I'll Let You Go

by Bruce Wagner

  “It’s all right, Grandpa! She’s a wonder!”

  “Don’t mind me—it’s just that you’re so personable. May I ask what exactly is wrong with you? Physically, of course.”

  “Oh God!” eructed the old man.

  “Not at all, you may ask and ask away! They call it Apert Syndrome.”

  Dot looked deep within herself. “Never heard of that one. My sister Ethel—who’d adore you—sent me an article about a special school in Long Island for children with deformities. ‘Inner Faces,’ they call it. They put on theater pieces—extremely talented. There’s a few with cleft palates; you don’t see those much anymore. You don’t see cleft palates or clubfeet. One of the kids had—what did they call it? Möbius Syndrome! The muscles in her face completely paralyzed—”

  “Good Lord, Mrs. Campbell,” cried Mr. Trotter, who had by now reached the end of a long, low string of chuffs—so low, only Pullman might have registered the last. “That’s quite enough!”

  “Grandpa, it’s fine. Seriously.”

  “Then tell me,” said Dot, eyeing him intently. “Why do you cover up your face?”

  “Personal choice. I suppose I’m vain. The eyes are a bit far apart. Dentition is … eruptive. Forehead veiny and elongated, with a ‘bregmatic bump.’ ”

  “Apert, did you say?—”

  “Yes. Like Herb Alpert, without the ‘Herb’ or the ‘l.’ ”

  “Now, Edward, is that—is Apert’s by any chance an ‘orphan’ disease? The ones not enough people actually have for them to go and commit research funding? They make television movies about them, it’s terribly unfair. Oprah even did a show on ‘orphans’—they do amazing things with prosthetics now. I read in People about a girl with a hole in her face—”

  “Oh God!” muttered Mr. Trotter as he strode off.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind us talking like this?” whispered Dot to her new friend.

  “Not at all.”

  “I feel so comfortable with you, you have that gift. Besides, it’s much better to be frank—that’s the way we learn.” She spoke softly now, taking him into her confidence. “I do worry about your grandfather sometimes. He’s here so much—even at night. I don’t think it’s healthy. To provide for oneself, yes, but well … you know, Edward, my sister Ethel would love to meet you, you’re so poised. There was that girl in People with a cancer. They took her nose, poor thing—and her left eye, part of the forehead, part of the cheek and part of the sinus. Left a hole the size of a papaya. Now, evidently, there’s a Romanian doctor who specializes in maxillofacial surgery. Makes ‘clip-on’ prosthetics—they drill screws right into the skull and the thing just snaps on. Though for the life of me I don’t know how they get the screws to stay. Ethel says—”

  “They’re titanium. Titanium bonds with bone.”

  “Yes! That’s what they said on 20/20, the faces clip on like sunglasses—so beautifully done. The quality of a Tussaud’s!”

  The old man took Sling Blade aside while Dot and his grandson continued their colloquy. As he imparted whatever it was that he imparted, he held the caretaker’s elbow and pressed money into his hand, a lavish, almost involuntary gesture repeated that very week with a Supercuts barber, a Montana Avenue haberdasher, even the humble, sweetly flummoxed receptionist for Dr. Bloore, his Bedford Drive dentist.

  Early after the purchase of his plot, the digger had had a dream about Sling Blade, and some small omens since had shown promise for his eventual entwinement with the Trotter familia. For example, Mr. Trotter recently noticed an abrasion on Sling Blade’s forehead. When questioned, he explained that it was an injury incurred while moonlighting as a guard at a building downtown—the Higgins, to be precise—the very landmark Dodd told his father he had in escrow.

  The main detail of the story, that during rounds he’d been assaulted by a burly trespasser, held no interest for the old man.

  When the Mauck reached La Colonne, the gates were already open. The vulgar Mr. Greenjeans stood waiting, mustered and tamed. He’d added a nitwitty canvas pith helmet to his regalia, and if Tull hadn’t been so agitated, he might have been sarcastic about it. After all, this was the man who once chased him down.

