I'll Let You Go

CHAPTER 15. Revolution’s Eve

That week, Trinnie invited him to go along on a job. She had never done that before; the gesture was a coming-of-age for both of them.

Mother and son were met in the lobby of the Motion Picture and Television Hospital by Tim de Kooning, the pastor there. The Trotters were well known, and Father de Kooning said it was a happy coincidence to have recently met Trinnie’s sister-in-law in connection with a “quite amazing program for orphaned children which Joyce — I’m sure you know! — has spearheaded.”

Upon entering the grounds, Trinnie felt as if in a geriatric Shangri-la. Like most Angelenos, she had only a dim awareness of this place, and (until now) thought of it as “the old actors’ home” rather than a modern medical facility. Her parents, along with their friends the Wassermans and the Douglases, had been generous to the institution throughout the years. Trinnie could remember being at a benefit listening to her mother and Debbie Reynolds chat about the Woodland Hills sanctuary, saying it was where both wanted to be when it was time to “wrap things up.” (Bluey had always loved show people.) Strolling through the cafeteria with its waiters and white linen, the pastor pointed out wizened cowboys and ex-vamps in dainty gloves carving up racks of lamb — here, a renowned cinematographer seated beside an early effects wizard; there, a mistress of Howard Hughes, now a hundred years old. The place had a hazy, anomalous Garden of Allah vibe that instantly drew her in. The Rockwellian town square, with its architectural nod to gazebos, bandstands and calliopes, finished off the effect.

They were on their way to Harry’s Haven, the unit for those suffering from the disease of forgetting. Father de Kooning liked going over to speak after Sunday chapel services. A gift from Kirk and Anne Douglas, the “Alzheimer’s cottage” had been built in memory of the actor’s father.

They followed him in to a large room off the main corridor, where nurses had assembled about a dozen residents. Trinnie and Tull sat near the back while the pastor spoke. The boy watched the goings-on, wide-eyed. A hawk-like man with crossed, hairy arms corrosively deconstructed Father de Kooning’s monologue, then abruptly fell silent, like an actor on a stool upon a stage. In the back row, a painted woman kissed the hand of a fey, embarrassed galfriend. “You’re marvelous!” she hissed with maudlin zealotry. “You’re just sensational, and you know it!” A Babe Paley type, displeased by the outburst, turned to stare the painted woman down — the former resembling a socialite who’d been forced to endure Bedlam itself as some kind of charity stunt.

Undaunted, the pastor homilized. “It was a dark and stormy night,” he said, putting on a bit of the evangelizing dog for Trinnie, “and a father and son headed home. They came to a bridge, but the bridge was washed out. As the wind howled and rain poured down, the man lifted his son and walked across a log that straddled the raging river.” He paused, for effect. “The boy awoke in his warm bed the next morning. He told his father that, back at the river, when he lifted him up he had fainted dead away, afraid they both would die.”

“And I was afraid you wouldn’t!” interjected the hawkish scold, who then turned instantly to stone.

The pastor was undeterred. “ ‘Why be afraid?’ asked the the boy’s father. ‘That’s what death is: you fall asleep in a storm — then suddenly, you’re home.’ ”

Given the milieu, Tull thought the story inappropriate — not that anyone in the room had anything to say about it. Anyhow, who gave a shit? It wasn’t exactly the Crystal Cathedral. He looked at Trinnie, amazed to see tears in her eyes. Maybe her mind was on something else entirely. Maybe she’s just missing heroin, he thought maliciously.

The pastor walked them to the garden and bid his adieu.

Trinnie took a draft of air as she scanned the site.

“They call this a wandering garden,” she said, in teaching mode, “because people with Alzheimer’s like to wander. Have you ever seen a walking labyrinth? They go way back to medieval Christian churches. That was my original thought for Saint-Cloud … there’s one in San Francisco — Grace. It’s based on the labyrinth at Chartres, thirteenth-century. Haven’t we been there, Tull?” He wouldn’t dignify it with an answer. “I can’t believe I never took you to Grace!”

“I can,” he said, unable to resist.

“Of course, there isn’t room for something like that here; the idea is to create the feeling of flow, without the formalism of concentric rings.” She stopped to touch the leaf of an overhanging tree. “The fun part is, all flowers must be edible. I am told that people with Alzheimer’s like to forage.”

