The Puzzled Heart Read Free

warnings to many women. I didn’t take it all that personally. The letter last night made it very personal.”
    “Let me see it,” Leslie said.
    Kate, who had held on to her purse, now took the letter from it and handed it to Leslie, who read it aloud:
    We have taken your husband. If you do not publicly recant your insane feminist position, he maycome to harm. Be at home tonight at seven when further more detailed instructions will reach you. Do not contact the police or anyone else if you hope to see your husband alive again.
    Leslie let the letter drop into her lap. “Kate, don’t hit me, but is there any chance this is a joke? A stupid joke, in frightfully bad taste, but a joke. Some of those academic types you work with might think this was sort of funny; you know, the types who go off in the woods, pee against trees, and pretend to shoot each other.”
    “There’s nothing I haven’t thought of during the night,” Kate said. “I don’t think it’s a joke, and the reason I don’t is the two men Nick saw putting Reed into the limousine. Some of the guys I work with might try to frighten me, but they would find a time when Reed was away, or they’d think up some other prank. I can’t believe they would actually force him into a car, that they would go that far, and then send this letter.”
    “It does seem to be the kind of letter they might write though. It’s like kid stuff.”
    “Leslie, the right wing in this country, Christians though they may call themselves, are besotted with their message. They are like fundamentalists everywhere, certain of their correctness and of being ordered by God to destroy those who disagree with that certainty. I think perhaps we should stop fooling ourselves about them.”
    “I’m not fooling myself about them. I’m just saying that it’s not that easy to distinguish that letter from a joke letter, the kind of anonymous note sent by nuts.”
    “I might agree with you if Reed were here. If I had heard from him, or had the slightest idea where he was. Now that I think of it, it was my certainty that I wouldn’t hear from him that allowed me to go to you. I’m so frightened. And I feel so helpless.”
    “Which,” Leslie said, “is why we have to get help. The question is who and how. Let’s come up with several possible plans while we’re waiting for seven o’clock—and their next message.”
    By the time they had reached this point, Kate was somewhat calmer, a bit more collected, though still capable, Leslie was certain, of collapsing into despair at the slightest provocation. Most ominously of all, she refused a drink, as though, Leslie surmised, Reed was doomed if Kate had a drink without him. By the time seven o’clock came around, and the doorbell rang announcing the delivery of the next message, Leslie had decided that coping with this kind of suspense required a wholly new, and for her unpracticed, support. Thinking of her grandchildren—by now, she hoped, claimed by their parents—she decided that life was never empty of new challenges, but with age one might have the fortitude to resist or meet them. Having, when push came to shove, resisted the grandchildren, she now sat with Kate hoping for the necessary fortitude.
    The seven o’clock message demanded that Kateannounce, through paid advertisements or articles or op-ed pieces in specific newspapers and journals by the time of their next publication, why she was abandoning feminism and joining the right wing in its efforts to restore true family values. A list of the publications and a concise but terrifying definition of “family values” was appended. If Kate failed to comply with these demands, Reed would be killed. The message concluded:
Neither the police nor any government agency must be contacted
.
    “I hate people who use contact as a verb,” Kate said. It was, Leslie considered, the first sign that her mind had clicked back into place.
    “I thought these people believed in the