I'll Let You Go

by Bruce Wagner

  “But—what exactly happened!” said Trinnie.

  “Your father,” he continued, “has suffered a hemorrhage.”

  “Is he going to die?” Dodd asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s fighting. The next forty-eight hours are critical.”

  “Can we see him?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Dodd left the room and squeezed the secretary’s hand as he walked by. Trinnie followed, then grabbed her husband’s arm, saying, “I want you to come.” Winter and Frances-Leigh stayed behind, huddling together like refugees.

  Mr. Trotter lay in a tangled, blood-flecked, intubated nest. After covering the old man’s catheterized penis with a sheet, Marcus stood sentry at the foot of the bed. Dodd, who was not good at this, shifted uncomfortably on the sidelines. Trinnie pulled up a chair and sat beside her dad, holding his hand in hers, smiling and cooing and murmuring that everything would be all right. Her cheeks glistened with tears and she wiped his face. She was certain that his eyes had welled up since their arrival.

  “It’s OK, Papa, it’s OK! We’re here. Dodd and me—and Marcus too. We love you so much! Are you in pain, Papa? If you’re in pain, squeeze once for yes and twice for no. Are you in pain? You’re not in pain? You’re not in pain? That’s good then—he’s not in pain. That’s good … is there anything else you need? Do you need water, Papa? Would you like some water?”

  One of the nurses said he was being “hydrated” but that Trinnie could daub his mouth with a damp towelette, which she did.

  “Is that better, Papa? Because we don’t want you thirsty. Maybe we could get them to put some scotch in that IV bag, huh. Would you like that, Papa? Can you arrange that, Dodd? Because I think it’d be very cool.” She smiled at her brother, then at her husband; she was heartbreaking. “We stayed in the tower last night, Papa. The house you built for our wedding. Can you believe it? We stayed all night and it was so beautiful … I put everything back the way it was—all the things you gave us, all the antiques … we slept like babies! Didn’t we, Marcus?” She drew the towelette across his forehead. “Oh, Papa, I love you so much! You can’t—what will I do without you? What will any of us do?”

  He opened his eyes and smiled.

  “Hello, Papa! Hello, baby! It’s your girl! He’s awake!” she shouted to one of the nurses. “Dodd, he smiled at me! Did you see? Did you see him smile?”

  When she turned back to him, he was smiling no more. “See? You’ll be fine now, Papa. We won’t let you leave just yet, will we, Dodd?”

  “No, no we won’t. There is just no way.”

  “And besides—you haven’t picked your memorial yet!” she said, laughing through her tears. “Has he, Dodd?”

  “He sure hasn’t.”

  “So you can’t leave, Papa, you just can’t. What would the woman at the cemetery say? What was her name, Dodd?”

  “Dot.”

  “Dot—that’s right. What a sweet, funny lady. Well, Dot would have a conniption. Wouldn’t she, Papa?”

  Dr. Kindman interrupted to say that the men needed to perform a procedure and the family could come back in twenty minutes.

  Trinnie caressed her father’s brow. Only one eye was open now; he looked like a gnome whose forest had burned. She bent to kiss his cheek.

  During her ministrations, Dodd’s attention was drawn to his father’s shriveled hand. As the four fingers twitched in unison, he had a shock of recognition, for what he saw he believed to be no purposeless tremor but rather the unmistakable trademark gesture belonging to Louis Aherne Trotter and Louis Aherne Trotter alone—a four-fingered last hurrah that for decades had slipped untold C-notes into the welcoming palms of bellboys, valets, barbers, doormen, gardeners, footmen, chefs, cabbies, housemaids and shine boys.

  Forty-five minutes later, that very hand—having passed off its final currency to God, say, as a grateful token for His services—grew still. And the digger dug no more.

  The funeral was a small, intimate affair, in keeping with the wishes of the deceased. There was no wake, and no ceremony for employees or shareholders.

  When Mr. Trotter crumpled, he was in the Withdrawing Room beside the welter of miniatures. The latest model—Ryue Nishizawa’s corrugated-steel tomb interlaced with slats of ipé, ash, piranha pine and ebonized afromosia (which the architect had titled “Open Plan”)—had broken his fall and was broken in turn. The family chose not to make that a portent; the old man’s choice of memorial remained more cryptic than ever.

  Trinnie’s idea, which no one challenged, was to bury him in the plain green field of his plot; in six months, the family would select from the commissions and build a structure there as he had wished. The irony of this arrangement—“the temporary contemporary,” as Trinnie called it in lighter moments—was that for now, the patriarch’s resting place was even more austere, more anonymous, if you will, than his grandson’s once-controversial domain.

