For Love of Audrey Rose

by Frank De Felitta

  Bill watched the tall buildings, the forbidding gray canyons, slush, taxi cabs, early morning pedestrians, the violent rhythm of the great city awakening around him. He became frightened, vulnerable.

  At the bus terminal, twenty more passengers tried to get on but were told to wait for thirty-five minutes. The driver checked the passengers coming off, making sure they still had their tickets. Bill followed them out, stepped on an escalator, found a grill in the main hall, ate quickly without tasting, then wandered out through the main doors.

  A smell of vomit reached him, mingled with roasted chestnuts and salt pretzels heated on a grill. Hundreds of people strolled in through the wide doors. New York always had a stony, murderous quality, and this time it had almost a physical taste.

  Bill was lost. After walking several blocks, oblivious of the taxis which missed him by inches, the drivers hurling epithets, he found himself in Hell’s Kitchen. Even in the cold, there were crates of fruit slanted by the doors to attract buyers. Cold eyes watched him go by, suspicious eyes sizing him up.

  Motion was the only cure for what Bill felt. He walked a mile uptown, a second mile backtracking, and lost any sense of direction. It was approaching the noon hour. Suddenly, he had an abnormal, almost infinite desire for alcohol.

  Inside a pink, smoky bar full of laborers and Hispanics, Bill peeled off the last of his five-dollar bills. All that was left were four singles. Dark eyes scrutinized him, the expensive suit gone dirty with mud and slush, the handsome face now drawn in to resemble some kind of fleshy death’shead. Bill plastered down his hair with a shaking hand.

  “Double whiskey,” he said.

  Bill sat at the wet, stained bar. The bartender brought him a bottle of whiskey and a glass. Bill watched the liquid pour into the glass. He lifted the glass to his lips. I wish to die, was his thought as the burning liquid traveled quickly down to his stomach, etching its way into his body, promising deliverance.

  He ordered a second drink.

  His hands stopped trembling. Dream images of snow-driven landscapes occurred to him. In his reverie, he looked out of a dirty bus window and saw distant farms wheeling past in great perspectival arcs. Then he also saw, on the horizon, the clearly visible, long, dark-roofed shape of the hospital in Darien. He drank.

  Then he saw Ivy behind the window glass, beating her fists at the mirror, frightened.

  Bill lowered his head onto his arms and wept.

  No one paid him any attention.

  After half an hour, he walked out into the cold, bitter wind howling up from the Battery. His legs were numb, though whether it was from the whiskey or the cold, he no longer knew. New York roared around him in an angry maelstrom of murderous voices, dark accusations.

  In horror, he saw Des Artistes loom in front of him.

  By some innate homing instinct, he had walked back through Central Park, past the lakes, and had drifted over to Sixty-seventh Street.

  Before he could retreat, Mario, the doorman, spotted him.

  “Mr. Templeton…Wait…”

  Bill ran back through the park, sweating, then cut south and east and finally ended up at the derelict warehouses among the concrete piers of the East River. Somehow the day had passed and it was night again. Several bums sat in the shadows of a bridge, cooking beans, and he wandered into their circle to keep out of the cold wind.

  In that darkness, the smell of beans and grease filled the space that also glistened with tar leaking down from the bridge. Trucks rumbled overhead, gears switching, carrying tonnage out to the west or bringing foodstuffs into the city markets.

  “Warmer by the fire than it is over there,” said a thin, coughing man with a greasy gray coat and an ascot stained with tar.

  Bill approached the low fire, rubbing his hands. He declined sweet amber wine. They left him alone. As he looked into the fire, he felt a deathly chill spread out within his body, a chill that no fire could reach.

  Outside the night, the lights of midtown gleamed; the Empire State Building rose high into the light clouds like a mirage of happier times.

  One by one, the men drifted away. Bill watched them shuffle into the darkness on the roads. They were a kind of subterranean living species he had never talked with before. Now they were gone and he had no company but his thoughts.

  Ivy bolted from the blue couch. She threw herself violently to the floor. Then she was running, running and screaming, down the length of the glass.

  “Huh?” Bill said, startled.

  A noise died in the darkness of distant stone, then there was a stealthy rustle.

