Set Me Free (6 page)

But she was starting to understand a little more about what made Michael feel so bereft. A house with just you in it did that
to you. Michael’s husband, Liam, had been dead five years. Although Michael had remained healthy on the cocktail for nearly
a decade, it was clear that the specter of a lonely death haunted him in the darkest shadows of his many empty rooms.

None of that was in the air today. Today there was light skipping off the water, sailboats to be counted as they flocked across
the bay. The light cotton of Helen’s dress was cool against her, and she could feel the sun browning her shoulders.

“And how is the First Stage?”

She took a healthy swig of her martini. “Good. Duncan’s hammering out the kinks at rehearsals.
Romeo and Juliet.’
She wished she hadn’t used the word “hammering.” It brought to mind a most unpleasant visual, one she knew Michael was fighting
the urge to acknowledge. So she wasn’t as surprised as she acted when he asked, “And do you happen to be sleeping in Duncan’s
bed?”

“Why on earth would you even ask that?”

He shrugged, scooped up a handful of peanuts, and didn’t answer. Instead, he stretched his finger out at the water. “See that
point? When we got old enough, my brothers and I used to swim from here to there. My mother didn’t let us start until we were
twelve, though we swore up and down that we were ready at eight, nine, ten. But it’s a lot farther than it looks. When you’re
in the water, it’s a lot farther.”

“Ahhh,” said Helen. “The wise man preacheth. What on earth are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I just thought you might like to hear a story.”

Helen sighed. “And why would you think that?”

“Because you obviously don’t want to talk about real life. And I get it. This is your vacation time. Away from everything.
So feel free to just sit and enjoy the environs. Drink in my little piece of heaven.”

“Jesus, Michael, what do you want me to say? That my marriage is deteriorating? That rumors abound? That Duncan hasn’t fucked
me in five months?”

Michael turned to her in mock horror. “Ms. Bernstein, watch your tongue. There are baby animals present.” He leaned toward
her conspiratorially. “That’s a long fucking time, Helen. Leave the bastard.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can. You just don’t want to.”

“No,” she said. “I
want
to. I can’t.”

“You
won’t.”

“Maybe I will.”

“That’s the spirit, Helen. Put some balls into it. All together now:
maybe.’

She leaned her head back against the chair and closed her eyes. The sun was almost too bright against the membrane of her
thought. “Elliot called.”

“The plot thickens.”

“Except it doesn’t. And I felt like such a fool. He wanted a list of directors, with the hopes of luring one out to Oregon
to direct
The Tempest
at his school.”

Michael groaned.
“The Tempest?
Isn’t that play dead yet? I am sick to death of the comedies.”

She shook her head. “You’re wrong—the comedies are the bard’s true treasures—but that’s not the point. The point is that I
thought he was going to ask me to come and do it.”

He looked at her as if she were insane. “You have a
life.
You can’t just drop everything and go across the country to direct a second-rate Shakespeare play with a bunch of Indian
kids.”

“Of course I can’t, but that’s not the point.”

“Anyway, are we even allowed to call them Indians? If I’m okay
with calling myself queer, does that give me the right to call them Indians? Did they ever really mind it in the first place?”
Michael threw a handful of pretzels toward the sleeping dog. Ferdinand immediately awoke and snuffled up the snacks from the
grass.

“When Fergus throws up tonight, you’re the one cleaning it up.”

“The dog’s name is Ferdinand. Why give your dog a dignified name if you’re just going to undignify it with a nickname like
Fergus?”

“I like Fergus.” Helen shrugged. “And I call him Ferdinand when he’s in trouble.”

“You have a marriage to be miserable in,” Michael declared. He had this habit of switching topics midconversation. “You can’t
be expected to go traipsing off every time that man calls…” He faltered. “Unless.” His hand fluttered to his chest gracefully.
Even though he was teasing, the word seemed to stop the world for a moment. “Unless you’re still in love with him.”

