Frank De Felitta - For Love of Audrey Rose

“Because what, Elliot?”

His face darkened.

“Precisely because of this …plan… with Jennie… with Bill. I was in despair, since it involved the element of deception.”

In the next room Jennie made a soft sound in her sleep.

“I suppose I disappeared in some way,” he explained. “Or should I say I reappeared in some way. In any case, I saw him again.”

“He’s still alive.”

“No. He died six years ago. But there he was, in the Benares garden, just as I always remembered him; the same sunlight, the same smell of the flowers and the incense, and his voice…”

Janice waited. She felt herself caught up in the passion of his remembrance. He seemed to use it to cast a wide net over her, as though she were one of the migrant butterflies that had startled them in South India, and she nervously watched him pace the floor.

“His voice was heard beyond the walls of oblivion,” he said ecstatically, “and it told me that there shall be no deception.”

He turned, happy that she did not disbelieve him, or at least made no sign of it.

“The deception shall not be a deception! That was what I heard! Don’t you see? To Bill, Jennie can be, will be, his child again! She will be the link, the bridge on which he can emerge again into the light of day.”

Janice had no doubt of Hoover’s vision. It seemed too potent to be confined to the small rooms and corridors of the clinic. It belonged in a vast landscape, like India’s, which could contain such dreams. Here, it threatened to burst the bounds of normalcy and sweep everything before it.

“Can you doubt it, Janice?” Hoover pleaded. “Can there be any doubt at all?”

“If it should misfire? What would happen to Bill?”

“There’s very little that can happen to him,” he said in a low voice, “that hasn’t already.”

In dismay she closed her eyes.

“Let me think about it. It seems too dangerous.”

Frustrated, he only clenched his jaw. His eyes looked lost, as though he had failed miserably, and having exposed the message of his trance, having shown her the sanctity of the room where his deities found their worship, he was even more vulnerable.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But you have to give me time.”

“That’s all right, Janice. Perhaps I’ve rushed things.”

In the next room there was a small thump. Janice instantly remembered the nights when Ivy had fallen from bed, only to be driven half mad by the dream from which she could not awaken, the dream of her own coming death.

“Did you just think of Ivy?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes,” she said, startled. “I did.”

“You see? The child calls out to you. In your own heart, you can’t deny her. Go to her, Janice. Tend to her.”

Janice opened the door and fumbled into the darkness. Behind her Hoover followed, and they groped toward the lamp. Jennie lay on the floor, her pajamas rumpled, and a tiny trickle of red lay over her nostril.

“Elliot, she’s hurt herself!”

“It isn’t like her to fall out of bed. James does that with a vengeance, but not Jennie.”

Janice took a tissue from the night table and quickly dabbed at the tiny nose. Strangely, the child seemed only now to awaken to the touch of Janice’s hand. There was the fragrance that a mother instantly recognizes, the soft smell of a sleeping infant, and the warm cotton of the pajamas.

“F-five — T-two—” Jennie mumbled.

“She’s awake,” Janice said.

Hoover bent down.

“So she is. I wonder if she knows whether or not she’s dreaming?”

The green eyes of the child gazed through them. Though she took notice of their presence by virtue of being alert, even aware of everything in the room around her, she refused to look at their faces. Janice sensed the protective hostility of the child, the fear that wrapped around her like a robe.

“Jennie,” she whispered. “It’s me. Do you know who I am?”

“F-five — T-two—”

Janice looked at Hoover. He shrugged.

“Three-three means bathroom. Maybe this is a further refinement. Would you like to do the honors?”

Janice laughed. “I’d love to. I haven’t done it in a long time.”

Hoover stood in the center of the room, without moving. The light went on in the adjoining bathroom. He watched as Janice gently removed the bottom pajamas, sat Jennie on the small toilet seat. Then Janice washed Jennie’s hands, then her own. Hoover watched Janice comb down the girl’s hair. Time seemed to slow down and die as Jennie gazed into the mirror, held in Janice’s arm.

Slowly the small hand slid down Janice’s neck, down the throat, toward the curve of her breast. Jennie relaxed, and the other arm wrapped itself slowly around Janice’s neck. The light went off. Janice carried the sleeping girl back into the bedroom.

“What’s wrong?” Janice whispered. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“She’s never returned an embrace before,” he said slowly.

As Janice lowered the child to the bed, the small arm had to be pulled from Janice’s neck. Jennie turned to Janice, the sleeping body curled, the arms stretched lengthwise across the sheets. From Hoover’s room the amber light mixed with the blue, and a curious glow appeared on the girl’s forehead.

“She seems warm,” Janice said.

Hoover went to the bathroom and in the darkness wetted a towel. He brought it back, gave it to Janice, and she daubed it lightly over Jennie’s forehead. Then Janice rose, took the towel back to the sink, rinsed it, and hung it on the bar to dry. She turned and was startled to find that he had followed her, looking just as tired as she.

“Will you not be her mother?” he asked, his voice oddly husky. “She needs that kind of care. The kind of love you can provide.”

“No. She’s a lovely girl, but—”

In the predawn gloom they spoke in soft voices, as though the long night had rid from them any anxieties. Janice felt she had been at the clinic for a month. She was familiar with its every sound, its every smell, and the children seemed, oddly, extensions of herself as well as Hoover. She slumped against the white basin, as the sleeplessness danced into her eyes. Jennie seemed to float in the light where the sheets were visible across the room.

“And the frightening shall not be frightening,” Hoover said gently.

She looked up at him. Odd glints of light swarmed in her vision where he stood.

“That’s what he told me. My master, the guru,” Hoover said softly. “The frightening shall not be frightening.”

Suddenly he leaned down over her, his lips against the soft warmth of her neck.

Her left hand instinctively went up around his neck and drew him closer. They were both exhausted, their blood racing, and the moment seemed to undulate in a slow motion, a giddiness as though the earth had wobbled from its foundations. Nor did she object when his hand slowly rested against her breast. Her breathing pushed out against him, and one by one he unbuttoned the buttons of her blouse.

She sighed, turned against his cheek, and his fingers slid across the hollow of her throat. For a long time they found comfort in each other’s proximity, a dreamlike stillness, the pressure of breathing so near each other’s ear. His fingertips pressed down, soft as velvet, to her undergarment, flowed down under and found the breast very warm, and there was a soft but sudden intake of her breath against his cheek.

“Elliot,” she whispered, “I’m so confused without you. I’m even more confused with you.”

“I am never without you,” he whispered.

She felt the warm comfort of his hand against her bare breast, and was, in her confusion, grateful for it. She leaned her head against his shoulder and watched as the tinted lamp illumined her blouse, making it look as though it belonged to someone else, and watched his fingers remove the next button, felt the soft sliding of the fingertips around and under the other breast.