For Love of Audrey Rose (41 page)

As Janice exhaled slowly, she watched Jennie. The small girl wore a red jumper, sneakers, and a red plaid shirt. The black silken hair was freshly washed, brushed into a hundred soft curls that lost their form in the sultry heat. A small area of rash threatened to break out inside her elbows. Jennie’s movements were now more fluid. Passing doctors and hospital personnel took no notice that the little girl on the vinyl couch looked into the air at nothing. From a distance, Jennie looked only bored, fidgeting by the tall aluminum ashtrays, waiting for a father or brother swallowed up somewhere in the recesses of the institution.

“Mrs. Templeton—”

Janice turned, and saw Dr. Geddes.

“Have they started?” Janice asked.

“No. They’re waiting for Mr. Hoover.” He sat down beside her on a worn brown chair.

“I don’t want you to build your hopes up too much,” he said. “What we’re attempting is a long-shot at best.”

“I only wish it were over,” Janice whispered.

Down the corridor there was a blurred motion. An orderly carried a brass canister from a storeroom and disappeared into the darkness. A slow parallelogram of light diminished as the storeroom door silently shut and locked.

That was how the light had gone out behind Bill’s eyes, Janice thought. It just got locked up. It took sixty days for him to realize that they wanted him to see a child. Forty-five days before he stopped cursing them all. Depriving him of his rightful daughter, he yelled. Illegitimate fruit of their lust. A scheme to falsify his religious quest. It was not until the beginning of summer that the silence began. That was worse. A slow, cynical smile on his lips, dark hostility in his eyes, and saying nothing—nothing at all.

He tore up Jennie’s photograph. Laughed at their claims. But finally, maybe out of boredom or a hideous despair, he assented to see Hoover. Just once. There were a few religious questions to pose. And they damned well better be answered, he warned.

That was when matters began to spiral in. Elliot Hoover procured a copy of a birth certificate from the Pittsburgh Hall of Records, paid an engraver to duplicate the scrolls and objects embedded in the margins. Then another man was found to forge the inks and signatures. A kind of evil began to filter into the entire enterprise.

“I’d better go,” Dr. Geddes said. “See if Hoover’s arrived.”

Behind the locked door, vague premonitions of voices insinuated themselves into Bill’s mind. He could not distinguish them from other, exterior voices. Sweat broke out along his forehead. In an agony of horror he shook himself from side to side, but the voices insisted, stung, and poked icy fingers through the nerves within his temples.

Bill’s wrists chafed against leather straps connected to the bar of a hard, iron bed. He could sit up, feet on floor, but his arms were bound down beside his thighs.

Suddenly the door opened. Bill stared at the incoming figure through the dampness of sweat fallen along his eyes. Bill’s slow, grinding teeth were audible. In the doorway, Dr. Boltin paused, breathing heavily, mopping his neck.

“Well, Bill,” he said breezily. “How are we doing? Not too badly, I trust?”

Bill’s gaze followed the portly director.

“Where is he?”
Bill whispered, his forearms bulging against the restraining straps.

“Come now, Bill. I was told you were calm. Calmness is everything now. Do you understand me?”

Bill licked his lips, stared moodily at the floor, and made his body relax.

The lock on the door gave off a metallic scratching, then it clicked. Dr. Geddes stepped in. Bill slumped against the wall. Dr. Geddes avoided Bill’s eyes.

Dr. Boltin checked his watch. “Are you sure he knew it was for two o’clock?”

“Absolutely,” Dr. Geddes said quickly.

For a long time none of the men in the chamber moved. Their breathing was vaguely audible. Dr. Geddes stared at the discolorations on the floor. They looked like streaks left by dragging shoes. Fights, violent suppressions. He turned away.

“You don’t think this is all a horrible mistake?” Dr. Boltin whispered.

Before Dr. Geddes answered, the lock clicked again. An orderly opened the door, and beside him, forehead glistening with sweat, stood Elliot Hoover in a blue suit. The light picked up his light hair, like a bruised halo, and the heat had reddened his face as though he blushed.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said, catching his breath, smiling. “Sorry I’m—”

“Let’s get on with it, Mr. Hoover,” Dr. Boltin wheezed, pointing to the single empty chair opposite the iron bed.