  Joyce elected to pay her respects, and everyone was fine with that. Rose, as she now called herself, flew in from London, looking older if not wiser. She was now in meager though spirited possession of an English accent, and peppered her conversation (outside the cemetery, anyway) with a superabundance of “shite”s and “bollocks.” She wasted no time in letting Toulouse know that there was a plenitude of “Etonians” in her life—“and some of them, Royals.” Naturally, Marcus and his parents were in attendance; Rose greeted them warmly, as a princess moving through an infirmary.

  Trinnie had asked the Motts to please come, and the family stood alongside the man they had once known as William Morris. Amaryllis insisted on wearing the birthday dress Lucy had bought her while she was on the lam, and that proved prescient; though its style was inappropriate for the occasion, the haughty expat was moved by the homage and was more easily able to renew her affections for “the other woman.”

  Samson cut short a snorkeling trip in Fiji. He brought a “date,” an aging-starlet type, and Trinnie thought that rude but figured he was making some kind of I’m-over-you statement. The thwarted detective was partly redeemed when the gal was later introduced as his ex-wife.

  Aside from immediate family members (and Winter, who was not having a good year at all), those hit hardest stood in a group, shivering and bereft: Epitacio, Sling Blade and Dot. The disconsolate chauffeur wept openly, and not since his father had cried over Jane Scull had Toulouse seen such a cruel and alarming thing. His sobs came like great perverted sneezes followed by a train of Ohs! that conspired to sound like a protracted guffaw—one simply could not look away. Sling Blade’s grief took a different tack. His face contorted in a frozen Mardi Gras smile reminiscent of one of the cousin’s workshop masks while he rocked back and forth on his heels and hung on to his elbows for all his life. Now and then a hand leapt to the opposite biceps and scoured it, as if he were a freezing person trying to warm himself.

  Perhaps the most poignant of all was Ms. Campbell. So distraught was the parkland guardian that her sister Ethel had been summoned from the East. Though she knew Mr. Trotter to be repulsed by her fashion sense, Dot was too unmoored and dispirited to dress in his honor, and wound up in the most grotesque costume misery could select, on or off the rack. (Ethel did not fare much better.) As many people were touched as they were chagrined by the clownish sight of her.

  When the body had been lowered, inevitably calling to mind the whirligig boy across the way—when they had taken turns shoveling dirt over the box—after all had stepped back in respectful contemplation—that is when the final mourner arrived.

  Pullman loped to the grave and no one interfered. He circled, tentatively poking his head in the airspace above. Seeing the great hole, he used a paw to push in a clod; if that weren’t enough, roundly and ceremonially chuffed. Some of the mourners swore they heard the old man chuff in return.

  CHAPTER 51

  Restless

  An autopsy revealed that Louis Trotter had exsanguinated into his thoracic cavity. Trinnie attended a meeting at the
law firm that had represented her father for thirty-five years. It was suggested that Cedars-Sinai be sued for employing what the attorneys characterized as a “fatally non-aggressive” treatment plan, the assertion being that their client had died of medical inaction.

  An aneurysm such as his was rare, and the doctors hadn’t caught it; they had attempted to rule out cancer or thyroiditis instead. They admitted being frustrated in their efforts to extract cells during the initial outpatient procedure, and the pathologists now had an understanding of why they had failed. It was speculated that some months ago, a microscopic tear in the decedent’s arterial wall had caused a leakage of blood—the root of Mr. Trotter’s difficulty in closing his collars. The hole had spontaneously repaired and the blood resorbed. Such a “rip” may have had its origin years ago, and been caused by trauma; a car accident or what have you. (There had been a collision with a taxi in Mallorca, but that was in ’85.) The innominate artery had been weakened and filled with “turbulent” blood flow, then burst from its capsule underneath the collarbone that day as the old man leafed through the pages of a recently acquired twelfth-century bestiary.

  Trinnie knew that her father never had any use for hospitals; he was a lousy, irascible patient and saw doctors on his terms, not theirs. He had lived a long and wonderful life and would not have wished a drawn-out lawsuit to be part of his legacy. So while Trinnie was amused that a quantity of physicians were shitting their pants, she forbade the lawyers to proceed.

  On ten o’clock Wednesday morning, they left Burbank by private jet. When they returned, approximately three and a half hours later, they were married—again. The oldlyweds agreed to tell no one, not even Toulouse.

