amaretto.'
Josephine looked up at her with those frighteningly dead eyes, eyes that had looked for answers and had found none. 'Not Richard. Talkin' 'bout Bradford. Bradford the one chased Lila, raped her. Bradford the one I killed. Richard, he help me. Richard beat him till he down, mos'ly dead. I just finish it.'
Cree felt suddenly dizzy herself, and she caught at a nearby branch to stabilize herself as she sat down on the ground. 'No, Josephine, I saw the photos! Richard wore the boar mask! Brad, he was a pirate, he – '
A pair of military jets roared by overhead, deafening, making the foliage shiver and startling a flock of blackbirds from the bushes thirty feet away. The birds scattered like buckshot but then swarmed together again as the thunder diminished.
And Josephine explained: Yes, Richard had worn the boar head and the tattered swamp rat clothes for three or four years, and Bradford had worn the pirate getup, the patched and bearded face mask, the wig and low-slung three-cornered hat. But of course everybody knew who everybody was, so that year the two of them had worked out a prank to play on the other Epicurus partyers, even on Charmian and Ron and Lila. They switched costumes. Only Josephine, who had helped Richard get done up, knew about the joke. For the whole evening, they played not only their masked parts, but they played each other, a disguise within the disguise. They avoided talking, but when they did their voices were muffled by the masks and camouflaged by the outlandish accents they each put on. It was a big success, and later in the evening it took everybody by surprise when they unmasked. But Lila had gone home before then. And it had been Bradford, wearing the boar mask, who had slipped away after her, so drunk, so abandoned, so angry inside, that night.
There was no question that Josephine told the truth: She was implacable, beyond doubting. More, it made sense at last of the differences between the two ghosts, two ghosts after all, and the beating motion in the library.
It was a horrifying story, but as Cree thought it through, she began to realize it was in many ways the best possible discovery. This alone made coming down here worthwhile. The fact that she could now identify both ghosts and their issues was the least of it. Knowing the truth brought a huge gust of relief and hope: It wasn't Lila's beloved father who had raped her! Richard was, after all, the good man he seemed. Lila could recover memory of the night and cope with it, and, crucially, live on with a sure knowledge of her father's love. She could love him in return without the nagging ambivalence, subconsciously blaming him for the long-forgotten violation. She would learn that far from being her attacker himself, Richard in outrage had helped kill her real violator, her real betrayer. And if Cree could bring her to share his dying moment, to receive into her heart the arrow of love Richard lofted her way, she would be strengthened enormously.
Cree played through therapeutic scenarios, feeling hugely relieved, grateful for the truth.
But then a lingering problem occurred to her. Josephine had fallen silent as she let Cree sort through the ramifications, just watching her, clearly anticipating where it would take her.
'But… but Richard was poisoned!' Cree cried. 'If you didn't kill him, who did? Charmian?'
Josephine looked at her with that implacable sympathy. 'You poor baby. You poor girl. Now you got to grow into a ol' lady. Now you gon' know what's worse'n Lila got raped by her daddy.'
'Nothing's worse!'
'Worse is, Lila killed her daddy! Lila burnt hot, she thought it was him had raped her, she stood up for herself, she put that poison in his drink. And she'd be right to! 'Cept Richard di'n't do it. He love her like I did! He the one beat Bradford near to death for it! But Lila didn't know. She killed her own daddy for somethin' he di'n't do. An' now you know why she got to forget.'
40
The heat was still intensifying as they hobbled along the paths in the dappled tree shade. Cree found herself limping, too, all the injuries of the past weeks coming back to pain her. She felt almost too weak to carry her own weight, as old as Josephine, as stiff. Behind them they heard the rhythmic whunk! of Hiram's mattock, and to the west the faint rush of cars on the highway. Here and there in the little ragtag wilderness were partially cultivated areas, Josephine's extended garden of wild herbs.
