The Puzzled Heart

by Amanda Cross

Kate woke after their somewhat extended nap and stayed quiet, pondering their situation but not wanting to wake Reed, when a slight stirring in the bed revealed Banny sleeping at his feet.

  “I’m awake,” he said. “I know she shouldn’t be up here, but I thought, with a total lack of consideration, it will be the problem of the lady who will have to bring her up. I am merely an indulgent foster parent.”

  “How are you?” Kate asked.

  “Dissatisfied with the current plan; I’ve been mulling it over. How about you?”

  “Very dissatisfied. I began to realize, rather belatedly after they had kidnapped you, that I was being wholly passive in the plan for your retrieval. I suppose the shock was so great it took me a while to wake up. I feel that we’re being pushed into something of the same position again. I’m rather sure I don’t like it. Not that Toni and Harriet don’t mean well.”

  “They mean the best. And from a certain point of view, their plan is a sensible one. The only trouble is, it doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t like hiding out, I don’t like your being the only target—nor would you like me to be—and I think that the more people we involve in this caper, the more successful we will be. Finding out who kidnapped me, who was behind it, isn’t the hard part. It’s what sort of support and organization is behind them. Do you agree?”

  “Totally,” Kate said. “I’m relieved, because I didn’t like the thought of urging you back into the open where you could be assaulted again. On the other hand, I want to be out there, talking about this, asking for help, finding out where everybody stands. You know it’s a risk, though, beyond the personal risk of danger to us. We may, we almost certainly will, get tarred with the brush of left radicalism. My thought is, it’s time someone was willing to say what he or she believes.”

  “Yes. We walk in fear, while the radical right trumpets its lies and delusions. Someone has to do something.”

  “True.” Kate reached over to touch him. Banny crawled farther up the bed until she was completely between them, making Kate laugh. “Who knows what your law school and my English department, let alone my university, will say about all this, but hell, what is tenure for? I shall never stop worrying about you, however, and that troubles me. I was shocked at how profound the shock was, if you see what I mean—the shock of your being simply lifted like that, taken from our daily life.”

  “Indicating a weakness?”

  “Indicating a dependency. Frightening, that, and don’t laugh.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of laughing. And if I felt equally or even more desperately shocked by your being kidnapped, that would just be normal male behavior: a man doesn’t want others messing around with his woman. Is that it?”

  “Fair enough. We all know about men; they are desperate for a while, and then find another wife, or female companion, whatever. I felt what I felt was different, frighteningly different. I was scared, not to put too fine a point on it.”

  “Yes,” Reed said. “It’s always hard to discover one’s vulnerability. Particularly when one had declared oneself satisfactorily unassailable.”

  “That’s nonsense.” Their hands met, brushing down Banny’s coat. “Who knows better than you how assailed I’ve been. You might even say that being assailed was my way of being. But to be paralyzed as I was, to be stricken into such passivity, that was terrifying.”

  “Yes, I see. I do see. Well, no more paralysis, no more passivity. What do we tell Harriet and Toni? That I, having been rescued, will take over the operation in partnership with you?”

  “We certainly have to talk to them. Let’s call and request a meeting. I think we’d better get Harriet to call Banny’s owner too. We’re getting too intimate with a dog we can’t keep. Anyway, how could we keep a dog while pursuing the radical right?”

  “Point well taken,” Reed said, ruffling the dog’s hair. “Call Harriet now.”

  Toni and Harriet, having been tracked down through beepers and other electronic beckoning devices, gathered at Kate and Reed’s apartment in the late afternoon. Drinks were offered. Toni refused, suggesting, only half humorously, that Harriet drank enough for the two of them, but Kate suspected that Toni never drank at work and, if she drank at all, did so only at home, off the job—an admirable policy but considerably out of line with the image of American private eyes. Still, Kate thought, almost everything these days is out of line with our images. Some of us want to revive the old forms, and others, like Reed and me, want to move on.