  Lucy was so excited she forgot to bring her Smythson. The young detective sat beside her brother in the locked-down buggy ready to be launched once the MSV reached the tip of the driveway, a small bulb intruding on the vast parkland space. Edward was dressed, well, Edwardian for the event—a three-piece “reworked” pin-striped suit by Matsushima, a retro Etro paisley vest, studded gloves and a translucent Trinnie-donated tattooed Kobayashi blouse, which he wore as a veil. Pullman, noble, copacetic specimen that he was, placidly drooled on the carpet, where lay his handsome, ham-size head.

  A gentleman of protruding jaw sat comfortably in one of the calfskin swivel chairs near the front of the Mauck, his back to Epitacio, who drove. Edward introduced him as Sling Blade, and the latter showed no signs of feeling teased by the appellation. Tull felt as if he were in a dream, a feeling certainly not foreign during the last few months. He didn’t think to ask about the stranger, or even who exactly had given them official ingress to the rarefied site. (Nor had he inquired of his cousin the provenance of the monogrammed letter let alone any details of the presumed cache from which it been extracted.) Initially, Lucy wasn’t thrilled with Sling Blade’s presence, but she grew tolerant, then positively ebullient, on realizing he would make a perfectly colorful cameo in The Mystery of the Blue Maze.

  They entered the meadow and drove slowly through, Mr. Greenjeans trotting along beside.

  The party of five—six, really, including Pullman—disembarked and Tull oriented himself. It was a different vista than that afforded from his usual illicit entry; it seemed impossible he and Pullman had never explored this side—the perspective his parents would have had when shown the place for the first time. The view of the wedding guests.

  Someone had taken great pains to lay floorboard over the grass (the same had been done on location during Boulder’s film, so the camera could wheel over uneven ground). The buggy lowered pneumatically; Epitacio and Sling Blade guided it to the first plank of Yellow Brick Road. Mr. Greenjeans caught up, grabbed hold and helped them jump the curb. The two caretakers then eyeballed each other, neither coming up to measure. The gardener was not at all happy to see Pullman, and paled when the Great deigned sniff his leg.

  Edward nodded for Tull to come, but the boy shook his head and hung back. Sling Blade got in and the buggy ascended the low hill. Epitacio leaned under the shade of a gull wing and smoked a cigarette; it was obvious to Tull that for him La Colonne was old hat. Mr. Greenjeans shadowed the buggy as it passed through the first set of myrtle balls, and kept apace from twenty yards.

  The air chilled, covering him with goose bumps. What were they doing here? Tull watched the surrey climb at the creepy pace of a roller-coaster car once the safety bar dropped over passengers’ laps; then set off to join them.

  The formal entry, as the cousin had already described from the Le Désert de Retz book, was a faithfully replicated grove of sycamores, chestnuts, lindens, blue cedars, maples and ash. Beneath the chirping of birds and rustle of leaves was a dead quiet. Pullman remained loyally at Tull’s side even when a large, still pond hove into view; then, oddly, the familiar allée of yews appeared, and the two were somehow back to their usual approach to the tower. They passed through—it was darker and colder than Tull remembered. He had a fleeting, terrible thought: one didn’t have to be in a maze to be swallowed up by darkness, never to escape.

  Seeing the buggy stop ahead, he sped up.

  Edward stood beneath the canopy staring at the prospect that for all its brooding melodrama might well have been a painting of nearly fetishistic romanticism. The sky blackened and trees shook nude limbs like upended broomsticks tickling the clouds, egging them on, daring them to rain down for the sheer joy and mischief of it—and there, squatting at the end of the field like a ravaged rotunda, was the s
till-distant, broken Babel.

  The cousin took it in with flooded concentration. For Lucy and Tull, the spectacle was not so much the Castle of Sleeping Beauty, as Edward told them a writer named Colette had called it, but the sight of the cousin himself transfixed, briefly lifting his veil to see what he could see. The ground was level now and the buggy zoomed toward Oz.

  Slouching ahead, Tull nervously populated the grounds with wedding-day people: lanterns appeared, strung in the dusk, landaus with glass-encased torches burning, high-booted footmen amid pastoral gaiety, grass-stained children with flowers and bugs in their silken hair. The wind sizzled a friction of branches, and he heard the wedding music of an absurdly imagined clavichord. Edward had loaned Tull enough sci fi for him to be able to readily muse on the transitoriness of Time, the wormhole nature of it all—the smallness of himself in the scheme of things. So, the scene became more real: he saw his mother there, younger, handmaids and tailors tweaking her Balenciaga, and his father, lanky and rakish, tender and kind, drinking with male friends, who laughed in gutsy, premarital chorus. In his mind, Marcus looked like a Jewish man with tousled hair, a cross between Steven Spielberg and Ralph Mirdling, wild-eyed and gaunt. He shook off his reverie, close to the castle now. The buggy was at the front door. Sling Blade carried Edward in like a bride.

