Set Me Free (41 page)

Elliot had nodded gravely when, a week before, she had told him she was leaving. She didn’t say she was leaving for good,
but it was assumed. She would stay the week, to see her project through. Elliot didn’t need to ask her to do that; she was
loyal to the children and the play. But after the performance, her task was over. “My friend is dying,” she said. “He needs
me.” She knew Michael would disagree with this phrasing. The truth was, he needed her more than anyone else in the world did,
and that counted for something. It would have to be enough. It was time to get back to her life.

She lit the kerosene lamp and the stove, and rubbed her hands together as she waited for the little room to warm up, then
filled Ferdinand’s water bowl. She had become so fond of her cabin. Even though a chill lurked in its corners, she could tell
spring was
firmly on its way. She had smelled it each morning since deciding to leave, and there was a part of her that longed to stay
and unfurl with the season. She opened one of her suitcases onto the bed.

There was a knock and the dog startled. Helen’s heart fluttered. She hoped it would not be Amelia, because she had not yet
told the girl she was leaving. She hoped, for that matter, it would not be any of her students, because she was prepared to
tell them in the morning, with a clear head, of her evening flight back east. She hoped it would, and she hoped it would not,
be me. For reasons too complicated to name. Still, as she swung the door open, there was a part of her that glittered at the
thought of me standing there.

It was Elliot. He was beaming broadly and enfolded her in a tight hug. “It was glorious! I wish you’d been able to come out
for dinner with the Benson faculty. They were thrilled, absolutely. Helen, you have no idea. Come to breakfast with us tomorrow
and they’ll gush. I have no idea how to thank you.”

“Come in, come in.”

“Oh, I know you’re busy packing. I don’t want to disturb you.”

“Elliot.” She took him by the arm and pulled him inside. “I need the company. And I’ve got a bottle of rum. Hot toddy?”

Elliot, who did not often drink, said yes.

It took him some time to bring up the real reason he had come to see her. By then they were loose and reminiscent. He was
sitting in her chair. Ferdinand was curled around his feet. She did not see the sober expression cross Elliot’s face—she was
consumed with fitting her socks into the nooks and crannies of her shoes and books—and his seriousness was odd to her, jarring.

“Cal is going to be sad to see you go.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well.”

“It’s hard to forgive someone when he betrays you.”

She nodded.

“But—this is none of my business—perhaps he deserves another chance? He’s a very good man, even if he sometimes acts—”

“Like a child?”

“I was going to say ‘as if he doesn’t know how to love someone.’ Perhaps your version is more… honest.”

Helen went back to packing her socks. “I’ve made up my mind,” she said. “I appreciate your point of view—”

“I understand,” he said. “I have to admit I liked watching you both grow to care about each other. I flattered myself that
I’d found a second career as a matchmaker. But I understand.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, the pause between them growing from hesitant to anxious to awkward.

“I’ll let you get back to your packing,” Elliot finally said but made no move to leave.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“I suppose.” Still he stayed where he was. Helen busied herself with the suitcase until she heard him say.“I’ve been wanting
to talk to you.”

“Uh-oh. You’ve put on the serious voice.”

“No, no, it’s nothing bad. Just… illuminating. I hope.”

“Okay.”

“Remember the first day you were here? When I first told you my plans with Benson? And then I thanked you. For that night,
seventeen years ago, when you helped me. After Astrid disappeared.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, I didn’t tell you everything.”

“Okay.”

“Why don’t you sit down?”

She sat beside the suitcase.

“Remember what I told you? About how I was starting to understand hope again?”

“Yes.”

“It’s real. My hope was real.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I thought for many years that I’d gone crazy that night. Yes, I was out of my mind. Astrid had just left me alone with our
infant with no warning! None at all. I found out three days later that I
was right to have lost my mind a little, when I found out what my wife had been up to. That the bombs she’d been helping make
were what killed her. That she’d kidnapped and helped assassinate that poor Simpson boy. That she and her comrades, as hideous
as their own crimes were, had to die in such a horrific fashion. That my daughter would grow up without a mother. I blamed
myself for making Astrid marry me. For trying to keep her safe from herself. I saw then that I’d been a fool to try to cage
that kind of bird.”

“It was a terrible time,” Helen said.

“Yes, it was. A tragic time. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.” He nodded to himself twice, as if encouraging himself to
continue. Then he met Helen’s eyes. His own were shining. “I was right,” he said with conviction, as if she knew what he was
talking about.

“Right about what?”

“Do you remember what I said that night?”

“You said a lot of things.”

“Yes, but do you remember what I kept saying? What I kept telling you?”

Helen looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. Of course she remembered. But she was not about to repeat the ravings of
a madman to the man, transformed, before her. “It was a long time ago,” she said finally.

“I’ve found her,” he said. “And that’s why. That’s why I’ve been in talks with Benson Country Day. That’s why I want so badly
for you and Cal to work out whatever is between you. Because I can’t be here anymore.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s real, Helen.” He was beaming.“It’s time to go and get her back. To let her know I tried everything. To try to make
it up to her. To tell her that no one would listen when I told them the truth.” He rose and came to her, grasping her hands
in his, kneeling before her. “Listen to me, Helen. You will change the future of this school. You and Cal, together, are exactly
what this school needs. I will place it in your capable hands. You will usher—”

“What are you talking about?” Helen was looking at Elliot in horror. She hadn’t gotten past his first sentence. “Who have
you found?”

“Her.” The word was a whisper.

Helen took a deep breath. “Astrid is dead, Elliot.”

“I know.”

“She’s never going to come back.”

“I know she’s not. But that’s not who—”

There was another knock on the door. The dog, instantly alert, bounded to the door as Lydia opened it. She blushed when she
saw Helen and Elliot so close, and touching. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I need help.”

