Set Me Free (45 page)

Even after I knew Elliot was never waking up again, I went to the hospital to sit in the dark room where Elliot lay barely
breathing, and I tried to account for what had happened and why Elliot was holding on. I looked at the heap of bandages before
me, at the machines blinking and beeping and whirring, and wished I had Elliot back so he could tell me the story himself.
Why wouldn’t he let go?

I valiantly assumed I’d figured out everything on my own. I figured out that Elliot couldn’t die because his daughter wasn’t
there for him to lay eyes on. I figured out that was the reason Amelia had decided to run off in the first place. She knew
her father was way too polite, way too cultured, to leave without bidding us all adieu. He wanted, and deserved, a proper
deathbed scene. I know that sounds trivial now—maybe even snide—but both Helen and I
knew Elliot and his daughter well enough to recognize that even if this wasn’t completely true, Amelia might believe it was
true. So I was feeling a little irked at Amelia, a little annoyed, for leaving her father in the lurch like this. For not
having the nerve to say goodbye.

I was thinking these thoughts as I headed back downstairs and one of the nurses took me aside. She wanted to ask me something,
but I shook my head. “Not now,” I said. “Later.” And strode on. What caught my eye then was the remarkable contrast between
competence and utter grief. There stood nurses, all clipboards and rainbow-hued scrubs, gleaming and confident, while the
others—
us
—the real people, felled by the suffering of those we loved but could not save, mumbled and churned in unkempt clothes, or
put on bright false countenances and read glossy magazines and sipped from giant thermoses. We waited in vain.

None of this was new. But today, in the center of the visitors’ lounge, stood a tall thin white man, and he was weeping, unabashed.
Tears flowing. His face a mask of agony. No consolation possible. Looking at him was at once unbearable and irresistible.
His grief was so pure that it should have shamed us all. He was losing someone before our eyes, and there was no help for
it.

What happened to me then was remarkable. I had—let’s put the right name on it—a revelation. I saw that I was mad at Amelia,
irked at her, as I believed, not because she was holding up her father’s demise but because I, Calbert Fleecing, her godfather,
was worried sick about her. What if I lost her too? Not just Elliot but Amelia? I felt a stab of pain that I recognized as
love and fear— both at once, as usual. Then I was out of there, racing out the front entrance of the hospital, on my way to
find the person who, I now knew, was becoming my daughter.

To say that I found her immediately makes it sound as if I’m lying. But that was what happened. No sooner had I opened my
eyes in the glare of the daylight than there, in the front seat of a car, I saw what we’d all been looking for.

I’d like to say that love filled my heart with kindness, but no. I felt good and mad. I also felt a rush of relief and a dawning
realization that Amelia was wounded, wounded like an animal, and more than anything, I had to lure her home. I couldn’t afford
to scare her. Maybe she’d been hitchhiking. I wouldn’t make her tell me anything. I’d just take her, safely, home.

Amelia stiffened when she saw me. Her eyes panicked, even though the rest of her stayed still, and I dreaded knowing what
had happened to her in the world to make her look at me that way. I tapped on the window. I said, “Open the window, please.”

She unrolled it a sliver, so that my words had to fly through a tiny space to reach her. “Your dad wants you to come with
me,” I said. “He wants you safe.”

She shook her head.

“Come on,” I said. “Come with me. You don’t have to say a word.”

When she opened the car door, it was clear she’d gathered things on her lap: a jean jacket, a backpack. I didn’t recognize
these things, but I don’t pay much attention to stuff like that. She reached down to the floor and picked up a cat, old and
stunned, and—I was proud of myself—I didn’t say a word. Hell, we could handle a cat. Even Ferdinand could. I was surprised
that she leaned on me, given how she’d looked at me through that window. But she leaned on me hard as I walked her to my truck.
It felt as if she was crying, though she didn’t make a sound.

We drove north, and she was silent the whole time. I’d decided to wait to speak until she did. She didn’t say anything. She
leaned her head against the window and angled her face away from me. I was glad I’d found her when I did.

