For Love of Audrey Rose (42 page)

Hoover stirred uncomfortably. “No, I’ve never looked too closely at them.”

Bill laughed again, softly but with an edge of malice. “For starters, there’s too much light here. You need darkness. The darkness, say, of a cave.”

“You could pull the curtains.”

“And skullbowls full of red blood. Rancid butter. Decomposing dogs, goats, and wild bears along the walls.”

Hoover said nothing. Dr. Boltin looked at Dr. Geddes, who shrugged.

“The painted, vermilion gods on the black stone,” Bill continued. “Death in copulation with life. Skinless carcasses on pointed posts around the fire.”

“This kind of magic,” Hoover said with a superior smile, “is utterly fallible. It takes a lifetime of humility, prayer, and discipline to gain any real influence, and that only over the self.”

“No! That’s not true!” Bill insisted. “You can control reality.”

Dr. Boltin tried in vain to light a pipe. The red, round cheeks puffed and drew, but there was only a wet gurgle. “What are you talking about, Bill?” he snapped.

“I could show you better if my hands were freed.”

“That’s all right, Bill. Just tell us.”

Bill shook the hair from his forehead. As he spoke he grew pale, shivering as though an arctic wind roared into his soul. His eyes grew small and bright.

“You start with an effigy,” Bill said. “Rag doll, wood. You concentrate on it. On the nothingness of it. You identify with the nothingness. Then you write the holy syllable and you sew it in with red thread. You recite the mantra:
Om kurulle hrih! Vasam kuru hoh! Akarsaya hrih suaha!
”

The orderly jumped at the sudden wail of the mantra. Dr. Boltin stared, white with surprise.

“Jesus Christ!” he blurted.

“Of course,” Bill added, smiling, “you add in the name of your victim. You put your concentration into the effigy. The concentration on your victim. That’s what you sew up inside. You forget your senses, your imagination, until the vision of the victim comes. Do you understand? And then,
Jah hum bam hoh! Jah hum bam hoh!
over and over until you can’t breathe, until the walls swirl like a cloud of bees, and you summon, absorb, bind yourself, into the effigy! You cast off your ego! You grasp the ego of the victim!”

Dr. Boltin stared, transfixed. Dr. Geddes slowly, absently, dabbed at the perspiration at his neck.

“You start a fire,” Bill whispered. “The effigy melts! Slowly! Dripping slowly! You stamp on it, reciting! It takes hours. It seems like years. Until you have no more strength. Your hands are too tired to make the signs of revenge.”

Bill did not so much finish as wind down. Like a huge clock, unable to go on, he stared disconsolately at the two psychiatrists. Hoover mopped his forehead.

“Exactly what does this get you?” Dr. Boltin asked curiously.

“Power. I summoned Elliot Hoover.”

Bill smiled secretively, said nothing more. An ominous atmosphere built up in the stark chamber.

“These Tibetan rituals,” Hoover ventured. “They lead the laymen astray.”

“Nothing leads me astray, Hoover.”

“You don’t really believe all that, do you, Bill?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

Dr. Boltin, short of air, walked into the corridor. He found a water fountain, drank copiously, even splashed some onto his face. Vague arguments between Hoover and Bill reached him, all incomprehensible. Dr. Boltin looked at his watch, sighed, and went back inside.

“There is
no
duality!” Hoover shouted. “No subject! No object! It’s—it’s ridiculous! The
Atman!
The Absolute! Why, it’s
a-dvaita,
just like in the Vedas!”

“Bullshit!” Bill yelled back. “Even you have to concede that the essence of the subject—the
tat tvam asi
— never returns. Never!”

“Listen to reason, Bill,” Hoover insisted, poking him in the shoulder. “A liberated self cannot appear to itself! Isn’t that obvious?”

Dr. Boltin leaned over to Dr. Geddes.

“Have you been, uh, following any of this?” he asked.

“Not a word. But look at Bill. I’ve never seen him so articulate. He’s reasoning!”

“Are you sure this is reason?”

Elliot Hoover and Bill were both shouting now, a dialectic of polemics, each trying to crush the other, oblivious of the psychiatrists.

“Your illusions of individuality,” Hoover yelled, “are totally unfounded!”

“You live in a perverted dream, Hoover,” Bill sneered. “Without power, without development, you can achieve nothing. Nothing! The soul, I tell you, is a creator!”

