City of Masks

35

Cree needed space. The interior of any building, even the city streets, seemed too congested, thick with sorrows. She told Paul to drive to the lake. The top of the levee, with its wide vistas of water and green, was the only place in New Orleans with any promise of respite. Human beings were insufferable. She didn't talk to him as they drove, but she did use his cell phone to call Joyce on hers.

"Where are you?" Cree asked.

"Right now I'm at the main library, looking through old city directories for Josephine Dupree. No luck so far. I've gone through the tax rolls, public housing authority, and social welfare records, and there's no reference to her. I even made calls to a bunch of Duprees in the current phone book, and nobody knows of any Josephine. I'd say she's probably dead, but I can't find a certificate of death in this parish, or any burial record in New Orleans. I might have to go to Baton Rouge for the statewide records."

Cree considered telling her to forget about Josephine, they'd solved the basic problem. But then it occurred to her that the old woman, if she were alive, might be useful in the next phase: helping Lila come to grips with what had happened to her. So instead, she added to Joyce's research agenda. "I need everything you can find on Richard Beauforte, Lila's father. I mean everything. Birth to death. Business deals, traffic citations, whatever."

"Uh-oh. Does this mean what I think it does?"

"We'll talk about it later," Cree said curtly. She folded the phone and handed it back to Paul.

He drove them to a lakeshore park not far from the Warrens' house. They left the car at the base of the levee, climbed the stairs set into the earthen mound, and stood for a moment, just taking in the views. It was just after one o'clock, the sun high; a wind sighed in off the water, drying some of the sweat on Cree's skin and rolling among the shore trees. The open lawns of the lakeshore park were all but deserted.

"How're you doing?" Paul asked. "You really up for walking?"

For a moment, Cree didn't know what he was talking about. She had completely forgotten the bruises and sprains that complained with every step. Something like fury drove her, anesthetized her. "I'm fine," she snapped. She turned west along the levee path, and yes, the breeze and the open sky and the relative absence of naked apes and their innumerable cruelties did help a little.

Paul followed behind for a time, then caught up. "So, Dr. Black, we have a problem."

"Yes."

"A fragile patient in denial over a severe childhood trauma. It's not just rape, and it's not just incest, it's worse than either. Beyond the violation of the rape, there's her betrayal by a loved and trusted family member. There's the frightening role reversal – a parent, a protector, turned into an attacker. All of it exacerbated by the mask, which made it more frightening and debasing – being raped by an animal who you knew was your father. It's all been repressed for thirty years, and the patient's ability to cope has been contingent on keeping it buried. Now the repression is breaking up. Why? And what's the correct therapeutic prognosis under the circumstances?"

They had found a number of other photos of Richard in the 1969 folder, wearing his boar's mask or holding it under his arm. Examining the boozy-looking gatherings, Cree had been struck by Lila, dressed as a twelve-year-old pixie or fairy of some kind: She was truly sparkling, a shining girl. And why shouldn't she be? Cree thought savagely. After all, she wasn't due to be violently raped by her father for another couple of years.

"The repression's breaking up because she moved back into Beauforte House and encountered the ghost there. And you know, Paul, screw you if you don't believe in the ghost part."

"Can we get past what I believe or not? Lila's well-being is at issue here, not whether you or I agree on everything. You're a top-notch psychologist. Put your talents to use."

She rounded on him in rage, but she knew he was right. She closed her mouth before the anger could explode out of it and kept walking.

"Let's reconstruct the scenario," Paul told her. "What exactly happened? If we're going to identify all the dimensions of Lila's problem, we've got to know."

Cree walked fast, staying half a step ahead of him. They were speed-walking along the levee top, rage and frustration burning in Cree's limbs.

Suddenly she realized he wasn't there any more. She looked back to see him, standing in the middle of the path, twenty feet behind her.

"I am not Richard Beauforte," he called. "Nor am I some generic representative of 'all men' with their supposed rapine instincts. You're upset at what happened to that woman. But / didn't do it. I'm upset, too. I'm trying to help her. Accept that and I'll keep walking with you. Otherwise, I'm going home."

