Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

He arrived in time for dinner and was startled to find an old couple at table with Trinnie and Grandpa Lou. It took a moment to place them — Harry and Ruth, the Weiners of Redlands! Introductions were made before Trinnie knowingly turned to her son and uttered the kind of arch drawing-room cliché that set the new, improved Ralph Mirdling’s teeth on edge: “I see that you’ve already met.”

†It was more than a decade since our detainee had been fingerprinted at a far smaller jail in upstate New York; those records, if they even still existed, may never have been entered into the national identity bank. That Marcus was lighter by nearly a hundred and twenty pounds and resembled a hunter from the Pleistocene epoch; this one was in his own manner as much a missing link. Neither resembled the man to whom Samson had been first introduced by Katrina Trotter.

“Aren’t you curious about our guests? I mean, what they’re doing here?”

Trinnie was making sport, but her son wasn’t receptive.

“It’s a wonderful thing that we’re here,” said Ruth. “Wonderful!”

“I can’t believe it myself,” offered Harry. The spiffed-up face still drooped on one side but was so closely shaven (Ruth had done the job) that his cheeks looked like marzipan. “This marvelous house — hasn’t changed! Nothing has changed.”

“Nothing, and everything! Well, aren’t you wondering , Toulouse?” his mother asked mischievously.

“Now, don’t bother the boy!” said Grandpa Lou.

“The Weiners graciously consented to come to dinner tonight so that I could make amends.” She looked at her son with near-religious gravitas. “It’s important to make amends. Do you know what ‘amends’ are, Toulouse?”

“Of course he knows!” exclaimed Ruth, beaming.

“But does he really —”

“Why talk to the boy like that, Katrina?” chuffed Louis, stabbing a forkful of quail salad.

“He’s extremely intelligent,” Ruth went on. “Like his cousin Edward.” She was thrilled to be sitting there dropping names and having discourse with … family! “Why, I couldn’t even follow some of the things that child discussed!”

“Marvelous boys,” said Harry, soaking an endive in Persian mulberry sauce. “Marvelous minds .”

“Now, don’t bother him, Katrina!”

“Father, he’ll be fine!” She gently mussed Toulouse’s hair with her fingertips, then took a breath, centering herself. “There’s an old saying — Ralph told it to me — back when he was still Rafe! But it’s a beautiful saying: ‘When someone plants a tree under which they will never sit, that’s how you know civilization has arrived.’ ”

“That’s lovely,” said Ruth, putting her hand on her husband’s.

“And quite pertinent,” said Harry, “for a designer of gardens.”

“It’s Greek — he probably read it during his Poetics period. Remember, Tull?” Then, to the Weiners: “Rafe is an old paramour. And so is Ralph!”

“Avery young old paramour,” said Toulouse.

“Oh!” said Ruth. She liked a little spice.

Trinnie eyed her son with mock reproach. Then: “He wrote for the movies, or was trying to, anyway. I think he was convinced that Aristotle could teach him something about screenwriting.”

“Now he prefers the ancient philosopher Ron Bass.”

Trinnie gave him another look.

“I wonder what Detective Dowling reads,” he cattily mused. Toulouse was on a roll.

She ignored the remark and turned to her affable in-laws, who, for their part, were somewhat confused by the banter. “The Greeks knew how to keep it real,” she said. (His mother’s hip-hopisms made the boy squirm.) “I share this, to illustrate something about amends — that they always come too late.” She lifted her glass of cranberry juice to the Weiners in salud; Grandpa Lou looked up, hastily raising his own. “Tonight, I have planted a tree. It was meant to be planted long ago, but never took root.” She winced, blinking back maudlin tears as she addressed their visitors. “I hope that … now that you know the tree is here , you’ll feel free to sit under it when you like, and avail yourself of the shade.”

Toulouse thought he was going to be sick. “You’re not even making sense!”

“It is never too late,” said Ruth ingratiatingly. “And it’s very nice what you’ve done, Katrina — to call after all this time and have us here for this lovely dinner.”

“To send a car ,” added Harry, adjusting a crepitant knee to throw his comment Louis’s way.

“It could not have been easy,” said Ruth. “It has not been easy — for any of us!”

“It has not been easy, no. And least of all for Marcus!” Only Harry could have pulled off such a remark. He reached for the gold raspberry vinaigrette; a server jumped into the fray, handing over a Chinese porcelain sauceboat.

“My son— your grandson —has taught me so much,” said Trinnie. “He taught me not to run and hide; I’ve been doing that long enough. Though he probably doesn’t know it — I hope he does — though he probably doesn’t know it, his mother loves him more than anything.” She fussed with his hair again, and he blushed in spite of himself. “ Toulouse is why the two of you are here tonight. And I just want to be as brave as he has been — and to make my amends. To ask his forgiveness again — and yours , for shutting you out. For taking this light — this lamp, my son, and hiding him away! For closing the door on his beautiful grandparents because of my own self-indulgent … I am praying the fences can be mended. I am praying you will sit beneath this tree that I have—”

“That’s enough!” said Louis, not to chastise, but to protect her from further shaming herself in the depths of such sorrows — he knew how low she could go. “But very well spoken. Very well spoken.”

“Oh, Katrina!” cried Ruth, unable to hold back. “Please don’t! We already love you — aren’t we family? Aren’t we still family? Haven’t we always been ?”

“Yes! But say you forgive me, Ruth! Harry … just say it—”

“Katrina!” barked her father.

“Well of course we forgive, dear! Now, we need to put this all behind us—”

“Listen to the lady, Trinnie!” chuffed Louis. “That’s a wise lady — listen to her.”

“She is wise,” said Harry, who never stopped munching his quail. “Always has been.”

Trinnie recovered herself. “Did you know that Toulouse never even mentioned that he’d been to see you?”

“Isn’t that something?” gushed Harry. “That’s how I’d have played it — close to the vest!”

After a few choice queries, he realized that his mother’s dinner invitation had been coincidental to the Redlands excursion and not because of it. (He’d been thinking the cousins had tattled.) He was impressed — and less pleased with himself all around.

“Well, well!” said Louis, spontaneously pushing back his chair to stand in greeting — for Bluey had come from the kitchen in chenille robe and silky hairpiece. Shadowed by Winter, she bore a silver tray of butter-laden sweets.

“How marvelous!” said Ruth, and really meant it. The appearance of the old woman moved her; she’d always had a fondness for Berenice in her heart and had been genuinely unhappy to learn of the recent downturn. Harry echoed his wife’s enthusiasms with bird-like perorations.

“Mother,” said Louis. “Do you remember the Weiners? Harry and Ruth?” He wished he could take it back, for his tone was too much the one used with a child.