City of Masks

21

There was so much to think about, so much to try to make sense of. And the house was calling her, compelling her to return: so many questions to ask it and its secret occupant, so much to learn. But after dropping Deelie back at the Times-Picayune office, Cree knew she had a couple of other priorities.

From a pay phone, she called Paul Fitzpatrick's office to learn the whereabouts of the clinic where Lila should be safely ensconced by now. His secretary patched her through, and the moment she heard his voice Cree realized she'd been hungry to hear it, curious to explore that warmth again.

But his voice was anything but warm. "She refused to be admitted, Cree. She's at home now. Or maybe she's back at Beauforte House, bouncing off the goddamned walls."

"What!"

"Look, this isn't easy for me to say. But maybe we were right the first time around – you can't present a patient with two conflicting modes of therapy. She said you believed her, you knew there were ghosts, you'd seen the damned ghost. She even pointed out that your fucking credentials are better than mine! That's pretty hard for me to overcome, Cree – someone validating, endorsing, a patient's delusions – "

"Paul, I told her she should do exactly as you said! I completely supported – "

"She didn't seem to hear that part, did she?"

"I'll go over there now. I'll tell her again!"

"Well, I'd appreciate that very much," he said acidly.

Cree stood on the sidewalk, looking at the phone, stunned. "I – I thought we would make an effective team, Paul. I thought we'd worked out ways our approaches could complement each other."

There were muffled voices on the other end of the line. "I've got a patient. I've got other patients, okay? I have to go now."

"Paul."

She wasn't sure whether he'd hung up, but after a pause he answered.

"Yeah."

"Is this what you want?" She hoped it sounded ambiguous, but she meant, with you and me.

Another pause. "Not really."

"Me neither. I'm going over there now. I'll call you as soon as I can."

"Okay." Just one word. She wasn't sure if she'd heard a slight softening of his tone or not.

Cree's tension eased slightly when Lila opened the door at the Warrens' tidy neoplantation home. Her panicked flight through Beauforte House had left her battered, with bruises purpling on her face and several bandages on her arms.

"Are you going to yell at me, too?" she asked as she led Cree back into the house. "So many people to try to please."

"You don't have to please anybody. But you do have to take care of yourself. How are you feeling?"

"Sore. Aching. A hundred years old."

She looked it. She looked like a gray balloon someone had let most of the air out of.

Lila led Cree to the dining room, where she swept her hand toward a chaos of loose photos, albums, cards, yearbooks, and clippings spread out across the big dining table. "I was looking at some things. You'd said you'd want to see our photo albums and such, so I started getting them out. There's a lot. There're still a couple of file cabinets over at the house, but when Momma moved over to Lakeside, she gave most of it to me damn sure wasn't going to give it to Ron, with his lifestyle. This is just the recent stuff. If you want the whole Beauforte history tour, I have a whole closetful."

"Do you enjoy it?" It sounded stupid the moment it came out of Cree's mouth.

Lila looked at her with a failed attempt at a smile. " 'Enjoy' isn't quite the word. Not at the moment."

"You want to show me some of it?"

They sat side by side at the table. The room was cool, half darkened, its windows dimmed by curtains. At one end, an antique-replica colonial hutch displayed decorative plates propped up in little brackets, and Audubon prints hung on three walls wallpapered in a muted fleur-de-lis pattern. Eight matching tall-backed dining chairs surrounded the table, which was lit by a small chandelier. Again, Cree was struck by the anonymity of the decor – with the exception of Lila's tiny watercolors, this could be a room in an upscale hotel suite. There were no mirrors, and the observation reminded Cree of the question she'd been meaning to ask.

"Lila, did you break the mirrors at the house?"

Lila's hands shuddered as she arranged loose photos and albums.

"Yes." A tiny voice.

"Can you tell me why?"

"It was… mainly it was when I was… running. When I was fighting him."

Having seen Lila careening through the house in blind panic, Cree could easily understand how things would get broken. Still, she was sure there was more to understand here. "Did they… frighten you?"

"Yes."

