I'll Let You Go (41 page)

They crept up a grassy slope and peered downward at this tableau: most of the adults had disbanded, while a few still spoke softly from within the same candlelit tent that only a week ago had been pitched
over South African soil. The detritus of plates, dishware, foodstuffs and empty bottles was all around. A body—perhaps it was Slouching Tiger's, perhaps one of the pilots', perhaps Professor Hookstratten's—lay fifty paces from the ahu, snoring vigorously. Attention was elsewhere drawn, though a wobbly Tull did not immediately join his scampering guides. What
did
comfort him was the sight of Lucy squatting nearby like a bushgirl and watching along with everyone else while a couple, half dressed, were “doing it.” It scarcely mattered who they were—steward or nurse, maven or techie—it was what they did that entranced. Tull slunk to his cousin, who acknowledged him with a glance before turning back to the dark, primitive spectacle. The woman moaned and seemed, like a crab, to scuttle away. She muttered a few words in low, anguished tones, which slowly grew louder until the phrase “fuck it” was vaguely discernible; a phrase repeated in varying stages of dishabille (“it” became “me” and “me” became “you” and “you” became “me” again—and so forth). At a certain point, her demands grew so furied that those in the tent grew silent, then burst into a hail of guttural laughter before going back about their sociable business.

Perhaps it was the pork pâté or boudin noir, or maybe the blood sausage too hastily combined with six frozen mini–Milky Ways—but the world began to spin and Tull along with it. His cousin helped him return to his hotel room, a phantasmagoric journey the boy hoped never again to be forced to repeat. Luckily, the teetotaling Dr. Raff had long since turned in; Lucy summoned him; after the required palpations, acute gastroenteritis was diagnosed. Nothing was to be done. Tull emptied bowels and stomach of all they had while Lucille Rose—martyr, author, girl detective—laid on cold compresses as he lurched through the maze of his delirium. Pullman was there, and he was glad about that. They stood before the puzzle his mother had designed at Saint-Cloud and which Mr. Randoll Coate (who in his dream bore Reed's supercilious countenance) now perfunctorily dismissed. His nasty thumbnail critique amused Mr. Hookstratten and the cousins, leaving Tull hurt and betrayed. Stung by the remarks, he suddenly noticed his mother fleeing into one of the pathways. Everyone disappeared. The boy knelt to examine Pullman, who was festooned with strange open sores, and was glad they didn't seem to be causing the beast any pain. He sprinted down the dark lane toward Trinnie. Instead of reaching the heart of the labyrinth, he found himself in an open clearing—that of La Colonne Détruite.
There, his grandfather, as if orchestrating the arrangement of stones in a cemetery, directed deformed workers while they raised up more cracked columns, ragged drapes flapping like crows in the frame of each eyeless window-socket. He heard his mother call out, and ran toward one of the mysterious buildings. Inside, the furnishings were uncovered. The Dane clambered up the spiral stairs, slipping on marble as Tull overtook him. The boy reached the topmost bedroom and tentatively entered. The bathroom light was on …

“Dad?” Tull bolted upright. “Daddy!” he shouted, blinking sweat from his eyes.

Lucy rushed over to minister; she felt as if they were onstage in that part of a play where the invalid's fever breaks.

Seeing it was she, he became embarrassed. “I … I was dreaming of my father,” he stammered, almost politely.

L
ike most on board, Tull slept the entire flight back to California, with nary a ghost of present, past or future to invade unconsciousness.

Settling into the comfort of their respective homes, the youngest Trotters kept to themselves for a full week, hardly even speaking on the telephone—though, with usual aplomb, Edward sprang back in record time, the only toll paid for his resilience being a harsh and intractable case of acne.

Tull was slower to surface. He was glad to see Pullman again, but the dream had sorely spooked him; it was a while before he dared take his old friend on a constitutional in the sealed park, fearing what they might find.

“I
want everyone to look for the mosasaur, OK?”

The teenage docent held a shark fin in his hand. The children reached out carefully, as if the fossil might still cause mayhem.

“And when you find the mosasaur—you'll see how really
huge
it is—when you find the mosasaur, just remember: this very
huge
creature was eaten by the much smaller
shark
.”

He stroked the hooked piece of cartilage to emphasize its role as David to the mosasaur's Goliath. Then he held it in front of Amaryllis, cuing her to touch. She wouldn't, a fact not lost on Dézhiree. The fin wound up at the wheelchair, in Cindra's lap; the disabled girl squirmed and rolled her eyes in delight.

There were two MacLaren field trips that summer—the mosasaur having been encountered on a sweaty, bus-rattled fiesta to Exposition Park's stately Natural History Museum. Though nearly ruined, the coliseum abutting that place was far from Rome; a newly minted IMAX behemoth had infected adjacent buildings with its garish pastels and multiplex aesthetic. “Dancing Waters,” those cheap public-space ejaculations that soak the kids during parental cigarette breaks, added to the sprucing up—all this part of the rankly meretricious, cheesily stimulating great American playground, arty and self-aggrandizing, thrilled with itself no end. The whole chain-linked grid, surrounded by a flatland of jaundiced soccer-trodden crabgrass, was supposed to be a free-spirited architectural tribute to the putative joys of Science and Learning yet was in fact an ugly hodgepodge of loading zones and dented dumpsters that no one, not even the brightest design intern, had
thought to conceal from general view. But the children of MacLaren weren't critics—they were just happy to be in the “outs,” roaming the cool halls of glassed-in bison and saber-tooth. The dioramas were as calming as meds.

