by Bruce Wagner
She couldn’t help but notice that her grandmother was now leaning on the walker with her elbows and reaching out with both arms—rather plaintively at that. Lucy regarded her with a slightly confused smile; thinking that she wished to be held, the young socialite put a stiff upper lip on it while she and Toulouse maneuvered the old woman from her encumbrance. Now free, they embraced—and Bluey began to scream. No ordinary outburst, but a high-pitched bone-rattling ululation that startled the girl and filled her with horror. (Winter later reported that it usually happened at night and was the cause of some wonderment, because once begun, the siren could last up to fourteen hours without relenting or even varying much in pitch. Even those who had seen their share of screamers were astonished at the suprahuman outpouring.)
Lucy tried to break away, but found the old woman’s grip to be formidable. Toulouse did what he could to pry them apart but was fearful of injuring his grandmother, who now fell atop the girl, pinning her to the hard ground, while other residents made their way over like querulous zombies.
“Tull!” she cried. “Tull, help me! Help me!” To add insult to injury, Bluey began to sing—“ ‘All of the kids—to teacher carried—candy and ice cream cones—but who do you think the teacher married? Wood’nhead Pudd’nhead Jones!’ ”—all happening in a blink yet feeling like an eternity to the child trapped beneath. Winter, who’d been taking a much-earned respite in the commissary, was on her way back when she saw the commotion through a garden fence. By the time she’d passed through the gate and emerged to the wandering path, the staff was already lifting Bluey from her traumatized guest, whose stylish retro print was soaked in the former’s pungent urine.
Winter and Toulouse helped her up as the old woman was led away. The smelly rubberneckers muttered oaths and inanities as they dispersed to rejoin traffic on the sumptuously topiaried loop.
“Are you all right?” asked Winter.
Lucy stood there, stunned.
“She didn’t mean it. She doesn’t know what she’s doing … she didn’t know who you were—”
Lucille Rose, who had by now wandered a short way down the path, turned and looked at her—at both of them—then tightly closed her eyes as if to teleport herself to another place.
Winter came closer.
Lucy screamed her own little scream, but it didn’t last—then ran like the devil to the car.
The Trotter women were having a time of it.
Trinnie hadn’t been the same since returning from another wedding—an old rehab chum’s, in Manhattan. She took to her room without explanation and wouldn’t speak to anyone, not even Marcus, who had shown himself to be an easy confidant. She shed twenty pounds in half as many days and was sleeping barely two hours a night. Out of suicidal desperation, she finally called Samson and said it was urgent that she see him.
When the detective arrived at Saint-Cloud, the feeling was of a city deserted. Trinnie had ordered the staff away; she could no longer tolerate their accusatory eyes.
“What’s wrong? My God, what’s happened?”
She stood at the door, emaciated and trembling. He’d never seen her so haunted.
“Oh, Sam!” she said, glomming on to his jacket. “Something terrible—something so horrible …”
“Is it Marcus? Did he leave?”
“No—no! Marcus is fine … better than ever.”
“Then Toulouse—”
“No,” she said, frantically shaking her head. “They’re all fine. It’s me this time, Sam, it’s me …”
She led him outside to the flagstone terrace, where she had laid a possum on a delicate porcelain plate. Its breath was labored; it was clearly dying.
“I think he fell from the roof. Look how sweet he is! Poor thing can’t breathe … do you think he’s going to die? He’s just a baby. Where’s his mother, Sam? Maybe he’s just playing possum, no? I put out some peanut butter—they’re supposed to like peanut butter. That’s not such a bad thing to smell if you have to die, is it, Sam? That’s not such a bad thing to be smelling before he …”
She began to sob. He helped her to the wrought-iron divan.
“Trinnie—tell me what’s wrong. What’s happened?”
“I was in New York last week … and I saw something from the hotel, on the street. Oh, Sam, I saw something!—”
“Tell me.”
“—and things have been going so well, Sam! That’s what’s so—that’s what’s so crazy … but it’s always like that, isn’t it? Just when you think everything’s great!”
