LANDED
at the Portland airport in the early afternoon, and Cal was there to meet her. I am Cal. I am trying to tell her story. But
I remember so much, and that means I am bursting to tell you what waiting for Helen’s plane to land was like for me. Because
I am selfish. Because I was there. Because I am the one telling this story.

It was not my choice. Elliot had a way of getting people to do things for him. He’d called me the night before, and what he
had to say was simple: “My wife is coming into town.” Keep in mind
I didn’t even know he had a wife. Keep in mind that she wasn’t his wife anymore. Did he feel the need to fully disclose? Of
course not.

I said, “You’re not married.”

He said, “Used to be.”

“Are you telling me this is Amelia’s mother?”

“You know that Amelia’s mother is dead.”

“So you’ve been married twice.” There was silence on the other end of the line. I said, “I didn’t know you were so popular
with the ladies.” Again nothing. “Why is your Not-Amelia’s-Mother ex-wife coming to visit? After all these years.”

“Helen’s going to help you with that Shakespeare project.”

“There is no Shakespeare project.”

“There is now.”

He also forgot to mention she was landing in Portland. I agreed to pick her up because one of us had to do a phone conference
with a possible donor, and I will do just about anything to avoid that kind of ass kissing. Furthermore, Elliot led me to
believe she was flying into the local airport. Sure, that would have killed three hours of my Saturday, but I figured I could
stop in to Rudy’s and see a few people. It was when I was about to hang up the phone that he let it slip: “Four-thirty
P.M.,
American Flight 457 from O’Hare.”

“American doesn’t fly into Redmond.”

“Go figure,” he said, and hung up. Five hours round-trip.

Why, you ask, did I not call him back and tell him to screw himself? True, he’d pulled pranks like this before, so I should
have been wise to him. Perhaps it was that, the shame of being tricked once again, that kept me from saying no. Then there
was the fact that Helen needed to know, regardless of whatever agreement Elliot had made with her, that her coming to the
school was for recreational purposes only. I didn’t know who she was. There was no way I was letting her into my classroom,
or into any of the classrooms, for that matter. There was a reason I was assistant
headmaster. Emperor Barrow’s whims (and Emperor Barrow’s dick) would not dictate the changing of curricula unchecked.

But the main reason I went? For myself. I wanted to see her for myself. Before anyone else formed an opinion. I wanted to
see the kind of woman who would marry Elliot Barrow.

I
WILL GIVE
this story back to Helen in a moment. She had never been to the Pacific Northwest; her forays to the West Coast had been
the occasional trip to L.A., and twice she’d visited San Francisco. She was a victim of that kind of New York provincialism
that is blind. Let’s say someone out here rarely left the same ten square miles. That’s a very small space in which to spend
your entire life; even those of us for whom the United States government has ever so politely reserved completely useless
parcels of land usually cover at least twice this distance in our day-to-day lives. But Helen was the kind of woman who had
been born and schooled in Manhattan, the kind of intellectual elitist for whom the move across the East River—and the decision
to actually buy a home in an “up-and-coming” outer-borough neighborhood—had been wildly significant. Which is all to say that
Helen was a New Yorker, and as a New Yorker, she initially gave off the distinct impression that the rest of the world could
only ever be a kind of vacation from the real life that New York lived.

Helen, I would find out later, was scared. She had found her husband humping a bimbo, turned tail, and strode forth, his pleas
falling useless in their empty theater. She had called Michael Reid and told him she was being brave, and his applause, crisp,
over the line, was enough to make her even braver: she dialed Elliot Barrow’s number and into the whorl of his ear declared,
“I’m not asking. I’m telling you. I’m the one who can help. Do I have a job?” She had crammed her poor Ferdinand into a crate
and locked the door of her home behind her.

There were all sorts of complicated legal battles to be fought about the status of the theater, which entered exhausting realms
of
debate over the disposition of intellectual property and the future of the company. Helen had chosen to ignore these particular
aspects of her life for at least a little while. She had not begun formal divorce proceedings. She was not yet ready to punish;
Duncan’s guilt, if he had any, would have to be enough for now.

She was asleep when the plane landed, so she missed the Columbia River, and she missed Mount Hood, and she missed the fringes
of Portland. When she awoke to the tires hitting tarmac, she was filled with excitement. Her throat thrummed with the words
she would say to Elliot when she stepped from the plane. He would be waiting at the gate, and surely they would touch, if
only for a hug. She dug into her purse as the plane taxied to the gate, and found a mirror and brush to try to tame her split-ended
mane. The teenage girl next to her smiled with young teeth and perfect bubble gum lips. Helen put on a lipstick one shade
too dark and frowned at herself in the compact mirror. Then the seat-belt sign dinged off and people leaped to their feet.
She was in a window seat, so she stood up halfway, her knee resting on the seat as though to hold her place in line. She wanted
to get off that plane, and to Elliot, as soon as possible.

Elliot was nowhere near the airport. Guess who was? Helen stepped from the jetway, and the anxious look on her face, peering
over the crowd as people spilled from the door, was somehow familiar to me. I held my sign up higher:
HELEN BERNSTEIN.

She saw me. She felt as if she were sinking. She was wrong to have come, wrong to have insisted. He had sent someone else.
He did not want her here. He did not want her.

I did not see these particulars on her face. I saw her rearranging the heavy bag of books on her shoulder, and she seemed
much smaller than I imagined, and very tired, very worn. “Of course,” I thought. “Elliot would have married a brainy girl,
the kind who travels with an entire bookshelf in a monogrammed L. L. Bean canvas tote.”

She came toward me.

“Cal,” I said. I stuck out my hand and she took it. Her fingers were cold.

“Helen.” Her smile was a slow curl of hope. She was delivered.

