City of Masks cb-1

by Daniel Hecht

  Deirdre had been watching Cree in the mirror again and must have seen her expression change. "Sorry," she began, "I didn't mean to — "

  "No, it's all right. I'll call her. Thanks for the heads up."

  They let it settle for a moment. Deirdre finished the carrots and set Cree up to slice them as she went to work on the fish. The girls were laughing together upstairs.

  "Stay for dinner?" Deirdre's light tone sounded a little forced. "Don will be home soon — "

  "I don't know…"

  "Cree — "

  "Really, Dee, it only hurts when I laugh. Just a little stitch, right here."

  Cree grimaced and put her hand on her heart. Pushing it all one level deeper in an effort to let Deirdre off the hook. "Okay?"

  "Okay," Deirdre said, smiling again. "But it would still be nice if you stayed for dinner."

  When the salad was washed, the rice on to boil, and the fish ready for the oven, Deirdre poured them each a glass of chardonnay. They sat on the tall kitchen stools, relaxing. Deirdre looked as though she deserved a moment to let her shoulders down.

  "So when's Mom supposed to go in for the angioplasty?" Cree asked.

  "Three weeks."

  "Good — I'll be back by then." At Deirdre's questioning look, Cree explained. "I'm going to New Orleans, flying out later this week. Just got a fat retainer for a preliminary investigation, probably only take four or five days. I'm looking forward to it — I've always wanted to go there."

  "You know Don and I went once," Deirdre said. "Back before the girls were born. Our wild youth — we thought it would be fun to go for Mardi Gras."

  "Right, I remember. How was it?"

  "Hmm. Strange, actually." Deirdre's pretty forehead drew into a small frown.

  "How so?"

  "It was really… well, wild. We went down there to party, but this was more than we'd bargained for. It's like the whole city goes crazy. Everybody's in costume. Everybody's wearing a mask. It's got a lot of morbid overtones, and it's very… pagan. And it's amazingly uninhibited — I mean, literally, people screwing in the streets and on the balconies. Seriously, in full view!"

  "That's the whole point of masks — license. If your identity's hidden, nobody can hold you accountable for your behavior — you can act the way you'd really like to." Cree swigged her wine and chuckled. "I didn't know you had such a prudish streak, Dee!"

  "No, really, Cree. We found it a little, I don't know… sinister. The city has this doubleness. Don started calling it 'the city of masks.' I don't mean just the parades. The whole town puts on a show, a welcoming facade, but it has another face: poverty, resentment, crime, corruption. Race issues. Nothing is quite what it seems. Even the woman who ran our b-and-b — charming, matronly Southern hostess, we got to know her pretty well, even went out for drinks with her? We were there for three days before I came into the bathroom and saw her with her wig off, shaving her chest. She was a man!"

  "So?"

  Dee snorted. "So nothing. Except that he took the opportunity to make a pass at me! And I'm standing there, still trying to put it together, and I just blurt the first thing that comes to my mind? I tell him, 'No, thanks so much, but I'm not a lesbian!'"

  They both laughed, and then the phone rang.

  Deirdre answered it, listened. "Sure, just a moment." She went to the hallway and called, "Hy — telephone!" She covered the mouthpiece with one hand and whispered to Cree, "Boyfriend!" She listened until Hyacinth picked up. Sober again, she told Cree, "I don't mean to rain on your parade. It's a fascinating place. You just have to, you know.. watch yourself, that's all."

  4

  Tuesday was a scattershot day. Cree felt like a dragonfly, darting and flitting as she prepared for the trip: getting airline tickets and hotel and rental car reservations, checking wardrobe, juggling appointments, and making phone calls to carve out the time away.

  Aside from the routine travel preparations, there were those specific to her trade. She reviewed the psi literature to learn more about past cases in New Orleans. She asked Joyce to buy a few books on Louisiana history and culture. She selected some equipment from the metal shelves of Edgar's room, checked it, and packed it carefully in a big foam-padded aluminum case.

  Even that was fairly routine.