  Why had Trinnie proposed (for Marcus would not have dared)? The reasons were manifold. She was thrilled at the effect he was having on her son. It was as if some magnificent chunk of the boy had been restored—perhaps his heart. He seemed more alive with his daddy in the world, more at ease, more boyish, more manly, more everything. It may have been her pride that colored what she saw, but Trinnie knew he respected Marcus’s native intelligence and eagerly sought him out for all manner of arcana, and was usually more than satisfied with the response. Seeing them together like that—student and mentor—was a coup de foudre.

  Yet it wasn’t just the child they shared. She was forced to admit to her therapist that her husband’s psychosis had always made him more perversely attractive; now it pulled her in deeper still, potentiated by the feeling she had in her bones that he would never leave her—them—again. In the time since his return, Trinnie had become convinced the wrenching dislocation that had transpired between them was actually a good thing; they were now in possession of their own “personal myth,” portable and custom-made, to which they’d been fated, and fated to recover from, too. The past would hold no dominion, and they would be infinitely richer for it.

  In other words, she had fallen in love for a second time.

  The therapist had some concerns. (They always do.)

  The most compelling reason for repeating those vows was the death of her father. The digger had always felt guilty for not having protected her from the beginning; he had built La Colonne out of hubris, and it became their tomb. It didn’t matter that his feelings were irrational—to marry Marcus again would close the circle, and give the old man absolution. Hadn’t she told him on his deathbed that they’d spent the night there? Hadn’t the corner of his mouth turned up in a smile?

  She had lost a man to the tower just as before—sacrificed so the other might stay.

  “Grandma!” shouted Lucy, running to Bluey’s arms.

  Though her name was now officially Rose, she had graciously agreed to fall back on the birth moniker so as not to further confuse our dear cottage resident. The old woman looked stricken; Lucy had forgotten (and Toulouse had failed to remind her) that Bluey didn’t take well to noise or abrupt movement. Even the girl’s clothes were loud—a Lacroix jigsaw-print mini with red tights and lime-green ankle boots. Her grandmother smiled and softened, yet didn’t say a word. Lucy had enough for both of them.

  “Oh, Grandma, I have so much to tell you!” Her accent was still cheap, but she wore it like the crown jewels. “England is so bloody wonderful! Aunt Trinnie said”—“aunt” being pronounced as in the first syllable of “entourage”—“Aunt Trinnie said you used to go there all the time. That you were a ‘regular’—crossing the Pond on the Queen Mary, I mean. Very posh: Port Outward Starboard Home. Did you know that’s what ‘posh’ stood for, Toulouse? At least you weren’t on the Titanic! Aunt Trinnie said you were like a heroine out of Henry James—I’m halfway through Portrait of a Lady, and it’s so you.”

  They set out for the wandering garden. Bluey, having twisted her ankle, now used a wheeled walker to get around; its front legs were thrust through tennis balls, to let it glide. She had lost a good deal of weight and constantly drew her tongue—dried-out from incontinence meds—over chapped lips in a futile attempt to moisten them. She cleared her throat incessantly, as if to dislodge foodstuff caught within, because the Haldol prescribed to squelch her delusions affected the ability to swallow. But she still looked elegant, due to Winter’s heroic ministrations. She wore her favorite Bill Blass and as usual was scrupulously done up for the children’s visit.

  The girl with straightened hair didn’t seem to register any of the sadder nuances that Bluey presented. The cousins had been to visit a number of times since their grandfather’s funeral, and Toulouse was, frankly, sickened by the caricature his relation had become. He hoped it to be a passing phase—he’d heard enough about Miss Hectare and her lord- and ladyships to last a lifetime. Lucy had flaunted the aquamarine ring “Amanda let me borrow” and couldn’t help but inform that it had cost five thousand quid and was designed by none other than the estimable Jade Jagger. He’d seen the charm bracelet she wore around her neck as well—*S*P*O*I*L*M*E*—and heard her prattle on about ludicrous chocolate boxes ringed in Chloé fringed denim that “Stella McCartney created at just four hundred apiece. They say Eat Me on the lid, and they’re giving all the proceeds to breast cancer! Isn’t that brilliant?” She’d exchanged her python Smythson for a fire-engine-red one with the snooty gold cover engravature:

  LONDON

  PARIS

  MILAN

  NEW YORK

  She spoke wantonly of fashion, like a pathetic imitation of his mom—how her “completely knackered” clique all wore Chanel and Ghost and Uth and how she and Amanda went to a Moroccan-style wedding and a Hilton girl took her bloody blouse off and then they went to Paris (the city, not the girl) and sat behind Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Lopez watching models in nun’s habits and $70,000 dresses, throats fakely slashed, sashay through fifteenth-century churches on bloodred catwalks—oh, but the “shows” were great fun! Her highest aspiration was to spin records at parties. She said she was meeting lots of boys who thought she was older. They all wanted to “bonk” and she’d actually “snogged” with a twenty-seven-year-old broker at Billie Piper’s nineteenth birthday at the Papagaio.