“Trinnie, you have to calm down. Try to—”
“A man and woman … arguing. It must have been two in the morning. Two or three. You know New York—these dramas playing themselves out … junkies and whatever. Like some awful play—you hear everything. The streets are like canyons, everything echoes. Especially if you’re high up—and they … the man, he kept walking away. He didn’t want to listen anymore. And she kept coming after him, like a harridan—and … it was like a play—some stupid Sam Shepard—because each time they moved in front of a town house, the lights would come on—you know, those automatic lights in front of houses that get triggered when you …—so as they walked, each house lit them up in pools of—oh, Sam! You don’t know, you don’t know, you don’t know!”
“Tell me, Trinnie,” he said, his tone nearly harsh.
“At a certain point, the man walked away and the woman came after—he turned—and she … hit his neck. And he fell backward …”
“She used a knife?—”
“No, no, nothing like that! With her hand—a fist, something. I don’t know. I couldn’t see.”
“The police came?”
“No! No! You don’t understand! No one can understand. Oh I am fucked I am fucked I am fucked! Sam … when I went to see my father last year—maybe it was the year before—when I went to see him at the quarry—I went to see him because I found out that he—it was after you told me the two of you found Marcus—I was so angry—and he was getting his hair cut when I came in, Sam, so helpless and so small and I struck him with my hand on his little neck! I was so angry and my hand just lashed out and I hit him hard, Sam, hard enough for him to fall back and I know that I hurt him! And he couldn’t button his shirts after that—do you remember? He couldn’t button his shirts! And then Marcus told me … Marcus said that when he met Toulouse for the first time—I was in the desert—Marcus wrote in a letter that when he met Toulouse at Saint-Cloud, Papa was holding a towel to his neck like a poultice … he was holding a towel there! And I never pursued it! I said I would but I didn’t! And the doctors—Sam, the doctors said the tear in his vein came from a blow! They asked if he’d been in a car crash—they said sometimes this sort of thing can happen as a result of an accident or a fight. But I didn’t think of it—I didn’t remember, Sam, until I saw that dreadful couple on the street! And I sat in the lawyers’ office feeling so smug, so benevolent because I didn’t want the hospital to be sued. The hospital—when it was me! Oh, Sam, I killed him, I really did! And what I want to know—what I need to know—from you—the reason why I asked you here, what I need to know—because that would be catastrophic—what I need to know is if they can put me in prison. Because I couldn’t survive that, Sam—I couldn’t survive! After everything we’ve been through, Sam, with Marcus and Toulouse, for it to end this way! But I did kill him, Sam, I killed my father! Toulouse’s grandpa! Toulouse and Lucy and poor Edward’s—Bluey’s husband … oh, Sam Sam Sam, the way he looked at me in the ICU—his eyes suddenly opened and he smiled at me and I think he was smiling because he realized I didn’t know what I’d done and he would have wanted to spare me from that knowledge because he would have to have known that me knowing something like that—well I simply could not live—and so he was glad that I—but now I do know, Sam, I do know—everything!—and oh, Sam Sam, what am I going to do, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?”
Marcus wasn’t overly concerned by his wife’s prolonged absence. A
lways careful not to make demands, he had resolved to calmly subjugate himself to her moods. He thought it best to maintain an attitude that at least on its surface was High Victorian laissez-faire.
He took to visiting the Westwood cemetery on a daily basis. It was a decent walk from his Cañon Drive home, and he enjoyed the sloping stretch of Wilshire Boulevard that bisected the country club. Sometimes you could see deer behind the fence butting heads.
He befriended Dot Campbell, who found him winning, and a great comfort.† His sartorial style reminded her of Mr. Trotter’s in that it was a tad antiquated—a “bespoke” lapel, golden fob or the unusual cut of a pocket amicably connoting another era (she wasn’t always sure which). Sometimes he came with Toulouse, but more often he was alone, and strolled the grounds scrutinizing stones and taking the air. He occasionally knelt to read an inscription but was not one of those tedious hobbyists who with paper and charcoal make imprints of headstone faces.
