For Love of Audrey Rose (32 page)

Bill nodded vigorously.

“Good, good,” he said in a strange monotone. “I’m glad to hear that.”

Hoover looked nervously around the conference room. Dr. Boltin gave him an almost imperceptible nod of encouragement. Hoover licked his lips and leaned forward. Janice’s grip on Bill’s shoulder tightened.

“When I heard that you were searching, Bill, as I had searched,” he began, “my heart was filled with… with sorrow. And with understanding. Because I’d gone through just that very search.”

Bill stared disconsolately down at the tabletop.

“And I knew the torment of that search. The doubts, the trials, the doctrines that leap against the mind like a dark and angry sea.”

Sensing contact, Hoover moved closer. His voice took on more confidence, and Janice heard the familiar charisma of his passion, the love and strength that knew no obstacles, admitted to no impediments, the iron will that penetrated any soul placed before it.

“But the
error
is not
renouncing
,” Hoover explained gently. “Do you recall in the
Vedas,
in the description of the progression of the soul, that beautiful description wherein it is written that the passions must renounce ere they possess? There is that extraordinary passage of the dawn of the soul, where the verse begins—”

“How did you know about me?” Bill interrupted, suddenly whirling to look at him, his expression sly as a wolf.

“What… what’s wrong, Bill?” Hoover said, frightened by the grinning intensity, the malevolence of the gaze.

“How did you know about me?” Bill whispered.

“Well, I—I heard…”

“Little birds in India? Singing in your dreams?”

Hoover shot a glance at Dr. Boltin, who was staring at Dr. Geddes. Dr. Geddes had gone pale. Janice and he began whispering feverishly. Meanwhile Bill’s haggard, tortured smile grew into something worse than a smile.

“Bill, listen to me. The
Vedas
exist for the benevolence of all mankind.”

“
Who told you about me?
” he shouted.

Hoover gazed helplessly at Dr. Boltin, who cleared his throat.

“Your wife went to India, found Mr. Hoover there, and brought him back for you.”

Bill clapped his hands over his ears. “No! No!” he shouted.

“Bill,” Janice said, touching his cheek. “I told you I would get help.”

Bill threw off her hand. He suddenly lurched to his feet and stared into Hoover’s startled face. A thousand emotions shot across Bill’s lips, cheeks, and eyes, and he seemed uncertain, then enraged, and then the trembling got the better of him and he could not speak without stuttering.

“H—h—has she—?” he began.

“Has she what?” Hoover asked defensively.

Bill came closer, whispering confidentially, his eyes gleaming, bloodshot.

“H—h—has she—she—a nice—
cunt
?” he said, almost inaudible, hoarse, as though his throat had been torn out.

“Bill!” Hoover said, shocked, standing.

Bill leaped forward, tried to strike him, but found his hands too tightened up to make fists or direct a blow, and fell on Hoover, his teeth clamping onto Hoover’s neck.

Janice screamed, jumped forward, chairs fell backward, Dr. Geddes threw himself at Bill, and the lanky staff assistant found his own fingers bleeding profusely where he foolishly tried to restrain Bill’s jaws. But in just that second Hoover managed to free himself. Gasping in disbelief and shock, he rolled to a kneeling position.

“I—is she…” Bill whispered, restrained by Dr. Geddes and the assistant, oblivious of Dr. Boltin and the physicians standing in paralyzed terror over the table, “is she a
good fuck
?”

Dr. Geddes edged backward to protect Janice. Bill sensed the change, broke free, and threw himself forward. He clubbed at Hoover with a heavy glass ashtray from the table. With sickening thuds the blows landed repeatedly at the base of Hoover’s skull, smashing at the hands which tried in vain to cushion the force of the blows.

The two physicians, stumbling, launched themselves onto Bill. The door opened and two burly orderlies appeared and instantly ran across the room, knocking chairs to the wall. In the tumult Janice saw a thin, awful spray of red blood fly outward as Bill was catapulted toward the wall. As they doubled him up by bending his arms behind his back, exerting pressure at his neck, she watched in numb horror as the tiny trickle of blood, like a symbol of total disaster, oozed slowly down the pale green wall to the floor.

“Take him…Take him…” Dr. Boltin faltered.

“To the restraint room,” one of the physicians ordered, his voice trembling. “And stay with him!”

“Sedation,” Dr. Geddes called after them. “No physical restraint.”

