I'll Let You Go (85 page)

When approached by outraged do-gooders, Trinnie chose not to get involved. Was she supposed to have an opinion? Did they think she was going to get big feelings over her kooky brother's little stunt? She actually
liked
it when Dodd took some kind of action; the more bizarre, the
merrier. Anyhow, who gave a shit. Beverly Hills could go fuck itself. He had always been there for her, and had suffered his own terrible losses; she would stand by him. She didn't think it was any of her business to meddle—hers or anyone else's.

O
ne weekend, after paying a purely social visit to Marcus at Cañon Manor, Dodd took a dusk-time walk to old BV. For a half-mile around ground zero, there was the eerie absence of customary sights, sounds and smells—the lived-in-ness of a neighborhood. A few cars idled here and there while tourists snapped pictures of loved ones posing in the driveways of vacant houses as if they were their own. City-leased klieg lights lined the sidewalks to ward off vandalism. He saw a few media vans rumble past, and private patrol cars. Some of the news teams were from other countries.

When he was sure no one saw him, Dodd entered the apartment building on the corner of Rexford and Charleville. He passed the dry lobby fountain and rode an elevator to the fourth floor. Using a master key to gain entry to one of the empty units, he walked out to the patio that overlooked the darkening playground where the ugly bungalows still held dominion.

He watched the night fall.

W
ith some reluctance, the author concedes that he has reached the end of his story. The garden will be frozen in time and yet, paradoxically, grow wild outside these pages. Some last trimmings are in order.

At the age of eighteen, Lucille Rose Trotter gave her hand to the son of Lord Tryeferne, thereby becoming the fairest component of that entity known in English society sheets as the Hon Travis and Lucille Rose Tryeferne. Through an unfortunate act of terrorism, she somewhat prematurely became Lady Tryeferne and Lady Tryeferne she would remain, through miscarriage and divorce and romantic entanglements thick and thin. Our dear cousin, who wore braids when we first met, would not settle down until her mid-twenties, when, after the usual diversions—stints at fashion and auction houses, jewelry designing, handbag making, hospice working and even finally a passing stab at children's-book authoring—she regained her senses and went to work for her dad. Taking to Quincunx like koi to water, she quickly proved herself to be more than a nepotistic adornment, and those who doubted her talents certainly suffered, though not for long; Mrs. Tryeferne (she detached the aristocratic handle in the workplace) had a way of wielding a blade so that its business was done before there was time to notice a spot of blood.
She had always gotten on well with Frances-Leigh, who was endeared by the girl's bossiness, especially after a star turn as the former secretary's maid-of-honor at the most spectacular Scottish castle anyone in the world had ever seen. (Her father had bought it especially for the wedding ceremony and the three-day gala that followed.) Lady Tryeferne—or Our Lady of the Tryeferne, as Trinnie liked to call her—was also keen on South Sea pearls, and looked more and more like her auntie each day: lanky, freckle-flecked, willowy and red, red, red, with a keen look in her eye that made one fear she knew, or at least had known, too much. Now, whether the lady would one day have children—she had no hankering to marry again, nor did she pine for the patter of little feet upon marble—is not for us to guess; though she did take the loss of the child she had conceived with Travis as an omen, and was sorely reminded of the bittersweet genes that had ushered her brother into the world. (It mattered little that she'd been told she was no likelier to have a child with Apert than anyone else.) While Lucille Rose could not imagine another Edward in spirit, she
could
conjure one in body; that would have been a terrible thing to inflict upon anyone. So she put off thoughts of childbearing for a while and told herself she was doing the responsible thing. But time is on her side. Her life, we can say with certainty, shall be a long one, with never a use for a wandering garden.

