I'll Let You Go

CHAPTER 26. Globe-Trotters

The children were away for a whirlwind three-week tour; and while travel was Edward Aurelius Trotter’s métier and he never felt more anchored than when bonds to earth were severed, the hardships he so gracefully endured amid numbered leave-takings from the softship of his father’s customized cabin were notable and should be recorded for future invalids, real and imaginary.

Exactly who was part of this airborne sodality? Let us first introduce those professionally engaged. The retooled 737 came with six pilots, whose tag-team approach allowed them to enjoy more than a few sights (one might think this arrangement was on account of Dodd Trotter’s largesse, when in actuality it was his wife’s suggestion, being Joyce’s sensible opinion that a happy, rested crew made for a safer voyage); two in-flight helpers — a hunky Greek, whom the overheated Lucy fantasized about on days when Tull was particularly distant and uncaring — and a stewardess, whose protracted, ritualized reapplication of lip gloss and outliner may as well have been a morbid surgical procedure for all the fascinated attention it received from the boys of Four Winds; a portly medical doctor by the name of Dr. Raff, who was a part-time resident of the hidden clinic at Olde CityWalk, hence well familiar with Edward’s condition; two homely, overqualified nurses — whose looks still proved eminently watchable to certain of our younger captives, and who seemed on this trip to stick thermometers in more mouths than they could remember — their technical skills and general know-how being of emergency-room caliber; a physical therapist and self-proclaimed tai chi instructor (dubbed Slouching Tiger by Edward) for whom no one seemed to care and who, to his credit, cared less in return and, aside from massaging the first cousin, which he did well enough, mostly took up “carrying” duties familiar to Epitacio, Eulogio and Sling Blade, delicately hoisting the boy in his arms on request; two techies — one, an expert in upkeep, maintenance and troubleshooting of aspirators, defibrillators and assorted hose-and-pump gewgaws (an inventory that remained, thankfully, unused) and the other, a kind of practical engineer, who saw to it that Edward’s portable AirBuggy, a more modest version of the bulkier trademark dry-docked at Olde CityWalk, would be up and running and not sputter out on the Via Whatever in front of Ruin XXVII; three bodyguards, charged with the security of the group and who were to be sure no kidnappings, hijackings or explosive surprises ensued; two cuisiniers particuliers and their assistants, all of whose glacially indifferent dispositions challenged one’s romantic notions of the fiery cook-as-artist; and finally, one of Dodd Trotter’s crack efficiency mavens, whose only job was to facilitate hemispheric, longitudinal and latitudinal comings and goings, VIP clearances, embassy liaisons, passports and vaccinations, baggage wranglings, concierge-strokings and hotel check-ins, general politics, skullduggeries and laundry. That would be dry-cleaning and fluff ’n’ fold.

Let us examine the next level up. Here resides the venerable Mr. Hookstratten, whose civilian clothes and multiplicity of camera gear first severely embarrassed the children, as they weren’t used to seeing him bustle about in the real world. (It felt way too intimate.) The teacher was joined by his life partner, a supposed expert in the field of celestial navigation, whose name was Reed, apropos for an attenuated, fuzzy-haired body that seemed to tilt sardonically in the wind, and who smiled at the little ones with the benevolence of a sadist who’d already poisoned their pie. There was a professor of medieval history with terrible breath, who was wont to accompany himself on guitar singing Middle English “ditties”; he was eventually exonerated, even extolled, after Edward proclaimed the man’s knowledge to be authentic and of enormous range. Rounding things out came a chess-master-cum-alpinist upon whom the physical-therapist-cum-tai-chi-master instantly fixated as nemesis.

Having dispensed with the above, we now arrive at a small VIP subset: the actress Diane Keaton and her daughter, Dex — the latter already slated to be a Four Winds scholar, class of 2012. As previously noted, Tull and the actress shared a dog walker, but the ties went deeper.

