Set Me Free (15 page)

It would take the husband many years to repay this kindness.

A
MELIA

Stolen, Oregon
Saturday, October
5,
1996

A
melia waited in the dark living room for Elliot to come home. Waiting in darkness was exactly as unexciting as it sounds,
but with each second that passed, she felt the satisfying swell of self-righteousness. When the door finally opened—she checked
her watch; it was 10:47—she had to bite her tongue to wait until he was standing in front of her, as she’d planned.

“Helen’s here,” she said.

“Jesus! You scared the hell out of me, Amelia.” Elliot fumbled over to the side table and switched on the lamp. Amelia had
to cover her eyes. The light made her even more irritated.

“Did you hear me, Dad? Helen? Is here? In our house? With her dog?”

“Where’s Cal?”

“I don’t know. He dropped her off. I found her throwing rocks at our windows. You want to explain what your ex-wife is doing
here?”

“Sweetheart.” He set down his briefcase. “It’s my mistake. I lost track of time. I assumed Cal would call me to tell me she’d
arrived. I’ve been working on that grant proposal—”

“It’s
so
not about that, Dad.”

Elliot cleared his throat.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Did you hear me? It’s so not about that.”

“What is it about?”

“You were
married
before?”

Elliot sighed. He didn’t have to say anything, but Amelia knew that sigh was for real. He nodded.

“When the hell were you married?”

“Helen and I were married for a matter of months. Back in the seventies. I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t relevant. There
seemed no need—”

“And you invited her
here?”

“Yes. She’s the Shakespeare expert I told you about; she’s from New York. She’s written two seminal works in the field and
directed some of the greatest productions of our time. She’s going to direct
The Tempest
for the academy.” There was both accusation and questioning in his voice. “Remember? I told you on the phone.”

“Yeah, you told me about a
play,
Dad, not about a
wife,
a wife whose existence you’ve somehow neglected to mention for—what has it been?—yes, that’s right, sixteen years!”

“I didn’t realize it would be such a big deal, honey. If I’d known that you were going to have to meet her alone… If I’d known
she was going to tell you… Where is she right now?”

“I gave her my bedroom.”

He lowered his voice. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Amelia got louder. “Yeah. I did, Dad. Where else was she going to sleep? She’s a
person.
She was
tired.
She needed a bed.” Amelia stood up. This would be her moment of triumph. She’d stayed calm. She’d given him the facts. “Anyway,
I’m going out.”

“Excuse me?”

Amelia edged toward the door. “Lydia and I are going to a party together. A party where there is likely to be both sex and
alcohol. So. Love you. Wish I could stay for the reunion. Don’t wait up.”
She grabbed the doorknob and launched herself onto the landing and down the stairs as she heard her father gathering behind
her.

“Amelia!” Her name as he spoke it was more of a plea than a command. But she did not turn around. Her shoes echoing on the
stairs were loud against his calls, and soon she was outside. She sprinted to the end of the driveway. Lydia had the car practically
in drive. Amelia slammed the door shut, and they shot off into the night. Elliot had kept a massive secret from her; it served
him right that she had secrets of her own. She was tired of being so good all the time, so
thoughtful.
The wind sang, rapid and cool, through the unrolled windows, lapping the girls’ long hair as they drove.

H
ELEN

Stolen, Oregon
Saturday, October 3, 1996

An hour earlier, Amelia, Helen, and Lydia had been sitting together at the kitchen table—where there was barely enough room
for all of them—when Helen stood to do the dishes.

“Oh, don’t do those,” Lydia said.

Amelia nodded vehemently. “Seriously. Don’t.”

Helen opened up the cabinet under the sink and searched for the garbage so she could empty the soggy dregs of her burrito
into it.

“Nope.” Lydia giggled. “We’re not even going to tell you where the trash is until you put down that plate.”

The counter space in the kitchen was scant to begin with, but with the ingredients of the evening’s meal spread across it,
not to mention what seemed to be a week’s worth of encrusted plates and utensils, there was no place for Helen to put down
her plate, except the exact spot where she’d picked it up. So she hovered and hemmed until Amelia took it from her and set
it right back down on the table.

“Please let me help you two,” Helen said.

Amelia and Lydia exchanged one of their glances.“Oh,
we’re
not cleaning anything up. Dad’ll have to manage on his own.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“Exactly. It isn’t fair,” Lydia chimed in. “Fair would have been him telling us you were coming. Fair would have been him
bothering to come to dinner. Or, oh yeah, telling us he even
had
a first wife.
Please.
This mess has nothing to do with the three of us.”

“Anyway,” said Amelia brightly, standing up and linking arms with Helen,“it’s time for you to be shown to your room. You must
be exhausted.”

Helen protested as she was pulled and pressed out of the tiny kitchen by the two girls. She even tried to refuse the room
she was offered: as soon as the light went on, she could tell from the lavender and teal bedspread, from the scarf over the
lamp shade, from the general mayhem of adolescent sprawl, that this was Amelia’s own bed being sacrificed. But Ferdinand immediately
jumped up onto the bed and curled into a sleepy ball.

Lydia took over. “You’re going to make the poor dog move? That’s just mean.” She sat beside Ferdinand and leaned her head
against his, saying, “Where the hell else does your crazy mama think she’s going to sleep? There
is
no other bed. Except for Elliot’s…” Lydia paused for dramatic effect.

