by Bruce Wagner
So: in the Russian gazebo she told her cousin she would soon be living the expatriate’s life. A fleet of planes at the heiress’s disposal guaranteed that no one in the Trotter clan—or outside, for that matter, i.e., such indispensables as Boulder Langon—would ever be more than a half day away. Yet Lucille Rose (who would in a matter of weeks pluck out the thorny Lucille and become a mere Rose) still somehow managed to make Toulouse feel that prohibition and embargo were in the air and that he might not see her for years—or at least not until she was an older woman of eighteen or twenty.
“Would you come with me, Toulouse?” she asked demurely.
He thought she meant England.
Tea had cooled, and by the time Candelaria arrived with hot water, they were already heading toward Olde CityWalk. Lucille Rose clutched her new snakeskin Smythson—Amanda Hectare said python was the “rage”—while Pullman gambol’d about, and she slapped and kissed and fussed over the creature all the way to the Boar’s Head. “Oh oh oh!” she cried (very Liz Taylor in National Velvet). “You’re the one I’m really going to miss! Oh, Pullie, you’re the one! You’re the one!”
“What’s going to happen to your book?” asked Toulouse.
“I don’t know,” she said cavalierly. “I sort of lost interest … now I just mostly use it to jot down places I want to go and people I’d like to meet.” She shook the python pad like a tambourine. “I’m not sure I really want to be an actual writer anymore—unless it’s for a magazine, like British Vogue. Oh, bugger it all! I mean, I’m good and everything, but … I talked to Mr. Hookstratten, and he was very upset. He had brilliant plans for Blue Maze. But as Grandma Bluey has sung before: Que sera, sera! Besides, if I still want to, England will only make my writing better. I mean, all the brilliant writers are from England. The Brontës, the Austens, Emily Dickinson … and bloody Shakespeare!”
“Emily Dickinson is not from England.”
“Well, Dick-ens is, so bugger off!”
When she led them past the Boar’s Head and the Majestyk, Toulouse wondered what she was up to.
“Anyway,” she said, “I never did really ‘crack the case.’ ”
“Case? What do you mean?”
“The mystery. What was the ‘mystery’ of the Blue Maze?”
“Well maybe,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “maybe the mystery was that there is no mystery.”
She stopped in her tracks, as if giving his suggestion the gravest consideration—for a moment, Toulouse thought he’d saved the day and handed her a reason to live again. Jumping for joy, she could at last go back to being plain old Bel-Air Lucy. They would ride together to school as they always had, and everything—well, most everything—would be just like it used to be.
“Too cliché,” she said.
He followed her to the hangar.
The 747 simulator was being picked up Monday and given to a charitable group. Lucille Rose climbed the stairs, turning midway to see if he had followed.
“Where shall we go?” asked the randy aviatrix, once they had settled in. It was dark; only the instruments were illuminated. “Oh my God—Heathrow, of course!”
She punched something in, and the cockpit began its subtle gyrations.
She reached over and kissed him. He unbuttoned her blouse and, for the first time ever, saw her breasts. She dropped his hand to her thigh, then moved it up. Her face was hot and tears sprang from her eyes. He watched her as they kissed like he always had, certain she was distressed by the same recollection: Edward surprising and embarrassing them as they groped in the plane. But that was far from her mind. She loved him so, yet he loved another—the orphan girl—and there wasn’t a thing in the world she could do. (Her brother was dead, and there was nothing she could do about that, either.) She was truly excited about leaving. England lit up before her, tactile and redolent: she had already dreamed herself there and could smell its trees, soot and chilled air. She was inordinately excited for her life … but she bloody loved Toulouse Trotter and always would, with every fiber and filament of her body, with every red hair she had and with the red blood that beat through her bloody, bleeding over–river-run heart—nothing to do about it, nothing to do …
Oh bugger! Oh bollocks! Oh brilliant! Oh, Toulouse—
But that wasn’t why she threw herself at him now … he would not want her for her little tits or for the pulse that shook her neck like explosives deep within a building being demolished; he would not want her for the thing she guided his fingers toward, and would not want her for her smile or kindnesses or funny girl-detective ways. He would not want her for any of that. No: he loved another, and she could not change what wasn’t meant to be. Just now she wanted what she wanted—merely to touch him, to breathe in his smell and his hair and feel his clumsy hands stumble-bum over her. Not, as her aunt might have put it, such a terrible way to say good-bye.