  Another dimension of preparation underlay all the bustle. For the empath there was always a quiet taking stock, a taking of one's own measure and readiness, and a grappling with the resulting ambiguities. Then there were the contacts made with loved ones and colleagues, all freighted with an unspoken burden — hellos with contingent good-byes hidden in them because the person who leaves for a ghost hunting expedition, the way Cree did it, might well not return. Not as the same person, anyway.

  It was almost eight o'clock before she had time to stop in and see her mother. She was still undecided whether to bring up the handsome cardiologist thing, but it would be good to see Mom, especially at work. She drove to the little civic rec center Janet Black managed, parked, went up the broad steps and into the invigorating stink of sweat and floor varnish, the rubbery smell of basketballs and athletic shoes.

  The racket in the entry hall told her that she'd guessed right: One of the teen league games was in full swing. The building echoed with the drub of balls, the squeak of shoes, the whistles of referees, the cheers of a small crowd. A girls' game, she saw as she paused at the gym door. The players milled for a moment and took positions for a foul shot, arms out, legs braced, eyes wildly alert. The shot hit the rim and bounced away, and then everyone was moving again, blue shirts and red shirts skirmishing, refs sidling and jogging. The numerals of the scoreboard clock counted down.

  Mom sat at the scoring table. She looked joyful and suitably officious, very much in her element here: a woman in her early sixties, wearing the tan uniform shirt and slacks of the rec department, gray-shot hair tied back and out of the way. She lifted her reading glasses to make a notation, then let them fall against her chest on their red sports band. Her eyes went back to the game for a moment before she spotted Cree at the door. They exchanged smiles.

  Cree made her way around the wall of the gym and slid into a folding chair next to her mother. This was Janet's preferred view of her domain: dead center in the big room with its high, trussed ceiling and glistening yellow floor. Fold-out bleachers lined one side, half full with the small but enthusiastic crowd; the teams hunched on low benches along the sidelines.

  "Good game?"

  Janet nodded. The crowd cheered for a scoring attempt, and she had to lean close to Cree's ear to be heard. "For sheer drama, nothing beats a middle school girls' basketball game. Not the NBA, not the WBA, nothing. This is something of a grudge match. The reds lost last time, and they've been building this up — the big rematch, right? But then their star player got hurt a couple of days ago. Fell off the stage during a play rehearsal at school and broke her foot. That's her over there."

  At the red team bench, a tall girl slumped miserably, her foot in a cast, crutches against her shoulders.

  "So now the poor reds are out there trying to 'win it for Jen,' Lord help us. And they're getting pounded."

  The clock showed two minutes to play, and the reds were getting desperate and frustrated, hustling too hard. Several looked as if they were biting back tears. They were behind 42 to 30.

  The battle veered close to the scoring table. The ball bounded over the line but was swatted back by a lunging red, and the crowd screamed. The reds recovered, charged the basket, shot, missed. A blue grabbed the rebound. Cree could feel the collective burning of flushed cheeks, the swelling of knots in throats.

  Blue scored twice in a row, red managed to pick up a basket, and then a foul stalled the inevitable. Janet had to attend to her record keeping. When the buzzer sounded, the careening players went slack suddenly like marionettes whose strings had been cut. The blues hugged each other in the middle of the court as the reds slumped toward their bench. The bleachers began to empty as people stood, stretched, mas
saged sore buttocks; mothers hustled younger sibs to the bathroom. Smokers hurried for the front steps.

  Janet discussed something with one of the coaches, then fielded a question from a ref. When they left, several parents approached the table and needed to talk to Mom.

  Cree leaned back and tried to let her shoulders down. The blue team went to the locker room. The reds had found the far corner, where they sat on the boards, consoling each other and drinking from plastic squeeze bottles as their coach gave them spiritual guidance — about coping in the face of great loss, presumably. Scattered around the edges of the gym, pairs and trios of high school kids flirted, girls flouncing their hair, boys posturing and punching each other in the arms. Toddlers ran aimlessly in the broad expanse of yellow floor, exhilarated by the space and noise. Slowly, the building began to empty.

