Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

“Come.” Janice spoke the word with all the heat and force of a rebuke.

Ivy quietly gathered up her books and outer garments and followed Janice into the waiting elevator. Ernie, the relief elevator operator, gave Janice’s soaked, mud-spattered garments a fleeting once-over as they rode up in silence. Ivy cast nervous, surreptitious glances up at her mother, knowing full well the cause of her anger and dreading the moment of confrontation which was only three floors away.

“I waited till three twenty-five, Mom,” Ivy said the moment they were alone in the ninth-floor corridor, keeping her voice at a soft, ingenuous level, striving to crack the armor of her mother’s hostility. “I didn’t know what time you’d be there, so I walked home. A man helped me cross the streets,” she added proudly, innocently.

Janice opened the door of the apartment and, grasping Ivy’s arm, ushered her across the threshold with a sharp tug. After slamming the door shut, Janice spun the frightened child around to her own lowered face and shouted, “You do not leave without me! You do not go with a strange man! You sit in the office and wait! And wait! And wait! And wait!. Do you understand me? ” Janice was screaming and shaking the sobbing child with all the force she could muster.

“Yes, yes!” shrieked Ivy. “Mom, you’re hurting me!”

Janice quickly let go of Ivy’s arms and took a step back, appalled by her own cruelty, as she saw red welts begin to form on the delicate white of her beautiful daughter’s skin. Oh, dear God, she thought in utter anguish. I am truly going mad.

“Go upstairs, please,” she told Ivy in a small, stunned voice.

Choking, racking, tormented sobs assaulted Janice’s ears as the child dashed down the narrow hallway and rounded the bend of the living room, the sobs gradually fading as they followed the route of her escape up the staircase and into her bedroom, where they lingered distantly.

“Oh, God. Oh, God,” Janice mumbled again and again as she staggered into the living room and fell crying across the sofa, vaguely aware of the soggy, muddy garments staining the black silk upholstery, and not giving a damn, letting it all pour out over the expensive Schumacher fabric, all the pent-up feelings, the hidden fears, panics, hurts, horrors of the past three days—Dear God, has it only been three days?

The telephone rang.

Janice’s first reaction was to let it ring. But then the knowledge that their bedroom extension was susceptible to Ivy’s curiosity forced her to pull herself, sobbing across the sofa, to pick up the receiver.

“Janice?” It was Bill’s voice. “Darlene says you called before. What’s up?”

Bill’s steady, assured voice finally broke the dam.

“Oh, God, Bill!” Janice cried, unleashing the full torrent of hysteria. “Oh, God, come home!”

“Leaving now,” Bill said crisply and hung up.

Somehow Bill made all the right connections and arrived home in less than ten minutes. After quickly surveying the wreckage and spot-checking its seriousness, he immediately commenced to put his house back into order. He drew two steaming bubble baths and put both his women into them to soak. He divided himself between the two bathrooms, allowing each equal time to sob out her story to him.

From Janice, he learned the incredible details of each grisly experience that had befallen her upon leaving him outside Rattazzi’s, with special emphasis on her encounter with the man, recalling every word he said to her, including intonation, inflection, and possible intent behind each sentence.

“What time did he say he’d call?” Bill asked.

“He didn’t give a time; he simply said tonight.”

“He told you he took Ivy home?”

“No, she told me that. He said that she was in the lobby, waiting for me, and that she was all right.”

Bill hesitated, then asked, “You’re sure it was the man? I mean, mustache, sideburns?”

“For God’s sake, Bill,” Janice shouted.

“Okay, okay,” Bill placated. “I suppose it had to be him.”

“Well, I didn’t see him. I didn’t look at him or acknowledge him in any way. I thought you’d be pleased by the way I handled it.”

Bill placed a comforting hand on her soapy shoulder and grinned. “You did great, Janice, just great.” Then, soberly, “I want you to know that I’ve had it with him. I’m through playing games.”

Bill found Ivy even more overwrought than Janice. She had never seen her mother behave like that; she was absolutely freaky, shaking her and shaking her till she almost vomited. And for what? All the girls her age walk home from school alone. “Bettina’s been doing it since she was nine! What’s so special about me?”

“You’re our beautiful child,” soothed Bill, holding her wet hand. “That’s what’s so special about you. We love you and want to protect you.”

“Protect me against what?”

“Against lots of things that happen each day in this city, Ivy. So far we’ve been lucky; they’ve happened to other people. People who are willing to take risks, take chances with their children. We’re not willing to do that.”

The warm bath, Bill’s tender touch and mollifying tone gradually eased Ivy’s tensions and gently guided her back toward understanding and forgiveness.

“Well, it’s really the first time I ever did a thing like that. And I wouldn’t have if that man hadn’t offered to help me cross the streets.”

“Tell me about the man, Ivy,” Bill asked in a disarming voice. “Did you ever see him before?”

“Sure. He waits in front of the school every afternoon.” Ivy looked up at Bill suddenly. “You must have seen him; he’s there in the mornings, too.”

“Oh, yes—mustache, sideburns?”

Ivy nodded. “He was really very nice. He walked me to Sixty-seventh Street and waited till I crossed.”

“Did he say anything? I mean, did you talk at all?”

“Nothing special. It was starting to snow again, and he said he liked winters better than summers. I said I like them better, too. Then he said that his daughter liked winters better, too. Things like that.”

“Did he ask any questions about me or Mother?”

“No.” Ivy studied Bill with a look of suspicion. “Do you know him, Dad?”

“No, dear, we don’t know him.”

“That’s funny—”

“What is?”

“I felt as if he knew us. Or at least he knew me.”

After their baths, relaxed and warm in the king-sized bed, with the electric blanket turned to “Hi,” mother and daughter were left to repair their shattered relationship while Bill went down to the kitchen to fix dinner.

When he returned, carrying a huge tray filled with thinly sliced roast beef sandwiches with the crusts removed, a pot of steaming beans, two kinds of pie, and milk, he found Janice and Ivy bundled together in a warm embrace, playing Actors and Actresses.

Bill spread a tablecloth across the coverlet, and they ate their picnic dinner on the bed. By seven thirty, when the call came, love and togetherness were firmly reestablished.

Ivy snatched up the phone from the bedside table on the first ring.

“Yes?” A short pause, then: “It’s for you, Dad.”

Bill signaled Janice to take the receiver, then hurried out of the room to take the call on the downstairs extension. Janice kept the phone at her ear, but covered the mouthpiece with her hand. In a moment Bill’s voice came on the other end.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Templeton?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Elliot Hoover.”

“Yes.”

“I think we should talk.”

“All right.”

“May I come to your home?”

“No. How about my office tomorrow morning?”