City of Masks

45

By the time Paul swung wide the iron gate at Beauforte House, Lila felt as if she were floating. The night air of the Garden District seemed to buoy her just above the ground – not a light, good feeling, but detached, emptied. The familiar streets struck her as alien. Meeting Bradford's ghost, sharing his dying moments, trying to find her own reconciliation with what had happened, she felt as if she'd been scraped raw inside, hollowed out.

Poor Paul had vomited wrenchingly after the encounter. Of the three of them, only Cree had been able to talk during the short drive from Lafayette Cemetery. Cree had said that the coming encounter was the crucial one. Meeting her father would be the way she'd become free and strong.

Thank you, Cree, Lila thought, I knew that. They were all being so kind.

"One other thing," Cree whispered. She put her hand on Lila's arm and the three of them stopped, halfway up the walk. "I can't be absolutely sure the boar-headed ghost is gone. Bradford's perimortem ghost is gone from the crypt, but his perseveration of the rape was highly independent. If we sense anything at all of him, we have to leave the house immediately. If you don't feel you can take the risk, we shouldn't go in at all."

Lila thought about that for a moment, weighing what was to be gained and what could be lost. "I want to go in," she said finally. "Come with me into the hall. But I want to go into the library by myself."

Even in the half-light, Lila could see the doubt in Paul's face. Cree looked wary but pleased. Of course Cree would know it was the only thing to be done.

They opened the door. Cree had insisted they leave the lights off, and for a moment the yawning darkness of the rooms frightened Lila. Maybe she couldn't do this. But though they waited at the bottom of the stairs, neither she nor Cree could feel the boar-headed specter, no echo or whisper. In fact, his absence was palpable. The house felt different: That coiled-spring feeling, that about-to-snap feeling, was gone. The boar-headed ghost was dead.

She drew one breath and realized it was the first clear, unconstricted inhalation she'd taken in many, many years.

Paul waited near the open front door as Cree walked her back through the dark hallway and through the kitchen. They turned into the long south wing hallway. Cree squeezed her hands at the library door and left without a word.

Lila went in. She could see almost nothing, but her body remembered the room's contours so well it almost didn't matter. She took small steps, feeling as she had when she'd performed on the cello as a little girl, going out onto the stage in front of a vast auditorium to perform some intimidating work she knew she hadn't mastered.

"Daddy?" she whispered.

The library smell reminded her of him, but she saw and heard nothing. Of course, Cree had said it might take a long time.

Her thigh found the piano bench and she sat backward on it, facing the room.

There were many varieties of fear, Lila decided. She was scared shaky now, but it was not the same as the fear she'd felt upstairs and in all her solitary moments in the last four months. That had been torn out of her like a tumor at the Lambert crypt. No, this was more like the fear you feel from some mountaintop you've climbed, where the fear of height chills you even as the long views make you joyful. There was a state where fear and hope met, she realized, where they were indistinguishable. The impulses sprang from the same well inside you.

It helped that everyone was so kind. Cree was so good-hearted. Paul had been dubious about this, but clearly he cared, he really wanted her to recover, as a human being as well as a psychiatrist. She hadn't seen Ron since all the revelations, but she knew he had done so much to protect her from what had happened. Even Momma, in her inimitable way confessing to killing Daddy and Temp Chase, taking all the blame. She'd played the tyrannical dowager to the hilt, even refusing to see Lila when she'd tried to visit her at the jail earlier. She'd done it so that Lila couldn't sympathize too strongly. So that Lila could stay angry at her.

And so that she wouldn't see the lie for what it was.

It was so touching. They'd been protecting her for so long, she couldn't bear to let them down.

Cree and Paul had explained what had happened to her: the boar mask, Brad and Daddy switching costumes that night, the rape. Daddy beating Brad and, thinking he was dead, hiding his unconscious body in the Lambert crypt, where he died of his wounds the next day. Charmian's rage at Daddy for killing Brad, last scion of the illustrious Lamberts, and her vengeance by poison.

She could almost believe it. Certainly she would put nothing past Momma, and a tiny, awful part of her gloated at Charmian's having to pay the piper at last, for these and other sins. But as she'd thought about it afterward, it didn't quite make sense, and during that last long night awake in the hospital room, her memory had unsealed itself. It was like discovering a hidden door in the house, one that opened into a long, dark hallway. That secret corridor of memory had always been there, she'd always sensed it, running parallel to the traveled ways of her life, her daily acts and thoughts. She had knocked on the walls and heard the hollow echoes, but she had never been able to find the way inside.

But as she thought about what Cree and Paul told her, she suddenly found the door, swinging open unexpectedly. It made sense out of Ron's inexplicable comments in the kitchen that afternoon. If you knew there was something I did – something that put me in danger. Something I could barely live with… something I could never even do again. Wouldn't you try to protect me?

He hadn't been talking about himself. He was talking about her.