Helen laughed, drowning her mouth in the remnants of her drink. “That’s ridiculous.” She closed her eyes again, this time
to end the conversation. She could hear Michael finishing his martini and fiddling with the olive spear; then he brought it
to his mouth and took in all four olives at once. He set down the glass and leaned back in his chair, chewing. She could feel
him looking at her, but she kept her eyes closed. She heard her words fading in the wind and listened to the sound of the
lake lapping down in the cove, the sound of the chipmunks running, of the maple branches’ slow sway. She listened so hard
that she couldn’t hear Michael anymore, and panic seized her. She opened her eyes in alarm. He was watching her, still as
can be.

“Yes, it’s ridiculous,” he said in a quiet voice, all joking aside. He took her hand, which was alarming in itself. Michael
Reid was not a man who did much touching. Helen looked down at his lovely fingers, perfectly soft and manicured, against hers,
unkempt and ignored. He spoke again. “Love is ridiculous. But it makes us human, Helen. When was the last time you felt human?”

She squeezed his hand and waited for the moment to pass. It made her uncomfortable to feel how fiercely this man—truly alone,
full of a deadly disease—pitied
her.
“You sure we can’t convince you to tackle
Richard III?”

“I’m retired, remember? I wouldn’t want to ruin the legend.”

“That’s why we ask: so that the legend can continue.”

“Oh, Helen,” he said in a paper-thin voice. “Keep asking. One of these days I just might say yes.”

“Well.” She withdrew her hand. She didn’t want this kind of seeing right now. It was too much. It was too maudlin. She stood.
“I’m going inside for another round. Can I bring you one?”

“Naturally,” he said. Helen picked up their glasses and headed back up to the house. A few steps away, she heard his voice
again. “Love lingers. Yes, it’s complicated. Yes, it’s ridiculous. That’s why we have a long life. So that, despite all the
shit, you can still make it a
good
life.” Helen waited for more, but he was done. Though his words made sense, she didn’t want to hear them, no matter how much
he meant them for himself too. She couldn’t help hearing the judgment behind them, the empty tragedy of the world: each day
you made more mistakes, missed more opportunities. Weariness washed over her. With small steps, she resumed her walk up the
bright lawn and into the cool of the cabin’s shade. When it hit her, she shivered and realized it was already evening, and
already autumn as well.

C
AL

W
hen do friends decide not to talk? Elliot was my closest friend in the world. He honored me as his baby’s godfather. He welcomed
my second cousin Eunice and me to Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas morning, and Easter brunch. Hell, every year I found a new
drill bit or a sweater from Mervyns with my name on it sitting underneath his tree, which was more than I did in return. Giftwise,
that is. Only once did he share a holiday meal at
our
table on the reservation. I chose not to be insulted by this. Maybe we offended his Puritan sensibility with our dead-from-smallpox-Indian-princess
jokes that particular Thanksgiving. Or maybe it was just that he had a hard time accepting goodness from others. He was the
one who dispensed goodness, wasn’t he?

The point is, I don’t know why, because I never asked. Likewise, he never asked me anything specific about my life before
he knew me. What he knew were the facts: I was the son of the great Neige Courante lawyer Jasper Francoeur. I graduated summa
cum laude from Harvard. I pursued a graduate degree at Harvard in literature but did not finish. I found my way back to the
reservation. Six months later, Elliot Barrow showed up, and we began the endeavor of building Ponderosa Academy.

That was almost seventeen years ago. Not once, in over a decade
and a half, did Elliot Barrow ask me how it came to be that my first twelve years were spent on the reservation and not in
my father’s home in Portland. Not once did he ask me why I didn’t call my father’s wife my mother. Not once did he ask me
what had happened at Harvard that made me limp home like an injured animal. Not once did he doubt that I was going to stand
by his side.

It’s not fair to chalk it all up to his being a Wasp. He didn’t pry into anyone’s life, but on more than one occasion he surprised
me with a juicy bit of gossip that even I had overlooked. Which meant that he listened when others spoke.

