Set Me Free (48 page)

“What about the pediatrician? School? Having a life?”

“You love rules,” she accused, pushing away the spoon. “I need to sleep, Elliot.”

Twenty-one days passed. Elliot noticed how strangely divided his family had become. Every time he tried to talk to Astrid
about the reality of both girls, she got angry. She started to rage at him. “They came out of
me
,” she said. She looked wild when she said this. He saw something of a threat in her eyes, and he was afraid. He’d keep the
second girl a secret one more day. He’d wait to talk to Astrid again when she was more reasonable. Just one more day. In the
meantime, he took Astrid’s lead; when she picked up a crying baby, it was always Willa she picked up first. “She’s so tiny,”
she would say. Elliot found that he was the one who picked up Amelia more often.

When Astrid started to venture outside, she took Willa with her. When Elliot went out to the grocery store, he carried with
him his firstborn. People from the neighborhood congratulated them on their daughter’s birth. Note the singular. When Astrid
disappeared, Elliot called the police, and the first thing he said was “She’s got my baby with her.” Because by then there
was
only one birth certificate, and he was holding a baby in his arms, and no remains of a baby were found at the scene of the
explosion a week later, his claims were dismissed. He was experiencing a break of sorts. These things happened. His pleas
for baby Willa were ignored.

Months later, when he knew all that Astrid had done, when he wondered if his second daughter still lived and breathed and
looked up at the stars at night, Elliot Barrow blamed himself. He worried night and day about his other girl. But he could
not find her. If the FBI denied her existence, how could he begin to look?

Until he figured out how, he would do what he could. Since he could not help his own, he would help as many other children
as he could. He would take his inheritance and make a difference. Oregon sounded like a beautiful place. And that was when
he brought his Amelia west.

* * *

W
E ASK STILL
why. Of course we do. The “why” is at the center of our tale—why did Astrid want to hold only one of her girls? Why did she
take this same girl with her when she kidnapped a man? Why did she leave one daughter behind? Why did she bring her other
daughter to Nat’s arms, and not home, to Elliot’s?

We would love to know the answers to these questions. We believe that if we have the truth, we will be able to forgive. Ourselves.
Each other. Her.

But no one can tell us why. I suspect that even Astrid—were she still alive and now a middle-aged woman, serving time—could
not tell us. I know, I know: having answers to these questions would be so easy. It would be so good. But it is not how this
story, this life, will go. No matter how many times we ask, there will never be answers, since those who might have known
them cannot speak, and perhaps they were answers that even then could not be named.

Meanwhile, those of us left behind are hungry for our lives. I see why you’ve been holding on, Elliot. Why we all have. We
have put our lives on hold, because we hope there will be answers. We hope to be rescued from the terrible moment when Astrid
picked up one baby girl and left the other one behind; we believe rescue will come in knowing why. But the truth is simple.
We will never know why. She is not here to tell us. We will never know what was in her heart: if she was scared, or angry,
or crazed, or cruel, or if she was so delusional that she believed she was doing good. The “why” of that moment will never
be answered. That truth is brutal. But it is still the truth.

You see that now, don’t you, Elliot? You see why we are here.

We are here to set you free. To forgive you for that fleeting second in which you made a decision: to say yes to Astrid’s
insistence that you acknowledge only one daughter, a decision that changed all our fates. We are here to forgive the woman
who bore you these beautiful girls, the woman who took your wholeness from you, who separated your daughters from each other.
More than that, we are here to help you. Because the girls are back together

now. We are here to promise you that in the face of this great gift of their togetherness, we are letting go of why. We are
letting go so we can get back to living. We are here to promise you that when we are heartbroken, and when we are angry, and
when we are afraid, we will not return to the never-answered why, because we know that it leads nowhere. Instead, when we
remember you and Astrid together, we will choose to remember the time before your world began to unravel. We will imagine
the extraordinary moment when you first became a father, when you first saw your daughters, pink baby salmon, swimming in
the waters. We know that in the instant when you and Astrid first saw these girls slip from their mother’s womb, you both
meant good. You meant no harm. You were hopeful in the act of creation.

What more can we expect? How else could we ever offer you our mercy?

You are my brother, Elliot, and here, with our mercy, is your story. I give it to you. We give it to you. With our great love,
it winds above us. It sneaks out through the open sash of the window. It streams skyward. It calls to you. Follow it out of
this room. Be not afraid.

I am no Shakespeare. But that doesn’t stop me from entertaining a fully Shakespearean ambition: to devise a world in my mind
and then to present my “insubstantial pageant” so broadly, and with such respect, that you too will be caught up in it.

In order to create this book, I—like so many fiction writers— dreamed and invented various characters, read voraciously, and
researched deeply. Finally, after much deliberation, I dreamed and invented the Neige Courante. I am not of Native heritage
and thus cannot write from the advantage of belonging.

I offer my invention with deep gratitude and respect; I could not live long enough to adequately represent the elaborate heritage
and worldview of any of the extremely culturally rich Northwest peoples. All faults are mine.

Of particular help in my research was the Museum at Warm Springs in Warm Springs, Oregon; the National Museum of the American
Indian in Washington, D.C.; and Frank B. Linderman’s book
Pretty-shield: Medicine Woman of the Crowds
, which Cal encounters under its original title,
Red Mother.

