Set Me Free (3 page)

Victor was taking a long time. Probably her father hadn’t been in his office. Since it was after hours, there was no one else
down on the main campus, not even Victor’s mom, who was grading tests. Maybe her dad was making dinner. Amelia was pinched
with a pang of hunger. She suddenly had to pee. It was funny she hadn’t felt it before, but now she thought she might wet
her pants. She would have to go to one of the bushes and pee behind it. And she would sing to the baby the whole time, so
it wouldn’t feel alone.

She leaned down quickly and kissed one of its toes. The baby foot was sweaty and squirmy like a thick pink worm. It smelled
like it wanted to be nibbled on. “I’ll be right back,” Amelia said. “I just have to pee now.” The baby gave a belly laugh,
and she kissed its toes again. It smiled at her, and she made a funny face. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll be right back.”

She went to the closest juniper and squatted behind it. She knew it probably didn’t matter whether the baby saw her pee, but
she wasn’t sure if that was okay. She made sure her pants were down around her ankles and her butt was sticking far enough
out that she wouldn’t splatter on her clothes. The pee took a few seconds to come; she pressed her face against the juniper
and breathed in deeply. Little blue berries jangled against her face. The sharp smell of the juniper was like pee, but she
couldn’t tell if it was her pee or the pee of the tree. She remembered she was going to sing to the baby, so she started on
“Row, Row, Row Your Boat” again until she was done. Just then she heard the voices of Victor and her father. It was going
to be exciting to explain about the baby to her dad. She pulled up her pants and stepped around the bush and waved.

They were running toward her, toward the spot where the baby was. Or had been. Because it wasn’t until she looked at her father’s
face, and Victor’s, that she glanced at where the baby was supposed to be, at where it had been just a moment ago, and saw
that it
wasn’t there anymore. Not it, not the blanket, not her sweatshirt, not anything.

“Where is it?” her father asked, walking slowly forward.

“I told you, Mr. Barrow, it was right there,” Victor said. He was looking at Amelia as if he didn’t know who she was.

“Where’d you take it?” her father asked, taking her by the shoulders.

“It was right there.” She pointed. “I swear. I just went to pee for a second.”

“Did you move it?” he asked. He was starting to shake her a little bit. His grip on her shoulders was tight.

“No,” she said. All she could think to say was “no.”

Her father was frantic. He pushed his long fingers through his hair. “You just don’t lose a baby, Amelia,” he said. “Tell
me where it is.”

Amelia started to cry. “I don’t know, Daddy. I promise, I don’t know.” He squatted beside her then and hugged her tight.

And that was it. They searched and searched, but nothing was found. Her father gave them a talking to for telling tall tales.
He didn’t want everyone to think that she and Victor were liars, so they all three agreed that this “prank” would remain a
secret. Amelia knew that her father was right. If the older kids, even the ones who played pranks on one another all the time,
found out, they would act like she’d done something terrible.

Even with the secret agreement, things unraveled. Victor wouldn’t talk to her anymore; whenever his mom was staying late at
school, he sat in her office and did his homework. It was as if they’d never been friends. And her dad gave a stern lecture
at assembly about the dangers of lying.

But that wasn’t what got Amelia. She knew what was true. She knew there’d been a baby. She’d smelled it. What got her was
knowing she would have to hold a terrible truth inside herself for the rest of her life: something bad had happened to that
baby. Death. Just like Victor said. A wolf had dragged it, or goblins. Or she and her game and her fairy wand had made the
baby appear
from another world, and she had done the wrong thing with it, like not saying the best magic spell, and that had made the
baby disappear again, back to a horrible land where it would know no happiness. She should have taken it into her arms and
held it. She should have been brave. She should not have let it die.

So Amelia vowed: no more fairy games. She didn’t know her own power.

In the weeks afterward, before the memory faded and summer came and she forgot the reason that she and Victor Littlefoot would
never be friends again (which seemed to matter less and less as time went on, if only because Victor and his mother moved
soon thereafter to a faraway land called Chicago), Amelia could still see her father clearly, in that first moment when he’d
taken her by the shoulders and asked where the baby was. He trusted her. She knew, despite what he said later, that he believed
her when she swore the baby had been there only a moment before. She knew because of his eyes. She’d told him that the baby
was gone like magic, and his eyes had filled with a grief she’d never known in him. He had never seemed less like a grown-up
and more like a child. This was a sadness that she pondered.

W
ILLA

New Milford, Connecticut
Wednesday, May
7,
1997

Willa would tell you that the story began on the breezy morning her father sped into the parking lot where she stood at the
Bellwether School, his old Volvo station wagon packed to the brim with their worldly possessions. It was the twelfth time
in the past seventeen years that Willa’s father had done this. Three years before, he’d promised he was never going to do
it again. She’d made him promise on her life.

Willa was outside the art studio, resentfully spraying fixer on her charcoal drawing in preparation for the following week’s
art show. She was listening to the wind skating through the newly green
maples that dotted Bellwether’s main lawn. When she felt the wind splaying her ponytail, she stopped the spray and waited
for the gust to pass. Though only a junior, Willa was the art star of the school. But over the last few weeks, she had come
to realize that Bellwether would champion her only as long as she made the art that the school wanted her to make. This realization
had replaced her initial excitement over the upcoming art show with unshakable sulkiness. Willa’s terrible mood was annoying
even herself. The stupid wind wasn’t helping matters.