In the three months since Amaryllis became a Pixie, she had been taken to children's court on the occasions that her stay at Mac exceeded the amount of time prescribed by law; in those same three months, two suitable placements had been found that were quickly deemed otherwise (though not at all in the league of the perilous Canyon klatch of E. Woolery).

For example, on the weekend of her arrival at the well-kept, super-stuccoed home of the Barnard Tofflers of Rosemead, she was sent packing due to an allergic reaction to the family cat—severe enough to require a trip to the emergency room at the ungodly hour such trips typically demand. Rosemead was not big enough for both of them, but Mrs. Toffler would not part with her beloved. This standoff, coupled with the girl's habitual under-sheet flashlight explorations of the machinery of martyrdom, had the effect of making the whippet-size, already skittish Mrs. Toffler more skittish still. After a day or so of relative segregation from the pet, Amaryllis was remanded to Mac. To be fair, the Tofflers bought her a dress in consolation.

In the second instance, she remained with the Alfredo Quiñoneses of Diamond Bar for a relatively carefree three weeks. The rural home had a big backyard with swings, barbecue and aboveground pool. Besides Amaryllis, five children lived there, all told; two were “real” Quiñoneses, while three were adopted (a palsied one among the latter, the disabled being a sacrosanct—and lucrative—cliché of Adoption World). A few weekends in, before school began, the mellow Mr. Quiñones, aged fifty, had a coronary and died. Soon after, a wet-eyed Quiñones aunt dutifully returned Amaryllis to MacLaren, along with Palsy Girl, who barked and wept the whole ride back.

Yet the vicissitudes of an adoptee's life were nothing compared to Amaryllis's wrenching separation from the babies. Their initial reunion was short-lived; knowing the inevitable, the Mac staff was more lenient than usual in providing the star-crossed family with “together time.” (Only once did Saffron ask where her mother was. “Heaven,” said Amaryllis, and her sister seemed satisfied. When she inquired if it would be possible to visit that place for a picnic, Amaryllis wished her nominated
to the Congregation for the Causes right then.) The age and adorableness of the babies made them “bull's-eyes”: within five days of their arrival at the center, they were placed in a private home. Amaryllis dehydrated herself with tears. Lani Mott showed up to reassure that “family lawful visits” would be arranged—as the girl's official CASA (the court paperwork had just gone through), the baker's wife informed that she was “launching a third world war” to find a single placement for the three siblings so they could remain together. Everyone knew the chances of that were almost nil. But each time Amaryllis returned to Mac, she futilely asked for her Saffron and Cody, awaiting word that never came. No one would tell her where they were; she couldn't even call them on the phone.

Mac's familiar surroundings, never so wonderful, were now a lonelier haven than she could bear. Except for Cindra, the children Amaryllis had befriended earlier had long since cycled or recycled out—to hospitals, foster families or residential homes (or just plain AWOL); even counselors had moved on, never to be seen again. Favorite volunteer grannies vanished, through attrition born of old age. Against her nature, Amaryllis began to harden. She frowned and sassed through the days, and if our orphan had been a shark, she would surely have eaten a mosasaur with the same consuming indifference that Dézhiree noshed a lunchtime sandwich. Rarely anymore did she seek comfort in the Box of Saints; and went hours without speaking. She huffed air freshener with the new girl, Kristl, and grew antagonistic with staffers. For a few days she proudly sported her very own one-on-one.

At night in her bed, it didn't take much for Amaryllis to imagine the babies already in Mrs. Woolery's satanic hatchery, outfitted in his-and-her helmets, rocketing into walls or drooling on urine-soaked futons. More than once, standing before the backdrop of unfinished mural or empty Streisand pool, she came close to enlisting Kristl on a Tunga Canyon search-and-rescue. Her fearless friend was up for anything.

“Did your CASA tell you where they were?”

“She said she would.”

“They're probably waiting to see if you act out. You know: they're not quite sure you're
worthy
of knowing where those babies are.
I
could find them—it's not even
legal
, keeping you separated.”

“How? How could you?”

“I could find them
anytime
,” said Kristl smugly, as if talking to a cretin.

Freshly fourteen, blond and sinewy, with nacreous glued-on fingernails and bleachy crosshatched suicide scars at the wrists, she was of the sorority of children of the damned (Crissie Fits of Tunga Canyon, naturally, included) fondly named after Godmother Meth: a veritable Kristallnacht.

“I could find out when we leave.”

“What do you mean?”

“We're getting
out
,” she whispered.

“When?”

“Field trip on Monday. Huntington Gardens.”

“Where's that?”

“Don't ask so many questions. Do you want to go or not?”

“I have court,” Amaryllis said timorously.

“Court is bullshit!”

“Lani said the babies'll be there. The judge can put us together.”

“That is
so much bullshit
. You are such a fucking victim! You're too
old
. They're
never
gonna put you with your brother and sister.”

Amaryllis chewed on a nail. “Are you going to run away by yourself?”