Trinnie and Ms. Keaton had a reunion of sorts at the oft-referred-to Animal CAT-scan Ball, which, the reader cannot fail to recall, was attended by Ron Bass himself. Diane, a former client of Marcus Weiner, had always been captivated by Katrina (the actress being a fabled cognoscente of style, genius and tragedy) and had long followed her career in the garden journals and magazines, coincidentally even visiting some of the heiress’s more acclaimed and faraway private commissions. While Mr. Bass commiserated with the now-former “Rafe” Mirdling, Trinnie poured out some of her scandalized heart to the entranced and startled Ms. Keaton, filling in the gaps of the actress’s knowledge, which of necessity had been dependent on gossip and newspaper accounts read long ago, now almost forgotten. The two had lunch at Il Pastaio, and Trinnie even went so far as to accommodate her old acquaintance and newfound friend (Ms. Keaton, to her eternal regret, had been unable to attend the wedding) with a moonlit tour of the near-virginal grounds of La Colonne. In the months since the benefit, the actress had met the entire Trotter clan and become enamored of them, as anyone would. While Trinnie was the initial connection, credit must be given to Joyce (who never receives enough) for suggesting that Diane and her sweet-banged Dexter join the kids for at least part of their international campaign.

At last, then, the student body: Tull, Edward, Lucy, Boulder and eighteen of their fellows, the latter of whose individual attributes and shortcomings will remain unsung — but let us say a fair cross-section of overachievers, with archetypal brainiacs and bullies to bracket the middling. It is heartening to note that for the length and breadth of the voyage, there wasn’t a single disciplinary problem of substance (and not a weapon, real or makeshift, brandished): the children, sensoria taxed and disoriented by constant movement through culture and time zone, shocked lungs breathing the recirculated air of an albeit opulent airship, had been transformed from jackasses into sweet, humble citizens of the world — in no time, the little dears possessed the poise and plenitude of UNICEF emissaries. They behaved with grateful worshipfulness toward their immediate hosts (Edward and his sister) while still managing to pay cousin Tull the worshiped-by-association homage or lack of it required by his given mood. Suffice to say that within mere days after the Los Angeles departure, the normally boisterous, disrespectful Four Winds mob became fine-tuned choristers, whose vocals could swing from ragtime to near liturgical at the instructive glance of any adult — or Trotter — on board. Oh, but they were good.

Let us address their itinerary. For the reader who tires of such inventories, a solution is at hand: accidental tourists may skip ahead, while the more adventurous (it is hoped, the majority) will be asked to surrender their passports forthwith. The trip will be swift — or perhaps feel swifter than our prefatory remarks — and cover much ground.

We are already in New Orleans; for Edward wished to visit a place where Mardi Gras masks are made.^† The atelier outshines Olde CityWalk’s by a long shot. Not that Edward is covetous — it has the opposite effect. He is utterly seduced by all manner of feather, bead and sequin. But the legendary city is oppressively humid, and this does not make anyone happy. A prearranged visit to the home of Anne Rice salves their wounds. The sequestered writer is ill and graciously sends her regrets; an extensive tour of the imposing, atmospheric grounds is offered by her handsome son, also a novelist. Lucy is at once besotted, but cannot compete with Boulder, who already whines that if she’d been old enough she was certain to have been chosen by his mother to “limn” the part Kirsten had played in Interview with a Vampire. She is a snake! thinks Lucy uncharitably of her best friend, who keeps posing and wriggling and “limning,” and the young man seems fairly entranced. Disgusted, Lucy dumps Christopher Rice without him ever having known they were a couple.

