I'll Let You Go (72 page)

As it happened, Lani and Gilles had tried for several months to stage a reunion between themselves and Marcus Weiner but were stonewalled by his attorneys. Said counsel, protective of their client's recovery, to say the least, could not have cared less about personal relationships formed during that particular era of Mr. Weiner's troubled life. Phone calls to Detective Dowling went unreturned in kind, though in all fairness Samson was swamped by cases old and new, and found nothing pressing about the resolute couple's nostalgic urges. At Montecito, Marcus had asked after the baker (and Amaryllis too), but the detective was chary about starting an egg hunt; there was enough omelette on his old friend's plate as it was. He
did
go so far as to discuss the matter with Mr. Trotter, who thoughtfully turned things over to the crack psychotherapeutic team. It was their continued and vaunted opinion that the patient should remain focused on reconstructing his life via insights attained through examination of childhood events—the memories of which were now surfacing nicely—and that it would be premature and counterproductive to revisit street bonds formed while in full delusion.

After a series of long talks with her husband, Lani finally caved. When she handed over Toulouse's e-mail address, Amaryllis nearly fainted. The child instantly set to composing a trial response in longhand
but found the composition as difficult as her suitor had, and as torturous too, for both possessed an elastic sense of time and keenly believed that every minute that passed without them somehow communicating exponentially decreased the chance they would ever see each other again. (So it goes with the very young.) Fortunately, girls are bolder; Amaryllis wrote everything out by suppertime, and her foster mother agreed to let her sit before the keyboard in privacy—though not before a forthright discussion about Master Trotter and his cousins, whose rescue efforts, she reminded, certainly helped in the short term but had had more dubious results as her respite stretched on. For Lani, the bottom line was that Bel-Air was a seductive place, but “you've got to keep it real.” She borrowed that phrase from Trinnie, who had dropped it during their chat.

We will not divulge the content of that first e-mail offering or summarize Toulouse's reply, nor hers after that, nor his that followed—what soon became a deliriously ungrammatical outpouring of gossip, jokes and sweet nothings. But all those nothings added up, and Lani soon curfewed her use of the iMac.

T
he sudden death of Edward Trotter obliterated upcoming birthday festivities and cast an apocalyptic pall over both Bel-Air houses.

The body was found by a gardener on a far-side Stradella path, leaning on the seat of the buggy that, without fanfare, had lumbered into a stand of hawthorn. Doctor and nurse reached him within minutes but were of no use. Dodd was 45,000 feet in the air when informed; Joyce had to be hospitalized for two days, for she could not catch her breath. Trinnie was at her best during such adversity and would not allow herself to feel the loss, because there were myriad details to which no one else possessed the sobriety to attend. Assured by her steeliness, the old man retreated to the Withdrawing Room in private grief. Bluey, of course, would not be told.

When Toulouse first saw Lucy after the event, she embraced him, then broke away and screamed. She ran off, and he took after her—they fell to the ground and locked on to each other, breath fetid, as if the caverns of their mouths held Edward's beating heart. Pullman yelped and
groaned and for two days was seen near the Boar's Head Inn retching like a drunk.

The two cousins would not leave each other's side, and grew giddy with the endless looping catharsis of horror and tears: they kissed hotly and deeply, laughing and sobbing in between, plumbing each other's depths for their beloved boy. Adults came and went. Lucy and Toulouse hid awhile in the coolness of the Majestyk—they could not yet bear to enter the workshop, with its masks and cowls and bolts of fabric, let alone Edward's apartments, which they felt should be decreed sacred ground and fenced in like La Colonne. Who would ever have the courage to go up there? Trinnie would, of course (and found a sheaf of papers in the bedroom whose striking contents will shortly be disclosed).

When she stepped from the Inn, the children huddled expectantly, as if she might tell them it was all a mistake; that Edward was resting comfortably in a toile caftan. Instead, she glided forward and held out her arms, which they took to like lost babes and promptly began another round of tremors and tears, the crowns of their heads now smacked by the salty droplets of Trinnie's own. All she said was, “I know, I know,” and she really did—she knew, and they were glad—
everyone
was glad—that she knew and that she was there.

