I'll Let You Go

CHAPTER 20. Inventories

Let us take a breath.

There was the introduction, pages ago, of a small detail which, in the unlikely event it has entered anyone’s mind since, may have led the reader to imagine the chronicler of this tale to be underhanded. (It would not be the first time he was wrongly accused.) A train of thought, heavily freighted, was set upon a track, then without fanfare derailed.

Inspired by the unfurling of Will’m’s “Strawberry Thief,” the baker Gilles spontaneously shared the story of his visit to a Gallic feast with his then-fiancée — something having to do with illicit songbirds and subterranean gourmands. The divertissement had been summoned from the depths to quell the pastrymaker’s nervousness around his unusual part-time employee, and he ran through it with a flourish before being heckled by the irritated giant. Just as well — Gilles had shot his anecdotal wad and would have been at a loss to continue.

Mr. Mott could not have known the strange, epic feelings he aroused in his burly listener. Right about the time he’d brought his tale around to the posh neighborhood of Marlene Dietrich and the opium eater at the door of the ancient wine cellar, Will’m found himself mentally elsewhere: twenty kilometers outside Paris to be exact, stealthily traversing a golf course during a drizzle. He saw his feet (and those of a woman, her face indistinct, gamely trailing after) step over a low barbed-wire fence, through bower and arborescent meadow. They walked awhile, then froze: in the distance stood a breathtaking apparition — a broken column made of stone. But this derelict fantasia had windows and could be lived in. While the baker droned on about crispy birds and such, Will’m remembed trodding toward the tower under billowing, storm-dirtied skies, the faceless woman tugging at his sleeve with worry. He was close enough to see the darkness within and had nearly entered when a man in short sleeves with a Gauloise stuck to his lower lip, caricature of a Frenchman, appeared on a tractor. He warned them against trespassing; so they never got to go inside.

At that very moment of recollection, an incensed Will’m resurfaced in time to cut Gilles off about his damn millet-gorged birds, barking (the perspicacious reader may recall), “That is the Frankish way, isn’t it? Murder a thrush behind veils of civility! Truth be told, the French are a dishonorable and troublously shoddy race.”

And so the baker’s history crashed to a halt.^†

Such embroidery is mere preamble to the aforementioned vexation: to wit, the baker’s remorse over what he implied was the jilting of the “long-lost” bride-to-be (not Lani, by a long shot) who attended the fabled fête des gourmands. A shadow fell over him at chapter’s end — did the author clumsily mean it to be Trinnie’s? — as he wistfully reflected upon his double life. Amends, he said, were due! The reader of these pages knows better now, of that we are certain; still, if way back when, the very same but for a moment believed — if it is feasible the reader could have actually, however fleetingly, believed that the baker Gilles Mott (whose name alone too coarsely hints at things “Toulousian”), at such an early stage, was plausibly central to our tale — and, even more implausibly, if one could believe that he is still — well, then it is understandable how that reader may now turn his nose up at this red herring and feel the whole gambit to be unworthy of an author who appeared to pride himself on being sensibly meticulous; or that it was at least improvident of the latter to dredge it up here, for it may only serve to illuminate his overreaching expository failures. If such is the case — if the reader is of that opinion — then there is nothing to be done. Suffice to say Gilles Mott does have reason to suffer, and reason to believe he has caused great suffering of another. He will make amends. But this is not the time or place.^†

Let teller and listener thus reconciled, regroup — and dust themselves off to remount. That’s what this chapter’s about. The trail is winding, the pace leisurely; let the loping, mulish narrative carry one along.

During the Pullmanic gala’s froth of fireworks, across the hill on Stradella, in surrey-fringed conversation, Edward Trotter, that wisest of boys, touched upon the extracurricular activities of his parents, pictorially pornographic and otherwise. He alluded to private prisons and Dead Baby Societies, but his blithe monologue went unheard; Tull’s concerns over the mysterious monogrammed letter took precedence. We have already looked into that missive with some thoroughness so can spend this time enumerating recent powerful developments in the destiny of Joyce Trotter née Gilligan.