We pulled into the school and in front of the house, but she made no move to get out of the car. Finally, I said, “I’d leave
you here alone, but I’m concerned you’ll run away. So you’re going to have to come inside.”

She nodded once.

“Do you think you can manage?”

She held her things to her chest as I walked around to her side. She held on to my arm as she stepped down from the truck.
Then she shrugged and handed me the cat. Her eyes searched the house, and that was the first time I had a moment of pause.
It looked as if she had never seen the house before. I thought, “She’s traumatized.” So I led her to the doorway and up the
stairs.

“Helen!” I called. “Look who I found!”

Helen appeared at the top of the stairs and went white at the sight of Amelia. “She ran away again?” She scrutinized Amelia.
Stern. Then asked, “How did you get out of your room?”

“I just found her down by the hospital—”

“But Victor brought her back about an hour ago. I’ve been trying to call you.”

“Victor?”

“He found her this morning up by his house. He brought her back himself.”

By then Amelia and I were at the top of the stairs. Helen enfolded her in a hug and shook her head. “You can’t keep running
away like this. I know it’s hard. But honey, I’m too old for this; you’re going to give me a heart attack.”

Amelia stood there, her things still in her arms.

“What’s all this?” Helen asked, but couldn’t pry them away.

There was a noise behind us. We turned one by one to see a second Amelia, standing in the doorway of her bedroom. “I’m trying
to sleep,” she said. “Could you keep it down?”

Helen screamed. It was a note that hung in the air long after it started. I dropped the cat and stepped back, speechless.
Helen stumbled as if her legs were giving out, and propped herself against the door frame.

There were two Amelias. They stared at each other, and their expressions were like those of people who have never heard of
the existence of snow, and then open their eyes one morning and find that the world is a miracle of white. Or people who have
never
known the sea, and the road turns left and there’s the Pacific, all wild and wide. It was as if the girls were seeing the
whole world for the first time. Hell, it was as if
all
of us were seeing the whole world for the first time. Looking at them was seeing the world coming together. No one said a
word, and then Helen murmured, “You weren’t crazy, you were never crazy.”

The girls moved toward each other. I looked at Helen and her eyes were wet, and she was gasping, but I’m ashamed that I can’t
explain in words the euphoria spangling through her. She told me later that I looked the same.

“Where’s my father?” the first Amelia asked me.

“Elliot?” I said.

She shook her head. “His name’s Nat.”

“I have no idea,” I said. The wheels of my mind were stuck in the mud.

“I’m Willa,” the first Amelia said. “I want to make sure my father’s okay.”

“Yes,” I said, but I didn’t move. I watched the girls take each other in.

“I’m Amelia,” Amelia said. They took each other’s hands.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was like a song. She was like a song because she preferred to hold still, and when
she held her very stillest, that was when song, pure and clear, emanated from her deepest self. She was shy about this song.
It was her great gift.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was like a dance. She was like a dance because she could not hold still. She ricocheted
off of everything. Her dance was frenetic and funny, and often she would whiz by and people would wonder, “What was that?”
She was not shy about this dance. It was her great gift.

The girl who was like a song did not know about the girl who was like a dance. Likewise, the girl who was like a dance did
not know about the girl who was like a song.

But the strange thing was, they looked exactly alike.

Before they figured out how it was they looked exactly alike, before they figured out that they had the same parents, before
they figured out that these parents had kept them apart for their song-and-dance lifetimes, there was a moment. This moment
was before the girls were sad or angry. This moment was full of wonder. This moment was when the song realized she had always
missed the dance, and the dance realized she had always missed the song.

The song said, “You look…”

The dance said, “You look…”

And together they said, “Like me. “

The dance reached out a finger to touch the song’s cheek. “Maybe I’m asleep,” the dance thought.

The song stood still and started to cry.

The dance said, “Why are you crying?”

The song said, “I’m scared.”

The dance said, “I’m fucking freaking out.”