An old crone gained on them, her purplish-spotted arm extended as if to hail a cab. “Hey! Hey!” she shouted at Trinnie. “You’re sensational! You’re just sensational and you know it! You know it!” She picked up speed and overtook them, a contender in a crazed derby.

“Maybe I should build a little grotto — and dovecotes. I need to find out if the sound of pigeons or water is a no-no for Alzheimoids. The birds’ll probably shit everywhere, and that’s no good … this really does remind me of the park Proust’s uncle made — the Pré Catelan — at Illiers-Combray. You know: ‘lost time’ and all. Kind of thematically perfect, huh. But is it pretentious?” Listening to his mother prattle sickened him. “Did I ever tell you,” she said conspiratorially, “that I stole something from the Proust Museum? Oh my God! A butter dish. I’ve never told anyone that; I wasn’t ‘well’ at the time — I think I was AWOL from somewhere. I need to send it back, anonymously, but I’ve never been able to find the damn thing. I only hope to God they had the sense not to leave the real dish out for John Q. Public … or should I say Jean Q. Publique—”

“Is Grandma going to live here?”

“No,” she said smugly, as if such a thing were out of the question.

Tull nodded at the squawking crone as she came around on another lap. “Is that what’s happening to Grandma?”

“We don’t know what’s happening to Grandma.”

“Then why are we here?”

“Because I’m redoing the garden. Grandpa’s paying for it.”

“Why?”

“Because the Douglases asked him to.”

“If Grandma’s going to live here, you should just tell me.”

“She’s not — OK?”

Trinnie shot him a look that said, I’ve already told you my secrets — get over it.

They kept walking.

“It’d be interesting to plant a little Cosmos atrosanguineus—that’s Latin for ‘black blood.’ They’re from Mexico and they smell like hot chocolate. Though I’m not so sure they can be eaten,” she said, besotted with herself.

Tull’s finger felt the soft outline of the folded cryptogram he’d committed to memory and carried in his pocket all week long. If I was shocked at the reckless insinuation of your employee, I was absolutely dumbfounded—

“Why were you crying?” he asked.

“Crying?”

“Inside — when he told the story.”

“It made me sad.”

“A retarded Sunday School story made you sad,” he said acidly. “Are you born-again now, on top of being AA?”

“Look,” she said, stopping in her tracks. “I brought you here because I thought you might be curious about what I do—and have compassion for what’s happened to these people. But all you’re doing is giving me shit.”

“Fuck you!” he shouted. “You’re not even here! You think that because you told me about Marcus—your version—you couldn’t even do it yourself, you needed Grandpa there! — you think that because you tell me some bullshit, suddenly you’re the great mother? You’re just a drug addict!”

“No one’s ‘just a drug addict,’ Tull,” she said wearily.

“You think because you get chauffeured to AA meetings, that makes you a great mother? That because you pay someone to come to the house and show you how to meditate that makes you a great mother?”

“I wish you’d stop saying that.”

“That you’ve been sober six weeks? Who cares! At least he left. I never had to even meet him — but you—you keep — coming — back! Keep coming back! Keep coming back!” He shrieked, flapping his arms in furious mockery of the famous slogan. “You don’t even care what it’s like to — for me to try to find you and you’re just gone! You don’t give a shit about me! When were we supposed to have gone to San Francisco to see some cathedral? When, Trinnie? That is such a joke! You don’t even know who I am—all you care about are your clothes and your drugs—”

“I’m not taking drugs.”

“But you will! You will!”

“Thank you, Tull. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“And Grandpa gives you money, like, every day. And you hate him! You hate your father—”

“Don’t project on me, Tull.”

“You hate everyone but yourself. Don’t tell me about compassion when you don’t even care about your own parents. You’ve done nothing but practically kill them! All they do is worry about you, you think Bluey doesn’t have any feelings, but Bluey just doesn’t show it like Grandpa does. If it wasn’t for them, I’d be dead! You don’t care about anyone! Not me or stupid Rafe or Grandma or Grandpa or Pullman—Pullman cares more about me than you ever did! You fucking make me sick!—”

She slapped him, and he stared at her in shock.