I drew inspiration and understanding from Janet Catherine Berlo’s
Spirit Beings and Sun Dancers: Black Hawk’s Vision of the Lakota World;
Ella E. Clark’s
Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest;
Luther S. Cressman’s
The Sandal and the Cave: The Indians of Oregon; Northwest Lands, Northwest Peoples: Readings in Environmental History,
edited by Dale D. Goble and Paul W Hirt; Eugene S. Hunn’s
Nch’i-Wâna “The Big River”: Mid-Columbia Indians and Their Land; Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest,
selected by Katharine Berry Judson;
Coyote Was Going There: Indian Literature of the Oregon Country,
compiled and edited by Jarold Ramsey;
Teaching American Indian Students,
edited by Jon Reyhner;
First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rim,
edited by Judith Roche and Meg McHutchison; Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown’s
A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest;
Cynthia D. Stow-ell’s
Faces of a Reservation:A Portrait of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation;
and Charles Wilkinson’s
Messages from Frank’s Landing: A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way.

The National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Pacific Northwest,
by Peter Alden and Dennis Paulson et al; and David D. Alt and Donald W. Hyndman’s
Roadside Geology of Oregon
gave me the right terms, trees, and animals. Judith Clavir Albert and Stewart Edward Albert’s
The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade; Weatherman,
edited by Harold Jacobs; and the Weather Underground’s publication
Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism
all gave me deeper understanding of Astrid Lux Barrow’s beliefs.

Thanks to my team of readers, Daniel J. Blau, Annalisa Brown, Jennifer Cayer, Caitlin Eicher, Amber Hall, Emily Raboteau,
and Wendy Salinger, for being so cogent and so kind; to Mona Kuhn, Maia Davis, Jock Sturges, and Marine Sturges, for the gifts
of space and art; to Se-ah-dom Edmo, for her encouragement and diligence; to Althea Pratt-Broome and Willowbrook, for casting
me as Feste when I was ten years old; to Sid Eaton and Steve Saslow, for inviting me on a life-changing voyage to Montana;
to the people of the Crow Reservation and Pretty Eagle School, for their exuberant welcome; to Amy March, for recounting her
adventures; to two extraordinary friends of my mind and heart: my father, Dr. Robert Dunster Whittemore II, and my sister,
Kai Beverly-Whittemore; to my husband, David M. Lobenstine for his friendship, sagacity and resolute faith—I am besotted;
and to my mother, Elizabeth Beverly, for planting the seed, watering the sapling, and pruning the branches.

Thanks to my agent, Anne Hawkins, for her vision and friendship; to Rick Horgan, for his early advocacy; to Emily Griffin,
for all she does; to Beth Thomas and Penina Sacks, for their keen eyes; and to my editors, Amy Einhorn and Frances Jalet-Miller,
for their wise insight and generous guidance.

“I am the one who is telling this story. So I’ll begin with what my illustrious father had to say about stories in the first
place. There he’d stand in front of a crowd of white senators, or Hollywood types, or—because he wasn’t a total hypocrite—a
flock of reservation kids, and he would say, fire in his eyes, ‘Only stories, true stories, can heal the crack at the heart
of the world.”

Ponderosa Academy is Elliot Barrow’s brainchild. Built with his own hands in the Oregon high desert, the school serves the
children of the Neige Courante, a Native American tribe eking out a living on a dusty, overlooked reservation. Elliot’s family,
colleagues, and friends know nothing of the devastating catastrophe at the heart of his life, the true reason he founded the
academy. After he’s critically injured in a horrific fire, those left behind have only the balm of narrative, tales gathered
by those who know him best. Until they are placed side by side, the secret at the heart of Elliot Barrow’s life will never
be known.

Narrated by the acerbic Cal, Elliot’s closest friend and bitterest rival, SET ME FREE is the story of those who love Elliot:
Amelia, his sixteen-year-old daughter, who hungers for a life beyond her father’s ideas and ideals, never imagining the violent,
tragic truth of her dead mother’s legacy; Helen, Elliot’s first wife, visiting the academy to direct a production of Shakespeare’s
The Tempest,
and Cal himself, brilliant, angry, and afraid. Then there is the matter of Willa Llewelyn, hurtling across the country in
her father’s ancient Volvo. She has never heard of Ponderosa Academy or Elliot Barrow. But she is vital to the great, beguiling
mystery haunting Amelia, Helen, and Cal.

Inspired by
The Tempest
—whose last words are “set me free”—Beverly-Whittemore’s novel reverberates with the ambitions and foibles of liberal ideals,
the dangers of protecting children from the sins of their fathers, and the boisterous voices of Neige Courante students. In
its frank depiction of fatherhood and friendship, race and class, love and devastation, SET ME FREE is moving, funny, incisive,
and, above all, wise.

M
IRANDA
B
EVERLY
-W
HITTEMORE
is the author of the highly acclaimed debut novel
The Effects of Light.
She is a graduate of Vassar College and has worked for the 92
^nd
Street Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can visit her at
www.MirandaBeverly-Whittemore.com
.

THE EFFECTS OF LIGHT

“[An] ambitious first novel.”

—
N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
B
OOKS
R
EVIEW

“A complex and beautifully written novel.”

—
A
NITA
S
HREVE, AUTHOR OF
T
HE
P
ILOT’S
W
IFE

“Beverly-Whittemore’s stunning novel will stick with you long after the last page.”

—
M
ARIE
C
LAIRE

“Here is the rare book where one is carried along as much by the author’s surprising and original mind as by her ability to
tell a good story.”

—S
UE
H
ALPERN, AUTHOR OF
F
OUR WINGS AND A
P
RAYER