Frank De Felitta - For Love of Audrey Rose

They stayed at a large dark hotel near the waterfront. In separate rooms. Hoover went to his bank in the morning to cash another draft, and emerged with the equivalent of a thousand dollars in cash and a small packet of checks. The balance of the day was spent at the American Embassy trying to secure a temporary visa to replace the passport Janice had lost in the flood. The difficulty was in establishing proper bona fides. It was a dreary wait between cables to and from New York and Washington. That finally accomplished, it then took an eternity to find a taxi. Another eternity to get to the airport. They sat on the couches of the Calcutta airport for four hours. Once Hoover’s hand squeezed hers and an electric thrill went through her. Their fingers slowly relaxed and drew apart. Not looking at him, Janice went to the large plate-glass window and watched the runways. It seemed impossible that she was leaving India. Somehow it was her home now, her real home, where she had become someone else, someone a thousand times more mature, a thousand times stronger.

She cabled Elaine and Dr. Geddes. No apologies. A brief explanation. Would see them in New York. Regards. Hoover rose, took her arm, and they joined the line of passengers filing into the entrance corridor.

“Nothing seems real anymore,” Janice said.

Hoover knew exactly what she meant. They had had the chance to express the beauty of themselves to one another, but had not, and the chance would most likely never come again.

“Nothing is real,” he said. “But one learns to survive.”

They went onto the plane. The flight was delayed for two hours due to a faulty tire. Then the crewman waved a yellow flag, and Air India lifted its plane into the skies. There was a brief circle of a sensuous, compact city, and Calcutta banked and drifted under the wings of the plane, and then there were only clouds. Clouds that tore apart as the plane roared through. Janice closed her eyes.

She was crying, and she did not know why.

Alarge city rotated underneath like an octopus, its radiating arms busy with slow-moving metallic gleams. Around it were green marshes and reflective bits of cold water.

“New England,” Hoover whispered to Janice. “Down there is Hartford… that must be the Interstate Thruway… See the sand dunes on the coast?”

He paused. They both realized that Darien, Connecticut, also lay somewhere underneath them. A nondescript town with its hopes, fears, ambitions, and its hospital. A hospital where Ivy died, surrounded by thirteen physicians and assistants, in full view of the horrified court. Where Bill broke apart like the glass around the hypnosis chamber. Unlike the chamber window, he could not be replaced, and he still pawed through life, suspicious, half dead, threatening to come apart still more.

Hoover licked his lips slowly, and Janice thought she saw his eyes grow moist. They avoided looking at one another, but they became intensely aware of each other’s breathing. Then Connecticut passed slowly under the fuselage, the thruways grew dense and tangled, and the great metropolis came into view.

“It feels like a lifetime since I was here,” Janice said in a distant voice.

“It is. You have become a different person.”

Suddenly the great World Trade Towers, twin steel structures, light blue and gray where the clouds were reflected, rolled underneath. The warning chime sounded and the seat belts were requested. Seats were pushed upright, cigarettes extinguished, and with a sudden lurch the jet began to roar and Janice saw the flaps move downward.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, suddenly frightened. “Are we doing the right thing?”

“I believe so,” he said, holding her hand. “As firmly as I have ever believed anything.”

The jet suddenly screamed. Janice looked out the window, saw white clouds stream past like smoke. White concrete appeared, racing by in streaks, and beyond it the familiar layout of Kennedy International. With dread and horror she saw the ground leap up, slam against the tires, and a blast of air resounded in their ears. Then they were slowing, the great engines in reverse, slower and slower, taxiing to the terminal.

“Manhattan,” Hoover said to the taxi driver. “West Sixty-seventh Street.”

The taxi maneuvered slowly through the traffic crowding around the various terminals. Finally it inched along a thruway ramp, out to another system of highways, and then picked up speed on the south shore of Long Island. As they passed the rippling marsh grass, the shivering gray ocean in the sound, Janice turned to look out the north window.

“Somewhere up there,” she said. “That’s where the institution is.”

Hoover crowded closer to get a look. “May God grant him peace,” he said, peering into the dark, rising clouds to the north.

Then the taxi slowed, crawled onto the Tri-Boro bridge, and a cityscape spread before them. Brown and gray tenements, crowded streets, all slow-moving and dull, as though life had nowhere to go, no place to grow but only went round and round in dilapidated rituals.

Janice found herself staring at her homeland as though it had become a foreign country. The dizziness refused to go away. It seemed as though something were missing, either in the landscape or in her.

“It’s all like a big vacuum.”

He smiled. “You see? India has changed you.”

Then the taxi drove rapidly into the canyons of the city and passed through Central Park. Against the leafy, humid summer afternoon were roller skaters, elderly people on small benches, and boats on the lake. Suddenly Janice’s heart constricted in an old pain as they approached the west side. By the time they got to Sixty-seventh Street her heart was beating rapidly and the dizziness was now troubling. Des Artistes stood in front of her, implacable stone, rain-stained, gray, like a prison and a fortress, full of threats and nearly forgotten promises. Janice found it difficult to step from the taxi. She was afraid that the slow maelstrom of despair would once again suck her in. And when she saw Mario, the doorman, emerge from the lobby, she quickly turned to Hoover.

“Elliot,” she whispered, “it would be better if they didn’t see you. Some of them will remember your face.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll find a hotel. Give you a call when I have a room.”

Hoover ducked his face as Mario opened the door and helped Janice out.

“Why, Mrs. Templeton!” he exclaimed. “We sure missed you. You’ve been gone a long time.”

“Hello, Mario. Just a little vacation. I’m entitled, no?”

“Yeah, sure,” Mario laughed.

He escorted her into the lobby as the taxi drove off with Elliot Hoover.

The shock of seeing the familiar white-covered tables in the restaurant, the chandeliers, and the elevator — all signs and symbols of past joys and terrors — overcame her and she felt an arm reach for her as she swayed.

“I’m all right,” she murmured.

But she was sitting on the bench in the elevator. The door was closed, she was riding up, and Ernie stared at her in concern.

“Ernie,” she said weakly. “How are you?”

He laughed, his teeth gleaming against his light brown face, an infectious laughter.

“How are you ?” he exclaimed. “You stay away for two months and come back without a word and as soon as you walk in the door you start to pass out.”

“Did I?” she said softly. “How embarrassing.”

“You want a doctor?”