There were adults in the room. The adults were supposed to have the answers. The adults were even more bewildered than the
song or the dance, because the adults were seeing double. They had known the song since she was a baby. They had sung to her
and changed her and held her in their arms as she cried. But they had never imagined there could be two of her.

Well, that is not entirely true. One of the adults was the man-who-had-once-been-the-boy. He knew about fathers and their
lies. The other adult was the satin woman. And as soon as she saw the song and the dance, face-to-face, she began to weep.
She tried to speak. She tried to say, “He told me about this. When you were just a baby.” The satin woman pointed between
the song and the dance, trying to tell the song she was speaking to her. “He told me there were two of you.” But she couldn’t
get the words to sound clear.

The song and dance said, “What?”

The satin woman finally got it out.

The song and dance said, “Who?”

“Your father. “

The song and the dance looked at each other, bewildered. They were each thinking of her father, but they were thinking of
different fathers.

The song and dance said, “When?”

“Seventeen years ago. On the night your mother left.”

The song and dance said, “Where?”

“New York City.”

The song and dance said, “Why?”

That would turn out to be the biggest mystery of all.

(As You from Crimes Would Pardon’d Be, Let Your Indulgence Set Me Free)

Spoken by
CAL

w
e’ve arrived at the end in the play. And though it may be almost time to quit our seats, the damn story—the one we’ve been
caught up in—will never be over. This is hard on all of us. The players, caught up in the spell of otherness, must plunge
down to earth, taking on their skinnier daily identities. The audience’s job is even harder. The audience, whose attention
cast this spell in the first place, must shrug the charm from their collective eyes and concede that the other life—the one
outside the theater—is the life they’re stuck with. It awaits them. But if the play has worked its magic, then that waiting
life, that coming death, can look a lot like peace, a lot like rest. A place to give way to sleep without giving up hope.
The time has come to scramble into coats, dry our eyes, roll up the playbill. Exeunt.

So. Elliot. There are only a few more things to tell. And then you can choose. To go or to stay. To be or not to be.

Should I start with your daughters? The way they sit on either side of you, whispering their secrets into your ears? That’s
one story I can’t tell. It’s not mine. Anyway, I know you have already
heard the heart of it. You hear them the way a father hears, love them the way a father loves.

So what is left?

First in line stands Nat Llewelyn. Willa is asking you to forgive Nat, her father. Dammit, we
all
are.

Ah, the mysterious sins of the fathers. Apparently and reasonably, kidnapping is considered a crime only if the person you’ve
kidnapped officially exists. Unless you’ve met that simple condition, no charges can be filed, even if you turn yourself in
to the police and seek out a hard-nosed judge who’s willing to listen to you until you run out of talk and tears.

No one, except perhaps you, Elliot, can blame Nat Llewelyn for basing his entire life of caring for Willa on the mistaken
belief that he was wanted by the feds. No one can blame him for assuming that Willa was your only child with Caroline aka
Astrid, and that you were devoting all your resources, all your might, to locating that precious daughter, to retrieving her,
to punishing whoever had stolen her. Since Nat loved her the way he did, with such a pure singing heart, he could imagine
what Willa meant to you. He did not know that Willa’s birth had never been registered, even though Amelia’s had; he didn’t
know that once your wife—Astrid to you, Caroline to him—had been killed in that blast, along with her comrades, you were the
sole living person, other than Nat himself, who knew that Willa was rightfully, biologically,
yours.

Why didn’t he keep his promise to Caroline, bundle that baby up, and deliver her to your arms? What made him wait until now?
Think about it, Elliot. There was a good chance that you were as wrongheaded and strong-willed as Caroline had proved to be.
As far as Nat was concerned, you had fallen in love with that terrorist knowing full well that she was a terrorist; as Caroline
had confided to him in a horrible rush of candor, you’d taught her everything worth knowing about life. Caroline was referring
to your idealism, your inexhaustible search for justice, but how was Nat, listening through a fog of heart-wrenched jealousy,
not to
think of violence? How was he supposed to know you weren’t the one who’d taught her bombs?