I'll Let You Go

by Bruce Wagner

  “He left her?”

  “They said maybe he had mental problems.”

  “My mom had mental problems. My dad left her, too. They never got married.”

  “She went kind of nuts after that. She took drugs—a lot. She was in and out of hospitals.”

  “They never found him?”

  “No.”

  “My father’s in jail. In the Valley.”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. They noticed him, but he declined to be present.”

  He kicked a stone with his foot.

  “My mom was in the hospital for drugs, too,” said Amaryllis.

  “Where is she?”

  “Someone killed her.”

  “Killed her?” He was incredulous. “Do they know who did it?”

  “She knew lots of bad people. She sold me once to a woman, for drugs.”

  “God, Amaryllis!”

  “Toulouse—you’re not going to leave me, are you?”

  “No! Why would I leave you?”

  “Because of all the things that happened to me? And for what I did … back at the—”

  “You didn’t do anything. I even liked it.”

  “No you didn’t. I only thought that—I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s all OK. We’re going to help you. Edward and Lucy—”

  “I don’t want anybody’s help!”

  He knew it had come out wrong.

  “Toulouse … do you love me?”

  “Do I love you?”

  “I want to know.”

  “Well—yes!” It wasn’t as if he didn’t; he loved her with all his heart. It was just that he’d never said that to a girl before. “I love you,” he said, and it wasn’t so hard. Fun, even: “I do love you.” He put his arms around her and kissed her—rather professionally at that, thanks to the tutelage of Lucille Rose.

  She started to cry. “I don’t want to go back to that place. To MacLaren …”

  “You’re not, Amaryllis. You won’t. You’ll never have to go back, OK? I’ll get my grandfather to—”

  A scattering of pebbles through dust as Pullman kicked past, barking. A shout from the maze’s entrance.

  “Hey, Tull! Tull! Toulouse!” (People were actually beginning to call him that.)

  “You in there?”

  “Coming!” Then: “It’s my mother—just stick to the story.” But she’d already forgotten the story. “You don’t have to talk. You’re shy, OK? And you don’t speak English that well.”

  Trinnie appeared at the end of the allée as a figure seen through the wrong end of an opera glass. “Ahoy!” The children walked toward her; Amaryllis smelled the familiar attar of myrtle as the lady approached. Her brown-speckled pants, white shirt, and orange hair made her look like a perfect cigarette.

  “I see you have company!”

  “What’s your name?” whispered Toulouse, a bit frantically; a detail he’d carelessly neglected. “What’s your name?”

  Amaryllis was truly stymied; by then, the woman was upon them.

  “Well, hello!”

  “Mom, this is—Amar. We met in Marrakesh.”

  “I am so jealous!”

  “She’s the consul’s daughter.”

  “Hello, Amar! What a lovely name. She’s gorgeous.”

  “She’s only here for a few weeks.”

  “Well, we’re happy to have you! Diane has so many stories—she showed me a picture of you and Dex on an elephant. Did you know,” she said to Toulouse, “those were the first pictures I’d seen of le grand tour? My son, Amar”—turning her full charm on the orphan—“is not very interested in photo documentation, as you may or may not know. I got him a digital camera and it just sits. I was so brutally envious I wasn’t there—I love the Sahara—it was obscene the way I carried on, wasn’t it, Tull? But I was taking care of Lauren Hutton, a dear friend of mine, who got in a terrible crash. I adore Marrakesh! I was there with Donna Karan and Lee Radziwill—at Dar Tamsna—that’s in the Palmaraie, do you know it? Well, of course you do. Was that already eight years ago?”

  The question was put to the social ether; Toulouse hated when his mother went on, dropping names like an idiot—hated that some horrible part of her was reflexively trying to impress “Amar” in order to actually insinuate herself into the exotic preteen orbit of an imaginary consul’s daughter. The humility she seemed to have acquired the last few months was falling away in noisome chunks; he wondered if she was stoned.

  “Did you know I was there with your grandmother? Bluey, oh yes. And Truman—how they adored each other! You still haven’t read any of Truman’s books, have you, Toulouse? I’ll get you A Tree of Night … my God—I was about your age,” she said, looking at “Amar,” “when I first met that astonishing little man. So: your father’s the consul! Tell me everything.”