Sobbing with anger, he tried to leave the garden, but the gate, like all doors, locked from inside to corral the guests. He put his foot on a tree and boosted himself to scale the fence, dropping down on the other side.

Trinnie watched, heart in throat, as he ran up the hill of the former onion field. She couldn’t help but notice the valley oak at its crest, fairly rare for Southern California.

Trinnie thought: Everything he said is true. And if then and there the gods had transmuted the very dirt to morphine, she’d have sunk to her knees and choked on the earth.

While the drama played out in Woodland Hills (ending with the winded Tull’s safe on-ramp apprehension), another scene unspooled at a Westwood cemetery with which the reader is already familiar.

The old man stood on his parcel. Instead of the Silver Seraph, the plush Mauck had been maneuvered past the gate; it did not present a serious encumbrance, for today park tourists were scant. Edward sat in his buggy a few paces away, ramrod straight thanks to the trusty titanium brace, which Lucy had adorned with decals of wasps and figs. Sling Blade, leaning on a rake to watch the summit from afar, completed the tableau.

The cousin smiled as beatifically as possible, while a fawning Dot discoursed. His grandfather tolerated the woman with a customary wince. Her flannel dress, to the old man’s offended eye, looked like a stained tent cinched at the waist by a thrift-store belt and pinned by a fun-house brooch — a medal given to the sartorially challenged.

“What an honor it is to meet you!” she said, pumping his webbed little hand. Edward’s mood was markedly Zen. “Those gloves! That marvelous veil! Are they — what was the word Mr. Trotter used? — ‘bespoke’? You’re just like your grandpa — so stylish. You are definitely going to be added to Dot Campbell’s Best-Dressed Hall of Fame, and that’s a hard thing to achieve!”

“Mrs. Campbell, please—”

“It’s all right, Grandpa! She’s a wonder!”

“Don’t mind me — it’s just that you’re so personable. May I ask what exactly is wrong with you? Physically, of course.”

“Oh God!” eructed the old man.

“Not at all, you may ask and ask away! They call it Apert Syndrome.”

Dot looked deep within herself. “Never heard of that one. My sister Ethel — who’d adore you — sent me an article about a special school in Long Island for children with deformities. ‘Inner Faces,’ they call it. They put on theater pieces—extremely talented. There’s a few with cleft palates; you don’t see those much anymore. You don’t see cleft palates or clubfeet. One of the kids had — what did they call it? Möbius Syndrome! The muscles in her face completely paralyzed—”

“Good Lord, Mrs. Campbell,” cried Mr. Trotter, who had by now reached the end of a long, low string of chuffs — so low, only Pullman might have registered the last. “That’s quite enough!”

“Grandpa, it’s fine. Seriously.”

“Then tell me,” said Dot, eyeing him intently. “Why do you cover up your face?”

“Personal choice. I suppose I’m vain. The eyes are a bit far apart. Dentition is … eruptive. Forehead veiny and elongated, with a ‘bregmatic bump.’ ”

“Apert, did you say?—”

“Yes. Like Herb Alpert, without the ‘Herb’ or the ‘l.’ ”

“Now, Edward, is that — is Apert’s by any chance an ‘orphan’ disease? The ones not enough people actually have for them to go and commit research funding? They make television movies about them, it’s terribly unfair. Oprah even did a show on ‘orphans’—they do amazing things with prosthetics now. I read in People about a girl with a hole in her face—”

“Oh God!” muttered Mr. Trotter as he strode off.

“Are you sure you don’t mind us talking like this?” whispered Dot to her new friend.

“Not at all.”

“I feel so comfortable with you, you have that gift. Besides, it’s much better to be frank — that’s the way we learn.” She spoke softly now, taking him into her confidence. “I do worry about your grandfather sometimes. He’s here so much — even at night. I don’t think it’s healthy. To provide for oneself, yes, but well … you know, Edward, my sister Ethel would love to meet you, you’re so poised. There was that girl in People with a cancer. They took her nose, poor thing — and her left eye, part of the forehead, part of the cheek and part of the sinus. Left a hole the size of a papaya. Now, evidently, there’s a Romanian doctor who specializes in maxillofacial surgery. Makes ‘clip-on’ prosthetics — they drill screws right into the skull and the thing just snaps on. Though for the life of me I don’t know how they get the screws to stay. Ethel says—”

“They’re titanium. Titanium bonds with bone.”

