Set Me Free (33 page)

One evening the satin woman left her acting group and strolled down the bustling avenue where she lived. She heard trains
rumbling below her and watched old women pushing carts of food. She looked forward to taking her dog out for a long walk when
morning came. Then she saw him. And she remembered. Not just what it had been to love him but what she had wanted from him
all those years and what she saw in his arms. A baby. He had a baby.

The husband and the woman who was like a bird had made a baby together. Now that the satin woman examined it, she understood
why the few people who were in the clan and with whom she still sometimes spoke had been so strange around her the past few
months. They had known the baby was on its way, but they hadn’t known what to tell her. So they had told her nothing at all.

She decided to pretend she had already known. She sidled up beside the husband who was now someone else’s husband and said,
“Congratulations.” The husband looked up at her, and tears seemed to leap to his eyes the second he saw her. Even without
the tears, he looked tired and worried. The satin woman hoped a little that he was sad on her account. But she also saw the
beautiful baby— really just a lump of pinkness, so new and bright—curled against him. She let out a sudden laugh that clapped
against the people milling beside them. “She’s beautiful!” the satin woman exclaimed.

“Thank you,” said the no-longer-husband. He was solemn. She wanted to punch him in the shoulder and say, “It’s okay. Bygones
and all that.” But she could see that he was about to say something big, and she didn’t want that. All she wanted to think
about was how she would be taking her dog on a walk in the park the next day. So before he could say another word, she took
a step back.

“I’ve got to get some milk,” she said, and walked away.

She did not buy milk. The next thing she knew, she was in the yarn store buying soft pink baby yarn. Apparently, she was going
to make a sweater for the husband’s baby. She thought this very odd indeed but didn’t know how to stop the transaction. She
wondered at herself. Why would she buy yarn for the different woman’s baby? Perhaps because she felt sorry for the baby itself,
being held by a man who looked so sad. Perhaps the satin woman sensed something so true and invisible, that the woman who
was like a bird and was now a mother was in far over her head, and this pink sweater was a method to try to stop what was
already on its way to happening. Or perhaps the satin woman was simply planning to let the different woman know she had won
after all, and leave it at that.

By the time the satin woman got the phone call five days later from the husband himself, she had knitted only one sleeve of
the baby sweater. She was not a very good knitter, after all. As she heard the panic in his voice, the sorrow, the need, she
fingered the soft little sleeve. She set it down and got her coat. The different woman had disappeared. The husband was in
a panic. The baby was with him, yes, but that was not the point. He was going mad. He thought something that wasn’t true.
She told him it wasn’t true. But he needed her, and she heard it. She left the beginnings of the sweater where it lay and
never worked on it again.

[OR]

Let Me Live Here Even; So Rare a Wonder’d Father and a Wise Makes This place Paradise

C
AL

Stolen, Oregon
Monday,January 6, 1997

W
hen I was a boy, and Maw-Maw sat at the center of my life, love and anger were two strong feelings I could easily tell apart.
As I grew older and felt the forces exerted by desire and betrayal, things grew more complicated. I could desire something
I knew I might grow to love, but when life betrayed me—by denying me the object of my desire— I felt anger and pain. That
was when fear entered the mix. Soon the terms got jumbled around, and over time—long time—a pattern emerged. Say, for instance,
I desired someone I felt I could love. Afraid of the inevitable betrayal and the subsequent pain, I’d grow enraged at
her
for making me want her in the first place. In a grand gesture of preemptive punishment, I’d be the one to initiate betrayal.
Because she was the one to blame for being so damn
wantable.
Which is a long way of saying that, in matters of love, I had become a self-justifying, lonely asshole.

Many problems arose from this strategy—many losses were tallied—but the greatest loss was the one I couldn’t even register.
Because love and pain, desire and fear and anger, all appeared at the same time, I lost my ability to tell them apart. Sure,
they still gave rise to loud, sharp roars in my body and soul, or a slow, raw keening in my heart, but let’s face it, all
I could tell is that I
was being jerked around by something huge. Pretty sophisticated, huh?

A
LL THAT IS
a prologue to my dealings with Duncan. Yes. Helen’s Duncan.

It was during the second week in January that I began to get the phone calls. Hard not to see now, with the benefit of hindsight,
that Duncan must have made a New Year’s resolution. I was sitting in my office, grading papers, when Eunice buzzed my line.
“There’s a guy on the phone. Wants to speak to the man in charge. Elliot’s in class.” She knew I’d bite.

“Yup?” I said into the receiver.

“Hello?” came the man’s voice.

“Hey. How can I help you?”

“Hello. Who’s this?”

“Who’s
this?”
I wanted a name.

“This
is
Ponderosa Academy, isn’t it? I’ve been trying to reach someone there since last week.”

“Yes, this is Ponderosa. We’ve been on break.”

“Thank God
someone
finally answered the phone. I need to speak with Helen Bernstein.” His voice dripped with irritation.

“May I ask the nature of your business?”

Silence. Then, a little huffily, “Is she there or not?”

Now I was the silent one.

“May I ask to whom I’m speaking?” A reasonable question, if you think about it.

It was my response—the promptness of it—that surprised me. “Elliot Barrow,” I said without thinking.

“Elliot Barrow!” The man paused. “I thought you were in class. Your secretary said—”

“I’m not in class. I’m here, with you. Now may I ask who’s calling?”