  “They’re all wankers, for the most part—poseurs. They come up to you straightaway and make their proposition. And you just stand there, gob-smacked. Amanda’s older, so she gets hit on more. They’re bleeding idiots! Poofs and poseurs! Tossers! Off their heads! They look you straight in the ‘porkpies’—that means ‘eyes.’ It’s Cockney-rhyming slang, haven’t you heard of that, Toulouse? It’s great fun. They look you in the porkpies, even the ones with rotten ‘boat races’—‘boat race’ means ‘face.’ And I thought English boys would be so … unaggressive! I was wrong, they are seemingly so un-English. Bounders! Oh, and Grandma!” She turned to Bluey, as if they were all on a talk show. “We went to the most amazing party at Badminton. Have you been? It’s where the duke of Beaufort lives. Lady Hectare’s brilliant friends with Bunter and Tracy—Bunter’s the duke’s son. And Bobby is so cute. He’s only twelve, but he’s an earl, the earl of Glamorgan or something. There were
huge amounts of marquesses and marchionesses, viscounts and countesses and even a bishop—the bishop of Kensington, I think. The houses there. They are castles, they are manors, Stradella is shite! Stradella is naff! Oh, Toulouse! I forgot—there was a Spanish infanta there too! But we never met her. Oh, bollocks. We were too busy painting our faces and being wicked! The duke’s wife is a landscape artist, just like Aunt Trinnie. They have a nanny from New Zealand who so reminded me of Winter … and the marquess of Bath was there—Alex, I think he’s called—he’s friends with your mom. Oh! And do you know who showed up? The marquess of Went! Remember when we were at Leaf House with Edward and that old man showed us the maze? Well, that was his property—I mean, the marquess of Went. But the marquess of Bath is so cute, looks like a bloody wizard. And he’s witty! And he wears the most brilliant vests and ties—and lives at Longleat with the marchioness—they’re ‘trouble and strife’—that’s husband and wife. But Amanda said Lord Bath has lots of wives—‘wifelets,’ I think he calls them. He’s like a Mormon. Do they call that ‘polygamous’? Oh, Toulouse, he’s the most brilliant hippie! Longleat’s open to the public. It would be like having crowds troop through Olde CityWalk, but that’s the way they do it, because the upkeep is so expensive. They even have a zoo there, and bollocks if there isn’t a gorilla living on an island gob-smack in the middle of the lake … oh it’s posh and posh-totty. There are lions and tigers and rhinos and giraffes—and even a railway! Capability Brown did the landscaping, Trinnie told me all about her. Didn’t Trinnie tell you about Capability Brown? Capability did Sutton Place too, that’s the Hectares’. It’s in Surrey—Surrey with a bloody fringe on top! Capability Brown and Gertrude Jekyll … aren’t they the queerest, most brilliant names? Oh don’t make a face, Toulouse, you look like an arse. Anyway, the duke had this very fab party and ordered everyone to wear purple leather and suede. Well, maybe it wasn’t the duke’s party, maybe it was his son’s. And there was an entirely different brilliant gathering where the men wore tuxedos and went shooting. Foxes? Or maybe birds—I’m not sure. These people are super multitaskers! They’re brilliant! And there are ghosts in that house, Grandma—I say ‘house’ but it’s more like a small country—it’s like fifty thousand acres! Lauren Bush was there, and Madonna, and the prince of Bourbon too. (Amanda calls him the Prince of Scotch and Soda, but not to his face.) Everyone got bloody well off their heads and played polo and it started to rain cats and dogs and the duke had a helicopter hover over the wicket so it wouldn’t pour on the pitch. Oh, Toulouse, you have to meet the Dent-Brocklehursts! Then Henry did a little dance and it stopped pouring! It was brilliant. Jemma introduced me to George Harrison, of the Beatles? I had no idea who he was! Amanda said he was stabbed or something, and he looks a hundred years old. Got cancer, too. A gray, gray man. Amanda and I were in the kitchen and she said, ‘You’ve just met one of the Beatles,’ and I said, ‘Bob’s your uncle!’ When I go back next week, we’re going to a party at Gatcombe Park. And guess who’s having it: Zara Phillips! She’s Princess Anne’s daughter but doesn’t ‘wear’ a title, isn’t that so fab? Got a pierced tongue, Zara does—Amanda and I are thinking of getting ours pierced. But don’t you dare say anything to your mum, Toulouse, or I’ll be fit to—”