Set Me Free (34 page)

I was surprised she stopped me. She was surprised she stopped me. We were both mightily surprised.

“Cal,” she said, two steps beyond me, before her brain had a chance to still her tongue. We were walking in opposite directions.

I was turned by her. I remember cocking my head to the side, as if I were listening up and listening down. “Yup.”

“Can we talk?”

There was a thunder pounding in my breast when she said those words. We sidled off the beaten path as children raced out of
the building into the free afternoon. We leaned like schoolgirls against a pair of lockers.

“I’m wondering if you’d mind sitting in on my auditions.”

Why didn’t these people know how to ask a question? Helen and Elliot had a way of framing things so you were damned if you
did and damned if you didn’t. I stood there in the stuffy hallway and tried to figure out who was wondering what and what
there was to mind and what sitting in on auditions meant.

She thought I was going to say no. She had the sudden fear that she would burst into tears. For though she had surprised herself
in speaking to me, she had been hoping for some time now that I could help her. She had imagined many different ways of asking.
She knew I would say I did not want to help her. But she also suspected that I actually would. Would want to and would help.
She had devised all sorts of suave ways to ask and tried to memorize them, so she would not bumble them up. And then she had
gone and done exactly that. She nearly ran away.

“Do you need my help?” I asked. I guess I wanted to know.

She glanced at her hands. They seemed too far away, folded against her jeans. “Yes,” she said after a moment. She was hoping
that wasn’t too forward.

“Why?”

“I don’t think I can manage on my own, actually,” she said. “Just
the auditions.” She laughed. The laugh was like a gust of wind that filled my sails. “At least for now.”

It was enough for
me.

C
AL

Stolen, Oregon
Monday,January 27, 1997

The children of Ponderosa Academy are a good lot. They are most often kind. They give back to their community, and not just
because they have to. They honor their elders almost every day. They are not, however, actors. Or at least most of them were
not actors of promise on that Friday in late January when Helen and I sat on folding chairs in the gym and listened to sixty-two
of them perform scenes: “I might call him / A thing divine, for nothing natural / I ever saw so noble”; “A howling monster;
a drunken monster!”; “You have often / Begun to tell me what I am, but stopp’d.” We watched as they hollered out monologues:
“Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves”;“Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises”; “If by your art, my dearest
father, you have / Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.” Helen, judicious, even-handed Helen, considered it fair
to give anyone interested in auditioning the chance to do so, including those kids who had not been meeting with her on a
regular basis. Ten minutes after nine, I saw the error of her ways.

Eunice kept order in the hallway. We could hear them buzzing out there, and in retrospect, I have to admit that was a good
thing. I didn’t say this out loud, but I’d never witnessed at Ponderosa anything like this bubbling desire to participate.

Elliot was in Portland for a week, engaged in serious negotiations with the folks at Benson Country Day. The rumor mill—well,
Eunice—had passed on the news that somehow Elliot had found out about certain irregularities concerning the dismissal of a
teacher who’d indulged in some inappropriate behavior, and Elliot was making sure the two schools saw eye to eye on such issues
before any possible merger. My anger over the entire merger question had
ebbed into something less tangible. I took refuge in the knowledge that I was under no obligation to Elliot Barrow, Ponderosa
Academy, or the Neige Courante. I could walk any time I wanted to. Maybe taking that walk would be cowardly, but letting myself
think about it provided me with a nice warm blanket of self-justification in which to wrap myself at the end of exhausting,
frustrating days.

So there I was, helping out. Helen’s play. I was not blind to the fact that the promised production of
The Tempest
might well have become the proverbial cherry on top of the diversity cake that made Ponderosa Academy look so damn delectable
to Benson Country Day.

Even if I had wanted to mull this over, even if I wanted to relish some irony, the children were too loud, too excited, too
insistent for me to think about anything other than
them.
Man, they commanded attention. Ever the practiced professional, Helen insisted on conducting the auditions as if the gym
at Ponderosa were Broadway. Each “actor”—her preferred term—filled out a detailed resume: name, age, grade, hair color, eye
color. Naturally, over 98 percent of our applicants wrote some combination of “black” or “brown” in those last two categories.
There was a space to record previous experience—one child had done some modeling one summer after being approached on a Portland
sidewalk by a talent agent. Amelia’s violin recitals were the sum total of our “previous experience.” Another space, left
blank by everyone, was labeled “future aspirations.” Helen explained that meant “dreams and hopes.” But most kids still left
it blank. The final, vague category— “interest in Shakespeare”—made a few of Helen’s loyal followers write things like “You
said to come.” Otherwise, all we saw were the occasional smiley face and obscene word.

By lunchtime, I had a pounding headache. I was supposed to go back to my office to see if there were any school disasters
that needed my magic touch, but Helen asked me to stay and talk with her. It was the damn way that woman asked for things.
She made me help her even when it was the last thing on my mind.

“So what did you think? Have we seen a Prospero yet?”

“You’re really asking me?”

“Be honest.”

I decided to try both honesty and tact, avoiding the subject of the kids’ lack of talent, focusing on the glory of the old
wizard Prospero. “Honestly, no. And I don’t think you’re going to. Prospero is… larger than life. Powerful. It takes balls
to be that big. And we don’t have anyone who’s going to fill those shoes. I just don’t see it happening.”

