Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

“I tried to remove the guilt with many applications of gin and vermouth, but it didn’t work—the glow grew, my head hurt, but the pricky feeling remained. I tell you, it was pure agony, but there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. Until, somewhere over Kansas, I happened to look down and saw the nation going by, forty thousand feet below me, and I started to focus on life and all its problems from that vantage point, watching cities, plains, mountains, the Rockies, the miracle of America going by from sea to shining sea—and me, encased in another miracle, a massive hunk of steel hurtling through space at the speed of sound. And it suddenly dawned on me that these were the miracles that really meant something—not Hoover’s miracles, but the miracles that living men made: taming lands, building incredible machines. These were the real miracles!

“And then I began to get the glimmerings of an answer. It was raining at this point, you see—we were in the clouds and rain was streaking against the window—and I said to myself, ‘Into each life a little rain must fall.’ A helluva cliché, but that was the answer. Hoover was the rain in our lives, like heart trouble or cancer, and thinking of him in this way, as a disease, he became less ominous and more manageable. I mean, you take cancer to a doctor, and if he can’t help, you go to another doctor and then to a specialist, and you keep on fighting and fighting to the bitter end … you don’t give up. Same with Hoover … you take him to a lawyer, and if that doesn’t help, you go to the police and ultimately to court, and quite possibly that may fail too, but you don’t give up—you don’t cut and run, you don’t hand in your ticket, give up your job, your home.… You don’t break up your family, Janice—you stick it out together and fight with guns, rocks, clubs, anything that comes to hand in order to keep what you’ve got and love. If all else fails, we’ve got to be the minutemen: you, me, Ivy, together as a family. And as long as we remain as a family, we’ve got a chance to beat this son of a bitch.…”

“… of a bitch, a bitch, itch …”

His voice came to a discordant halt, sending the final word echoing across the expanse of water like a rock skimming its surface. In the silence that followed, the soft wave sounds reestablished themselves. Janice stood motionless, letting the gentle noise wash over her boggled, benumbed brain. He wouldn’t understand, couldn’t understand, and she suddenly felt too weary to care any longer whether he did or not.

“So forget about boarding schools for Ivy. Tomorrow morning we’re going to return to our home. As a family .”

The words were uttered softly, but with Biblical obstinacy and determination, closing off all channels of discussion.

So be it.

“All right,” Janice said.

They returned to the city in the late afternoon of November 13, a Wednesday.

Janice’s eyes quickly scanned the solitary, shadowy parts of the street as the car pulled up in front of Des Artistes.

Bill, she noticed, did the same, though less obviously.

There was no sign of Hoover.

Janice watched Ivy kick listlessly at the curbside drift of blackened snow as Mario and Ernie helped Bill carry the suitcases into the lobby. There was a swiftness to Bill’s movements that betrayed his anxiety to get off the street as quickly as possible.

“Better get her inside,” he told Janice, and climbed into the car to return it to the Hertz people.

Janice complied.

The bottle of scotch was where she had left it, open and half consumed on the sewing table next to the rocker. The cork was nowhere in sight.

The entire living room seemed slightly tipsy, furniture, draperies, pillows, askew or out of place—victims of the nightmare.

Janice restored order while Ivy watched TV.

Upstairs, the basin of water was on the bedroom floor, a sediment of brownish grit formed on the bottom. Janice thought of Hoover’s hands washing her legs as she emptied the soiled water into the toilet and rinsed the basin clean.

Ivy’s room was at the epicenter of the cyclone—furniture upended, blankets and bedsheets coiled together in twisted, knotted balls, the Chinese screen, still at a slight angle, covering the window, the subtle motif of the center panel torn and mutilated beyond recognition.

Janice spent the better part of an hour returning the room to its normal state, but could do nothing with the screen since it was stuck solidly behind the radiator. She and Bill together finally pried it loose and carted it back to their bedroom.

Upon first seeing the screen, Bill had asked her what the hell had happened. She told him. His face blanched.

They ate sandwiches from the Stage Delicatessen (Bill had picked them up on his way back from the car rental), along with beer and milk. As they were finishing their meal, the house telephone rang.

Bill calmly ate the last of his sandwich before rising to answer it. His composure was too calculated to pass for indifference.

Russ. Mario had told him they were back. Did they need anything? Carole had baked a large lasagna and they were welcome. Bill thanked Russ and told him they had just finished dinner and were making an early night of it as they were all beat.

Which was partially true, Janice thought worriedly, observing Ivy’s heavy-lidded eyes and drawn, pale face—she seemed ready to flake out at the dinner table. Her milk glass was empty, but her sandwich had been hardly touched. Janice reminded herself to make an appointment with Dr. Kaplan in the morning. Unless, she bleakly reflected, we have need of him sooner.

The bath forgone, Janice tucked Ivy into bed just shy of eight o’clock, and almost immediately she fell asleep. She stayed with her child for a long time, listening to her soft, even breathing, before leaving the room and quietly closing the door.

She found Bill in their bedroom, lethargically unpacking his suitcase, lingering over the disposition of each item as though reluctant to complete the task. Janice snapped open her own suitcase. There was only one exchange between them.

“Is she asleep?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she whispered back.

They both continued to unpack in a silence that was charged with tension and expectancy.

They didn’t have long to wait.

Audrey Rose arrived at eight fifteen.

“Mommydaddy mommydaddy mommydaddy hothothothot—”

Bill snapped his finger at the telephone …

“Kaplan!”

… and dashed out of the room.

Janice dashed to the telephone. (teamwork)

—snatched it up and, the number burned in her brain, quickly dialed it from memory.…

“HOTHOTHOTHOTHOThothothot—”

Agony rose and fell as the bedroom door opened and closed.…

“Yes?” Kaplan, thank God!

“Doctor, it’s Janice Templeton, please come right away!”

“I’ll be right over.”

Janice stumbled forward into the hallway, zooming toward bedlam—

“Hothothothothotdaddydaddydaddy—”

—opened the bedroom door—

“HOTHOTHOTHOT—”

—saw Ivy, head thrown back, howling up at Bill, standing staunchly between her and the window, arms akimbo, legs outstretched, the Colossus of Rhodes, the human barrier to her ravening need—

“HOTHOTHOTHOT—”

—bandaged fists flailing and pelting him, ripping at shirt and trousers with a strength that brought beads of sweat popping to his face—

“Kaplan’s coming!” Janice encouraged.

“HOTHOTHOTHOTHOT—”

—Ivy’s face a raging mask of fear and anguish, fists pummeling Bill with maniacal force and accuracy; thudding impacts collecting him in sensitive regions of belly and groin, causing him to wince in pain and seize the thin arms to stay the vicious hammerblows—