  “Who’s there?”

  Bill quickly shoveled a burning ember onto a piece of cardboard and threw it into the darkness. There was a scamper. Then it was quiet as before. Rats, Bill thought. City rats. He listened. No sound.

  “… daddydaddydaddydaddydaddydaddy—”

  Suddenly Bill’s heart pounded. He covered his ears with his hands. I’m going mad, he thought. I’ve got to think. To reason.

  But the fatigue made it difficult to think. Only images came, and the images were distorted. Snowy landscapes. The Greyhound station in Darien. The cold, long hospital. And Hoover, standing, shouting through the glass. Bill rubbed his eyes until red sparks danced.

  Something became horribly clear: when it counted most, Hoover had had the presence of mind to smash the glass. Bill remembered only paralysis.

  “Ivy,” he wept over and over.

  Shivering, he dozed off, jerked awake, and went to the bridge support to urinate. While there, he saw the long lights of investigating policemen. Two men in uniform finally appeared at the rusted can, kicked the embers apart, dousing the coals, and left. Bill waited, then walked out onto the street.

  Pools of water rippled under the brisk wind, throwing freezing spray over the broken pavements.

  Far away, a truck pulled up at a deserted newsstand and a man tossed down a heavy bundle of papers.

  When the truck roared away into the predawn darkness, Bill walked up and pulled out the top copy. It was a morning tabloid, and under a two-inch headline was Hoover’s picture.

  REINCARNATION MAN PROVES CASE, the headline read. In smaller type, it read: SHOCKING DEATH OF DAUGHTER IN HOSPITAL CONVINCES JURY. Bill ripped open the newspaper to the continuation on page thirteen. The jury had not even been sent into deliberation, he read. Hoover was free. Bill started to crumple the newspaper in his fists when a final paragraph caught his attention.

  A memorial service would be held at ten o’clock for Audrey Rose at Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, 14 Christopher Place, New York.

  Bill’s eyes bulged in rage. For Audrey Rose?

  Angrily, he tossed the newspaper into the gutter and stormed on into the heart of the still-dark city.

  Number 14 Christopher Place was a small brick building that had served as an alternative school, a radical arts center, a vegetarian health information society, and now had been converted into an esoteric Buddhist place of worship. Bill peeked into the windows. One adolescent, wearing an orange robe, swept the worn wooden floor. Another in a blue shirt and white skirt set flowers at the front, where an altar of sorts had been constructed from doors and benches. On the wall were photographs of Gupta Pradesh.

  Bill recoiled. He walked across the street and pretended to browse at leather crafts displayed on iron hooks in a boutique window. Time after time, as though drawn magnetically, he turned to stare at the self-styled temple.

  Something was being sprinkled on the floor. Maybe holy water, Bill thought. Maybe sweeping compound. Rage filled his body, and he knew he was capable of murder.

  An hour later, several more adolescents in orange robes walked up to the door, bowed, and entered. Through the window Bill saw incense lighted. At 9:45, Judge Langley walked to the door, checked the address, and hesitantly entered. Bill dashed for cover into a small supermarket. Over the avocadoes he saw Scott Velie drive up in a black Mercedes. Next came Hoover’s lawyer and Dr. Lipscomb. Then a taxi drove up, and
Russ and Carole Federico, wan and red-eyed, stepped out. Uncertainly, they waited, then saw Scott Velie motioning them in from the window, and they went, arm in arm, into the temple. Janice would be next.

  Bill ran up the alley, circled several blocks and found himself cutting back toward Washington Square. He changed direction, walked on and on, for two hours, and did not stop until he sat on a bench in Central Park.

  By now Bill knew that he could run no more. His brain was whirling. His nervous system was on fire. He felt like an animal with one paw in the steel trap. By instinct, he got up, walked on through the park, past lanky teenagers throwing Frisbees, past couples necking on the cold grass, and crossed to Des Artistes, the one place he knew Janice would not be.

  Mario stared at him, his eyes filled with sadness.

  “My keys—I lost my keys, Mario—”

  “Sure, Mr. Templeton. I’ll have Ernie take you up.”