Bellwether’s Catholic headmaster adored Willa’s ten drawings of the Connecticut natural world, collectively named
Hill and Dale.
It had been decreed: the drawings—safe and beautiful—would be framed and hung in the main hall beside the faculty artwork
and the work of the best seniors. The main hall was where the reception for the art show would take place the following Friday.
Willa had been reminded more than once that it was an unprecedented honor for an eleventh-grader to be asked to participate.
She pretended to be thrilled when all she could feel was a quiet kind of fury. She didn’t care about the drawings. They were
a technical exercise in giving people what they wanted. Willa believed they were “good” only in the eyes of people who didn’t
understand art.

In contrast, Willa’s photography series,
Scars,
had been relegated to a drawer in the cramped darkroom, which technically was to be opened for public viewing that same Friday
night. But everyone knew no parent, let alone any of the students, was going to take the long trek across campus to the art
building, down the gloomy back stairway into the basement, and into the ugly, dank darkroom to open up the drawer that happened
to hold Willa’s series of condemned photographs.
Scars,
twelve black-and-white close-ups of the scars of twelve unidentified students, had caused a kerfuffle in the Bellwether administration,
primarily because two of the photographs featured breasts, and one a pair of buttocks. Willa had argued and argued. The breasts
and buttocks were there only because of the scars upon them: a removed cyst, a healed surgical incision,
the remnants of a bicycle accident. The headmaster had offered his version of a compromise: remove the offending material
and the photographs would be hung. No, said Willa. Nonnegotiable. And so she’d endured her first lesson in censorship. The
photographs were not going to see the light of day. The students she had photographed—members of the Socialist Club, the Comic
Books Club, the Democrats for Peace Club—kept their secret and smiled in solidarity at Willa across the dining hall.

Miss Finlay, the young, brightly dressed art teacher whom Willa adored, had been telling Willa since the ninth grade that
she had what it took—the talent, the drive, the anger—to make it in the art world. Miss Finlay said that at her alma mater,
Yale, photographic projects like Willa’s were adored. She said even the drawings were to be commended for their clarity. She
offered to write a glowing recommendation to Yale, and she also wanted Willa to consider RISD and Pratt. But Willa had told
her New Haven was as far as she could go, and anyway, she knew her father wouldn’t be able to afford it. When Willa’s father
had promised her they would never leave the white house with the blue shutters, Willa had made her own silent promise: she
would never
want
to leave. All her life, all she’d wanted was a home. She’d made her father promise her that very thing, and he’d delivered.
She wasn’t going to need anything more.

Willa heard the familiar clank and thrum of the ancient Volvo before she saw it. The wind brought it to her early. Her first
thought was that her father was coming to see the art. Or maybe she’d forgotten her lunch at the house. It had been so long
since he’d done this that he caught her off guard. Five years before, she would have known what was to come simply from her
body’s reaction to the sound of his arrival: the sinking of her heart, her fallen shoulders, the mental tallying of which
friends were close enough to bid goodbye. Already, she would have anticipated the resigned cold of the metal door handle under
her palm.

This time she was nothing but surprised. When Nat Llewelyn
pulled around Tully Hall, he saw sadness shake down his daughter’s body. He saw her limbs become taut, and he couldn’t help
but remember Caroline. A ball of guilt welled in his throat.

What Willa didn’t know was that Nat was going to give her a choice this time. He knew what he wanted her to say, because it
would make things much easier. But he had made a promise. Only a monster wouldn’t give her the choice. And he knew that if
she didn’t come of her own volition, she would never be able to hear him. She would be too distracted by injustice. He had
been a fool to keep the truth this long from Caroline’s girl.

H
ELEN

Brooklyn, New York
Thursday, September 5, 1996

Helen would tell you that the story began on the Thursday just after Labor Day, when a purple bruise of a cloud was dampening
the Brooklyn skyline and threatening her daily walk. Her golden retriever, Ferdinand, jangled his leash on the hook beside
the door and pointed his nose toward her eagerly as she slipped on her sandals, shaking her head.

“I don’t know how long this is going to hold, Fergus,” she said. “You better make it quick.” She could tell an umbrella would
be no match for what the dark sky threatened. The maple sapling planted in front of the brownstone bent with the wind, swarmed
by brittle leaves and city dust. Helen sneezed, just watching. She looked back down at the poor dog wagging his tail.“Five
minutes,” she said. “We’ll go on a real walk tomorrow.”

The phone rang, clanging open the quiet house. With a guilty glance at the dog, Helen strode to the side table and picked
up. “Hello?” She cringed at her own eagerness. It was her first call of the day, and despite her better judgment, she couldn’t
help hoping it was Duncan. Any sign that he remembered where he lived, where his wife waited for him, was a good sign.

“Hello hello.” It wasn’t Duncan.

“Elliot?”

“Yes! Good to hear your voice, dearest Helen. The face that launched a thousand ships.”

“Is everything all right?” Elliot Barrow never called. They had spoken on five occasions since that night in 1980 when he
briefly lost his mind. And ever since then, every time they had spoken, she would worry: has he lost it again? As if he deserved
her worry. She watched the dog earnestly pointing at the door and wondered at herself. Here, in the midst of terrible sorrow,
only five exchanges into a conversation, and she was willing—nay, ready—to jump to Elliot’s aid. How did he accomplish this
so swiftly? She would have to call her therapist. She would need to pretend Elliot hadn’t brought up those thousand ships.
That was the line he’d used when he first took her to bed.