Frank De Felitta - For Love of Audrey Rose

“I love you, Janice,” Bill whispered, and kissed her gently on the lips.

“And I love you, Bill.”

Janice caressed his forehead, and, to her surprise, it was beaded with perspiration despite the chill wind. Bill leaned forward suddenly and began unpacking the wicker basket.

“I’m starving,” he exclaimed. “You must be famished. Hey — I forgot the silverware. No, here it is! Good old Bill — finally wired together.”

“Beaujolais!” Janice exclaimed. “Where did you get this?”

“Geddes,” Bill said, brightening. “He got it for me in Ossining. Great man, Geddes.”

“Delicious!” she said, biting into a chicken sandwich.

Janice poured the Beaujolais into two metal cups. They drank slowly, looking into one another’s eyes.

Then Bill poured another cup. He held it up to make a toast.

“I was going to say — to Ivy,” he said uncertainly, “but, well, to our next Ivy — whoever she is — or he is.”

“To us, Bill. To you and to me and to our being together all over again.”

The second cup warmed them more than the first. Bill replenished the cups, and soon the wind blew in vain against the oak trees. The rain fell in long slants far away over the town, almost as though a hand of God had torn the underbelly of a ragged blue cloud and dragged it downward, releasing its pent-up tons of water.

“I feel a little nervous,” Bill confessed. “Sometimes I know I say things a little abruptly. You have to forgive me.”

“Of course I do, darling.”

“Thank you, Janice. If you only knew what I’ve been through, where I’ve been down deep inside. Hey, did you bring me any books?”

“Of course,” Janice said, crawling toward her bag. “I’d almost forgotten. I brought you a whole library.”

Janice reached in and dumped a handful of volumes beside her plate. Bill picked up several. He examined the titles.

“Twelfth Night?” he asked.

“It’s Shakespeare. It’s about the varieties of love.”

“Sounds good and racy. What’s this? Sonnets from the Portuguese? ”

“Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”

Bill laughed.

“You always were trying to get me to like her. What about that blue one?”

“Where?”

“By the picnic basket.”

Janice hesitated. Slowly she picked it up, opened a few pages. Then she closed it again.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought this one,” she said.

“Why not?”

Janice hesitated once more, then leaned closer to Bill.

“It was given to me by—” she began.

“Please,” he said. “Just read.”

Searching for the most comprehensible passage, Janice paged backward and forward through the thin volume. At last, and with misgivings, she began.

“‘If someone were to strike at the root of a large tree, it would bleed sap, but live. If he were to strike at its trunk, it would bleed sap, but live. If he were to strike at the topmost leaves, it would bleed sap, but live. Pervaded by the living substance, the tree would stand firm, drinking nourishment from the earth and the sun. Therefore, know this, that the body withers and yet the substance never dies.’”

Bill smiled.

“That’s like old what’s-his-name. John Keats. All that sentimental garbage. Read me some more.”

Bill closed his eyes, folded his arms behind his neck, and listened. Warming to her role, Janice read on with more expression, a soothing, almost maternal voice.

“‘Of what is not,’” she read, “‘there is no coming to be. Nor is there destruction of what is. Know, therefore, that all is indestructible, and pervaded by the imperishable.’”

Bill laughed gleefully.

“What wonderful bilge,” he chortled. “Go on, Janice. Let me dream away.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“It all sounds like bilge to me. But it sounds good. Go on.”

Paging ahead, Janice continued. “‘Bodies come to an end, Yet the eternal embodied soul of the universe, Is indestructible and unfathomable, Unborn, eternal, everlasting, that ancient soul, That is not slain when the body is slain.’”

Janice stopped reading. Bill’s silence unnerved her. She regretted having brought the book, and, having brought it, she regretted reading it now.

“You got that from those loonies in the orange robes, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” Janice lied.

“Well, I’m not afraid of them. Go on.”

“Bill, I’m terribly sorry. It was a bad mistake—”

“I said, read on. It’s only words.”

“Bill, are you really sure you want me to?” she asked plaintively.

“Sure. What the hell, Janice. I’ve learned a lot these last few weeks. I’ve learned it’s better to be alive than dead. It’s better to look up than down. So go ahead. I’m not afraid.”

Janice bit her lip, then gave in, and paged ahead to another section. She nestled in against Bill’s side, feeling his warmth and the expansion of his breathing. He moved and slid his left arm over her shoulder, still looking dreamily at the sky.

“‘Just as death is certain to one that is born, So birth is certain for one that has died. Therefore, the thing being unavoidable, One should not mourn.’”

She stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Bill asked.

“I don’t feel like reading anymore.”

“I thought you believed in all that stuff.”

“It doesn’t mean the same now,” Janice said, closing the book. “It makes me feel all — I don’t know, afraid inside.”

Bill turned to her.

“That’s all right, honey,” he said. “I know what you mean. Maybe we’ve had too much of all this gobbledygook. Why don’t we go back inside before the rain comes?”

“All right,” she said, trying to smile.

He kissed his finger and put the finger on her lips. She smiled, though she looked suddenly pale, and then the wind rushed into the trees, shaking down twirling trails of dead oak leaves.

Bill sprang to his feet.

“Here it comes!” he yelled. “Just throw it all in the blanket!”

Janice tossed the books and a fallen wine cup into the center of the blanket. Bill pulled the four corners together, and, like a hobo, slung it over his shoulder and grabbed her hand.

“Come on!” he shouted.

A dull, roaring boom echoed over the distant flatlands, and instantly the air grew even cooler, turned direction, and before they were halfway through the meadow the rain hit them like a cold wall. Laughing, hair bedraggled and matted, they dashed into the lobby, trailing water over the carpets.

Bill embraced her and the contents of the blanket spilled over the floor, knocked a potted palm against the window.

“Next Friday,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’ll come home next Friday.”

“For a day or two, Bill,” Janice cautioned. “Dr. Geddes said—”

“I know, I know. He’s right, of course. Oh, Janice, buy us some of that awful orange liqueur we like. You know, from Belgium. And get some flowers.”

“I will, I will.”

They kissed again, and a massive roar of thunder rattled the windows.

Janice rode home on the late afternoon train. The rain had given her a slight chill. At Des Artistes she took two aspirins, a hot bath, and lay in the suds, luxuriating. She thought again and again about Bill, and his body, and his eagerness, and she thought it would drive her insane.

She removed the aquarium from Ivy’s room. Outside, the rain lashed at New York, a peculiar blue rain that seemed to shed its darkness over the rooftops. If there were no children, she thought, Bill could use the room as a study. That aspect of it was still undecided in her mind. It still seemed a profanation to think of other children in Ivy’s room, and she closed the door quietly behind her as she left.