  Kate and Reed had agreed that he would speak first, partly because he was the one supposed to be hiding out, and partly because he wasn’t the one who had hired them and could therefore criticize their plan with less offense, or so he hoped.

  “Kate and I,” he began, “want to offer a different plan of action. We’ve talked this over, and we both feel strongly that we should get back to our jobs, and speak publicly about what has happened and about our eagerness to discover the contrivers of the plot—not the students, but those who planned the students’ moves and thought up the whole scheme. This doesn’t mean that we don’t want you to continue working with us, if you will agree to. It does mean that everything we do is proposed in consultation and agreed upon by us all. We’d like you to continue underground, as it were, while Kate and I operate in the open. How does that strike you?”

  “What about the girls still being held in that apartment? Harriet left them with my operators when she came here at your urgent request,” Toni said, in a tone of voice indicating her disapproval of this development.

  “I think we shall have to turn them over to the police now,” Reed said. “I know you’ve left yourself open to severe complaints, at the least for not calling the police at once, and I intend to take the blame for that. No, nothing noble,” he said as Toni began to object. “It might well have been a logical request of mine at the time, and I think I’ll be able to deal with the consequences a lot more easily than you. For one thing, I’ve got connections left over from my days in the D.A.’s office, and for another, I’m less vulnerable, not being a private eye, always a suspicious identity to the police. Why don’t you call your operators and then call the police now?”

  “That means the girls may not talk,” Toni said.

  “I think they probably will.” Reed looked at his hands. “After all, I’m a valid witness; they may well want to cut their losses. And I don’t think those girls know who was behind all this, other than Kate’s student’s boyfriend who bullied or persuaded them into it.”

  “All right,” Toni said. “I’ll call. But I’m by no means going along with the rest of this until I hear a lot more about it.” She went into the hall to use the telephone.

  “And when she’s finished,” Kate said to Harriet, “maybe you could call and tell the breeder who owns Banny to take her back. We don’t need an excuse for messages anymore, and we’re getting too attached to her, not to mention teaching her bad habits.”

  “What bad habits?” Harriet asked, intrigued.

  “Never mind. Just call. Either the breeder can pick her up, or we’ll manage to deliver her, though I’d rather it were a quicker parting than that. She’s a very appealing little bugger.”

  Toni returned and Harriet went to use the hall phone. While she was gone, Toni, who clearly had something on her mind, decided to get it off. “I’ve felt from the start,” she said to Kate, “that you didn’t really trust or like me, and that it was only because of Harriet that you even considered hiring me professionally. That being the case, maybe we’d better part now. We can just consider the job we were hired for over; Reed is back, and the people holding him are in custody.”

  Reed looked at Kate: your move, he indicated. Kate was about to speak when Harriet returned. “The woman who lent us Banny can’t come for her any day soon because her kennel person is ill and she can’t leave the place long enough to drive to New York City. But she has heard from Dorothy Hedge, who turns out to be a neighbor—that is, much closer than New York City, though some miles
nearer New York than the breeder, whose name is Marjorie—that you were there, that is, visiting Dorothy Hedge. I’m afraid I completely lost control of that sentence, but maybe its meaning has seeped through. This all came about because Dorothy Hedge knew that Marjorie bred Saint Bernards and called to ask about Banny. I’m not altogether sure she didn’t slightly suspect you may have stolen the dog, but that point was passed over rather lightly. Marjorie explained lending Banny, and asked Dorothy to receive her when you’re able to deliver. Is that, if far from perfectly clear, acceptable?”

  “It’s odd,” Kate said, “but I’m not sure why. I had hoped to simply hand Banny over, but I’ll drive her up there tomorrow if that’s all right with Dorothy Hedge. Oh, lord, I’d almost forgotten that I promised to see her again on Thursday to learn more about her family. Well, this visit will have to serve instead. But I shan’t like saying goodbye to Banny.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Reed said. “Of course I will.”

  “Nice thought. But you’d better get back to your teaching or they’ll think you’re taking the whole semester off.”

