For Love of Audrey Rose (9 page)

That night Bill telephoned.

“Honey,” he said, “guess what? I’ve got a fever of a hundred and two degrees. Courtesy of that damned picnic.”

“Oh, Bill, what a shame.”

“The clinic doctor has been tapping on my chest and feeding me big yellow pills and I can’t stop throwing up.”

“Oh, Bill!”

Bill moved from the receiver to cough. It was a long, hacking cough that sounded painful.

“To make a long story short,” he said, a bit out of breath, “I won’t be there on Friday unless I can shake this.”

Janice sank down in her chair, the weight of disappointment nearly a physical sensation.

“It’s probably because you’d exercised that day,” she said.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. I loved seeing you again. And thanks for the books. I really mean that.”

Janice, staring, brooding at the black windows, watched the long dribbles of gleaming water-drops, each trailing a splattered light out of the void.

“Although, if you stop to think about it,” Bill continued, “it doesn’t all add up.”

“What? What doesn’t?”

“That stuff you read to me. From the
Bhagavad Gita,
wasn’t it?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, it doesn’t quite add up.”

Janice licked her lips. She sat up, partially out of the chair, on its edge, and held the receiver carefully.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Look. All that twaddle about the eternal soul going on and on, and all that. Even when the body dies.”

Janice closed her eyes. For a split second, a headache threatened to form, then it receded, more by an act of will than anything else. She almost wanted to hang up.

“Bill, I really don’t like talking about it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he complained. “It’s loony. If there’s one great eternal soul, like a universal spirit, then what the hell happened to Ivy? Know what I mean? It could all have just flowed back, or whatever. Instead of that conflict—”

“Bill, please, I beg you—”

“I mean,” he added in a softer voice, “she sure as hell didn’t have to go through what she did. Christ, when I remember how she suffered—”

“Bill!” Janice yelled.

“What? What are you yelling for?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not yelling. I only was trying to say that—that it’s still not easy for me—to remember.”

There was a long silence.

“Frankly,” Bill said, “I’m surprised. You had a lot of time to work it out. More than I had, that’s for damn sure.”

“Yes, but it’s all so distant, so confused, I mean. Bill, I can’t think about it anymore. I tried. I tried for the longest time and never made sense.”

“Okay, okay,” Bill conceded. “I shouldn’t have said anything. This fever’s baked my brain anyway. But you got to admit that the
Bhagavad Gita
is a little naive after what happened to us.”

“All right, Bill. I’ll admit it. But tell me about your chest. You sound absolutely dreadful.”

“I always did have weak lungs. I think I’m out of commission for a while. Listen, honey, could you do me a favor?”

Janice smiled, tucked her feet up under her as she sat back into the soft folds of the chair.

“Anything, darling,” she said.

“This library here is pretty puny. All they’ve got are some encyclopedias and the
Guinness Book of Records.
Could you make a run to the library for me?”

“Sure. I’d love to.”

Holding the receiver against her collarbone with her chin, she reached into a drawer and coaxed a pencil and a note pad from it.

“What kind of books would you like?” she asked.

“Well, as I said, this Hindu stuff is pretty weak dishwater, from what I can gather. Now listen closely. There’s an older religion. It’s called Jainism. It goes back to even before the Hindus knew how to cross their legs and scratch themselves.”

Janice put the pencil and pad down on her lap.

“Bill,” she whispered. “Don’t—”

“Jainism,” Bill said. “You want me to spell that?”

“No, it’s not necessary.”

“Great. I really need this help on the outside. Right now, I feel like somebody pumped up a balloon inside my head. Are you there, Janice?”

“I’m here.”

“Okay. And if I’m not up to seeing you next week, just mail the books here, will you?”

“Yes,” she said without enthusiasm.

“Wonderful. Now take care of yourself. Keep warm. It’s really miserable all over the East Coast tonight.”

“I will,” she said dully. “And Bill—”

“Yes?”

“Be careful. And get your rest. Do what Dr. Geddes says.”

Bill chuckled, a familiar, warm kind of laugh that came from deep within his throat.

“I’ll be a model patient, sweetheart,” he said. “I love you. Now be a good girl and we’ll be together soon. I promise.”