She sat at the dermatologist’s flipping through Condé Nasts, then leaned to pull two “throwaways” from the pile. The glossy 310 had a garish photo of Katrina Trotter and Ralph Mirdling at a black-tie gala, standing beside studio titan Sherry Lansing, billionaire Gary Winnick and screenwriter Ron Bass. (All looked amiable except for the wincing Mr. M.) Joyce then opened the Courier to find a photo of her husband and Marcie Millard in white hardhats standing with shovels at the fence surrounding his former grade school. That would have had to have been staged, she thought; not even Dodd’s money made things happen that fast.

Her eye drifted to an ad:

EXCEPTIONAL CRYPT FOR SALE

Pierce Brothers Mortuary in Westwood Village

Resting Place for a Single Casket and a Single Urn

Located in “Sanctuary of Peace”

Crypt is at eye level, in the same enclave as

Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote, Natalie Wood and other legendary personalities

Price $105,000

There are no longer any other crypts available in this Sanctuary.

Don’t burden your heirs with a hasty choice of your final resting place.

It gave her the biggest idea she ever had in her life.

As she drove through the cemetery gate, infused with collagen and Percodan, Joyce saw a familiar coxcombly figure at the far end of the oval drive — her father-in-law, chatting with a groundskeeper. She parked close enough to see the old man press something into the other’s hand before Epitacio shut him into the Silver Seraph and spirited him away.

She of course knew of Mr. Trotter’s exhaustive search for the ideal mausoleum, but had never visited the winning Westwood site. She’d never seen any of the famed funerary models either (except for the doghouses), not having had a great interest and never, oddly, having been invited into that most legendary and exclusive of clubs: the Withdrawing Room. Amazing, she thought, to run into him at this time of day — the man truly was obsessed! Joyce watched the Rolls roll away and the homely caretaker return to raking. Then she ambled to the park office, where a receptionist quickly introduced her to Dot Campbell, the effervescent manager (she used Gilligan instead of Trotter); Ms. Campbell, in a smudged gingham, seemed ill-fitted for the part.

As they strolled the enclave past various “bench estates” and columbaria — new mausoleums were in varied stages of construction — she learned more about Ms. Campbell and her sister Ethel’s pet peeves than she might have cared to. That was all right; in this instance, a kind-hearted eccentric would serve her well. SIT DOWN AND HAVE A CHAT WITH SADIE AND MORRIS was etched into a marble love seat beside two graves. Dot explained how Sadie and Morris were not yet dead but wanted the legend inscribed anyway. In funeral-world parlance, that was what they called pre-need.

Something drew her to the farthermost corner of the property, where a maintenance yard was being razed to make way for more tombs. It was lonely there, and felt colder than the rest of the grounds. When she saw a whitish pigeon wheel overhead, it reminded her of the doves at Castaic and she knew her instincts were, well, dead-on. Dot was glad the woman was interested in something family plot — size and said the work-in-progress parcel could be had for a million and a half, including a newly built adjacent shrine.

But Joyce said she wanted a simple field of grass, and besides, the unfortunately pink cenotaph held just four — not nearly enough. No: her babies needed to be in and of the earth. Well, said Dot, an unbuilt-on field did have its advantages — caskets could be “contumulated” or stacked vertically; if you cremated, you could fit more than a dozen. The benefactress stared at a separate grid that was going for about $500,000—at eleven by fourteen, it still seemed a bit confining … yet what was she expecting in the middle of Westwood? Elysium? Would she even be able to raise that sort of money to bury unknown children? She would have to incorporate her loose-knit group of “angels.” They could call themselves Candlelight — the Candlelight Group. The Candlelighters … they’d have fund-raisers and make the bigwigs give them their money. She was adamant on doing it all without Dodd’s help.

Joyce felt a surge of confidence and emotion. The gesture of acquiring Westside memorial space was born not of convenience (the drive to Castaic was actually meditative) but as a way of weaving those orphans into the everyday tapestry of her — Westside — world. There was something mildly depressing about their current resting place, that arid, unincorporated outback of hinterland exurbia butt-up against the whiz and rumble of failed ride-share speed lanes, sig-alert big-rigs and CHP gunships. How magnificent it would be to bury those treasures here—here, not there — amid wealth of skyscraper, museum and university, far from potter’s field. The poorest of forgotten children may after all help the richest of men into heaven.

