For Love of Audrey Rose (45 page)

“No-no-no-no—!”

Upstairs Jennie recited the numbers. Was it a string of zeroes, or was she refusing something? Hesitating, Janice went slowly up the stairs.

Jennie’s eyes were open, but they were glazed in tormented sleep.

“No-no-no-no—”

The glassy face looked as though it were in the throes of denial. Denying something from within.

Janice took her temperature. Just under 100 degrees. She looked at the clock. They had two hours to catch the flight.

“No-no-no—” Jennie whispered plaintively.

“Nobody’s going to frighten you ever again, darling.”

In thirty-five minutes, the taxi deposited them at La-Guardia Airport. Through the blackness swirled the lights of departing aircraft, livid behind the falling sleet.

The flight was delayed due to the storm. When it took off, an uncomfortable shiver shook the wings, and the passengers laughed nervously. In her arms, Jennie grew warmer. Janice took her to the lavatory and kept her face cool with wet paper towels.

Sleet turned to heavy snow, flailing past the red light at the wing tip. White particles out of nowhere, flashing, then disappearing to nowhere.

A bang of tires on hard cement, a second thud, a third, and then the plane decelerated and taxied carefully to the terminal.

This time Elliot Hoover stood at the bottom of the steps. He raised his hat in mute, worried greeting.

“They told me you were coming.”

He took Jennie in his arms, kissed her, but it was not until they nearly reached the terminal building that he saw the flush on her face.

“She looks ill,” he stammered.

“The fever. It’s come back. Elliot, I had to get her out of New York! Bill’s collapsed! He’s become a raving maniac! Dr. Geddes wants to lock him up and throw away the key!”

“This is terrible,” Hoover murmured. Jennie stirred in his arms.

“It was during the birthday party,” Janice continued stridently. “They were alone together in his room. Jennie started screaming. Wouldn’t stop. By the time we entered the room, the whole place was a shambles and she wouldn’t stop screaming.”

Hoover swallowed. A wave of despair passed over his face.

“Did he say anything?”

Janice took a deep breath. “He said, ‘She remembered.’ Over and over, Elliot.”

Hoover sighed. The sorrow of the night was softened in the deep snow. The warehouses, coal cars, and stacks of iron pipes looked like fanciful sculptures. Only a few red lights blinked high on the water tower, and then the Ford stopped in front of the clinic.

“Let’s get her to the clinic.”

“Elliot. What’s happening?”

He put a gloved hand on hers. “I don’t know.” Then gently, “Come. Let’s take her home.”

Inside the clinic most of the children were in bed. Roy peered suspiciously from behind a bookshelf. The carpet was littered with toys, pictures torn from magazines, and pieces of crayon. A smell of wet wool permeated the halls.

Mr. Radimanath, surprised, stood up from the desk in Hoover’s office and came into the hall.

“Mr. Templeton has had a relapse,” Hoover said calmly.

Mr. Radimanath’s hand went to his mouth.

“Please listen. I want you to fix up Jennie’s room. She has a bad fever.”

With an anxious glance at Janice, then at Hoover, Mr. Radimanath shuffled rapidly to the stairs.

Hoover hung his coat on one of a small series of pegs. He took Jennie from Janice’s arms and felt the girl’s neck and forehead. Mrs. Concepcion peered in from the hallway leading to the kitchen.

“Rosa,” Hoover whispered, “could you prepare a hot drink for Jennie?”

“Right away, Mr. Hoover.”

Hoover turned Jennie’s face to him, smiled, and kissed the small forehead.

“No-no-no—” she murmured sleepily.

“Yes, yes, yes,” he said, smiling.

Mrs. Concepcion returned with two cups of steaming broth. Shivering, Janice accepted a cup. Then Mrs. Concepcion spooned the broth gently into Jennie’s mouth and carried her upstairs to her room. The clinic’s quiet was broken by a low moan upstairs.

“You see?” Hoover said after a while. “Nothing changes here.”

Janice looked anxiously out the window. Fat flakes continued to fall. The sills were blocked up with snow.

“The roads will be closed by morning,” Hoover said. “At least two feet. That’s what the radio forecast.”

Janice sipped the soup, fondling the cup. The trembling did not go, even though she was finally warm. She put her coat across a child’s desk and leaned wearily against the wall. The stairwell light went off. After several minutes the upstairs lights went off. A thin outline of luminosity rimmed Hoover’s forehead.

