I'll Let You Go

by Bruce Wagner

  “Marcus, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Anything, sir!”

  The former colleagues had been rehashing the good old days at Morris. It wasn’t John Burnham’s first time chez Weiner; just last week, Marcus and his wife had invited the agent for dinner with Diane Keaton and Gus Van Sant (another Burnham client). The group had salivated over their host’s seared Kobe rib eye, DHL’d the day before from Japan.

  “This might sound a little unusual, but—what you’ve been through—your life—is really kind of … amazing. Have you thought of doing anything with it?”

  “Doing anything?”

  “Writing it down.”

  “The baker said I should try that very thing!”

  “The baker?”

  “Gilles Mott. Said I’d win an Oscar—some such claptrap. One of my therapists encouraged me to keep a journal. Used to do just that. Afraid I haven’t been very religious about it lately.”

  “You wrote?”

  “Oh yes, kept a book for years.”

  “While you were out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “A journal …”

  “Called News from Nowhere.”

  “I love that. Would I be able to see it? ‘For my eyes only.’ Or, if it’s too personal—”

  “Not at all. I have it somewhere, hidden in the house. Give me a day to find it! Become somewhat of a rabbit warren here, I’m afraid.”

  “You know, Gus really loved meeting you. He mentioned something to me that might be kind of an amazing opportunity. I think he’s interested in doing a film about you.”

  “A film?”

  “Did you have a chance to see Good Will Hunting?”

  “Not since you spoke of it. Been a bit derelict. Toulouse and I were going to rent it.”

  “You really should look at it.”

  “Katy said it’s quite marvelous.”

  “It’s a wonderful film—aside from the fact that it’s Gus. Good Will took a lot of people by surprise, because it was mainstream without really being mainstream. And this from the man who made Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. Not exactly Middle America! Gus can do it all.”

  He screwed up his eyes and said, “Now, what do you mean, John, when you say he wants to make a film about me?”

  “Gus was incredibly moved by your story—your journey. He’s looking for something to do next. He wants to do something ‘smaller,’ and I think this could be it—though this might be a little ‘bigger’ than what he’s looking for … but I think it could totally work. There’s a book called A Beautiful Mind, have you heard of it? At one point, Gus was interested in developing it—it’s a pretty amazing story. Ron Howard did it. Russell Crowe. It’s about a professor at Princeton—a true story—who kind of dropped out for twenty years because of his schizophrenia. They let him roam the campus, that sort of thing. He wasn’t violent or anything—is it weird for me to be talking about this?”

  “Not at all, John! Talk away!”

  “Then he had this incredible recovery and they wound up giving him the Nobel Prize in economics.”

  “I don’t think there’s a likely chance of such a thing happening in my case,” said Marcus sardonically. “Though if they gave a prize for walking, I might get one.”

  “I mention it because I think that while Gus is drawn to that kind of screenplay or book—stories with certain ‘elements’—the fact that this one, your story, is so personable … and I don’t think he wants to do the whole campus thing again, which he’s done and which A Beautiful Mind kind of heavily gets into. He wants to go more the Charlie Kaufman route. But what I needed to know, what I wanted to ask was, would you be interested in him pursuing that? Because Gus was very specific about not wanting to offend or intrude. And I, certainly, as your friend—and possible agent!—wouldn’t want you to become involved in anything that’s going to make you uncomfortable. I wouldn’t even bring something like this to the table if it was anyone but Gus. He expressed the interest; I didn’t pitch him. Gus is a genius. He gets it. He’s an artist. And Good Will made about $250 million! I asked if you’d written anything for two reasons. One, because that’s something I would be interested in reading personally and possibly passing to someone in New York if we felt there was a book there, or if you felt a book could be something that might help you or be valuable in your recovery or journey or process. Or even if you just wanted to do a book to see what it felt like to be an author who suddenly has a book on the shelves. Because—bam!—you’re a bestselling author. The agency could do that. And, two, because Gus would be totally open to you writing the screenplay.”

  “Me? John, you’re kidding!”

