by Bruce Wagner
Thank you, no, he’d sit out the incestuous quadrille for now. His dance card was full.
Contrary action . . .
In light-speed lucubration (still in the hall, while Allegra washed and dried, douched and cried), it hit him like a stun grenade: though he’d taken pains never to mention Dusty Wilding to his boyfriend, or anything else about his career—an absurd game he found dumbly refreshing—what sort of madness had allowed him to pretend Tristen didn’t already know everything about his life? As if an atom of his world could be hidden, and from Tristen, no less—the Kill Bill bride, the Crazy 88 of Internet trap queens! Jeremy was continually surprised, galled, and shamed by his unrepairable naïveté; the generational blind spot that made him oblivious to the avalanche of files and thumbnails that rendered a jittery, fossilized portrait of him as exacting as a Chuck Close for anyone who cared to look. Of course Tristen knew about his decades-old alliance with the film star! Of course he did—and of ten thousand other dark and minuscule things about himself that Jeremy’d long forgotten . . .
Suddenly, he wondered how much Tristen had told his mother about their affair. He imagined that oedipal relation to be miscreant on the level of Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore in Bates Motel—why wouldn’t they share all, routinely enlisting one another in the gory details of their mutual degeneracy? Jeremy did trust the boy yet in the moment let his thoughts run wild, shuddering as he fantasized about mother and son’s salacious comparing of notes (he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Larissa told Tristen that she’d become “friendly” with the movie star and her wife), two Sherpas celebrating the amazing karma that had helicoptered them to Mt. Annapurna base camp for a grand expedition into the larcenous unknown.
But what manner of larceny?—
He heard Allegra flush the toilet.
An arson of sinister thoughts lit up his brain and threatened his hair; as much as he wanted to put out the fire, he wanted to watch it burn . . .
If his insurgent speculations were true—that Tristen and Larissa were thick as thieves—then what was the meaning, the strategy of the boy having delayed sharing that his mommy was Dusty’s camera double? Because he would have known from Day One. And when he did finally mention it, Tristen was careful not to acknowledge Jeremy’s relationship to the star, the movie, or anything else. The kid could have said, “Isn’t that bizarre, Nobodaddy? And I know you don’t like to talk about it but you’re one of the producers on that film, right? Aren’t you and Dusty Wilding, like, really close?” But, no—he just let it ride . . . and Jeremy definitely didn’t get the feeling he’d done that out of respect or discretion. So the question remained: why withhold what he knew all along? And on a more sinister note, wouldn’t it stand to reason that Larissa would have told Allegra (who, after all, was her lover)? You know, “Your friend Jeremy’s boyfriend happens to be my son”? And if she had told Allegra, why hadn’t Allegra shared that savory morsel with him? “Oh my God, Jeremy, you’ll never believe this!” He could understand her not wanting to get into that with him earlier because she wouldn’t have wanted to admit she was seeing Larissa—but now that she’d confessed, why wouldn’t she have mentioned it right then, on the Night of the Living Buddhist breakdown? Might the omission have something to do with what Allegra said about Dusty while they sat on the bed? “There are things I can’t even tell you”?
First things first. Assuming Ma Barker and protégé were in absolute control—that Jeremy and Allegra were their puppets, being made to dance on strings—what was it, then, that they were up to? Something criminal? Twisterella’s Web-hacking motherfuckery already pegged him as a spectrum sociopath, albeit a harmless one—at least harmless when it came to Jeremy. (Or so the old mark thought, or used to think, anyway.) Clearly, moral turpitude, embezzlement, and flimflammery were the building blocks of the Dunnick family DNA . . . all that kiting and trolling and five-finger discounting. And yet what, now, were the duo conspiring toward? And if they were conspiring, why would Tristen have even tipped his hand by laying out his mother’s rap sheet for Jeremy’s gratification and delight? He had the sudden, minatory thought that the boy’s throwaway bulletin about her job promotion (to Dusty’s double) had been a ruse—a game, a sort of test organized by Larissa, and that her son’s mission was to report back Jeremy’s reaction, with further actions to be determined. He wondered now if it had been a mistake not to have headed Tristen off at the pass with the immediate retort of, “Oh! Isn’t that funny? I’m old friends with Dusty and I’m producing Sylvia & Marilyn!”