Marcus often walked alongside the caretaker while the latter performed his duties, and sometimes (though Dot frowned on it) the burly companion assisted with a rake. He was happy to talk with Sling Blade about the old man, and it seemed to relieve them both of pent-up sorrows. Marcus was especially intrigued by the Candlelighters’ parcel, with its whirling grave markers—he counted more than twenty now. He never failed to brush Edward’s plaque with the tips of his fingers and say, “Sleep well, son. Sleep well.”
Invariably, he ended his visit with a walk to where the digger lay. There was no memorial as yet, but that wasn’t what disturbed him (for even the portraits of the founders of William Morris bore no names). The man had spent so many years imagining a monument, and Trinnie would soon make her decision—but how? By what lights? And who had the right? Perhaps they should just leave things as they were, he thought. Perhaps in the end it was best that Mr. Trotter take a note from the Candlelighters and join his grandson in oblivion.
Whenever he left that place, always in dusky hour, when a chill stole through the gate, Marcus felt no peace—and was certain that it did not bode well for the migrant, entrepreneurial spirit of his dear, departed benefactor.
“Doddie?”
“Mother! Hello—”
“Doddie, I’m so glad I reached you!”
“Are you OK? Is everything OK?”
“Yes, yes, wonderful! Where—where are you?”
“I’m on my way to India, Mother.”
“India!”
“Can you believe it?”
“How wonderful!”
“I’ll only be gone a few days.”
“A few days! But why on earth India?”
“We have factories there. Quincunx has factories there.”
“Well now, that’s really something.”
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m clear today!”
“That’s so great. You sound wonderful.”
“I’m not afraid today! And Winter’s here—she’s been so marvelous.”
“Winter’s a terrific lady.”
“I haven’t been the hostess with the mostess. In fact, I’ve been a royal pain in the you-know-what!”
“She understands, Mother. She understands … God, it’s so great to talk to you like this. To hear you sounding so—”
“I can talk, you know. People seem to have written me off.”
“No one’s written you off. That would be an impossibility.”
“Doddie …”
“What is it, Mother?”
“Doddie, I know that Louis isn’t here. That my dear Louis is gone.”
“Did one of the nurses tell you that?”
“No, no. There are certain things a person doesn’t have to be told. And I say: what’s so great about this little blue planet anyway, that’s what I say! Doddie, did I tell you that marvelous little aphorism of Winter’s? God is wringing his hands. He’s sitting on a bench in the clouds, wringing his hands. ‘I’m in love with an atheist,’ he says, tears streaming down his cheeks onto that long white beard. ‘I’m in love with an atheist who lives in New York—but she doesn’t even know I exist!’ Isn’t that marvelous, Doddie?”
“It’s a wonderful joke.”
“It’s not a joke, it’s an aphorism.”
“I laugh every time you tell it.”
“Oh, don’t be so stupid.”
“I’ll come see you, soon as I get back. Thursday, all right? I’ll bring you something, would you like that? I’ll bring you a sari.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Mother? I didn’t hear you. What did you—”
“I’m so sorry, said she, but we’re not accepting saris today.”
He laughed. “It’s great to hear you like this. To hear your sense of humor again.”
“Doddie, how are we fixed for cash?”
“We’re fine, Mother.”
“I don’t want you spending all your money on that plane.”
“Can’t happen.”
“Why don’t you get rid of that plane and fly American Airlines?”
“I actually save money with the jet, Mother.”
“Oh.”
“So I don’t want you to worry.”
“Doddie—there’s something I read in the paper—while I have you on the phone … did you hear about Lillian Hammersmith? A glorious dancer. Friend of Alice’s—Astor. Had a house in Rhinebeck, one of those fancy places high on a hill. I always wanted your father to buy in Rhinebeck, but he was obsessed with the Adirondack ‘style,’ had to have his Great Camp. But, my God, Hudson Valley was grand. So green, so stately! Alice had fireplaces in the bathrooms, and that, I think, is the greatest luxury known to man. If you stood in the backyard, you could see the Roosevelts on one side and the Stuyvesants on the other.”
“Mother? I’m sorry, I didn’t … what was the last thing you said?”
