Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

The gang looked after her in turns — except for Boulder, who was more or less busy with shooting a film and all the important folderol that entailed — and set about her tutoring with gusto. The orphan, who turned twelve that first week of October (and was duly feted in a secret ceremony), took in the world afresh, albeit with somewhat shorter hair: as a cloak of anonymity against those who might be in pursuit, Edward had insisted a visit be paid to Frédéric Fekkai. She tearfully emerged from the salon looking like the most beautiful boy imaginable and was immediately treated to as many of Cañon Drive’s 31 Flavors as she desired. †

Amaryllis was an eager bride. In exchange for the teaching of insipid social graces, Lucy conscripted the pint-size Scheherazade to spin yarns of a netherworld that the authoress hoped “to make her own.” (The character of a wandering waif was now central to the Blue Maze opus.) After all, Mr. Hookstratten said the scribbler’s credo was to “write what you know”; Lucy took that to mean what others know, too.

This was the time of Sukkoth and a great hut was constructed at school — as was a temporary dwelling on the lower Stradella campus, made from cornstalks, and hung with figs, dates, grapes, olives and pomegranates. Eager to hammily underscore the real-life exodus — Amaryllis’s — unfolding before him, Toulouse edified his favorite student about the Jewish holiday in hortatory tones that promptly sickened him.

“ ‘You shall dwell in booths seven days,’ ” he read, “ ‘that your generations may know that I made the children [italics Toulouse’s] of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.’ That’s Leviticus,” he said bombastically, closing the book with a flourish. He couldn’t seem to help himself. Any metaphors were lost on the girl, who at the mention of Israel thought only of Edith Stein; unhappily, the open-air evergreen “booth” only served to remind her of Topsy’s GE box beneath the 4th Street Bridge.

There was much recreation for Amaryllis, who, aside from swimming, skating and soccering, was not infrequently seen aboard the spotted back of Pullman, hugging his flanks while he lagged behind the fat-wheeled buggy — it wasn’t the easiest thing to catch up with Edward as he careered his way over Stradella House’s great expanse. The cousin would finally stop for lunch in the sukkah, where the girl held her own in conversation, showing a fine instinct and wider apprehension. She told him everything she knew about saints, an instructive amount indeed. Their encounters left him positively ebullient; even his complexion cleared.

As for Toulouse, she continued to provoke and enthrall the boy whom she had forever marked. With a sophistication that belied her years, Amaryllis experimented in both elating and angering him with as little space between as could be managed. Just when he began to shudder and his lips went bloodless and he prepared to scold, Amaryllis smiled or kissed his cheek or threw a small, sweet punch to a shoulder that made him glad he hadn’t been petty — and terrified that if he ever was, she might vanish forever. It confused and upset him that he sometimes had the same anxieties about the girl that he had for Trinnie.

The gang alternated playing hooky in order to show Amaryllis the sights and buy her things — clothes and accessories that not only enhanced mood and appearance but allowed for a general blending-in with her new surroundings. It must not be forgotten that these children of privilege (as long as their schoolwork was deemed not to suffer) were afforded such leeway in their personal schedules that even at night — with cowed, overworked Eulogio at the Mauck’s helm — they moved more or less with the freedom of adults. Of course Edward had always done as he pleased, especially as he got older; those who loved him wished his happiness unrestricted. On a school night, then, it was not unusual to see the foursome gorging on puu-puu platters at Trader Vic’s or à table oceanside at Casa del Mar. In a two-week period, Amaryllis saw her very first concert and more movies than she had in her entire life, a slew of the latter screened at Stradella’s own Majestyk, the existence of which continued to puzzle her — as did the surrealistic whole of Olde CityWalk. Some things one could never fathom. She walked on the beach for the first time too and looked through telescopes at the Observatory, forded Raging Waters, climbed Magic Mountain and went to a place called the Bowl for an evening picnic — which in fact did look like a bowl, but one upright and half-buried in the earth. They had their own private little outdoor room with a low fence around it, and an orchestra serenaded them under starry skies. Afterward, Toulouse suggested they drive to the motel where she had once lived, but her face darkened and he saw he had somehow trivialized her. He had not meant to make her life into another entertainment. He said he was sorry and left it at that. Why, he wondered, had he told her nothing of his own history and travails? Did he feel himself above that? He had deliberately mentioned his mother, but only to throw her off the scent of the missing dad; thankfully, she hadn’t been curious enough about fathers — any fathers at all — to follow up. So at least he never lied outright about his “situation.” But he was already ashamed, and the shame of not being candid with her shamed him further.

A few times, Amaryllis actually glimpsed the parents of her quirky hosts. One Saturday around midnight, after a hard day of designing masks in Edward’s workshop and flying with Toulouse in the 747 simulator and giving Lucy her Thousand and One Nights fix, after a particularly arduous day of shopping and playing and eating very strange foods — for example, lunch consisted of raw fish and green mustard strapped by seaweed onto cubes of rice — a day made even more arduous by a visit to a certain bakery, whose creations so reminded her of Topsy that she burst into tears — Toulouse asked what was the matter, but she wouldn’t say — around Saturday midnight, the merry twosome (Edward remained behind) abducted the girl and led her through flash-lit forest and pathway to Stradella’s main house. Joyce and Dodd were having a party, and they espied them from the bushes. The first one Amaryllis noticed was a priest, whom Toulouse identified as Father de Kooning. She asked if the Flying Nun was there, laughing at her own lame joke. Mr. Hookstratten was in high spirits (the professor still tutored Dodd, currently mired in Beowulf ), meaning he was drunk; Lucy said she could tell he was in the middle of an anecdote about their now-legendary summer vacation. There were actors and socialites and a few portly men who had managed to pull Lotus and Lamborghini from the Nasdaq heap but sported bodyguards no more. Toulouse said that some of the wives were members of the Dead Baby Brigade — but his sarcasm was mostly for Edward’s sake, by proxy.

Amaryllis was perplexed. When he began to explain Joyce’s good works, the orphan, seeing her own babies before her, could bear no more and ran back through the night to the comforts of Olde CityWalk, flying straight to the duvet of her surreptitious, Black Lantern Shoppe couch.

Two weeks before Halloween, Toulouse brought her to La Colonne Détruite for a day of reckoning. He gave no preamble; she was clueless about the place. He left Pullman at home — he felt a little exposed and thought things would go easier without his four-legged friend. Maybe it was Pullman’s feelings he was protecting.

They ducked through the storm drain, and for a while, though not much was said, Amaryllis was sure they were breaking into a condemned park. She was overdressed and tried hard not to soil her ensemble.