Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

A girl with long orange braids stood blinking at the inhabitants of this brave new world. Gambling there was oxygen in the atmosphere, Lucy decided the best thing was to step forward. From behind her came a boy of around twelve with freckly skin and hair the color of dark wine. She nervously took his arm, and he joined her in deploying the universal smile that said We Mean You No Harm. We Are Here to Learn.

Eulogio helped them down while his brother gamely supervised — first Lucy, then Tull.

And now, the real show began.

The wary mob took a great startled breath as the canopied buggy, with steady percussive bleat, began telescoping itself outward upon its iron ramp. After an étude of whirrings and pneumatic rushes of air, both ramp and cart had protruded as far as they ever would. The rubber-wheeled carriage, steered by our intrepid first cousin, lowered then suavely disconnected its own umbilicus, free of the mother ship.

It carved a cool arc over the asphalt, leaving gasps and other outbursts in its wake, for there was Edward at the wheel — or rather a small, misshapen, genderless figure in green satin mask and muumuu, its chin supported by what looked to be some sort of metal rod (like a science-fiction Jesus). The buggy drove into the street away from the house as if taking its leave, yet all were too astonished to follow with anything but their eyes.

By now Ruth Weiner appeared in the drive, having opened the gate that led to her backyard and covered garage. With unfailing timing, Edward, nearly a quarter of the way down the block, triumphantly returned — the cul-de-sac crowd parted for him while he waved a dashing “Hi, everyone!”—before noiselessly gliding onto the sidewalk, into the driveway and through the gate. A few younger ones nervously waved back, the way half-frightened children do at Mickey Mouse before he bounds over and sets them to tears. The neighborhood kids finally whooped it up, gleefully following his trail, yet politely stopping short of the Weiner border like Third World ragamuffins following a prince. (That would make Edward, to use a favorite expression of his aunt Trinnie’s, most Fourth World indeed.) While Ruth held the gate, Epitacio, cracking a smile at last, strode through, followed by Tull, Lucy and Harry, the latter of whom was so pale that his lips were as white as his skin.

An explosion of three staccato barks caused heads to snap toward the Mauck. After a suitably dramatic moment, Pullman appeared at the rear and languidly stretched before standing, nearly tall as a man, his speckled head never more ham-size or handsomely commanding; Tull’s flurry of coddling had done him well after all. Even the grown-ups scattered as he leapt from the thick Hokanson onto the street, glanced this way and that, then cantered to the driveway and through the entry, which Ruth Weiner finally fastened behind him. A jubilant crowd burst into applause, then made a beeline to the MSV, desperate to glimpse as much of the exotic orchid-filled high-tech interior as the beaming, gap-toothed Eulogio would allow.

Meanwhile, as awkward introductions were hastily made, the Trotters entered the quiet backyard and saw that a picnic table sat in readiness upon a stained-redwood deck under the shade of a tarp. The exciting details of their arrival — the built-in celebrity of Edward and his mastery, both stylish and technological, over physical misfortune — proved a beneficial distraction during what inevitably was a discomfitting moment. Tull thought Lucy wonderful in making the elderly couple feel at ease — so selfless and assured, and her efforts all for him. He felt a kind of ardor for her, shot through by pangs at how much he took her for granted; and vowed then and there he’d begin to appreciate this girl for all she was worth.

Yet watching the interplay afforded him time to step back and observe their hosts.

Summoning the ectoplasmic image of his mother’s Kodak, he struggled to see his father in the bones of Mr. Weiner’s physiognomy before reprimanding himself that Marcus was not of their blood. One side of the newfound grandfather’s face sank down a bit as if today it had decided to sleep in. The eye was rheumy, and wept into a small yellowish crust at its corner; the same had formed like grains of dirty sand at the edges of mouth and nostril. He’d shaved as closely as he could for the event — that was touching to Tull — with some small patches on the droopy cheek bypassed or overlooked. The skin was waxen and lacked tension; the smile still bright, yet one had the sense it too would “sleep in” one day soon. Harry had dressed for the occasion in bow tie and insignia’d blazer, and this too moved young Tull. He shuffled his feet (shod in comfy old bedroom slippers) when he walked and had a faint odor to him, like brine doused in talc.

His wife, in flowery bonnet and sundress, was all loose ends. In contrast, her features were severe and controlled, more harshly “Jewish” than Harry’s. Her graying hair was short as a terrier’s, with nails impeccably groomed. Ruth Weiner looked like someone you wouldn’t want to tangle with — a consumer-rights ombudswoman or Judge Judy type. But those looks belied; as Tull watched, she seemed more and more a woman who had unraveled.

She busied herself with small talk and place settings, barely glancing his way. He thought the call from Lucy must have been an amazing blow; under the circumstances, the lady was handling herself exceptionally well.

Epitacio lifted Edward from the buggy and sat him at table’s end on a high-backed chair the old couple had thoughtfully provided — they had done their homework. Easing into it, the cousin declared the unexpected provisions to be happy ones. Hamburgers and pink lemonade were served by Ruth, who fluttered to and from the house forestalling Lucy’s requests to help. Pullman was given a rather too large patty on a thick paper plate, which he dutifully ignored. When Ruth finally joined them, all fell silent, as if it were time for someone to say a few words of import or at least acknowledge this momentous event; instead, the woman stood up and began to quiver. After a stab or two at intelligibility, she hurried inside. Lucy swiveled on the bench wondering if she should follow, but Harry reassured that his wife would be fine.

So they ate awhile in silence, save the occasional honking (Eulogio allowed a few members of his appreciative audience to take liberties). Epitacio glowered in his reckless brother’s direction before politely excusing himself from the table. Discussion resumed, touching on diverse topics — the especial enormity of Pullman’s frame and the sage qualities of his breed; the preferred route from Bel-Air to Redlands proper and the odious state of traffic in general (a topic that naturally led to the Mauck and Edward’s custom buggy) — finally settling on the cousin’s costume, selected for today’s occasion from a vast wardrobe handwoven by the boy himself.

When Lucy offered that he had been taught to sew by Tull’s mother, Harry said, “Katrina? My goodness! How is she?”—reminding the children afresh of everyone’s connection. But the query was somehow hollow, as was Tull’s response (both came from too far a distance). Conversation trickled back to Edward and his affliction. Harry was given a cordial crash course on Apert Syndrome and related “orphans” of the craniofacial ilk. He wanted to know if the boy had had surgeries, and Edward said many, when he was younger; adenoids and tonsils removed and nasal passages enlarged to ease breathing; clubfoot, webbed toes and fingers more or less corrected; nose and cheekbones separated from skull, then reattached with metal plates, widening the space between, so new bone could fill the gap — this being accomplished by encasing the prodigy’s head in a birdcage for a few months while expansion screws were slowly, torturously turned, “thus making me the person I am today. Hey — what was I expecting? The Spanish Inquisition?” Lucy and Tull laughed as always at the reference to the old Python bit, but Harry was oblivious.