  “I’ll show up in the morning and we’ll drive up with Banny in the afternoon. That’s settled. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” said Kate, who was relieved. Harriet said she would call Marjorie back now to tell her to tell Dorothy to expect Kate and Reed.

  “And then,” Toni said, “perhaps we can at least get an outline of your plan, and our part in it, if any.”

  “That’s simple,” Kate said, “if you’ll agree. Reed and I will do our best to stir things up. If there are any leads, or ideas, we’d very much like you to follow them. While we will be out there collecting the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, you will be less obviously involved and able to make inquiries and follow leads. Sorry about my weak and repetitive vocabulary but I seem to have only the most conventional set of words at hand when it comes to what private eyes do.”

  Toni smiled and seemed, almost perceptibly, to relax. “It’s okay with me, I guess. It’s a job, and we’re not exactly raking in the fees at the moment; so fine, you’re on. You tell us what to do and we’ll do it. Harriet can go on being the invisible old lady who can get in anywhere, and I’ll go on being the sexpot who uses the magician’s trick of making you watch one hand while the necessary business is accomplished by the other. If it’s all right with Harriet, that is.”

  “It’s fine with me,” Harriet said, returning in time to catch the gist. “Dorothy expects both of you plus puppy dog tomorrow afternoon, anytime. She is used to the trauma of parting, and will give what help she can. So that’s done.”

  “I guess that’s enough for today. Do you think so, Kate?”

  “I think so. Shall we all have another drink?”

  “We’ll leave you three to your last evening together,” Harriet said in tones of profound drama. “Come on, Toni. We’re only wanted once the bullets begin to fly. A metaphor,” she quickly added, catching Reed’s eye. And taking Toni by the arm, she extracted them both from the apartment with amazing efficiency.

  “I thought she’d at least have another drink, a farewell to Banny,” Kate said. “It’s not like Harriet.”

  “I think she felt we needed to be alone.”

  “Well,” Kate said, “I think she was right. But there’s no food in the house, except puppy chow for Banny. I kind of let things drop.”

  “There’s always Chinese takeout and the telephone,” Reed said. “Like Woody Allen in his movies, we can eat it in bed out of the cartons and watch television.”

  “Nothing on television,” Kate said.

  “I know,” Reed said. “There never is.”

  Seven

  EARLY the next day Kate and Reed held a conference over their coffee, an unusual gambit, since Reed’s classes were earlier than Kate’s and he always left while she was still asleep. Today they had both risen early to review their new plan of action.

  “We are not only going to be in the open, in a way hardly familiar to either of us,” Reed said, “but we must go out of our way to recount the adventures of the last few days to anyone we meet. That will be easier for me, since I will have, in any case, to explain my absence. But you must do your best, going on about how worried you were, making clear that you and the article you would have been forced to write were the real object of the exercise.”

  “Do you intend to describe the sexual details of your incarceration?”

  “No. I know it’s no good telling you to forget that, but it’s hardly the most important detail in all this. Do try to remember, dear Kate, that I may have been snatched, but you were the target. Eventually, of course, when we both decide the moment has come, I’ll go into all the gory details.”

  “The point, I gather, is to let as many people as possible know about what happened, pleading the while for any information about who might have been responsible.”

  “Exactly. We may be wrong, but we have decided that the wider the net, the better the chance of catching something. I don’t know if that holds as a fact about deep sea fishing, but it’s worth a try in these circumstances. I’ll meet you back here to deliver Banny to the Hedge woman. My God, what is to become of Banny this morning?”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Kate said, “and I think she’d better stay here, in the kitchen with paper, food, and water—and with the radio playing in the hope that that will console her for her solitude. I did think about taking her with me to the office, but I wasn’t up to explaining her, especially since she won’t be with us after today.”

  “Suppose she howls?”

  “I know. I worried about that; unfair to the neighbors. But it’s only for one day, and if they are home during the day and complain, we’ll apologize and say, with perfect veracity, that it will never happen again.”