  “Ma, don’t give her the third degree.”

  “I’ve barely said a word to her,” she said, looking at him as if he were insane. She turned back to the girl. “We must have a dinner. Is your father here on business?”

  Amaryllis stammered, but their attention was drawn to the puzzle’s entrance, where Pullman caracoled, playfully ducking his head. A man in a suit walked toward them. He did not recognize the girl in the demure princess-style spaghetti-strapped silk organza dress and matching bolero, which Lucy had bought for her birthday, at Saks—and not merely because her hair was shorn and she had fattened. Seeing her in context of the Trotter’s Bel-Air manse and being introduced to her, with such certainty, as the daughter of a Moroccan consul, was so wildly disparate from the circumstances of the dun-colored room in which he’d interviewed her last that Samson’s mind refused to make the connection. Luckily, the girl, though recognizing the detective, was too startled to betray herself and gave away nothing but a marmoreal calm. Toulouse braced himself for the treacherous shoals of banal conversational inquiry when fortune smiled on them again—a hideous, rhythmical scream penetrated the air, panicked and desperate, soul-rending.

  “It’s Mother!” said Trinnie, and flew from the maze.

  Samson jogged after, but when Toulouse began to follow, the orphan held him back.

  †Because the children adored her and truly did mean well, they could not foresee that what began as derring-do, a “homeless project” if you will, could neither be sustained nor come to good end. But they had rescued her and were so fated, thus cannot be judged.

  CHAPTER 32

  Les Miz

  Bursting from the boxwood, this is what first Trinnie, then Samson, saw: Bluey, in favored negligee that unfavorably revealed her anatomy, sprinting past with spatula in hand, followed by a pink-faced Winter, the former shrieking like a parrot in maddening metronomic intervals while making a beeline for the Len Brackett–designed Pine-Lute Pavilion doghouse. Bluey clambered in double time.

  “Mother! Winter, my God, what is going on?”

  “I was helping with her album! She said she was hungry!”

  The hyperventilating nanny looked close to collapse.

  “Calm down, Winter,” said Samson.

  “But what happened—”

  “I asked if she wanted breakfast in the kitchen … she’s been locked in that bedroom for weeks … she said she did. I thought it’d be good for her!—”

  “Why is she carrying that fucking spatula?”

  “I was about to serve her eggs, and she grabbed … she—” (here, Winter began to lose it) “—threw the eggs in my face! Said I was trying to kill her!” The detective noticed some evidence of yellowish residue in her hair, which would support her assertions. “I was serving her breakfast!—”

  The shrieks continued from the villa unabated, interrupted by an occasional bark.

  Trinnie bent to her knees and looked in. “Pullman, you get out of there!”

  “Why don’t we call a doctor?” offered Samson.

  “Mother, would you come out, please?”

  “I am an old woman!” Bluey shouted. “And I wi
ll not die today, whether Winter likes it or not!”

  The anguished Icelander looked imploringly at Samson, who gave a small nod of empathy.

  “Oh my God. Mother! Do we have to call the paramedics? Is that what you want? Do you want the paramedics to go in there and grab you?”

  Bluey began to shriek again and Pullman to roar, while Winter wept and Trinnie raged, and it was under this chaotic cover that the children made their getaway.

  Approximately one hour later, in the vaulted quiet of Olde CityWalk’s Majestyk Theater, an emergency summit was called. Amaryllis reverted to her watchful, closemouthed street ways, fearing, however irrationally, a reversal of fortune and speedy return to the Canyon realm of Earlymae Woolery. What she did share with the small circle was this: Samson Dowling was the very cop who had “arrested” her, booking her into MacLaren.

  The exciting development was discussed from every possible angle. There was general discombobulation at the fact that the same man once hired by Grandpa Lou to find Marcus Weiner—the same man whose name had been first broached in the sanctum sanctorum of Tabori & Co.—the same man who had summered with Trotter familia before any of them were even born and now just happened to be cohabiting with their beloved aunt and mother (Toulouse averted his eyes, not wanting to “go there”)—was the infernal bloodhound now after their adored Amaryllis! The diabolical enormity of it left Edward astonished and invigored, and his grateful sister ecstatic at such a plot twist; made to order and delivered by hand. Toulouse was merely angry, and mindful of Amaryllis’s safety.