Broken mirrors, Cree was thinking. Murdering your own father, even if you believed him guilty of the ultimate betrayal – yes, that would freight you with enough subconscious guilt and self-hatred for a lifetime.
For the life of her, she could not imagine a way to free Lila. In this case, the truth set no one free. She walked numb and stiff and speechless as Josephine filled in the story.
Bradford had always been wild and reckless. The kids loved him because he was charming and funny and let them do things their parents didn't and because Charmian and Richard both adored him. Brad was smart, affectionate, and engaging – he quickly understood people and their feelings and motivations. Richard and he were very close. Josephine thought it was because each provided the other with a counterbalance for the excesses of his nature. Where Richard was responsible, overcom-mitted, staid, dutiful, Brad was freewheeling, pleasure seeking, risk taking, free of constraints and obligations. Around Brad, Richard could have fun, let his guard down, feel young and free and easy; around Richard, Brad could feel more important, useful, legitimate, connected. They could talk about Charmian, they could talk about women in general, they could talk about Ron's development. Their fishing trips together were a chance for both to leave behind their habitual roles and connect in some primal male way, as equals. Richard sometimes helped Brad out in business matters. Brad occasionally helped smooth over arguments between Richard and Charmian, or served as mediator between Richard and his sometimes rebellious son, his spirited daughter. Over the years, they had forged a deep bond, more like brothers than brothers-in-law.
But Brad had grown up with too much money and privilege and good looks. For all the shallow social successes his charm bought him, he harbored the nagging sense that he was worthless, that he lived off the Lambert family's accomplishments and not his own, that he used his sister's family to anchor him because he lacked what it took to create one of his own. As he got older, he noticed changes in his relationship with other scions of the aristocracy: He became less of a peer than an icon of perpetual immaturity, the one who never quite grew up. People liked him, but they didn't respect him, didn't trust him in business dealings; as a result, his entrepreneurial efforts never panned out. The same was true in his intimate life. Women of his class learned he was fun for a fling but not any kind of candidate for marriage. Aside from his connection with his sister's household, he found himself increasingly outside the main channel of New Orleans social and business life.
Except for Carnival – that was an arena in which he could earn respect. Carnival had different standards. Status then was measured by the very things that jeopardized it in daily life: hard drinking, pranks, flirtations and risque talk, sexual escapades and braggadocio, wild dancing, lavish spending, showing off, pushing every boundary of acceptable behavior. Fat Tuesday was almost a competition to see who could cut most loose, especially among the younger men. And here Bradford excelled.
Josephine's implacable rasp painted a clear portrait: For Bradford, the Mardi Gras of 1971 folded together the toxic psychological elements required for the sadistic rape of his niece. The lust-charged exuberance and abandon combined with the frustration and rage at his growing sense of irrelevance, his impotence in other spheres of life, an unending string of failed romances.
And Lila had turned into a beauty. At fourteen, she had already grown into a woman's shape, with fuller breasts and broader hips than her friends, and that confidence, that assertiveness, that spunk. Brad had long since begun injecting playful sexual innuendo into their conversations, flattering and teasing her, and Lila had thrown it right back, vamping and scorning him. The family laughed at the whole thing.
The morning after, when Josephine had seen the blood on Lila's sheets and had put it together with the change in Lila's affect and the mess in the house, she had gone straight to Lila. Lila had at first denied that anything was wrong. But after only a few moments of Josephine's probing she broke, crawled crying like a toddler into her nanny's lap, and told the story.
She was afraid to tell Momma, she said. She hurt inside. He had said things that suggested it was her fault, her own secret wish. It was 1971, the miniskirt had finally hit New Orleans, she had taken to wearing one over Daddy's objections, and she and all her friends were dancing to that kind of music he disapproved of. Maybe he was right, she deserved it, she had sort of asked for it? When he'd made those animal noises, pig noises, the whole time, it was like he'd wanted her to feel like an animal. And she did, she felt filthy and disgusting. She hated
