Set Me Free (22 page)

The gypsy rover came over the hill,

Down through the valley so shady,

He whistled and he sang till the green woods rang

And he won the heart of a lady.

She left her father’s castle gate,

She left her own true lover,

She left her servants and her estate

To follow the gypsy rover.

Ah-di-doo ah-di-doo-dah-day

Ah-di-doo ah-di-day-dee

He whistled and he sang till the green woods rang

And he won the heart of the lady.

Her father saddled his fastest steed

And roamed the free lands all over.

He found her at last in a mansion fine

With the whistling gypsy rover.

“He’s no gypsy, my father,” said she.

“He’s lord of the free lands all over.

And I will stay till my dying day

With the whistling gypsy rover.”

Helen came back. Amelia could feel her footsteps shimmying through the floorboards. Elliot kept singing. This was the part
they
could never remember the words to. Something about marriage. Something about a feast.

…
down by the River Clady

And there was music and there was wine

For the gypsy and his lady.

Elliot’s voice hummed the rest of the chorus, so that it reverberated through his chest, down into his legs, and into Amelia.
She kept her eyes closed and remembered how this felt, just the two of them.

The song ended. There was a rest in things, and Amelia knew someone would speak, but she wished they wouldn’t. She held her
breath and was surprised when no one spoke at all. She kept this silence, leaning against her father, feeling his warm hand
on the back of her head. The smell of peppermint wafted up from the fields near the highway, and she breathed in deeply, savoring
its familiarity.

The sound of a car coming up the driveway was what finally broke the moment. Amelia was nearly asleep when the purring engine
and the crunch of gravel under tires pulled her back into herself. She heard the dog perk up and run to the driveway. She
heard Helen stand—she hadn’t heard her sit—and follow. Amelia reluctantly opened her eyes. Elliot rubbed her back for a few
moments, and she broke from him, sitting back, stretching her arms.

“Let’s never fight again,” he said.

“Yeah, right.”

“You’re sixteen, Amelia. Last night was an important reminder. I can vaguely, in the darkest corners of my mind, remember
sixteen. I wanted more freedom. So how’s this? One night every two weekends.” It wasn’t much. But it was something. “Just
promise me you won’t drink—you won’t drink too much, anyway. And no sex. Please, no sex.”

“Oh God, Dad.”

“We don’t have to talk about it. Just understand that I’m not old enough to be a grandfather.”

“Please stop.”

“Because if you have sex, I’ll know. I’ll see it on your face.”

“I’m going to die.” Amelia blushed. Her embarrassment was an odd comfort. As she wished it away, she also wanted it. She wanted
him to speak this way to her, to forbid her things, to discipline, to lead her, when she also wanted exactly the opposite.
This is what you feel if you are lucky enough to be loved, and in the world between the children and the adults.

Elliot’s face lit up as he looked beyond Amelia and greeted someone. She turned to see Victor standing awkwardly beside Helen.
Amelia stood—too fast, she realized, as the world spun around her then swerved to a halt. “Hi!” she said loudly, brightly,
much too eagerly. She promptly wished she could find a hiding place.

“Come sit, Victor,” said Elliot. “What a pleasant surprise! I see you’ve met Helen. She’s going to be directing a production
of
The Tempest
this year. Victor is one of our best and brightest. We knew him when he was very small, but then he made the move to Chicago.
Come sit, Victor. Tell us about your mother!”

“Hey,” said a somewhat overwhelmed-looking Victor, who didn’t move an inch. “Actually, I came to see if Amelia’s free.”

“Oh.” Surprise clipped Elliot’s voice, but he recovered quickly. “Sure.” He smiled broadly, genuinely.

An awkward silence fell over the group. The smell of the peppermint was beginning to make Amelia feel a little sick. She had
no idea what to do or say. All the joy she’d felt earlier in the day had blossomed into pure terror. As each second ticked
by, she could remember fewer and fewer words. So she could have kissed Helen for speaking next. “What do you two have planned?”

Victor caught Amelia’s eye and cleared his throat. “We’re on a… on a kind of mission, I guess you could say. Looking for something.”

“Like a treasure hunt?”

“Yeah, sure. Like a treasure hunt.”

“Sounds like fun,” Helen said. “I’m sure Amelia will want to
freshen up a bit—she just got back from Lydia’s—so why don’t you do that, Amelia, and in the meantime, Victor can have some
tea and tell me all about living in Chicago and what it’s been like to move back here.” Helen pulled Victor and Elliot into
a breezy kind of chitchat as Amelia fled the porch and sought out the cool of the stairwell. The privacy of it.

She remembered as she climbed what she always forgot when she was alone with her father like that: how hard it was afterward,
reentering the world, being around anyone else whose company she enjoyed. If she was allied with someone else, it seemed she
was Elliot’s enemy. She wished she could keep Helen on retainer, for her smooth transitions, for her directorial authority

S
OON
A
MELIA WAS
riding in Victor’s Chevy pickup, which was high off the ground and moved fast through the world. It was red and beat up and
being in it was like being in a dream. Victor himself was a dream—a white T-shirt, dirty jeans, and a wide smile. If Amelia
could have cast this moment in a fantasy, this was exactly how she would have wished it. In that imaginary world, she never
knew what Victor would say to her. For that matter, she never knew that she would have anything worthwhile to say to him.
But here they were, making fluid conversation about nothing in particular. It was unreal.

