I'll Let You Go

CHAPTER 44. Close to Home

Marcus put away his wife’s letters but couldn’t help think of her, especially while leafing through the garden of his Montecito home. Though Louis said his daughter had never set foot on the property, the husband felt her hand there nonetheless: in the purplish echinacea, magenta cosmos and — most powerfully — in the white bridal veil of Dendrobium superbum. He spent an inordinate time watching caterpillars fatten on parsley before attaining their samadhi posture, necks arc’d to twig, perfect yellow-green sarcophagi suspended by strands of silk. In time, the single wing of a black swallowtail previewed through a diaphanous cocoon; then out it came, lucky enough to have dodged the wasp.

He went around picking up snails as when he was a boy, gently provoking them to retract their gelatinous antennae. One of the suited men had shown him a magazine article about a certain parasite that began its life cycle beneath the shell of one of those curious creatures. When the host was eaten by a fish, the parasite sent a pulse through the fish’s brain, commanding it to surface, thus increasing the odds of being plucked from the water by a gull. There was beauty, he thought, in being snatched heavenward from the deep blue sea. For so many years he’d marched to schizophrenia’s viral drum — what was each living thing, he thought, if not a parasite of God? Now he was free; he’d been commanded to surface. A great bird was bearing him aloft.

One morning, Marcus had a dream that made him rush to the ocean for cleansing. He had conjured the tower — and Katrina on their wedding bed. He came in her and was still ejaculating when he woke up.

He went out far enough to make his chaperons briefly consider stripping for a rescue before he turned around and bodysurfed to shore like a doughy crate. As he strode from the heavy water, the Great Dane he had met at Saint-Cloud nearly knocked him over before taking a desultory romp in the foam. A small figure trudged tentatively forward, dappling the sand with its footprints. A suited man handed Marcus a towel as the boy approached.

“Hello!”

“Hello!”

“We went to the house. They said I could find you here.”

“And they were right!”

The boy was staring at the tattooed heart that encircled his name. Marcus dipped down to give him a better look.

“Want to come in? The water’s fine.”

Toulouse hesitated.

“Not too cold today — are you a swimmer?”

“Mostly in pools. But I like to Boogie-board.”

“Do you? We’ve got one right there!” He pointed to the fiberglass plank, stuck in the sand like a shark’s fin.

Toulouse cracked a smile.

“Well come on, then!”

“But I don’t have a suit—”

“You’ve got skivvies, don’t you? That’ll do — there isn’t a soul around! And these gentlemen,” he ribbed, with a wink to his keepers, “well, they don’t count!”

“Oh my God, Edward, are they taking off their clothes?” She strained her eyes mightily. Lucy and her brother had stayed behind in the parking lot, where they sat in the buggy like tourists in a safari park.

“Incredible.”

“Edward, let me see,” she cried, grabbing at his binoculars.

She tugged again, but he was busy getting his magnified jollies; the fabric of the Mizrahi Christmas shroud bunched atop the lenses like a soft, thick cord. He relented his hold.

While Lucy adjusted focus, Sling Blade rolled up his trouser legs and blissfully ambled in the sand.

“Oh my God,” said Lucy. “They’re going in?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s … beautiful.”

Edward watched with naked eyes, transfixed, the veil held up by a gloved, sequined finger. He lowered the cloth, and on its way to his chin, the Moroccan weave blotted tears from his eyes.

The scene was primeval: the father, a large, pale mammal, with the jittery seed of his progeny floating near, ducked under the greenest crepuscular swell, the very air aglimmer from a drunk philanthropist sun who carelessly cast a trillion coins down. (You could see the milky wave’s arterial underside.) Edward thought of his own father, Dodd, a man who’d been here all along — on Stradella Road—not a swimmer, and with whom he would never float in seas real or imagined. He envisioned the body of his grandfather on a bier, cast onto wavelets, lapping toward oblivion, then drifted back to the iroko tub where his mother bathed him — he could summon all the years spent soaking there — and closed his eyes, wondering how it might feel to be in the ocean with her: a baptizing and a going-away, bobbing in the deep with Toulouse and Marcus and Trinnie and Lucy — Pullie and Bluey and Grandpa Lou. Winter and the Monasterios …

“They’re coming out!” cried Lucy.

Like bizarre cabana boys, a row of suited men held bath towels in readiness.

“Let’s go to the Mauck,” said Edward, who was himself just surfacing.

“But why? Don’t you want to meet him?”