Helen was going to let that one lie. “I was planning on the couch.”

Lydia righted herself. “The couch is purely for show. Trust me. There is absolutely no way you could get even a half hour’s
sleep on that monstrosity. It’s been in here since the sixties.” Meanwhile, Amelia was gathering clothes from the floor and
stuffing them into a small duffel bag. Helen couldn’t tell if she was upset.

“Amelia, sweetie, you don’t have to—”

Amelia righted herself and fixed Helen in her gaze. It was a not unfamiliar look of determination, as though her father were
suddenly in the room. The look silenced Helen at once.

“She’s staying at my house tonight,” said Lydia. “We do it all the time.”

“Should I give Elliot a message?”

“He’ll figure it out,” Lydia replied, and in the wake of Amelia’s silence, Helen decided to leave it at that.

So H
ELEN WAS
not entirely surprised when, after forty-five minutes of silence and darkness, she heard the muffled sounds of a fight between
a man to whom she’d once been married and the daughter whose will was remarkably similar to his own. Crisp whispers rose into
sharp voices, then the slam of the apartment door, a flush of feet running rapidly down the stairs, a holler from Elliot,
followed by the distant, lonely sound of a motor revving. Helen rose from the bed, where she’d been lying fully clothed against
Ferdinand’s flank, and pressed her face against the cool window. The ruby glow of the car’s rear lights weakened as the girls
sped into the distance. It was perfectly quiet after that.

Helen was alone again, for the first time in decades, with Elliot. It was her decision to make a greeting now or wait until
the morning. When she’d first turned off the bedside lamp, she’d imagined she would sleep. She was bone-tired, and in an alternate
reality, she could have closed her eyes and done some delicious dreaming. But as soon as she cast back over the day, emotion
surged through her: sadness, irritation, and embarrassment. Though she didn’t know all the facts, she knew she’d been manipulated.
Abused, even. And she knew what she would have to say:“I need access to a phone, please. I need to make a return-trip plane
reservation.” Full stop. Easy. Tomorrow.

Helen made her escape plan and waited for sleep. Then a strange thing happened in that hour on Amelia’s bed. She still didn’t
know precisely what she would say to Elliot once he came home,
if
he came home. But she found comfort in knowing she did not yet have to say it. She began to listen. What she heard, before
the yelling, was a glorious chorus of nothing. She didn’t think she’d ever heard anything so silent in her whole life. It
was dark outside. We’re talking pitch-black. So dark that Helen began to believe she wasn’t really anywhere. She had arrived
in the twilight, when the
edges of objects were already smudged and dreamlike. Her body was unmoving and unmovable, and she pushed her reality into
that same crepuscular light where the concrete world faded into nothingness. Elliot didn’t exist, his academy was illusory,
she had never been married to an asshole named Duncan, there was no New York City, bright and bustling even as she lay there,
a country away. Even Helen’s own body was a trick she’d conjured. Only Ferdinand’s breath kept her constant. She began to
think: “Perhaps this is rock bottom. But perhaps rock bottom is not so terrible after all.”

By the time the taillights evaporated into the night, Helen was ready. There was already enough enmity to go around, so she
smiled at herself, which was odd, considering her earlier anxieties. For now she felt a paucity of panic. She opened the door
to the bright hallway and was not the slightest bit afraid. She
knew
Elliot. She’d been married to him, for Christ’s sake. There was no need to be timid or needy. Hadn’t she known the second
she heard his voice that there would be something accomplished in seeing him with her own eyes? Hadn’t she known she would
gain back a part of herself she had not known in years?

“Elliot.”

“I hope we didn’t wake you.”

Helen’s eyes adjusted as she took in Elliot’s perch on the couch. There he was. Older, yes. But his eyes were still that blue,
fringed in thick black lashes. The kind of eyes that told you this man held mystery. Amelia had those eyes. Elliot’s brown
hair was still dusty—though now with brushstrokes of gray instead of flecks of blond—and he was as strong and long as he’d
been the day she’d met him, in a chemistry class freshman year at Columbia. He’d been the same color then, tanned in the way
of a man who is not fussy. But damn, those eyes. She was reminded, as she stood in his hallway, leaning against the door frame,
exactly why she had first fallen in love.

“Not at all. It’s fine.”

He came toward her, touched her arm, and leaned in to peck
her on the cheek. “Hello, Helen,” he said. “I seem to have screwed up all around. I can’t believe Cal didn’t call me. And
I’m afraid I didn’t mention your coming to Amelia. And now she’s stormed out.” He sighed. He
did
look older.

“You seem not to have mentioned anything about me.”

He was silent. He nodded. “Haven’t known what to say. I’m sorry,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I should have picked
you up myself.”

“Yes. You really should have. “She couldn’t believe her honesty. But there it was.

“Sit?”

“I’m happy,” she said, staying where she was. He had moved away from her. She wanted to watch him like this, outside of the
frame of the picture, before she was a part of it. He glanced toward the front door. Helen added, “I don’t think she’s coming
back tonight.”

He sighed again, full of worry.

“If I remember correctly, Elliot, you were only two years older than Amelia is now when I met you. And you were doing a hell
of a lot more than drinking with your friends in the middle of the desert.”