She sensed he was about to hang up. There was so much more she wanted to say, to warn him in some obscure way, but none of it came to her.

“I love you, too,” she said softly. “Good-bye, darling.”

He hung up. Janice wrote the word
Jainism
on the pad, tore off the top sheet, and stuffed it into her purse. She threw the pad and pencil back into the drawer and slammed it shut. Outside, the night seemed to belch forth a cold, hard rain from its blackest interior.

Janice put off her trip to the library as long as possible. Finally, she went to the New York Public Library, asked for assistance, and found that the Jains occupied so small a segment of religious thought that they hardly merited a single book to themselves. With the librarian’s help, Janice plucked three volumes which seemed to have the most information, and she checked them out.

The books hung together on a shelf in the kitchen, casting a small, gloomy shadow when the light was on. When the light was off, they melded into the general darkness.

When she saw him next, Bill was dressed in his robe; a tray of orange juice, several small bottles of capsules, and several discarded magazines were at his side. He looked impatient when she came into the room.

“Did you bring the books?” he asked, his eyes slightly bright, as though the fever which had wracked his body for several days had not entirely dissipated.

“Right here,” Janice said, drawing them from her purse. “Aren’t you even going to say hello?”

“I’m sorry,” Bill said, grinning. “You look just fabulous, Janice. I just ran out of reading material, lying here like King Tut. A guy could scream from boredom.”

He took the books from her, casually flipped through them, and put them on the night table next to his pillow. He pulled her down and let her kiss him.

“I’m all right,” he said. “Really, I am. They thought it had blossomed into a walking pneumonia, which is why they kept me here. But it was really a kind of bronchitis. That’s all.”

“Are you sure?” Janice asked. “I was so worried when you called.”

“Positive. Could you open the window a half inch? A little fresh air would do wonders.”

Janice went to the window. She heard him stretch over, and when she turned back, he was paging through the top book, his back to her.

“Thanks a lot, honey,” he murmured. “These look just fine.”

“If you really have to read them now…”

Bill turned and smiled guiltily.

“Poor Janice,” he said. “You come all this way to watch your addled husband reading in bed. Come on. Let’s mosey out of here.”

Bill slipped from bed, modestly turned from her, and dressed. Janice was shocked to see how much weight he had lost. His hip bones almost protruded from his flat stomach. Even his legs looked thin. When he was dressed fully, he turned and escorted her from his room. First, however, he slipped the topmost book into his jacket pocket.

“Depressing little place, isn’t it?” he confessed as they walked up the corridor. “I just can’t wait to get out of here. Dr. Geddes means well, but— Here, let’s duck into the library. At least it’s comfortable in there.”

Bill opened a door and they entered a large room containing long shelves of books, globes on stands, a few antique brass lamps, some geographer’s maps on the walls, and tall, clean windows with maroon curtains.

“Pretty fancy, isn’t it?” Bill said. “The clinic buys this stuff from auctions. All the one-room schoolhouses that are disappearing. Well, this is where they disappear to.”

Bill turned away slightly from her, looking out the window, peering into the mist that rolled inward from the rain, blotting out the hill where he had caught his fever. There was a long silence. A horse, more silhouette than substance, walked slowly out of the mist, like a harbinger from a mysterious landscape.

Turning back to Janice, Bill studied her curiously.

“What have you got in your handbag?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on. I see something with ribbon on it.”

Janice smiled, then reached down to her purse and pulled out a glass jar. Inside were round, milky-white balls. Janice held out the jar to him, enjoying his puzzled expression.

“Go on, coward,” she insisted. “Try one.”

“They look like marbles.”

Frowning, Bill unscrewed the lid, reached in, and popped a candy into his mouth. Nothing happened, so he bit into it. Suddenly, his expression changed.

“Holy shit,” he marveled.

“They’re filled with Calvados cognac,” Janice said. “Aren’t they great?”

Bill helped himself to another.

“Crazy. Where’d you find them?”

“From Elaine Romine.”

“Yeah? Well, thank her for me. Jesus, I haven’t had strong stuff since… since… since the trial. No, in New York…I don’t remember.”

Bill bit into another candy, savoring the hot, stinging sensation of delicate apple cognac. Janice guessed now that he remembered everything that had ever happened, and it broke some barrier between them. Possibly the last barrier, she thought hopefully.

As they calmly ate, two more horses came out of the mist, rubbing shoulders, gazing quizzically into the library windows.

Janice leaned back into the extraordinary comfort of the dark red chair, watching the horses, absorbing the tranquility of the ceaselessly moving yet ever-unchanging mist out over the meadow. There was really no sense of time at all, like the rainy days on Sunday afternoons when all motion at Des Artistes stopped, and the floor was littered with the
New York Times
, and the breakfast dishes were still on the dining room table. Bill caught her looking fondly at him, wistfully.

“Do you remember how it was at home? Sunday afternoons? We’d just all sort of lounge around, listening to the rain? Sometimes Ivy would go play with Bettina. And we’d make love… before a crackling fire. God, how beautiful it was.”

Janice nodded, startled by the coincidence of their thoughts.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Bill asked reflectively. “But she’s gone. Our Ivy.”

Janice watched him. There were no signs of agitation on his face, only a tired and bittersweet resignation. Bill reached out to the window and traced a heart with his finger. He put an arrow through the heart and then the initials
I.T.
and
B.T.
He winked at Janice.

“Remember?” he whispered. “She used to put those on the windows. Ivy Templeton loves Bill Templeton. I’ll never forget.”

Janice squeezed his hand warmly as they sat in the two heavy chairs, listening to the calm, steady drizzle outside. Janice felt the drowsy atmosphere taking hold of her. She sighed and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Bill was browsing through the book on Jainism.

“It says here that a seal was found dating back to at least fifteen hundred B.C.,” Bill said. “On it is a cross-legged figure wearing a horned headdress, three faces, and surrounded by jungle animals. It’s a proto-Yoga figure.”

“Bill,” Janice said, trying to smile and keep her voice calm, “what is this sudden interest in all this?”

“No sudden interest. It just seems weird.”

Janice turned away to look out the window. The heart with the initials had melted downward into a grotesque, slumped form. Janice wiped out the lines with the palm of her hand.

“Listen to this, Janice,” Bill insisted. “Jainism goes back before the Hindus. To a non-Aryan antiquity, that predated the sacred writings.”

“Bill, please. I’m really not interested.”

“All right. Sorry. Let’s just look out the window and count raindrops.”

“Why are you angry? I just said—”

“Right. You did say that. Well, maybe you’re right. Why should you care? All this garbage.”

For an instant, Janice could only watch the strange expression on his flushed face, a mixture of determination and confusion. He put the book under his right thigh, as if to guard against anyone’s taking it away.

“I don’t feel too well,” Bill said softly. “I think it’s the fever.”

“You look a bit flushed. Maybe we should get you back in bed.”

Together they walked out of the library, down to Bill’s room, which had been made up in their absence, and Bill undressed and slipped under the covers, clutching his book. Janice knew by the warmth of his forehead that he was running a high fever again. His cheeks were flushed.

Bill took her hand and kissed it.

“Was I sharp with you?” he asked softly. “I didn’t mean to be.”

“No. No, Bill, you weren’t. But I think you’d better close your eyes now. You don’t look at all well.”

“Kiss me, Janice.”

She kissed him on his closed eyes. As she left, she saw him wave weakly to her. She knew that as soon as she closed the door behind her, he would start reading again.

She found Dr. Geddes sipping coffee in the clinic dining hall. He looked up from a journal, sensing her footsteps. Immediately, he pulled aside a second red metal chair for her. As she sat down, his smile faded.

“Dr. Geddes,” Janice said, “are you aware that Bill has developed a fixation about certain subjects?”

“No. Frankly, I was not aware. What kind of subjects?”

“Well, at first it was the poetry you had him read. Keats. It was innocuous enough. Then he passed on to Eastern verses—”

“What Eastern verses?”

Janice blushed.

“I brought him a stack of books, as you suggested. About consolation and endurance. One of them was a collection from the
Bhagavad Gita.
”