“Do you want them to see us gaping?” he snapped. “Jesus, Lucy, they’ve hardly met — allow them some dignity!”

Apprehending him stirred by forces larger than the ones at hand, she sheepishly trailed after while Edward steered the buggy to the ramp. It docked and was pneumatically lifted.

Holding a tidy package of dry clothing above his head as they descended the low dune that overlooked the lot, a shivering, towel-wrapped Toulouse proposed a jaunt to Bel-Air. (The plan all along was to introduce Mr. Weiner to the peerless pleasures of Olde CityWalk. The cousins had wisely chosen a day when the in-laws were out of town.) Marcus enthusiastically agreed, begging the chance to first run home so he might make himself more presentable. It was exciting as hell to be courted by his son.

While Pullman leapt ahead, entering the MSV through the passenger side, Toulouse confessed to having brought his cousins and hoped Marcus didn’t mind. The man proclaimed it a delight. Seconds later, the dear, inquisitive face of Lucille Rose hung like a small pink lantern beneath the Mauck’s open wing, the long neck attached to a body still hidden in that amazing vehicle’s recesses. Mr. Weiner caught a glimpse but was diverted by the arrival of Sling Blade, who threw his old acquaintance a cocky salute. Lucy had by then retreated — and Edward was nowhere to be seen.

The small convoy left the lot, with Marcus in the Town Car ahead. Edward busied himself in the lavatory while Toulouse gingerly removed the sand between his toes and quietly mused; he still tingled from the sea and from other things, too, and the corners of his eyes stung from salt.

Lucy could contain herself no more. “Well, what did you talk about?”

“Not too much. We mostly swam.”

“Not in the water — on the way back.”

“Not too much. He said he was glad to see me.”

“Did he mention her?”

“Who.”

“Trinnie!” she exclaimed, marveling, but not in a charmed way, at his laconic mien. “Your mother—”

“No.”

He started in on the other foot, and she wanted to slap him. “Did you tell him about us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does he know we’re here? That we came with you?”

“He saw you, didn’t he?” he said grumpily.

“I wasn’t sure.”

“I told him. He already knows all about you anyway. Your dad’s fucking told him everything, I’m sure.”

“Knowing about us is different from us just having invited ourselves along, OK? That could be construed as rude.”

Edward clumsily exited the bathroom.

“What I want to find out,” his sister continued, “is why he went to that cemetery in East L.A.” She was convinced that a chapter — if not her whole book — hinged upon that particular puzzle’s solution.

“Lucy,” Edward interjected. “Would you please just stop?”

“Edward, why are you so angry with me? It’s for my book.”

“Are you a writer or a journalist?”

“A writer,” she said, with a mixture of pride and caution.

“Well, I’m not sure if you’re either — but if you think you’re a writer, then act like one. Some things are better left as mystery.”

She sulked. “It’s interesting, that’s all. I mean, him going there. The possible reasons. Whatever.”

They arrived in Montecito and waited while Marcus readied himself. One of the men in suits poked a head in to invite them for refreshments at the house; another bade them stretch their legs on the manicured grounds. Only Pullman took them up on their offers.

After an interlude, that very animal shot back to the Mauck from the outside world. At the same time, there were boomy voices and, without warning, Mr. Weiner clambered aboard, causing immediate discomfort and general paralysis. He was still an enormous man in many ways, but a superbly dressed one, and his face, slapped with fine aftershave, shone with health, wit and good tidings. He had the stubble of a beard on him and had come from the shower — his hair glowed too and the tousled locks tangled and stormed so that for the life of him he resembled Neptune on holiday — and he filled up the Mauck in such a way that it felt close to bursting.

Toulouse made introductions and his father shook hands all around, taking care not to pulverize any mitts. Edward was disarmed by the air of diffidence and politesse that accompanied this fellow freak of nature; and the trace of an English accent, threadbare yet aristocratic, along with the old-fashioned cadence of speech further lifted his sour mood. Lucy developed a crush on the spot, even larger than her erstwhile devotions to the detective — it would be fair to say that all the children had their crush, if one can call it that; for they felt like lost, weary travelers emerging from a jungle clearing to encounter a smiling tribal chief of legendary wisdom and largesse. However we may define it, Marcus reciprocated, and was happily crushed himself.

They gave him the captain’s chair; he already knew its contours. He nestled in with an exhalation of comfort, and Sling Blade motored off.

