I'll Let You Go

CHAPTER 50. Misery House

Toulouse and Amaryllis returned to the maze to complete the tour interrupted months ago. They strolled within its tall borders, and had no fear of becoming lost. Pullman lay at the entrance, supremely bored.

He confessed his indiscretion with Lucille Rose on the eve of her crossing “the Pond” (as his cousin liked to put it), and Amaryllis didn’t seem to mind; she had won the war, so it was easy to concede a battle or two. She kissed him deeply, in front of the inset Rodin, to show her willingness to forgive and forget.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” she said. “And I don’t want you to make fun of me.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“I’ve been thinking about John Paul.”

“John Paul George and Ringo?”

“I told you not to make fun of me.”

“Sorry.”

“I was talking about the pope. I used to do a lot of thinking about John Paul, and I had this idea … you promise you won’t make fun?”

“I won’t. I swear.”

“Well for a long time — a long time — I wanted to be a saint. I wanted him to make me a saint. But I thought only Catholic people could be made into saints and they had to have lived a long time ago. Like centuries. Then I found out it wasn’t true and John Paul wanted to make as many saints as he could, so he changed all the rules. Now you only need one miracle for beatification, and one for canonization — that’s when he makes you a saint.”

“You don’t have to be dead?”

“I thought you did, but John Paul says no. John Paul is rad! He even made eighty-seven Chinese people saints. And he canonized a society lady from Philadelphia — someone just like Joyce.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I bet your grandfather would be able to meet John Paul. He could fly to the Vatican on his plane. If the pope was too busy or sick or whatever—then your grandfather could give the Vatican money or build an orphanage. Something to get his attention. Then John Paul would have to meet with him.”

“Meet with him? For what?”

“For Edward.”

Toulouse just looked at her.

“Edward was a martyr to the Apert — martyrs don’t even need miracles to get beatified. Then John Paul could put him on a fast track.”

“Amaryllis, are you kidding?”

“I told you not to laugh!”

“I’m not. But a saint …”

“Edward was a saint.”

“But you said you needed a miracle to be ‘canon—’ ”

“There is a miracle — it came to me when I was with my brother and sister at California Adventure. I think Edward was put here for a reason, and no one knew it but him. He was put here for Joyce so she would take care of those babies! The ones people throw in the trash. Otherwise, why would she have done that, Toulouse? Why would she have even started to do it? It was because of him, because of Edward, and I think he must have known all along. Remember how you said at the funeral she was crying because she never named him? That’s the proof! He had no name because he was pure. It’s like he was ‘of God’—how do you give God a name? And don’t make fun of me! And now Joyce names those poor little babies, Toulouse, that’s her life’s work! She made a potter’s field in a rich man’s graveyard. For a woman like that — and I don’t even know her that well, but I do know what you and Lucy and Edward always said about her — for a rich lady who doesn’t care about anyone and who just gets face-lifts, for a rich lady like that to bury those dumpster babies and give them names, to make that her life’s work, well, that is a miracle, isn’t it, Toulouse? Isn’t it? Isn’t that a miracle?”

Marcus met with Van Sant, and with a writer from Vanity Fair. But one had nothing to do with the other.

The meetings took place at the William Morris Agency on El Camino Drive. This time, he stared at the oil paintings of the founders to his heart’s content.

He was greeted warmly, if as a kind of charismatic curio, by the many to whom he was introduced. He was frankly startled that he ever had a passion for anything that went on in this cold brick building; though appreciative of Burnham’s intentions, he would soon put an end to the misguided efforts of his gemütlich old friend. Marcus found it amusing that the agent actually harbored the fantasy that he might wish to return, in whatever capacity, to the world of “talent”—as what? Mental-Health liaison? The Van Sant business he didn’t particularly mind; Gus was the real article, and he’d let that play itself out, to be sociable. He would say no to Vanity Fair; when he told Burnham—“Say no to Vanity Fair”—the unintentioned hilarity of the command made them split a gut. But a line had been drawn in the sand and Burnham understood. Trinnie couldn’t have been happier; his behavior in the matter was the ultimate proof of sanity.

On Christmas morning, he arranged to meet Trinnie, Toulouse and his father-in-law at Saint-Cloud. It was a joyous surprise when he rolled up in a pristine aqua-blue Chevy convertible (a Bel-Air, fittingly), having passed his driver’s exam a mere three days before. Mr. Trotter declined, so he took his wife and son for a spin to the beach. They drove all the way to Palos Verdes, then around the peacock-infested peninsula to Portuguese Bend. They ate hamburgers and watched surfers.