She began to remember: believing Daddy had done it to her. Secretly making the poison from the wild cherry seeds and blossoms as Josephine had told them years ago, and putting it in his amaretto. Coming down later to find Momma with him on the floor, and all the feelings she'd felt. Though she'd been kind of crazy since that night with the boar-headed man, it was that moment in the library that she'd gone truly insane. That searing instant had cauterized her mind, closing the wound and sealing off her memory.

Knowing what she'd done, she wanted again to kill herself. After Cree and Paul had left the hospital room, she'd raged at herself, and at them for trying to deceive her yet again.

But the girl who had done it was so long gone; Lila could not fully blame her. The emotion was weary, it had worn itself out. And all around her now was the kindness of those who sought to protect her. Didn't she owe them the consummation of their kindness? That was what won out, what gave her strength. That much kindness was something of a redemption, wasn't it? People were at least sometimes capable of fine deeds and noble hopes, weren't they?

She made up her mind to pretend she didn't know. Cree had helped her at every step of the way, but this step she decided she'd take on her own. She'd see if she could find Daddy tonight. She'd ask for his forgiveness. She'd try to let him free. Then she'd keep the secret for the rest of her life.

Time passed. She wondered now how long she'd been in here; it seemed like hours, but in the dark it was hard to tell. Cree had said it might take a while, and that Daddy's ghost was a subtler sort of manifestation; she might not experience him as strongly as Brad's ghost, at least not visually. It might be only her heart that perceived him, so she'd have to observe her feelings closely. Be gentle with yourself, Cree had said. Be patient with yourself

She did her best. She tried to relax, and she stared open-eyed around her in the dark. The room wasn't totally black – a little light crept around the edges of the curtains. She could see the vaguest of forms: the dark flat of bookshelves, the lighter walls on either side of the fireplace, the looming lumps of darkness that would be the wingback chairs. Invisible at the far end of the room was the table that had scared her so badly and that throughout the many ordeals with the boar-headed man had lingered in her thoughts and figured in her nightmares. She'd worried that it would persist as the boar-headed man did, it would arise to torment her in some unforseen way. That other things in the house would start changing, too.

But Cree had explained that, too, along with the snake and the wolf. When Cree had asked Josephine about it, down in Port Sulphur, Josephine had shown her a book she'd kept since back then. Again, Lila remembered it the moment Cree told her about it. She and Ro-Ro would go to Josephine's room and huddle up in their pajamas on the quilted bed cover as Josephine read to them. Sometimes it was Bible stories, sometimes fairy tales, but their favorite was an old volume of supernatural stories, illustrated with lurid full-color plates, called Terrors of Devil's Bayou. Daddy called that kind of thing "pulp." The book had heavy, flaking cardboard covers, and just the smell of it when they opened its crumbly pages gave them a delicious thrill of terror. Josephine said it was from back in the 1920s. They'd make her read it, and though she'd always resist she always gave in. It would scare them terribly and they'd come trembling back into the main house to lie wide eyed and quaking in bed, imagining all its lovely horrors.

There was the gigantic water moccasin that dwelt deep in the cypress swamps. It came at night to the scattered houses of Cajun trappers to eat their children, right in their beds. Nothing could stop it: It was able to seep like smoke through cracks in walls, down chimneys, around doors. The old people knew that the black mist that sometimes gathered and glided along the bayous at sundown was the snake, beginning to take form, and that its appearance meant someone would die that night.

The wolf was a loup-garou that terrorized the swamps. He could lope through the night over land or water or swamp and turn into a man or a wolf at will. The scariest picture was when he was halfway between. When he came to the house of his victim, he became as stealthy as a shadow and took great pleasure in stalking his unknowing victim. Before he struck, he'd whisper the name of his intended prey at door cracks and keyholes.

The living table was pictured in the book, Cree said, claw feet and all. Lila remembered the story: An evil rich man in some small town oppressed the men who worked in his sawmill and was cruel to their wives and children. He lived alone in a huge house, and while his neighbors suffered in poverty he indulged himself by buying jewels and baubles, importing fine furniture from France, drinking only the most expensive wines. Eventually the townspeople asked a local witch to put a curse on him. The house and the rich things in it came alive, attacking him, driving him mad, and devouring his soul.

These things happened when you were really haunted, Cree had said. She had a term for it: "epiphenomenal manifestations." Your mind was triggered and generated other scary things, cobbled together from memories and imaginings. The proximity of the unknown could awaken a lifetime's worth of fears.

Lila shivered, remembering the nightmare of the snake's visit, the wolf, the table. But as Cree had predicted, once they'd taken a place in the architecture of her waking, normal world, their power had begun to ebb. She had some control of them.

Cree was very smart, Lila thought again.

But still there was no sign of Daddy's ghost. Cree had told her nothing about what the ghost did, what it felt or needed, only to say that Lila would emerge from the encounter strengthened and freed.

Lila's back ached from sitting on the hard rosewood bench, and a tension pain sank talons into her shoulders. She got up, stretched, took a few steps in the dark, turned to survey the room. The darkness was ordinary darkness, as far as she could tell. It wasn't about to explode at her, or strike at her like some snake. It was just a quiet room where her father had spent many hours of his life. Until that awful table had come alive, she'd always felt a nice feeling in here, safe and calm, and she felt a bit of it now. Did that feeling count as a ghost? She wasn't sure. Daddy used to read in here, smoking his cigar, and he often did his business at the big desk. Sometimes she'd come in here to be with him. Sometimes he'd let her pester him, sometimes he'd shoo her away so he could attend to his affairs.