  Janet had done an exemplary job of "getting on with her life" after Pop died. She had mourned hard and then called an end to it. Now she carried her lingering grief gracefully, honoring his memory but never permitting her daughters to pity her. It was no accident that she had chosen to work in a rec center, where the river of life ran quick and bright every day, cleansing the psychic space of shadows. To Cree, the building felt full of sparks: the residual hot, clear feelings of kids at play and the tempestuous but transient emotions of competition — the reds'defeat made a dull ache in her chest, but already it was ebbing. Mom was queen here, managing the program calendar, score-keeping when she could afford the time, refereeing whenever she had a chance, at least before her arteries clogged enough to make the exertion dangerous. She liked the epicenter of activity, here under the bright lights.

  At last the big room began to quiet down. The teams left, Janet's assistant rounded up balls.

  "God, I am beat," Janet said. "The excitement is too much for me. Oh Lordy." She palmed her eyes for a moment, then turned to give Cree a kiss. "Hello, Cree."

  "Can you leave soon?"

  "Yeah. The cleaning crew will be in tomorrow morning. Let's give it another five minutes and I'll close up."

  Cree dug in her bag and pulled out a wax-paper-wrapped parcel. "I brought you some salmon. From that fish guy you like."

  "God, I'm hungry enough to eat it raw!" Janet hefted the package appreciatively before leaning to put it into her own bag. "I'm glad to see you. What prompts this unexpected visit?"

  Nothing, she could say, just wanted to see you. Or I'm leaving town for a few days, just wanted to touch base. "Dee says you're going to have an angioplasty."

  Mom's eyes changed just a little — guarded to hide concern over the procedure, Cree wondered, or the plot with the cardiologist? "Well. All my friends are having them. I figured I had to keep up appearances."

  Cree smiled. "But how do you feel?"

  "Me? I feel great." She paused and gave it a little disclaimer. "Just get out of breath, and these little pinches in my chest. Same old stuff."

  "I'm flying out to New Orleans on Thursday. I'll be back before you have to go in."

  "What's doing in New Orleans?"

  "A job. I'm not sure of the details, but it looks promising." Janet nodded. "Well, I'm jealous. Your father went once and had a blast. He and I were always going to go back, but we never quite managed it."

  "What was Pop doing in New Orleans?" Cree asked.

  "Oh, his ship docked there when he was in the Navy. He never admitted it in so many words, but I believe he drank his way up one side of Bourbon Street and whored his way down the other. He was twenty. That was 1950, it's no doubt very different now." Janet shrugged."C'mon. Help me close this barn down."

  They gathered their things. Cree tagged along as her mother returned the score sheets and clock controls to her office, then checked the bathrooms, the locker rooms, the basement. They turned off lights as they went.

  "Oh, I meant to ask you. I was hoping you could come with me to the cardiologist. Talk through the procedure with my doctor and me, the recovery and so on. Help me get the medications straight — you know how I am, I — "

  "I'll go with you if you want me to. But I can't make promises about the cardiologist. Even if he is good-looking."

  Janet smiled as they came back into the gym, dazzlingly bright after the back hall. "Damn Dee anyway."

  "You want to go out for something to eat? Or we could go to your house and I'll fix that salmon — "

  "You know I just want you to…" Janet petered out. At a loss, she gestured at the big bright space, the purity and simplicity of it, all the good ghosts. Embrace life, she probably wanted to say. Find something like this. But she just came up with, "… be happy."

  "I know."

  They got to the front hall. Janet unlocked the switch cover and cut the gym lights and then the hall lights. The building was dark now and somehow much bigger. They went out onto the front steps, where Janet shoved the doors shut and checked them with a hard yank.

  The sky was deep purple velvet, the street a harder dark pierced with blue streetlights and the metallic reflections of parked cars. Halfway down the block an SUV with a dead black windshield crouched, motor idling, just its parking lights on. The city made an encompassing whisper, a vast vacuum of white noise.

  "Mom," Cree began.

  "Mm-hm?"

  "I love it in the gym. With all the people there. All the noise and distraction."

  "It's not 'distraction,' Cree — "

  "But let me ask you something. Can I?"

  "Cree, it's not 'distraction.' It's called 'life'. If I push at you sometimes, it's because I want you to enjoy it. I'm sorry i f — "

  "Mom, how do you feel right now? With the lights off, the gym all dark. If I wasn't here right now, and you were going to go out into the dark and go home alone as you usually do. As strong?"