England-bound. Cabin lights dimmed in readiness for sleep. The student body lay in flattened, cashmere-upholstered lounges while Tull Trotter, prompted by a certain mischievous cousin, entertains the spellbound Four Winders (and one or two anxious adults, who pretend not to listen) by reading aloud from a book of transcripts containing the blackbox recordings of fatally crashed airplanes. Aside from Tull’s radio-play voice, all one can hear is the drone of engines in the howling void, from which they are separated by a metallic husk of mere inches. Edward — whose king-size head, it may be too painstakingly observed, rested upon a $2,500 oversize Legends eiderdown pillow, its feathers collected by hand from Icelandic nests so as not to harm the ducks — titters devilishly from beneath his 435-thread-count filigreed oyster-colored silk hood, while Lucy, that high-flying authoress, tries to cadge a few moments with her Smythson Blue Maze Mystery journal, sending a scowl or two Tull’s way. Other than Edward, the only person deriving any real pleasure from this theater of cockpit cruelties is Mr. Hookstratten’s consort, the very weedy Reed; Tull’s tasty morsels (particularly monologues that end with pilots screaming for their mothers) elicit a steady, sardonic grin. The man is in his element.

Trinnie had insisted that while in England they visit her mentor — Randoll Coate, maze maker extraordinaire — for a tour in Gloucestershire. The extremely tall, extremely eccentric eightysomething gent was among the most amicable and learned of men (that would include Mr. Emerson Tabori) the Trotter children or for that matter the entire troupe had ever had the pleasure to meet. He spoke a great deal in phrases and whole paragraphs of other languages, and it was not a bore to wait for the enlightened translation, though sometimes the wait was very long indeed; some of the group is waiting still. At first defensive, for he was loath to have the Saint-Cloud maze upstaged, Tull gradually conceded that the Master’s creations were, well, different and, as such, not really competitive with his mom’s (or “mum’s,” as Lucy would have it, for while in England her pronunciation of words had subtly shifted; though to say the newly adopted accent was English would have been too generous). Some of the hedged puzzleboxes were barely three feet in height — Mr. Coate not subscribing to any hard-and-fast rules when it came to grafting his imaginative constructs onto garden or hillock.

As the Four Winders helped feed one of his egg-shaped foliated creatures bonemeal, he glanced up to ask — first in Italian, then in English—“What’s the difference between a book and a labyrinth? Nothing! There is no difference.” (He was full of koans, beans and majesty.) Lucy flushed at the revelation and instantly put pen to Smythson, certain that Merlin had just solved the Mystery of the Blue Maze. But Edward knew that Borges had said it first.

He led them deeper through a breathtaking lunar puzzle while recounting the minotaur’s tale. For the children, it was like hearing it afresh; such was Randoll’s art, they could almost smell the flatulence of that hairy, mythic beast. When he said “labyrinth” was thought to derive from the Minoan labrys, or “double-headed ax,” Edward, in the tireless arms of his carrier, cursorily added (and much to their host’s enchantment) that the item was most accurately defined “as a unicursal spiral to the center whereas a maze is a multicursal route: junctions and deceptions.”

“Choices,” added Randoll sunnily.

The old fabulist did not dawdle; like young Theseuses, they followed the thread of his erudition as best they could and in a short while found themselves within a “see-through” maze of espaliered apple and pear trees. Finally, five hundred yards farther, they traipsed amid the whimsical “Imprint of Man,” an enormous boxwood footprint, the great toe of which resided on a specially created Coatesian island of an adjacent river. Ms. Keaton nearly expired with delight; it was she, with Dexter at one hand and the intoxicated Lucille Rose at the other (for, at least while on the larger Isle, that is what the braided girl demanded to be called), who spearheaded the successful search-and-rescue of a disoriented and embarrassed Mr. Hookstratten — his verdant explorations of Randoll’s more complex outgrowths having been more labyrinthine than expected.

They were all put up at Leaf House, the marquess of Went’s little spread in the country. It was a lovely sight to see at dusk the caravan of children and caretakers moving swiftly over roads of packed gravel on bicycles retrieved from the belly of the Boeing, vintage Schwinns and Trussardi Classics, the latter trimmed in Napa leather.^† Edward took over the bathroom suite. Tended by a host of country elves, he soaked to heart’s content in the marquess’s $42,000 hand-crafted Archeo copper tub while Lucy fork-fed him grilled white peaches sprinkled with cardamom and sugar. For dinner, there were hamburgers and Black Sphinx dates; fresh sheep’s-milk ricotta with warmed lemon-lime marmalade; french fries and fragile fraises des bois dipped in crème fraîche.

