“How’s it going for her in Portland?”
“If you’re fishing to find out whether she returned, she did. A few days ago.”
I set the mug aside. “Does she know I’m here?”
“Not yet. Should we make it our little secret?”
“No need,” I said. “If you speak to her, send my best.”
“If I speak to her before you do, I will,” Lydia said. She mirrored me, putting down her own mug. “I birthed a free spirit, I honored that as I raised her, allowing her to be who she wanted to be. Watching her evolve was lovely. She’s always been so much like me. Though by her age, I’d accomplished what I’d set out to accomplish.”
Her arms had begun to twine toward the ceiling. I couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or simply a reflex — the world her stage.
“Yet despite that” — she wilted — “a critical piece of my psyche remained unfinished: I wasn’t free. It had of course to do with my own mother. She was such a terrible scold. Art to her was a competition. I wasn’t going to make that mistake with my child.”
She smiled. “I know you must miss Tatiana, how could you not? But it’s for the best. You’re an authority figure by nature. You can boss her around but it will never work.”
“I wouldn’t dream of trying.”
“Oh, don’t say that, don’t ever say that. What else have we, but our dreams?”
Said the woman in the eight-million-dollar apartment.
“So,” she said, “young, strapping Mr. Edison, what can I do for you? I know you didn’t come here to talk about her. Or did you?” She leaned in. “I do hope you aren’t going to ask me to carry a message to her.”
“I’m not.”
“Good, because I’m enjoined against that. By the rules of rational parenting: we all must make our own choices. Although if you give up that easily, then you don’t deserve her.”
“You’re probably right,” I said.
Having won her point, she smiled again, though I detected a certain disappointment that I hadn’t fought back. “Tell me, then, what are we going to talk about?”
“Dr. Rennert,” I said.
“Ah,” she said.
“I understand you two kept in touch after the divorce.”
“Naturally. We’re connected on a cellular level. Our living styles became incompatible but that doesn’t mean he ceased to adore me and I, him. The same applies to everyone I’ve loved. The web of intimacy, sticky and ever-expanding.”
She pursed her lips, kissed air, looking as satisfied as though she’d made contact with flesh. “I don’t believe we’re meant as a species to be monogamous.”
“Right.”
“Nobody is perfect,” she said. “And thank goodness, perfect is boring. Walter wasn’t perfect, though he would’ve liked people to think he was. Do you believe — do you expect me to believe — that he didn’t take his fair share of comfort in the arms of others? I don’t begrudge anyone the pursuit of happiness.”
“It’s his connection to Julian Triplett that interests me.”
Another disappointed nod. “If we must.”
“You’ve been expecting this conversation,” I said.
“At some point, perhaps. I didn’t expect to be having it with you.”
“Who, then?”
“Tatiana, if she took the time to find out. Has she?”
“Not in detail.”
“You’ve tried to discuss it with her,” she said. “She got angry. Yes?”
I stared.
Lydia Delavigne said, “A mother knows. She idolized Walter. And idealized him. And he encouraged it.”
“Aside from you, did he tell anyone else about his relationship with Triplett?”
“Oh no. He was afraid of more scandal. For himself and for the boy.” She smiled. “I’m extraordinarily discreet. It’s one of my best qualities.”
“Clearly.”
“That’s very sweet of you to say,” she said. “May I ask what led you to investigate?”
“The rocking chair.”
She shuddered. “That thing. It put a nobler face on what was essentially charity. You know, teach a man to fish, versus give him a hunk of halibut. Walter tried to convince me to buy one, as well. I said let’s not get carried away.”
I said, “How did it start between them?”
She sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s much harm in telling you, now that he’s gone... He wrote the boy a letter.”
“While Triplett was in prison?”
“I warned him not to. I thought it was unhealthy. But he got into one of his righteous funks.”
“When did this happen?”
“Oh, don’t quiz me, it’s boring. Three or four years after the fact? We were still married. I remember Walter’s excitement when he got the reply. What do you know, but it was quite articulate, too, once you got past the atrocious spelling and grammar. They corresponded for a while. Eventually Walter went to visit him, where they kept him.”
“How many times?”
“More than once. I wasn’t keeping count. The boy had no one.”
“He had a sister.”
“Well, all I know is that Walter felt he had a moral obligation.”
“To do what.”
Her answer surprised me. “I suppose you could say he viewed it as a personal research project,” she said. “An attempt to grapple with the same question he always grappled with. How does it happen that a person can come to commit such a horrible act?”
I said, “Triplett was a case study?”
“You make it sound so sterile... No. It was never Walter’s intention to exploit. And he never could have published it, that would have been impossible.”
“Then what was he trying to accomplish?”
“He was curious,” she said. “One of his best qualities.”
She took a sip of tea. “Walter was very badly beaten as a child. Did you know that?”
I shook my head.
“His own father was a wicked man. Creative, but horrible. That’s not accidental. True cruelty is its own form of genius. He owned property all over San Francisco.”
“That’s where the money comes from.”
“You didn’t think Walter got rich in a lab, did you? The house he grew up in — it’s still there, in Pacific Heights. Landmarked. Some twenty-five-year-old computer person lives there now... Walter showed me pictures once. There’s a grand marble foyer, and a pair of staircases, shaped like this.”
She traced a female form.
“When Randolph — that was his father — when he wanted to punish Walter, he would make him run up one side and down the other, for hours on end. If he slowed down, or tripped, Randolph would whip him.”
I said, “Does Tatiana know about this?”
“Certainly not. And you’re not to tell her. I’m only telling you so that you’ll understand why Walter was so drawn to darkness. It mesmerized him. It wasn’t simple voyeurism. He genuinely wanted to understand. That’s how it started, at any rate. With time, I think he came to view the boy as a kind of ward.”
“When did Walter start supplying him meds?”
“After his release. Practically from day one. It was the right thing to do. They just punted him out and locked the gate behind. Shameful, but predictable.”
“Did he give him anything else? Money?”
“It’s certainly possible. By then I had moved out. I didn’t keep close tabs.”
“I’m trying to figure out how Walter felt comfortable hanging out with a convicted murderer. Having him over to the house.”
“I suppose he was confident in his own ability to manage the situation.”
“Ms. Delavigne, did your ex-husband ever express the belief that Julian Triplett was innocent?”
“Not in so many words.”
“But?”
“Well, actions speak louder, don’t they.”