Frank De Felitta - For Love of Audrey Rose

“Oh, Ivy…Ivy…” he repeated, the litany of a broken man.

Gradually he pressed close against her, and her small body relaxed against him.

“Ivy…Ivy…”

Hoover, overjoyed, pushed his way past the orderlies, but Dr. Geddes grabbed his arm.

“Leave them alone!”

Janice circled closer, unable to believe it. She whirled back to the doorway, congested with men.

“Elliot — she went to him.”

“Yes,” Hoover whispered. “Exactly what we prayed for.”

Janice, her hand to her mouth, watched incredulously. Bill rocked Jennie back and forth, and the girl seemed to have found shelter there forever.

Finally Dr. Geddes led both Hoover and Janice farther out into the corridor. From where they stood, they could barely see the girl, so completely was she lost in Bill’s embrace. But they heard Bill again and again call her Ivy.

“This is one of the greatest days of my life,” Dr. Geddes whispered. “We’ve made contact!”

“H-he called her Ivy !” Janice stammered. “And she went to him!”

“Yes,” Dr. Geddes said. “You’re right. Go back in and say that Ivy has to go home now. She’s tired and has to rest.”

Janice stared at him in confusion.

“Do it,” Hoover softly urged.

Mechanically, Janice walked back up the corridor, entered the room, and saw how completely safe and secure the girl felt in Bill’s arms. She was not asleep. The small, lovely eyes were open, but dreamy and at peace for the first time since Janice had known her.

“Ivy… Ivy has to go now, Bill. She’s tired.”

Bill heard nothing. Janice stepped closer.

“Bill, darling, Ivy has to get some rest.”

He closed his eyes, nodded, and with infinite sorrow released the girl. Janice took her by the hand. Jennie walked in the peculiar, mincing, teetering steps once again. When the door closed, Janice caught a last glimpse of Bill’s face — still tear-wet, but serene, even luminous with expansive love and, for the first time, hope.

Elliot Hoover lifted Jennie from the taxi. For a while he was unwilling to step into Des Artistes.

“The last time I came into this building,” he mused, “it was to take a daughter. Now it is to return one.”

Janice looked at him distantly, wondering what it was that had resolved itself in such a peculiar circle of events.

Hoover carried the girl slowly toward the elevator. He seemed to walk on tiptoe, and he ignored Mario’s incredulous gaze as they rode up. Down the hallway he carried the girl, following Janice. The noise of the door being unlocked broke the silence.

The apartment door swiveled open. The stained-glass windows displayed a buoyant light, a subdued extravagance of reds and greens in the hushed atmosphere. In some unspoken way when he crossed the threshold, a terrifying sense of responsibility wakened in him.

Jennie stirred in his arms. Her eyes remained closed.

“The ceiling,” he marveled softly. “It hasn’t changed.”

“No. The ceiling never changes.”

He turned to her, having heard a deeper meaning in her words.

“But so much else has changed.”

“Yes. In all of us.”

Jennie stirred again.

“Shall I put her to bed?” he asked softly.

“She can sleep upstairs.”

Janice led them up the carpeted steps. She paused at what had been Ivy’s room. Delicately she pushed it open. Jars of paintbrushes, ink bottles, and piles of sketchbooks lay on white shelves and a desk.

“In Ivy’s room…” marveled Hoover.

“I have a cot in the closet.”

Hoover lifted Jennie carefully to Janice’s arms. He went to the closet, briskly brought out a metal cot and unfolded it. Then, as directed, he brought in sheets and two blankets from the closet in the hallway. Gently he undressed Jennie down to the underpants and covered her, tucking the sheet and blanket around the slender shoulders.

“She normally sleeps like a log,” he said, stroking her chin.

“Elliot, why did she go to him?”

Hoover shrugged. “She was tired. It was a long, hard flight, a strange environment. She heard a man’s soothing voice and simply went to him.”

“She’s autistic; she doesn’t respond to voices.”

“She’ll hold my hand. And yours. Maybe she does distinguish tones of voices.”

Janice stared at the sleeping child. “It frightened me,” she confessed, “to see her go to him like that.”

“We should be happy, Janice,” Hoover said. “Isn’t it what we worked for? To make contact with him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel right about it.”

Hoover said nothing. He walked to the window and stared down at the grimy, sultry city. He almost seemed to forget her, lost in thought. To Janice the silence was unbearable.

“Will you stay?” she asked simply.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t. We can’t. Not for a while.”

“Did Bill say something that changed your mind?”

He turned to her, confused and not hiding it. “It would spoil the — the sanctity of what we’ve done,” he said very quietly.

“Sanctity?” Janice replied almost harshly. “We deceived him! That birth certificate was phony! And he’ll find out! He’ll call the Hall of Records! You know he will.”

“He’ll find the certificate, properly filed, just as I told him.”

“But there is no certificate!”

He glared at her, and she grew silent.

“ Now there is,” he said simply. “I’ve arranged it. That’s all you have to know.”

Janice looked down at Jennie sadly. “This kind of deception can come to no good.”

“Look. You saw him when we left. He was joyous, calm, a gentle soul. What the hell was he before? A maniac. A vegetable.”

Something dangerous filled the air, like smoke. Hoover sensed it too and softened. He looked out the window again, but this time he saw only the grit and streaks that adhered to the glass.

“We are instruments of heaven,” he said. “We can only follow its dictates. Blindly.”

She said nothing. The feeling of vague horror consolidated into the specific fear of being discovered. She felt a peculiar darkness everywhere, hovering over her, all over the apartment.

“Will you take care of Jennie?” he asked. “For as long as Dr. Geddes needs her?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Suddenly tears burst from Janice’s eyes, and she turned away. Hoover quickly turned her back, held her, and she sank against his chest.

“What’s going to happen, Elliot?” she said unevenly.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. All we can do now is help Dr. Geddes.”

“What about us?”

He stiffened. She felt him draw away. It was as though they were saying farewell forever.

“I’ll come see you, Janice. But it can’t be for a while.”

“Elliot—”

He smiled, stroking her cheek.

“I’ll be with you, darling,” he whispered. “I always am.”

Something softened within her.

He smiled gently. “Let me call you from Pittsburgh.”

She nodded slowly. Together they went down the stairs to the apartment door. He kissed her lightly on the cheek. They tried to convince each other that there was no leave-taking, that they would be together, that night and every night, but there was a wrench of emptiness when he drew away. She watched him walk to the elevator. With a friendly smile, sweet and bashful, yet complicitous, he waved. Then he was gone.

The impact of his absence hit her as though she had fallen into a vast and empty shaft. Now the apartment was denuded of protection — Bill was gone, Elliot Hoover was gone, and upstairs was a strange child who needed help.

Janice went to Ivy’s bedroom and peered in. For an instant the bundle of blankets deceived her. Then Jennie’s small face appeared. An eye lazily opened and closed. Janice stroked the girl’s hair, but the room seemed alive with muted whispers. They barraged her in long enfilades of obscene, mocking jeers. She looked up. It was silent. Nothing in the room was left from the night when Ivy, in that mad whirl of pain, ran from the nightmare that finally destroyed her.