Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

“And how did she respond?” asked Tull, playing along.

“With something very … Trinnie-like,” answered the cousin.

“I believe,” said Lucy, “it was: ‘Edward, shut the fuck up.’ ” Her brother rasped and hooted, then Lucy got a grand idea. “You know what we should do? We should just drive in! Come on, Edward! Journey to the center of the labyrinth — I dare you!”

“We’ll tie some yarn to the cart,” said Tull. “In case we get lost.”

“I’ll pass.”

“He’s afraid,” shouted Lucy gleefully. “Edward’s afraid!”

“That would be you,” said the cousin. “I’ve seen how far you’ve gotten. You won’t even go in with Pullie.”

“That isn’t true,” she said defensively. As impossible as it may seem, the Trotter children were, in regard to the maze, wary of exploration.

“Then no one’s been to the center,” said Tull.

“What? Not even you?” asked Edward, a bit stunned.

“Well, when would I? They only just finished it.”

“Nearly two weeks ago, they did,” said Edward, thoroughly pleased. “Well, well, we are a timid group!”

“Then let’s do it,” said Tull. “What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is what your mother put in the middle of the damn thing.”

“The Rodin?”

“Guess again.” He paused, striking his Benny pose. “A dumpster fetus — what else?”

While Tull and Lucy laughed, exhaustion darkened Edward’s face like a cloud, and his sister sprang to help. They walked from bench to buggy, supporting him on each side. Lucy got in to drive and smiled at Tull, pained and poignant; Edward would need to skip a few days of school to get his strength back, and she hoped he wouldn’t have to go to the hospital. Pullman cantered about the carriage, then licked Edward’s hand, but the cousin twitched it away. As Lucy drove the serpentine path to the house, the Dane galloped toward a rakish figure on the hill: Grandpa Lou.

Trinnie shouted at the children that it was time to see Bluey, then Ralph shouted to her that they would be late and she hurried off. As they entered the living room, Tull called out hello, but the old man didn’t hear.

He was already down on all fours, chuffing with Pullman at the door of the Palladian doghouse.

After they dropped Edward at the cousins’ home on Stradella Road, they descended Saint-Cloud in the four-wheel Cadillac truck that took them to and from school. The gentle driver, Epitacio, was aptly named; he rarely spoke, and when he did, one could imagine the words being his last. The children were enormously fond of him.

“Epi, can we stop at Rexall for nonpareils?” The chauffeur shrugged as if to disappoint, then toothily grinned. Tull turned his attentions to Lucy. “So what’s going on with Edward? Seemed like he had a fever or something.”

“He’s OK.” She tapped her fingers and stared out the window. “He might have another surgery. No biggie.”

They sat quietly while Epitacio guided the SUV toward Cedars, down, down, down through the stone West Gate.

“That is weird about your mother and those babies.”

“My parents are kind of insane, if you haven’t noticed. The whole Trotter dynasty— and that means you, too. And ever since this Forbes thing—”

“How high was your dad on the list?”

“Like, the eighteenth-richest person.”

“How much?”

“Nine-point-four.”

“Billion?”

“Duh.”

“Whoa.”

“He’s been on this giant binge.”

“What do you mean?”

“He got totally freaked when someone told him Ted Turner was the biggest private landowner in the country.”

“Like how much?”

“Turner? Like a million and a half acres.”

“In the U.S.?”

“And the world. Argentina, I think.”

“Whoa.”

“Dad doesn’t really want that. I think he visited a few ranches for sale in Wyoming, but — can you imagine my father on a ranch? So he started buying … really strange things instead.”

“Like?”

“Buildings. Big, empty buildings. Foreclosure stuff. You have no idea how many empty buildings there are.”

“For investing?”

“He doesn’t do anything with them — they just sit there with homeless people inside.”

“Squatters.”

“Whatever.”

“He probably has a master plan.” Tull fiddled with a mahogany air vent. “Lucy … do you think Edward’s serious about all that maze stuff? You don’t think he actually thinks my mother would—”

“Oh, don’t be so paranoid. We have to take him into the maze, we all have to go, right into the middle — just to get it over with. Put him in a wheelbarrow! I’m writing a mystery about it, you know.”

“About what?”

“ The Mystery of the Blue Maze —Mr. Hookstratten said the school would publish five hundred copies to sell at the fund-raiser. And the lady said I could sell them out of Every Picture Tells a Story.”

“What’s that?”

“A store for kids’ books. Mr. Hookstratten says it’s a natural. He said publishers love it when a real kid writes a book, it could be a franchise. He said I should make it a little hard-edged, like maybe the girl’s grandma is dying.”

“That’s depressing.”

“It’s real . He said that’s the trend.”

Lucy glanced out the tinted window at the Beverly Center as they swooped toward the drugstore. She surveyed it with abstracted hauteur — as if she owned the dun-colored retail fastness and all the serfs who desperately congregated within. A man with an aluminum crutch stood outside the Hard Rock with a sign: SOMEONE HELP ME.

“That’s sort of why I wanted to come tonight. For research.”

“But Bluey isn’t dying.”

“I know that,” she said disdainfully. “It’s still good for research. Mr. Hookstratten says the When a Grandparent Dies books do really well in the marketplace.” Tull frowned at his cousin’s mercenary ways. “ The Mystery of the Blue Maze . Isn’t that cool? Mr. Hookstratten said it’s better when you put a color in the title.”

“Shouldn’t it be green? A green maze?”

“That’s the cliché ,” she said, sounding much like her brother. “Anyhow, green looks blue in the dark. I already have the cover — I get all my ideas that way. I always start with a cover. Want me to describe it?” Without waiting for an answer, she hunched like a witch ready to conjure. “It’s midnight, and a girl — I may name her Lucy — creeps toward the dark mouth of the maze. I’m calling it a maze, not a labyrinth, because Mr. Hookstratten said maze is less complicated. That with children’s books you could be ironic but not complicated . Anyway, Lucy — if that’s what I decide to name her — is in a long, flowing robe. She glides across the lawn, carrying a brass taper in her hand. The flame flickers across her thin, anxious, pretty face—”

“Did you hear about the tapir at the zoo?” he asked impetuously.

“I mean taper , as in candle …”

“It tore off the keeper’s arm.”

“I really don’t care.”

The spell was broken; her expression curdled as Tull gave rein to a diabolically mischievous impulse. Impious and inspired, he leaned across the front seat and reached upward. “Let’s talk to the man !” Epitacio smiled as the boy pressed a button on the roof console; a little arpeggio played, like the one that languorously strummed when he turned on his ThinkPad. Then came a Voice from the mystical GPS ether.