“Ninety-two she was, poor Lillian. That’s marvelous genes, isn’t it? A great, great friend of Bill’s—and Tennessee’s—and Cecil and Evelyn too. They were all at Rhinebeck. Well as you can imagine I was deeply impressed. I was barely twenty-five!”
“Little hard to hear you, Mother. Connection isn’t good.”
“The Times didn’t say how she passed away—at that age, they never do! It’s considered poor form. But it seems she held on to her money, and I’m glad for that. Doddie …”
“Yes, Mother? I can hear you now.”
“There’s someone else who passed on.”
He was certain now that she knew about Edward too, and girded himself to respond.
“Do you remember Bluey Trotter? Née Twisselmann, of the Pittsburgh Twisselmanns? She married Louis Trotter, the Bel-Air waste-removal king.”
“Mother?”
“Doddie, can you hear me?”
“Yes—”
“Because I know how busy you are …”
“I’m not busy at all. I just couldn’t understand what you—”
“Bluey Trotter née Twisselmann. Have you already heard?”
“Heard what, Mother?”
“She passed, Doddie! And so young. Well, relatively—do you remember her? We all seem to have lost touch. I wanted you to know before you read about it or heard it from a stranger.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Don’t be stupid, Doddie! You’re always so stupid!”
“Is Winter there?”
“I’m telling you that she passed. But I know how busy you are.”
“Mom, can you please put Winter on?”
“I’ll let you go, dear. You take care now, Puddin’-head.”
“Can you just let me talk to Winter a second?”
“I just wanted you to know so you wouldn’t read about it in the paper. So don’t be sorry. Say hello to the Indians, said she, and don’t be ‘sari’!”
†[All but the most persnickety of voyagers are here advised to skip this lengthy, if final, footnote; or at least come back another day, for it has no pertinence to our main stor
y, nor does it desire to disturb the secret rhythms of denouement—“Ed.”] Before disclosing this almost whimsical piece of intelligence, the author wishes to note that the perfect reader does not exist; and while some whose hands turn these pages may come close, certain ideals should as such remain hypothetical. All right then. A long while back (long enough that it may translate to weeks in the life of one who has attended this volume) it was learned that Gilles Mott had a fiancée with whom he mistakenly ventured to a certain (or uncertain) Parisian cellar in which a sophisticated group partook of roasted songbird—but of this incident we’ve already heard enough. What matters here is that he implied, songbird or no, that said fiancée was subsequently jilted. The author did not think much of this indiscretion then nor does he now; it is the baker himself who belabored it. As a remorseful pastime, he had long dreamed of making amends to that aggrieved and vanished girl, and to his amazement, opportunity finally knocked. That “girl,” alas, was Dorothea “Dot” Campbell—or so a careful study of her features and dress (for even then, at the time of their affiance, she was well on her way to fashion infamy and remained undeterred by the raiments of the City of Light) during Louis Trotter’s services bade him believe. Knowing that the time and place were inappropriate, he remained undaunted, for he knew full well he would never have the gumption to return. Immediately following the burial, Gilles Mott confirmed she was indeed the womanly version of the one he had ditched not two weeks after their illicit dinner in an arrondissement whose numeric designation remained forgotten even then. Dot watched blank-faced (gob-smacked, as Lucille Rose might have put it) as the baker stood on her turf and launched into one of the more stupendous mea culpas of our time—after which he went rigid, expecting to nobly bear the brunt of a physical blow. Instead, her clear and simple response freed him. Ms. Campbell said she did remember and always felt he’d done her a great service, for it was within the same month of the “lucky breakup” that she met the love of her life, the courtly, handsome (and short-lived) Byron Campbell, inventor and engineer, whose romantic attributes were such that the memory of past dalliance or promised betrothal (there were many, she assured with a wink) were completely and utterly obliterated. Upon hearing this, Gilles Mott was so relieved that he ventured a flirtatious remark, but was cut off when she excused herself with the finality of a debutante detaching herself from a cipher. A final footnote deserves a final epigram: it was Marcus Aurelius who wrote: “How ludicrous and unrealistic is he who is astonished at anything that happens in life!”