  The light inside was the same as in the Poussin of Grandpa’s Withdrawing Room. They allowed fairy-dust motes stirred by their arrival to settle before awakening any spirits. The white tents Tull spied before were now up close—a bedouin camp of covered furniture and figurines. Mr. Greenjeans said “the lady” had wished nothing moved. (Mr. Greenjeans being suddenly loquacious.)

  “ ‘An armed prowler would not dare stay here at night,’ ” said Edward out loud, again quoting this person Colette. “ ‘How to convince yourself that in this dungeon-like darkness, a rosewood headrest and the remains of a commode are not positively evil?’ ”

  “I don’t think it’s evil at all,” offered Lucy, shakily.

  As in the original Colonne, there were four aboveground levels, including the lobby—in the basement, which no one was in a hurry to explore, Edward said that the castle’s onetime Freemason residents were intent upon alchemizing the bones of Pascal into gold (both Lucy and Tull assumed Pascal to be a dear, lamented friend of Colette’s). The braided authoress pushed aside her fears and began to warm to the place; she flitted like a moth, powdering the edges of the protective drapes.

  “Careful!” hissed Mr. Greenjeans. “Nothing must be moved or broken!”

  Lucy started a moment, then laughed, gleeful. What fun it was being a writer! And what a wonderful character would this mad gardener make!

  Edward told Sling Blade he wished to go up—the column was bifurcated by a spiral staircase—and the strong-armed cemetery worker obeyed. His sister followed.

  Pullman lay at the foot of the stairwell. While the others went exploring, his master stepped over him, craning his neck. A skylight nestled high above in the jagged edges of the snapped-off “pillar,” plant life sprouting from the latter like a weedy tiara. Tull took the stairs, numb. He wondered if his parents had roped off the bedroom that wedding-day night, barring access to revelers.

  So these were the stairs his parents had climbed—the same his father had crept down that morning without her. She would have come later, barefoot, lover’s face lit by a puzzled smile as she stared out at the rolling hills. Katrina Berenice Trotter Weiner thought for certain she would see her husband there, playfully naked, turning to make a rutting run at his brand-new bride in this blue-green heaven, outraged at their love and good fortune. The smile, Tull thought, would have stuck to her face as she wandered, searching, calling his name … tiring, she may have said aloud: It’s a game! He’s been watching me, and now’s gone back in …

  He heard Lucy’s and Edward’s treasure-hunt voices some floors above—and shot past, for Edward’s progress was slow, and, besides, the cousins were distracted by the eerie stillness of each new floor. The structure was vast, even larger, if that were possible, than it seemed from outside. With unexpected verve, Tull bolted to the remaining level.

  Ralph once told him about fire beetles—insects drawn to forest fires that flew through flames to lay eggs in charred tree bark—and though its door was shut and told nothing of what it hid, that is how Tull flew to the boudoir. He could smell his mother there, her shock and her sorrow, addictions and adorations. When he entered, he saw them for a moment entwined—then all he could see was her alone, blissful, awakening, yawning her newlywed breath, stretching, womb-starred, squatting on the toilet, then standing on tiptoes to spy from one of the mosaic porticoes, scanning for her beloved somewhere in the landscape below. He saw her put on slippers and say his father’s name … then descend, calling out at each floor, mixing in lyrics of a sweetly improvised song as she floated down corkscrew stairs until finding herself at the front door, already flung open, he had flung it open, staring out at the rolling hills, smile stuck to radiantly doomed face—when Lucy suddenly appeared, exalted and fairly wheezing, already sucking the thin air of bestsellerdom. Tull blocked her way as she tried to come in.

  “No!” he said. “You can’t! No one can!”

  She thought at first it was a joke, but Tull was shaking and crying and she backed off.

