Set Free (8 page)

One of the great joys of being self-employed is never having to wake up to an alarm clock. Even so, six days a week an alarm did ring in our bedroom, at exactly 6:00 a.m. Jenn was a light sleeper and a disciplined riser, so it rarely managed more than a peep before her hand shot out from beneath the covers to silence it. I usually didn’t remember it. I’d wake on my own about an hour later, get Mikki to school or wherever she had to be that day, and eventually end up behind my computer.

In the two months since that awful morning in our front yard, standing beside a mailbox that had yet again failed to deliver a letter from our daughter’s kidnapper, we’d created a new version of our lives. While Jenn returned to work with a vengeance, working longer, harder hours, I’d taken to sleeping in, later and later every day. What did I have to wake up for? The emptiness and resounding silence of an abruptly-childless house was nearly unbearable. The laughing, the petty squabbles, the occasional tears, the distinct scent of a teenage girl’s perfume—always something flowery and named after a singer I’d never heard of—the mysterious phone calls ripe with gossip and secrets about boys, the constant texting and selfie-taking. The assorted accoutrement of someone enslaved to fashion and pop culture—scattered magazines, smears of makeup on the bathroom sink, megalithic piles of disposed Kleenex, bottles and vials and jars of haircare and skincare product. Shoes, shoes, shoes.

All gone.

GONE.

Most of the stuff was still in Mikki’s room, but no matter how I tried to preserve it—even going so far as to spritz the air with her perfume—the essence of my daughter was slowly, inexorably, agonizingly disappearing.

Unlike Jenn, who’d taken on more responsibility at work, some days staying at the office until the wee hours of the morning, my own work repelled me. It wasn’t that I had writer’s block, because I could almost understand that. No, this was something deeper. I felt as if I might never
want
to write again. Ever.

The pressure was on.
In The Middle
, as big as it had been, for as long as it had been, was becoming old news. Everyone who was ever going to had bought the book, seen the movie, raved about it, or torn it apart. It was so yesterday. My agent, my publisher, my accountant, my fans, were all asking the same question: what’s next?

The money wasn’t running out—yet. But it would. Jenn was making a decent salary, but we had a large monthly nut to crack, and we were young. There was still a lot of life left to pay for. And I needed to work. Not just for the money, but for me.

The day after our bitter realization by the mailbox, Jenn woke up, woke me, announced she was going back to work, and did it. She never looked back. At first I couldn’t understand how she could do it. Secretly, I began to judge her for the apparent ease with which she did. But slowly I figured it out. She was reaching out for something to hold on to. During the relentless storm of what had happened to us—what was still happening to us—she’d wisely grabbed an anchor. I, however, opted for floating aimlessly about. I was jealous of her.

The police assured us that they were still on the case, still actively searching for Mikki. Words can lie. The looks on their faces told the truth. Clues and leads had all but dried up. The damn TV expert was right. The longer Mikki was missing, the less probable it was that she would ever be found. And if she was—well, it wasn’t likely to be a happy ending to the story.

Jenn and I did our best to support each other. In spite of her declarations that she didn’t blame me for not coming home early on the night of Mikki’s disappearance, deep down I doubted her. And I doubted myself. I told myself I wasn’t to blame; our therapist did the same. But guilt is an intrusive, nasty thing, nearly impossible to eradicate entirely.

I needed to write. Something—anything—to run interference with my mind. I needed the distraction. I needed Jaspar Wills back.

As unexpected and unsolicited as it had been, the fame and attention that had attached itself to
In The Middle
was nothing short of extraordinary. The media circus, the TV and radio talk shows, the speaking engagements, the travel opportunities, the glitzy parties at clubs and mansions, the invitations to be everything from a guest of honor at literary conventions to a judge at beauty contests, the adulation of millions—all of it was heady, exciting, addictive stuff. I wasn’t the first—nor would I be the last—author to experience this, but I’d ridden the wave for significantly longer than many of my peers who’d had similar runaway hits. It helped that I was keen to do it, that I was young and had plenty of energy. The subsequent movie adaptation was like exchanging a match with a firecracker. Suddenly the book had a whole new life, a new rash of fans, people discovering my writing for the first time—followed by a fresh round of interviews and events, this time on a scale even bigger and ritzier than before.

