Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

The first clump of earth was shoveled in.

After the funeral, a large reception was held on Stradella. Cavernous tents were pitched over heroic amounts of food, and visitors — some, there for the first time, marveling at the cobblestoned village — filed through the Boar’s Head to admire the masks Edward had created and the tidy rows of those he’d been crafting at the time of his death. (Candelaria and her elves had made the place spotless.) Ordinarily, such trespass would be anathema, but Lucy and Toulouse felt expansive as the crowds ogled deferentially; they stood to the side like proud curators, their burden for the moment lightened as it was shared.

Trinnie accepted a number of hugs, then pleaded exhaustion and told her son she was going home. Now her grief arrived, borne aloft by the pallbearers of her relatively young life’s every regretful moment. Our stay on earth was suddenly exposed as tenuous at best, and of exceeding short term — what if it had been Toulouse they were busy burying? She shuddered at the ease with which the image came. She was perverse; she had no regard for the sanctity of this world or any other; she was a wastrel who ruined everything she touched. Marcus had an excuse! He had myth and pathology on his side — and yet, there he was doing the brave thing, battling his demons, bloody and unbowed. For her, it was business as usual: still playing in the garden and flirting with disaster. Edward was stone-dead and now, on top of everything, Toulouse must factor that in, his fragile worldview further rocked. At least he had the role model of his father, a father at war, kind and courtly, fervid, mysterious, brimming with remorse and amends — real amends — back from a hell ten thousand times worse than any of the self-pitying, insipidly pornographic soap operas this brassy golden girl’s rehabs had ever provided. There she was, a twat ingenue who could only be counted on to pick up her toys and vanish, and who dared feel justified because that’s what he , Marcus, husband and eternal old flame, had done … done to her .

The men in suits waved Trinnie through. She saw him right away, stepping from the Town Car; he must have arrived only moments before. Dressed in dark navy, with a great shock of hair and a week’s growth of beard, he wore a recherché vulnerability that drew her in.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for Marcus Weiner.”

Startled by this roan-headed woman (handsome and exotic to him as well) and unable to put the pieces together, he said, with a smile both broad and nervous, “I am Marcus Weiner.”

“It’s Trinnie.”

He still looked perplexed, so she held out her hand.

“Katrina Trotter. We were once married.”

†Once Trinnie had decided to aid her son, Detective Dowling contacted the Motts (who had not let up in asking after Marcus anyway) and laid the whole astonishing thing out: how, independent of aka William, the street-savvy waif had insinuated herself into the bosom of the Trotter clan. That was a mind-blower. Lani subsequently had a lively conversation with Katrina Berenice Trotter, who was funny, easygoing and acerbic. (By the time they spoke, the CASA extraordinaire had supplemented her working knowledge of the famous family with numerous Internet forays.) When Lani discreetly referred to the almost supernatural far-fetchedness of Marcus and Amaryllis’s skid-row alliance — without mentioning anything relating to his incarceration — Trinnie said indeed it was a weird thing, but her voice was flat and distracted and she made a dry cliché about life sometimes being stranger than fiction. Yet before they got off the phone, Trinnie had warmed to the topic. She said she’d debated about putting the kids in touch at all, then decided it would be unfair to be censorious. They were good kids, she said, and without having met her “Tull,” Lani wholeheartedly agreed. Toulouse — his “full” name, the mom explained — had intermittently spoken of Amaryllis for months, but Trinnie said that until rather recently, the adults were of a mind that there had been enough excitement surrounding the girl already. So at first, she wasn’t eager to reward the delinquent clique’s behavior by tying their special friend to Marcus Weiner in nearly cosmic fashion. Things were different now, she said. They had stabilized; months had passed, and the phantasmagoric aspect of it had diminished. Everyone seemed to be getting on with their lives.

“This is so strange!”

“Yes.”

“Your letters were nice.”

“It was difficult — to know what to say.”

“It’s difficult now .”

“Yes!”

They sat under a pergola near — appropriately enough — the “Tête-à-Tête” Narcissi.

“So: you were William Morris.”

“Yes.”

“It’s funny — not funny but odd.”

“It is funny.”

“It is . And kind of fascinating.”

“He was an interesting man. He and his circle.”

“You already knew a lot about him.”

“Yes.”

“From when you were at Oxford.”

“Yes indeed.”

“He went to Oxford, too, no?”

“Yes. And I learned a good deal more — I mean, through the years. Firsthand! So to speak.”

“You were always making jokes about ‘the two Williams.’ When you were an agent.”

“The joke was on me, I’m afraid.”

He smiled disarmingly while she laughed. “You’ve got a bit of an accent there.”

“They tell me it’s fading.”

“I like it. I mean, it’s not too bad on you.” She took cigarettes from her purse. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all!”

“Do you know who has a lot of Morris pieces? Andrew Lloyd Webber, the composer. He did Evita and Cats .”

“Oh yes.”

“He’s a tremendous collector of the Pre-Raphaelites.”

“Is he?”

Marcus seemed quite thrilled, which he actually was, but more because this woman was finally in front of his eyes. Though he did not yet know what that meant.

“Oh yes. I did one of his gardens, in London.”

“ Really . Whereabouts?”

“Belgravia. He’s got Burne-Jones tapestries—”

“My, my!”

“And portraits of Jane, Morris’s wife—”

“Jane Burden.”

“Well, of course you know who Jane is,” she said, chastising herself. “He’s got a portrait of her by Rossetti.”

“Now, there was a character. A wicked, wonderful character, Rossetti. Loved the low life, that one. Took tremendous walks — like Dickens that way.”

A pause wherein it was tacitly acknowledged that Marcus was a well-known — or at least inveterate — walker himself.

“How do you find Santa Barbara?”

“Very tranquil. The beach is lovely — a tonic. Though part of me misses the city, vile as it’s become.”

“The bustle.”

The bustle, he concurred. They fell silent again.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I can cook something.”

“No thank you. I’m not sure how long I — how long I should stay. The children—”

“Of course.”

“And Joyce isn’t well.”

Pause.

“What a horrible, terrible thing. Someone so gifted and so young.”

“Toulouse said you met him — Edward.”

“He came up with his sister when the boy and I had a swim in the ocean. We all rode back together to the house on Stradella. He was a bit introverted, Edward — I drew him out. And now it feels like he may have had a … foreshadowing. He seemed to be very special that way.”