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