When they were done, Dot let her be. She communed with Dorothy Stratten, Donna Reed and Dean Paul Martin, then with deliberation, “Mrs. Gilligan” moved closer to the groundskeeper, who now angled toward her as he raked. She struck up a casual conversation, wondering in what schemes her father-in-law had enlisted him. It was Sling Blade’s peculiar fate to be linked to all the Trotters, without one another’s knowledge.

In time Joyce returned to Pierce Brothers with Father de Kooning, whose blessings she required. The Bel-Air matron needed confirmation that her crusade didn’t smack of dilettantism, that what she was considering was real and mighty and good.

The pastor mentioned meeting her sister at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital, and Joyce testily corrected him: sister-in-law. It seemed like she could never escape Trinnie — well, she could, but only on Trinnie’s terms … those would be whenever she decided to leave the country or go into rehab (usually doing both at once). And when she returned, the men of this family still dropped everything to pend upon her every move. Now, here Joyce was with Father Tim, her Father Tim, whom she’d first met while doing selfless service at a godforsaken graveyard in Castaic, something Trinnie Trotter would be too stoned or bored or grandiose to ever do, and here he was serving her up just like that! Your sister-in-law, he said, was kind enough to be donating her services in designing a garden for the hospital (“kind” because even in her dereliction she was expensively renowned) — with a coy smile he called ministering at the hospital his “day job,” meaning, thought Joyce, the real place he worked, the place that paid and sustained him, the place with a tangible, needy, dying parish, the place a thousand leagues above whatever after-school volunteer eulogizing he happened to do for dumpster babies on behalf of vainglorious society women with too much time on their hands. Her gorgeous, drug-addicted sister-in-law was donating her time, which was precious — precious, priceless Time and Service, making a beautiful, deathless “wandering garden”—whereas she, Joyce, the drab, laughable, very old in-law, the one who had to work her ass off to even look half decent, the one who cruelly brought a crippled genius into the world, was out there burying the discarded dead.

A few visits later, Joyce let it be known to Ms. Campbell that she was in fact a Trotter. She handed her a check for $50,000 as a deposit on a deposit — which Dot happily though confusedly accepted, noting that her father-in-law, “Mr. Louis,” already had a plot and rather famously at that. Joyce said she was well aware, but the space she’d become interested in was for a “different” family, one she was quite close to and for which she wished to make this gift. That melted Dot’s heart, triggering a lengthy, somewhat inappropriate monologue of how her sister Ethel told her of a “great scandale—a horrible woman bought up all the remaining cemetery space in the Hamptons — for her own family of course, not for others. A hundred and ten plots! The selfishness!” Joyce listened and clucked along before making it exceptionally clear that she did not wish her visits or intentions passed on to the Trotter patriarch; she would tell him in time. She assumed Ms. Campbell gossiped with employees, so took it upon herself to reiterate as much to the character we know as Sling Blade, who was surprised and impressed that she and the old man were related. For his part, he couldn’t help wondering if Joyce would soon put him to work. The possibility caused him some anxiety, what with Dot being not at all shy about expressing her dissatisfaction with his growing absenteeism. The clan had him moving around so much — as occasional night watchman at various properties, for which he was on the Quincunx payroll, and sometime Mauck chauffeur, whereupon the old man tipped him lavishly — that under his breath he called them not Trotters but Gallops. He was not without his own brand of humor.

But have we gone off-trail? Then let us speed the pace.

The billionaire has been steadily adding to his ghost portfolio of empty tenements, and it bothered his wife not a little. Outlaid moneys were not the issue; such a burden Dodd Trotter could easily bear. It wasn’t the cost of the forays that disturbed her but the compulsive behavior surrounding them.

As private wealth increases, cities and states struggle for revenue. Structures once deemed historic are sold off; that is how Dodd came to own the oldest government building in Newark, the Essex County Jail (put up in 1837, it was made by the designer of the Tombs). Mr. Trotter also traveled to Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County, New York, to purchase the four-hundred-acre High Victorian Italianate Hudson River State Hospital for the Insane. He is now landlord of the crenellated asylum on the hill in Binghamton, with its trefoil-embossed stair treads and floors embedded with glass blocks; he has bought a somber, elegant bluestone palace with fifty-foot Doric columns, once the Utica State Hospital for the Mentally Ill. He acquired the Traverse City asylum (1885), too, in Michigan, another turreted affair high on the preservationist list.