  “It’s Les Misérables!” cried the authorette, beside herself. “Samson is Inspector Javert! And she,” said Lucy, turning to the orphan with what struck the latter as an accusatory air, “is Cosette! Amaryllis is Cosette.”

  A plan was hatched. Until now, she had been shacking up in the rear parlor of the Black Lantern Book Shoppe—but that place had been deemed unsafe in the long term; Candelaria and her minions were notorious for scouring storefront innards and cobblestone without warning, especially when the children were at school. (There had already been a few close calls.) Amaryllis would now be secreted away in the attic of the cousin’s apartments, an aerie accessible only by rope ladder. Seeing the look on the girl’s face upon hearing his proclamation, Edward assured her there was nothing in the old belfry but discarded masks and paintbrushes, a detail that only served to frighten her more. In this way, reasoned Edward—the attic way—the likelihood of surprise attacks by Candelaria’s crack troops would be severely diminished, as the invalid’s quarters were strictly off-limits to the unannounced visits of parent or staff. It was agreed, then: while brother and sister breezily took to the Four Winds, Amaryllis would remain sequestered in the manner of Anne Frank (the allusion was Lucy’s), at least until her freedom could be properly secured. So it was with a measure of exhilaration that the gang, excepting of course Edward and Pullman, ascended the rope like fledgling acrobats. Once she landed, Amaryllis practiced stowing the roll-up ladder, replacing the square wedge of dislocated floor that sealed her in, et cetera. Mission accomplished, shakes and hamburgers were ordered in.

  What the children, precocious as they were (which was precocious indeed) yet with more a taste for melodrama than for the actual cruelties that may be visited upon us by the world—what the children could not have known was, at that very moment of mobilization, all their worst fears, fueled more by adrenaline and active imaginations than anything else, were being realized. The wheels of juvenile justice were already turning.

  After much Sturm und Drang, Pullman’s teahouse was restored to him. A doctor was summoned and the old woman was sedated. They bundled her up in a cashmere throw and laid her in the back of the Silver Seraph for the drive to Cedars. Louis, in sharp houndstooth coat, held her dear, limp hand, wiping periodic tears that gathered to tremble in the corner of his eyes.

  When Bluey was settled in, Trinnie told the detective she was tired and not in the mood for the dinner they’d planned. He drove back to the El Royale wondering, as a younger man had earlier that very long day, if the honeymoon was over.

  Samson Dowling was level-headed enough to know that Trinnie had always loomed larger for him than he for her—from even before she fell under the thumb of a ghost. He had always wanted her, and what he’d fantasized about for years had finally happened; yet they were connected through him, her husband, and when they made love, he had the unnerving sense of being part of a séance. Sometimes as they lay in bed afterward she would ask him, like a child, to tell her the story of how Marcus had been found at St. John’s in the Wilderness or how he had looked that time when Samson first saw him or what the hospital that he and her father had taken him to was like—and how it was again that Marcus had escaped …

  Dive, be not fearful how dark the waves flow;

  Sink through the surge, and bring pearls up to me;

  Deeper, ay, deeper; the fairest lie low …

  Sitting alone with his cocktail, the detective found his mouth suddenly forming a word: “Amaryllis.”

  My God.

  He conjured her face, then said the name aloud …

  Amaryllis?

  He dialed MacLaren. There was no one he knew on duty, so it took a while to get confirmation that, yes, Amaryllis Kornfeld had gone AWOL during a field trip last month. Jesus. How the hell could she have wound up with the Trotter kids? That meant he would have to drive over to Saint-Cloud. He would have to bother Trinnie or wake her up or do whatever—would have to tell her about the AWOL girl and bother her son about it, too. Oh shit. She just wouldn’t be in the mood. The intrusion would seem bogus, some cockamamie bullshit he’d come up with to get next to her. If the honeymoon was over, this could be just the thing to push them into Divorce World. Still, it had to be done. We’re talking about a homicide here. And a girl, a minor, a ward of the dependency court, who’s out there. Floating.

