I'll Let You Go (31 page)

“I thought you stopped.”

“They're organic.”

“I don't
think
so.”

“Whatever.” She paused. “He was seeing a psychiatrist—mine, on
Bedford. Same building where Daniel Ellsberg saw
his
shrink. But you wouldn't know about Ellsberg.”

“Why did he take the book?”

“He was having some … problems. You know, it wasn't like sticking up Van Cleef and Arpels. It was a difficult time for your father, that's all.”

“Was he using drugs?”

“For what,” she said, somewhat defensively.

He wavered. “Just … to take them.”

“No.”

“
You
use them.”

“I'm not doing that anymore. And your father wasn't a druggie, OK? He never even smoked pot.”

All the frankness made something between them relax. He saw how beautiful she was and felt his love anew. “Was I adopted?”

“Were you—
no
. Emphatically not.”

“Did Father finish high school?”

“Of course he finished high school. With honors. Marcus was brilliant. He went to Oxford on a grant.”

“Where's that?”

“England! Christ, Tull, you should
know
that.”

“Sorry.”

“That's appalling, Tull.” She sucked on a Spirit, taking a deep, incredulous draft. “When he came back, he was … a little at sea. A friend of his worked at the agency.”

“At William Morris?”

She nodded, punching out her cigarette. “Your father's friend helped get him a job in the mail room and within a few years he was a full-fledged agent. He loved the business, but I think what he really wanted was to be a writer. Marcus was a very creative man—hilarious. A great mimic. He was famous for his revue sketches at the Morris retreats.” She stopped to scrutinize her son. “Why did you ask if you were adopted?”

Tull shrugged, suddenly exhausted. “I don't know.”

“Because he was. Your father was.”

The boy enlivened. “Who were his parents?”

“His real parents? He was never able to find out.”

“Was he in an orphanage?”

“I already told you, he was adopted.”

“But you have to be in an orphanage first, don't you?”

“I suppose. He never discussed it.”

“Then where did he live—I mean, grow up?”

“Redlands. That's where he was raised. Lovely people.”

“Have you seen them? His foster parents? I mean since.”

“No.”

“Was he crazy?”

She consulted the Spirit, and lit up afresh. Then: “Something happened when he was at Oxford … when he was a student.”

“Like what?”

“He didn't talk about it much. All I knew was that he put himself in the hospital—from the pressure of exams.” Pullman yawned, stretching in the doorway like a guardian-statue come alive. “And something happened in France, too, the first time we saw the tower.”

She retrieved the snapshot taken at the Désert de Retz and handed it to a goggle-eyed Tull. There, short-bearded and charismatic, with open brow and fearful eyes, stood his washed-up father in front of the ruin, which itself looked beached in the bowl of a lea. He'd never seen the man before, and stifled a surge of tears that seemed to rush up from the earth like an electrical charge.

“Keep it if you like.”

“
What
happened in France?”

“When we left that place, your father insisted on walking. He wouldn't get in the car. So I drove while he strolled—all the way to Versailles. It was awful. I followed alongside the way they do in those bike marathons. I had to make sure he didn't hurt himself … but
I
was the one who almost almost got killed. He wouldn't even
talk
to me. I checked into a little hotel—this was in Versailles—and after cajoling him like hell, he finally came in and lay down on the floor. We were in that room for days; I'm
still
shocked no one called the police. I don't think either of us slept. Anyway, Bluey knew a doctor in Paris—Bluey knew a
lot
of doctors in Paris—how we got him there I'll never remember. They finally put him under. For a whole week I kept bedside vigil at the Plaza Athénée; I just didn't want him in the hospital, which was probably a mistake. When we got Marcus to the States, we put him in a private place in Westwood on Bundy. It's not there anymore; I think it fell apart in the earthquake.” She stared at her lap, wondering if she had already said too much—or if that was even possible. “They gave him shock treatment and that seemed to help. The quality of life got better anyhow.
It couldn't have been much worse! He started being his old self again. Your father and I had a lot of fun together,” she said wistfully. “He and your grandpa got very close. They hardly said a word, but they loved each other—the way Louis and Pullman are when they're together. Ha! Just like Grandpa and Pullie! After a month or so, Marcus went back to work and just
flourished
. Lots of important clients: Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep. Then it started all over again, the mania, sleeplessness—the walking. Walk walk walk walk walk. Oh God, I think once he walked to Montecito. It culminated in …” She sighed, looking off into space. “It went on like that—relapse and recovery, relapse and recovery—and when we got married … you know, we didn't know anything about your grandfather's gift—it was a
very
well kept secret. We saw La Colonne for the first time on the day of our wedding, like everyone else. I can't tell you the look in your father's eyes when we emerged from the allée and saw it perched up there on the hill, waiting—for him. He shook all over, then tried to get his bearings … like he was having shock treatment again! Then came a look of … acquiescence. Tull, it was so scary to see—
the mountain had come to Mohammed
. This inescapable
thing
that in France so unhinged him had somehow taken flight across the Atlantic and set up residence, like a dream. Bizarre! Your grandfather couldn't have had any idea … because Marcus and I had spoken so
glowingly
of the place—it truly
was
magical, and Grandpa Lou was so taken with it, by our enthusiasm. You know how he can be. But he—your grandfather—was merely the instrument … I remember watching Marcus standing there smiling to himself as if—as if he finally
understood
, as if he had some
final understanding
that he was trapped, in a web—a spiderweb—I
saw
the shadow of the tower cross his face like some fairy-tale dungeon. It had come for him!”

