I am traveling and shall not be returning letters. It is probably best we break this off.
Wishing you the Best,
Trinnie
A FIFTH LETTER
February 10
Katy,
Thank you for your response, and of course, I will not revisit the house — as you wish. Thus far, a request for an encore has not been received! Not to worry.
And yes, sadly, I accede to your desire to end our exchange. I hope this will not prevent you from thinking well of me, and at least on occasion, too. I have a long road ahead to be sure. I am getting to know my parents again and will soon make the trip to Redlands. I am catching up on the historical goings-on of this country and the world since I went in abeyance — am finding the computers absolutely extraordinary. I’ve been shown how to play some astonishing games on the keyboard by the boys — around here we call them “the men in suits”—and am already whupping them, to their great chagrin. Have been to a few films in the Westwood Village (how that place has changed!). I’ve seen the most elaborate cartoons, where the characters look almost as real as people. They are also apparently made by the computers.
All told, I’ve lost nearly 80 pounds in the last 4 months — no mean feat, considering the side effects of the medication I am currently prescribed tend to seriously enhance one’s avoirdupois … Soon I’ll be wearing Louis’s fancy hand-me-downs!
That was in jest—
I’ve taken to reading Variety and am staggered at the amount of money films now take in. And the venues! Three thousand theaters, all at once
I know I shan’t “speak” to you, so am trying to cram much in … forgive my foolish mouth (and pen) while it tries, and fails, so valiantly to keep up with my heart. Please have a splendid journey, Katy, WHEREVER you may go! And may you be secure in the knowledge there are those who value your great, tremendous spirit and demand nothing of you — and so — and so
You have my everlasting admiration, support, and dare I say, Love. Please, know that I will always be
Your Hu
Marcus Weiner
CHAPTER 44. Close to Home
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow’s soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall, — I knew it all of yore.
Marcus put away his wife’s letters but couldn’t help think of her, especially while leafing through the garden of his Montecito home. Though Louis said his daughter had never set foot on the property, the husband felt her hand there nonetheless: in the purplish echinacea, magenta cosmos and — most powerfully — in the white bridal veil of Dendrobium superbum. He spent an inordinate time watching caterpillars fatten on parsley before attaining their samadhi posture, necks arc’d to twig, perfect yellow-green sarcophagi suspended by strands of silk. In time, the single wing of a black swallowtail previewed through a diaphanous cocoon; then out it came, lucky enough to have dodged the wasp.
He went around picking up snails as when he was a boy, gently provoking them to retract their gelatinous antennae. One of the suited men had shown him a magazine article about a certain parasite that began its life cycle beneath the shell of one of those curious creatures. When the host was eaten by a fish, the parasite sent a pulse through the fish’s brain, commanding it to surface, thus increasing the odds of being plucked from the water by a gull. There was beauty, he thought, in being snatched heavenward from the deep blue sea. For so many years he’d marched to schizophrenia’s viral drum — what was each living thing, he thought, if not a parasite of God? Now he was free; he’d been commanded to surface. A great bird was bearing him aloft.
One morning, Marcus had a dream that made him rush to the ocean for cleansing. He had conjured the tower — and Katrina on their wedding bed. He came in her and was still ejaculating when he woke up.
He went out far enough to make his chaperons briefly consider stripping for a rescue before he turned around and bodysurfed to shore like a doughy crate. As he strode from the heavy water, the Great Dane he had met at Saint-Cloud nearly knocked him over before taking a desultory romp in the foam. A small figure trudged tentatively forward, dappling the sand with its footprints. A suited man handed Marcus a towel as the boy approached.
“Hello!”
“Hello!”
“We went to the house. They said I could find you here.”
“And they were right!”
The boy was staring at the tattooed heart that encircled his name. Marcus dipped down to give him a better look.
“Want to come in? The water’s fine.”
Toulouse hesitated.
“Not too cold today — are you a swimmer?”
“Mostly in pools. But I like to Boogie-board.”
“Do you? We’ve got one right there!” He pointed to the fiberglass plank, stuck in the sand like a shark’s fin.
Toulouse cracked a smile.
“Well come on, then!”
“But I don’t have a suit—”
“You’ve got skivvies, don’t you? That’ll do — there isn’t a soul around! And these gentlemen,” he ribbed, with a wink to his keepers, “well, they don’t count!”
“Oh my God, Edward, are they taking off their clothes?” She strained her eyes mightily. Lucy and her brother had stayed behind in the parking lot, where they sat in the buggy like tourists in a safari park.
“Incredible.”
“Edward, let me see,” she cried, grabbing at his binoculars.
She tugged again, but he was busy getting his magnified jollies; the fabric of the Mizrahi Christmas shroud bunched atop the lenses like a soft, thick cord. He relented his hold.
While Lucy adjusted focus, Sling Blade rolled up his trouser legs and blissfully ambled in the sand.
“Oh my God,” said Lucy. “They’re going in?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s … beautiful.”
Edward watched with naked eyes, transfixed, the veil held up by a gloved, sequined finger. He lowered the cloth, and on its way to his chin, the Moroccan weave blotted tears from his eyes.
The scene was primevaclass="underline" the father, a large, pale mammal, with the jittery seed of his progeny floating near, ducked under the greenest crepuscular swell, the very air aglimmer from a drunk philanthropist sun who carelessly cast a trillion coins down. (You could see the milky wave’s arterial underside.) Edward thought of his own father, Dodd, a man who’d been here all along — on Stradella Road—not a swimmer, and with whom he would never float in seas real or imagined. He envisioned the body of his grandfather on a bier, cast onto wavelets, lapping toward oblivion, then drifted back to the iroko tub where his mother bathed him — he could summon all the years spent soaking there — and closed his eyes, wondering how it might feel to be in the ocean with her: a baptizing and a going-away, bobbing in the deep with Toulouse and Marcus and Trinnie and Lucy — Pullie and Bluey and Grandpa Lou. Winter and the Monasterios …
“They’re coming out!” cried Lucy.
Like bizarre cabana boys, a row of suited men held bath towels in readiness.
“Let’s go to the Mauck,” said Edward, who was himself just surfacing.