The cousins spent the next few days watching grown-ups emerge from the house to embrace or smoke or chat among themselves in low tones, or merely to meditate. First would come Dodd, with Trinnie, who held him; then Epitacio and kin, respectfully scurrying on this or that errand; and Grandpa Lou, with private sector–types, whom they did not recognize. Still others—old money and vanished new new money (and just plain money too); fashion mavens and designers who had loved Edward so; a cadre of their grandfather's funerary architects (Mr. Koolhaas included); sundry politicians; imperishable icons (Bluey's dear friend Rosamond Bernier), socialites and blue bloods—famous of themselves who went mostly unrecognized too.

One time they even saw Joyce. She was hugging Trinnie, and while they thought it unnatural, they were glad nonetheless, for she didn't look at all well. She was led back to the house by poor Winter, who, since the death, had been shuttling between Saint-Cloud and Alzheimer's World, and whom the children had never seen demonstrate such quintessentially Icelandic reserve. Ushered into the darkness of the tomb-like
master bedroom, Lucy visited with her mother ten minutes at a time. Few words were spoken and a uniformed nurse was always present, tucked into a shadowy niche like some kind of low-caste devil.

There was some trouble over the funeral. The papers Trinnie found in Edward's apartments were copies of those in the packet he'd given his grandfather months before: etchings and photo montages of memorials, ancient and modern. But there was something else—a letter addressed to his aunt. For a change of heart had taken place in the time since he first made his desires known to the old man.

During long baths, mother and son spoke of many things. Joyce told him how she had bought land in Westwood for the abandoned babies, an incursive notion that suddenly appealed to Edward immensely, but for reasons other than charitableness. He thought there was something gorgeously heretical about it; he had found his new “gang.” His grandfather, he reasoned (and all this he carefully set down in the letter TO MY AUNTIE), would be injured by his decision, yet still he'd forever be just a stone's throw away, so to speak, from that kindly old digger … It was the perfect
anonymity
of it that had enraptured him and bloomed during his ablutions; he, who had always been stared at and singled out, in wealth and infirmity—he, who had been surrounded by untold riches, would now make his home in the unglamorous swales of the park's Siberia, surrounded by unnamed discards—the very ones he used to mock!

The unfortunate task of disclosing his wishes to the old man fell naturally to Trinnie. He shot the messenger, then reloaded, initially appalled that his daughter-in-law had sneakily purchased mass graves in the very spot it had taken him years to select. It was hostile and underhanded—but worse than that, it
contaminated
 … she had connivingly hauled her cut-rate bleeding heart onto
his
domain and now would ask him to soak himself in its tainted fluids as they leached down into the very earth intended to encoffin him, and he would not have it! And that her
son
—his
grandson
, a
Trotter
, and the noblest of the lot—would be buried alongside the murdered children of addicts and criminals, born of rotten wombs! Hadn't the boy come to him with a plan not long ago? He had said that he wished to be interred somewhere beauteous, beside his grandpa—those were
his
words,
his
instincts. TO MY AUNTIE be damned! It was obvious he'd been unduly influenced … but why? Why would she want that for him? Some born-again conversion? Was it possibly true
she could
be
such a crazy cunt? Who was she but a spinster—a non-executive secretary at Trotter Waste Systems—and a shitty one at that—a tired, dried-out fuck who had preyed upon his son and made a lucky last-ditch marriage. He would see her in court! At any rate, the boy was still a minor and such an “instrument” could be superseded. He paced the Withdrawing Room like a wounded bull. He had loved that child … he had made a promise to him, and would keep it!