“Duncan Reilly. Helen’s husband. Her
current
husband. Let me speak to her, Elliot.”

That’s when my fear and anger merged into a rather manipulative, albeit stupid, wiliness. “But you see, my good friend, she’s
unavailable. She’s in a class right this very minute. And the truth is, the first thing out of her mouth the second she stepped
on campus was that she would rather be drawn and quartered than ever have to speak to you again. I assured her I would do
everything in my power to make sure she got her wish. Now I find myself in a rather tricky situation.” I felt like Elliot—sure
I did—only braver, more honest, slightly more British. I went on. “Between us, Duncan, if anyone can empathize with your position,
it’s me.”

His voice softened. “Is she okay?”

“She’s thriving,” Elliot replied.

“Well, there’s a lot we have to talk about.” He wavered. “I really want to talk to her.
Need
to talk to her.”

“Naturally.” As if impersonating Elliot weren’t bad enough, I did something worse. “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Since Helen
doesn’t want to hear about you, but you want to hear how she’s doing, why don’t I just pass along my private office number
and you call me from time to time?” As soon as I spoke, I knew my ruse might work. I never answered the phone by giving my
name—I hated the stuffiness of that—and instead uttered a trademark
“Yup?”
Fortunately, Duncan didn’t know of either my existence or my trademark. “That way I can keep you posted on how Helen’s doing.
Serve as sort of a go-between. Let you know when she’s ready to initiate contact again.” I let him mull it over. “What do
you say?” I sounded like Elliot at his most patronizingly friendly.

“You’re sure she won’t talk to me now? Will you at least tell her I called? That I want her to call me back? Whenever she
can?”

“Trust me,” I said.

He trusted me. Then we hung up.

There you have it. In the space of a few minutes, I had managed to commit three relatively brutal acts: I’d lied to Duncan,
impersonated Elliot, and infantilized Helen. Four brutal acts, if you count me as another one of my victims: I’d set myself
up for a colossal
downfall. At least some part of my pea brain must have known that I’d pay for this. Big-time. Once it was undertaken, it was
something I couldn’t undo.

So W
HY DO
we think I did something that was so bad for so many? Let’s forget all that crap about love and desire, betrayal and anger.
They are relevant but not necessarily helpful. Sure I desired Helen, knew she was loveworthy. Sure I felt betrayed by her
continuing rectitude, and that made me mad. I think I hated Elliot for lots of reasons. But that wasn’t why I did this.

I did it because I wanted something clean and basic, something that I’d never allowed myself to have. I wanted to talk about
Helen in the way you get to talk about someone you care for. I wanted to brag about her a little. Smile as I reminisced. I
wanted to share this talk, these feelings, with someone who could get how simple they were, how justified. I wanted Helen’s
name to live in my mouth, her stories on my tongue. It seems that I, Calbert Fleecing, couldn’t let myself be a man who got
to have such rudimentary, good things without stealing them from another man.

I heard from Duncan again a week or so later. This probably had something to do with the fact that I never told Helen that
Duncan had called. I know. I know.

I lied to him. I told him I’d passed along the message and she’d asked to be left alone. But let it be noted that there were
limits to my arrogance: that was the last time I ever spoke on her behalf. I never said, “She does not forgive you.” I never
said, “Never call here.” So he kept calling. Sometimes we’d shoot the shit. Sometimes he would reveal deeply personal fears
to me, like his terror that, having cheated on his wife and been left by his mistress—who was not his mistress in the first
place but, rather, some pretty young thing who’d wanted to bed Power and figured out soon thereafter that she had simply bedded
Pathetic—he was going to die alone. Or his fears about his career, about the people in New York who had turned against him
now that he did not have Helen on his arm.

He became something of a friend. I pretended to be Elliot only in name; the rest of it was me: listening, offering advice.
He liked me. He was a troubled man, but he was also good. Funny. Smart. He wanted to be better than he was. He was asking
me to help him decipher where that missing piece of him had gone. He once said to me, “I never thought we’d be friends, Elliot.
And the truth is, I don’t have many friends. I don’t think I know how to make people trust me. That’s why losing Helen is
so terrible. Maybe it’s not even losing her. Maybe it’s losing who she thought I was.”

I became kind toward him, and not just because I pitied him. I didn’t side with him, certainly not, but I began to see their
story as an orb, something with smoothness to it, where one thing would lead to another and fault was not involved. I began
to understand Helen from another point of view, like seeing the moon from the other side of space. Every time he called, and
every time we talked, I knew I was one step closer to being found out. But I began to like him. Some days I even hoped he’d
call.

Given all the world’s loneliness, I don’t know if there was anything wrong in that.

H
ELEN

Stolen, Oregon
Wednesday,January 15, 1997

Helen stopped me in the hallway a week past winter break. By this point we were being nice to each other, but we certainly
weren’t at an easy-breezy “stop in the hallway and say hello” phase. What had happened the night we went to Rudy’s was still
making things awkward between us. Lord knows why. I’d done a lot more with women for a lot less drama. But Helen was careful.
I had begun to realize this about her, and it would be a good while before I would like her even more because of it. She wasn’t
the kind of person who accidentally almost slept with people. This truth was something she repeated, alone to herself, as
she lay in her icy bed and thought, into the darkness, about me. I didn’t know this. All I knew
was that I wanted to blame the awkwardness on her. Which was unfair, to say the least; it takes two to tango.