The next few days were occupied with incursions to sundry frescoed palazzi and Palladian villas along the Riviera del Brenta, between Padua and Venice. A canal side trip to the deserted fourteenth-century private chapels of Abruzzo, Ovid’s birthplace, provided the occasion for a filibuster by their very own medievalist on the subject of architecture, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio and “The First House — Myth, Paradigm and the Task of Architecture,” to be more exacting. Half those present nearly fainted from boredom.

But we wouldn’t wish such doldrums to overtake us here; for time is precious and must be moved along, and there are pressing concerns in the County Los Angeles.

To summarize, these are the places the silver BBJ bullet alit, though not necessarily in the order presented: the Temple of the Tooth in Sri Lanka (resting place of the sacred molar of Buddha, snatched from the flames of his funeral pyre in 483 B.C.); the Londolozi game preserve in South Africa (where children sat on pearwood-and-leather folding chairs from Hermès under Missoni maharajah’s tents, drinking Diet Pepsi from Asprey steel flasks while adults, engorged with satiny Bresse chicken, truffles en gelée and lavender sorbet, lazily confined themselves to Henry Beguelin chaises on faux Aubusson rugs); the Old City of Jerusalem (where Boulder, within a stone’s throw of the Wailing Wall, was actually asked to sign autographs — prompting Tull to make a crack on the Via Dolorosa about the “Shroud of Tourists” which so convulsed the First Cousin that his anxious handlers began plotting routes to the nearest hospital); two sprawling villas in Marrakesh (one of which, informed Mr. Hookstratten, happened to be built by the descendants of Tolstoy; Mr. Giorgio Armani and his party had decamped only the night before), the base from which they sallied forth to souks, Berber villages and desert camelback excursions in the shadow of the Atlas Mountains — though Edward, hard at work weaving a “bespoke djellaba,” spent most of his time sipping blood-orange juice and soaking in the tadelakt bath — returning late in the afternoon, where, surrounded by palm groves, yellow roses, periwinkles and plum trees, all sat on the terrace of a place called Orchard of the Shooting Star, and partook of partridge soup and swathed jellies on cloth-covered dough that had baked all night buried in sand.^†(One evening they ate in the heart of the medina, scant tables away from King Mohamed VI.)

At each stop, they endeavored to give food and alms to the poor, and Tull always imagined to espy the face of the girl called Amaryllis, and wondered why the feeling of her had stayed with him so long.

Their last destination fittingly brought them to one of the navels of the world, where Tull underwent a great trial.

About fifteen years earlier, NASA had been kind enough to provide Easter Island with an emergency shuttle landing strip — more than commodious for the trusty 737. At descent, the children gathered excitedly by the windows to view the stone moai, which, poised upon ahu altar shelves, looked more like Polynesian-themed salt and pepper shakers than icons of mysterium. Everything smelled of sea and horses when they deplaned, and it seemed the entire town and not a few travelers had appeared to observe the peculiar invaders, of which Edward and his AirBuggy — a Sun King and his golden chariot — were the prime attraction. They took over the four-star Hanga Roa as planned.

That very day, our constituents visited the crater that provided tuff, the dense volcanic stone of the famous stoic statuary (the right tuff indeed), and it was agreed that Rano Raraku was most certainly a quarry to give the normally unflappable Grandpa Lou meditative pause. Edward was amazed and delighted to find the place littered with hundreds of discarded, unfinished moai, some without eyes, ears, mouths or arms. Lucy pronounced it all “Très Olde CityWalk — Workshop of the Gods!” Boulder was bored and had to be sweet-talked by Tull, which Lucy liked not a bit, into tagging along to the lapidarian caves of Orongo, anticlimactic site of the ancient Bird Man cult. (The young star’s spirits sagged then rose again with Edward’s allowance of a call to her theatrical agent via his Thrane & Thrane TT-3060A satphone.) Mr. Hookstratten said they used to pick clan chiefs by having warriors swim to the rock that jutted a mile offshore; the first to come back with a tern’s egg strapped to his forehead became Boss Man until nesting season. It was immediately proposed that a new Four Winds principal should thus be selected, and much urging of Mr. Hookstratten to hit the drink followed. He refused. When it looked as if Slouching Tiger and the chess-master-cum-alpinist might dive for competing honors, the children lost interest and began whining for supper.