Trinnie had her own surprise. At dusk, after dropping off the boy, they switched seats and she drove downhill to Carcassone Way. The cold wind snapped at their burnished cheeks, and they were happy. When they reached the driveway of La Colonne, she pushed the remote on her key chain and the gate swung open; the padlock days were no more.

“I had to do this,” she said as they walked the short distance to the tower. “I know I’m insane — but I had to.”

Entering the house, still lit by a stubbornly dying sun, Marcus slowly apperceived. It was filled with housewarming furniture and just-opened gifts, ribbons and wrappers torn off in a careless bacchanal. The kitchen was redolent of “leftovers,” painstakingly re-created only this morning by Saint-Cloud chefs from archival recipes, their exact placement on stove, pot and dishes culled from “crime-scene” sketches commissioned by La Colonne curators — the same white-truffle risotto cooked in the late hours of their wedding night after a first round of lovemaking. The sheer recovered memory of it all, the audaciously micromanaged authenticity … the touching, nearly macabre care his wife had poured into presentation and conceit — part spectacle, part performance-theater — sent Marcus’s heart to stifle his throat.

He went up to view her handiwork, with Trinnie nervously trailing after. Whenever he smiled or shook his head in wonderment, she did the same; and when the light that shone from his face darkened at some fleeting, unvoiced thought, she inadvertently mimicked his mood like the most sorrowful of mimes. Occasionally, he bent to the floor to retrieve an article of clothing or slip of paper — say, a receipt from ’87 with his signature — and muttered his astonishment, to which Trinnie would say with an anxious smile, “I know, I know — I’m insane, I told you …” Then he would calm her with a caress or a look of such kindness that she thought: now we can truly face anything.

More investigations: darting in and out of cupboard and closet, drawer, nook and cranny (most of the middle floors were empty, as Louis had only provisionally furnished “lobby” and topmost floor), and for a moment it seemed like the very air of that time was transported intact from some fabulous interdimensional holding zone, flying mites, motes and all. It took his breath away and reminded him of the daring, the scope and wild apprehension, of the girl he’d left behind: remarkable creature! Naturally, he’d have been drawn to her, and she to him with his cracked mind — that was her passion and folly — and now here they were strolling through the crackedness of both, room by room, floor by floor, until they reached the master suite. This time there sat the four-poster in the Moroccan style, the one they had made Toulouse in. He swore he could smell their young bodies there.

By now it was dark. He sat on the bed, and Trinnie lit candles as she had years ago. They took off their clothes, eager and ritualized. When he came in her, she was sure she had conceived again.

“Shall we stay over?” he said.

“It’s like that horror film, isn’t it?” she laughed. “The House on Haunted Hill? You know — if you can remain without being scared shitless you win the inheritance.”

They listened to the wind and soon he drifted to sleep. She stared at his rugged, beautiful face, and it was not hard to imagine that he had never gone away. Fourteen years … what was fourteen years in the scheme of things?

The jealous moon glared, all full of itself. “If he’s gone in the morning,” it seemed to say, “then you’ll belong to me forever.” Trinnie told the moon it had a deal.

Morning, with its inescapable light — and majestic indifference. Morning, unbecoming — neither birth nor death nor even Time itself can woo it. Morning: that outruns the lightest of heart, and makes undone the rest.

She heard Marcus brushing his teeth. She was glad she hadn’t reconnected the phones; she shivered with the memory of her father’s calls — then Dodd’s — then her father’s — then Samson’s — and her father’s and Dodd’s again and Bluey’s and Samson’s and her father’s again and again and again until she could pick up no more. Bluey and Winter had finally come and spirited her to Saint-Cloud.

He appeared in the rococo door frame and smiled, toothbrush in hand. She ran and wrapped her legs around him like a child, so her feet touched soles at the small of his back; he carried her down that way — for all four flights they were conjoined — then walked her to the vast lawn, where they spun around and around, their dervish movements banishing anything that remained of old specters — that tragic and befuddled young woman who had searched futilely for her Gothic groom.

“Hey! Hey!”