"Was there something in them, or – "

"There was me, Cree! There was me!" She spat the syllable with disgust, looking at Cree with eyes beseeching understanding. She held both hands open, palms up in front of her chest, as if the explanation were self-evident: Because I am this.

Cree took the hands and brought them together in her own. Lila looked away, but Cree cradled them until, after a moment, the tension ebbed from them. When Lila's breathing had steadied, Cree gently freed the hands and began scanning photos.

"That's your mother," Cree said. She pulled over a black-and-white photo of Charmian, posed in a Jackie Kennedy-era dress and pillbox hat. Though she looked much younger, the imperious and slightly predatory look was the same. "She was pretty! She's still a beautiful woman."

"I've always thought so. Momma and I aren't what anyone would call close, we never have been, but I've always been very proud of her." Lila put the photo aside and pulled a scrapbook over. "She was very prominent in society, very active with all the civic organizations and clubs. She had the style for that. I know I sure never did – it was about all I could manage to be a housewife and a mom."

Lila flipped the plastic-sealed pages. There were a few photos of Charmian in domestic circumstances: in the kitchen at Beauforte House with baby Ron, in the garden with baby Lila. But most showed her at one social function or another – meetings, speeches, balls. One, clipped from a newspaper, showed her on a tennis court, dressed in whites, winging what looked like a savage backhand.

Cree drew over another photo. "And this one – your father?"

"Yes."

Richard Beauforte had a staid, boardroom look to him. In several photos, he stood at Charmian's side in a tuxedo, with a sober smile and dark eyes beneath heavy browrs. One photo showed him in front of a small boat, dressed in a checked shirt, khakis, a billed cap. He was handing a couple of fishing rods to a slightly younger man who grinned rakishly at the camera. Behind him, a scrawny, towheaded, T-shirted Ron showed an eager gap-toothed smile.

"This is Ron, but who's this?" Cree asked. "He's handsome! He looks like Brad Pitt."

"It is Brad. My uncle Bradford, Momma's brother. He and Daddy were good buddies. We all loved him so. Uncle Brad. For Ron and me, he was more like, I don't know, our older brother or something."

"He's the one who – " Cree started to ask, then thought better of it.

"Yes. Who died in the fishing accident." Lila faded suddenly, then quickly flipped several pages. This was clearly not a good moment for recalling family tragedies. She turned a page, waited a few seconds without saying anything, then turned again and again. Snapshots of people and places past, little windows into bygone worlds. Richard and Brad in front of a new Thunderbird car. A black groundskeeper high in the branches of a fulsome magnolia, Ron and Lila grinning from the ladder beneath him. Various nameless faces whose resemblance revealed them to be Beauforte or Lambert uncles and aunts.

Another page showed a tall black woman bent over Lila and doing something to her hair while Lila grimaced. "Josephine," Lila explained.

"I told you about her, didn't I? Our nanny."

The second photo on the spread showed Lila and Josephine standing together. Lila looked to be about twelve and was wearing a graduation gown and an excited, rather blitzed smile. Josephine was a slim, sinewy woman with a faint friz of gray in her hair, wearing a black dress with white polka dots and prim white collar. She looked at the young Lila with an expression of pride, possessiveness, and something else – concern, or maybe protectiveness.

Lila put her hand to Josephine's face. "Sometimes," she said quietly, "when this has been really bad? And all I want to do is go run to somebody, like I'm a baby again? It's her I want to run to." Lila's eyes went wide at the admission. "Don't ever tell Momma I said that! Please!"

Cree would have liked to ask about Josephine, but Lila had begun flipping pages again. Then Cree spotted a face she wanted more time with, and she put her hand on Lila's arm to stop her.

"That's you."

"Yes." Reluctantly, Lila let the page fall open. "I was somethin', back then, wasn't I? Uncle Brad always called me a real firecracker, and I guess I was."

One photo was a grade-school-era portrait of a clear-eyed, pretty girl looking straight at the camera with an expression of confident amusement. Another showed her on stage with a cello between her knees, sawing away intently.