  "Well, this is not the safest neighborhood in Seattle… an older woman, alone, naturally I — "

  "Not that part."

  They were still standing in the pool of light at the top of the stairs. Janet looked up at Cree. "You mean, am I like the older waiter in that Hemingway story? 'Nada y nada y pues nadd? A little, probably. Sure. So what? 'It is only insomnia, many must have it.' Or however it goes." She snorted.

  "I'mjust saying, see, this is what /need to look at, this side. This set of feelings, you know? That's what I need to figure out. I don't want to fear it. I don't want to ignore it, or pretend it's less important than… back in there. That's all." Hearing herself, Cree realized she was too serious, too urgent. She'd turned this visit into one of those cloaked good-byes.

  Janet didn't answer for a moment, just stood looking up at her, concerned. After a while, she grinned a tight, small grin, to show she accepted the point, she got it. Mom always got it. She sighed. "What I don't understand is why you come to me as some kind of… oracle if you're not going to listen to what I tell you. And I'm no good at being a damned oracle anyway."

  "I don't come to you as my oracle, Mom."

  "What then?"

  "Hmm. More of a good luck charm. My lucky talisman. Gotta rub up against you once in a while." Cree took her arm and hugged it against her side.

  That seemed to please her. She shook her head, confounded. "What is it with mothers and daughters?"

  Cree shrugged. "Beats me."

  Janet tugged her toward the steps. "Okay. So I'm full of shit for the cardiologist caper. So take me home and let's eat something. If you promise to be a good girl, I'll tell you some other scandalous tales about your father. Deal?"

  Cree wondered what it cost her to treat of him so easily, so cheerfully. Maybe not much — everyone was constituted differently in those matters. She promised to be good.

  5

  Lila Warren's eyes widened. "Oh, I don't think so. I can't go back. No, I really don't think I can go into that house again."

  "Even in the middle of the day? Even if I'm with you?"

  "You have to understand, I'm… i t has upset me badly. Very badly. It's been over three months now, I thought maybe I'd be getting over
it, but I'm not. It's only getting… worse." Lila's speech carried only a moderate accent of the Deep South, the stretched and rounded vowels.

  They were talking across a low table and a pot of tea in the second-floor sitting room of Lila Beauforte Warren's house, on the northern end of New Orleans. From the windows, Cree could see over the grassy slope of the levee to the scattered trees of a shoreline park, and then to the vast flat blue of Lake Ponchartrain. The border between water and sky was straight as a ruled line and completely empty.

  Lila's house was not one of the lavishly ostentatious piles Cree had passed as she drove here in her rental car, but rather a contemporary, somewhat smaller copy of a Greek-revival plantation house. And that described Lila herself, Cree thought: a contemporary, miniaturized version of a Southern businessman's wife. The sense was reinforced by the minute watercolors hung here and there, neatly framed, that Lila admitted were her own. The hand-sized floral still lifes were tiny and unobtrusive, yet their rich hues and slightly ominous darker tints suggested that a great deal of feeling had been compressed to fit within those little frames.

  Perhaps Lila's diminution came from her current uneasiness. She was clearly struggling to cope with some recent, troubling experience. But there was also something habitual there, more deeply rooted. She had obviously lived with some kind of uncertainty and diminished sense of herself for a long time. Cree could see it in the rounded hunch of her plump shoulders, her small, uncertain hands, the tentative way she set the tray on the table and then rearranged the teapot and cups as if unsure she had put them in just the right places. Her eyebrows were uneven: One of them tilted up slightly at the center, enough to suggest a hint of alarm or doubtfulness.

  And yet she was still rather pretty, Cree thought. She had shoulder-length, graying-blond hair that seemed to rebel against the controlled hairdo she'd chosen, a face with full lips and a generous but nicely upturned nose. Her knee-length blue knit dress, her makeup, the simple pearl necklace and earrings — all were good matches for her natural coloring. From the photos on the mantel, Cree could see that though she'd always tended toward the plump, she was one of those women who carry their weight mainly in bust and hips, retaining an enviably narrow waist.