“So your dad’s not mad?”

“Nah. I mean, he’s disappointed. Which is sometimes worse than mad. He doesn’t really get mad, actually. Just disapproving.”

“Was it okay I came over?”

“Of course!” Again a little too eager. “Tone it down,” she told herself, then said,“I mean, it’s cool.” She added quietly,
so that even she had a hard time hearing herself, “I guess I didn’t expect to see you.”

“What? You serious?”

“I mean, you have so many friends, and…” She shrugged.

“You didn’t think we had a good talk last night?”

“Oh, sure, I did. I just… I didn’t know if you meant it.”

Victor shook his head, matching her seriousness. “I don’t break my word. I ask you for your help, I need your help. I believe
in keeping a word of honor.”

They were driving the back road now, looping around to the other side of the school, and Wiggler’s Creek, to the ranch next
door. Amelia wanted to ask why exactly it was her help he needed. Yes, she could muster interest and passion about the subject
of the disappearing baby, if it meant he wanted her alone. Most of all—even more than finding the baby for Victor—she wanted
that moment back: when he told her she was all he remembered about Stolen. It was like wanting back the moment before one
flipped a coin. That moment in which everything was possible.

Amelia was realizing what we all realize, that in the seconds when someone reveals that he needs us, we are made vaster, wiser,
and more capable than we have ever been. We are altered by that need. Afterward, we are faced with the cruel truth of coming
back here, to earth, which makes no mention of our alteration. Victor’s mouth had delivered a warm wash of need to Amelia’s
ears, and twelve hours later, she was already discovering she could relive this conversation only so many times.

She was in trouble. She was ready for more. But she didn’t know how to begin. Victor tapped against the glass of his window,
pointing into the distance at the stand of alders, ashen-leaved, rattling in the soft breeze, much taller than they had been
ten years before. He asked simply, “We found the baby near there, right?”

“Yes,” said Amelia. “You’re right.”

C
AL

Stolen, Oregon
Monday, October 7, 1996

T
hese days I like to think of the negotiations over the Benson-Ponderosa merger as a string of pitched battles in what would
become my private bloodless war with Elliot Barrow. The first skirmish took place on the Monday morning after Helen arrived.
I knew Elliot was up to something when he made his appearance in the teachers’ lounge. All right, that’s unfair. I’m making
it sound as if he never came in there, and he came in all the time. Enamored of the brassy shine of academic euphemism, he
always referred to it as the Faculty Lounge. It seemed I was the only one who could detect the difference between his purely
social visits and the ones where he expected something. He poked his head in the door: “Hello, Doris! Looking forward to sitting
in on the frog dissections tomorrow! Ray, Amelia’s dreading today’s quiz. Make her squirm!” Soon he was tapping my shoulder,
drawing me out from behind my carefully erected wall: the
Times
arts section. “Cal, can I have a word? Are you free this period?” He knew I was free.

Assistant Headmaster Calbert Fleecing. Has a lovely ring to it. But I knew it would be a meaningless title unless I supplied
the meaning. When Elliot Barrow came to our end of the earth to start a school for our Neige Courante children, everyone here
suspected
he was running from something. It’s amazing how quickly people forget. A rich man decides to spend his inheritance educating
your children, and all your questions disappear. I’ll be the first to admit that I understood what it felt like to run away.
That was one thing we had in common. Perhaps that’s why he jumped the moment my name was dangled before him. Given my circumstances
at the time, I embodied a strange blend of open hostility and pleased-as-punchness. I’m not saying Elliot didn’t have to work
hard to nab me. I was not an easy get. But I mean, come on. I had fled the preeminent academic institution on earth with a
shroud of shame to show for my time there. I had moved back to a place where I had zero friends and a reluctant family. Something
would have to end my misery.

Even before Elliot showed up—and even through my self-hatred, which we can discuss later ad nauseam, if you’re really all
that interested—I began to notice something. Because of who my father was, and what the people owed him, those same people
seemed to want me to lead them a little too. Kind of as a way to pay my father back for what he’d given. This unspoken investment
in me was something that followed me down the aisles of the grocery store and came roaring across the prairie. People didn’t
like me. But that hardly mattered. They liked what I stood for.

For a while I resisted. My moniker for a time was Harvard Graduate Calbert Fleecing. Okay, fine. Not my favorite but fine.
And then this: “They loved him so much, they asked him to stay on for graduate school! And Lord knows we don’t know how they
taught him this, but they taught him poetry. They taught him literature. Law might have been more useful. Medicine. The tribe
could have used a proper doctor. But poetry, that’s good too, and no one can say anything bad about it, because a literature
degree from Harvard must be the best literature degree in the world! You can tell he excelled. Just look at him! All he does
all day is sit around and brood! Now,
there’s
a writer if we’ve ever seen one!” What came next was the downward spiral of a young man trying to match wits with a whole
nation’s set of elderly women.