Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

Harry and Ruth delivered a trove of picture albums, and Marcus soon ran “Red” and “Lands” together like a native, no longer infusing his boyhood community with comic biblical import. Though images of himself as a toddler left him scratching his head, he began to scrutinize the souvenirs with a growing titillation — bar mitzvah photos were of exorbitant interest, like clandestine documents detailing the arcane rites of Guinean tribes. Delicately, with Polaroid and Kodachrome time line, the Weiners drew him toward adulthood. He loved the snapshots taken at the Huntington — here they huddled at the foot of the Japanese bridge; there, crouched at the lily pond. Young Marcus stood in the library of that great institution beside a tapestry, and his older self brought it closer and cooed, as if recognizing something he had woven with his own hands.

His parents were grateful to be asked the random personal question — for example, What happened to his father’s face? “I had a stroke, son,” Harry said. “But it hasn’t slowed me a whit.”

Marcus nodded and cooed, like an acolyte handed a koan.

Ruth brought pomegranate preserves made especially for him; he slathered them on a cracker, wincing as they hit the palate — the three had a good laugh about that, because even thirty years ago he had not liked her results. The men in suits admired the jelly well enough and were given some to take home. The men in suits seemed to eat pretty much anything.

Ruth Weiner left the wedding album home, for a mother’s instincts told her it was too soon. But Harry, rascal that he was, managed to smuggle something past — not that his wife knew, even in hindsight, that she would have objected. One day at the Bel-Air, he presented his son with a package wrapped in rice paper. Marcus tore it open and stared blinkingly at News from Nowhere , the very book that Toulouse, whose existence was still unknown to him, had held in his hands not long ago.

The former agent hung his head and remembered. (But could not remember why or when he had mailed it to Redlands.) This was the thing he’d been accused of stealing, and had stolen, but had lied about when confronted; not even his parents knew of that episode — nor was their son aware that Mr. Trotter, using Detective Dowling as a go-between, had compensated the aggrieved booksellers shortly after his final flight. The longer he held it, the heavier it became, its history soaking his cells the way certain medicines act on the muscles of a horse when sponged upon its coat; for this book of William Morris’s marked a kind of beginning of the end. He had taken its name for his own diary …

He pressed the book to his chest and sunk into the divan, disconsolate. Ruth and Harry rallied futilely around him. His mother suggested it was time to go home, but when she tried to take the book, thinking it had already vexed him enough, he resisted, so Harry told her to let it be.

That night, instead of Gilles’s letter, he turned the utopian novel over in his large hands. He examined the frontispiece.

Ex Libris

This Book Belongs to Marcus Weiner

He was beset by nausea, disgusted by the pretentious ass, the wag who thought a juxtaposition of names — William Morris the showman and William Morris the designer — so incredibly amusing; it was himself he hated. His mind regurgitated an agency mosaic: a speedy mail-room apprenticeship; staff retreats in Santa Barbara; romantic weekends at San Ysidro Ranch (though he wasn’t at all certain it was a ranch, and couldn’t remember who used to go there with him); openings of restaurants and openings of films and openings of little retail palaces filled with ruinously expensive clothes; first-class flights to visit clients the world over — Fiji, Ireland, Paris — lavish vacation jaunts to Venice and Sri Lanka, pyramids and power spots and the thousand wonders of lava beach, fjord and dune; cay, cwm, atoll. All those breakfasts and lunches and screenings with desperately self-assured faces, famous and egregiously unknown. A name wafted back: John Burnham, the colleague to whom he had told his premonitory dream of becoming Chairman of the Disembodied … — but the whole of these meandering mental aerobics, though invaluable to his rehabilitation, would not lead him to Katrina, for too much scar tissue had formed.

Other matters weighed heavily upon him, specifically one that took precedence even over the fate of the orphan girl, and had been stirred by his parents’ restoration of the forbidden fruit of his kleptistic act — the other “ News from Nowhere,” his news, needed to be retrieved, for it was a vital piece to the great puzzle of where and what he had been. He had already layed his hands on it, with his little cab ride; and the timing of the trip to Public Storage — coming just before his arrest — seemed a powerful omen. He only hoped the journal (Weiner’s, not Morris’s) would be intelligible. Like the proverbial man who in the middle of sleep jots down the secret of the universe only to find jibberish in the morning, Marcus feared that the diary, ten years in the making, might be useless. Sometimes long-buried things decay when exposed to light and air.

Now each time he saw the hidden earpieces of the men in suits, he thought of her.

He would retrieve his manuscript, and Jane Scull in the bargain.

Marcus had not yet visited with the old man, though on his release from the Towers, they had spoken by phone.

He knew Louis Trotter to be his “father-in-law,” but the scarring earlier noted made him subject to a selective dysphasia that robbed things of context and meaning. Still, such were Mr. Trotter’s patriarchal powers (and so genuine his concern for this creature) that Marcus relied on him for all manner of “pieces of intelligence.” So it was not unusual that he asked his mentor to grant a furlough to visit his dear friend Jane so that he could get back the journal she had in safekeeping; it had been his last request of her. He also told Mr. Trotter it would not be a bad thing for him to help this woman, as she was disabled and might benefit even more than he from the quality of care so kindly made available; and as she — his Janey — was the most decent, hard-luck being he’d ever known and he would do anything for her if ever he had the means. (This, he offered with characteristic charm and humility, not wishing to tax Mr. Trotter’s energies or goodwill.) When the old man consulted Marcus’s therapist on whether a small road trip would be kosher, the lady raised a flag, astutely hypothesizing — for she was no slouch, and even knew her Victoriana — that this new “Jane” (if she existed at all) might in fact be a delusionary stand-in for the other: the Jane Burden of William Morris, the famously adulterous wife of which therapist and client had had numerous discussions early on, in fresh-from-Twin-Towers pre-Zyprexa days. He had been doing so well; she wanted to be sure he wasn’t mixing himself up with Morris again or confusing Jane Burden with Katrina Trotter — or some such combination. If this were the case, the analyst coolly cautioned that Mr. Weiner’s lauded progress would need to be reassessed. They went to his son-in-law’s rooms to talk over the matter. Mr. Trotter was glad to see Marcus good-naturedly assure both himself and therapist alike that Jane, unburdened— this Jane — was indeed the very special, very dear Jane Scull, boon companion and erstwhile shelter mate. The digger stopped short of deeper inquiry, wisely deciding it was none of his damn business.