"I had no idea you played the cello! Do you still?"

"Haven't touched it in… oh, so long I don't remember. I guess I gave it up when I went off to Excelsior – that's the boarding school they shipped me to over in Mobile. I did love it so, but I… didn't have the talent." Again Lila began turning pages as if fleeing the images, and then stopped abruptly. "Oh, I am so rude! I didn't offer you anything. Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Iced tea?"

"Actually, tea would be nice. I'm sure not used to the heat."

Lila stood up and went quickly to the doorway. But she paused there and looked back at Cree. "Everything hurts," she said, as if explaining her sudden retreat. "It's all lost! When life takes a turn like this, it's all… frightening. It's all pain. Every page, every face. I can't touch it. I can't go near it." And she turned away and fled into the hallway.

Cree sat alone in the air-conditioned cool, feeling overwhelmed by the sad feast of memories spread on the table. / can't go near it: Cree remembered too well the day she had boxed up the photos of Mike. Into the closet went any image that would remind her of their wedding, their vacations, the innumerable impromptu moments, the dogs, the parties, the new cars, the dinners with friends. The odd ones that really hurt: Mike lying on that awful plaid couch in their first apartment on some hot day, sleepy-eyed, naked beneath the newspaper he'd been reading. That Polaroid taken by a stranger they'd corralled for the job: Mike and Cree together on Cadillac Mountain with the misty depths of Mount Desert Island behind them – Mike's accidental look of tenderness.

She'd come to the point of locking things away only after, what, three years or so. But it never really worked. After that, she thought about that box all the time; she could feel it in the house, those years compressed inside it, as if it glowed with heat and pressure. Sometimes it seemed it was about to blow open again on its own like an undetonated bomb left over from some war, and then she'd flee whatever house or apartment she lived in to get away from it. Or she'd give up and spread it out like this and spend weeks of renewed grieving, trying to reassemble anything like a life. She couldn't blame Lila for her reluctance.

She had come here with the goal of convincing Lila to do as Paul said: to admit herself for a period of observation and treatment. But there didn't seem to be any way to ask that of her, even to open the subject.

Cree took a deep breath, reminding herself that in any case, she had to seize this opportunity to look through the Beauforte family archives. There were a thousand threads here; synesthesically, she could feel them almost as if they were tangible filaments beneath her fingers. Each led to some element of Lila's past, and she was sure one would lead her to the connection she sought: the link to the ghost, to Lila's vulnerability.

Randomly, she pulled over a school yearbook: Jean Cavelier Country Day school, 1969. Lila would have been in seventh grade. Opening to the index, she was astonished to find a long column of listings under Lila Beauforte's name: drama club, chamber orchestra, debate team, honor roll. She'd also been active in what sounded like school-sponsored community groups, Save Our Shores and Neighborhood Friends. Cree chose a page and opened it to see Lila with four other kids of mixed races, all holding the slender trunk of a sapling they'd apparently just planted. They looked proud and happy, Lila particularly – that wise, innocent spark ofjoie.

Cree heard the distant chunk! of the refrigerator door and the rattle of ice cubes, and suddenly she felt that there was something she had to do before Lila came back. She stood to rummage quickly through the materials on the table. She found several more yearbooks but not what she was looking for. Then she saw that there were still materials in one of the plastic file boxes under the table, and when she bent to open it saw that it contained what she'd hoped: yearbooks from the Excelsior Academy Girls' School. She opened the one from 1974, found Lila's name, and turned to the solitary listing. It was just a small portrait in a row of photos, a plumpish sort of girl staring out of the frame with a mix of uncertainty, hopelessness, and sorrow – an early version of the look Lila wore today.

Another reason for locking away the photos of Mike: having to face the difference between the Cree who appeared in them and the Cree she met in the mirror every day – the desolation there, the aching hollowness that refused to be filled.

Abruptly hopelessness descended on her like a heavy curtain falling. Someone in her predicament had nothing whatever to offer Lila. She was showing too many signs of instability herself; she had too much emotional baggage of her own. Paul was right: All she was doing was compromising Lila's recovery process.