In their agony, neither party would relent. Joyce descended on her husband, who diplomatically remained neutral.
Does your father think that we're making this up?
They'd shown him the letter—tantamount to a last will and testament, it could not be ignored. Did he really imagine that because of his own narcissistic obsession with the “aesthetics” of death she would fly in the face of her son's final wishes? Did he think she was one of his toadies? That she would capitulate? Was he so arrogant to assume that she had had no discourse with her son,
her
son, no quiet intimacies wherein he confessed his desires? He had even dared throw at her the circumstances of the difficult birth and her “selfish sequestration”—how cruel of him, how merciless! It only strengthened her resolve. Weeks ago, when Edward shared his plan, she had brought Dodd in on it; now he had told his father as much, but the old asshole only spat and raged. You are simply siding with your wife! he said. During a fiasco of a “mediation,” Father de Kooning predictably made no headway; and Mr. Trotter warned the by now co-dependent chorus of Montecito therapists not to come near him. (On a drive to Woodland Hills, Dodd hatched a bizarre peacekeeping compromise: the boy would be cremated and kept in a fourth-century Scythian vase in the lobby of the Majestyk. It was good he kept the brainstorm to himself.)

Word of the passing found Marcus much aggrieved. He phoned his son to say how sorry he was, and Toulouse cried, softly thanking him. He asked if he was coming to the service. Marcus said he'd very much like to, but feared it would make his mother uncomfortable; this wasn't the time for additional drama. The boy understood, appreciating his sensitivities in the matter. Marcus said,
“Bon courage,”
and hung up.

The funeral, held on what was perhaps the dreariest Sunday in the history of the basin if not the world, was a horrific affair. Such was their fervor that the mourners threatened at any given moment to break out in mass insanity, as in storied incidents of villages poisoned by ergotlaced
water. The park was ringed by bodyguards, for there was a large contingent of press (he had been, after all, a royal son) and principals wore swatches of fabric, torn from Edward's shrouds, pinned to their clothes in the manner of Orthodox Jews. Even Pullman wore a papier-mâché mask contrived by Lucy and Toulouse to sit on his shoulders so that it devoutly faced the sky. Dot Campbell's skirt, blouse and coat were poignantly mismatched; Sling Blade wore a suit, his first ever, purchased for the occasion. It was also a first for Dot to see a zoned-out look in the haggard caretaker's eye, as if he had finally had enough of death. He drove the Mauck to the cemetery as per Dodd's instructions, and lowered the buggy from its berth; once grounded, it sat like an otherworldly catafalque. The sight of it sent a fresh wave of despair through those gathered.

Joyce, in lenses dark as obsidian, was supported on one side by Dodd and on the other by Trinnie (appropriately Edwardian, in a high-collared Branquinho waistcoat), with Father de Kooning and the vigilant Candelaria in tow. She sporadically stopped sobbing to aver, as if in the middle of a daymare, “I never named him! I named the babies—but never him!”—spectacularly moving and bathetic at once. She wore Prada, except for the distinctive veil that fell on her face: a favorite of Edward's, it was inelegantly poised and made for a grotesquely comic effect. A row of votive Candlelighters stood close to the parcel where Edward would be laid, while the lesbians from the Palisades hovered nearby, perturbed and guilt-stricken, as if all this might have been avoided if the Lord had taken their boy instead. (Fortunately, the son of Jane Scull was on his best behavior throughout the ceremonies, although, upon her catching sight of the bundle she had dubbed Lazarus, the same could not be said of Mrs. Trotter.) Then Winter's heel broke and she fell with a thud; Frances-Leigh, and two from the deceased's Olde CityWalk health-care team rushed to her aid, but Epitacio and his brother adroitly won out. She rubbed her ankle and smiled as they helped her stand, and spent the remainder of the event partly unshod, anchored by the somber, handsome brothers.

Louis Trotter, incensed and betrayed, did not attend; he was the digger after all, and had that in him. He would visit his grandson another time, away from the circus, and let a moment pass before contemplating legal action to move the boy to more hallowed ground. He visited Bluey
instead, who was in fine form, and sat with her on a bench along the path of the wandering garden.

The Weiners stood a respectful distance off until Trinnie waved them closer. Ruth helped Harry navigate the gravestones and he kept reaching for his yarmulke, which, ill-clipped, threatened to tumble from his head. Detective Dowling passed Lucy and Toulouse—he smiled at the girl, and her face lit up through her sorrow—and Trinnie greeted him warmly. When she embraced Ralph Mirdling, who had come to pay respects with his friend Ron Bass, Samson stepped back and stared contemplatively at the ground. He was going to say hello to Dodd but would have to wait, for the billionaire was consumed with ministering to his wife.