“Good night, Mr. Hoover,” came Mrs. Concepcion’s voice from above.

“Good night, Mrs. Concepcion. Thank you.”

“Good night, Mr. Hoover,” followed Mr. Radimanath’s voice.

“Good night and peace to you, Mr. Radimanath.”

Another light went off. Hoover slumped against the wall, head down, massaging his face.

“What next, Janice?” he whispered.

She walked to him slowly. He felt her presence, but did not move.

“I’ve tried everything,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve given everything I have. Everything.”

She put a hand against his neck, gently pressed on the knotted muscles, slowly eased the tension there.

“Poor Elliot,” she whispered ironically, and yet afraid that she was all too correct. “I’ve ruined you, haven’t I?”

“Saved me, Janice. You saved me. That’s the miracle.”

Suddenly his cold finger traced a curve against her cheek.

“Miracle,” he whispered gently. “So utterly miraculous.”

She hesitated, then let him come forward. It made her feel real again. The silence was an ally, not a horror. Janice waited, and, like the falling snow, was content to be moved by the night.

“An extraordinary woman,” he whispered, in all-consuming awe.

She closed her eyes and rested against him. She felt his heart beat through his shirt. A fragrance of lotion filled her nostrils.

“Elliot, I’ve been so lonely.”

She moved, and her breasts were warm under his palms. He pressed against her until her back pushed up against the wall.

“Not here. Mr. Radimanath may come.”

But whatever he whispered back, she caught only the urgency of it. Her back was pressed hard against the wall. His breath was hot against her ear. Her fingers hesitated, then clutched at the back of his neck.

The urgency of his entry surprised her. The violence of his insatiable need. She faltered, holding him at the wall, in the darkness. But then there was a soft, slow explosion within her belly, and she gasped, and she felt limp as a rag doll. It seemed to go on forever, exhausting her, until everything stopped, and she hung on to him for dear life itself.

“Oh God,” she whispered after a dizzy moment.

“Janice, darling Janice…”

“Oh—I feel so—Oh, God…”

She hung on to his neck, leaning on his chest. He rocked her gently side to side, as though they danced. Partially dressed still, their hair and faces passed in and out of the glow cast by the streetlamps and the snow. She felt soft inside, transformed, and she pressed her body closer to his, though her mind remained troubled. For the wages of sin, she knew, was death.

“Hold me, Elliot. Don’t ever let me go!”

Gently he rocked her, and his large hands rested against her back and neck.

The snow stopped. Darkness gleamed from the recesses of the neighborhood. Janice leaned, breasts against his chest, so that he might love her again. The rising and falling of his breathing comforted her. Against the window, she had descended, at long last and painfully, into a different kind of night.

27

B
ill lay on his cot. His wrists chafed against leather restraints. Turning his head, he perceived the rotund outline of the orderly by the window. A vicious storm of sleet and jagged ice pellets beat against the cardboard taped there.

“Untie me,” Bill mumbled.

“Have to get two more orderlies if I do,” replied the man without looking up. “And we ain’t got nobody to spare.”

Bill let his neck rest, the muscles strained, and his head rolled back on the mattress.

“Untie me, for God’s sake,” he repeated.

The orderly turned a page in his magazine.

Then the storm brought a bulge at the cardboard. Wet stains showed in long striations. The orderly shivered and drew his white shirt tight about his throat.

“You’re damn lucky you didn’t ruin her,” the orderly said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Child molesters rot in here. Take it from me. That’s the one kind of pervert never gets out of here.”

“I didn’t molest her.”

“Sure you didn’t.” The orderly turned a page of the magazine. “Goddamn kook.”

Bill stared at the ceiling. The room was going cold, and only a light from the hall glinted off the metal shapes inside. Bill did not know why the window was broken, why there were no lights, only assumed that he had smashed them somehow. He closed his eyes.

“I need her,” he whispered. “She was all I had.”

“Then you shulda kept your fingers off her.”

“I never touched her!”

“Keep your voice down!”

Bill’s head arched upward, his neck throbbing.

“She remembered! That’s why she started screaming! She remembered what happened in Darien!”

“Calm down!”

Bill glared at the obsequious, immovable man at the desk chair, then settled back to the mattress.