She heard footsteps in the hall and quickly dropped the book into the box. She was back in her chair by the time Lila came in with her little silver tray and two glasses of tea, a wedge of lemon clipped to each rim.

Lila handed her one and then held hers uncertainly, as if she wanted to apologize for the tea's inadequacy. Instead, she gestured toward the spill of photos. "I'm sorry," she said, "I know this is something you need to do… but I really don't know if I'm up for any more of it today."

"I was just thinking the same thing. Me neither."

"You? Why not?"

"Look, Lila, I – " Cree grappled with what to say. She swigged her tea but set it down quickly, frustrated at her inability to express what she felt. "You want to go for a walk or something? Just to get outside? I… I'm feeling a little cooped up, I think I have to get out of here."

"I don't know – "

"What do New Orleans women do when they have guests over? How about showing me your garden? I got just a glimpse from the levee the other day, it looks lovely."

Lila looked completely taken aback. "It… the groundskeeping service does it all. I used to love working in my garden, but I haven't even – I don't think I've even been back there since… you know."

Cree stood up awkwardly. "All the better. We can both explore. We can both pretend we're normal."

They went out through a rear door to a tall, narrow, columned gallery set with a white wrought-iron table and several chairs. Beyond, the grass stretched level for a hundred feet or so before the steep green slope of the levee began. A big live oak and a longleaf pine shifted in the lake breeze, and two palmettos rattled their spiky fronds. Islands of blossoming shrubs and flowers exulted in the dappled sun.

Without waiting for Lila's invitation, she stepped off the gallery and into the lawn. The mat of grass was deep and spongy, and she kicked off her shoes to feel it with her toes. Wishing the tea she carried were a beer, she headed back across the yard to the levee, found a spot of tree shade, and sat down with her back to the levee. It was better out here. She eased her back down against the grass and lay looking up at the heat-hazy sky. When she lifted her head she could see Lila, a little, forlorn figure still standing indecisively between the tall white pillars.

She laid her head back again. No question: Paul was right. She'd be better off quitting this case. She was showing serious indications of psychological instability. She was too tied up in her own knots, fighting with her own "ghosts," to do anything about the ghost at Beauforte House. She was just screwing things up. She'd do Lila a favor by leaving. Today. Now. Really, the only thing left was to tell her.

Lila's voice, nearby, surprised her. "I'm sorry, but the ground's probably moist. I'm worried you'll ruin you skirt." Cree looked up to see her standing anxiously a few feet away, holding her tea glass carefully. She was barefoot; her shoes were set neatly side by side on the steps of the gallery.

"Screw my skirt," Cree said despondently.

Lila looked slightly aghast.

"Don't you ever feel that way? You know? Screw it all, totally?"

Lila seemed to think about that. "Yes, I guess I do." She sounded surprised at herself.

"My father had an expression: 'Heck wit'.' He was a plumber, born in Brooklyn. It translates as 'the heck with it.' It meant, 'Sometimes you just have to let it go.' Or maybe it was 'You can't win 'em all.' Or, more like, 'It's not worth getting bent out of shape about.' It was actually a profound philosophical statement."

Lila nodded equivocally.

Cree dropped her head back and stared up at the sky, wondering why her father came back to her so strongly at moments like this. After another moment Lila sat primly down on the slope next to her, her glass in her lap. Behind and above them, a couple of women rode bikes along the top of the levee, chatting. Through her blouse, Cree felt insects move in the grass.

Cree was trying to think of how to say it: / think Dr. Fitzpatrick is right. I'm lousing things up for your work with him. I've got too much shit of my own, and some of the stuff I do, it's crazy. I have to quit. I'm sorry I can't help you, but -

"Something happened to me." Lila said it quietly but with great certainty.

Startled, Cree lifted her head again. Lila was sitting with her legs straight out in front of her, flexing her feet. Her big toes angled hard over toward the second toes, Cree saw: feet long imprisoned in a proper woman's confining shoes.

Cree sat up to look at her.

