Frank De Felitta: For Love of Audrey Rose

“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.

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.