City of Masks (36 page)

Below, at the far end of the press floor, a spindle lift driven by a young man approached a stack of paper rolls, each four feet in diameter. The shiny, six-foot steel phallus approached the holes in the massive paper spools, raised, lowered, found its way into the hole, backed halfway out to adjust its angle, went in again.
How many bad jokes that job must generate
here,
Cree thought, feeling more than a little sick. It occurred to her that the incest probability didn't negate the specter theory. Ro-Ro's dark side?

And then Sharon was back, carrying a couple of fat, accordion-style folders. "Here we go," she said cheerfully. "Epicurus, 1969. Y'all take your time and enjoy." She gave them a stewardess smile and went back to her desk.

Paul seemed to share Cree's reluctance as they opened the first. It was a tidily organized file of photos of different sizes, some obviously done by a professional hired for the job, some three-by-fives apparently taken by Mr. Galveston or other Epicurus members. There were also newspaper clippings, yellowing and turning a little crumbly in glassine envelopes.

They flipped photos for a few minutes. People in tuxes, people in costumes, people toasting, people dancing, people looking up from meals. Then a posed group photo, obviously done by a professional: around thirty costumed partyers standing shoulder to shoulder. Cree thought she recognized Bradford Lambert in the middle row, the swashbuckling pirate.

And then she saw the boar-headed man.

He stood at the left end of the back row, his bristled head turned to a three-quarter view. He wore a jacket of some coarse material, ragged and patched.

Cree felt the breath go out of her. Paul whipped the photo over. Penned in neat copperplate, row by row, were the names of the partyers.

Far left, back row, was Richard Beauforte.

35

C
REE 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?"