Allegra’s film-noir words came back to haunt him: “It was a setup.”
But if it was a monstrous strategem—to what end?
One last ominous question stuck in his craw. If Allegra did know that Larissa’s son was his lover—which she had to have!—why the fuck wouldn’t she have mentioned the meta-connection to Jeremy right away? And if for some unbelievable but still feasible reason she hadn’t yet gotten around to divulging it, what would have prevented her from just spitting it out as she cried in his arms at the Geshe’s soirée, when she was utterly raw and defenseless? What was there to gain by protecting such intel? Unless she was a . . . co-conspirator, involved in something truly iniquitous—no! How could she be? Leggy was too much a naïf, too dumb, really (ah, there: he said it) to be so clandestine, so Machiavellian. Wasn’t she? He wondered if he was reading too much into it. Maybe the explanation was simple. Maybe Allegra not disclosing that their lovers were mother and son was merely a result of her spectacular narcissism—a princessy self-involvement that trumped the possibility of any revelations that were off-point (herself being the only point), no matter how striking or singular.
Allegra emerged from the powder room and Jeremy walked her down.
Rejoining the group, she faked it pretty well, falling back on all that familiar, funky flower-child Eros, hanging mostly with the half Rodarte and the one-third Haim (too intimidated by the whole Tartt) whilst muttering spotty apologies in regard to her absenteeism and general agita, courtesy of an alleged stomach bug—though she really did have the runs. Dear Jeremy stood close by for support.
Dusty came into her room around two a.m., naked and stoned. Allegra had planned to confess everything but said nothing, sublimating rage, confusion, panic and fear into bodylove. Dusty knew something was wrong, even very wrong, but was energized by the demolition of language and analysis. Their love was potentiated, and for a moment, the niceties of psychotherapeutic dynamics among couples were forgotten.
They lay in a field of golden land mines that went off one after the other, leaving them eyeless, limbless, heartless—dead and alive all at once.
She hadn’t left her favorite suite at the Gansevoort in three days.
She came to New York alone, a sort of getaway, half for the birthday party Meryl and Bill Irwin were throwing for Edward Albee’s eighty-eighth, half to see Todd Haynes about a film project.
She had planned on staying a week but things changed.
When Ginevra heard from her—a disjointed rush of torn, hyperventilated syntax—she asked her to come to the office straightaway. Dusty balked and the therapist went over to the hotel instead. She answered the door in big movie-star sunglasses but the disguise nobly failed. Like a victim in a cerebral European horror flick, the skinscape and very bones of her face had already begun to metamorphose into something unknown and misbegotten. She returned to the couch where she’d been living.
“There’s tea,” she said, nodding at a pillaged room-service table.
“Have you spoken to her?”
“No.”
“Is your friend still here?”
“No.” A long pause, then: “They both left.”
Two days before, on a bright, freezing Sunday, Livia had called. (As it happened, she was in Brooklyn visiting a just-born grandchild; she’d learned through Allegra that Dusty was in New York.) She needed to see the actress—a “
personal matter,” which seemed to rule out any news about the search—and would rather it didn’t wait until they were back in L.A. An hour later, her old ally arrived at the hotel with Snoop Raskin. The news came quick, like a rogue wave.
“I was able to locate the babysitter,” he said. “Claudia Zabert.”
“Okay,” said Dusty with a generic smile, too disoriented by the incongruity of their sudden presence to even know she was afraid.
“And—this is going to be difficult.”
His entire face blistered and lurched like a satellite photo of a surgical strike, before returning to a blank composure of unbombed grids.
“Your daughter is Allegra.”
“What?”
Livia tensed and moved closer, self-deputized into suicide watch.
“It’s—Allegra. She’s Aurora. The one you’ve been looking for. They’re the same.”
Dusty tried to say what again but slurred “Grallegwa?” as if in the midst of a stroke. Sinatra’s boy soldiered on.