She couldn't answer. The best she could do was to turn aside and sit down on the slope facing the lake. It took another minute to call back to him, "I'm sorry." How many times had she said that today? She looked toward him and gestured to the grass at her side. "I am completely screwed up, Paul. I'm sorry."

He did come and sit, but not within arm's reach.

He was right, they had to determine just what happened. So she extemporized, stringing together what they knew with reasonable suppositions. Paul just listened, nodding now and then.

It was 1971; Lila would have been fourteen, and, according to the photos Cree had seen among the family albums, well developed for her age. The family went out for a typical Mardi Gras party at some other old family's house, wearing their costumes. Lila came home before the others; maybe she wasn't feeling well, or she was just sick of the party, or maybe being the youngest it was simply her bedtime. She was upstairs, maybe getting ready for bed, when she heard somebody come in. It'd been a busy, bustling day at Beauforte House, she didn't think twice about it. Or maybe she didn't hear anybody, she just came out of her bedroom or the bathroom and saw the shoe tips. They startled her, but it was a night of crazy behavior. Probably she thought it was Ron. But then she saw the boar head, peeking around the corner at the end of the hallway, trying to be scary. "Daddy, cut it out," she said. Maybe she laughed at him. She knew he was pretty drunk. But then he came all the way out, and the way he came toward her was creepy. It was piggy, he was being too real. Something startled her – his breathing, his eyes. Or maybe it started out as a game, some parody of a fatherly game of pursuit, the way they all used to love doing when she and Ron were younger. She skittered away, either playful or already scared. And he chased her. Maybe he caught her once and hurt her a little. And all of a sudden, however it had started out, it was no game; he had become a monstrous stranger, a real wereboar, no longer her father. After the first pursuit, he vanished into the house again, and she decided to try to go downstairs, get to a phone or go outside. But he cut her off before she could reach the stairs. He chased her through the rooms. She implored him to come to his senses. "What are you doing? Stop it!" He caught her and hurt her again, or touched her the wrong way.

He let her go because he had discovered how much he enjoyed the pursuit, even after she started crying and pleading. He called her name in scary ways, he mimicked her whimpers and cries, taunting her. Maybe he had started out just feeling a little devil-may-care, pushing the envelope with just a tinge of sadism, but anger or resentment burned in him from some business disappointment or loss of status, and here was catharsis. Probably he kept telling himself it was just paternal high jinks, but the wild dark hilarity, the temptation of the edge of the permissible, grew by degrees. He had never felt such power and freedom, such an absolute release of inhibition. He felt alive in ways he hadn't for years, he felt like a robust, rutting animal. His prey was lush and fresh and innocent. The feel of her blossoming body aroused him in ways he didn't anticipate. His control slipped another notch each time, and her fear gratified him. Maybe he told himself that her terror was a pretense, part of the game. He chased her again, and vanished again, and chased her and wrestled with her, and finally his arousal was complete, he needed to cross the threshold, to break the ultimate taboo. And he did.

Cree had run out of air and felt dizzy. The details were all hypothetical, but somehow she knew the story was about right.

Paul was shaking his head, looking disgusted with himself. "It fits," he said. "It fits so well I should have seen it right away. She's classic. A textbook example of the psychology of incest and rape. All the behavioral patterns." For a moment he just sat, tearing up tufts of grass and tossing them into the breeze. Then he sighed and turned toward Cree. "And afterward?"

"I think she went to her mother and told her. Because Charmian damn well knows about this. She's withholding something from me, and this has to be it. And Lila told me that Charmian had stopped sleeping with her father right around then. Which I would bloody well hope she would."

"And Charmian's response was -?"

"She told Lila to show some spine, reminded her that Beaufortes don't cry. Or she didn't believe her. So Lila tried to tough it out, and later she went off to boarding school. Couldn't process what had happened to her, had a breakdown, came home. They called in your father to treat her because they knew they could rely on his confidentiality. Your father drugged her up, did the best he could. Richard died of a heart attack in there somewhere. Once he was dead, and she was away from home again, it was easier to forget. Forgetting seemed like the only way out. Forgetting became the habit, the rule."

Paul sat with his elbows on his knees, squinting as he looked out over the water. "The love never dies, you know." He sounded very sad. "The abused child still loves the parent. She may hate and fear her abuser, too, but the love never goes away. Whenever her father has come up in our sessions, it's clear Lila admired him and felt very close to him. She has nothing but good things to say about him."

"All the more motivation to repress the rape. The ambivalence would be intolerable, the two emotions utterly irreconcilable. Burying the hate and sense of betrayal was the only way to preserve any of the love."

Paul was laboring over some thought. "Cree, let me ask you a very serious question. Please think about this, okay? Because it's stumping me at the moment. If we expose the memory, aren't we taking something away, too? Aren't we robbing the adult Lila of her father? Aren't we. .. killing the decent, loving man and replacing him with a monster?" He shook his head. "We can't guarantee a positive prognosis for Lila if we open up that wound. Jesus God, I never thought I'd hear myself saying this, but maybe in this case it would be better to… just let it lie."

They chewed on that for a while. Down in the park, an old man shuffled along the water's edge, head down, looking dejected. Far above, a jetliner caught the sun and blazed for a few seconds as it banked for its descent to New Orleans airport, bringing another load of happy tourists to the City That Care Forgot.

Cree was thinking that letting it lie was an option already lost to them. The spectral rape had started something irreversible in Lila. Somehow they had to do both: give Lila access to the anger and hurt so that she could start to rebuild, but somehow preserve the love she felt for her father, the love she still thought she felt from him. Possible? Remotely, maybe. It depended on the ghost. The outcome with the ghost would determine everything for Lila's future. Josephine might help, too, if she were alive, if they could find her. Lila had said repeatedly that in many ways she'd been closer to Josephine than to her own mother, that she had emotionally relied on the wise, patient nanny. And all the photos Cree had seen bore that out – their faces gave it away. A special connection.

But that brought up another thought. Lila had been so close to Josephine – wouldn't she have sought comfort in those strong, sinewy arms before she went to Charmian? Absolutely. Which meant the old woman would know the facts of that night. And Josephine would not have let the event pass without responding in some way. How? What had happened that night and in the following days? Josephine was cmcial here.

Suddenly Cree knew she had to go help Joyce. They had to double up on the search for Josephine.

She stood up quickly, staggered as the forgotten pain exploded in her hips and thigh, and lost her balance on the levee slope. Immediately Paul stood, too, and she grabbed his outstretched hand. She let him help her back to the path, and when he didn't let go she didn't resist the continuing contact. He put his arm around her waist, and they started back toward his car that way, hip to hip. After a moment she put her arm half around him, too, hooking a finger into a belt loop.

She felt a little better. The open spaces had helped, and the thought that maybe in Josephine they had a resource to help heal Lila. Paul helped, too, she realized. The occasional soft bump and brush of their hips felt good, at once so casual and so intimate. Less scary and confusing than it would have been a week ago. For all her sense of urgency, she didn't mind allowing the moment to linger. They didn't race back. From a distance, Cree thought, they would look like lovers out for a stroll.

"So what do we do?" Paul asked quietly. "Do we approach Lila with this?"

Cree shook her head. "Not yet. I want to see if we can find Josephine. And I want to get to know Richard first. Maybe some therapeutic avenues will become clearer."

Paul nodded. After another minute he cleared his throat as if he had something he'd been wanting to say.

"Back at the hospital, I said I'd thought about… you know. What you told me the other night. About Mike. Is this something you're up for talking about now?"

"I think so." She tugged at his belt loop.

"I want to offer you a provocative suggestion, one you may not like. But I hope you'll think about it."