The first cousin offered their celebrated guest sparkling water, and when he assented, Lucy scurried to the fridge. Toulouse took a crystal glass from a cabinet. After inordinate fussing with an ice bucket, two bottles of Perrier (deemed “flat” by Lucy’s eagle eye) were discarded; when a third green vessel reached his prodigious palm, it looked like a dollhouse prop. He sipped and nodded approvingly — relief all around.

“Who’s in the closet?” he finally asked. The children were confounded. “Do you mean to say no one’s hiding in the closet? Scandalous!” He smiled — and the children smiled, then laughed — and felt completely at ease. It was like a merry tree-house club in there.

Marcus was grateful that his son had reached out, and was eager to be “sane” and accessible — which of course, for all intents and purposes, he now was. He was moved by Edward’s fractured physique and the outlandish ways that he compensated for his lot in the world; the vestigial Victorian was particularly captivated by the ornamental intricacies of pattern-design and dye he’d availed himself of to be swathed from prying eyes. For his part, the cousin found Mr. Weiner to be unpretentiously imposing. In his presence, Edward felt like one of those bent trees that, managing to survive an eruption, is now forever in the good graces of the volcano gods.

When he democratically turned his attention toward Lucy and spoke of her book, she blushed, frowning at Toulouse for having said so much (when it was her own proud father who’d betrayed her). But the bearish magus distracted her by apotheosizing the Blue Maze — what an evocative title it was, how he’d already visited the one at Saint-Cloud and been duly impressed, what a fine centerpiece for a mystery it’d make, and so forth. He made her feel as if she were already on a bestseller’s tour. His interest was piqued when Edward brought up the venerable Mr. Coate, a master “labyrinther” met on their globe-trotting sojourn.

Half an hour from Bel-Air, Marcus gave a tender précis of the lost years leading to his imprisonment and subsequent liberation at the hands of their grandfather, the estimable Louis Aherne Trotter. He was compelled to add that after the storm there came a glorious rainbow of trainers, dietitians and pill-pushers (for whom he had a more dignified name), the latter dispensing compounds which altered, in a subtle and marvelous way, the very chemistry of his brain — allowing him to take stock of his life and start anew. No mention was made of his estranged wife, and that was fine for all concerned. The children were relieved that Marcus Weiner knew enough not to throw open every door.

“Are you aware,” asked Edward, “that we know Amaryllis? Amaryllis Kornfeld?”

Toulouse didn’t seem thrilled to hear her name; he wasn’t sure what might annoy his father (he would soon enough learn that little did) and was wary of upsetting the apple cart, such as it was — a very large cart indeed.

“Oh yes! I had been apprised of that by Mr. Dowling.”

The detective had in fact been the first to enlighten Marcus to that curiously entwined history, even going so far as to suggest that it not be dwelled on in the case of an encounter with the children. Marcus grinned, adding nothing further — which again seemed a fine thing all around.

Candelaria had lunch waiting (a salad with pomegranate dressing, served in his honor), set upon a table smack in the cobblestone middle of the main thoroughfare of Olde CityWalk, and Marcus had a wonderful time with nephew, niece and son. But he could not relax, for his brow impulsively furrowed at the thought of sleeping in a box on a street less luxurious than this. With that spasmodic image came others, like falling dominoes: the orphan girl, and the guard who had come upon them in their hideout, and Janey too — and Fitz and Half Dead, and the kind baker Gilles — then last of all Katy, his Katy hovering for a millisecond before him: I am traveling and shall not be returning letters. It is probably best we break this off. He shook away the faces and felt some comfort that the children were not the wiser.

They popped corn and watched a movie at the Majestyk (Boulder’s latest, yet to be released) but still Marcus couldn’t enjoy himself, having now succumbed to the chaotic melancholy that had visited him earlier. The portraits — and feelings — returned with such force that he thought he might sob and frighten his hosts, ruining everything. So he was relieved when Candelaria half whispered to the boy that his mother had returned from New York and ordered him back to Saint-Cloud, pronto.

Marcus seized the opportunity to stroll into the light, where he took some restorative breaths and crouched beneath the theater’s overhanging marquee.

Toulouse came out moments later. “It’s OK — I don’t have to go home.”

“But your mother asked for you.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to go.”

“You mightn’t be so cavalier, Toulouse — if I may say it respectfully. She’s your mother and has done the best she could. Always has done that very thing: her best. Loves you deeply, boy. Has done much more than I.” The last said without a trace of self-pity.