  “It’s not for your stupid book, so get out! Get out—”

  She put her hands up to calm him. At that moment Edward arrived, with entourage.

  “What’s happening?” he asked from Sling Blade’s arms. The caretaker looked like a ventriloquist. He set the boy down.

  “I said no one goes in there!” Tull slammed the door in their faces. Pullman barked from below.

  “We won’t,” called Edward respectfully. “Don’t worry …”

  “This was a mistake,” shouted Tull. “We shouldn’t have come here!”

  “Then,” said Edward, “we’ll just turn around and go.”

  Lucy had never seen her brother so calm and collected, so gracious. Like one of those crisis negotiators.

  “If anyone comes in here,” said Tull dramatically, “I’ll kill them!”

  Sling Blade swept the boy up and the party retreated.

  Tull of course stayed behind, heart pounding madly. It was only when their steps left the echoing cylinder at ground level and he heard circumspect voices outside La Colonne that he allowed himself to breathe again. His body, rigid since spitting its words, relaxed and his mouth began to jigger uncontrollably, tears scalding as he emerged from the wedding suite and walked down.

  He thought of leaving by the old, secret way—through hedge of privet andromeda—but then thought better, to make certain the others had gone. So he raced ahead with Pullman and stood across the road until the Mauck edged from the drive.

  Lucy stared at him through the window of the MSV as it swept past, her face riven by pain. Tull was ashamed and confused. He didn’t want his cousins—especially Edward, who’d been so excited about the castle—to be traumatized on his account. Lucy had been trying so hard to help … and Edward—he would not want to injure his fragile, mystic friend. He’d call them later to make things right. For now, all he wanted was the gate of La Colonne Détruite to clang shut, its padlock restored.

  The Mauck turned the corner and vanished. Mr. Greenjeans unraveled the chain and sealed everything up, then he too receded. All that was left was a nip of wind to sting Tull’s eyes.

  A station wagon of tourists cruised slowly down and stopped.

  “Excuse me, but do you know where Nic Cage lives?” asked the driver, a sunny man in short sleeves.

  “He moved,” said Tull.

  The man turned to his wife and said, “Apparently, he moved.” The wife turned to the kids and said, “He moved.”

  “Where?” asked an older boy. “Yeah, where!” said the girl. “I don’t know,” said the mother, glancing down at her Maps to Stars Homes. She turned back to her husband. He was about to ask again, but the boy and his
steadfast friend had already begun the lonesome trudge to Saint-Cloud.

  CHAPTER 16

  Advocates

  An Amaryllis is one of the easiest

  plants to grow as well as to save

  from year to year. Only a few

  simple procedures are needed.

  —www.plantconnection.com

  When we left Amaryllis last, it was dawn. Gilles Mott had invited her into his East Edgeware bakery, which she entered like a prisoner led to gallows.

  Instead of wooden steps and rope, she was greeted by metal trays heaped with tarts, even day-olds she recognized as items Topsy had shared during underbridge idylls. She pecked at the almond-and-pomegranate treats and remembered bringing them home to the babies—thinking of them suddenly, alone in the void, pierced her heart so that she swooned; Gilles, already on the phone to his wife, said a few words, then hung up, coming to comfort as best he could.

  Lani Mott, being a trained, sworn-in volunteer advocate, was required by law to call the child-abuse hotline, and thus set in motion a series of events we will roughly sketch. On this day, the dependency system worked with unusual efficiency. The police arrived at Frenchie’s within the hour (Mrs. Mott had preceded them) and Amaryllis was taken to Rampart Detectives—the very precinct she and Topsy circumvented an eternity ago. Lani followed in her Saab.

  In transit, the crying girl huddled against the shoulder of the policewoman in back of the squad car. The officer tried to engage her—she had a daughter of her own—to no avail. At the station, Lani and little Jane Doe were taken to a snug room next to the homicide suites. There, a utility table sported neatly arranged rows of stuffed animals, books and crayons, and a near–life size plastic gorilla. An aged TV was fixed high on the wall. The policewoman turned on cartoons before making a last, futile effort to learn her name, where she lived and how her parents might be reached. When the lady left, Amaryllis sheepishly asked if this was the place where her babies had been brought. She clammed up when Lani dug deeper.