Set Me Free (38 page)

As we crested the pass, we noticed a dusting of snow over everything—icing
the conifers, slicking up the road. We were among the first to see this snow; there were only two sets of tire tracks with
which to play catch-up.

I told her, “The Neige Courante loved these mountains. You’ve met us living on the steppes, but we’ve been living down there
only since the government made us move. We’re originally people of the volcano. That’s why we lived on these high alpine slopes
whenever we could. We knew it was our job to cool down the hot lava running just below the surface. It was our job to cool
down the mountains in the fervor of the earth to escape its own plight.”

“Is this something you memorized?” She was amused, impressed.

I shook my head and kept talking. “The lava we could detect bubbling under the surface of every dried cone, the steam we felt
on its escape from tiny vents in ancient moraines, all of it attested to the intolerable situation of the earth’s displacement.
This huge rock that we lived on—Earth—had once made its home in the skies. Now it was trying to get back up there, but we
needed it down here, because here was where we lived. It was the Neige Courante who kept the earth cool. It was the Neige
Courante who kept the earth from aspiring to the unattainable condition of the stars. That’s really how we got our name. To
answer the question you asked me when I first picked you up at the airport. Yes. We gave ourselves this name.”

I could tell I’d made Helen happy. I was glad to see her shine. I leaned back in my seat and turned up the heat. It was cozy,
looking out at a kind of winter this woman had never seen. Somewhere in there, I stopped worrying about where she was taking
me and said, “The snow’s because of the rain shadow effect,” and explained how the Cascade Mountains are like a wall; the
moist air comes in off the Pacific and drops its wet all over the western side of the wall, so that by the time it makes it
all the way over, the air isn’t moist anymore. And that’s why Ponderosa Academy and the Neige Courante reservation rarely
see rain, because the air is bone-dry by the time it gets to us.

She saw I was right as we came down the other side of the mountains; the moisture had been dropped not as snow but as rain
in the lower elevations. It clung to the upper boughs, refracting light. It was beautiful. All along, the land burst green.
She read names and I repeated them back: Black Butte, Camp Sherman, Santiam Pass, Three-Fingered Jack, Tombstone Pass, Menagerie
Wilderness, Sweet Home. She wanted to know everything she could, about land formation, about the dormant volcanoes and their
residual lava rocks, about the buttes left over from the time when the mountains were being made. She wanted to know about
winds, and weather, and birds, and flowers, and trees. I told her what I know. I surprised myself in knowing so much, as I
never thought I’d be the kind of man who would want to know this place like the back of my hand. In talking, even I was impressed
by the strangeness of this wild, natural world that was mine.

Waterloo, Sodaville, Tangent, Philomath, Eddyville. These are the towns you pass through before Newport, and Newport is where
the world opens. Newport is where the land meets the ocean. Helen gasped when she saw it. It was truly erotic, that gasp.
Made me chuckle. Made her blush.

Then we were standing on a dun-colored beach blasting with ocean wind. The air was icy. She had her arms around herself, as
if she were her own armor. She said, “I wanted to be with you the first time I saw this.” She said, “I’ve never seen the ocean
so cold or so wild.” She said, “My husbands were not good to me,” and that was when I put my hand upon her waist and pulled
her to me. That was the first time I kissed her.

You’ll notice by now that I’ve lost my slip on her. I’ve lost my ability to imagine things from her direction. This is her
section, after all. But I can’t see it, no matter how hard I try, from her point of view. Maybe there’s fear there. Maybe
I don’t want to imagine all the other things she was likely thinking in that moment when I was closer to her than I had ever
been before. Maybe all I want to believe is that she saw things just the way I did, that all she
wanted in the world was to have her lips on mine, because that was all I wanted.

All I know is this: knowing Helen at first was like a friend explaining a delicious dish to you, an unusual assortment of
ingredients that a well-known chef has crafted into something new. You are unimpressed at the description, sure you won’t
enjoy it. But your friend insists you give it a try. You’re sure you’ll hate it. You can live your life without it. But your
friend’s enthusiam has made you curious. You start to wonder if you’re missing out. And then. One day. You score reservations.
You order your meal.

Reader, Helen was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

C
AL

Stolen, Oregon
Wednesday, April 30, 1997

I knew Duncan would call again. His phone calls had dropped off in recent weeks, and most of me hadn’t much noticed. I’d won.
Helen was mine. I knew the dimples that appeared below her scapulae when she shifted her weight onto her elbows, the drowsy
swell around her eyes in the morning, her embarrassed thrill when I told her she was beautiful. Hence, it was convenient to
forget the way I had been betraying her. Subtly, yes, and in her best interest, but still and all, I had been reporting to
her husband, and lying to her, and impersonating a friend, and those were not honorable activities. I was going to get caught.