  “There’s a tremendous ‘independent’ focus, and we are very strong in that area. Gus bridges both worlds. Do I think that with his help you could write a great script? Absolutely. The old rules don’t apply. And, Marcus: if you write the same way you talk, the potential is amazing.”

  “Well, I’m flattered, John—I think.” He chuckled. “And if you’d like me to meet with Gus, I’d be more than happy to. A very interesting man, very humble. I like that.”

  Marcus walked Burnham to his scintillating Facel-Vega. They chatted about their kids, and the agent asked after his father-in-law.

  “Marcus,” said Burnham. “Would you please come by?”

  “Come by?”

  “The agency—whenever it feels right. I think it’d be great, or interesting anyway, for you to see the changes that have happened since you were away.”

  “You’re not going to offer me a job, are you, John?”

  “It crossed my mind.” They had a laugh. “Seriously, though, lots of people you knew are still doin’ their thing. Doing very well, too. Let me throw you a little coming-out.”

  “Ah. The medicated debutante.”

  Burnham smiled as he switched on the engine. “Gus called me four times the day after our dinner. He was really moved—that story you told about the dream you had … about the ‘disembodied’—”

  “The Chairman of the Disembodied.”

  “The Chairman of the Disembodied! Great title, don’t you think? You could call the book or the movie that—The Chairman of the Disembodied. I love that. Anyway, it really blew Gus’s mind.”

  “Well, it surely blew mine,” he said. Burnham waved good-bye, then mischievously peeled some rubber.

  Marcus repeated the words sotto voce: “it surely blew mine.”

  †Of late, Katrina allowed herself the occasional social drink; and while it may seem politically incorrect to note, her decision was—and remained—a most sober one.

  CHAPTER 50

  Misery House

  Carry me out

  Into the wind and the sunshine,

  Into the beautiful world.

  —W. E. Henley

  Toulouse and Amaryllis returned to the maze to complete the tour interrupted months ago. They strolled within its tall borders, and had no fear of becoming lost. Pullman lay at the entrance, supremely bored.

  He confessed his indiscretion with Lucille Rose on the eve of her crossing “the Pond” (as his cousin liked to put it), and Amaryllis didn’t seem to mind; she had won the war, so it was easy to concede a battle or two. She kissed him deeply, in front of the inset Rodin, to show her willingness to forgive and forget.

  “I’ve been thinking about something,” she said. “And I don’t want you to make fun of me.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “I’ve been thinking about John Paul.”

  “John Paul George and Ringo?”

  “I told you not to make fun of me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I was talking about the pope. I used to do a lot of thinking about John Paul, and I had this idea … you promise you won’t make fun?”

  “I won’t. I swear.”

  “Well for a long time—a long time—I wanted to be a saint. I wanted him
to make me a saint. But I thought only Catholic people could be made into saints and they had to have lived a long time ago. Like centuries. Then I found out it wasn’t true and John Paul wanted to make as many saints as he could, so he changed all the rules. Now you only need one miracle for beatification, and one for canonization—that’s when he makes you a saint.”

  “You don’t have to be dead?”

  “I thought you did, but John Paul says no. John Paul is rad! He even made eighty-seven Chinese people saints. And he canonized a society lady from Philadelphia—someone just like Joyce.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I bet your grandfather would be able to meet John Paul. He could fly to the Vatican on his plane. If the pope was too busy or sick or whatever—then your grandfather could give the Vatican money or build an orphanage. Something to get his attention. Then John Paul would have to meet with him.”

  “Meet with him? For what?”

  “For Edward.”

  Toulouse just looked at her.

  “Edward was a martyr to the Apert—martyrs don’t even need miracles to get beatified. Then John Paul could put him on a fast track.”

  “Amaryllis, are you kidding?”

  “I told you not to laugh!”

  “I’m not. But a saint …”

  “Edward was a saint.”