  He swigged his drink and reluctantly picked up the phone. If they stonewalled him, he’d tell the staff it was an emergency and that he needed to talk to Katrina right away.

  By ten o’clock the next morning, William had finished his baking chores in the SeaShelter kitchen. He strolled to the farmers’ market on Main Street. Amid wealthy housewives, their punnets filled with feta and white mulberries, he bought his precious pomegranates. They were in season now, brick-red and unbruised and of glistening pulp. He would make a chutney for his sweet lady Jane Scull, with shallots sautéed in grapeseed oil, the red seeds folded in with molasses, kumquats and fat Jordan dates, ras el hanout and zest. He watched children ride the ponies—so many children!—then walked to the high-end hostelry called Shutters, where he summoned a cab. He gave the driver the Public Storage address and said he’d be making a round trip.

  Eighteen months ago, he had paid in advance and had worn the key to the garage-size space about his neck ever since. The downtown structure occupied several acres beneath a swooping freeway on-ramp; guided by William’s sure hand, the taxi proceeded down this lane and that, like a hearse on its way to the grave. He bade it stop, then stepped out, fitting the key with some trouble. He sweated, jigging it; the lock finally sprang. He went in.

  The room was cool and empty. A rag on the floor proved on closer examination to be a rat, long extinct, bringing him briefly back to encampment days. An overturned milk crate sat in the center of the room, where he had last left it, like a prop on a stage. On top was a junky file cabinet drawer; and within, the leather-bound record of his itinerant education. He used to sit in this sanctuary and write down his thoughts, but had soon stopped all that, overcome by the Laocoönean struggle of daily life.

  He reached through a spiderweb and took up the volume, opening its cover:

  … Hereafter follows the book itself which is called News from Nowhere, or An Epoch of Rest & is written by William Morris.

  Jane visited a clinic that she thought would rid her of the child but was told it was too late. And still no one knew, no one but (horror of horrors!) Pl
ease-Help.-Bless. For they had been intimate and he had caressed her belly as Jilbo had done, and licked every place with his tongue. The baby became a third party to their intimacies; he said he could change the features of its fetal face with the tip of what he had between his legs (he never tired of dispensing this bit of folk wisdom). He went roughly in both holes, and even Jilbo had not done that. The only thing that kept her from coming completely undone was that she had not yet been with her William in a lover’s way, not for lack of desire but because of his courtly, thoughtful manner. She did desire him (there would be time enough for that when they married), but for now did him the favor of forbearance, one William returned, for it was the most beautiful, refined favor, built upon Godly love. If they had been together as such, and she with the demon Please-Help.-Bless after—why, then Jane would already have thrown herself in front of a big Blue Bus! For how could she have lain with her gentleman again, after being sucked and prodded by that diseased, invidious harpy, that snide and limping carbuncle, the wheedling agent of her precious William’s destruction?

  The gimp had one day followed her, pinning her to a wall; though thin and rickety, there was strength in him too and what he had to say nearly crippled her.

  “I know yer boy!” he rasped. She smelled the stink of his purulent gums. “I know yer boy Topsy from Adam! From day one! I seen you with him. He was a good boy once—helped with my sign. Then got kinked—like his friend with the tore-up dawg; got ridda him, too. Ain’ none of ’em right in the head, jus’ like you! Come down to the beach and shave that big beard, he did. Don’t wear that fancy suit no more so no one’ll find ’im. So what. So shit what. I find ’im. I know yer boy. He fuck the kiddies, that’s what he do. Kill some lady too, thas right! They lookin’ fer him—I’m tight with who’s lookin’, all right? Man with a gold shield. Ahm tellin’ you this is serious shit—Gold Shield gave me the hewhaw to help find ’im. ’Cause I know the streets. Gold Shield ain’ gonna rest ’fore he find yer boy! They look to me, all right? An’ there I walks straight into him! An’ him, with you—he’s yer boy! Fuckin’ you too, huh? Fuckin’ an’ suckin’ you an’ the kiddies, tha’s right.”