CHAPTER 49
Pied-à-Terre
Toulouse began his last year at Four Winds feeling very much older, and more philosophical, too. During one of Mr. Hookstratten’s lectures, he stared out a window and mused on the capriciousness of this life. The mature student played a mental parlor game, imagining he was eleven years old again, sitting cross-legged on a hill. Peering into a crystal ball, he saw himself just as he was now, in Mr. Hookstratten’s class during a lecture, musing through a window. The ball then showed him walking the campus alone. “But where,” he asked of a wizened old warlock, “are my cousins?”
“Edward is dead,” said the Merlin. “And Lucille Rose has moved to England.” The images in the crystal swirled and changed: there was Toulouse romping with Pullman at a house in the flats, just south of Wilshire. His mother turned into the drive in a Mercedes G-wagen, while a handsome bear of a man in corduroy slacks, tweed vest and smudged cook’s apron barreled out the front door to greet her. “And who,” asked the mesmerized child, “is that?” “Why, your father, of course!” said the mage. “But,” stammered the boy, “my father is dead—” A final figure materialized in the ether: Amaryllis. But by then class was over. Toulouse gathered up his books, passing Mr. Hookstratten on the way out.
“How is your cousin Lucy?” asked the teacher with a smile.
“Fine.”
“She’s in London? Or was it Monaco.”
“London, sir,” he said, giving his enunciation an Oliver twist. “Living the bloody high life!”
“Well, give her my love—she’s much missed. And tell her Mr. Hookstratten said, ‘Keep writing!’ ” He shuffled his papers, then posed a daring afterthought: “And your father? Is he well?”
“Bloody well, sir. Bloody well.”
As Toulouse emerged from the Hall, a shiver of autumnal breezes brought the scent of chimney smoke and the haunting frisson that only the end of a year can deliver; an unsettled, gnawing feeling that when the music of Time stops (and starts up again, soon enough), one just might be left without a chair. Yet as Lucille Rose “smelled” England, so did Toulouse intuit a whole cosmos awaiting him, grown-up and filled with adventure. Students ran or walked past on the way to their own thrilling destinies; some nodded in recognition, fellow ships nearly launched. The knowledge that his father had returned was by now common and somewhat secondhand. The occasional mockeries had stopped. He wondered if the general restraint had been tied to Edward’s death—maybe not. Everyone was busy enough with sails and rigging, readying their vessels for the full-masted world.
When his brother-in-law left Montecito, Dodd was happy enough to provide him with new lodgings. The redbrick colonial was on South Cañon, between Gregory and Charleville, and within a few weeks had been graced by Trinnie’s sure touch—funky Moorish tapestries hung on wood-paneled walls that overlooked a sly, swank mishmash of furnishings from the sixties of the last two centuries. The backyard garden was deliciously, deliriously remade, with a charming little brook that meandered through creeper and feverfew.
Though Mr. Trotter provided his son-in-law with a generous allowance s
o that he could begin to manage his own affairs, Marcus retained the frugality he’d exercised on the streets (and still had a not insignificant amount left over from the once Right Honorable Geo. Fitzsimmons’s original bequest); so he was well fixed to treat his boy to marathon movie binges and snackathons. Within the dreaded claustrophobic cineplexes—Marcus beguilingly called them “charnel houses”—our fearless duo leapfrogged from theater to theater, dodging an incessant barrage of special effects and silver-screen profanities. (He was sad his beloved Wilshire Boulevard mecca—the Vagabond, that old Buñuelian bastion of youth—was no more, yet gladdened the lake at MacArthur Park appeared in great good health). They went bargain bookstore–hunting for inexpensive treasures to fill the groaning shelves that lined most rooms of what his father had sardonically christened Cañon Manor. They even journeyed to Tabori & Co. There, after Toulouse made “improper introductions” (Marcus’s witticism), Emerson was startled to be the recipient of profuse apologies in regards to the infamously stolen volume, which the scholar accepted (the apologies) on behalf of his belated brother. The wide-eyed visitor, still Victorian in taste and sensibility, marveled at the establishment’s Gothic arches and spent a full hour lingering over the pages of the Kelmscott Chaucer—Mr. William Morris’s pride and joy.
