Sweet Lamb of Heaven (44)

“But worse,” said the person, inflectionless.

After I signed the contracts and they were delivered, Lena would be brought back to me.

These events unrolled quickly. The contracts were received and signed, Will and Don read them, as well as Reiner, who turned out to be a corporate lawyer. Will drove me to a notary at the fire station that stayed open all night, and after that a messenger took the packet from me. Then we went back to the motel and waited.

I took no pill and drank no wine, determined to be sober as a judge. Instead of drinking I walked around and around the outside of the motel, my heart beating fast, my cheeks hot, until my calves burned and the soles of my feet were sore. Freezing, I walked for hours. Every brief headlight near the end of the road made me breathless.

It was after midnight when the car pulled up and two men got out, two men I didn’t know, though I wondered in passing if I recognized one of them as a cop.

Then Lena was here, I had her with me again, and the motel guests were close, and Don and Will, Don’s father smiling widely as he leaned on his wavering cane. Everyone was hugging Lena or patting her, congratulating me, whatever. We were in the warm lobby without having walked there—we’d floated, I think now, and when I finally looked up there were no men and there was no car. Vanished.



SO NED HAS BECOME a condition again, a feature of life. Our end date is still the election, contractually, after which Lena and I should be released—but for now we’re indentured. We’re flying to Alaska next week for the official candidacy announcement, to do our duty as mannequins.

Ned’s staff booked the tickets; Ned’s staff booked the rental car. We’re staying in our old house for almost a week. Without speaking to me at all, only sending me emails containing flight confirmation numbers and the rental car details, Ned’s staff took charge of the arrangements.

Lena’s still saying little about her time in kidnapping—I can’t tell how deep the injury may go, though Don found us a counselor forty-five minutes away and we drive to see her three days a week. It doesn’t seem to be the case that anything of substance occurred while she was in Ned’s hands. That is, as long as she hasn’t blocked a trauma. All that happened, apparently—once the initial violation had occurred when she was drugged and taken from me—was that she stayed in a hotel suite with a babysitter. And of course she was frightened because they told her I was sick.

It sounds like it was one of those big chain hotels, more like apartments in an office park, possibly in Massachusetts somewhere, the PIs say, with generic but pleasant enough bedrooms off a central living room and kitchen. The babysitter had her own room, and so did Lena, between which the doors were left open.

Apparently she only saw Ned once. The first morning he stayed away and had the babysitter tell her that she was safe, I was safe, the illness wasn’t life-threatening. Everyone was safe, but she was staying there for her own protection in case the sickness was contagious. He made his single in-person appearance that evening, bearing ice cream and an expensive, wholesome-looking doll wearing a red-velvet ice-skating outfit. After that he sent her toys daily through the caregiver: animated movies, books, doll clothes.

She kept the doll for longest, toward which she felt a parental responsibility, but finally she asked me to take it to the same donation bin in the grocery-store parking lot where we’d taken the other items he’d sent. The gifts must have left a sour taste in her mouth.

The babysitter, a kindly, bland-sounding woman, prepared their meals: whatever Lena wanted, up to and including large ice-cream sundaes, chocolate layer cake, and piles of frosted cookies. For exercise she was taken to the indoor hotel pool, which, to hear Lena tell it, was always deserted, except for the babysitter and her. She liked the hot tub, which kids weren’t allowed to go in: she had received the babysitter’s special permission.

She watched a lot of TV.

Now that she’s back I can stand to hear about it, I want to know every detail she imparts. Her experience has taken her sense of security and consistency from her—her exuberance has been curtailed. She doesn’t sob or clutch at me, but she moves more cautiously than she used to, she’s more measured.

One afternoon a guest checked in—a tired man from Quebec who didn’t appear to hear any voices; he was so tired he barely even heard ours—and Don asked if she wanted to offer him a tour. She was polite and dutiful, mainly, I think, to protect Don’s feelings. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful. Yet the tour was subdued. She skipped the ice machine entirely.

I’m so angry at Ned for taking it from her, that free, unreasonable joy that was her greatest possession.



SO MY FEAR has turned mostly to anger, which is much easier to live with—I see now why it’s popular.

But I continue to need distraction so to expend my nervous energy, maybe dispel the rage, I scroll and scroll and click and click once she’s tucked in at night.

I’ve been going to the meetings faithfully, knowing we’re leaving, trying to absorb as much as I can before I say goodbye to this strange circle. I can’t take Lena with me to the meetings and there’s no one I trust to watch her when I’m occupied except Will, so I’ve been vague about the meetings, implying only that they’re about “recovery”—my own therapy, as she has hers. Fifteen minutes before they start I drop Lena at the library.