Then, it was over. Suddenly, instead of people holding out copies of the book for my autograph—eyes wide with admiration, words dripping with praise—they stood before me empty-handed. Asking to be filled up, to be given something more—and quickly, because if I didn’t comply they’d forget about me and move on to the next literary superstar holding the magic keys to the zeitgeist. Maybe it would be a teenage lesbian werewolf with an especially kind heart, or a cooking guru with recipes for heart-healthy fast foods made in a deep fryer, or an alien who arrives on earth from outer space dispensing relationship advice with the clichéd lesson that we all have the same problems no matter where in the universe we’re from.

I wanted to do it. Badly. I wanted to give them exactly what they wanted. I knew I could do it. I had it in me, ideas for a hundred more
In The Middle
s. Once the whirlwind of traveling and promotional activities and—let’s be honest—fete-feasts was over, I’d have the time to allow my creativity to unleash the next something special. I
would
do it.

Then, my daughter was taken and my life imploded.

I’d lost confidence that I would ever get my old life back—or anything resembling it. I lived only for sleep. Deep, mindless, soulless, blinding, undemanding sleep.

So when the alarm startled me awake, its jarring blasts insisting that a bomb was about to detonate next to my head, it took me a moment to figure out what to do. Eventually, I rolled over to Jenn’s side of the bed and took a poorly-aimed swipe at the damn thing. Nothing. The bleating continued—persistent, ear-splitting. I opened one eye and locked a hate-filled gaze on the ugly clock face. Where the hell was the doohickey that shut this thing up?

When several more slaphappy attempts went unrewarded, I pulled myself up on one elbow, grabbed the clock, forced my second eye open, and stared uncomprehendingly at the contraption, the shut-off procedure not particularly intuitive at six o’clock in the fucking morning.

That’s when it struck me.

It was 6:00 a.m. Where was my wife? Why wasn’t she here to shut off the alarm like she always did?

I studied the tangle of bed sheets as if that would help. No water glass on the nightstand. Jenn always brought a glass of water to bed with her and never took the empty one back to the kitchen in the morning, leaving that chore for me. I searched my sleep-fogged memory for clues.

At least once in the course of every night of our marriage, even if it was just for a few minutes, we would unconsciously slip into the spooning position. As far as I could recall, that hadn’t happened last night.
Why not?

The alarm ringing in my head began to rival the mechanical one next to it.

Suddenly another bell joined the clamor.

What the hell is happening?

The phone.

I grabbed it and shouted into the defenseless receiver. “Hold on!”

Who’s calling the house at six in the morning?

With unnecessary might, I pulled the alarm clock’s cord out of the wall.

The bleating continued. Damn battery backup.

Fuck redundancy systems!

I turned the device upside down, looking for the battery compartment; instead I found a switch labeled “Alarm On/Off” and gratefully moved it to the desired position.

Blessed silence restored, I returned to the phone. “Hello?”

“Jaspar? Is that you?”

It was Jenn’s friend, Katie. “Yeah, Katie, I…”

“Jaspar, Jenn’s in jail.”

“What?” Nothing about this morning was making sense. “Why?”

“She’s been arrested. For attempted murder.”

The police precinct's waiting room was as cheerless and uninviting as the fittingly overcast Wednesday morning. Katie Edwards, newly minted toast-of-the-town newsy—thanks to her friendship with my wife and resultant primetime access to the goulash our lives had become—was as camera-ready as you’d expect a reporter-on-the-rise to be. I found her multitasking between iPhone and iPad when I walked in. She was laughably well put-together for so early in the morning, especially compared to my barely-conscious, unshaven, uncaffeinated, distraught self.