Toulouse accompanied him to Redlands, where the boy had the surreal experience of rediscovering the childhood bedroom of his father (the same one he had napped in on a prior visit) through the very eyes of the man responsible by half for bringing him into the world. Marcus made his folks a succulent osso bucco with risotto alla Milanese before embarking on a bicycle tour of old haunts. (Redlands, oddly enough, was famed for its Victorian homes.) They camped in Joshua Tree. He showed his son the Dog Star, Sirius, and spoke intimately of Magellanic clouds buffeted by stellar wind, nostalgically perusing the sky as he once did from the lonesome beaches of Santa Monica, as if it was there whence he’d hailed—not Redlands or England or Misery House—now so far away from home. On the way back to L.A. they went to Huntington Gardens—there was a Morris exhibit that his father assiduously avoided but whose presence seemed to galvanize him nonetheless, for suddenly he got the urge to visit the 4th Street Bridge. Off they trooped, and made a walkabout to that encampment and other spots of local lore and legend: the motel where Amaryllis had lived with her mother, and the Higgins, too (now property of Quincunx Holdings), where he and the girl once rendezvous’d—on to the magnificent cathedral (in those days barely a shadow of its current self) that had replaced dear old St. Vib. He told him how he piggybacked their friend alongside its fence in the wee small hours of night, saving the whole of the story for another time.
At dusk, the Town Car stealthily skirted the Twin Towers, then rolled by thousands of homeless in cardboard shacks. Watching the street bonfires scared Toulouse, and he leaned into his dad. Before long, Marcus had guided them to the alley behind Frenchie’s, where the boy took over. Recovering his courage, he directed the driver to double-back to the SRO where the children and Amaryllis had first met—but in the darkness, the former movie set could not be found.
“Are you certain?” she asked, with not a little superstition. They were stepping from Katrina’s G-wagen; Pullman had already leapt out. “You’re sure this is a good idea?”
“Well—actually, no! But we’ve got the boy here. The boy will keep us from harm, won’t you?” He winked, but Toulouse didn’t wink back; seeing his father was having sport, he merely smiled. “And if the boy won’t, then Pullie will!”
Mr. Greenjeans had left for the day and the heavy, corroded gates of La Colonne Détruite were flung open in readiness.
Toulouse lugged a picnic basket filled with delicacies. Pomegranates were in season again, and Marcus had poached Shinseiki pears with caramel sauce made from the ruby-studded fruit. They’d packed bread from Poilâne, a small round of Époisses (his father said it was Napoleon’s favorite) and a Solengo, one of Tuscany’s finest.†
“Pullman and I have been coming here for years,” said Toulouse, by way of small talk to calm his mother’s nerves. “I mean, before I even knew anything.”
“Beautiful,” said Marcus, breathlessly taking it in. “Untouched! Exactly as I remembered.”
As they walked in deeper, past skedges and box globes, hornbeams and hedges of hawthorn, viburnum, rhamnus and sweet briar, silence overtook them; the little family got soaked in the lush, peculiar meadow kingdom as a cotton pad in chloroform. Beyond the allée, the great cracked tower hove into view above the swales. The smile plastered on his father’s face struck Toulouse as garishly bogus, and his mother had the same stilted, artificial look—like goo-gooing pedestrians who lean over a pram only to find themselves nose-to-nose with Rosemary’s baby.
“That was quite a wedding we had here!” he awkwardly exclaimed (and somewhat ridiculously, too, thought Toulouse), not so much halfhearted as half winded by the sight of the castle before him. He had slain the dragons of psychotic delusion—and still there was this: like something out of Piranesi run riot, it should have had the sense to confine itself to Mr. Trotter’s Withdrawing Room wall.
