Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

He appeared in the rococo door frame and smiled, toothbrush in hand. She ran and wrapped her legs around him like a child, so her feet touched soles at the small of his back; he carried her down that way — for all four flights they were conjoined — then walked her to the vast lawn, where they spun around and around, their dervish movements banishing anything that remained of old specters — that tragic and befuddled young woman who had searched futilely for her Gothic groom.

“Hey! Hey!”

Epitacio smiled frantically, waving from the Silver Seraph as it raced up the drive. The first thing that went through Trinnie’s mind was that her disapproving father had gotten wind of what she’d been up to (from one of the archivists) and was perhaps in the throes of a sympathetic panic that Marcus had disappeared again. But she didn’t see the old man on the passenger side.

As he got closer, Epitacio looked to be in a state — his smile wasn’t a smile at all. “It’s your father—”

“What …”

“He’s at Cedars!”

“Oh my God.”

Marcus opened the door and pushed his wife in. “Take us there!” he commanded.

They were barefoot and barely dressed.

When they arrived, Dodd and Winter were in the waiting room of the ICU. Epitacio was dispatched to bring the Weiners clothes from both Saint-Cloud and Cañon Manor; in the meantime, his-and-her VIP-suite bathrobes were proffered.

“What happened?” asked Trinnie.

“Winter found him — Dad was in the Withdrawing Room. He collapsed. He was on the floor.”

“For how long?”

“We don’t know!” said Winter.

Dodd put an arm around the woman to shore her up. His secretary, Frances-Leigh, came in, then hung back.

“The paramedics worked on him for a while. They had trouble getting him — Dad’s heart wouldn’t …”

Trinnie closed her eyes and groaned.

Four doctors came to the lounge, including the retired Dr. Kindman, who counted himself as Louis Trotter’s oldest friend. He had treated her as a little girl, and now she went to him for comfort. He clasped her hand while the head man spoke in low, thoughtful tones. “He’s unconscious at this time.”

“But — what exactly happened!” said Trinnie.

“Your father,” he continued, “has suffered a hemorrhage.”

“Is he going to die?” Dodd asked.

“I don’t know. He’s fighting. The next forty-eight hours are critical.”

“Can we see him?”

“Yes, of course.”

Dodd left the room and squeezed the secretary’s hand as he walked by. Trinnie followed, then grabbed her husband’s arm, saying, “I want you to come.” Winter and Frances-Leigh stayed behind, huddling together like refugees.

Mr. Trotter lay in a tangled, blood-flecked, intubated nest. After covering the old man’s catheterized penis with a sheet, Marcus stood sentry at the foot of the bed. Dodd, who was not good at this, shifted uncomfortably on the sidelines. Trinnie pulled up a chair and sat beside her dad, holding his hand in hers, smiling and cooing and murmuring that everything would be all right. Her cheeks glistened with tears and she wiped his face. She was certain that his eyes had welled up since their arrival.

“It’s OK, Papa, it’s OK! We’re here. Dodd and me — and Marcus too. We love you so much! Are you in pain, Papa? If you’re in pain, squeeze once for yes and twice for no. Are you in pain? You’re not in pain? You’re not in pain? That’s good then — he’s not in pain. That’s good … is there anything else you need? Do you need water, Papa? Would you like some water?”

One of the nurses said he was being “hydrated” but that Trinnie could daub his mouth with a damp towelette, which she did.

“Is that better, Papa? Because we don’t want you thirsty. Maybe we could get them to put some scotch in that IV bag, huh. Would you like that, Papa? Can you arrange that, Dodd? Because I think it’d be very cool.” She smiled at her brother, then at her husband; she was heartbreaking. “We stayed in the tower last night, Papa. The house you built for our wedding. Can you believe it? We stayed all night and it was so beautiful … I put everything back the way it was — all the things you gave us, all the antiques … we slept like babies! Didn’t we, Marcus?” She drew the towelette across his forehead. “Oh, Papa, I love you so much! You can’t — what will I do without you? What will any of us do?”

He opened his eyes and smiled.

“Hello, Papa! Hello, baby! It’s your girl! He’s awake!” she shouted to one of the nurses. “Dodd, he smiled at me! Did you see? Did you see him smile?”

When she turned back to him, he was smiling no more. “See? You’ll be fine now, Papa. We won’t let you leave just yet, will we, Dodd?”

“No, no we won’t. There is just no way.”

“And besides — you haven’t picked your memorial yet!” she said, laughing through her tears. “Has he, Dodd?”

“He sure hasn’t.”

“So you can’t leave, Papa, you just can’t . What would the woman at the cemetery say? What was her name, Dodd?”

“Dot.”

“Dot — that’s right. What a sweet, funny lady. Well, Dot would have a conniption. Wouldn’t she, Papa?”

Dr. Kindman interrupted to say that the men needed to perform a procedure and the family could come back in twenty minutes.

Trinnie caressed her father’s brow. Only one eye was open now; he looked like a gnome whose forest had burned. She bent to kiss his cheek.

During her ministrations, Dodd’s attention was drawn to his father’s shriveled hand. As the four fingers twitched in unison, he had a shock of recognition, for what he saw he believed to be no purposeless tremor but rather the unmistakable trademark gesture belonging to Louis Aherne Trotter and Louis Aherne Trotter alone — a four-fingered last hurrah that for decades had slipped untold C-notes into the welcoming palms of bellboys, valets, barbers, doormen, gardeners, footmen, chefs, cabbies, housemaids and shine boys.

Forty-five minutes later, that very hand — having passed off its final currency to God, say, as a grateful token for His services — grew still. And the digger dug no more.

The funeral was a small, intimate affair, in keeping with the wishes of the deceased. There was no wake, and no ceremony for employees or shareholders.

When Mr. Trotter crumpled, he was in the Withdrawing Room beside the welter of miniatures. The latest model — Ryue Nishizawa’s corrugated-steel tomb interlaced with slats of ipé, ash, piranha pine and ebonized afromosia (which the architect had titled “Open Plan”) — had broken his fall and was broken in turn. The family chose not to make that a portent; the old man’s choice of memorial remained more cryptic than ever.

Trinnie’s idea, which no one challenged, was to bury him in the plain green field of his plot; in six months, the family would select from the commissions and build a structure there as he had wished. The irony of this arrangement—“the temporary contemporary,” as Trinnie called it in lighter moments — was that for now, the patriarch’s resting place was even more austere, more anonymous, if you will, than his grandson’s once-controversial domain.

Joyce elected to pay her respects, and everyone was fine with that. Rose, as she now called herself, flew in from London, looking older if not wiser. She was now in meager though spirited possession of an English accent, and peppered her conversation (outside the cemetery, anyway) with a superabundance of “shite”s and “bollocks.” She wasted no time in letting Toulouse know that there was a plenitude of “Etonians” in her life—“and some of them, Royals.” Naturally, Marcus and his parents were in attendance; Rose greeted them warmly, as a princess moving through an infirmary.