The day I was to be discharged from the Tulane hospital, I learned that Margaret Lavigne was also a patient there. I had an orderly wheel me down to her floor and leave me alone in her room. Margaret lay comatose beneath a white sheet, connected to an assortment of monitors and tubes. The insulin she’d injected into her veins had turned her brain into a useless gray lump. John Kaiser had told me that Lavigne’s mother was likely to authorize the withdrawal of life support later in the week. I held Margaret’s hand for a while, thinking quietly about the suicide note she’d left behind, and of the horror she must have felt when she realized she’d condemned an innocent man to death. Like me, she had been unable to believe that her father had raped her. She erroneously blamed her stepfather instead. I’m thankful that in my own case I was right, but I could so easily have been wrong.
The first funeral I attended was Nathan Malik’s.
The psychiatrist had elected to be cremated, so it was a memorial service, held in a New Orleans park. About fifty people attended, most of them women. There were a few men, too, some of them obviously Vietnam veterans. A Buddhist monk chanted and said some prayers, and everyone laid flowers by the urn.
The second funeral was Ann’s, and it was held in Natchez.
Michael Wells drove me to McDonough’s Funeral Home, helped me into my wheelchair, and even drove me out to the cemetery afterward for the burial. While the minister gave a generic eulogy, I sat in the pews reserved for family and thought of the tape Ann had made for Nathan Malik. The mini-DV cassette I stole from the box at Angie Pitre’s house had made it all the way to the hospital in my purse. I borrowed a camcorder to watch it, but I could only endure about ten minutes before I was overwhelmed. Ann had suffered far more than the rest of us. For whatever reason, she had not dissociated during her abuse. She had felt and processed and remembered every agonizing detail. Her primary concern had been protecting her younger sister-my mother. And though she failed in that goal, she tried her best. She did this by luring my grandfather to her room whenever she sensed his attention wandering to her sister. But Ann wasn’t trying to protect only Gwen. The reason for her silence over the years was simple: Grandpapa had threatened that if she ever revealed what he was doing to her, he would kill both her sister and her mother. Ann had no doubt that he would carry out his threat. She knew better than any of us that he was capable of murder.
The third funeral-the unexpected one-was held one day after Ann’s.
Today.
I didn’t go to the funeral home. I had Michael drive me out to the cemetery to sit beside Ann’s freshly covered grave. I stared at the mound of wet brown earth on the grass and wondered if I could somehow have prevented her suicide. Michael assured me that I could not, and I’m trying my best to believe him. A few minutes before the mourners were to arrive, Michael wheeled me up the lane to a vantage point from which I could watch the burial service without being bothered.
And here I sit.
The line of luxury cars behind the black hearse seems to go on forever, like the cortege of a slain president. I shouldn’t be surprised. Dr. William Kirkland was a wealthy, powerful, and respected man, a pillar of the community.
My mother tried to keep the funeral simple, but in the end she gave in to the well-intentioned friends who insisted on a large production, including eulogies delivered by the mayor, the attorney general, and the governor of Mississippi.
Everyone seems content to pretend that my grandfather’s death was an accident. That he drove off the edge of the bridge to DeSalle Island in bright sunlight at midday seems to escape everyone’s attention. A few people have mentioned his “recent” stroke-which happened a year ago-and recalled his doctor forbidding him to drive. In fact, they say, it was the untimely death of his driver-Billy Neal-that caused my grandfather to drive down to the island alone to deal with some urgent business matters.
The truth is much simpler.
My grandfather killed himself. He knew that his life’s foul secret was about to be exposed. That all of his power and money would be insufficient to stop one of his victims-me-from finally revealing his depravity to the world. And his pride could not abide that. He probably saw himself as choosing a manly death, even a noble one. But I know him for what he was. He was what he once called my father in front of me when I was a little girl.
I’m here today because I want to see him lowered into the ground. I need that closure. When you’ve lived with a demon all your life, and you somehow escape him, it’s important to see him buried. If old Mr. McDonough would have let me, I’d have walked into the prep room and driven a stake through my grandfather’s heart.
And yet…he didn’t begin life as a monster. He began it as an innocent little boy who lost his parents in a car wreck on the way to his baptism. It was only later-I’ll never know when-that the poison with which he infected me was passed into him. Decades ago, on some dark and silent country night,
One mystery that will probably remain unsolved is why Grandpapa was buying up my father’s sculptures. Was he driven by guilt over the life he had stolen so long ago? Or was he on some half-mad quest to understand the creative spark that he had snuffed out, creativity being the one talent he had never really possessed? Perhaps time or some as-yet-undiscovered document will give me an answer someday.
The burial service is mercifully brief, as the sky is threatening rain. The mourners quickly return to their cars, and the long line begins to leave the cemetery.
When all of them have gone, a solitary figure remains beside the grave.
Pearlie Washington.
She’s wearing a black dress and a huge black hat, but I know her bony figure as well as I know my mother’s. Probably better. Has she stayed behind to mourn my grandfather alone? Or Ann? Or has she stayed because she knows what’s about to happen in the DeSalle family plot?
As Michael wheels me down the hill, Pearlie stands motionless, looking down at Grandpapa’s grave. As we near her, a white Dodge Caravan with ornate silver trim appears in the lane and rolls slowly to a stop near the low wall. Two men in dark suits get out, walk to the back of the van, and unload a bronze casket. They settle it onto a collapsible gurney, then work the gurney across the grass to the corner of the plot, where a green tarp is staked out over a long hole in the ground.
The headstone above the tarp reads LUKE FERRY, 1951–1981.
As Michael rolls me through the gate, Pearlie walks over to me and touches my hand. “They doing what I think they’re doing?”
“Yes.”
I see pain in her eyes. “Why you didn’t tell me about it? I loved that boy, too.”
“I wanted to be alone with him. I’m sorry, Pearlie.”
“You want me to go?”
“No.”
The old woman watches the men strip the tarp from the ground. As they fold it up, soft rain begins to fall.
“Where’s your mama?” Pearlie asks.
“She said she couldn’t stand to bury her husband a second time.”
Pearlie sighs heavily. “She’s probably right.”
Michael touches my elbow and leans down to my ear. “I’m going to give you a few minutes.”
I take his hand and squeeze it. “Thanks. I won’t be long.”
“Take your time.”
As he walks away, Pearlie turns and watches him leave the family plot. “He seems like a good man.”
“He is.”
“Does he know you carrying another man’s child?”
I look up at the curious brown eyes. “Yes.”
“And he still wants to see you?”
“Yes.”
She shakes her head as though at some rare and wonderful sight. “That’s a man you need to stick with, right there.”
I feel my mouth smile. “I think you’re right.”
Pearlie takes my hand in hers and squeezes tight. “Lord, it’s about time you settled down. We been needing