“It’s my understanding that your mother—Reina—gave Ms. Zabert five thousand dollars for ‘expenses,’ and after leaving Tustin, she and the girl—whom she renamed Allegra—spent time in Northern California. San Bruno, San Francisco, San Rafael. They lived in campsites and motels and with various acquaintances of Ms. Zabert’s. There are at least five recorded arrests for panhandling, vagrancy, and prostitution—it’s actually somewhat remarkable Ms. Zabert was able to maintain her physical ‘custodianship’ of the girl, such as it was. There may have been an involvement in a cult known as the Children of God or ‘the Family,’ but I believe that would have been something she dabbled in on an expedient basis in order to procure food, clothing, and shelter, and have other needs met. Ultimately, they settled in a commune near the Salmon River—this would have been 1981 or thereabouts, when the girl was age three. The commune was located in the Siskiyou Mountains and fairly remote; Ms. Zabert may have been seeking to avoid or escape certain legal pressures and predicaments. She and the girl experienced the communal lifestyle for approximately six years. Toward the end of their stay she joined a second cult, in a less casual way than she had before, and left the commune—with the girl, with ‘Allegra-Aurora’—traveling extensively in Asia, India, and other regions where the members of that group may or may not have had ‘affiliations.’ I’m of the understanding they were living in the U.K. when the girl returned to the States at age fifteen, accompanied by an adult female who, to my knowledge, had no relationship with the cult or Ms. Zabert. I’m fairly confident that at this point in time, Allegra was a runaway. Ms. Zabert did not choose to follow her and remained behind, working as a housekeeper for a family in Knightsbridge.”
She looked into Livia’s eyes, imploring her to be allowed to awaken from this nightmare. But all the woman could manage was to tenderly say: “Dusty . . .”
She turned to Snoop—pleading now with her executioner.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“I wish it were.” He’d been careful not to go off-book but allowed himself that improv. “The degree of certainty is one hundred percent.”
What could anyone even do with such information? The profusion of detail and deadpan Dragnet delivery belied the sheer horror. It was like trying to parse the meaning of a massive heart attack or a bullet to the brain. The shock was so great that Dusty wasn’t even sent reeling; instead, she felt something akin to being catapulted into space and embalmed at once. A second opinion would be futile, as it didn’t seem possible the detective could make such an assertion without already being in possession of invincible documents, inalienable proofs. To present anything less than an airtight case would be a recklessly unpardonable moral and professional sin, because if he was wrong . . . no—he couldn’t be. Snoop Raskin wasn’t a foolhardy man, nor was he prone to career immolation.
She saw it clearly now. On learning the truth, he and Livia put their heads together and seized the moment. With Dusty in New York, far away from the daughter-wife, the stage had been perfectly, fatefully set.
So they flew in from L.A., the detective with his Enigma machine in carry-on. Its decoded message, like the face of God, was fatal to behold.
—
She thought she’d lose her mind—perhaps she already had.
In the days that followed, she was consumed with the idea that Allegra knew she was her mother all along, and their marriage had been a premeditated act—the capstone of an abandoned child’s unspeakable plot of bloodlust and revenge. She stubbornly promoted this theory in a series of crazed, jaggedly hysterical late-night phone calls to the detective, who, in turn, patiently attempted to defuse. He argued that Allegra could only have learned of her origins through her guardian, which was most unlikely; the street-smart woman would certainly have been aware of the legal consequences of her criminal act (the technical abduction of a child for financial gain). To bolster his rationale, he suggested that by the time they landed in the mountain commune, Claudia would presumably have been a fugitive from other crimes, and even more keenly motivated to retain old secrets.
Each time his deftness of logic delivered them to solid ground, Dusty lost her footing, and Snoop had to grab her by the wrists to keep the poor woman from being sucked into a vortex of insanity. He shot at clay pigeons and plugged leaks when they sprang, tap-danced and puddle-jumped from one muddy foothold to another, and chased runaway trains of thought—for example, derailing his client’s idea that the babysitter from hell had gotten in touch with her mother for additional funds. The “profile” of the sadistic matriarch that Dusty had provided led the detective to deduce that Reina was likely holding something over Ms. Zabert’s head that would have made contact disagreeable, if not outright dangerous to her health. Furthermore, he voiced strong doubts that Claudia knew of Dusty’s celebrity (which presumably would have been added incitement for a cash grab), not only because the actress changed her name early on—by the time she started getting noticed in movies, Allegra and her guardian had already left America—but from everything he’d gleaned of their impoverished, insulated life in a hermetic overseas cult, exposure to the movies and gossipy ephemera of Hollywood pop culture would have been effectively nil. There seemed little chance she would have had an awareness of Janine Whitmore’s cinematic transformation.