Epitacio smiled frantically, waving from the Silver Seraph as it raced up the drive. The first thing that went through Trinnie’s mind was that her disapproving father had gotten wind of what she’d been up to (from one of the archivists) and was perhaps in the throes of a sympathetic panic that Marcus had disappeared again. But she didn’t see the old man on the passenger side.

As he got closer, Epitacio looked to be in a state — his smile wasn’t a smile at all. “It’s your father—”

“What …”

“He’s at Cedars!”

“Oh my God.”

Marcus opened the door and pushed his wife in. “Take us there!” he commanded.

They were barefoot and barely dressed.

When they arrived, Dodd and Winter were in the waiting room of the ICU. Epitacio was dispatched to bring the Weiners clothes from both Saint-Cloud and Cañon Manor; in the meantime, his-and-her VIP-suite bathrobes were proffered.

“What happened?” asked Trinnie.

“Winter found him — Dad was in the Withdrawing Room. He collapsed. He was on the floor.”

“For how long?”

“We don’t know!” said Winter.

Dodd put an arm around the woman to shore her up. His secretary, Frances-Leigh, came in, then hung back.

“The paramedics worked on him for a while. They had trouble getting him — Dad’s heart wouldn’t …”

Trinnie closed her eyes and groaned.

Four doctors came to the lounge, including the retired Dr. Kindman, who counted himself as Louis Trotter’s oldest friend. He had treated her as a little girl, and now she went to him for comfort. He clasped her hand while the head man spoke in low, thoughtful tones. “He’s unconscious at this time.”

“But — what exactly happened!” said Trinnie.

“Your father,” he continued, “has suffered a hemorrhage.”

“Is he going to die?” Dodd asked.

“I don’t know. He’s fighting. The next forty-eight hours are critical.”

“Can we see him?”

“Yes, of course.”

Dodd left the room and squeezed the secretary’s hand as he walked by. Trinnie followed, then grabbed her husband’s arm, saying, “I want you to come.” Winter and Frances-Leigh stayed behind, huddling together like refugees.

Mr. Trotter lay in a tangled, blood-flecked, intubated nest. After covering the old man’s catheterized penis with a sheet, Marcus stood sentry at the foot of the bed. Dodd, who was not good at this, shifted uncomfortably on the sidelines. Trinnie pulled up a chair and sat beside her dad, holding his hand in hers, smiling and cooing and murmuring that everything would be all right. Her cheeks glistened with tears and she wiped his face. She was certain that his eyes had welled up since their arrival.

“It’s OK, Papa, it’s OK! We’re here. Dodd and me — and Marcus too. We love you so much! Are you in pain, Papa? If you’re in pain, squeeze once for yes and twice for no. Are you in pain? You’re not in pain? You’re not in pain? That’s good then — he’s not in pain. That’s good … is there anything else you need? Do you need water, Papa? Would you like some water?”

One of the nurses said he was being “hydrated” but that Trinnie could daub his mouth with a damp towelette, which she did.

“Is that better, Papa? Because we don’t want you thirsty. Maybe we could get them to put some scotch in that IV bag, huh. Would you like that, Papa? Can you arrange that, Dodd? Because I think it’d be very cool.” She smiled at her brother, then at her husband; she was heartbreaking. “We stayed in the tower last night, Papa. The house you built for our wedding. Can you believe it? We stayed all night and it was so beautiful … I put everything back the way it was — all the things you gave us, all the antiques … we slept like babies! Didn’t we, Marcus?” She drew the towelette across his forehead. “Oh, Papa, I love you so much! You can’t — what will I do without you? What will any of us do?”

He opened his eyes and smiled.

“Hello, Papa! Hello, baby! It’s your girl! He’s awake!” she shouted to one of the nurses. “Dodd, he smiled at me! Did you see? Did you see him smile?”

When she turned back to him, he was smiling no more. “See? You’ll be fine now, Papa. We won’t let you leave just yet, will we, Dodd?”

“No, no we won’t. There is just no way.”

“And besides — you haven’t picked your memorial yet!” she said, laughing through her tears. “Has he, Dodd?”

“He sure hasn’t.”

“So you can’t leave, Papa, you just can’t. What would the woman at the cemetery say? What was her name, Dodd?”

“Dot.”

“Dot — that’s right. What a sweet, funny lady. Well, Dot would have a conniption. Wouldn’t she, Papa?”

