Frank De Felitta - For Love of Audrey Rose

“That’s all right, orderly,” Dr. Boltin barked.

The orderly retreated to his place at the wall. Hoover grimaced in pain, drew his chair back, and tried to ignore the shock spreading outward from his knee, burgeoning into brilliant throbs of agony.

He paused, seeing the hostile stare on the iron bed.

“You’re lying, Hoover!”

“Jennie is frightened by birds. Isn’t that peculiar? Don’t you know another child who was afraid of birds?”

Bill glared at him, the eyes sunk darkly in the sockets, head lowered.

“Janice tell you this?” he demanded. “What is this, pillow talk?”

Hoover said nothing. They watched the fingers grope at the iron rail. Sweat broke out again on Bill’s face, along his neck, drenching his shirt. His back trembled with a hideous effort.

“What about it, Bill?” Dr. Boltin asked. “Is all this familiar?”

Suddenly Bill repeatedly rammed his fists against the iron rail. The leather straps exploded into tautness over and over, but Bill was helpless, impotent, in a fury of rage. His legs jerked out like a demented marionette, his head shook violently, and an inarticulate roar tore from his throat.

“Wipe his mouth,” Dr. Boltin ordered.

The orderly flourished a large white tissue over Bill’s mouth. Bill jerked his head away, then hung awkwardly against the straps, crying silently.

“Come now, Bill,” Dr. Geddes said gently. “Isn’t this truly like your own daughter?”

Bill slumped, defeated, his whole body caving in. An occasional spasm crossed his back. Trembling, he tried to control his voice.

“I found my daughter! I held her in my arms!”

“You were mistaken,” Hoover said.

Bill shook his head, sank lower, and could not stifle the sobs.

“She was my own — my Ivy. I held her in the snowstorm.”

“But, Bill, there were no signs. How could you think she could give you any signs? Why, she was only an infant, not even a personality yet. She could not speak, walk— nothing!”

Bill only wept, losing control altogether.

“Please,” he whispered. “Go away. Please go away.”

“She was an illusion, Bill,” Hoover said quietly. “All right, maybe by some freak of arithmetic she was born at the right time. But she was never what you thought her to be. She was never your own.”

The words pierced Bill like tiny needles, exploring his body to search out the heart. He seemed to tremble at every phrase, deflate, until he was a rag doll.

“Never your own, Bill,” Hoover intoned. “Never your own.”

For a long moment, nobody moved. Dr. Boltin became restless. The orderly slowly shifted his weight and stared at the ceiling.

“What karma did I inherit,” Bill whispered, “that I should live in hell?”

Elliot Hoover sensed the fatal vulnerability and lunged forward.

“Every karma can — is obligated to — improve, Bill,” he said gently.

Bill shook his head.

“The seven levels of hell — I have been there.”

“No. Remember the doctrine of brahmacharya. Self-control. Do not despair.”

Bill’s eyes were nearly hidden under the hair that slanted across his forehead. The two men faced each other, eyes locked in a peculiar, savage, muted combat.

“ Brahmacharya, ” Bill retorted softly. “Are you clean enough to speak to me of that?”

Hoover paled, withdrew slightly, confused. “What are you talking about?” he stammered.

“Have you reddened her breasts with saffron?” Bill asked. “Have you tasted the golden nectar?”

“I’m not sure what you’re driving at, Bill.”

Bill smiled sardonically.

“Did you not,” he whispered with a manic glee, “practice the deep womb-thrust? From the calves, the thighs? Did you not light the lamp of mystic jewels?”

Hoover reddened, but maintained his ground, staring back at Bill.

“This is your imagination, Bill,” Hoover exclaimed. “Your wife and I have only tried to help you.”

Bill laughed. Then a strange smile fixed upon his face, and he seemed to look down on Hoover from a thousand miles away.

“You have not stood firm,” Bill said, mocking. “You are corrupted. You are utterly lost, Hoover!”

Hoover swallowed, looked at Dr. Boltin, whose face was screwed up in utter incomprehension. Hoover wiped the sweat from his face. He turned back, but Bill was no longer listening.

“The body is a possession like any other,” Bill said in subtle simplicity. “You should not have enslaved yourself to it. The two of you are forsaken.”

Bill seemed to watch them all from far away, as though he had become bodiless. He smiled bitterly.

“You see,” Bill continued calmly, “man is a transitional being. He is the secret, holy workshop of evolution. Bit by bit, he transcends his past. Like one who climbs mountains, he looks down on all he has surpassed with contempt. He evolves to a new system of values. He experiences a luminous expansion.”

The orderly coughed slightly, oblivious to everything. Dr. Boltin waited, making sense of nothing. Dr. Geddes, however, was transfixed by the change in Bill. Bill’s face had grown serene, and the words flowed easily, without a pause in their articulation.

“Therefore, I have forsaken my wife,” Bill concluded, letting the thought evaporate slowly, like a mist in the crowded air. The silence was pregnant with a bleak density. In contrast to Bill’s calmness, Hoover fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair.

“Yet, by works,” Hoover said at last, “one may strive for liberation. Without the performance of works, it is as a journey into the wind.”

Bill laughed. “I know all about your works,” he sneered. “A clinic for overflow misfits in Pittsburgh. Since when is Pittsburgh a place for spiritual works?”

“Pittsburgh was where my daughter died.”

“So?”

“Therefore, Pittsburgh being the locus of her greatest happiness, it stands to reason that she would return — at some point.”

“Ivy was born in New York,” Bill chuckled derisively.

“Nevertheless, the problem — the tragedy — began in Pittsburgh.”

Bill considered this, and finally shrugged.

“Children often inherit the sick karma of their parents,” he observed maliciously.

“That is precisely why we must perform our rituals, Bill. You as well as I. To cure the lame of spirit.”

Bill laughed softly. “Depends which rituals you perform. Do you know about the Tibetan mysteries?”

Hoover stirred uncomfortably. “No, I’ve never looked too closely at them.”

Bill laughed again, softly but with an edge of malice. “For starters, there’s too much light here. You need darkness. The darkness, say, of a cave.”

“You could pull the curtains.”

“And skullbowls full of red blood. Rancid butter. Decomposing dogs, goats, and wild bears along the walls.”

Hoover said nothing. Dr. Boltin looked at Dr. Geddes, who shrugged.

“The painted, vermilion gods on the black stone,” Bill continued. “Death in copulation with life. Skinless carcasses on pointed posts around the fire.”

“This kind of magic,” Hoover said with a superior smile, “is utterly fallible. It takes a lifetime of humility, prayer, and discipline to gain any real influence, and that only over the self.”

“No! That’s not true!” Bill insisted. “You can control reality.”

Dr. Boltin tried in vain to light a pipe. The red, round cheeks puffed and drew, but there was only a wet gurgle. “What are you talking about, Bill?” he snapped.

“I could show you better if my hands were freed.”

“That’s all right, Bill. Just tell us.”

Bill shook the hair from his forehead. As he spoke he grew pale, shivering as though an arctic wind roared into his soul. His eyes grew small and bright.