The verbal flow rose and fell, a strange current of attack and counterattack that seemed to belong on the far side of the earth.

“They seem to be slowing down,” Dr. Geddes observed.

“It’s been almost an hour.”

Elliot Hoover had removed his coat and tie, and he vigorously mopped his throat through the unbuttoned shirt. Bill, exhausted, slumped on the edge of the iron bed.

“Well?” Dr. Boltin demanded, irritated. “What’s the verdict?”

Hoover looked up wearily. Slowly he rolled down his shirt sleeves and buttoned them again. His face betrayed an agony of weariness, even a kind of fear, no triumph at all, only a sensation of having survived something terrible.

“He’s willing to meet the child,” Hoover said quietly.

Bill groaned softly.

“If she—is—Ivy,” he murmured, “her soul—will— speak—to me.”

25

T
he orderlies unlocked the door. Inside, Bill suddenly looked up, saw Dr. Geddes put a restraining arm in front of Hoover.

“I want Mrs. Templeton to take Jennie in. Just the two of them.”

Hoover nodded. Janice quickly smoothed down Jennie’s hair. Janice felt she was on the threshold of something worse than an asylum room: it was the threshold of the last chance they would ever have. She nervously straightened Jennie’s red jumper and stared into the quiet, lovely, mysterious face.

“Don’t be frightened, Janice,” Hoover whispered. “Have faith.”

Janice smiled, pressed his hand, and then cautiously led Jennie into Bill’s room.

The door closed behind her. Jennie shuffled her feet. Bill looked absently at Janice. Then slowly he focused on the child. Curious, nothing more.

“This is Jennie, Bill,” Janice said softly.

Bill observed the red jumper, the new sneakers. The black hair surprised him. He softened when he realized how frail she was, how slender her limbs really were. But he said nothing.

“Jennie,” Janice said. “Jennie doesn’t talk.”

“I know. They told me.”

Jennie let go of Janice’s fingers. A complicity of awkwardness and silence surrounded the girl. She walked in her mincing, teetering steps, across the tile floor, away from Bill.

Jennie looked down at her sneakers. A loose shoelace obsessed her. She bent down, completely absorbed in the mystery of the string. Her tiny fingers smoothed it, her foot jerked away with it. Then she broke away from it and walked against one of the orderlies, taking no more notice of him than if he had been made of stone.

Bill’s eyes followed her in growing curiosity.

As she walked to the edge of his desk something bothered her. Slowly her head turned in the direction of Bill. He was staring at her with an intensity she did not like. She ran her fingers through her hair, violently shook her head, and slumped down to play dead.

The orderlies looked at each other. One felt impelled to rescue the girl, but the other gestured for him to remain at his post. Janice watched Jennie roll over slowly, then look back to see if Bill was still watching.

For a stony eternity their eyes locked. Again Jennie shook her head as though a swarm of bees attacked her. She grew still, then rose and stood in the center of the room. Her arms moved ritualistically at her sides, pumping up and down, then froze. She stared at Bill’s right arm.

Slowly Bill’s right hand opened, beckoned her closer.

Jennie, startled, looked back at the man’s face. An almost deranged intensity poured out of her small eyes. She was frightened, rooted to the spot.

Bill licked his lips.

“Ivy…” he whispered.

Jennie suddenly tilted her head, looking at the ceiling, tossed her arms over her head, and stomped noisily around the room. She marched like an insane drum majorette, over the toes of the second orderly, then stopped in front of Janice, oblivious to Bill.

“Ivy!” Bill called desperately, in vain.

A horrific chill swept through Janice, and she turned, looking for Hoover beyond the orderlies at the opened door.

Jennie shook her limbs in a mindless parody of an African dance, then paused and quietly surveyed the room as though she had never seen it.

“Ivy!” Bill whispered urgently.

A strange look appeared on Jennie’s face. Her eyes locked with Bill’s face, now streaming with tears.

“Ivy…” he said, barely audible, the final whisper of his tortured need.

Janice remained rooted to the floor as the girl’s smile grew softer, a steady signal of muted love, and legs carried her without awkwardness, carried her toward Bill. Like a soft fawn she fell forward, gently onto his chest, and his cheek, glistening wet, pressed down on her hair.

“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.