“I saw it in her eyes,” Bill whispered. “It was a kind of horrible memory…. But it came too fast for her. Much too fast. It frightened her.”

The orderly yawned, checked his watch, and rubbed his eyes. There were footsteps in the hall. Eager for company, the orderly went to the door, poked his head out, and engaged two other orderlies in a bantering conversation. One was tall and black, the other equally tall, but with a limp that made him look diminutive. A pint of whiskey made the rounds. In the darkness there was the sound of cards shuffled.

Bill shivered in the cold that seeped into the room.

For thirty minutes the orderlies played poker and drank. The dimes and quarters glinted in the dim hallway. The whiskey bottle went empty, and was carefully hidden behind a radiator. A groan emerged from Bill’s room.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said the first orderly.

He rose and lurched into Bill’s room. Bill smelled whiskey-laden breath just over his face in the darkness, and felt the straps being removed from his wrists and ankles.

“Now you be good,” the orderly warned. “I’ll leave you loose for ten minutes, so make the most of it.”

Bill flexed his wrists, but the sensation of constriction remained. Slowly he rubbed his wrists and then reached down to massage his ankles. He was too tired to sit up, and lay back again on the blanket.

The orderly’s large hand tapped him lightly on the chest.

“Behave yourself. We ain’t in no mood to be interrupted. You hear?”

Bill nodded.

“What’s that you say?”

“I hear you, I said.”

“Goddamn right you do.”

The orderly lurched back to his game. For a while the coins clinked onto the glazed wooden surface. Bill shivered and crawled from under the blanket. He rose to his feet unsteadily, his senses keened, and tiptoed to the door.

For fifteen minutes the orderlies played cards. Their curses became more frequent, more amiable. Their laughter was stifled with difficulty.

“Roy, did you lock the door?”

“Sure did.”

“Are you sure, Roy?”

“Sure of what, fat man?”

“The goddamn door, and watch your language.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Go check it, Roy.”

With annoyance, the orderly went to the door and gave a violent pull. It opened.

“Jesus Christ,” he shouted. “You’re sure you done something and it turns out you ain’t done it.”

Alarmed by his tone, his two companions quickly joined him. In the density of their drunkenness they stared at the bed. The rumpled forms coalesced into a human shape, then receded into a mixture of pillow, mattress, and blankets. With a sudden lurch all three orderlies jumped toward the bed. The black orderly’s hands threw the blankets high into the air, onto the floor.

“He’s gone!”

“Jesus Christ! He jumped!”

They ran to the window, laboriously stripped away the cardboard and peered down in the storm. The hospital lights illuminated a small patch of white snow below, obscured in the driving sleet.

“Do you see him?”

“There’s something dark on the snow—I can’t tell.”

The sleet drove down, almost horizontal to the ground. The lights were small bulbs of opaque light in the dizzying storm. The ground was caked in ice, and the whistling wind covered the sound of a man’s feet over the frozen earth.

Bill wore a long black overcoat, stolen from a closet on the first floor. It stretched from his shoulders clear down to his knees; an expensive, severely styled black coat with thin strips of fur along the collar and down the lapel. His feet were still in slippers, and they slipped painfully over the ice.

Bill thought he saw a smaller figure emerge from the sanitarium, limping under the small globes of light. He ducked his head and ran south, cutting across the parking lot. A man’s voice called out to him.

“Dr. Henderson!”

Panicked, Bill whirled, lost his balance, and nearly fell. Two enormous headlights swirled slowly toward him out of the darkness, blinding him. He held his hand in front of his face. The door of a taxi opened.

“Here, Dr. Henderson, climb in.”

In the distance, a limping figure made its way under the windows of the dormitory wing of the building. His feeble arms were waving.

Bill scrambled quickly into the cab.

“Sorry,” laughed the cab driver, “but I had my lights off. You couldn’t see me but I spotted you.”

Bill craned his neck backward through the rear window. He saw an orderly running toward them, losing ground.

“Hell, I’d recognize that black coat anywhere, Dr. Henderson,” the driver chuckled.

Under the gentle noise of the radio, Bill heard the sound of the wheels spinning out of control, digging down to the asphalt beneath the ice. The taxi went slowly sideways in a great arc, then straightened and skidded slowly ahead.