Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

In the days following the meeting in the Withdrawing Room, Tull went to school like a somnambulist — scattered, so to speak, to the Four Winds. He finally understood what Edward meant when summoning the word postictal (pronounced post- ik -tal, always with great flourish) to refer to the emptied, euphoric state that came over him in the wake of an Apert seizure. That is to say, Tull walked about in a kind of gauze; he felt an overall generic thankfulness; colors and scents seemed more vivid. As he floated indolently from class to class, building to building, ethereally benevolent toward his fellow students, the once cynically regarded campus revealed itself as a quaint and inconsequential place, a warm and fuzzy manufacturer of future nostalgia.

Lucy and Edward were the only ones aware of the facts behind Tull’s “seizure.” Though Edward was perversely thrilled by the development, his poor sister grew morbidly beside herself. Deeply ashamed to be the snitching source of Tull’s pain and fearful to approach him, the redhead kept her distance. Unable to concentrate on the detective-book project, she sat at desk torturing herself for having delivered the coup de grâce — it was only a matter of time before a distant chorus of screams would announce that Tull had gunned down a dozen students or been found hanging from the top metal slat of the folding bleachers of the multimillion-dollar DODD AND JOYCE TROTTER GYMNASIUM. The truth would out and she’d soon be (nationally) marked: Lucille Rose, spoiled scion, had destroyed her adored first cousin because while on the way to visit their hospitalized grandmother (whom she was exploiting in the name of “research”) he had not paid enough attention to the prattling précis of her pathetically still unwritten Mystery of the Blue Maze . The horror of such ruminations came to a head when she startled herself awake with a reflexive gasp in the middle of European History. Boulder turned to scowl at the creepy little outburst — the outburst of a loser.

Tull still thought of the homeless girl, and fantasized that the reassuring voice of the GPS would direct them to her. He would invite Amaryllis and her mom to Saint-Cloud for dinner and make Grandpa Lou give them money so they could move from their motel — to Malibu or the Marina. After his grandson’s recent trauma, how could the old man refuse?

By dreamy smile and odd disaffection, Tull not so subtly advertised the intimate, intensely private revelation that had knighted him with its from-left-field melodrama. At such a tender age we’re as innocent as we are vain, and while it’s true Tull had his share of weepily beleaguered moments, he was not above considering himself the irresistibly charismatic star of a new school play called, say, The Wounded Boy .

Having thus left the door open, it was inevitable that his nastier contemporaries would gather, as Grandpa Lou would say, a piece of intelligence, on their own; predictably, l’affaire Colonne still lived on in the memory of those peers of Trinnie’s who had begotten children way back when — such were the vagaries of coming of age in the town one was born. Hence, like an ungainly, standoffish bodyguard, Lucy found herself shadowing the boy she loved and had so casually betrayed. “Stop it!” she shouted when tormentors made their retarded Bride of Frankenstein/Invisible Man jokes about his father that cut Tull like daggers—“You better shut up!” They laughed until she cuffed the biggest one, hard. The bully almost struck back, but her coldly measured comment—“ Touch me and my father will fuck your family” —dissuaded him. (The aggressor, like most of the student body, had laid curious eyes on Dodd Trotter, the bullet-headed billionaire, at the formal dedication of the gymnasium; and though his own father was a cruel Century City litigator, instincts told him not to call her bluff.) Reveling in the martyrdom of his “second act,” the Wounded Boy allowed Lucy to vent. If not exactly righting a wrong, she could at least salve her guilt.

Things changed at home, too. Ralph stopped pestering him for comments about his script, and that was definitely a plus.

As for his mother, Trinnie seemed at once lighter and heavier, like a ballasted ghost. She dressed elegantly, as always, but without the usual frivolity. She joked less, more droll than outrageous. Though she spent most of her time in the gardens, she had a warm, missionary smile for anyone who came along — she was effortlessly, agonizingly present. Even Bluey was surprised when her daughter moved from the bedroom that had been hers as a child into a guest cottage, which she kept uncharacteristically clutter free. Trinnie no longer had wine with dinner, and when speaking to Tull made sure to lightly touch his arm or hand, shoulder or cheek, like an otherworldly healer infusing with balm. She looked into his eyes when he answered; her own were clear as bells.

And each day, Tull thought: my father must be dead . They’d hired a detective … yet how was it a body was never found? Didn’t they say a body always had to be found? Grandpa Lou would have scoured the ends of the earth, dug the deepest hole with spindly, spotted hands until he broke to the other side — he would have done that for Katrina, Tull knew. No: he must be dead, or good as. What a mediocre denouement for the drama of a gifted child! He raged at the walls while headphones blared Slim Shady, feebly rapping to slang he didn’t fully understand, a psycho Gilbert-and-Sullivan blizzard of miniature passion plays about duct-taped women thrashing in car trunks.

“There’s someone here to see you,” said Winter.

He stood bathed in the light of the Sub-Zero picking at cold Cuban chicken. Lucy appeared in the kitchen door, frail and diffident. The old nurse ducked out.

“Tull …” she stammered. “I’m — I’m so sorry! You have to forgive me! I didn’t mean to—”

She cried, and his heart opened up. The smell of her perspiration was animal, as if she’d been chased to Saint-Cloud by predators.

“It’s all right, Lucy, really—”

“No, no, it isn’t! It isn’t, it isn’t, it isn’t! It was so sadistic —all because you wouldn’t listen to my stupid book cover!”

“It isn’t stupid. I like your book cover.”

“You are so sweet !” Deliriously, she kissed him, and he blushed. “Why do I do things like that? Edward says I have a mean streak, like Mom.” She dried an eye with the butt of her palm. “Then you’ll forgive me?”

He nodded, then sat forlornly on the stool Ralph favored during culinary rants and raids.

“So: what are you gonna do?”

“About what?”

“You want to find him, don’t you?”

“There is no finding him.”

“That is bullshit, Tull.” He narrowed his eyes menacingly.

Lucy quickly apologized, fearing she’d lost all the ground she had gained. “But you could find him, if you—”

“He’s dead.”

“No one knows that for sure.”

“I said he’s dead!”

She let him breathe for a minute — well, maybe five seconds. He’d been through so much. “But did you talk to Grandpa?”

“He said he hired a detective but they couldn’t find him.”

“What did your father even do ? I mean, for a living.”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you ask?”

“No.” Tull wondered what else she knew, and was withholding for the sake of rapprochement. “If my father were alive, Grandpa would have found him.”

“I don’t think that’s necessarily true.”

“What do you mean?”