Dusty wasn’t going for it.
In fact, she thought it was lame—because all Claudia Zabert had to do (“Out of sheer curiosity!” she crowed contemptuously) was Google “Janine Whitmore” and voilà: mystery solved. She had a point, but Snoop stuck to his guns. He counterpunched by proposing that even if Claudia had been aware of her fame all along—if she’d improbably followed her rise to stardom and become Dusty Wilding’s biggest fan—why would she have shared her knowledge with Allegra, risking jail and/or the wrath of that gunslinger Reina Whitmore? Having spoken to certain individuals privy to Claudia’s history (Raskin’s resources were vast—just forty-eight hours before the Gansevoort summit, he had visited Ms. Zabert at a trailer park in Vallejo. She was “profoundly damaged”), he uncovered no evidence that she’d maintained any relations with Allegra after the girl returned to America. He convincingly theorized that no one knew of the orphan’s origins by reason of the simple fact that in close to forty years, the movie star hadn’t been contacted once in that regard, or in any other, not by Ms. Zabert or anyone else, for the most compelling, timeless motive of them all: blackmail. Dusty fought him on that too. (The vortex was always near.) But what if Claudia was feeling guilt over what she’d done, she forcefully suggested. What if she just wanted me to reconnect with Allegra? (She couldn’t bring herself to say, let alone think “my daughter.” She couldn’t even bring herself to use Aurora yet, though why she couldn’t made no sense; it should have been so much easier than Allegra. Everything was a nauseating jumble.) Wouldn’t that be a reason for her to have told Allegra everything? She could have told Allegra, then kind of ju
st faded out of the picture. His categorical response was, “Well, did she? Did she tell Allegra? Did you ever get that call?” Dusty shouted back, sardonic and crazed, “In a sense!” but Raskin talked emphatically over her. “No, you didn’t. Because Claudia never knew, and Allegra doesn’t either. I can assure you of that.”
—
Her therapist agreed with the detective. (When Dusty wasn’t talking to the one, she was talking to the other.) “Look,” said Ginevra. “The idea that Allegra knew, that Claudia told her—and I agree with Mr. Raskin, because who else could have told her—if Allegra did know, you have to ask yourself when, when would she have known? Claudia would have waited till she was older, to tell her. Hypothetically. Because why tell a six-year-old? Or an eight-year-old? That just complicates Claudia’s life. Telling Allegra—Aurora—at all would have complicated her life! And that woman’s life was already complicated enough. So let’s just say for the sake of argument that she waited until they were in Europe and told her then. Which she didn’t—but for argument’s sake, okay? Let’s just say that when Allegra ran away from England or wherever when she was fifteen and came back to the States, to New York—let’s say that by then she knew. She already knew. Let’s even say that’s why she came back, why she ran away. Because now she knew who her real mother was and she wanted to ‘come home.’ Okay? The idea, Dusty, that she’s back in America, that she’s a teenager, probably desperate and flat broke, scared—the kind of life she’s been living, so chaotic, like a gypsy—and now she’s back in the States, in New York, knowing that her mother’s a rich, famous movie star! Which gave her even more motivation to come back to the country . . . she’s here but she doesn’t get in touch with her mom? With you? Dusty, it doesn’t make any sense. Because a fifteen-year-old doesn’t operate that way! Twenty-year-olds and thirty-year-olds don’t operate that way either. No one says, ‘I’m going to get back at her for what she did by making her falling in love and marry me!’ No—as her mother, at the very least, you’d be her brass ring, her ticket out. She’d say, Help, Mom! Give me money! Give me love! I want to move to Hollywood! I want to be rich and famous too! That’s what a fifteen-year-old would do, but she didn’t. She didn’t, Dusty, because she did not know. This ‘possibility’”—the shrink wouldn’t give it more weight by calling it otherwise—“this possibility that you’ve been obsessing over . . . well, it isn’t. It’s a possibility that simply isn’t. That’s what I’m trying to say. Do you see?”
