Lucy tried to break away, but found the old woman’s grip to be formidable. Toulouse did what he could to pry them apart but was fearful of injuring his grandmother, who now fell atop the girl, pinning her to the hard ground, while other residents made their way over like querulous zombies.
“Tull!” she cried. “Tull, help me! Help me!” To add insult to injury, Bluey began to sing—“ ‘All of the kids — to teacher carried — candy and ice cream cones — but who do you think the teacher married? Wood’nhead Pudd’nhead Jones!’ ”—all happening in a blink yet feeling like an eternity to the child trapped beneath. Winter, who’d been taking a much-earned respite in the commissary, was on her way back when she saw the commotion through a garden fence. By the time she’d passed through the gate and emerged to the wandering path, the staff was already lifting Bluey from her traumatized guest, whose stylish retro print was soaked in the former’s pungent urine.
Winter and Toulouse helped her up as the old woman was led away. The smelly rubberneckers muttered oaths and inanities as they dispersed to rejoin traffic on the sumptuously topiaried loop.
“Are you all right?” asked Winter.
Lucy stood there, stunned.
“She didn’t mean it. She doesn’t know what she’s doing … she didn’t know who you were—”
Lucille Rose, who had by now wandered a short way down the path, turned and looked at her — at both of them — then tightly closed her eyes as if to teleport herself to another place.
Winter came closer.
Lucy screamed her own little scream, but it didn’t last — then ran like the devil to the car.
The Trotter women were having a time of it.
Trinnie hadn’t been the same since returning from another wedding — an old rehab chum’s, in Manhattan. She took to her room without explanation and wouldn’t speak to anyone, not even Marcus, who had shown himself to be an easy confidant. She shed twenty pounds in half as many days and was sleeping barely two hours a night. Out of suicidal desperation, she finally called Samson and said it was urgent that she see him.
When the detective arrived at Saint-Cloud, the feeling was of a city deserted. Trinnie had ordered the staff away; she could no longer tolerate their accusatory eyes.
“What’s wrong? My God, what’s happened?”
She stood at the door, emaciated and trembling. He’d never seen her so haunted.
“Oh, Sam!” she said, glomming on to his jacket. “Something terrible — something so horrible …”
“Is it Marcus? Did he leave?”
“No — no! Marcus is fine … better than ever.”
“Then Toulouse—”
“No,” she said, frantically shaking her head. “They’re all fine. It’s me this time, Sam, it’s me …”
She led him outside to the flagstone terrace, where she had laid a possum on a delicate porcelain plate. Its breath was labored; it was clearly dying.
“I think he fell from the roof. Look how sweet he is! Poor thing can’t breathe … do you think he’s going to die? He’s just a baby. Where’s his mother, Sam? Maybe he’s just playing possum, no? I put out some peanut butter — they’re supposed to like peanut butter. That’s not such a bad thing to smell if you have to die, is it, Sam? That’s not such a bad thing to be smelling before he …”
She began to sob. He helped her to the wrought-iron divan.
“Trinnie — tell me what’s wrong. What’s happened?”
“I was in New York last week … and I saw something from the hotel, on the street. Oh, Sam, I saw something!—”
“Tell me.”
“—and things have been going so well, Sam! That’s what’s so — that’s what’s so crazy … but it’s always like that, isn’t it? Just when you think everything’s great!”
“Trinnie, you have to calm down. Try to—”
“A man and woman … arguing. It must have been two in the morning. Two or three. You know New York — these dramas playing themselves out … junkies and whatever. Like some awful play — you hear everything. The streets are like canyons, everything echoes. Especially if you’re high up — and they … the man, he kept walking away. He didn’t want to listen anymore. And she kept coming after him, like a harridan — and … it was like a play — some stupid Sam Shepard — because each time they moved in front of a town house, the lights would come on — you know, those automatic lights in front of houses that get triggered when you … — so as they walked, each house lit them up in pools of — oh, Sam! You don’t know, you don’t know, you don’t know!”
“Tell me, Trinnie,” he said, his tone nearly harsh.
“At a certain point, the man walked away and the woman came after — he turned — and she … hit his neck. And he fell backward …”
“She used a knife?—”
“No, no, nothing like that! With her hand—a fist, something. I don’t know. I couldn’t see.”
“The police came?”
“No! No! You don’t understand! No one can understand. Oh I am fucked I am fucked I am fucked! Sam … when I went to see my father last year — maybe it was the year before — when I went to see him at the quarry — I went to see him because I found out that he — it was after you told me the two of you found Marcus — I was so angry—and he was getting his hair cut when I came in, Sam, so helpless and so small and I struck him with my hand on his little neck! I was so angry and my hand just lashed out and I hit him hard, Sam, hard enough for him to fall back and I know that I hurt him! And he couldn’t button his shirts after that — do you remember? He couldn’t button his shirts! And then Marcus told me … Marcus said that when he met Toulouse for the first time — I was in the desert — Marcus wrote in a letter that when he met Toulouse at Saint-Cloud, Papa was holding a towel to his neck like a poultice … he was holding a towel there! And I never pursued it! I said I would but I didn’t! And the doctors — Sam, the doctors said the tear in his vein came from a blow! They asked if he’d been in a car crash — they said sometimes this sort of thing can happen as a result of an accident or a fight. But I didn’t think of it — I didn’t remember, Sam, until I saw that dreadful couple on the street! And I sat in the lawyers’ office feeling so smug, so benevolent because I didn’t want the hospital to be sued. The hospital — when it was me! Oh, Sam, I killed him, I really did! And what I want to know — what I need to know — from you—the reason why I asked you here, what I need to know — because that would be catastrophic — what I need to know is if they can put me in prison. Because I couldn’t survive that, Sam — I couldn’t survive! After everything we’ve been through, Sam, with Marcus and Toulouse, for it to end this way! But I did kill him, Sam, I killed my father! Toulouse’s grandpa! Toulouse and Lucy and poor Edward’s — Bluey’s husband … oh, Sam Sam Sam, the way he looked at me in the ICU — his eyes suddenly opened and he smiled at me and I think he was smiling because he realized I didn’t know what I’d done and he would have wanted to spare me from that knowledge because he would have to have known that me knowing something like that — well I simply could not live—and so he was glad that I — but now I do know, Sam, I do know — everything! — and oh, Sam Sam, what am I going to do, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?”