  “But you said you needed a miracle to be ‘canon—’ ”

  “There is a miracle—it came to me when I was with my brother and sister at California Adventure. I think Edward was put here for a reason, and no one knew it but him. He was put here for Joyce so she would take care of those babies! The ones people throw in the trash. Otherwise, why would she have done that, Toulouse? Why would she have even started to do it? It was because of him, because of Edward, and I think he must have known all along. Remember how you said at the funeral she was crying because she never named him? That’s the proof! He had no name because he was pure. It’s like he was ‘of God’—how do you give God a name? And don’t make fun of me! And now Joyce names those poor little babies, Toulouse, that’s her life’s work! She made a potter’s field in a rich man’s graveyard. For a woman like that—and I don’t even know her that well, but I do know what you and Lucy and Edward always said about her—for a rich lady who doesn’t care about anyone and who just gets face-lifts, for a rich lady like that to bury those dumpster babies and give them names, to make that her life’s work, well, that is a miracle, isn’t it, Toulouse? Isn’t it? Isn’t that a miracle?”

  Marcus met with Van Sant, and with a writer from Vanity Fair. But one had nothing to do with the other.

  The meetings took place at the William Morris Agency on El Camino Drive. This time, he stared at the oil paintings of the founders to his heart’s content.

  He was greeted warmly, if as a kind of charismatic curio, by the many to whom he was introduced. He was frankly startled that he ever had a passion for anything that went on in this cold brick building; though appreciative of Burnham’s intentions, he would soon put an end to the misguided efforts of his gemütlich old friend. Marcus found it amusing that the agent actually harbored the fantasy that he might wish to return, in whatever capacity, to the world of “talent”—as what? Mental-Health liaison? The Van Sant business he didn’t particularly mind; Gus was the real article, and he’d let that play itself out, to be sociable. He would say no to Vanity Fair; when he told Burnham—“Say no to Vanity Fair”—the unintentioned hilarity of the command made them split a gut. But a line had been drawn in the sand and Burnham understood. Trinnie couldn’t have been happier; his behavior in the matter was the ultimate proof of sanity.

  On Christmas morning, he arranged to meet Trinnie, Toulouse and his father-in-law at Saint-Cloud. It was a joyous surprise when he rolled up in a pristine aqua-blue Chevy convertible (a Bel-Air, fittingly), having passed his driver’s exam a mere three days before. Mr. Trotter declined, so he took his wife and son for a spin to the beach. They drove all the way to Palos Verdes, then around the peacock-infested peninsula to Portuguese Bend. They ate hamburgers and watched surfers.

  Trinnie had her own surprise. At dusk, after dropping off the boy, they switched seats and she drove downhill to Carcassone Way. The cold wind snapped at their burnished cheeks, and they were happy. When they reached the driveway of La Colonne, she pushed the remote on her key chain and the gate swung open; the padlock days were no more.

  “I had to do this,” she said as they walked the short distance to the tower. “I know I’m insane—but I had to.”

  Entering the house, still lit by a stubbornly dying sun, Marcus slowly apperceived. It was filled with housewarming furniture and just-opened gifts, ribbons and wrappers torn off in a careless bacchanal. The kitchen was redolent of “leftovers,” painstakingly re-created only this morning by Saint-Cloud chefs from archival recipes, their exact placement on stove, pot and dishes culled from “crime-scene” sketches commissioned by La Colonne curators—the same white-truffle risotto cooked in the late hours of their wedding night after a first round of lovemaking. The sheer recovered memory of it all, the audaciously micromanaged authenticity … the touching, nearly macabre care his wife had poured into presentation and conceit—part spectacle, part performance-theater—sent Marcus’s heart to stifle his throat.

  He went up to view her handiwork, with Trinnie nervously trailing after. Whenever he smiled or shook his head in wonderment, she did the same; and when the light that shone from his face darkened at some fleeting, unvoiced thought, she inadvertently mimicked his mood like the most sorrowful of mimes. Occasionally, he bent to the floor to retrieve an article of clothing or slip of paper—say, a receipt from ’87 with his signature—and muttered his astonishment, to which Trinnie would say with an anxious smile, “I know, I know—I’m insane, I told you …” Then he would calm her with a caress or a look of such kindness that she thought: now we can truly face anything.