“Yes! That’s what they said on 20/20, the faces clip on like sunglasses—so beautifully done. The quality of a Tussaud’s!”

The old man took Sling Blade aside while Dot and his grandson continued their colloquy. As he imparted whatever it was that he imparted, he held the caretaker’s elbow and pressed money into his hand, a lavish, almost involuntary gesture repeated that very week with a Supercuts barber, a Montana Avenue haberdasher, even the humble, sweetly flummoxed receptionist for Dr. Bloore, his Bedford Drive dentist.

Early after the purchase of his plot, the digger had had a dream about Sling Blade, and some small omens since had shown promise for his eventual entwinement with the Trotter familia. For example, Mr. Trotter recently noticed an abrasion on Sling Blade’s forehead. When questioned, he explained that it was an injury incurred while moonlighting as a guard at a building downtown — the Higgins, to be precise — the very landmark Dodd told his father he had in escrow.

The main detail of the story, that during rounds he’d been assaulted by a burly trespasser, held no interest for the old man.

When the Mauck reached La Colonne, the gates were already open. The vulgar Mr. Greenjeans stood waiting, mustered and tamed. He’d added a nitwitty canvas pith helmet to his regalia, and if Tull hadn’t been so agitated, he might have been sarcastic about it. After all, this was the man who once chased him down.

Lucy was so excited she forgot to bring her Smythson. The young detective sat beside her brother in the locked-down buggy ready to be launched once the MSV reached the tip of the driveway, a small bulb intruding on the vast parkland space. Edward was dressed, well, Edwardian for the event — a three-piece “reworked” pin-striped suit by Matsushima, a retro Etro paisley vest, studded gloves and a translucent Trinnie-donated tattooed Kobayashi blouse, which he wore as a veil. Pullman, noble, copacetic specimen that he was, placidly drooled on the carpet, where lay his handsome, ham-size head.

A gentleman of protruding jaw sat comfortably in one of the calfskin swivel chairs near the front of the Mauck, his back to Epitacio, who drove. Edward introduced him as Sling Blade, and the latter showed no signs of feeling teased by the appellation. Tull felt as if he were in a dream, a feeling certainly not foreign during the last few months. He didn’t think to ask about the stranger, or even who exactly had given them official ingress to the rarefied site. (Nor had he inquired of his cousin the provenance of the monogrammed letter let alone any details of the presumed cache from which it been extracted.) Initially, Lucy wasn’t thrilled with Sling Blade’s presence, but she grew tolerant, then positively ebullient, on realizing he would make a perfectly colorful cameo in The Mystery of the Blue Maze.

They entered the meadow and drove slowly through, Mr. Greenjeans trotting along beside.

The party of five — six, really, including Pullman — disembarked and Tull oriented himself. It was a different vista than that afforded from his usual illicit entry; it seemed impossible he and Pullman had never explored this side — the perspective his parents would have had when shown the place for the first time. The view of the wedding guests.

Someone had taken great pains to lay floorboard over the grass (the same had been done on location during Boulder’s film, so the camera could wheel over uneven ground). The buggy lowered pneumatically; Epitacio and Sling Blade guided it to the first plank of Yellow Brick Road. Mr. Greenjeans caught up, grabbed hold and helped them jump the curb. The two caretakers then eyeballed each other, neither coming up to measure. The gardener was not at all happy to see Pullman, and paled when the Great deigned sniff his leg.

Edward nodded for Tull to come, but the boy shook his head and hung back. Sling Blade got in and the buggy ascended the low hill. Epitacio leaned under the shade of a gull wing and smoked a cigarette; it was obvious to Tull that for him La Colonne was old hat. Mr. Greenjeans shadowed the buggy as it passed through the first set of myrtle balls, and kept apace from twenty yards.

The air chilled, covering him with goose bumps. What were they doing here? Tull watched the surrey climb at the creepy pace of a roller-coaster car once the safety bar dropped over passengers’ laps; then set off to join them.

The formal entry, as the cousin had already described from the Le Désert de Retz book, was a faithfully replicated grove of sycamores, chestnuts, lindens, blue cedars, maples and ash. Beneath the chirping of birds and rustle of leaves was a dead quiet. Pullman remained loyally at Tull’s side even when a large, still pond hove into view; then, oddly, the familiar allée of yews appeared, and the two were somehow back to their usual approach to the tower. They passed through — it was darker and colder than Tull remembered. He had a fleeting, terrible thought: one didn’t have to be in a maze to be swallowed up by darkness, never to escape.

Seeing the buggy stop ahead, he sped up.

Edward stood beneath the canopy staring at the prospect that for all its brooding melodrama might well have been a painting of nearly fetishistic romanticism. The sky blackened and trees shook nude limbs like upended broomsticks tickling the clouds, egging them on, daring them to rain down for the sheer joy and mischief of it — and there, squatting at the end of the field like a ravaged rotunda, was the still-distant, broken Babel.

The cousin took it in with flooded concentration. For Lucy and Tull, the spectacle was not so much the Castle of Sleeping Beauty, as Edward told them a writer named Colette had called it, but the sight of the cousin himself transfixed, briefly lifting his veil to see what he could see. The ground was level now and the buggy zoomed toward Oz.

Slouching ahead, Tull nervously populated the grounds with wedding-day people: lanterns appeared, strung in the dusk, landaus with glass-encased torches burning, high-booted footmen amid pastoral gaiety, grass-stained children with flowers and bugs in their silken hair. The wind sizzled a friction of branches, and he heard the wedding music of an absurdly imagined clavichord. Edward had loaned Tull enough sci fi for him to be able to readily muse on the transitoriness of Time, the wormhole nature of it all — the smallness of himself in the scheme of things. So, the scene became more real: he saw his mother there, younger, handmaids and tailors tweaking her Balenciaga, and his father, lanky and rakish, tender and kind, drinking with male friends, who laughed in gutsy, premarital chorus. In his mind, Marcus looked like a Jewish man with tousled hair, a cross between Steven Spielberg and Ralph Mirdling, wild-eyed and gaunt. He shook off his reverie, close to the castle now. The buggy was at the front door. Sling Blade carried Edward in like a bride.

The light inside was the same as in the Poussin of Grandpa’s Withdrawing Room. They allowed fairy-dust motes stirred by their arrival to settle before awakening any spirits. The white tents Tull spied before were now up close — a bedouin camp of covered furniture and figurines. Mr. Greenjeans said “the lady” had wished nothing moved. (Mr. Greenjeans being suddenly loquacious.)

“ ‘An armed prowler would not dare stay here at night,’ ” said Edward out loud, again quoting this person Colette. “ ‘How to convince yourself that in this dungeon-like darkness, a rosewood headrest and the remains of a commode are not positively evil?’ ”

“I don’t think it’s evil at all,” offered Lucy, shakily.

As in the original Colonne, there were four aboveground levels, including the lobby — in the basement, which no one was in a hurry to explore, Edward said that the castle’s onetime Freemason residents were intent upon alchemizing the bones of Pascal into gold (both Lucy and Tull assumed Pascal to be a dear, lamented friend of Colette’s). The braided authoress pushed aside her fears and began to warm to the place; she flitted like a moth, powdering the edges of the protective drapes.

“Careful!” hissed Mr. Greenjeans. “Nothing must be moved or broken!”

Lucy started a moment, then laughed, gleeful. What fun it was being a writer! And what a wonderful character would this mad gardener make!

Edward told Sling Blade he wished to go up — the column was bifurcated by a spiral staircase — and the strong-armed cemetery worker obeyed. His sister followed.

Pullman lay at the foot of the stairwell. While the others went exploring, his master stepped over him, craning his neck. A skylight nestled high above in the jagged edges of the snapped-off “pillar,” plant life sprouting from the latter like a weedy tiara. Tull took the stairs, numb. He wondered if his parents had roped off the bedroom that wedding-day night, barring access to revelers.