“What is it?” Elliot was standing already.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Barrow, but there’s a party. And everyone’s pretty messed up, and I’m worried that something bad’s going to
happen. I don’t know how to explain, but we need someone to come.” She looked at Helen with pleading eyes. “And maybe someone
to call the police. I’m sorry.”

Elliot shot out the door, and Lydia followed on his heels. The car was still running, and they took off into the darkness.
It was amazing how quickly they were gone. Helen ran flank to flank with Ferdinand. The nearest phone lay waiting at the school.

C
AL

Stolen, Oregon
Tuesday, May 6, 1997

Here is what great art does to me: it opens me. It opens me dangerously. That woman I loved in Boston? Her poetry was the
most exquisite thing I had ever heard. It made me see the world in a way I had never seen it, and once her words inhabited
me, it was as though there was no other way to see the world. Even now, when I run across one of her poems in the occasional
literary magazine, I feel as though my breath has been taken from me in the most delicious, necessary way.

Helen’s play did that for me. All that crap about Benson Country
Day and Elliot? It flew out the window as I stood backstage and sent our children out into the footlights. I was opened dangerously
by that play, by what it did to the people in that room. It made me ache. It made me ache for that moreness that great art
makes me ache for.

When the play was over and the children had dispersed, and the chairs were folded and the gym swept, and Eunice had convinced
Helen to get home and pack—Helen, whom I had not yet spoken to, Helen, who had not even told me in person she was leaving—
I was left alone in the dark, vast room, so recently full of hundreds of pumping hearts, quick tongues, clapping hands. My
own heart beat as if it might burst out of my chest.

I locked the gym door behind me. I found myself sprinting across the field that separated the school from Helen’s home. I
was fast and blinded and breathless. I would knock on Helen’s door and hold her and love her and tell her I was sorry and
that she was the brilliant thing in my life, the fire in my heart, the sun in my sky, that I was a fool to have hurt her,
that she could not leave me or the school, that I would not let her. I would make love to her until she glowed.

At the house, I thought, “Better look inside first.” Funny how those little thoughts pop up and you listen. For the rest of
your life, you wonder what if.

I did not see that room from the inside, where things were positively fraternal. I did not know that Elliot was pleading my
case. No, what I saw was what Lydia saw: a man and a woman, once married, holding hands like lovers. I stopped short and I
knew: “Well, that’s it.” I could not compete with Elliot. I would not win. I hiked back to the parking lot, trying to close
the open part of me. I thought I heard a car engine behind me, but I didn’t turn to look. It was as if I was outside the world.

I
WAS SHOCKED
when Pete held up the phone over the din of the jukebox and hollered, “Your girlfriend’s on the phone.”

“What girlfriend?” I was already into my second whiskey.

“That teacher,” he said. “The one from New York.”

“How’d you find me?” I asked into the mouthpiece.

“Eunice,” she said in one breath, and in the next, she began to speak so fast I could hardly understand her. The noise from
the bar wasn’t helping. What I got clearly was “Come quickly.” She needed me. I headed back out to the school, speeding the
whole way.

D
RIVING OUT TO
Where-We-Have-the-Parties, I assured Helen things were going to be fine. “Elliot’s there,” I joked. “He’s an expert at ending
teen fun.” She was amazed that the police and I both knew exactly where the party was. “I grew up here,” I said. “It’s not
that hard to guess where the kids go.” Aside from that, there wasn’t much to say. Yet I was glad to be near her. I was still
thinking of myself.

We knew, as soon as we started up that last little hill, that things were going to be terrible. We felt it, the horror growling
in the root of our stomachs, when we saw the flames. They were the tallest flames I’ve ever seen, and when we crested the
hill, the world was lit up. The whole place where the old barn had once been was now fire. And around that fire was a circle
of silhouettes, watching like statues.

We were out of the car and running into the smoke, but the police were already there, and they held us back. “Is everything
okay?” Helen kept asking, over and over. The children’s faces were different in the orange light of the blaze. I searched
them for the people I knew, and even though the next day, many of them told me they tried to talk to me, they said it was
as if I never saw them at all. I was looking and looking, but I could not see.

The fire department arrived about five minutes later. It seemed to take forever, but I’m told it was five minutes. Those men
are skilled at quarantining forest fires in an area where a lit match can ignite a whole mountain. They ran toward the fire,
and that was when I noticed Amelia and Lydia. They were wrapped around each other, intercepting the firemen, begging them
to help. “He’s inside!” I heard Amelia cry. Then I squinted into the heat of the
blaze and saw a tall boy, his face wrapped in a shirt, being pulled away from the fire. Victor.

“It’s all right,” I said, coming up to the girls. “Look, he’s fine.”

“Where?” asked Amelia, frantically searching.

“There,” I said, pointing at Victor.

“No,” she said. “I don’t mean Victor. I mean my father.” She stepped back from me. “My father went in there looking for me.”

I looked back at the blaze as it groaned, the great structure bowing and bending. It made the sound of a thousand coyotes
howling at the moon. It made the sound of a thousand pine trees blown down by a mighty wind. The heat from the fire blistered
my face and singed my hair, and the smell of it was to be on me for days. The water truck pulled up in front of us, blocking
our view, and I began to move us around, but Amelia buried herself in me. “I don’t want to see,” she said. “I don’t want to
watch this.” Which was wise. Because the barn collapsed, but before it did, they found Elliot. One of the firemen carried
Elliot out on his shoulder, but it looked like that man was carrying a deer or a dog. I could not see clearly, but I could
see that Elliot no longer had a face. I held down my bile as they put him on a stretcher and the ambulance screamed away.