Hoover hesitated. Bill’s body seemed to repel him with an almost magnetic barrier. Hoover seemed unable to stand the gaze of the manacled man on the bed. He stared at Bill’s shoes, at the standing orderly, back at the psychiatrists; then, he went slowly to the chair and sat down. He did not look at Bill. He licked his lips and swallowed heavily. The door closed behind them and a horrific silence drummed in their ears.

“The, uh, certificate,” Dr. Geddes suggested.

Hoover reached into his interior coat pocket. He produced a long brown envelope. Carefully, controlling nervous fingers, he slit it open. An elegant, scrolled document slid into his palm.

He cleared his throat. “This is the birth certificate of Jennie Dunn.”

Hoover looked up, recoiled from Bill’s stare, and in a kind of psychic defense, held out the document. Bill slowly pulled himself upright, using powerful forearms, until the two men sat facing each other, less than two feet apart. Dr. Geddes now observed that Bill’s feet were unstrapped.

“Look at it, Bill,” Dr. Boltin said.

Bill glared at Dr. Boltin, but like a talisman the document slowly drew his eyes back.

“Jennifer Dunn,” Hoover recited. “February 3, 1975. 10:43 A.M. Signed by the Registrar of Births.”

Bill stared at the document for a long time.

“What do you think, Bill?” Dr. Boltin asked.

“Nice forgery.”

“What makes you think it’s a forgery?” Dr. Geddes asked.

Bill sneered, but he could not take his eyes from the document.

“Look,” Hoover reasoned. “How could anybody duplicate the old scrollwork, the emblems, of the State of Pennsylvania? Only the Hall of Records in the City Hall has these plates.”

Bill’s lips pressed together. He agreed to nothing, but he looked demoralized. Sensing the shift of moral power, Hoover quickly leaned to the attack.

“Now listen to me, Bill,” he said. “
Ahimsa
requires it.”

“Who?” Dr. Boltin asked.

“The humility of universal love.
Ahimsa.
”

“Oh.”

Hoover turned slowly back to Bill. Bill had softened even more. Compulsively he twined his fingers at the restraining straps. It was pathetic, ritualistic, a bizarre muscular reaction to frustration.

“Listen to me, Bill,” Hoover said softly. “Jennie Dunn is a lovely girl, Bill. She is fragile in many ways, but she is also full of tiny secrets. She moves as though afraid of disturbing the air.”

Bill sighed, and let his hands fall back onto the iron rail. He sat inert under Hoover’s hypnotic monotone.

“When she sleeps, she curls her left leg, as though ready to fly away into the night.”

“Shut up.”

“She’s delicate, Bill. She walks up and down, like a figure on a music box. She dances with herself in the morning sunlight.”

“So does every kid.”

“She needs a soft blue night-light. No other color will do. Her dreams make her sit up, still sleeping.”

“Hoover, I’m warning you.”

Hoover leaned forward, smiling. Suddenly Bill’s foot lashed out, the point of the shoe smashed against Hoover’s right knee. Hoover gasped, turned pale. The sound had cracked like the chop of an axe.

“That’s all right, orderly,” Dr. Boltin barked.

The orderly retreated to his place at the wall. Hoover grimaced in pain, drew his chair back, and tried to ignore the shock spreading outward from his knee, burgeoning into brilliant throbs of agony.

He paused, seeing the hostile stare on the iron bed.

“You’re lying, Hoover!”

“Jennie is frightened by birds. Isn’t that peculiar? Don’t you know another child who was afraid of birds?”

Bill glared at him, the eyes sunk darkly in the sockets, head lowered.

“Janice tell you this?” he demanded. “What is this, pillow talk?”

Hoover said nothing. They watched the fingers grope at the iron rail. Sweat broke out again on Bill’s face, along his neck, drenching his shirt. His back trembled with a hideous effort.

“What about it, Bill?” Dr. Boltin asked. “Is all this familiar?”

Suddenly Bill repeatedly rammed his fists against the iron rail. The leather straps exploded into tautness over and over, but Bill was helpless, impotent, in a fury of rage. His legs jerked out like a demented marionette, his head shook violently, and an inarticulate roar tore from his throat.

“Wipe his mouth,” Dr. Boltin ordered.

The orderly flourished a large white tissue over Bill’s mouth. Bill jerked his head away, then hung awkwardly against the straps, crying silently.

“Come now, Bill,” Dr. Geddes said gently. “Isn’t this truly like your own daughter?”

Bill slumped, defeated, his whole body caving in. An occasional spasm crossed his back. Trembling, he tried to control his voice.