She repressed the urge to look at her watch. Instead, she recited Cree's parting advice like a chant, a prayer: Don't worry about mechanical time. Take all the time you need. Just let your mind roam. Remember things, if they come to you. Feel what you feel, cherish each feeling, and then let it pass if it will. Keep your eyes moving in the dark, scanning, but remember it could start with a mood, an emotion, or even a smell.

You might get afraid, but just remember this was someone who loved you. His ghost still does, very much. You'll see.

But he wasn't coming. It made her very sad.

"I'm sorry," she said out loud. "We all went kind of crazy. No one knew what to do, did they?" The room just absorbed her words. "I'm sorry I poisoned you. I wasn't really sure it would even work. I didn't know about Brad. I didn't mean to betray you. I love you so much."

There didn't seem to be anyone listening.

She went back to the piano bench and settled herself on it. Her hands started kneading each other, kneading the opposite wrists, but she made them stop.

Right now Cree would be sitting in the dark entry hall with Paul. They wouldn't be saying much; they'd both be listening hard for sounds of trouble from back in the house. Cree would have her weird, empathic radar going. Those two were so drawn to each other, you could feel it in the air between them. But Cree was angry with him for some reason, probably because for all her insights and courage, she was afraid of the things he showed her about herself. Everyone had things inside they couldn't easily face. Paul, too. Right now, he was reeling inwardly, feeling sick and uncertain about everything after what he'd experienced at the Lambert crypt. Lila knew just how it felt.

What would happen to the two of them? Cree would go back to Seattle tomorrow or the next day. Paul – who knew? She hoped they wouldn't give up, wouldn't waste the good thing between them. It was too rare in life to waste.

More time passed.

She worried about Jack. He'd be sitting at home, still awake and sick with anxiety, or fallen asleep on the couch. He hadn't wanted to let her go without him tonight, but she had insisted. She was determined to be a new person, to break out of her old roles, but she wasn't sure what that really meant. It was all so new, and she needed time to decide just what she'd do differently. Jackie had never met this new person – would he love her? She kind of hoped he would; for all that he was not high class or exceptionally intelligent, he was a sweet man, earnest, funny. He had sure stuck through some tough spots.

Again, she recalled Cree's advice: Don't worry about Jack. Just trust that where you lead, he'll follow.

She felt her back grow tired of sitting. The fear abated, replaced by exhaustion. She struggled not to drowse. Her mood drifted toward a sweet sort of nostalgic melancholy. The past looked and felt different now. Cree said everyone did this – that important events, even just of the normal world, changed your view of yourself and your history and your family. You were always revising them.

Lila found herself returning to a memory she'd long ignored or forgotten, an afternoon from when she must have been six or seven. It wasn't anything particularly special, just her and Daddy wandering in the yard. He was always so sweet but so seldom had the time. He'd gone out to look at the eaves or something, and she'd hijacked him. She had led him around by the hand, Daddy in his suit pants and business shoes and shirt with suspenders and tie, Lila wearing her favorite dress, a frilly sort of thing that made her feel pretty. She showed off by naming every flower and then swore him to secrecy and brought him to the elf house she'd made under the bushy, arching branches of one of the hydrangeas. It was really little more than a collection of sticks, but Daddy seemed very impressed. After a while they went to the swing he'd hung from one of the big live oaks, and when Lila sat in it he began to push her. It felt so nice. She couldn't stop laughing, not because anything was funny, just because she was happy. She felt like she could go up into the green, right through the leaves and on into the sky. At the same time, it was nice knowing Daddy was there to catch her if she needed him to. The sun came through the branches and made everything so green and intricate and mysterious. You could easily believe in fairies. Daddy seemed very happy, too. She remembered feeling good that he was having as much fun as she was.

She savored the recollection for a little while. When she came away from it, she could swear there was more light coming in around the curtains. It startled her, and she wondered at the source of the glow. She got up, went to one of the windows, cracked the curtain, and was astonished to see that it was the sky, paling toward dawn.

She had been in here all night.

Immediately, she felt sorry for Cree and Paul, who must have gotten very uncomfortable, waiting for her in the hallway for, what, seven hours! She had asked enough of everybody. It was time to go. She had failed to make contact with her father's ghost. If she wanted that strength and freedom Cree had promised, she'd have to find it without him.

She stood up, every muscle and joint stiff. At the doorway she turned and faced the empty room once more. The memory of that time on the swing, the green aerial mansions above and having Daddy all to herself, was ebbing; she was sad to see it fade.

"Daddy, if you're there and I just can't see you? I just want you to know I turned out all right. So you don't have to worry." She listened and got no answer, and then corrected herself: "There was a bad time," she said quietly, "but now I'm all right."

Then she turned back to the door and went out to make it true.