It was a good thing the Boeing was well stocked, because all the island could offer were pastries, bananas, grocery-store meats and the ubiquitous pollo con agregado. Mutiny nearly ensued when the taciturn chefs proceeded to whip up bisque de homard and tournedos Rossini, along with braised Swiss chard, bone marrow and cardoons and what looked to be an obscene quantity of squid garnished with whorled, warty celeriac. The brave Mr. Hookstratten (one could almost see egg of tern on his brow), backed by troupes of loyal students and faculty, protested they’d all had enough and would like hamburgers and hot dogs instead. A heretofore timid, rubicund sommelier stepped forward to testily note how “the goose foie gras is from Ducasse family flocks in the Landes!”—a response which made the protesters think the cooks had lost their minds. Even Reed was discomfitted. With the latter’s help (and this endeared him to the students, at least for the night), Mr. Hookstratten staged an intervention involving female staff. The women promptly got stoned. In short order, the cooks were lured to tents deliberately pitched in the shadows of what the medievalist deemed “fertility moai” and over the course of a few otherworldly hours, six bottles of blended L’Esprit de Courvoisier were consumed, along with Laura Scudder’s ridged chips, Southern-fried chicken and a pot-brownie baker’s dozen.

Around midnight, Tull fell into sweat-soaked sleep. A rapping at the door of his room slowly brought him to awareness. When he answered, the bully whom Lucy had once stood up to on Tull’s behalf appeared at the door with a half-platoon of pint-size soldiers behind him. They bade him throw on some clothes, which he did in a fugue state before following them to the towering head that overlooked the cooks’ bacchanal with a kind of remonstrating hauteur.

They crept up a grassy slope and peered downward at this tableau: most of the adults had disbanded, while a few still spoke softly from within the same candlelit tent that only a week ago had been pitched over South African soil. The detritus of plates, dishware, foodstuffs and empty bottles was all around. A body — perhaps it was Slouching Tiger’s, perhaps one of the pilots’, perhaps Professor Hookstratten’s — lay fifty paces from the ahu, snoring vigorously. Attention was elsewhere drawn, though a wobbly Tull did not immediately join his scampering guides. What did comfort him was the sight of Lucy squatting nearby like a bushgirl and watching along with everyone else while a couple, half dressed, were “doing it.” It scarcely mattered who they were — steward or nurse, maven or techie — it was what they did that entranced. Tull slunk to his cousin, who acknowledged him with a glance before turning back to the dark, primitive spectacle. The woman moaned and seemed, like a crab, to scuttle away. She muttered a few words in low, anguished tones, which slowly grew louder until the phrase “fuck it” was vaguely discernible; a phrase repeated in varying stages of dishabille (“it” became “me” and “me” became “you” and “you” became “me” again — and so forth). At a certain point, her demands grew so furied that those in the tent grew silent, then burst into a hail of guttural laughter before going back about their sociable business.