  Mario led him to Ernie, who opened the Templetons’ apartment with a passkey. Ernie brushed against Bill as the apartment door opened, and he felt the icy cold of the man’s hands.

  “You going to be all right?” Ernie asked softly. “You want I should call a doctor?”

  Bill croaked out a negative reply. Ernie stood, watched Bill collapse on a chair by the window, head slumped down, shivering. The radiator hissed, which meant he would be warm there, Ernie thought, and closed the door.

  In the apartment, Bill sat alone, dimly conscious of the cold leaving his bones, but otherwise conscious only of sinking, waiting, and trying not to think.

  “… daddydaddydaddydaddydaddy—”

  “Ahhhhhh!”

  Bill slammed his fist against the wall.

  When it was late in the day, almost twilight, he heard the elevator door open in the distance. Janice’s footsteps came slowly over the carpeted hallway. Bill wanted to turn, to face her, to defend himself in a physical way, but his body no longer responded. He sat, slumped, his arms heavy as cast iron, and only the hair at the back of his neck stirred, prickling, when he heard the door slowly unlock.

  2

  Janice closed the door softly. Though Mario had told her that Bill was in the apartment, she was still surprised to see him, a silhouette against the stained-glass windows. It had been so long since she had seen him. Even his silhouette looked different. It belonged to a weary, broken man.

  Janice took off her coat, then her hat.

  Bill’s shadow, a bulk of darkness, followed her as she moved in the room.

  “Is it over?” he whispered hoarsely.

  “Yes.”

  Overhead, the paintings on the ceiling were now lost in gloom, the dancers and dressed monkeys stilled, erased in twilight’s shade ahead.

  “She will be…cremated.”

  Bill bent over, crumpled, as though to avoid her. Janice now saw the shirt, once so white and freshly pressed, filthy, wrinkled, with streaks at the sides and shoulders.

  “I didn’t mean to, Janice…it was an accident….”

  Bill rose, raised his fist as though to strike it against the wall, but instead his hand opened up and he simply leaned, exhausted, against the wallpaper, head down, in the growing darkness.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he repeated. “It was… an accident….”

  Janice stepped farther into the room. Alone, she had had to bear the responsibility of dealing with the hospital, the court, and the representatives of the Mount Canaan Mausoleum in Valhalla, New York. She alone had signed the official papers. She alone had been at the autopsy. If it had not been for the support of the young Buddhists, and Scott Velie, and the Federicos, she would have collapsed.

  With pained scrutiny, she examined the husband who was a stranger to her. His hair was wet, disheveled. The trousers had stains of slush and tar and were torn at the knees. The broad, athletic shoulders twitched from nervousness and lack of sleep.

  “Janice!” he sobbed. “Is it possible?”

  Janice wanted to go to him, to comfort him, but the words of comfort that she knew would have sent him into a frenzy. Their minds had become incompatible. Their beings had separated. Janice looked away from Bill, as though to avoid the sight of a destroyed relationship.

  “I asked you a question,” he said coldly. Bill had turned. His eyes had an odd, burning quality, a shining feverish quality that frightened her. “Tell me, Janice,” he said.

  “You saw with your own eyes,” she said simply.

  “He bewitched her. Didn’t he? He bewitched all of us.”

  “No, he did not bewitch her.”

  Bill sighed wearily.

  “I went to the temple, Janice… but I couldn’t go in. I wanted to, but I couldn’t….” His voice trailed away into a sibilant, meaningless whisper.

  Janice wiped her eyes at the kitchen door.She found the light switch. The glow filled the dining area. Light sparkled from the china in the cabinet, off the Mexican vases. Bill stood immobile, in the center of the room.

  “Please, Janice, forgive me,” he pleaded.

  “Nobody’s blamed you, Bill.”

  “Janice, I’m begging you.”

  “In time. You’ll forgive me in time, too. But we need time.”

  Janice turned, more to escape the sight of Bill’s manic, sleep-deprived stare. When she turned on the kitchen light, the sudden glare shocked her. The physical reality of stainless-steel sinks, water faucets, calendar on the wall, and plates and cups, restored a sense of gravity.