He was not unaffected by his father’s words, and appeared resigned. Just then Eulogio materialized, jangling his keys at Toulouse and grinning like an ass. Meanwhile, Sling Blade revved up the Mauck for the drive back to Montecito.

“Son — would you say adieu to your cousins for me? They’re fine, fine children. That Edward is a heartbreaker! And Lucille — she’ll make an exceptional authoress, she will: big brain on her. You value them, don’t you, boy? They love you! They love you with everything they have, and that’s rare. But you give it back to them, don’t you? I know you do. You’ve a great gift that way. You’ve your mother’s gift.” He gathered his son to him, and Toulouse tucked his head into the brocaded vest. “I hope to see you again, son. I’m here now — I shan’t leave you.”

“Have you talked to Mother?”

“We’ve corresponded. But we have not seen each other.”

“Is she — was she mad — was she angry with you …”

“She was civil. She was — kind.” He bent on his knee to face the boy. “Thank you, Toulouse. Thank you for your courage, for coming to see me today. I am a very lucky man.”

He kissed him on the cheek, and the child wiped a tear as Marcus climbed into the Mauck. Lucy saw this last bit of business but with uncharacteristic restraint did not rush to her cousin, who watched his father pull away, preferring to step discreetly backward into the fastness of the movie palace instead.

Rather than return to Santa Barbara straightaway, Marcus had a request. He knew (because the old man had told him) of the famed Louis Trotter funerary commission; just as he knew of the parcel in Westwood where his benefactor would eventually make his “digs.” He was also aware that his driver was its general caretaker, and was curious about the place. But there was something more. Since the burial of Jane Scull, he had had a powerful, pointedly unmorbid desire to visit a graveyard, to loiter in a place twice removed from her tragedy, abstract enough to absorb his grief over all those lost to him.

At the moment Sling Blade was revealed by the ascending gull wing, Dot Campbell, in an outfit that worked much too hard to be called a leisure suit, charged at the errant employee, who had not even bothered this time to leave a scrap of paper behind explaining his absence. He took his scolding, then muttered the provenance of their guest; she was miraculously assuaged. The caretaker was then free to give Mr. Weiner a tour of the sanctuary, while his overlord graciously hung back.

Marcus spent a while pacing the grassy roof, so to speak, of the patriarch’s “last house.” When both roof and pacer had enough, Sling Blade vainly suggested that they examine the stones of various celebs; yet even Dorothy Stratten held insufficient allure. As a kind of consolation, his guide walked them to the furthermost real estate Joyce had purchased under Candlelighters’ aegis; then swore his guest to secrecy before divulging Mrs. Trotter’s mission. He held Mr. Weiner in thrall while weaving the peculiar tale of dumpster babies, identities unknown.

Marcus winced at the irony — if he would not come to potter’s field, potter’s field would come to him.

“Did you see your father?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he well?”

“He’s all right.”

“Did he say anything … weird?”

“No,” he said, displeased by her comment.

“Don’t get defensive,” she said, a little ruffled. “I guess it is pretty romantic — having a father return from the urban wild. The mental outback. I can’t compete with that.”

“I didn’t realize there was a competition,” he said frigidly. Silence, then: “Have you talked to him?”

He’d heard his father’s side and now wanted to hear hers.

“He wrote some letters — strange but sweet. I thought it best not to continue. It didn’t seem healthy.”

“He’s trying really hard. The pills seem to be working.”

“Good. Good for him.” She lit a cigarette and took the deepest inhalation he’d ever seen.

“You’re smoking again.”

“Toulouse, I just want you to be careful. You’re a big boy and he is your father … But we’re not talking about someone who has something that’s necessarily curable. I don’t want to see you hurt. Any more than you’ve been already.”

“I’m OK.”

“You’re OK now. The disease that your father has — is not something you can predict. There are relapses. And whatevers. And I just don’t want you to have false hopes. But you do what you like … And I’m not saying seeing him is wrong — I don’t want to give you a double message, which I guess is what I’m doing. It’s just that … we don’t know if he’ll be here when we wake up.”

“Will you?” Her jaw tightened. “You’ve been traveling a lot lately. And you’re smoking again.”

“You’re not my jailer. Look,” she said contritely. “I didn’t even want to talk to you about any of this.” She took another long, fidgety drag. “And that girl is staying with a social worker.”

“Girl?—”

“The girl,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Amaryllis. The woman gave me her e-mail, if you want to write.”