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.
Not 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—”