I didn’t ask him about his past. I spent so much time steaming about how Elliot Barrow was interested only in his own vision,
his own daughter, his own life, that I didn’t notice I was just like him. It never occurred to me to wonder what had led him
to such a passionate pursuit as starting a school in the country, for poor brown children. It never occurred to me to ask
about Amelia’s mother. All I knew was her name was Astrid and she was dead, and I thought that was all I needed to know.

Boy, was I wrong. Boy, do I wish, just once, after one of those early-summer days spent roofing the gym, I’d clinked my beer
bottle against Elliot’s and asked, “What happened to Astrid?” I wish he’d turned to me and asked, “What happened at Harvard?”
We would have realized we were talking about the same thing: the death of love. We would have shared our secrets. I would
have known him not as my salvation, or a genius, or a liar, or a charmer. I would have known him as a man.

I would have told him everything.

Y
OU DON’T HAPPEN
into falling in love. Or perhaps that’s how I comfort myself: I believe that you don’t
only
happen into it. It happens to you, oh boy does it ever happen—you step in it and it won’t unsmear—but more often than not,
you also help it along. You do something minuscule to let it breeze in.

Afterward, when you are wretched and alone (and indulging,
with little trouble, your flair for the dramatic), somehow knowing this—that you welcomed love, that you opened up the door
to it— makes you feel the slightest bit better. It makes you feel better because it makes you feel worse, and in those days,
weeks, months afterward, all you want to feel is worse and worse and worse. You’d stab yourself to death with a penknife if
you knew it wouldn’t make you seem so goddamn pathetic to her people, who used to be your people, whom you care about only
because you know they’ll report back to her the second they see you wounded.

So it was.

Sometimes all I can think about, all these years and miles later, is those few seconds we had on my makeshift couch in my
dusty living room in Cambridge. In the summer of 1980. In the beginning.

Blue dusk huddles outside the front window. She and I are talking about something profound, I’m sure, something impressively
erudite: China’s domestic policy, Derek Walcott’s elegant prosody. Anything but what is happening between us. I make her laugh,
and she shifts her weight, and her knee, naked, peeking from beneath her maroon corduroy skirt, grazes my leg. I expect nothing.
I expect her not to notice; she’s never given any indication of noticing before. But then, so slowly that I barely see it
happening, she moves her knee back against my thigh. Two centimeters. Warm. Hovering. She looks at me. I look at her. And
my God, I realize she’s
looking.
Her face is serious, alarmed. She’s discovered. Then, subtly, slowly, as I hold my breath, she presses that tiny bit of flesh
against me. Time slows. I can taste the air. My arms ache. I remember it’s impossible, but the world swoons so wildly that
all I want to do is burrow, to be
in
her where it will finally make sense. Forget about language. It just fucking leaves me. I couldn’t construct a sentence if
you paid me a million dollars.

But I can now. Boy, can I ever.

You want to know what happens next, don’t you? You want it to go on, vividly: my hands on her shirt, her lips on my lips,
the press of new arousal. How easy it would have been, or rather, how
easy it seemed to be. It seemed likely. It seemed probable. But the thing about love is that it makes you lose your grip.
You become a moron. My God, I thought, life opens. Hope abounds. Forget all logic; I’ve got her. Here, now, she’s mine.

And then her husband came back from the bathroom. She lay her smooth, bare feet back on the floor. She turned her face to
him in the fading light and smiled as I stood and refilled our three wineglasses. Coq au vin was bubbling hot in that oven
of mine. He flipped on the overhead light, and the brightness jolted me back to friendship, to our triumvirate and all I loved
about it. Yes, I thought, I have a secret. But I will carry it inside me and I will be tight-lipped. Yes, I will worship it
and tend it and pledge all fealty to its truth, for her knee was here, right here, and that’s all the truth I need, for who
does that hurt? What can ever be wrong about love if it is kept quiet, and honorable, and private? What indeed.

A
MELIA

Stolen, Oregon
Saturday, September 28, 1996