“And a Caliban?”

I smiled and settled back in my chair. “Same thing,” I said. “I hate to disappoint you, but if Prospero’s got big balls, then
Caliban’s the only one with gigantic ones. The play is a battle of wits—”

“I don’t know if I’d call it that.”

“I don’t want to debate you.” I laughed. “You’ll win. But you asked for my opinion, and now you have it.”

My candor got me out of one job: Helen didn’t ask me to help her with casting. For the rest of the day, I warmed my seat as
the children filed in and out and slaughtered the Bard. At the end of the day, I went home and lay in bed and smiled to myself.
I didn’t know if I was smiling because she was going to fail or because I’d spent the day in her company.

O
N
M
ONDAY SHE
posted a cast list that was so crazy, so bold, I sought her out the first chance I got. Which happened to be a lunch meeting
in Elliot’s office.

“You cast Amelia as Caliban?”

She was sitting, prim as can be, her knees up against the front of Elliot’s desk, one of Amelia’s lunches spread before her.
I would recognize that fifteen-year-old Tupperware and the signature combination of hard-boiled egg and peanut-butter sandwich
anywhere, even if it hadn’t been sitting right next to an identical meal spread before Elliot Barrow.

“And what’s wrong with that?” she asked innocently.

“Nepotism? For one?” I gestured to the meals on the desk and in Elliot’s general direction. “And she’s a girl? And no offense,
Elliot, but the truth is, she isn’t very good. Which brings me back to nepotism.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Helen said. She had an odd way of looking like Maria von Trapp when she wanted to. The Julie Andrews version,
not the real one, with the wrinkled face and Nordic brow. Helen pinned me with her eyes and asked with a smile, “Is it because
she’s white?”

“No,” I said vehemently.“Honestly, no.”

“And what do you think of my Prospero?”

“Victor Littlefoot?”

“Yes. Do you think he has enough portent?”

“He’s certainly something of a deity around these parts. If that’s what you were going for.” Two can play at the fancy word
game. “To tell you the truth, I’m surprised he even showed up. That kid lives for basketball.”

“And Lydia?”

“As Miranda? Well, she sure won’t play the role as it was written. Lydia’s not what we call a wallflower.”

“I was going for putting the best people in the parts I had available.”

“Well, you know my opinions on that.”

“We certainly do,” said Elliot, with an annoying trace of amusement in his voice. It was then that I wished I’d kept my opinions
to myself. “Care to sit?” he asked.

“I should get back.”

“Just sit down,” said Helen, and before I knew it, I was sitting. “Sandwich?” she said, beginning to slide a lunch baggy in
my direction, but that was where I drew the line.

Elliot and Helen had been talking about his trip up to Benson Country Day. I had interrupted an apparent flurry of excitement
about the day of what we were now calling the Ponderosa Festival, which would take place on May 6 and feature a daytime powwow,
a musical performance by the elementary students, and, in the evening,
The Tempest.
There was much to be done, but as I listened, I was surprised at how much had already been scheduled. Teachers and parents
had already signed up to volunteer, and as they
went down the list of names, it seemed mine was the only one not included. In fact, my name was noticeably absent. As Helen
and Elliot discussed their vision, and the vision of every other adult member of the school community save me, things took
a turn for the uncomfortable. I couldn’t very well excuse myself, if only because that would have drawn even more attention
to me.

Let it be noted: I did not want to help. I did not want anything to do with the hoopla required to ingratiate ourselves with
Benson Country Day folks. But it was inevitable.

“And Cal?” Elliot looked in my direction, one eyebrow raised.

“Cal is helping me.” So Helen was also going to pretend I wasn’t sitting there.

“Really? How?”

“Working with the actors. Scene work. Stage work. Building sets.”

“Good. Wow, Cal.” I hated it when Elliot took this tone. “That’s great. I must admit, I’m surprised.”

After we stepped outside and before we parted ways, Helen said, “You owe me one.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I just saved your ass in there,” she said, rippling into laughter.

“I’m not working with the kids,” I said.

“Oh, yes, you are.”

“I don’t know anything about acting. Or the theater. Or Shakespeare.”

“Hah! That’s a good one! You went to Harvard, got your degree in English and American literature and language, didn’t you?
Harry Levin’s famed lectures? Any of that ring bells?” She laughed again. “Don’t look at me that way! I know you know Shakespeare
better than anyone else around!”

“Except you.”

“Well, yes. You would be right about that.”

“Since when did you get to be the boss of me?”

“Since I saved your ass.”

Which was how I became her slave.

A
MELIA

Stolen, Oregon
Friday, February 21, 1997

F
orgiveness. Forgiveness is what must come after rage. Amelia had been raised to assume that an apology functions a little
like a reset button on the hair dryer. The dryer blasts heat, then refuses to turn on the next time you plug it in, you push
the reset button, and voilà—more hot air! Things are back to normal. Except for the part where you no longer count 100 percent
on the dryer working in the dead of winter. So you don’t wake up at dawn to wash your hair before school; you begin to plan
ahead. Your life changes a tiny bit, reorganizes itself, and you don’t notice. You think it’s the way it’s always been, and
it sort of is. But not completely.