Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

“What happened to me anyway?” she cried in a delirium of anguish. “What made me do such a thing?”

“It was an accident, baby,” Bill said in a soft, relaxing voice.

“No, Daddy, I did it on purpose. They say I walked into the fire, and I don’t remember anything about it.”

Bill’s expression tightened. “Who says you did that?”

Ivy’s eyes sought the stately black-cloaked form standing at the foot of the bed. “Mother did,” she said, weeping.

Bill ran a finger between his neck and his shirt collar.

“She’s wrong,” he said, then turned a hard, brutal face on Mother Veronica Joseph. “What do you build fires for anyway?” he rasped. “What kind of business is that in a convent? We send our children to you for peace and protection, and you build fires.”

In receipt of Bill’s anger, Mother Veronica Joseph made no reply. Silence quivered in the room until the old nun, her lips a thin, grim line, forced herself to speak.

“I’ll wait outside,” she said quietly, clutching her beads, and left.

Dr. Webster coughed and in a hushed voice conferred with the nurse who was in the room, attentive and constant, yet so unobtrusive as to have escaped Janice’s notice.

“What’s happening to me anyway?” Ivy repeated in a continuing moaning lament. “What’s happening to me?”

Janice considered the question—a question unanswerable to all but herself—and one other person. There was never a doubt in her mind about who had been behind this murderous escapade, as there now was no doubt about Audrey Rose’s ultimate intentions. As Elliot Hoover had warned, “She will keep pushing Ivy back to the source of the problem; she’ll be trying to get back to that moment and will be leading Ivy into dangers as tormenting and destructive as the fire that took her life.…” Yes, Audrey Rose clearly had no compunction about showing her hand and would continue to have none. The consideration of how easily they could lose Ivy made her shudder. “Audrey will continue to abuse Ivy’s body until her soul is set free.…” There was nothing to hold her, nothing to make her even hesitate. Unless—

Janice sat stunned by her own thought. Sitting erect, almost wooden, listening to the soft and mending sounds of Bill’s voice gradually restore and calm their fear-stricken child, she gravely hesitated to pursue the thought, knowing with certainty that there could be only one possible result from such an act. Had the answer come to her too quickly? It was, in its way, a bizarre and capricious answer; still, it blazed in her head, for it seemed the only right answer. Tread lightly, a voice within her warned. Consider deeply. The next moves are fraught with peril. The decisions of the next twelve hours could blow up your world.

They didn’t leave the hospital till nine fifteen. Neither was surprised to find that Mother Veronica Joseph had not waited. They encountered Dr. Webster in the reception lounge, chatting intimately with an elderly patient in a wheelchair.

Upon seeing the Templetons, he excused himself and joined them at the door. He reiterated his confidence that Ivy would be fine and would probably be discharged by the weekend. Janice asked if Nurse Baylor might be told to stay with Ivy through the night.

“She’s off duty at twelve,” the doctor said.

“Isn’t there someone who replaces her?” Janice asked.

“Just the floor nurse, but there’s nothing to be concerned about, her TV monitor covers each room.”

Janice frowned. “Can’t you get someone to stay with her?”

Bill flashed her a quick look, then turned to the doctor.

“Yes,” he agreed. “We’d be willing to pay for a private nurse, of course.”

Dr. Webster thought a moment. There was an urgency in the request he felt he couldn’t ignore.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he finally said.

Outside, the snow had stopped and only a misty drizzle fell. Bill drove south on the Boston Post Road in search of a restaurant that wasn’t crowded and found one with a few cars parked in front, just south of Stanford.

The dining room was nearly empty. A waiter led the way to a table against the wall, apart from the ones that were occupied. Drinks were brought them, after which they ordered and consumed an unusually large dinner.

They did not talk until the steak plates were removed and their drinks refilled. And then it was Bill who did the talking, not Janice. The things he said were pleasantly irrelevant, taxing neither her mind nor her emotions, which were deeply embedded in her own private turmoil. She was grateful for Bill’s unwillingness to discuss the subject uppermost in both their minds. His attack on Mother Veronica Joseph had left no doubt about his feelings on the matter and was clearly intended as a warning to Janice as well.

To Bill, it was an accident. Nothing more. To suggest anything different would only fan the flames of his anger, unleash the full torrent of his scorn and ridicule. No useful purpose could be served in confiding her thoughts and feelings to Bill. Not now or ever. Her fears for Ivy’s safety—for her life—would be her own private business.

She deliberately put from her mind all thoughts of Bill and, against the backdrop of his innocuous ramblings, plunged into the total consideration of the decision she must make before morning.

He noticed her absence and said harshly, “Where the hell are you anyway?”

His comment startled her. “What?”

“Up flittin’ about with the spooks and goblins?”

There was an ugly twist to his grin. He drained his glass and ordered another. Janice’s failure to answer further intrigued him.

“I suppose you agree with Reverend Mother?” And without waiting for her reply, added: “Well, it doesn’t matter who you agree with or what you think. Hoover’s had it. That little display in the courtroom this afternoon was their full salvo, and it didn’t mean a goddamn thing. Velie said they’ve run out of witnesses. They’ve no place to go but us.” He chuckled with grim pleasure. “Nobody left but us chickens. Unless they decide to put on Hoover or fly in some other goony bird from Timbuktu.” This idea made him laugh. “Gunga Din,” he said, rounding out the thought. His drink came. He drank it while he settled the bill.

Nothing more was said until the drive south on the Merritt Parkway. It was a cold ride since the car heater was faulty, a fact which had a decidedly sobering effect on Bill.

As they approached the Henry Hudson Parkway, he said without rancor, “We should do something for Mr. Calitri—to show our appreciation. A nice gift or a check.”

Janice agreed.

Later, walking home from the Hertz garage, the two of them bent into the chill January wind which bore against them, he shouted to her, “I’d ask Harold Yates to look into a possible lawsuit for incompetence or negligence, but how the fuck do you sue the Catholic Church?”

It was near midnight when they entered the apartment.

Bill took a cold beer out of the refrigerator and poured himself a double bourbon. He seemed distant and sulky again and carried the drinks unsteadily to the staircase, where he paused. After some trouble balancing his nightcap, he managed to flick on the light switch with his elbow, illuminating the upstairs hallway. Before ascending, he stepped aside to allow Janice to precede him.

“Coming to bed?”

Janice said cautiously, “In a while.”

He nodded sagely and with infinite wisdom. “Good night,” he said, and raised his shot glass in a toast. “Pleasant dreams.”

His scorn of her fears, which he had easily fathomed, was definitive, as was his amusement at her cowardice in expressing them.

Janice watched him ascend the stairs with a dazed stillness—not for his taunting ridicule of her, but for the barrier he had erected between them which now separated them irrevocably.