Dodd Trotter leaves Detroit. From the 40,000-foot-high cocoon of his bed, he daydreams of Beverly Vista School’s vast tarry playground and early-morning fog, where boys floated toward him from the mist like foretellers of doom and misfortune — wrong answers in a novelty eight ball. It strikes him as ironic that he’s helping Marcie Millard and her committee refurbish the edifice, the only vacant building he has ever actually restored.

He notices a blinking light on the console. A steward peeks in and, seeing he’s resting, discreetly begins to exit. The fitful sleeper inquiringly raises his head. It’s your mother, says the steward, and Dodd picks up.

She is calling with today’s deaths.

We’ve almost come full circle.

Bluey too is in bed, happy to have reached her son, imperfect as the satellite connection may be. There’s a little Cessna crash in the local Times—a CEO and his three children — because Dodd is airborne, the item is bypassed in favor of the New York paper’s listing of a one-hundred-year-old “socialite-turned-big-game-hunter and prisoner of war”; then, a famous singer Bluey never heard of, dead at forty from “total organ failure.” She thinks it suspect; sounds like AIDS.

Winter sullenly pastes notices into the suede memory album. Since Pullman’s birthday gala, the Icelander has been somewhat “off,” so grumpy that Bluey calls her “the Winter of my discontent”—which only exacerbates her mood.

After lunch, they walk to the maze and Bluey sits on the granite bench at its entrance. (Trinnie likes that spot, too.) There, she decides to tell the helpmeet she’s going to leave her something in the will. Winter scowls, but the old woman with will-o’-the-wisp hair and translucent bluish temples persists, calm and imperious enough so the younger must listen. She is going to leave her a condo, she says. It is already paid for. Winter gasps as the words sink in — and cries, because no one ever gave her anything, ever, not even the Trotters, not in the thirty-five years she has served them.

Bluey turns to stare down a wall of boxwood leading to the maze’s center. She remembers reading how slaughterhouses were designed with curves so the animals couldn’t see where they were heading. Panicking, she lifts her head to the sky and searches for the plane. “Dodd? Dodd? Doddie!”

Chastened, Winter walks her to the house.

Her daughter, at an AA meeting in an old wooden church on Ohio Avenue.

A homely woman stands to say she turned everything over to God and that meant “antidepressants and nicotine patches, too”—a tacit indictment of the weak hypocrites in the room who cannot do without. She says she isn’t going to celebrate her AA birthday this year (Trinnie thinks: as if anyone cares) because her home group “forces women to put on dresses” to accept their sobriety cakes. She says she won’t put on a dress for anyone.

You dyke, thought Trinnie. You’re not going to make it. You’re going to die.

She dreamed of Marcus Weiner and spent her days in the vast archives of the Withdrawing Room. Her father thought she was researching the wandering garden, but it wasn’t so; she was busy unearthing blueprints and photos of the Bel-Air Colonne Détruite. Soon after her husband disappeared, Trinnie ordered that an inventory be taken of the marital house — all objects and their placement in each room painstakingly measured and documented. Everything — furnishings, clothes, books, utensils — was subsequently placed in storage.

Now, like a necromancer, she pores over the fastidious records, looking for signs of life.

^†Of his sudden, compelling memory of that ruined column (both, incomplete), Will’m could make no sense or give good context. We offer that sidebar as sheer human interest — for it is a rare, poignant, shivery thing to glimpse the metaphor of one’s coming disarray, in a storybook garden to boot. That house cracked his head, then made him take up fractured residence.

^†Simply because Mr. Mott’s agonies are of lesser general interest than our principal players’ does not rob them of meaning, for pain is pain. Consolation comes more to the earnest reader who may have been briefly hoodwinked, in a simple truism: when invariably one is misled — in book or in life — better it be for a price not too high or investment too dear. We are early enough in our history for the latter to hold true.