City of Masks

3

Deirdre didn't answer when Cree tried to return her call, so after leaving a message she decided to stop over there on her way home. A dose of normalcy seemed in order, and anyway she was feeling something like a nutritional deficit after going four days without seeing the twins.

Her sister had married a carpenter who when he wasn't renovating other people's homes had gradually restored their own, a fine Craftsman-style house in the heart of the Queen Anne district. Between Don's carpentering and Deirdre's teaching, they did well, and their place was something of a testament to building on what you've got, sticking with it, in both marriage and domicile. The house was pleasingly proportioned, with ivory clapboards and goldenrod trim, fronted by a small yard exploding with rhododendrons and California lilacs: a place loved and loved in.

Cree went up the walk between mounds of blossoms to the front porch. No one answered when she rang the bell, but she could hear muffled music through the door. She banged on the glass for a while and was glad to see feet and then legs and then all of Zoe skipping down the stairs, a slender girl with chin-length yellow hair that clashed with her Sonics jersey.

"Hi, Aunt Cree."

"Hi, Niece Zoe."

Following Zoe into the living room, she wondered how those straight hips managed to hold up low-riding bell bottoms at all. She tossed her purse onto the couch and then threw herself after it, immediately feeling better.

"Come here," Cree said. "Gimme some girl bones, kid." She made a grab and managed to snag Zoe, who didn't resist much as Cree pulled her onto her lap and hugged her. Both girls had started to shoot up and were skinny as witches' brooms, all angles and ticklish skin. Now Zoe's butt bones dug painfully into Cree's thigh, sharp as two elbows. Cree inhaled the sweet smell of her as she rocked her back and forth.

"So where's your mom?"

"She went to Larry's Market to get some fish and stuff. We're being responsible."

They probably were, Cree agreed. Ten years old, it was at least a possibility. "And where's your sister?"

"HYACINTH!" Zoe exploded like a trench mortar. "She's upstairs. HY!" Zoe leaned away so she could finger one of Cree's earrings, inspecting it with a critical expression. "She's got her music on.

HYA-CINTH! YOUR AUNT HAS COME TO SEE YOU!"

Cree's ears rang. "You know, I never really noticed it before, but you got quite the voice on you," she said. "Especially from this close."

"I get plenty of practice, believe me." Zoe tossed her head contemptuously toward the stairs. An indictment of her sister.

They were supposedly identical twins, and were both blonde, skinny, moon-faced, verbal, and vivid. But they were not at all alike. Hyacinth seemed to Cree like a cheerful garden of pansies, cosmos, and marigolds on a breezy day, her moods varying but only the way the flowers sometimes toss their heads in the wind and sometimes go still, come vibrantly alight in the sun and then dim as clouds passed over. Zoe was more like fireworks, intense and intermittent, searing colors bursting aloft, etching the sky with brilliant trails and flashes and as quickly fading into utter darkness.

Hyacinth came into the living room, barefooted and wearing a yellow dress. She frowned at Zoe. "I'm not deaf," she said primly. "I just wanted to hear the end of that song. Hi, Aunt Cree."

"She actually likes Britney Spears," Zoe said, appalled.

"I do not! Just that one song."

Cree gathered Hyacinth onto her lap, holding the two of them like a big, loose armful of reeds and twigs, awkward and pokey. Too big to fit, now. For a moment they jostled and squirmed, and then Zoe broke loose and went to sit on a chair nearby.

"So, have you been finding any ghosts recently?" Zoe asked.

Cree thought for a moment. She had never tried to conceal what she did from the twins, but she made it a policy not to get too deep with them. You could gloss over it somewhat, but in the end you were dealing with death, and what happened after death, and the often sad and scary compulsions and fixations that lived on, and living people's fear.

The girls didn't need all that.

"Well, actually, I wanted to ask you two for some advice. On one of my cases." Cree decided that if she didn't mention names, telling them wouldn't really constitute a breach of confidentiality. "A very nice old woman came into my office today with a most unusual request."

That got their interest: They both loved a challenge, a problem to solve. Hyacinth slid off Cree's lap and sat sideways on the couch so she could see Cree better. She bent her long stems under her and tugged her skirt hem over her knees. "What was it?" she asked.

"She wanted me to make contact with a loved one who had died? And before I could tell her what we really do, she showed me his picture. And it was a dog."

Different responses: Zoe rolled her eyes, Hyacinth made an expression of sympathy.

"Do dogs… can there be ghosts of dogs?" Hyacinth asked.

Cree shrugged. "I've never encountered one. But I don't see why not."

"So what are you going to do?"

"That's what I wanted to ask you guys. She was such a nice person. I wanted to help her, but I couldn't think of how."

"I know how," Zoe said. "You could do this, like, seance, and pretend you'd made contact with the dog. You could tell her the dog's ghost was happy and still loved her and would stay with her a Ways."

"Hmm. Yeah. But I don't like to lie to people. And then if she believed me, she'd want me to do it again, and pretty soon – "

Zoe scowled. "You could just tell her to get a new dog. I mean, that's what she needs!"

"No," Hyacinth said immediately. "That would be disloyal! And Aunt Cree couldn't suggest it without offending her, like her precious dog could be so… replaceable. She doesn't want just any dog, she misses that one."

"That's what I thought, too," Cree agreed. "You can see it's a quandary."

The girls put their chins in their hands and thought about it, taking it on face value, in their different ways allying themselves instantly with solving the problem. Cree looked at them and loved them fiercely. There had been times when she'd envied Deirdre her marriage, her living husband, her relatively normal life, and most of all these two. In tougher moments her longing hurt and knotted up dark inside, but more often it was like this: acute gratitude that these two girls were in her life. The best imaginable nieces.

They spent a few minutes coming up with suggestions of increasing complexity and unlikeliness, and then the phone rang. Hyacinth bounced off the couch to go to the kitchen to answer it.

Zoe watched her leave the room, then turned to Cree. "That's her boyfriend. You can tell by how fast she jumped up."

"Boyfriend! Really? At ten years old?" Cree could just see down the hall to the kitchen, where Hyacinth leaned in the doorway. She had cradled the phone between ear and shoulder and was speaking quietly into the receiver, very involved, swinging the coiled cord like a jump rope.

Zoe nodded. "At least I think it's a boy. But he looks like some kind of, like, rodent. The sad part is, I think she's in love with him because that's what he's like. She's so softhearted. 'Mommy, look, he followed me home, can we keep him?' " An acid caricature of a cutesy kid. "Pathetic."

Cree pretended to peer at her doubtfully. "Twins, huh. Which one were you, again?"

"Very funny," Zoe said acidly.

"You really are a menace, you know that?"

Zoe just nodded again in sober agreement. " 'Me-nace 2 So-cie-ty,' "she intoned. Then she sniffed indignantly, and her eyes widened in accusation. "You should talk!"

"Really like a rodent?

"I can hear you guys perfectly, by the way," Hyacinth called down the hall.

When Deirdre came in, banging through the door with a double armload of groceries, purse, key ring, newspaper, Cree and the girls took the bags and they all went to the kitchen to put things away. The two cats came to get underfoot as they opened and slammed cupboards and drawers and refrigerator.

"Leave the fish out," Deirdre ordered. "That's dinner. And one of those lemons, Hy."

"The girls were very responsible," Cree told her. "I can personally attest."

"This old lady wants Aunt Cree to hunt for the ghost of a dog," Zoe said.

Another minute of chaos and Deirdre paused to look her daughters up and down. "You know, girls, it's awfully crowded in here. I think Cree and I have this under control. Why don't you go get started on your homework and let us catch up. I'll call you when it's time to set the table." She turned back to the cupboard to stack cans of cat food.

The twins left, carrying the cats. Cree folded the shopping bags as Deirdre put on an apron and began washing vegetables. The music began again upstairs, this time the insistent, battering beat of Zoe's rap. Cree leaned against the counter, watching her sister's face in the mirror over the sink as they conversed. Deirdre was thirty-six, two years younger and, even in the thick-soled jogging shoes she always put on after work, three inches shorter than Cree. Now she was dressed in her teaching clothes, a white blouse and a practical floral skirt with a faint handprint of chalk dust on one thigh, a silk scarf at her throat, looking very much the middle school teacher at the end of a long day. Cree knew from experience that people seeing them side by side would recognize them as sisters but wouldn't be able to say which was older. Deirdre had prettier, more delicate features, made dramatic by darker hair and brows, but her face showed deeper lines of both worry and laughter, the paradoxical marks of teaching and motherhood. When they'd been in their teens, Cree had often felt largish and plain by comparison. Later, she'd discovered that men could fall just as hard for a fuller-bodied woman, and that had evened things out.

"Monday, huh," Cree inquired.

"It certainly is that." Deirdre put the greens in the salad spinner, set it aside, and began scrubbing some carrots. "What's this about a dog?"

"It's complex. I was just asking the girls for advice. Joyce said you called – anything urgent? I left a message."

Deirdre glanced at the blinking red light on the answering machine she hadn't had time to check. "Not urgent. Just that Mom called this morning. She likes to call up for heart-to-heart chats when I'm running around trying to get ready for school."

"Uh-oh. What was on her mind?" When their mother called Deirdre, it often had to do with Cree, and vice versa.

"She told me the doctor said she has congested coronary arteries."

"Well, we suspected as much."

"Yeah. So she's supposed to go in for an angioplasty – where they blow up this little balloon in your artery? She says her friend Marie Haskell had one last year, and it was no big thing."

"But you're worried?"

Deirdre turned her back to the sink, leaning against it with her arms crossed. "Well, yeah. You know."

"Was she?"

"She plays it down. But I'd say, yes. Can't blame her." Deirdre frowned, then brightened. "And then she talked about you."

"I figured."

"She told me her new heart doctor is a total dreamboat and is your age and recently divorced." A tight grin. She turned back to the sink but kept her eyes on Cree's in the mirror. "She thought maybe next time she went to see him, you could come with her – ostensibly to help her, you know, decide on treatment or whatever, did I think that was a good idea? I figured you deserved fair warning."

Cree laughed and gripped her head in exasperation. "So what was your verdict? Good idea?"

"Uh-uh. No comment. I'm staying completely out of it." Deirdre applied herself to the carrots.

It was all lighthearted, supposedly. Mother's concern for her widowed daughter's singleness, childlessness, strange profession, and bouts of existential anguish. Mike had died nine years ago, and Cree still wore her wedding ring. No, she hadn't gotten over it, didn't have a clue how to let go of the sweetness they'd had, and given what had happened when he'd died there was no way to explain to Mom the confusions that came with meeting other men. She was married forever to a dead man and devoted to a metaphysical quest, like some kind of nun in a strange religion with herself as its only adherent. You could laugh all you wanted at people's concern and matchmaking reflexes and the rest, but you still couldn't deny the pang of truth that came with it.

Deirdre had been watching Cree in the mirror again and must have seen her expression change. "Sorry," she began, "I didn't mean to – "

"No, it's all right. I'll call her. Thanks for the heads up."

They let it settle for a moment. Deirdre finished the carrots and set Cree up to slice them as she went to work on the fish. The girls were laughing together upstairs.

"Stay for dinner?" Deirdre's light tone sounded a little forced. "Don will be home soon – "

"I don't know…"

"Cree – "

"Really, Dee, it only hurts when I laugh. Just a little stitch, right here."

Cree grimaced and put her hand on her heart. Pushing it all one level deeper in an effort to let Deirdre off the hook. "Okay?"

"Okay," Deirdre said, smiling again. "But it would still be nice if you stayed for dinner."

When the salad was washed, the rice on to boil, and the fish ready for the oven, Deirdre poured them each a glass of chardonnay. They sat on the tall kitchen stools, relaxing. Deirdre looked as though she deserved a moment to let her shoulders down.

"So when's Mom supposed to go in for the angioplasty?" Cree asked.

"Three weeks."

"Good – I'll be back by then." At Deirdre's questioning look, Cree explained. "I'm going to New Orleans, flying out later this week. Just got a fat retainer for a preliminary investigation, probably only take four or five days. I'm looking forward to it – I've always wanted to go there."

"You know Don and I went once," Deirdre said. "Back before the girls were born. Our wild youth – we thought it would be fun to go for Mardi Gras."

"Right, I remember. How was it?"

"Hmm. Strange, actually." Deirdre's pretty forehead drew into a small frown.

"How so?"

"It was really… well, wild. We went down there to party, but this was more than we'd bargained for. It's like the whole city goes crazy. Everybody's in costume. Everybody's wearing a mask. It's got a lot of morbid overtones, and it's very… pagan. And it's amazingly uninhibited – I mean, literally, people screwing in the streets and on the balconies. Seriously, in full view!"

"That's the whole point of masks – license. If your identity's hidden, nobody can hold you accountable for your behavior – you can act the way you'd really like to." Cree swigged her wine and chuckled. "I didn't know you had such a prudish streak, Dee!"

"No, really, Cree. We found it a little, I don't know… sinister. The city has this doubleness. Don started calling it 'the city of masks.' I don't mean just the parades. The whole town puts on a show, a welcoming facade, but it has another face: poverty, resentment, crime, corruption. Race issues. Nothing is quite what it seems. Even the woman who ran our b-and-b – charming, matronly Southern hostess, we got to know her pretty well, even went out for drinks with her? We were there for three days before I came into the bathroom and saw her with her wig off, shaving her chest. She was a man!"

"So?"

Dee snorted. "So nothing. Except that he took the opportunity to make a pass at me! And I'm standing there, still trying to put it together, and I just blurt the first thing that comes to my mind? I tell him, 'No, thanks so much, but I'm not a lesbian!'"

They both laughed, and then the phone rang.

Deirdre answered it, listened. "Sure, just a moment." She went to the hallway and called, "Hy – telephone!" She covered the mouthpiece with one hand and whispered to Cree, "Boyfriend!" She listened until Hyacinth picked up. Sober again, she told Cree, "I don't mean to rain on your parade. It's a fascinating place. You just have to, you know. .. watch yourself, that's all."