She trembled, and Tull moved closer to take her arm. She stubbed out her cigarette, took a deep breath, and composed herself. “That must have been his thinking, anyway.”

“And he left the next day?”

She nodded. “I was still sleeping.”

“And that's why you took the drugs?”

She looked pale and flustered. He could see her capillaries and the fine down of her cheeks; could hear the blood beating through her veins.

“What do you mean?”

“That's why you took the drugs? Because he left you?”

She was duty-bound to answer everything now.

“I was just so … astonished. I thought we could—get through
anything
. We'd already been through so much in so short a time. But never to see him again? That he would just walk away? I hadn't considered the possibility. It wasn't an option.”

A delicate hand rose to blot the tears. Tull wrapped his arms around her, imagining his mother's hot breath like a frightened calf's. Then he said all he could think to say that was true: “But he loved you.”

The words hung in the air, an indisputable paradox, sad and just, with no corollary or conclusion. The Withdrawing Room fell silent save for the sound of her weeping. Pullman loped over, lowering himself at their feet—and that simple act unleashed in her a round of sobs, wails and clenches that inured Tull to manhood before he even knew what had taken place.

N
ot all that far from the house on Saint-Cloud, on Santa Monica Boulevard's verdant north side, walked a bearded giant all in tweed. His gait slowed while he thought of his mentor John Ruskin's descent to madness—the great beacon of his generation and author of
The Stones of Venice
hallucinating in Derbyshire, foaming at the mouth in Brantwood, mute and occluded on the Kent Sands—and while he feared the same, he was willful enough to determine that would not be his fate. He must take care, if only for the girl's sake. His stride was festive and leisurely now, as one who arrives at a pleasure faire, though the ocean was really his destination. Perhaps he wasn't as vigilant as he should have been, having surmised the police would not look for him this far west.

In Beverly Hills, he paused at a “pocket park” on South Reeves to catch his breath. Other homeless were there, roosting with the requisite shopping carts and rags. He thought it made him less noticeable.

After the unfortunate summit with the baker and his wife, Will'm had returned to Angelino Heights beside himself with rage. He tore at his beard and battered his head against fragile walls like a wounded rhinoceros. He bellowed in the garden. He fell to his knees and beseeched the skies: “O darlin', darlin' girl, what have I done! What have I done!” It would not have been a good thing for a mortal to meet him during those
imprecations, but there came Fitz to run his hand through Will'm's hair, with unexpectedly palliative effect.

“You've got to leave,” said the pasty caseworker. Today, there seemed to be no blood in him. “The flatfoot was asking for you—look out. He
will
find you. Knew me by name he did, me, your ‘running partner'—knew more about me than I know myself! So, look out, that's a
wily
man. I'd go north, Will'm—Bay Area. Big population. Cut the hair, trim the beard … get yourself a new set of clothes. Lay low awhile, then settle down in San Rafael or Sebastopol. I hear there's a vagrants' camp in Occidental—”

Will'm unhappily agreed, and they sat to a makeshift meal, consumed in silence.

Then he retired and plunged into sleep. A carousel of grueling, tenebrous images swam before his rhino eye, a virtual
News from Nowhere
newsreel: the Pre-Raphaelite orphan girl with nail-bitten hand resting upon a shit-stained illuminated manuscript. He heard his voice in the dream, but without English accent—the woman calling to him was not, for once, his Janey. He stood in a meadow. A man on a tractor rolled toward him, raffish cigarette stuck on lower lip. The tractor-man opened his mouth and spoke in Frankish tongue: “Monsieur,” he said, “would you be so kind to consider the appointment of Chairman of the Disembodied?”

He awakened feverish. The cracks of the garage hemorrhaged cold, blinding light. Fitz was gone—nor did his faithful partner lay on the familiar bed of onerous glad rags. Will'm gathered his carpetbag and strode to the courtyard to tell his friend good-bye. No sign of him. The house was peaceful as a grave. Into the drawing room he went, calling the name of his benefactor.

The body was in the parlor, one shoe on, one shoe off, a note pinned to the grimy seersucker lapel. He stooped prayerfully to read.

A clump of excess rope lay on Fitz's shoulder like an improbable epaulet. He tenderly pressed a knuckle to a cold cheek—the distended eyes looked straight ahead and would not be closed. Will'm tore the note into bits and stuffed an envelope, also addressed to him, into a pocket without opening, then broke from the house.

He stood from the park bench and walked north on a street called Charleville, past Beverly Drive. He
knew
this refined village—whence? His feet, propelled by habit or instinct, marched him to a brick building on a tree-strewn avenue called El Camino. He slowed, fixing an eye on the sleek structure's entrance. There, he saw the symbol—
—and read with astonishment the legend above the doors: