For Love of Audrey Rose (7 page)

“Come, come. We haven’t got all day.”

Janice panicked. She regained her composure but had to confess a most embarrassing truth.

“Miss Romine,” she whispered, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I was so nervous about the job, I didn’t think about it.”

Elaine stared at her, then burst out laughing, a sweet, musical laughter. She wiped her lips with a white napkin, looked at Janice, and started to laugh again.

“I’ll have to remember that,” Elaine said, her eyes twinkling. “Look. I’ll pay you five hundred dollars for the project. It’ll give you experience in knowing how to judge time if you ever get asked again.”

“All right. That sounds fair.”

“You should go to Quadrangle Art Supply House down the street, and tell Ralph—he’s the one with the earring— that you’re working for me. He’ll start you out with a few basic brushes and things. I want you to begin with clean tools.”

Janice had the sinking feeling that Ralph with the earring was about to stick her with a pretty fair-sized supply of expensive tools.

Elaine studied Janice with a different kind of eye.

“Would you like to be called Janice or Mrs. Templeton?”

“Janice, please.”

“Fine. I think things will work out well. You’re used to a little pressure?”

“Oh, certainly. Yes, of course.”

Elaine smiled. Her manner had none of the brittleness Janice had expected. There was nothing arch or aloof about Elaine Romine. She was direct and friendly, just frighteningly self-confident. She must be a genius, Janice thought.

“One more thing,” Elaine said.

“Yes?”

“My female employees do not make coffee for the male employees, get their mail, or laugh at their stupid jokes. None of that garbage around here. If anybody makes an uninvited pass at you, kick him in the teeth.”

Janice laughed and promised she would.

“I like men,” Elaine said, “but it’s a woman’s world on this floor. It’s that way because I prefer it. I want my staff to have boldness and integrity, and to make beautiful design.”

Janice nodded.

“So respect yourself, work hard, and you’ll learn a lot.”

“I will. And thank you. I’m very grateful.”

“Nonsense. Your work is competent. I didn’t hire you out of charity.”

On the way home Janice wanted to shout for joy. Instead, testing out her new station in life, she strolled down Lexington Avenue with her portfolio under her arm. She now had a place, at least for a while, in this mad whirl of New York. In a kind of daze, she wandered past the expensive shops, critically examining her wardrobe reflected in the windows, and she decided that Elaine was the most remarkable woman she had ever met.

With her first paycheck, she bought Bill an electric wrist watch, the kind that he had long admired. Dr. Geddes assured her that there were small signs—improved muscle tone, improved responses to being touched. Bill distinguished between friendly and neutral faces. To Janice, it seemed like no change at all. Bill was a man without a personality.

Janice worked long hours to make up for her lack of experience. It probably averaged out to less than the minimum wage. But on the last night of her first project, at 1:30 in the morning, with the floor littered with scraps of paper, and her fingers black with ink, she knew that she had passed the test. Elaine asked her to stay for a second project.

Now, with the first few months out of the way, there was a little time. Time to observe the energy and direction of Elaine’s changing creations. She was working on midwinter designs, and the pressure on her was intense.

Elaine was not married, and her views on men were not what Janice would have called conventional. For the first time, she felt a twinge of jealousy at Elaine’s free-wheeling ease with more than one male friend at a time, for her own evenings were long and lonely. She was often too tired to go out to a movie, and reading—mainly popular fiction— began to wear thin. Sometimes loneliness just mounted up. But for an occasional dinner with the Federicos, or a call from Dr. Geddes, her life was one long siege of ennui.

One particular evening, Dr. Geddes called with a bit of good news for a change.

“Bill is responding to words,” he chortled over the telephone.

“Really? Why, that’s marvelous.”

“Some words, anyway. Even a concept or two. Of course, it’s all still rudimentary. But quite frankly I’m very pleased.”

Janice heard his pleasant laughter on the other end of the line.

“Should I do anything different?” she asked. “Should I bring anything?”

“No, just come at the usual time,” he said. “I just wanted to share the good news with you.”

“I can’t tell you how pleased I am to hear this, Dr. Geddes.”

“We both could use some encouragement,” he chuckled musically. “It’s going to be a long haul, but there are signs. Damned good signs.”

After she put down the receiver, Janice felt peculiarly light-headed. Could it be that things were going to return to normal? At least, as normal as Des Artistes could be without Ivy. A new reality would be formed, around the two of them. Bill would return to work—if not at Simmons, then somewhere else. Maybe in time there could even be another child. As she looked around the apartment, a bit of the old magic, that happy combination of light, space, and sheer exuberance overflowed once again, filling the walls, and the ceilings danced as they had danced years before, with secretive lovers among the flower-draped arbors.

The summer was over, and the autumn had come with changes. But changes were not to be feared. They were to be welcomed. They were to be welcomed because they meant the end of fear, and the end of that sucking darkness, and together she and Bill would start again, sad but deeper, ever deeper in love, and cognizant of its most profound responsibilities.

4

A
utumn came as an azure tribute to the fading summer, the deep blue sky warm and endless over the Eilenberg clinic. The low, cream-colored walls of the institution were dappled by the moving shadows of low-bending oak trees.

Janice was long familiar with the grounds. She nodded briefly to a nurse as she made her way to the clinic gardens. Bees still hovered around the faded flowers but there was a sensation of aridity, even sterility, and the dust rose upward, chalk white, as she walked into the garden.

Bill sat on an iron bench, a book on his lap. He had lost weight. His white shirt fluttered in the breeze. He was still very pale, and his red bedroom slippers looked like symbols of illness against the white dusty path. He looked up as he sensed her coming. As always, the direct contact of his eyes made her uneasy. He had become someone else, a broken-hearted, altered image of the man she had known and loved.

He smiled. The lips quivered.

“Hello, Bill,” Janice said gently, and kissed him on the forehead.

She sat down next to him and looked at the book in his lap. The type was small and she could not make out the words. It looked like stanzas of poetry. Bill fidgeted with the pages, as though he were very nervous.

“I feel much better,” he said, his voice husky. “But sometimes I get dizzy.”

Janice put her hand on his and smiled. She was gratified that he did not withdraw it.

“Oh, Bill,” she whispered. “It’s so wonderful to hear your voice!”

Bill’s hands trembled, like an old man’s. Janice wondered what powerful emotions surged through the thin frame. He looked up at the oak trees beyond the pink gravel driveway.

“Birds,” he said gruffly. “Like music.”

“Yes, Bill, I can hear them; oh, my, but it’s good to hear you speak.”

Suddenly embarrassed, he stood awkwardly, grasping his book. He looked as though he did not know whether to sit down or to walk down the garden path. Janice looked at the cover.

“John Keats,” she marveled. “Why, Bill, you never read poetry.”

Bill smiled. He had lost so much weight that his cheekbones were unnaturally prominent.

“Dr. Geddes makes me read,” he said hesitantly. “It feels good to read about some things.”

“Yes. Read to me, Bill. Let me hear your voice some more.”

Awkward, Bill licked his lips, and read:

“We are such forest trees that our fair boughs Have bred forth, not pale solitary doves But eagles golden-feathered, who do tower Above us in their beauty….”

Overcome, Bill closed the book, but kept his finger in it to mark the place.

“We did give birth to an eagle,” he said slowly. “You and I. Ivy was the most beautiful, the most courageous…”

He stopped. She tried to brush away the moisture from his eyes, but he pushed her hand aside. They rose, walked in silence, into the bright heat of the afternoon.

Janice felt his gait grow confused, like an old man’s. She led him as quickly as she could toward the entrance to the garden and signaled to a passing nurse. The nurse came quickly, put Bill’s left arm over her own shoulder, and assisted him to a bench in the shade of the clinic roof.

“I don’t know what happened,” Janice said, suddenly frightened. “All of a sudden, his knees began buckling.”

“He’s still in a kind of postshock syndrome,” the nurse said matter-of-factly. “Conversation actually takes a lot out of him.”

They set Bill down in front of the window to the lobby. He apologized weakly, coughed once, then blew his nose into a clean handkerchief. Janice suddenly realized that he looked like an old man, too.

“It’s quite normal,” the nurse assured her. “Every day he gains a bit more strength.”

“Right now I couldn’t lift a finger,” Bill whispered hoarsely. “Christ, I feel all sucked out.”

Janice sat down next to him. “Don’t speak, darling,” she said gently. “Would you like me to read to you?”

He nodded, then closed his eyes, settling his head against the window behind him. The nurse, who had picked up the book from the driveway, handed it to her. Janice nodded her thanks, then opened up to a well-worn passage:

“Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal—yet do not grieve.”

Janice looked up at a strange sound. Bill’s lips were moving, and in a feathery whisper he completed the stanza with deep sorrow, tinged with a delicacy she had never seen in him before.

“She cannot fade,” Bill whispered, “though thou hast not thy bliss; Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”

Bill sighed deeply. The nurse and Janice watched him, for he smiled without opening his eyes.

“Do you believe that, Janice?” he asked softly. “That Ivy will be forever loved, and forever beautiful? I do. I’ll never forget the color of her eyes… the way she ran… never…”

“Nor I, Bill,” Janice whispered, leaning closer, squeezing his heavy hand.

Bill fell into a light sleep. When he awoke later, with an embarrassed jerk, he had no memory of reading poetry in the garden. Instead, he, Janice, and Dr. Geddes discussed the terms of his leaving the clinic. Tentatively, they arrived at a figure of about six weeks.

Privately, Dr. Geddes reminded Janice not to nurture false hopes. Bill was infinitely better, but only in spurts. He still needed time to grow a solid foundation for his thoughts.

“By the way,” Janice said, as she was leaving, “Bill said you encourage him to read poetry. Is that true? He asked me to bring him some.”

“Yes, a very good idea,” Dr. Geddes said. “Nothing explicit. Nothing violent. But the subject of death is all right. Lovely thoughts about it. Bit by bit, Bill is coming to terms with his emotions, releasing them, diffusing them.”

“Anything in particular?”

“A little of everything. The more variety, the better.”

Janice returned home on the 5:25 evening train. It was already twilight, though unseasonably warm. She stopped at the library, and without thinking much about what she was picking up, collected a small armful of verse that dealt in elegies, dramas of Shakespeare, and even farces translated from French. Anything that would stimulate Bill’s mind, so long fallow and destitute. Exhausted, she dropped the books in a heap on the couch at home and sat staring at her watercolor layouts.

“She cannot fade,” Janice quoted dreamily, remembering Bill, “though thou hast not her bliss, Forever wilt thou love, Bill, and Ivy be fair!”

She rose, suddenly remembering she had one book left from months ago, from Hoover. She found it in her desk drawer. It was the Bhagavad Gita, a slim blue volume, published in London in 1796. Opening it, Janice smiled. The poetry of Eastern resignation. Like honey, the words flowed, half insensible, often contradictory, in what must assuredly be a ludicrous translation, like Victorian English put through a meat grinder. She recognized a few suitable phrases of comfort.

Hesitating for a long while, Janice held it poised over the fallen pile of books on the couch. At long last, the room grown darker already with the onset of the dry night, the slim blue volume lay with the others, and Janice forgot about it.

On Friday evening, Bill telephoned. He sounded tired at first, then the confidence returned to his voice.

“This clinic has lousy central heating,” he said. “It’s cold all the time.”

“Could I bring you a sweater, darling?”

“I’d appreciate that,” Bill said. “And remember those slipper socks your mother sent me for my birthday? I could use those, too.”

“I will. Oh, Bill, how sweet of you to call.”

Bill’s voice changed, almost imperceptibly. Probably Janice was the only human being on the face of the earth who could have noticed it, or understood what it really meant.

“I’ve been missing you,” he said simply.

“I—Me, too, Bill. It’s been so long.”

“Not having you around is really the worst thing in the world. Dr. Geddes tells me that maybe I could start coming home—for a night, a weekend—something like that.”

“I’d like that, Bill. I can’t tell you how much I would.”

“It sure is good to hear you say that. After all we’ve been through, you know, I wasn’t sure. I mean, it must have been terrible for you—having to put up with all my…” His voice drifted.