There were half a dozen others spread throughout the room, none talking to each other. Katie waved me over and I settled into the seat next to hers. She handed me a paper cup of coffee.

“I thought you’d need this,” she said, assessing me with her inquisitive journalist’s eyes.

“What’s going on, Katie?” I needed to know, mindlessly sipping the lukewarm drink. It might have been machine-quality, but it tasted great. “Thanks for this, by the way.”

“A lawyer called me. Someone from Jenn’s firm, I think.”

“Jenn has a lawyer?”

“Yeah…” She consulted a notebook. “Shelley Brown. You know her?”

I shrugged. I had probably met the woman at an office Christmas party or something. “Why did this lawyer call you and not me?” Another even more disconcerting thought stuck its tongue out at me:
Why did Jenn call a lawyer and not me?

Katie must have read my mind. “It’s attempted murder, Jaspar, not a parking ticket. This is serious. Jenn would have known she needed someone to represent her. I’m guessing she told the lawyer to call me so you’d hear it from a friend and not a stranger.”

I stared at her. Katie and I were not friends. Actually, we barely knew each other. She and Jenn had hit it off earlier that year, when Katie had come to Jenn’s firm with a legal problem. Something about a deadbeat boyfriend. I hadn’t paid much attention. I was just glad that Jenn had found someone to socialize with other than the single-minded, legal eagle, type As she worked with. Socializing with other lawyers is just like being at the office, except with drinks and pretzels and no one taking notes. It wasn’t until the night Mikki disappeared that I thought of Katie as anything other than the friend who dropped Jenn off after a girl’s night out.

Ever since Mikki’s disappearance, Katie had become a much bigger part of our lives. She held Jenn’s hand, lent an extra shoulder to cry on, made tea, poured wine, provided whatever Jenn needed whenever I couldn’t. When asked to deal with the outrageous media frenzy that had erupted once news of the kidnapping got out, she’d seamlessly jumped to the helm of our rocky boat and taken over, giving us one less thing to worry about. Sure, it was great for her career—something she readily acknowledged—but if someone could benefit from this hell and keep us out of it at the same time, I was all for it. As I looked at her that morning, I realized I might have been wrong about Katie Edwards. Maybe, sometime during the maelstrom of shit we’d suffered through together, she’d become my friend too.

“What happened, Katie? What the hell is going on? You’re kidding about the murder thing, right? I mean, who on earth would Jenn ever want to murder?”

The answer was a drop kick to my stomach.

By some great power, or the celestial movement of stars and moon unknown to me, I had entered a new phase of my incarceration in the rectangle. Each day was an invitation to something new, a gentle, slow progression into a different reality—all thanks to the benevolent graces of Asmae.

When I’d finally managed to crawl down from my nighttime perch on her first visit, I found the meal she’d brought me wasn’t the usual dry crust of bread. There wasn’t even a single wondrous olive. Instead, on a platter laid out on a crate that doubled as a table, was a veritable smorgasbord of delights. Along with double my typical bread allotment was a ramekin of oil, another of honey, a small
tagine
containing a mixture of moist cooked lamb, apricot and vegetables, and a dollop of couscous. It was more food than I’d consumed all month. Although my desiccated salivary glands were telling me to do one thing, my stomach demanded another, performing its own version of a dry heave.

That day, over several hours, I only managed to swallow a miniscule portion of the couscous, along with small pieces of bread dipped in honey and oil. When Asmae appeared again just before sunset, bearing a second platter, I apologized, trying to explain my predicament with hand signals—not easy to do—and then spent the rest of my gesticulations thanking her in every way I could think of. With just that diminutive improvement in my diet, I could already feel my writer’s brain—once bursting with exposition and clever turns of phrase—if not exactly come back to life, then at least peep its intention to do so...but only if I continued to provide nutrients for my body, despite how it currently repelled them. Asmae nodded often, smiled widely, said little, and stayed only a few moments.

