Frank De Felitta: For Love of Audrey Rose

“Some legal matter. Shouldn’t be serious.”

At 2:30 Bill stepped into Dr. Geddes’s office. Janice sat against a small window covered in brown drapes. At her side were two men, one of whom was Harold Yates, their family lawyer. Self-consciously Bill sat down, feeling all eyes fixed on him. Harold flashed him an uncomfortable smile.

The other man, in a blue suit a size too tight, introduced himself as Charles Petty, deputy assistant to the Attorney General of the State of New York. He had enormous hands and a craggy face, a thin black tie, and a habit of chewing his tongue.

“Mr. Petty has been very kind to come down here,” Dr. Geddes began, “his time being limited.”

Petty cleared his throat, looking Bill up and down. Petty’s casual manner was studied.

“The — uh — case which provided for your original detention—”

“What case?” Bill asked.

“The kidnapping.”

“Oh.”

“By order of the court you were remanded, under a psychiatric provision, to the Goodland Sanitarium. Now, the theory of such placement is not punishment, but to make the person well enough to stand trial.”

“Trial?” Janice blurted.

“Or whatever action the court deems, in its wisdom, to undertake.”

Harold Yates held up a beefy hand for silence. “That’s the formal scenario. A trial is most unlikely.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No previous arrests or convictions. The death of an only daughter. The peculiar nature of the trial which preceded her tragic death. Its bizarre publicity. The marital difficulties, incarceration at the Eilenberg Clinic — you see, Bill acted in extremis. He’s not an extortionist, or sexually driven.”

Bill stared back at the two men.

“So what are you saying?” he demanded. “A whole task force came down just to tell me there’s nothing to worry about?”

Petty cleared his throat. “There will be some formalities, affidavits, interviews.”

“But Bill won’t have to appear in court?” Janice asked anxiously.

Harold Yates shrugged. “Offhand, Janice, I’d say there is a ten percent chance he’ll see the inside of a courtroom. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the State quashed the whole thing.”

Embarrassed, Petty squirmed in his seat. “Well, I can’t speak for the District Attorney. He’s funny. Blows hot and cold. But I’ve seen him throw out better cases. I mean, stronger cases than this one.”

“There? You see?” Harold insisted. “Straight from the horse’s mouth.”

For half an hour the lawyer and Petty detailed the material, spelling out the probable steps. Most of it was procedural, explained slowly and carefully to Bill. Exhausted by the meeting, Bill politely shook their hands, thanked them for coming, and went to the door.

“Does the cook make birthday cakes?” he asked.

“What?” Dr. Geddes said. “Oh. Yes, of course. Tell her it’s for me.”

“Right. Merry Christmas, gentlemen.”

Only Dr. Geddes caught the fact that Bill only nodded dutifully at Janice before he left.

Harold Yates left with Charles Petty. Dr. Geddes escorted Janice to the door. The noises of the hospital were muted, as though the snow outside absorbed sound, or sealed them from the outer world. Something made Janice pause as she saw the Christmas ornaments stretched over the lobby, leading to the cafeteria.

“What did he say about a birthday party?” Janice asked.

“Oh,” Dr. Geddes said, smiling, “for Jennie. In early February. She’ll certainly be well by then.”

“Yes, of course,” Janice said lightly, but a palpable shiver went up her spine. A birthday party? For Jennie. Who, to Bill, was Ivy.

Janice left, crossed through the deep snow of the parking lot, and found a taxi waiting. When she arrived at Des Artistes she saw that Christmas decorations had been strung along the lobby there too. In the apartment, Jennie slept by the small window in Ivy’s room. Janice paid the baby-sitter. After ten minutes she telephoned Pittsburgh.

“Elliot, he’s going to give a birthday party for Jennie!”

“What about it? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I just sense that everything’s about to explode. They’re going to bring Bill into court.”

“What?”

“Because of the kidnapping. They say it’s a formality, but—”

“Then he really is better. They don’t try sick men.”

“Elliot, you don’t understand. The media; they’d love to roast us a second time.”

“Pay them no attention. I never did.”

“They’ll drag up everything. They’ll find out about us.”

There was a long pause. Janice heard him sigh after a while.

“I see,” he said.

Janice waited, but he said nothing more. “I miss you,” she said simply.

“If you knew how I miss you.”

They spoke generalities, pleasant hopes for the future, but it did not stall the gnawing doubts within. They did not want to hang up. It was like being together, only more ethereal. When Janice cradled the telephone, a pleasant lassitude came over her. Talking with Elliot Hoover usually did that. She relaxed on the couch, nearly asleep, and it seemed that nothing on earth could disturb the deep pleasure of listening to the city move and breathe far away in the early evening.

But in Pittsburgh, Elliot Hoover could not sleep. He stared at the vermilion icons lost in the gloom of the bedroom, and he listened to the silence where Jennie had once slept in the adjacent room. It had been thirteen days since he had prayed. Something inside him had altered, frozen to stone.

Bill was right. He had not stood firm. He was corrupted. Utterly lost.

Hoover’s fingers went cold. He was divided now and he knew it. It brought upon him a peculiar fear of spiritual death. He was chained again, in the great cycle of being, in the passions of those who love and fear to lose. It made the night cold, even horrifying. The frost sparkled against the window glass, and the pane rattled in the bitter wind.

Woman made the life energy concentrate upon the body. And the body was the cage of the soul. Yet Hoover knew, staring into the cold night, lying naked on top of the bedcovers, that he was capable of preferring the unholy prison of earthly love to anything.

There were prayers, soft and insistent, but high in the sanitarium in New York. Bill was one with the night, its cold, its inhuman stars. He cherished the winds that battered the windows, for they were harbingers of liberty. He was disciplined now, enough to wait; only he did not want to wait beyond February.

“February,” he whispered.

February was the darkest month. It was the month the winter sucked children into its craw. February had been the end of the trail, he reflected. The month Ivy Templeton had stopped breathing. The month all her fibers, bone marrow, and flesh had turned to ash and smoke. But the darkness gave birth once again. He looked out the window. The frost against the darkness pleased him. The crystalline structure of universal forms, producing white perfection. Beyond, small lights glittered on the sound. Whether a bridge or ship he did not know. The vastness of night pleased him. It was another form of perfection, another harbinger of the greater liberty.

Far away the hospital staff made preparations for Christmas and New Year’s. Bill lay back on the bed, arms under his head, and smiled. The earth as it moved dragged along the accumulated karma of its billions of living beings. It impregnated the cosmos with sorrow. None but the very few dreamt of liberation as he did.

“February,” he murmured, like a prayer.

Soon it would be February again, as it had been before, and it would signal his time to reenter the world of the living… with Ivy.