Now it was Paul's turn to be speechless with anger. It should never have gone this far. There seemed to be no limit to Charmian's willingness to intrigue, to control everyone around her, to bring anyone down if she didn't get what she wanted. At last he croaked, 'You mean you'll tell her about our… arrangement… if I don't keep doing what you want.'
At the other end of the line, Charmian made a pleased sound in her throat. 'Exactly! And before you play indignant with me, Paul, let me remind you, you signed on from the start. You know what's at stake here. You're right, it's time for the truth. But even in your most self-righteous moments, you'll agree that it needs to be revealed.. . tactfully, right? So now I'm going to tell you exactly what we're going to do.'
34
Don't pretend to believe me, Paul. It's condescending. I don't need it right now.'
She hadn't meant to say it like that, but the tension she felt was making her cross, impatient. She was leaning against the door of the BMW as Paul piloted it through the sunlit streets. Even with the sunglasses she'd put on, the light seemed too bright to Cree. She felt like road kill, but six hours of sleep, a scalding shower, and a half hour of cautious yoga stretching had taken away the worst of the pain and stiffness. Joyce was long gone to City Hall and the libraries, charged with locating Josephine Dupree. At Paul's suggestion, they were going to the office of Phil Galveston, the man who had been the Epicures organization's secretary for thirty years and who had charged himself with maintaining an archive of the krewe's activities.
If the Beaufortes hadn't kept records of the years after 1968, maybe Phil Galveston had. Maybe in his files they'd find photos of the man in the boar-head mask, and a name for him. If Cree's assumption was correct.
Paul shook his head. 'I'm not pretending. I'm curious – I want to understand how the parts fit together. You seem to have an integrated methodology, you have your version of clinical observation and literature. So far, it looks pretty consistent and – '
'Yeah. The only hard part is the fundamental premise.'
'That what we're talking about is the psychology of dead people? Yes. That's hard. Can you blame me? Put the shoe on the other foot, Cree. Suppose you'd been going merrily along with your private psychiatry practice, never had a paranormal experience in your life, and then you met me, and I told you the things you're telling me. How would you react? Would you revise your whole personal and professional belief system, overnight, on the basis of what I said?'
Cree shrugged and looked out the window, giving the point only grudgingly.
'So go on,' he urged. 'You were saying you learned something last night, something about the ghost's affective complex.'
Cree sighed. 'I have to give you some background first. I use the word 'complex' the same way Freud did, as in Oedipus complex, inferiority complex, and so on – a connected group of repressed ideas that compel habitual actions of thought, feeling, and action. My point was going to be that though every ghost relives the experience of the death to a large degree, the act of physically dying is not necessarily the foremost aspect of the dying person's experience. At the moment of death, people experience an enormous range of emotions. It's not just about pain or fear. They might remember or relive things that seem unconnected with the circumstances of death. They often yearn toward or call out to loved ones. They might feel lonely or ecstatic or serene. They might cling to, or retreat toward reassuring thoughts. Sometimes their concerns seem at first trivial or absurd.'
'Okay. But you were saying something about 'distillation' – '
'A dying person's perimortem emotions and thoughts are not random. They derive from some central, overpowering concern or issue in his or her life. Death is a moment of absolute desperation and surrender, and a person's thoughts home in on a crucial, defining image, event, emotion, or concern. If I can understand what that is, I can release the ghost.'
'Example, please.'
Cree took a moment to recall one that was appropriate. 'A case in Arizona. The ghost – the man who had died – was a Hopi Indian, not particularly identified with Native American culture, who was making extra money stealing relics from historic Hopi sites. The physical circumstance of his death was that he'd gotten trapped in an under ground kiva, badly injured after part of the rock ceiling fell in. So the immediate dying experience was one of physical pain, fear, and the frantic desire to try to survive, all very typical. The secondary experience was one of guilt at desecrating the holy place, and with the guilt came regret over having ignored his grandfather's lifelong pleas to understand and respect traditions – this accident and injury seemed like a punishment for that, for which he blamed and hated his grandfather. The ghost relived moments of conflict with his grandfather from twenty years earlier, an incident when he'd driven away from the grandfather's home after an argument, swearing at him and deliberately running over a couple of his chickens. That's the affect that witnesses felt when they saw his ghost, and that's what I first encountered, too – rage, impulsive violence, resentment, shame. Very scary. But deeper still was another layer, more affirmative – the knowledge that his grandfather loved him unconditionally and forgave him. That was associated with a look his grandfather had given him, literally a single momentary gaze, when they were out fishing when he was a kid. Sunset, just the two of them, a powerful glance of kinship and love. In its pain and remorse, the dying man's psyche yearned for, tried to flee to, that… sanctuary.'
Remembering brought tears to her eyes, and she was very glad she had sunglasses on. She didn't look at Paul, didn't know how he was hearing it, but she decided, Screw him, he can take it or leave it.
'And that's what you used, right?' he said softly. 'You helped him
… find his way to that sanctuary? Helped him accept that the grandfather's love could overcome and transcend his transgressions?'
'Yes. I led him to his grandfather's eyes at the moment of that gaze.'
Paul came up behind cars at a light and stopped. They sat there without talking, listening to muffled heavy metal music from the SUV in front of them,
'That's a beautiful story,' Paul said, shaking his head. 'Man! Every time I get around you, it's another… revelation. You… you kind of boot my brain into orbit every time we talk, so help me.'
Cree didn't answer. She was glad he seemed to understand and appreciate. But it was becoming increasingly clear to her that their metaphysical differences were a real impediment to having a relationship. Last night, when they'd gone back to the Garden District to retrieve the other cars, Joyce had driven away immediately, leaving Paul and Cree standing together in the cool night, just down the block from Beauforte House. 'Would you like to spend the night at my place?' Paul had asked simply. By then Cree had been on the edge of exhaustion. She'd put her arms around him and leaned her face against his. He'd held her softly, careful of her injuries, and for a full minute they'd just stood in the humid night air like that, and it felt very nice. He was warm, and she liked the rhythm of his bones, the way their bodies fit.
But other things didn't fit.
'Would you sleep with a woman you thought was presenting as schizophrenic?' she'd asked.
Against the side of her face, she'd felt his cheek move in a smile. 'Not unless I was really head over heels. I'd have to be pretty far gone.'
Yes, he'd framed it as sort of a joke, and it was a sweet way of affirming his attraction. But it had also been a deflection. Maybe she was still fleeing from her own ghosts, but Cree didn't think she could enter into any real intimacy unless it was truly reciprocal, equal, balanced. And as long as Paul believed she was at the very least misguided, and quite possibly in the grip of a delusive, clinically definable, aberrant mental condition, that equality wasn't possible.
She had pulled away, given his hand one last squeeze, and gone to her car.
'Here we are,' Paul said, and Cree roused from her thoughts to notice her surroundings. Paul pulled over in front of a big brick building, three stories tall, with a Greek-revival-style entrance framed by four white columns. On the side of the building, a decorative sign in the style of the nineteenth century announced that it was Galveston amp; Sons Press.
'Phil's a fussy ol' fuddy-duddy,' Paul told her as they went up the steps. 'I don't know him well, but my father knew him, and of course I see him maybe twice a year at Epicurus functions. This is his family's business, since forever. It's a bindery, too.'