  “I’m glad to see you’ve thought of everything.”

  “I try,” Kate said modestly, with downcast eyes. Reed laughed his appreciation.

  “Did I say how good it is to be back?”

  “Not in the last hour,” Kate said.

  When Kate reached her office it was borne in upon her how much harder her task was than Reed’s. He, having to explain his absence, had an opening for his revelations; Kate had to create her own openings. It was odd how difficult it was suddenly to say to a class—for they had decided she would say this to her classes today, since they were seminars and not the large lecture—“If I have seemed distracted these past days, please forgive me; you see, they kidnapped my husband and I was worried about him.”

  She had hoped that someone would exclaim “Kidnapped!” in astonished tones, and she would launch into her story. In the first seminar, however, her students simply stared at her openmouthed, and she had to go on talking for quite a while before she elicited any response at all. But when the response finally came, it was satisfactorily one of outrage, if nonverbal outrage. Kate emphasized the point of the whole scheme’s having come from the right, as was evident from the demand for the article and the kidnappers’ condemnation of her politics. At this, the seminar’s members glanced knowingly at one another, but continued to offer no suggestions or information.

  “If,” Kate said, into the silence, “any of you knows anything, anything at all, about radical right groups, organizations, or outspoken individuals on this campus, I do ask you to talk to me about them. Either make an appointment with me or come to my office hour, or write me a note on paper or e-mail. Or if you leave a message on my voice mail, I’ll return your call. This sort of violence is dangerous, and I do hope that you will help me to discover who is in back of it. I have suffered a good deal, as has my husband, and I want to be sure that neither I nor anyone else has to endure that again. And this is to say nothing of the danger to the university itself.” She then, after a significant pause, launched into the subject of the day.

  Kate expected her second seminar, scheduled an hour after the first had finished, to be a repeat, but the student and faculty grapevine had already he
ated up. Kate had dropped into the department office and told her story to the secretarial staff there, as well as to any of her colleagues who happened in. Thus, by the second seminar, she had hardly begun to speak of Reed’s kidnapping when she was besieged by questions, suggestions, and warnings. The literary subject of the day abandoned, these students were eager to discuss the political situation at the university.

  It took Kate but a moment to realize that the first seminar had been for graduate students, who were notoriously cautious; their dependence on the faculty for recommendations, grades, fellowships, and ultimately jobs was great enough to discourage offending anyone in power. This seminar, an undergraduate one, was encumbered by no such trepidations. These college students were more than ready to give their views on anything and everything, particularly if in doing so they could avoid too detailed a discussion of the assignment, which had been long and of an arduous nature.

  “There’s an amazing number of right-wing nuts,” one young man said.

  “Meaning what, exactly?” Kate interrupted. She needed to have the nuts defined. The more exact the discussion, the more likely it was to lead somewhere.

  “They think gun control is a way to disarm citizens so that the government can take over their land.”

  “And,” a young woman added, “they think women are their property, and that women’s bodies belong to them.”

  “They haven’t the sense to see that gun control is only about concealed weapons, and that they can keep their hunting stuff. Of course, they’re also against banning assault rifles; same reason as before.”

  Descriptions of the right-wing ideas that were sweeping the campus—in the view of these students—continued for a while. With a shock Kate realized that no undergraduate with right-wing sympathies would have taken her class except, in the manner of some of the right-wing phalanx at Dartmouth, to spy on it. What she had here, it seemed, was a bunch of liberal, feminist environmentalists, probably in favor of welfare, national health care, and food for hungry families with children. Without question, these were the sort who were interested not only in literature but in the questions they might ask of it. And because of the time in which they were living, those questions inevitably touched on race, class, gender, and sexual orientation—subjects anathema to the right. For the first time it came home to Kate that she was already politically tagged, and that that tag was well known to all undergraduate students and probably a fair proportion of the faculty. This was, somehow, a slightly shocking revelation—it is always disturbing to discover we have been labeled—but it at least made her investigation in some ways easier.