She found her mother's adoption of the McDonald's baby galling. In
her
mind, he hadn't so much been adopted as co-opted—a fledgling, deputized into Edward's memory posse. It was just so blatant and, as she put it to friends, “unattractive”; happily, such judgments coincided with the arrival of that age when a young girl cultivates her innate desire to cannibalize or at least crucify the woman who bore and raised her (the very woman who, in therapists' undying jargon, “had done the best she could”). Well, Lucille Rose did
her
best to loathe her put-upon mom. Yet each time she saw Ketchum, he was a little bit bigger and a little bit older, and a bit more affectionate, too, until Lucy (that's what she let him call her) began to see him as a person in his own right rather than a substitute for the loveliest, most poetic soul she'd ever known. Watching Joyce with the boy, watching her chide and correct, hold and fuss, watching her
love
in a way the woman had never been able to with Edward (not to mention Lucy herself), she grew to respect and forgive, and to imagine her mother anew. It brought her close to godliness, for she finally untied what up till then had been the banal knot of Christian charity: that to
save a life—such as Ketchum's had been saved—to love for love's sake alone created a chain reaction that truly changed the world. During yoga, or in moments of repose, Lady Tryeferne felt herself on the receiving end of her mother's selfless act and was invigorated to start her own “chain”—when and where and whatever that might be. Her heart overflowed with hope and abundance.

It was true that Joyce had never been happier. When Dodd came to town, they caught up over drinks at swank Brentwood hideaways, a routine Frances-Leigh lobbied for and was immensely satisfied to see take hold. The amazing thing was, they even flirted. Yet on the romantic front, Joyce had no time or desire. Her life was filled by Ketchum and the others—her Westwood children. Men fluttered around like butterflies, but she was no collector; she took her leave from fancy fund-raisers on the arm of Father de Kooning, her walker and biggest fan, and that was just fine.

S
hortly after his move to Cañon Manor, Marcus Weiner spent many a Saturday at Frenchie's, refining and embellishing his prodigious gifts. The first thing he did was re-create the Persephone, the original pastry that had drawn Bluey in years ago, making sure it was delivered to her cottage at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills. According to Winter, whenever the old woman partook of that favored treat, she broke lustily into song and a certain woodenheaded Mr. Jones was invariably invoked.

One person who particularly benefited from Marcus's drop-ins was none other than the proprietor's daughter. Amaryllis Kornfeld-Mott proved herself a studious yet inventive helper, with the knack of being one step ahead of her tutor, even when at his most unpredictably daring. Sometimes he challenged her—threw down the gauntlet and stood back, hands clasped behind him like a Russian maestro commanding a scherzo to be played at speeds beyond human capability—in this case, the prodigy pulled it off and then some. They simply took over, relegating Gilles to the front register, and the only thing left for him was to get coffee and cupcakes for the old folks who shuffled in. During lulls, the poor baker tried to small-talk, but so involved was the pair that they wouldn't even notice; if they did, he was shooed away forthwith. Back at his post, he heard Marcus roar at his pupil or clap with delight upon tasting her
morsels, and the coffee-sipping pensioners wondered what the hell was going on. The pâtissier got carried away enough that he often forgot to remove his old-style tweed coat, which became dusted with confectionary powders as a field by snow. Even when Amaryllis was enrolled in Pitzer College, she came home on weekends to see Cody and Saffron, and to attend master classes with the man she loved as a father—the man who had once fed her and the babies and who carried her on his back, where she would forever in both their eyes remain.

Toulouse was still in love. It was unnecessary to remind her of the pledge he had made—she knew full well his feelings. She
did
love him, but could not jump, as Lucy had with Travis Tryeferne; perhaps, thought Amaryllis gloomily, that was her flaw. The truth was, too much had happened in her young life for her to ever have a passionate, clear-cut feeling. Eroticism and emotions had been commingled, and mangled too, and ghosts conspired to put a governor on her ability to sort it all out. Things had been done to her of which she never told a soul. Eventually, she would, thus opening a door to the world; it can be assumed that Toulouse Trotter would be standing there, first in line, in forthright, timorous fashion, holding a slender stalk of honeysuckle and passionflowers. She would let him in. But that time was not now, nor would it be for some years. There would be other loves and other heartaches for both, the lesser ones which they'd share as best friends do. By
that
time (the time they found each other), Amaryllis would have consecrated a Westside Frenchie's, hard by Le Marmiton, and its wafery creations would make her name—and bake it too.

