'The amazing and ever-astonishing Cree. Hey, I just remembered something I wanted to tell you last time we talked.'
'What was that?'
'Sunday… it's a little different today, but Sunday? The ocean was exactly the color of your eyes. I'd glance out the window and it was like you were looking at me. Keeping me company.'
His affection touched her and she had to flee from it. 'Thank you, Edgar.'
'Okay, so let's see if we can dig up the names of the neighbors. See if General Beauforte had a daughter. We can work on it when I get there. In the meantime, you gotta think of yourself differently. Not a problem, an opportunity, right? You gotta celebrate yourself, Cree. You're not screwed up, you're miraculous. However it works out, Millards or no Millards. Okay?'
She could hear the smile in his voice. His attitude helped. He was right, that was a good way to process it: You have to welcome your own strangeness. Good advice.
'I'll try,' Cree said. Yes, talking to Ed always helped. The hard part was that you could love someone like this and still not feel the pull, the magnetism, that you knew had to be there. Which meant that as good as this friendship was, there were places it couldn't go, confidences it couldn't accommodate.
As if he'd heard her despondency, Ed didn't say anything for a long time. She began to feel very sleepy. The rain noise increased outside, bearing down hard now. Four A.M.
'You still there?' he asked at last. He sounded as if he had more to say.
'Barely,' she mumbled. 'I feel better. Thanks, Ed. You're miraculous, too. I should probably get some sleep now. Both of us.'
'Yeah.' He sounded disappointed. She was always letting him down.
They said good-bye. Cree lay in the dark and drifted away to the sound of the tropical rain from across a thousand miles of water, exploring and caressing the building in the dark like a blind lover.
25
Yes, it could rain in New Orleans.
Cree clenched the steering wheel as the car hit standing water and sent an arc of spray slashing across Highway 10. She was running late, so blind from the whirling rain and the dirty mist tossed up by other vehicles that she was afraid she'd miss the airport signs. Blind also from the welter of facts and impressions and intuitions, the half-seen paranormal and normal-world insights that seemed to come at her just as hard.
She had awakened to find the hotel windows streaked and bleary. Below, Canal Street looked battered by the drenching gale. The awnings along the sidewalk fluttered and humped as if they'd rip off and fly away, and only a few pedestrians scuttled here and there. The road crew had apparently given up their mud pit for the duration.
The memory of last night made her wince.
Her visit with Lila this morning had been frustrating, distracted, pointless. The wild wind and rain seemed to pull everything apart. In the Warrens' neighborhood, so staid and placid on a calm day, the trees and garden plants tossed and gyrated in the stormy half-light like a frenzied disco crowd. Then she'd arrived to find a couple of tradesmen's vans parked in the driveway. Sweet, dear, Realtor Jackie's idea of a romantic surprise, Lila had explained resignedly: He'd scheduled the remodeling of one of their bathrooms to cheer her up. Which meant the house was full of the voices of men, the whine of drills, the thump of fixtures being moved around, and every few minutes a voice calling down the stairs, 'Mrs. Warren, I don't mean to trouble you ma'am, but I got a question 'bout this heah shower stall. .. '
Understandably, Lila was also preoccupied with her forthcoming diagnostics; the desperate intimacy they'd established yesterday had faded. Still, she had dutifully pulled out more of the family archives, and they'd spent a difficult hour or so looking at photos. They had looked at faces of Beaufortes and Lamberts, of Charmian's brother Bradford, Richard's sister Antoinette and brothers Franklin and Alexander, of cousins, in-laws, family friends, servants who had come and gone.
Between interruptions, Lila had managed a few words about each one. All Lila's uncles and aunts were dead now. Bradford had been the only one to stay close to the family, and he'd died before having children. Richard's sister Antoinette had married and moved to Houston, where she'd had one son, killed in Vietnam, and a daughter who'd become a prominent oncologist before succumbing to her own specialty; Antoinette had died a few years later. Franklin had moved to Italy just after World War II and had stayed there, marrying into a large Tuscany clan. Alexander had died of a stroke; one of his sons had become a priest, the other had been killed driving home drunk from a keg party. His daughter, Lila's cousin Jennifer, was still alive; fifty-one now, she lived in Oakland, California, with her partner Ellen.
Lila told it all without excess emotion, in a tone that was almost formal, as if she were speaking for the benefit of the plumbers and carpenters who passed in the hallway.
With Brad's death in 1971, the future of both proud families had come to depend on only Charmian and Richard. And given Ron's distinctly undomestic habits, that had narrowed in the next generation to only one line: Lila and her three children. Lila admitted that the fact had contributed to her desire to reestablish the family roots at Beauforte House.
Many of the photos and clippings showed Charmian or Richard with influential people who Lila explained were good friends, neighbors, or fellow members of their country club or Mardi Gras krewe: a couple of mayors, a state supreme court judge, a governor, a police cornmissioner, the state coroner, various parish representatives, prominent restaurateurs, other bankers, heads of charities to which the Beaufortes gave generously. Lila's memory of them all seemed quite good; if she were repressing anything, Cree thought, it wasn't apparent from any systematic lack of recall.
Cree had her own distractions. The reassurance she'd felt after talking to Edgar hadn't survived the conflicted feelings that accompanied it. Uncomfortable memories returned: last night with Paul and almost intolerable ones of much earlier. At moments, Mike's face materialized in front of the Beauforte faces she studied.
And then after a while it was time for Lila to leave for Ochsner Clinic and for Cree to head to the airport. Lila ended their session looking battered, puffy around the eyes. Cree felt only frustration: The family archives had shown her nothing, except to confirm that the Beaufortes were indeed very well connected, well established. A distinguished family without a blemish upon its name.
Cree gasped as a truck threw up a huge gout of muddy water that completely obscured the view ahead. The car sped forward into absolute murk, Cree bracing for a head-on collision but afraid to slam on the breaks for fear she'd be hit by the equally blind car behind.
Her view cleared after only a second or two. But the sensation of hurtling out of control, the sense of imminent danger from ahead and behind, future and past, stayed with her.
Joyce came into the arrival gate wearing baggy beige pants, a tight white tank top, open sandals that displayed her red toenails, and oversize pink sunglasses pushed up into her ebony hair. With her gigantic handbag, she looked every bit the Long Island tourist, and she barely made it to the parking lot without buying cheesy New Orleans souvenirs from the airport concessions.
'You look like something the cat dragged in,' she said as Cree pulled onto Route 10 and headed toward the occluded skyline of New Orleans. 'You are not living right.'
'Hey, tell me about it.'
Joyce peered out the car window. 'This is not what I expected. I didn't know it rained like this here. Not this time of year. My Gawd.' She had to raise her voice to be heard over the drumming of rain on the car roof and the vehement whack-whack of the windshield wipers.
'I didn't either.'
'Your sister says hi, by the way. And the twins. Such sweet kids!'
'You talked to them?'
Joyce bit her lips and looked a little caught out. 'Well. She was a little worried. Called me as I was going out the door this A.M. and asked me if I knew how you were doing. Said you'd called her late last night, you had the blues pretty bad.'
'I'll get over it.'