  More investigations: darting in and out of cupboard and closet, drawer, nook and cranny (most of the middle floors were empty, as Louis had only provisionally furnished “lobby” and topmost floor), and for a moment it seemed like the very air of that time was transported intact from some fabulous interdimensional holding zone, flying mites, motes and all. It took his breath away and reminded him of the daring, the scope and wild apprehension, of the girl he’d left behind: remarkable creature! Naturally, he’d have been drawn to her, and she to him with his cracked mind—that was her passion and folly—and now here they were strolling through the crackedness of both, room by room, floor by floor, until they reached the master suite. This time there sat the four-poster in the Moroccan style, the one they had made Toulouse in. He swore he could smell their young bodies there.

  By now it was dark. He sat on the bed, and Trinnie lit candles as she had years ago. They took off their clothes, eager and ritualized. When he came in her, she was sure she had conceived again.

  “Shall we stay over?” he said.

  “It’s like that horror film, isn’t it?” she laughed. “The House on Haunted Hill? You know—if you can remain without being scared shitless you win the inheritance.”

  They listened to the wind and soon he drifted to sleep. She stared at his rugged, beautiful face, and it was not hard to imagine that he had never gone away. Fourteen years … what was fourteen years in the scheme of things?

  The jealous moon glared, all full of itself. “If he’s gone in the morning,” it seemed to say, “then you’ll belong to me forever.” Trinnie told the moon it had a deal.

  Morning, with its inescapable light—and majestic indifference. Morning, unbecoming—neither birth nor death nor even Time itself can woo it. Morning: that outruns the lightest of heart, and makes undone the rest.

  She heard Marcus brushing his teeth. She was glad she hadn’t reconnected the phones; she shivered with the memory of her father’s calls—then Dodd’s—then her father’s—then Samson’s—and her father’s and Dodd’s again and Bluey’s and Samson’s
and her father’s again and again and again until she could pick up no more. Bluey and Winter had finally come and spirited her to Saint-Cloud.

  He appeared in the rococo door frame and smiled, toothbrush in hand. She ran and wrapped her legs around him like a child, so her feet touched soles at the small of his back; he carried her down that way—for all four flights they were conjoined—then walked her to the vast lawn, where they spun around and around, their dervish movements banishing anything that remained of old specters—that tragic and befuddled young woman who had searched futilely for her Gothic groom.

  “Hey! Hey!”

  Epitacio smiled frantically, waving from the Silver Seraph as it raced up the drive. The first thing that went through Trinnie’s mind was that her disapproving father had gotten wind of what she’d been up to (from one of the archivists) and was perhaps in the throes of a sympathetic panic that Marcus had disappeared again. But she didn’t see the old man on the passenger side.

  As he got closer, Epitacio looked to be in a state—his smile wasn’t a smile at all. “It’s your father—”

  “What …”

  “He’s at Cedars!”

  “Oh my God.”

  Marcus opened the door and pushed his wife in. “Take us there!” he commanded.

  They were barefoot and barely dressed.

  When they arrived, Dodd and Winter were in the waiting room of the ICU. Epitacio was dispatched to bring the Weiners clothes from both Saint-Cloud and Cañon Manor; in the meantime, his-and-her VIP-suite bathrobes were proffered.

  “What happened?” asked Trinnie.

  “Winter found him—Dad was in the Withdrawing Room. He collapsed. He was on the floor.”

  “For how long?”

  “We don’t know!” said Winter.

  Dodd put an arm around the woman to shore her up. His secretary, Frances-Leigh, came in, then hung back.

  “The paramedics worked on him for a while. They had trouble getting him—Dad’s heart wouldn’t …”

  Trinnie closed her eyes and groaned.

  Four doctors came to the lounge, including the retired Dr. Kindman, who counted himself as Louis Trotter’s oldest friend. He had treated her as a little girl, and now she went to him for comfort. He clasped her hand while the head man spoke in low, thoughtful tones. “He’s unconscious at this time.”