Dr. Kindman interrupted to say that the men needed to perform a procedure and the family could come back in twenty minutes.

Trinnie caressed her father’s brow. Only one eye was open now; he looked like a gnome whose forest had burned. She bent to kiss his cheek.

During her ministrations, Dodd’s attention was drawn to his father’s shriveled hand. As the four fingers twitched in unison, he had a shock of recognition, for what he saw he believed to be no purposeless tremor but rather the unmistakable trademark gesture belonging to Louis Aherne Trotter and Louis Aherne Trotter alone — a four-fingered last hurrah that for decades had slipped untold C-notes into the welcoming palms of bellboys, valets, barbers, doormen, gardeners, footmen, chefs, cabbies, housemaids and shine boys.

Forty-five minutes later, that very hand — having passed off its final currency to God, say, as a grateful token for His services — grew still. And the digger dug no more.

The funeral was a small, intimate affair, in keeping with the wishes of the deceased. There was no wake, and no ceremony for employees or shareholders.

When Mr. Trotter crumpled, he was in the Withdrawing Room beside the welter of miniatures. The latest model — Ryue Nishizawa’s corrugated-steel tomb interlaced with slats of ipé, ash, piranha pine and ebonized afromosia (which the architect had titled “Open Plan”) — had broken his fall and was broken in turn. The family chose not to make that a portent; the old man’s choice of memorial remained more cryptic than ever.

Trinnie’s idea, which no one challenged, was to bury him in the plain green field of his plot; in six months, the family would select from the commissions and build a structure there as he had wished. The irony of this arrangement—“the temporary contemporary,” as Trinnie called it in lighter moments — was that for now, the patriarch’s resting place was even more austere, more anonymous, if you will, than his grandson’s once-controversial domain.

Joyce elected to pay her respects, and everyone was fine with that. Rose, as she now called herself, flew in from London, looking older if not wiser. She was now in meager though spirited possession of an English accent, and peppered her conversation (outside the cemetery, anyway) with a superabundance of “shite”s and “bollocks.” She wasted no time in letting Toulouse know that there was a plenitude of “Etonians” in her life—“and some of them, Royals.” Naturally, Marcus and his parents were in attendance; Rose greeted them warmly, as a princess moving through an infirmary.

Trinnie had asked the Motts to please come, and the family stood alongside the man they had once known as William Morris. Amaryllis insisted on wearing the birthday dress Lucy had bought her while she was on the lam, and that proved prescient; though its style was inappropriate for the occasion, the haughty expat was moved by the homage and was more easily able to renew her affections for “the other woman.”

Samson cut short a snorkeling trip in Fiji. He brought a “date,” an aging-starlet type, and Trinnie thought that rude but figured he was making some kind of I’m-over-you statement. The thwarted detective was partly redeemed when the gal was later introduced as his ex-wife.

Aside from immediate family members (and Winter, who was not having a good year at all), those hit hardest stood in a group, shivering and bereft: Epitacio, Sling Blade and Dot. The disconsolate chauffeur wept openly, and not since his father had cried over Jane Scull had Toulouse seen such a cruel and alarming thing. His sobs came like great perverted sneezes followed by a train of Ohs! that conspired to sound like a protracted guffaw — one simply could not look away. Sling Blade’s grief took a different tack. His face contorted in a frozen Mardi Gras smile reminiscent of one of the cousin’s workshop masks while he rocked back and forth on his heels and hung on to his elbows for all his life. Now and then a hand leapt to the opposite biceps and scoured it, as if he were a freezing person trying to warm himself.

Perhaps the most poignant of all was Ms. Campbell. So distraught was the parkland guardian that her sister Ethel had been summoned from the East. Though she knew Mr. Trotter to be repulsed by her fashion sense, Dot was too unmoored and dispirited to dress in his honor, and wound up in the most grotesque costume misery could select, on or off the rack. (Ethel did not fare much better.) As many people were touched as they were chagrined by the clownish sight of her.

When the body had been lowered, inevitably calling to mind the whirligig boy across the way — when they had taken turns shoveling dirt over the box — after all had stepped back in respectful contemplation — that is when the final mourner arrived.

Pullman loped to the grave and no one interfered. He circled, tentatively poking his head in the airspace above. Seeing the great hole, he used a paw to push in a clod; if that weren’t enough, roundly and ceremonially chuffed. Some of the mourners swore they heard the old man chuff in return.