Cree chuckled humorlessly. "After the events of the last forty-eight hours, Paul, I think I can probably take just about anything."

He bobbed his head, uncertain. "Seeing Mike after his death was a huge thing. It changed your outlook, you had to radically adapt your worldview to cope with it. And it left you with… ambiguities about your marital status. If people don't exactly, totally die, is Cree Black still sort of married? Or is she single? Your situation was more extreme, perhaps, but it's not so different from the confusion that's typical of every person who loses a spouse. They grieve, and they often stay single and celibate out of respect for the dead loved one – the sense of connectedness and love, the desire for fidelity, doesn't go away. Staying loyal is a way to keep the lost one alive, just a little, and anyway, it just doesn't feel right to become close to someone else. And there's often the fear of intimacy, the fear that getting close to someone might just set you up for another such loss. Have I got all this about right?"

Cree nodded.

"So in searching for answers, you become, by degrees, a ghost hunter – a psychologist for the dead. Because you want to know how it works. You want to know what kind of beings we are! But you also wonder where Mike is. Some part of you has got to be hoping maybe you'll see him again? You'll find him again?"

Cree felt each word like a body blow. It was all too true, it was all too much to bear. "This isn't what I thought you were wanting to talk about," she said hoarsely. "I've just been through five kinds of hell. I don't -"

"Please, just let me finish. So you become a ghost hunter. Watching you dealing with Lila, I can tell your process just about kills you every time, yet you keep on doing it. Why? Just existential curiosity? I don't think so. I think the answer is right there, in what you really do with ghosts. Cree, no, don't turn away now! Listen to me! You get rid of them, you banish them! You 'free' them, you, what's your word, 'remediate' them! Don't hear this wrong, Cree, but maybe that's no accident? Maybe after nine years, part of you knows you need to 'remediate' Mike? Maybe that's the hidden truth of why you do this. You're unconsciously trying to free yourself from your own haunting. You're trying to – "

"You are not my psychiatrist!" All the anger had returned in a blinding blaze, and she shoved him from her so hard he staggered away. "How dare you!"

Paul stood just off the path, hands palm up, his face searching hers. "I'm just trying to – "

"You're trying to get me into the sack! You're being self-interested and opportunistic, and you're being intolerably condescending. You're thinking of me as some kind of psychological specimen under your microscope, Paul! You're violating a basic professional precept, which is that people ask you to analyze them, you don't presume to do so unless you are asked. And I most definitely do not want you to be my psychoanalyst!"

Furious, she strode away, leaving him standing there.

"What would you like me to be, Cree?" he called after her. "Maybe it's time to figure that out."

She stormed back to the car, tears burning on her cheeks. It wasn't until she saw the BMW below her that she realized that of course there were no clean exits here. She was dependent on Paul to drive her back downtown. A couple of other cars were in the lot now, trunk lids up as families unloaded picnic gear. She stumbled down the steps, ashamed of her red, tear-slicked face, of her predicament. She wanted to hide in the car, but of course the doors were locked and Paul had the keys.

So she leaned against the hood, her arms crossed hard, occasionally wiping her eyes with the back of her hands, doing her best to swallow the sobs before they could burst out. Everything hurt. The picnickers averted their eyes as they went past her to the stairs. Paul was a little figure at the top of the levee half a block away, walking along slowly, head down, hands in pockets, kicking at stones.

She hated him. She hated being wrenched open and exposed. She hated having to face that truth in her. She hated that Paul was right.

Oh, Mike! she cried inwardly. The rest was right there, the part she had never been able to say or even think: Set me free! Please, my love.

Paul came to the top of the stairs but stopped suddenly to dig his cell phone out of his pocket. He flipped it open, put it to his ear, and listened intently. His face changed.

Then he was trotting quickly down the stairs and jogging toward her. Whatever they might have said or not said was moot, because when he was fifteen feet away he called out, "That was Jack Warren. Lila has attempted suicide – he doesn't know, maybe she's succeeded. Cut her wrists. They've just taken her to the emergency ward."