In those few moments when I did think about hearing Duncan’s voice again, I felt sure I’d come clean.“Here’s who I really
am, here’s how to get ahold of Helen, she’s been willing to talk to you all along,” etc. etc. The reality was much different.

“It’s me,” he said.

“Good to hear from you! How are you, old man?” I often found myself slipping into Elliot’s mock Briticisms, which were truly
just snob.

“Actually,” and his tone was a different color than it had been in
the other phone calls, murkier, more purple, “I need you to pass along a message to Helen. I know she doesn’t want to speak
with me, God, she’s made that abundantly clear, but her good friend Michael Reid is very ill. He’s… It looks like he hasn’t
got long to live. He’s just deteriorated…” His voice trailed off. “I know she’ll want to see him. Please tell her I’ll do
anything to help her make that happen.”

I had heard her speak of Michael. She’d described his house in Vermont and how she was going to take me there, how he was
going to love my furrowed brow. I sat in my office and thought about how she’d told me, after one of the six times we’d made
love, that she believed Michael Reid was the real love of her life, that that’s who wonderful friends were, your love affairs.
I had held her in my arms and listened to her voice pattering the air as I fell asleep. It was time to tell her the truth.

It was the middle of the day. I had a class to teach. But I poked my head in the classroom and told my ninth-graders to please
read aloud from
The Odyssey
until I got back. I headed over to the gym, but she wasn’t there yet. So I made my way down the path, each step heavier than
the last.

She opened her door with a broad smile. “You’re supposed to be teaching an English class,” she said, taking my hand, pulling
me in.

“Helen,” I began, and the look on my face was enough to stop her.

“What is it?” Her voice was newly grave. We had not done this yet, the taking in of each other’s sorrow. It broke my heart
to hear her worry.

“There’s no easy way to say this.”

“I knew it.” She stepped backward. “I knew it. You’re married, right? Or—”

“Nothing like that. No, it’s just… I spoke to Duncan just now. He left you a message. Your friend? Michael Reid? He’s very
sick. So sick that Duncan’s concerned he isn’t going to hold on much longer.”

“Oh God.” I’ve never seen tears spring to someone’s eyes that
quickly. “Oh God,” and soon she was doubled over, bent in sorrow, and I was holding her up, but it was that odd tangle of
not knowing how to touch someone when she is in the throes of sadness. She had a stunned look to her, but after the initial
blow, I saw her mind beginning to work. She was putting on her jacket. “I have to call him,” she said. I didn’t know if she
meant Duncan or Michael, but it didn’t much matter at that point, because all I wanted was for her not to cry anymore. “How
did Duncan get your number?” she asked, one shoe nearly tied.

I shrugged. “He called me.”

“How strange.” It was strange. But I didn’t know how to begin it. Then she was winding a scarf around her neck and kissing
my cheek and saying, “I can use your phone, right?” and I was handing her my office keys and she was racing out the door and
she was gone.

S
HE CAME BACK
two hours later, her eyes rimmed in greasy red. “Please leave me alone,” she said, and I knew that Duncan and she and Elliot
had figured things out. She had figured things out with her husbands.

“I’d like to tell you—” I began, but she pointed to the door.

“Please.”

So I left.

W
ILLA

Day Six
Salt Lake City, Utah, to Boise, Idaho
Monday, May 12, 1997

T
hey spent the night just short of Salt Lake City. In the midmorning light, they turned abruptly north, shooting past the Great
Salt Lake, where the light fell crisply from the open sky. Willa traced the curves and bends of the roadbed in the atlas and
glanced at her father. His eyes were trained on the road.

“Dad?” she asked.

“Hmm.”

“Did you… Did you
do
something?”

“What do you mean?”

“To help her. Is that why you think there are people after us? Did you hurt someone?”

She meant it seriously, but Nat smiled at her from his eyes so she knew he wasn’t lying when he said, “You know me, Wills.
I couldn’t hurt a fly.”

She took a picture of a slice of the Great Salt Lake out the driver’s window, between her father’s arms. She wished she could
crunch the crusty white salt underneath her sneakers, but she didn’t suggest they stop. She knew that Boulder had been the
vacation.
Now her father was all business. He was hunched in a different way over the steering wheel. Reluctant to give up the driver’s
seat. Unwilling to tell her anything beyond what he must. She had tried begging for information. Now she had to try patience.

A
MELIA

Stolen, Oregon
Tuesday, May 6, 1997

Amelia was agitated. Shaken up, nervous, unable to relax. On a daily basis. She felt this way when she ate dinner alone with
her father. When she walked to class with Lydia by her side. When she imagined Wes and Sadie coming to Ponderosa Academy.
When she passed Victor in the hallway. When she endured my lectures on
A Tale of Two Cities.
She had felt this way every day since the morning Victor’s great-grandmother told her things were the way they were because
she’d cracked the world open with a fairy game.