“I
found
my daughter! I held her in my arms!”

“You were mistaken,” Hoover said.

Bill shook his head, sank lower, and could not stifle the sobs.

“She was my own—my Ivy. I held her in the snowstorm.”

“But, Bill, there were no signs. How could you think she could give you any signs? Why, she was only an infant, not even a personality yet. She could not speak, walk— nothing!”

Bill only wept, losing control altogether.

“Please,” he whispered. “Go away. Please go away.”

“She was an illusion, Bill,” Hoover said quietly. “All right, maybe by some freak of arithmetic she was born at the right time. But she was never what you thought her to be. She was never your own.”

The words pierced Bill like tiny needles, exploring his body to search out the heart. He seemed to tremble at every phrase, deflate, until he was a rag doll.

“Never your own, Bill,” Hoover intoned. “Never your own.”

For a long moment, nobody moved. Dr. Boltin became restless. The orderly slowly shifted his weight and stared at the ceiling.

“What
karma
did I inherit,” Bill whispered, “that I should live in hell?”

Elliot Hoover sensed the fatal vulnerability and lunged forward.

“Every
karma
can—is
obligated
to—improve, Bill,” he said gently.

Bill shook his head.

“The seven levels of hell—I have been there.”

“No. Remember the doctrine of
brahmacharya.
Self-control. Do not despair.”

Bill’s eyes were nearly hidden under the hair that slanted across his forehead. The two men faced each other, eyes locked in a peculiar, savage, muted combat.

“
Brahmacharya,
” Bill retorted softly. “Are you clean enough to speak to me of that?”

Hoover paled, withdrew slightly, confused. “What are you talking about?” he stammered.

“Have you reddened her breasts with saffron?” Bill asked. “Have you tasted the golden nectar?”

“I’m not sure what you’re driving at, Bill.”

Bill smiled sardonically.

“Did you not,” he whispered with a manic glee, “practice the deep womb-thrust? From the calves, the thighs? Did you not light the lamp of mystic jewels?”

Hoover reddened, but maintained his ground, staring back at Bill.

“This is your imagination, Bill,” Hoover exclaimed. “Your wife and I have only tried to help you.”

Bill laughed. Then a strange smile fixed upon his face, and he seemed to look down on Hoover from a thousand miles away.

“You have not stood firm,” Bill said, mocking. “You are corrupted. You are utterly lost, Hoover!”

Hoover swallowed, looked at Dr. Boltin, whose face was screwed up in utter incomprehension. Hoover wiped the sweat from his face. He turned back, but Bill was no longer listening.

“The body is a possession like any other,” Bill said in subtle simplicity. “You should not have enslaved yourself to it. The two of you are forsaken.”

Bill seemed to watch them all from far away, as though he had become bodiless. He smiled bitterly.

“You see,” Bill continued calmly, “man is a transitional being. He is the secret, holy workshop of evolution. Bit by bit, he transcends his past. Like one who climbs mountains, he looks down on all he has surpassed with contempt. He evolves to a new system of values. He experiences a luminous expansion.”

The orderly coughed slightly, oblivious to everything. Dr. Boltin waited, making sense of nothing. Dr. Geddes, however, was transfixed by the change in Bill. Bill’s face had grown serene, and the words flowed easily, without a pause in their articulation.

“Therefore, I have forsaken my wife,” Bill concluded, letting the thought evaporate slowly, like a mist in the crowded air. The silence was pregnant with a bleak density. In contrast to Bill’s calmness, Hoover fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair.

“Yet, by works,” Hoover said at last, “one may strive for liberation. Without the performance of works, it is as a journey into the wind.”

Bill laughed. “I know all about your works,” he sneered. “A clinic for overflow misfits in Pittsburgh. Since when is Pittsburgh a place for spiritual works?”

“Pittsburgh was where my daughter died.”

“So?”

“Therefore, Pittsburgh being the locus of her greatest happiness, it stands to reason that she would return—at some point.”

“Ivy was born in New York,” Bill chuckled derisively.

“Nevertheless, the problem—the tragedy—began in Pittsburgh.”

Bill considered this, and finally shrugged.

“Children often inherit the sick
karma
of their parents,” he observed maliciously.

“That is precisely why we must perform our rituals, Bill. You as well as I. To cure the lame of spirit.”

Bill laughed softly. “Depends which rituals you perform. Do you know about the Tibetan mysteries?”