A
MELIA

Stolen, Oregon
Saturday, October
5,
1996

For at least an hour, Amelia had been trying to play the violin. She had lifted the familiar amber-hued instrument out of
its velvet bed and tuned the strings until they sounded perfect. She’d swept the bow over its neat block of greenish resin
until a little white spray accompanied each pull across the strings. She’d produced notes, run up and down scales accurately,
but there was not a drop of music left in her. It had fled her fingers, her mind, her body. She ached to have it back. It
felt as if it had gone for good. She wanted to pick up the phone to call Lydia, but she knew her friend was out shooting hoops.
Afternoon light flooded the room.

Sometimes these days Amelia went through the Wes story as a series of points, like a plot outline for Calbert Fleecing’s English
class. It went like this:

1. Wes Hazzard was Sadie’s older brother.
   
2. Wes chose Amelia to be his second violin.
   
3. Wes let her borrow his own fabulous violin because he had two of them. The one she played had cost his parents thousands of
   dollars. He laughed lightly when Amelia confessed it made her nervous to even touch. But when he encouraged her to play, she
   forgot how scared she was, seduced by the sound of her own music. There was a big difference between a good violin and a great
   one.
   
4. She sounded marginally talented as music welled up from every part of her mind and body to match Wes’s line of notes. While
   they were inside the music, she and Wes
   strode together, raced side by side, intersected, parted company, and met again.
   
5. Then they stopped playing and Wes turned toward her, leaned in, and kissed her. Warm, luscious. Close like music. That was
   the good part, the wonderful part, and it made her hungry for more.
   
6. The next day she went to the office of her violin teacher, Jackson, to meet Wes for duet practice; she opened the door before
   knocking—and yes, that was rude, but not as rude as what she had to see—Wes and Jackson Rice on the floor, kissing, kissing,
   kissing. Clothes all around them. A flash of naked shoulder. Of leg. Of butt.
   
7. Even though she wanted to shut the door before they could see her, she couldn’t move, so they saw her and were totally cool
   and matter-of-fact; they asked her to understand, to keep quiet, and on and on and…
   
8. Of course, she said yes, anything, she would do anything, she would keep quiet, but inside she was shaking and horrified and
   ashamed of herself for being horrified, this was just sex and sex wasn’t bad, she was from the country, she knew about sex,
   and it didn’t matter that they were both men, she didn’t care, but Wes? Wes? What have you done to me, Wes?
   
9. Later that day she met with Jackson Rice at his request in that very same office, and he was so kind, saying that he knew
   it must have been a shock to see them like that, but how wonderful of Amelia, how mature of Amelia, how lib eral and kind
   of Amelia, to realize that if she mentioned this to anyone, he, Jackson, would lose his job and Wes would probably be expelled,
   and she didn’t really want that, did she? She was doing so well and showed such promise. He was sure he could write her some
   wonderful recommenda tions when the time came to apply to conservatories.
   
10. Right outside Jackson Rice’s office, Wes grabbed her by the elbow and steered her into one of the empty practice rooms and
    said, Hey, Amelia, don’t be pissed at me, I can’t help it, I think I like guys and I know I love Jackson and you have no idea
    how mad my dad will be, he’ll kill me, and Sadie must never know, she can’t know, it would kill her, and I think you’re wonderful,
    and some really lucky guy will love you too someday, just please don’t tell. I thought maybe I could help you out with your
    day-to-day expenses, you can get yourself a nice dress or something cool, we’re absolutely good friends, and I really meant
    that kiss, I know that’s hard to believe now, but here’s some money, please don’t tell Sadie, please. And into Amelia’s hand
    he pressed more money than she had ever seen in one place at one time. And now that money was supposed to be hers. In exchange
    for silence.
    
11. Amelia didn’t tell—she wasn’t a snitch—but someone else
    did
    tell, and it wasn’t even about Wes, it was about another boy, but it didn’t matter because Wes thought Amelia had told, and
    he intercepted her under the trees between class and his eyes looked shattered, like broken glass, and what he thought had
    happened was what mattered, not what had actually happened. How could she have betrayed him? She couldn’t say, You’re not
    really mad at
    me
    for betraying you, you’re mad at
    him,
    because he said he loved you, but all that time he was doing the same thing with someone else. Isn’t that right, isn’t that
    really why you look so broken?
    
12. Instead Amelia said, I promise you, I didn’t tell anyone. I kept it a secret. I don’t want your money. Sadie doesn’t know.
    
13. He said, Who even cares if she knows now? She’ll know someday because I’m a fag. Amelia, I’m a fag.
    
14. Don’t say that.
    
15. I’ll say what I want to say. Don’t lie to me. Keep the fucking money.
    
16. Please. Here, take it.
    
17. That’s why you liked us so much in the first place, isn’t it? You wanted our money, and Jackson just wanted to love me. In
    peace. Keep the money. It’s yours. You ruined my life and you made a bundle.
    
18. I didn’t say anything. I don’t want your money. I want to go home.
    
19. Then go.
    

The twang of the basketball on the Ponderosa Academy court brought Amelia to the window. The sound of the basketball, in itself,
was not what drew her. She knew this. She wanted to see the person attached to those hands that made the ball rise and fall.
In past years, she’d practiced the violin in her bedroom, facing away from the school, but ever since she’d heard that Victor
was the newfound hope for the Ponderosa team, she taken up practicing in the living room, which looked out over the court.
A part of her wished that her music might spill out into the open air and be heard by ears that weren’t her own. She wished
the delicacy and grace of her violin’s song would bring such a calm to her listeners that the basketball would fall from their
hands, the book bags from their shoulders, the pencils from their fingertips, and they would turn, slowly, to seek out the
music’s source. Victor would turn. He would see her up here, on the hill, in her father’s top-floor apartment, above the math
rooms, and he would want to know more.