What
was
Toulouse Trotter doing while the door to her heart remained closed (or at least secured against entry of all but an occasional breeze of sweet nothings)? Well, he was doing the things that young people do while casting about for “meaning.” Taking a leaf from Lucy's earliest Smythson, he attempted to write what he thought to be a touching absurdist play about his cousin, called
Prince Headward
(after careful consideration, the somewhat sacrilegious title was revised to
Edward the First
). Sadly, the title was its high point. He traveled the world, notching this and that power spot on his belt, taking care to avoid places visited during the famous Four Winds holiday—not an altogether easy task. He became enamored of Cambodia and New Guinea, Java and Madagascar, Abu Dhabi and the Maldives, Zanzibar and Nepal, and kept the river on his right during the requisite near-death, near-homosexual experiences
of an inveterate adventurer; he had dalliances with nymphomaniacal girls who spoke pidgin English; he sometimes stayed with families who thought him a poor vagabond—in short, got up to all the normal mischief that could be expected of any self-respecting scion.

He never stayed away too long (whenever home, he bunked at Cañon Manor), and sent his parents a raft of letters, which Trinnie thought so wonderful she threatened to have published under the title
Off the Road
. Particularly savored was the antic account of Toulouse's re-enactment of his father's legendary walk from Oxford to the great earthwork of Silbury Hill, a path William Morris himself had once trod as an undergrad. He called his dispatches “News from Anywhere,” a nod to the log Marcus kept all those years and had long ago given him for safekeeping—a gesture so intimate that his son had immediately handed it over to Harry and Ruth.

The young man at last fell upon the career of medical doctor, with a specialty in maxillofacial reconstruction; he had no stomach for blood, so it didn't pan out. His studies
did
get him writing again, penning thoughts on morbidity and mortality (which had become a clichéd literary genre in itself)—but the trenchant, tender quality of Dr. Trotter's observations proved anomalous, and anomalously marketable at that. Now wisely engaged in dermatological pursuits, he wrote as elegantly of lupus as he did of childhood acne, though readers generally conceded his finest essay to date concerned a dog—his own.

Toulouse had meant to meditate on his cousin's infirmity but wound up memorializing Pullman instead. In “A Harlequin Romance,” he wrote how as a boy his mother had tried to put him off Great Danes, owing to the breed's short life-span, and recounted that tragicomic year of vicarious hypochondria wherein Pullman was needled, massaged and therapized. But the dog turned eight, then ten, then twelve, then fourteen … an age thought impossible for the breed.

Then he disappeared.

At first, Toulouse thought that in a misguided act of charity, his mother and the Monasterios had taken it upon themselves to incinerate the finally dead creature and concoct a story of his mysterious departure. But they withered under his interrogations—he had after all inherited the digger's formidable “nose”—and the young man concluded that if they
had
been responsible, they'd have surely come clean under his assault.

He had gory theories galore: someone had struck the dog with a car then buried him in a literal cover-up—or that Pullman had collapsed and fallen into a street-maintenance dugout, where the body was inadvertently mutilated by pipe cutters or whatnot, then simply buried by workers out of sheer expediency. Awakening in the middle of the night from a dream, he was certain the dog was in the maze, but would then remember it had been uprooted and that the house on Saint-Cloud was no more.

A
bout a year after Marcus moved to Cañon Manor, Trinnie began taking lovers again, as she had all those years he was absent. If Marcus knew, he kept his feelings close; she was a good mother and a good friend and he had no right to tell her anything. Their own lovemaking had come and gone like a freakish meteorological event that would never recur. (She had been wrong when she thought she conceived in the tower on their return; the doctors said she was now barren.) Katrina Berenice Trotter Weiner made excuses, telling herself they just needed time. He was having relapses—an accent had crept back to his voice, and the tailor Montalvo called to say that Marcus had ordered a dozen suits in “the bespoke Victorian cut.” The bill was to be sent to a certain W. Morris of Kelmscott Manor. But the details of his infirmity no longer seduced—once the stained glass was broken, the rebuilt church could not allure. When she left for Slovakia (Ralph Mirdling and Ms. Keaton had since broken up and he was directing a film there) and stayed six weeks, husband and wife spoke twice a day, and that gave Marcus great joy. Sometimes when she returned from her travels, she was so exhausted that he nursed her. Once she almost needed to be hospitalized again, and he brought her to Cañon Manor because she couldn't sleep. She paced like a wraith at all hours, muttering in a fugue state, “I killed him! I killed him—it was
my
blow that killed him!” He shushed and kissed and rocked her in his arms; it was so beautiful and so awful that the boy could hardly watch.