by Bruce Wagner
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.
The 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.
&nb
sp; 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.
There were photo flashes as Diane Keaton walked through the gate on the arm of John Burnham (she and Ralph were still seeing each other but had decided to arrive separately), and it was only a coincidence that Boulder Langon and her mother arrived just after. The starlet gave the wannest of smiles to the paparazzi before hurrying along to join the group from Four Winds—Mr. Hookstratten, his lanky friend Reed and the teachers and nurses and flight crew from the world tour. All the globe-trotting kids were there, too, shocked and shivering, deflowered by death.
Trinnie stoically held the hands of son and niece, and, as the casket was lowered, at last began to fall apart. When she saw them watching her, she smiled like a valiant dying superhero: “He loved you,” she said. “He so loved you!”
While his mother gently released the warm water of a sea sponge over his spindly chest, Edward used to speak of the potter’s field his cousin visited that famed stowaway afternoon. Toulouse had told him the plaques were inscribed with years instead of names—that’s what Edward said he wanted. But she couldn’t bear to listen—and could not bear it now, could not bear to have him in the earth without his name as a marker. She had violated her son’s request and begged his forgiveness. Joyce felt a bottomless pang of loneliness for him, but soon there would be others crowding around—the “gang.” She knew how sardonic yet welcoming he would be. He would disperse their fears like doves into the air, and call them by their new names.
The first clump of earth was shoveled in.
After the funeral, a large reception was held on Stradella. Cavernous tents were pitched over heroic amounts of food, and visitors—some, there for the first time, marveling at the cobblestoned village—filed through the Boar’s Head to admire the masks Edward had created and the tidy rows of those he’d been crafting at the time of his death. (Candelaria and her elves had made the place spotless.) Ordinarily, such trespass would be anathema, but Lucy and Toulouse felt expansive as the crowds ogled deferentially; they stood to the side like proud curators, their burden for the moment lightened as it was shared.
Trinnie accepted a number of hugs, then pleaded exhaustion and told her son she was going home. Now her grief arrived, borne aloft by the pallbearers of her relatively young life’s every regretful moment. Our stay on earth was suddenly exposed as tenuous at best, and of exceeding short term—what if it had been Toulouse they were busy burying? She shuddered at the ease with which the image came. She was perverse; she had no regard for the sanctity of this world or any other; she was a wastrel who ruined everything she touched. Marcus had an excuse! He had myth and pathology on his side—and yet, there he was doing the brave thing, battling his demons, bloody and unbowed. For her, it was business as usual: still playing in the garden and flirting with disaster. Edward was stone-dead and now, on top of everything, Toulouse must factor that in, his fragile worldview further rocked. At least he had the role model of his father, a father at war, kind and courtly, fervid, mysterious, brimming with remorse and amends—real amends—back from a hell ten thousand times worse than any of the self-pitying, insipidly pornographic soap operas this brassy golden girl’s rehabs had ever provided. There she was, a twat ingenue who could only be counted on to pick up her toys and vanish, and who dared feel justified because that’s what he, Marcus, husband and eternal old flame, had done … done to her.
The men in suits waved Trinnie through. She saw him right away, stepping from the Town Car; he must have arrived only moments before. Dressed in dark navy, with a great shock of hair and a week’s growth of beard, he wore a recherché vulnerability that drew her in.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for Marcus Weiner.”
Startled by this roan-headed woman (handsome and exotic to him as well) and unable to put the pieces together, he said, with a smile both broad and nervous, “I am Marcus Weiner.”
“It’s Trinnie.”
He still looked perplexed, so she held out her hand.
“Katrina Trotter. We were once married.”
†Once Trinnie had decided to aid her son, Detective Dowling contacted the Motts (who had not let up in asking after Marcus anyway) and laid the whole astonishing thing out: how, independent of aka William, the street-savvy waif had insinuated herself into the bosom of the Trotter clan. That was a mind-blower. Lani subsequently had a lively conversation with Katrina Berenice Trotter, who was funny, easygoing and acerbic. (By the time they spoke, the CASA extraordinaire had supplemented her working knowledge of the famous family with numerous Internet forays.) When Lani discreetly referred to the almost supernatural far-fetchedness of Marcus and Amaryllis’s skid-row alliance—without mentioning anything relating to his incarceration—Trinnie said indeed it was a weird thing, but her voice was flat and distracted and she made a dry cliché about life someti
mes being stranger than fiction. Yet before they got off the phone, Trinnie had warmed to the topic. She said she’d debated about putting the kids in touch at all, then decided it would be unfair to be censorious. They were good kids, she said, and without having met her “Tull,” Lani wholeheartedly agreed. Toulouse—his “full” name, the mom explained—had intermittently spoken of Amaryllis for months, but Trinnie said that until rather recently, the adults were of a mind that there had been enough excitement surrounding the girl already. So at first, she wasn’t eager to reward the delinquent clique’s behavior by tying their special friend to Marcus Weiner in nearly cosmic fashion. Things were different now, she said. They had stabilized; months had passed, and the phantasmagoric aspect of it had diminished. Everyone seemed to be getting on with their lives.
CHAPTER 46
Forgotten Prayers
“This is so strange!”
“Yes.”
“Your letters were nice.”
“It was difficult—to know what to say.”
“It’s difficult now.”