Perhaps it was the pork pâté or boudin noir, or maybe the blood sausage too hastily combined with six frozen mini — Milky Ways — but the world began to spin and Tull along with it. His cousin helped him return to his hotel room, a phantasmagoric journey the boy hoped never again to be forced to repeat. Luckily, the teetotaling Dr. Raff had long since turned in; Lucy summoned him; after the required palpations, acute gastroenteritis was diagnosed. Nothing was to be done. Tull emptied bowels and stomach of all they had while Lucille Rose — martyr, author, girl detective — laid on cold compresses as he lurched through the maze of his delirium. Pullman was there, and he was glad about that. They stood before the puzzle his mother had designed at Saint-Cloud and which Mr. Randoll Coate (who in his dream bore Reed’s supercilious countenance) now perfunctorily dismissed. His nasty thumbnail critique amused Mr. Hookstratten and the cousins, leaving Tull hurt and betrayed. Stung by the remarks, he suddenly noticed his mother fleeing into one of the pathways. Everyone disappeared. The boy knelt to examine Pullman, who was festooned with strange open sores, and was glad they didn’t seem to be causing the beast any pain. He sprinted down the dark lane toward Trinnie. Instead of reaching the heart of the labyrinth, he found himself in an open clearing — that of La Colonne Détruite. There, his grandfather, as if orchestrating the arrangement of stones in a cemetery, directed deformed workers while they raised up more cracked columns, ragged drapes flapping like crows in the frame of each eyeless window-socket. He heard his mother call out, and ran toward one of the mysterious buildings. Inside, the furnishings were uncovered. The Dane clambered up the spiral stairs, slipping on marble as Tull overtook him. The boy reached the topmost bedroom and tentatively entered. The bathroom light was on …

“Dad?” Tull bolted upright. “Daddy!” he shouted, blinking sweat from his eyes.

Lucy rushed over to minister; she felt as if they were onstage in that part of a play where the invalid’s fever breaks.

Seeing it was she, he became embarrassed. “I … I was dreaming of my father,” he stammered, almost politely.

Like most on board, Tull slept the entire flight back to California, with nary a ghost of present, past or future to invade unconsciousness.

Settling into the comfort of their respective homes, the youngest Trotters kept to themselves for a full week, hardly even speaking on the telephone — though, with usual aplomb, Edward sprang back in record time, the only toll paid for his resilience being a harsh and intractable case of acne.

Tull was slower to surface. He was glad to see Pullman again, but the dream had sorely spooked him; it was a while before he dared take his old friend on a constitutional in the sealed park, fearing what they might find.

^†Something must be aired, if a bit prematurely. A question may arise: Why, or how, could such an impossible array of peculiar places be visited in so short a time? An eclectica of destinations was culled from the exotic wish list that Lucy and her brother had whimsically drawn up; their father was committed to fulfilling those wishes to the letter. The logistics were a challenge, but it would get done. There is no limit to wealth and its imaginative excesses, just as there is no limit to the proscriptions of poverty — but the details of both extremes are sometimes difficult to comprehend. Just as a sixty-year-old woman might spend three days knee-deep in recycling bins so she might gather the capital to buy her grandson shoes, so may a father fly a chef from Hong Kong to Palos Verdes with ten $20,000 boxes of saliva-thread swallows’ nests to make special soup for his daughter’s bat mitzvah. Such is the world.

^†It should be noted that the Trussardis were $5,000 apiece, retail. Well, whether it should be noted or not, the author begs indulgence for his catalogue des excès and would argue it to be something more; that such details are relevant to this chapter and of legitimate ethnographic interest. In this vein, he will add that the eager students were cautioned to steer clear of Gothick Hall, which harbored a secretary built by Rhode Island cabinetmaker Christopher Townsend, its silver fixtures smithyed by one Samuel Casey, and recently acquired by Lord Went at Sotheby’s for the not unlordly sum of £7 million. Nor were they to approach the $210,000 bottle of Château d’Yquem, personally engraved with Thomas Jefferson’s initials — though grown-ups were allowed to have a look if not a taste. The good lord also happened to be a collector of money itself. As a hobby, he enjoyed buying uncirculated legal tender: $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills (he’d purchased one of the latter for around $115,000), whose value increased exponentially each year.

^†Against all intentions, the Keatons did not make it that far. Young Dexter’s earache precluded her flying; the two graciously took their leave in Tel Aviv, and were much missed to journey’s end.