So these were the stairs his parents had climbed — the same his father had crept down that morning without her. She would have come later, barefoot, lover’s face lit by a puzzled smile as she stared out at the rolling hills. Katrina Berenice Trotter Weiner thought for certain she would see her husband there, playfully naked, turning to make a rutting run at his brand-new bride in this blue-green heaven, outraged at their love and good fortune. The smile, Tull thought, would have stuck to her face as she wandered, searching, calling his name … tiring, she may have said aloud: It’s a game! He’s been watching me, and now’s gone back in …

He heard Lucy’s and Edward’s treasure-hunt voices some floors above — and shot past, for Edward’s progress was slow, and, besides, the cousins were distracted by the eerie stillness of each new floor. The structure was vast, even larger, if that were possible, than it seemed from outside. With unexpected verve, Tull bolted to the remaining level.

Ralph once told him about fire beetles — insects drawn to forest fires that flew through flames to lay eggs in charred tree bark — and though its door was shut and told nothing of what it hid, that is how Tull flew to the boudoir. He could smell his mother there, her shock and her sorrow, addictions and adorations. When he entered, he saw them for a moment entwined — then all he could see was her alone, blissful, awakening, yawning her newlywed breath, stretching, womb-starred, squatting on the toilet, then standing on tiptoes to spy from one of the mosaic porticoes, scanning for her beloved somewhere in the landscape below. He saw her put on slippers and say his father’s name … then descend, calling out at each floor, mixing in lyrics of a sweetly improvised song as she floated down corkscrew stairs until finding herself at the front door, already flung open, he had flung it open, staring out at the rolling hills, smile stuck to radiantly doomed face — when Lucy suddenly appeared, exalted and fairly wheezing, already sucking the thin air of bestsellerdom. Tull blocked her way as she tried to come in.

“No!” he said. “You can’t! No one can!”

She thought at first it was a joke, but Tull was shaking and crying and she backed off.

“It’s not for your stupid book, so get out! Get out—”

She put her hands up to calm him. At that moment Edward arrived, with entourage.

“What’s happening?” he asked from Sling Blade’s arms. The caretaker looked like a ventriloquist. He set the boy down.

“I said no one goes in there!” Tull slammed the door in their faces. Pullman barked from below.

“We won’t,” called Edward respectfully. “Don’t worry …”

“This was a mistake,” shouted Tull. “We shouldn’t have come here!”

“Then,” said Edward, “we’ll just turn around and go.”

Lucy had never seen her brother so calm and collected, so gracious. Like one of those crisis negotiators.

“If anyone comes in here,” said Tull dramatically, “I’ll kill them!”

Sling Blade swept the boy up and the party retreated.

Tull of course stayed behind, heart pounding madly. It was only when their steps left the echoing cylinder at ground level and he heard circumspect voices outside La Colonne that he allowed himself to breathe again. His body, rigid since spitting its words, relaxed and his mouth began to jigger uncontrollably, tears scalding as he emerged from the wedding suite and walked down.

He thought of leaving by the old, secret way — through hedge of privet andromeda — but then thought better, to make certain the others had gone. So he raced ahead with Pullman and stood across the road until the Mauck edged from the drive.

Lucy stared at him through the window of the MSV as it swept past, her face riven by pain. Tull was ashamed and confused. He didn’t want his cousins — especially Edward, who’d been so excited about the castle — to be traumatized on his account. Lucy had been trying so hard to help … and Edward — he would not want to injure his fragile, mystic friend. He’d call them later to make things right. For now, all he wanted was the gate of La Colonne Détruite to clang shut, its padlock restored.

The Mauck turned the corner and vanished. Mr. Greenjeans unraveled the chain and sealed everything up, then he too receded. All that was left was a nip of wind to sting Tull’s eyes.

A station wagon of tourists cruised slowly down and stopped.

“Excuse me, but do you know where Nic Cage lives?” asked the driver, a sunny man in short sleeves.

“He moved,” said Tull.

The man turned to his wife and said, “Apparently, he moved.” The wife turned to the kids and said, “He moved.”

“Where?” asked an older boy. “Yeah, where!” said the girl. “I don’t know,” said the mother, glancing down at her Maps to Stars Homes. She turned back to her husband. He was about to ask again, but the boy and his steadfast friend had already begun the lonesome trudge to Saint-Cloud.