Frank De Felitta - For Love of Audrey Rose

The deception shall not be the deception, said the guru, looking away from Hoover. The frightening shall not be frightening. The guru’s palms, upturned on the white-clothed knee, caught the bright sunshine, and twin auras of blinding white light shone upward through the heavens. And Hoover was more certainly in Benares, listening to his first religious teacher, than he had ever been in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

It all went black, a cloudy black, and Elliot Hoover fell a thousand miles, growing fuller and heavier, until he heard his own breathing and tasted his own salt tears on his lips.

Opening his eyes, he did not move. He was surprised to find himself in a cluttered office, littered with books and strange-looking folders and papers. Was this a form of teleportation mentioned in the Vedas ? Gradually he realized that he had been crying, and he rubbed his eyes with his sleeve. His breathing grew calmer, and his glance caught the open book of the Bhagavad Gita, still on his desk.

With a sigh, Hoover leaned forward, remembering everything now. He felt limp with exhaustion. That he had been elsewhere he did not doubt. He still had no sense of time. He could not focus on whether it was December or July, early evening or before dawn. He was conscious of the damp perspiration that stained his clothes, of the oppressive heat in his red office. Dimly he tried to recall the words beyond hearing, the revelation of his most difficult trance.

The deception shall not be the deception. The frightening shall not be frightening.

He did not understand. With great difficulty he uncrossed his legs. He remembered that the long meditation of the Gautama Buddha had so sapped the man’s strength that Buddha had to learn to walk all over again. Hoover pulled himself up by the edge of the desk. He massaged his calves and then walked slowly around the room, breathing in deeply, exhaling regularly, to reenter the normal rhythms of life.

Before him were all the complexities of application forms, bills, letters of inquiry on the desk and on the floor, charts on the wall, play-therapy schedules, cafeteria diets, medical dosages for several of the children — all grim reminders of the work at hand.

On the wall was Mr. Radimanath’s vocabulary sheet. Jennie’s numbers, five of which had been associated with specific commands. Hoover smiled. The little leprechaun. The little deception.

He bent over a cracked burner, lit the stove, and warmed some tea. Jennie was the small deception, the personality behind a facade of deafness and retardation. The great veil of Maya was the large deception, the delusion that things of the earth were real. Suppose they were both, in fact, not delusions? Hoover drank his tea and stared out at the darkness of the autumn through his window.

Well, if Jennie was not a deception, what did that mean? That she was real. What did that mean? Jennie could really love him, trust him as a daughter? That she really was his daughter? But that was impossible. Jennie was born a good six months before Ivy Templeton died. Besides, it had never been Hoover’s earnest desire that Jennie actually be his daughter. That was the kind of thought that obsessed Bill Templeton.

Pursuing onward, Hoover trained his thoughts on Bill. The man hovered between lucidity and madness, Hoover realized. All his thoughts fixated on needing a cornerstone on which to assuage his guilt. Bill Templeton needed to believe his daughter was alive and well, could be embraced and spoken to. Therefore, if Jennie were Bill’s daughter…

Of course she was not. But if Hoover could make it appear so… Then the deception would not be a deception— to Bill. Bill would find his fulcrum again. Jennie would be the therapeutic instrument of his cure, and more important to the orphaned child, the beneficiary of his love.

Hoover laughed out loud. Life had broken all the circles, and the destinies had crossed, a labyrinth of shattered illusions, destroyed hopes, and forbidden desires. It made his head swim. Nothing made sense. Everything made sense. It was all a mad whirl in which he was no longer frightened. Through Jennie they would cure Bill. It was all so fantastic that Hoover sat down abruptly, spun around in the leather chair, and stopped with his feet against the wall.

The frightening shall not be frightening.

He reached for the telephone. He called the all-night Western Union number. A telegram, he instructed. With his name, address, his telephone number. The message? One single word.

Hoover repeated. One word. That was all. He hung up. The night had grown cold. He shivered in his shirt and trousers, the damp of the perspiration grown chill. He knew he had best go upstairs, shower, and sleep. But it seemed a long way from where he sat. He, who had transcended all time and all space, who had flown inwardly ten thousand miles and ten years, found it impossible to go the fifty yards up the steps to bed.

He fell asleep in the leather chair, drifting into the more common bliss, the normal relaxation and rest, which had been denied him so long.

Janice was tired. She was tired of the long journeys thrice weekly into the precincts of the hospital. She was weary of the dark, dusty halls that echoed with the voices of unseen patients, mocking reminders of deformed human discourse. It was all she could do to force herself, again and yet again, into the tiny ward where the man who was legally her husband sat with his back to the wall, hearing nothing.

Bill nestled against the corner of the room, seated on his bed. It was warm, the windows closed against the chill outside. Dr. Geddes was also tired. It was as though he had run down. He sat slumped in a chair beside the bed, smiled wearily, and put a gentle hand on Bill’s shoulder.

“All right,” he conceded. “Maybe that’s enough for today. Have you anything to say, Mrs. Templeton?”

“No.”

Dr. Geddes was not surprised.

“Very well. Let’s go to my office.”

But even as he closed the door, locking it from the outside, their eyes sought each other’s, and a grim understanding flowed from one to the other.

“Have you given up?” she asked softly, but not without bitterness.

He shrugged. “One never gives up on a patient. Many times I’ve—”

“Don’t give me a pep talk, Dr. Geddes. Tell me the truth.”

“All right. Let’s look at this objectively. My feeling, Mrs. Templeton, is that we can expect very little change for a long, long time.”

She listened. In a small sense it was a relief to hear there was no hope. Hope had been the cruel illusion that kept her in agony. Now that there was none, life was suddenly simpler, reduced to cold practical problems.

“I think he should be moved,” Dr. Geddes continued, reaching for cigarettes in his pocket, finding none, “to a smaller place. It would be like a long-term sanitarium. Much less expensive. Kind of a nursing home.”

Janice paled. “Is that what it’s come to?”

“Yes,” he said, emotions violent and mixed, all savagely repressed so his voice remained smooth and professional. “That is what it has come to.”

“All right. I suppose you know of a good sanitarium?”

“I’ll make inquiries.”

After several minutes, several platitudes, nonsequiturs that hid accusations, apologies, and unspoken griefs, Janice said good-bye and walked to the main glass doors. She heard his footsteps coming rapidly behind her. She turned. Dr. Geddes’s face was all red, as though he had been crying.

“I’m so very sorry,” he blurted, “that it turned out like this.”

“We did what we could, Dr. Geddes.”

“But I had always thought…If we could only produce the key, open him up…”