Somehow, my new caregiver/warden must have comprehended my speechless performance. Over the next several days, thrice-daily platters were prepared for the constitution of someone unaccustomed to eating actual meals. Every day the rations were adjusted for what had transpired the day before. If I ate one spoonful of couscous on day one, day two brought a spoonful and a half. If I didn’t touch any meat, fish was attempted the following meal. If I vomited or experienced diarrhea, the menu item that caused the reaction was immediately discontinued.

Sometimes the platter appeared at the opening of the door as before, slid through on the ground and left there for me to retrieve. Other times, Asmae would bring the fare in herself, arranging it on the crate-table, all the while cooing something that I concluded was either her describing the meal’s contents or asking after my well-being.

Oftentimes she’d find me prone in the lean-to’s shade, asleep and difficult to wake. I knew I’d grown dangerously thin and, by all other measures, dreadful and likely repulsive in appearance, so I understood the concern I regularly saw in her eyes.

I’d never been an exceedingly vain man, but I’d come to know—especially during the heady years following the release of
In The Middle—
the value of looking a certain way, of putting forward the best possible you. People react positively, and sometimes unreasonably exuberantly, to someone who is—by nothing more than cut of jaw, placement of cheek, color of eye, fit of clothes—defined by society as more attractive than others. More books were sold. Everyone benefited—publisher, agent, booksellers, me. My looks were something I’d been given, and had spit and polished as required. But, like everything else, they too had been taken from me. My current state was by far the least of my losses, but it was a loss nonetheless.

It was a blistering hot afternoon like countless ones before it, the sun pounding the rectangle with bolts of neon. As usual, I’d taken to the small haven of shade provided by the lean-to, and fallen asleep on the bamboo mat I used as a daybed. I’d been feeling poorly for days, which was nothing new, and running a fever. I could only guess at why. Perhaps I was fighting an infection—or perhaps my body was simply complaining, yet again, about its stunning fall from grace.

The sensation of a cool cloth pressed against my steaming forehead, perfumed with a delicate floral scent I’d come to associate with Asmae, was nothing short of miraculous. I didn’t open my eyes. It might have been because of my weakened state—or it might have been because of a desire to perpetuate the joy of what I admitted might be nothing but another hallucination.

Taking great care, Asmae unfastened the two remaining functional buttons of my shirt. She gently ran the cloth across my chest, and then down into the deep hollow of my belly. With a refreshed towel, she next ministered to my arms, paying special attention to my ruined hands. I loved every second, each pass across my starving skin bringing me closer to feeling once more like a human being...and I simultaneously hated every second, for fear it would be the last.

Maintaining an almost reverential silence, by which she asked permission to continue and I acquiesced, Asmae again dipped the cloth into a basin of water and wrung it out, setting off a flutter of aromas, and then laid it aside. With a touch so light it might have been the work of an angel, she rolled up the hem of each pant leg. She laid the cool, fragrant towel across the bridge of my right foot, then moved it up the leg, down the backside, and tenderly around the rough, chapped bottom of the foot, repeating the same route on the left.

Laying a buttery-soft hand against my forehead, she checked my fever. Whether my temperature told the story or not, I felt as revived and well as if she’d just given me an entire body transplant.

This is how it can be.

Our lives had been stolen and gutted, Mikki’s and mine, and that was a horrible thing. But empathy, compassion, and kindness are powerful salves. Through Asmae and what she was doing for me, I suddenly knew what was possible. For me. For my daughter. Peacefulness filled me and took me to sleep.

When next I woke, the sun was dipping below my cement horizon, delivering a merciful abatement from the day’s heat. Tempered shadows of dusk revealed hints of color in an otherwise sun-bleached world. For long moments I lay there, enjoying the return of fresh night air, breathing in the perfume of a dinner platter that must have arrived during my slumber. I felt rejuvenated by the thought of someone like Asmae helping Mikki. I tried to recall the lessons we’d taught our daughter in the short years we’d had her. Would she know the difference between a person like Asmae, who came into your life to save it...and someone like Scott Walker, who came to destroy it?