“Yes,” said Katrina, privately undergoing her own swampish dishabille. “Amazing!” she averred. (Her reading was hollow and stagey.)
His father turned to him. “Horses and carriages—the works!”
“We have pictures!” said Katrina, taking up the slack. “I’ve never shown you pictures, Toulouse?”
“I saw some at Grandma Weiner’s.”
“Well!” said Marcus, rubbing his hands together. “Shall we have a walk around it?”
“Yes! Let’s.”
It was like watching a car wreck. Toulouse set the basket down, and his father handed him the colorful blanket he’d been carrying. The boy thought it better to let them wander alone. He took out food and drink, linen and silverware, arranging things as best he could; he even tore a sprig of flowers from a bush and laid it fetchingly upon the spread. He watched his parents glance at the tower like fitful tourists as they strolled. They held hands intermittently. When they reached the entrance, they stood in suspended wonderment—then laughed, declining the open invitation of its mouth. Their laughter broke the mood, and Toulouse rushed over. At least, he thought, they had the good sense to know it wasn’t yet time to explore; in his worst imaginings, he saw them swallowed up, never to return.
Within a week, the couple returned sans Toulouse. In earlier days, Lucille Rose would surely have found them perfect subjects for a book cover, though she would no doubt have bestowed them flashlights, the more dramatically to ascend the spiral staircase at midnight hour. As it was, husband and wife performed their excavations in the reassuring light of day.
They ventured forth in much the same way that Toulouse first had—with titillated innocence, fearless and inspired. They giggled a lot and delinquently skidded around corners. Only upon entering the master suite, did they allow their mood to become something more layered. The sheets on the mattress Katrina had put down months ago were mussed, as if a body had lain there only hours before, calling to mind all manner of curious comings and goings; when she confessed, as she had in her letter, that she had drawn comfort from staying here—here, on this very bed—Marcus rushed to the loo to compose himself. Trinnie was at the window reclaiming the empty, verdant vista (unchanged from so many years past) when she suddenly realized how quiet it was and panicked that her husband would evaporate, or already had. She shivered and moaned aloud, and then he came toward her. He held her awhile before they descended.
Emboldened, she asked him to Mexico. They stayed in separate rooms, sharing a canary-yellow villa choked with elephant’s ear and guayabi trees whose lanky branches sprang from saffron-colored brush. They took long walks on the beach and siesta’d in a stranglervined palapa overlooking Careyes Bay. Under its thatched roof, she told him how La Colonne was shuttered after he’d gone, and how everything inside had been finically accounted for and fastidiously stored away.
“
Do you mean, it all still exists? As it was?”
She nodded. “I think that I—well, I hoped you’d be back. I thought you might have suffered a memory loss … I don’t know what I was thinking. I was crazy. When you came—if you came back—I was going to return everything to how it was. To jog your … it’s silly, I know … so that it would be as if you never—I still have the maps the curators made of each room, showing where everything was—because I didn’t want photos taken. Like little art pieces, really. They’re in Father’s study.”
“There’s something ineffable in that,” he said softly. “It pierces my heart.”
She held him, kissing the tears. Then his body awakened, and he trembled with desire. He lifted her blouse and kissed her there.
“But”—she felt so lurid to be bringing it up!—“have you … have you been tested?”
He didn’t know what she meant. “What I mean is, well—you’ve been—you were on the streets for so many years … have you been tested? At one of the clinics?”
“Do you mean, for a disease?”
“Well—yes. For AIDS, mostly … for anything. I don’t have any condoms.” She cringed, but soldiered on. “Have—have you—did the doctors—did the doctors give you a test? I mean, at the jail. Or Father must have had them—”
“I have not been with any woman since you, Katy.”
She had not expected that response in a million years.
“But how?”
“That part of me closed down.”
“But that woman … the one you visited at the cemetery—”
“Jane Scull? I wasn’t with her that way. I loved her dearly, but was not with her like that at all.”
“Oh!”
“What is it?” he asked tenderly.
“But I have, Marcus.”
“Have?”
“Other men! I have—”
She sobbed in his arms, feeling very Mary Magdalene—then grew ravenous.