"I don't mean the ghost," Lila said. "I mean a long time ago."

"What was it?"

"I don't know. But I know it changed me. Most of the time I run away, or I shut it off in me. But sometimes I want to run right at it – chase it away, or… or know it and take away its power. And you help me do that. You're the only one who's ever helped."

Cree felt her face flush, trying to find the way to tell her, I can't! I want to run, too!

"You act like… something happened to you, too," Lila went on.

"Yeah. But I know what it was."

"What?"

"Oh, I don't usually talk about it. Just something I have to get over." Lila nodded at that. Sitting there side by side, gravity drew them slightly down the slope, their skirts rising unavoidably higher on their legs. Lila's plump, dimpled thighs looked unaccustomed to daylight, a blue-white now marbled with awful purple bmises from yesterday's violence. She stared perplexedly down at her legs, as if they were strange to her.

"Cree, could a ghost be the, what did you call it – perseveration? – of more than one emotion? More than one experience?"

"Yes. As a matter of fact, I count on that. It's always mixed. It's one of the ways you release them – you find the part that's willing to let go. Why?"

Lila tore up a tuft of grass and inspected it disinterestedly. "Because this one isn't all bad. It's hard to explain."

Cree thought about the affective locus in the library, which she hoped was a perseveration of the boar-headed man's dying moments. "Nobody's all bad or all good."

Lila nodded, accepting that. "Why can't you tell people what happened to you?"

"You know, Lila, I'm… I'm kind of unbalanced myself right now. I haven't been through what you have, but the last few days've been very draining for me, too, and – "

"I mean, maybe that's how you find the part that's willing to let go. In yourself. Does that make sense?"

They just looked at each other. For the first time, Lila held her gaze for a long moment, shy but not permitting of evasion, imploring yet somehow… what? Determined.

Cree felt a gust in her chest, a welling toward release. Maybe, she thought. She realized suddenly that on some level, Lila was bargaining. Seeking an equal exchange: You try it, I'll try it. You dare, maybe lean dare. But it was too big. The consequences of opening that repository of feeling could ruin Cree for this case. Right now, it felt as if it would rip her apart.

Again Lila startled her. "Do you know what Jackie did last night? He took away all the kitchen knives, right out of the house."

"What! Why?"

"And his shotgun, and most of the pills in the medicine cabinet. Even the single-edged razor blades in the hardware drawer." Lila paused to observe Cree's expression. "Because after I came home from the doctor, I had… thoughts. I told him I had thoughts."

That sent a chill through Cree. She had known all along that suicide was a real danger. A bad experience with a ghost could be like terminal disease, settling in along the nerves and synapses, gripping the psyche, killing the will to live. Cree could feel the impulse in Lila, brooding like a bruise-colored cloud at her center. Besides all the damage they wrought among the living, suicides made for the very worst kind of ghosts: an enduring echo of self- and life-hatred that poisoned the place where it happened, hard to banish.

"But I told him," Lila went on determinedly, "I told him I wouldn't. I told him there was a way through this. That the answer was, There's a ghost in that house, and we've got to understand why it's there and get rid of it. That you had seen it, too, it couldn't be just me going crazy. That you'd been through this before and you knew what to do about it. That no way was I going to give up before we'd given this all a try. So he shouldn't… worry."

Cree felt a sudden admiration for her – her concern for those around her despite her own predicament. And it dawned on her that, as if she' dintuited Cree's faltering resolve, Lila was consciously or unconsciously asking her to persevere, to see this process through. Again, she had challenged Cree and had proposed something like a pact: You have to stick this out. If you don't, how can I?

Cree was trying to frame an answer when the back door of the house opened, and there was Jack Warren, coming out onto the gallery, loosening his tie.

"Darlin'?" he called.

He looked toward them in bafflement, and for a moment Cree saw the scene through his eyes: two women sitting at the base of the levee with their legs awkwardly straight out in front, skirts bunched around bare thighs, looking at each other like frightened, battle-weary comrades-inarms who had just forged a pact to charge out of the foxhole and face enemy fire together one more time.