  Janice found remnants of an old roast and cold potato salad. They ate in silence. She saw Bill’s hands tremble; the tears fell down from his face as she shoveled the food into his mouth.

  He took a deep breath, washed his face at the faucet. The harsh light bounced off the yellow kitchen walls as though to bleach them both of each and every facade, to reveal each of them utterly naked to the other, all softness and illusion destroyed in a terrible finality.

  Bill could not turn to face Janice. He tried, but a kind of magnetic pull prevented it. He wiped his face on a kitchen towel. When he finally spoke, the silence broke under the cruel, cold voice.

  “It was because I approved the test,” Bill croaked. “It was all my fault.”

  Time passed like a dark tide, scraping them, tossing them about in inchoate currents of bitter regrets and self-accusations. Janice remembered key words from the temple service, from Hoover’s crudely articulated philosophies, and they brought a kind of balm. A diffused substitute for serenity that outdid Dr. Kaplan’s Valium at any rate. Bill had nothing. He lay on the couch, eyes wide at the ceiling. From time to time, his arm jerked from nervous exhaustion.

  Janice brought some scotch and water to him, but he ignored it.

  In the morning, Janice dressed in a soft beige suit and a dark hat. Bill huddled in his dirty clothes on the couch.

  “I can’t go,” he whispered hoarsely, breaking a night-long silence.

  “No one will be there,” Janice said. “Only us. The Federicos.”

  “I can’t—I can’t go—”

  “Do you think it’s wise to stay home alone?”

  “I won’t go and have them accuse me!”

  Janice knew it was useless to argue. The cremation took place without him.

  Flames roared from gas jets arranged in a semicircle around the entire wooden casket. It was so hot that the interior walls, cast iron, flaked off in large patches. Ivy, who had fled in panic from the fire, was consumed in an obliterating flame.

  Only a few ounces of pebbly ash were left of the human body.

  Steel instruments gathered the ashes into a brass urn. The urn was placed in a small varnished mahogany chest. A thin man with sober eyes lifted the chest into a compartment in a marble wall.

  On the marble wall was a brass plate: IVY TEMPLETON— 1964–1975 No. 5693452. There was nothing else left.

  Janice stood in the marbled hall. Ivy, she silently prayed, forgive us. Forgive and understand us. She prayed for the liberty of her child’s soul. Then she added a Catholic pr
ayer that she remembered from her own youth. When she was through, a great silence filled the chamber.

  She walked away on the arm of Russ Federico. Outside, the sun glinted on patches of snow on the small lawn. Running water glistened in the roads. It was Ivy’s kind of spring—a quick transition, full of clean snow, warmth, and icicles melting with musical drops into the muddy ground below. The crisp air breathed hope.

  At the door of Des Artistes, Carole and Russ took their leave.

  “Sure we can’t come up and sit with you?” Carole asked.

  “Thank you, but Bill wants to be alone.”

  Russ shook his head. “My father always said that grief is something you can’t work out on your own.”

  “I know, Russ,” Janice answered, “but I think it’s better if we wait until tomorrow.”

  “As you think best.”

  Stepping alone onto the ninth floor was an eerie sensation. It seemed denuded, all the life sucked out of it by death. Janice plucked up her courage and stepped into the apartment. Bill had not moved from where she had left him that morning.

  He moaned softly as she closed the door.

  She tried to get him to eat but he refused. She brought fresh clothes from the bedroom and he slowly dressed. Throughout the day, she answered the telephone, calls from family and relatives, the parents of Ivy’s friends. A small delegation of Ernie, Dominick, Mario, and several members of the restaurant staff came to pay their respects.

  Later that night, a massive bouquet of flowers arrived from the Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, with poems that expressed how the flower reincarnated the soul of the plant.

  Bill began to bite his knuckles until they grew raw and bleeding. Janice slipped a crumbled Valium into his dinner but it had no effect. He paced through the apartment, restless as a caged panther, saying nothing.

  Suddenly the wind blew and the pressure slammed the door of Ivy’s room.

  Bill stopped, frightened, and stared up at the landing, at Ivy’s door. He put his hands over his ears as though to block out inaudible screams, the scurry of twisting, pattering feet.