Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

“Grandpa Lou would not be terribly anxious to find someone who hurt your mother the way that man did.” He admitted she had a point. “But you should find him, for your own peace of mind.”

“I don’t care,” he said, unconvincingly.

“You don’t have to — but you should probably still make the effort. You need closure.”

“Closure?” he said, with suspicion. “Maybe you’re the one who needs closure — for your book . You know — for research . I know how thorough you like to be. Because you’re such a great writer . Maybe you’re the one who needs closure so you can figure out how to end your book!”

She listened to the tirade, eyes glued to the ground. “I guess I deserved that.”

Tull thought that maybe he’d been a bit rough. He poked at the soggy plantains. “Besides,” he said, “I wouldn’t know where to start. I’m no good at ‘Missing Persons.’ ”

Lucy tap-tapped psychedelic decal’d nails on the marble cutting board, squinting her eyes — the girl detective again. “The trail is cold, but the Internet, you know, is … hot .”

Not far away, in a modernist villa on Stradella Road, cousin Edward lay in bed attended by his mother. A Gucci scarf pinned to a goose-down pillow shaded his head, its hem stopping short at the brow. Liquid brown eyes watched her sponge his small frame; today he was too tired for the tub.

Joyce Trotter was older than her husband by nearly fifteen years. Approaching sixty (having had Lucy at forty-five and Edward at forty-seven), she carried herself with the presumption of an actress who had retired in her prime and was now only rarely glimpsed, someone of whom the world might say: Still so gorgeous! She had mitigated the tragedy of her son’s unhappy lot with the compulsive maintenance of her own body. Though she desired to prolong and enhance her femininity, Botox and herbal wraps hadn’t really softened her — Ashtanga and kickboxing instead bestowed a Brentwood warrior’s mannish, sinewy glow. Sclerotherapy erased spider veins and Autologen was injected into nasolabial folds (a lab in New Jersey was busy farming collagen from three millimeters of skin taken from behind her ears); the men on Roxbury Drive had rolled up AlloDerm, an implant made from the dermis of human cadavers, surgically inserting it in her lip, and applied erbium laser to forehead. Mistakenly diagnosed with Lyme disease, Joyce flew to New York on the BBJ to have her blood pumped with a synthetic amino acid. Horrified that she leaked urine during a particularly torturous Pilates session, she immediately had a “designer” vaginoplasty and anterior colporrhaphy to restore the dropped bladder to normal position.

But dark clouds hung overhead that would not disperse. They had tried so long and so nobly to have children. Joyce saw a hundred specialists, but nothing worked; she combed Russia and China for little ones, but could never commit. Then came the magician of Santa Monica. He was going to use her womb as an incubator for another woman’s eggs — Joyce was giving herself preparatory injections when by mistake Lucy happened. Well, why not? She knew plenty of fortysomethings who were knocked up. What was modern technology for? Then she wanted another, and the magician made it happen. Presto: eyebrows were raised — there were always the doomsayers, including her mother-in-law, who wasn’t thrilled from the beginning that her son had chosen une femme ancienne . Is it safe? they would ask. Are you sure that you want to? You were so lucky with Lucy … so blessed . What if the child — and she knew he was damaged, of course she knew, because the magician had told her so, but then she met with Father de Kooning and was certain she would have it. She would have it . And people were not happy! Years later, the Four Winds Mommies, scourges of the silent auction/Pediatric AIDS/carnival-booth charity circuit, tacitly indicted her for Edward’s plastic fantastic skeletophantasmagoric woes … she could feel it. She smelled it in their eyes, their hair, their smiles, their very teeth as they pushed thousand-dollar prams stuffed with bawling bundles of gorgeous DNA. (Since Apert’s wasn’t a “recessive,” the odds of Lucy having a child so afflicted were astronomical … as were those of Joyce and Dodd if it were possible for them to have another, which of course it wasn’t. Wasn’t that a consolation?)

“Think he’ll snap?”

“Who?”

“Tull.”

“Edward, don’t be silly.”

She used a little bit of alcohol to swab beneath the brace, then rubbed his pale skin with Camelia Iris from E. Coudray, his favorite. Say what he would to Lucy and Tull, he secretly adored her. These were the only times — her touching him — that Edward felt alive.

“He’s been acting pretty weird since he found out.”

“I think that’s normal — an attention-getter. The whole thing has been quite a shock, I’m sure.”

“Have you talked to Trinnie?”

“Yesterday.”

“And Grandpa Lou?”

“Today.” She smiled. “What are all these questions?”

“Is Grandpa Lou angry that Tull found out?”

“I think he’s relieved.”

“What about Trinnie?”

“Seems better than ever.”

“She isn’t mad?”

“Why would she be?”

“At you and Dad. For snitching.”

“No one snitched , Edward.”

“ Lucy did.”

“It’s better that Tull know. He’s of age — he would have found out. He should have been told. How can you keep a thing like that quiet?”

“ You couldn’t.”

“Very funny,” she said, smirking. “I always thought it was handled poorly.”

“Mommy”—that’s what he called her when they were alone—“what would make someone leave like that?”

“I don’t know. Marcus was always kind of a nutjob.”

“He didn’t love her? He didn’t love Aunt Trinnie?”

“I’m sure that he did.”

“Did you know him?”

“Not very well.”

“What was he like?”

“Edward, I’m late.”

She screwed the lid on the iridescent green lotion, then drew the thin down quilt over his whiteness, gently kissing his cheek.

“Are you going to another funeral?”

“Yes.”

“I never told you this before,” he said, clearing his throat. “But I–I really respect the work you do.”

“Thank you, Edward.”

She kissed his bare cheek again, just under the hem of the scarf.

“I guess,” he said, “you can’t explain certain things — what makes someone leave. Tull’s dad … or what makes someone throw a baby into a dumpster.”

“No — you can’t explain.”

“Guess that’s just the world, huh?”

“ Part of the world. An ugly part, but just a part.”

Joyce Trotter stood at the Castaic grave near Grasshopper Canyon.

The breast of her son still flitted before her like a haunted, broken bird’s.

“Can you hear the freeway?” asked Father de Kooning. “It sounds like a fountain. Jesus was tired, and stopped at a well — Jacob’s well. He asked a woman for water, and she said, ‘You are a Jew and I am a woman. How can you ask me for water?’ Jesus said, ‘If you knew who I am, you would ask me for water. With the water in this well, you will still have thirst. With the water I give you, you would never know thirst again because it would be like a fountain inside you.’ ”

There were about forty gathered there. She had dressed down for the burial, in simple earrings and black Donna Karan sheath; the sun highlighted the chalky outline of water stains from the sponge bath. The small box about to be lowered into the earth held a two-year-old, found in the trash. Joyce had been informed that as in some infernal Rugrats episode, the diapered boy had scaled the garbage and draped himself over the metal side of the bin before dying in balanced repose, like a tiny-tot prisoner shot in mid-escape.