The other physician accompanied Bill while the orderlies and staff assistant simultaneously locked him in their arms and trundled him toward the door. Janice saw the grisly sight of Bill’s mouth drooling. He had lost control of his own throat in his pathological rage, and a roar of pain shook his thin frame. He glared at Janice like a tiger from a cage, and she knew that if he were free he would certainly at that moment have killed her.

“WHORE! WHORE!”

He lost coherence. The orderlies dragged him out into the hall, his ravings echoing, growing louder in the corridor, like a demented bull elephant, screaming obscenities about Janice’s body, about her lust, about her death; then it subsided and faded into the distant north wing.

Janice reeled from chair to chair, and finally sat down heavily. In her shock she gazed about vaguely, apprehending nothing, seeing horrific caricatures of the men she had trusted to heal Bill. Dr. Geddes stood, half poised to sit, paralyzed, trying to think of something, anything, to end the horror. Dr. Boltin trembled like a leaf, knocking over cups of coffee, as in a dream, trying to get to Elliot Hoover on the floor.

“It’s—it’s all right,” Hoover said, pushing the physician away.

The sound of Hoover’s voice restored a sense of reality. Janice reached out, touched Hoover on the cheek, and saw thin flecks of his blood stain her fingers.

“Dear God,” he whispered, “what have we done?”

“We’ve killed him. Inside,” she whispered. “He’s broken. Completely.”

“God forgive us.”

Dr. Boltin cleared his throat. At the sound, Dr. Geddes stirred, lifted his head, and his eyes were red.

“I must go see Bill,” Dr. Geddes said. “I—I will stay the night with him.”

Compassionately, Dr. Boltin nodded. “We’ll confer in the morning.”

Dr. Geddes sensed his impotence, muttered a few more words, and left the conference room, heading for the north wing of the complex.

Dr. Boltin went to Hoover.

“Is your neck all right?” he asked.

“Yes, I’ll be all right.”

Janice stood next to him, needing his strength, his warmth, his solidity, even under the gaze of Dr. Boltin.

“I am so sorry that this happened,” Dr. Boltin said. “We had no way of predicting.”

“Have we destroyed him?” Hoover asked after a pause.

“It is most serious now,” the doctor conceded. “I believe that we must be prepared to accept the worst.”

Janice sagged against Hoover’s chest. “Don’t go,” she said, frightened.

Hoover’s eyes looked bloodshot. His face was pale.

“I came to atone,” he said incredulously. “I’ve only compounded the sin.”

“Please don’t leave me. I need you.”

He looked down at her.

“Let me go,” he pleaded. “Let me pray. Let me understand. Perhaps then I can help you. But now it’s all too confused.”

He stumbled toward the open door. The corridor was filled with nurses and doctors who peeked into the room where the disturbance had rocked the hospital. Hoover stopped at the door.

“Pray for Bill,” he said, adding, “and for me, Janice.”

He walked quickly toward the lobby. Janice followed him into the corridor, caught a glimpse of his retreating form at the double glass doors to the parking lot.

“Elliot!”

He slowed ever so slightly, then painfully opened the door, stepped outside, and saw a taxi discharging a patient with family. He raised his arm, shouted, and ran through the night rain toward the twin shafts of headlights.

“Elliot!”

Janice ran through the double doors into the cold rain. Instantly her hair was drenched, and a foul smell of the marsh assailed her nostrils. She ran through the puddles and caught Hoover just as he opened the rear door of the taxi.

“Please,” she wept. “Don’t leave me now.”

He touched her cheek softly. “I’m no good to you now. I can’t help you. I can’t help Bill. When I understand, when I know what to do, I’ll contact you. And we can make right everything that we’ve done wrong. Trust me. For Bill’s sake, trust me.” With a tortured look he got into the taxi and closed the door.

Janice saw the taxi grow small, then vanish into the night. The rain blew in vicious veils around her.

“Elliot…” she whispered.

No one heard. She turned. The lights blazed inside the hospital. Through the rain she saw the pattern of windows and doors, the labyrinth of dementia and rage awaiting her. The rain was so cold it seemed to have seeped into her body and begun to rot away her will to act, her will even to live. Numbly she walked slowly through the oil slicks and black puddles, back toward what remained of Bill.

19

T
he abrupt departure of Elliot Hoover left a horrifying vacuum. It was identical to the vista of mud-swallowed mass death that she had seen after the flood. Instead of a black bull, its forelegs broken, dead or dying in the foul waste, there was Bill. Her husband lay inert in her future, accusing, wasting away in the awful solidity of decay.

Janice did not know whether Hoover had fled to find help or to escape her. There was no knowledge of his plans at his hotel. He had simply disappeared.

The months passed.

Elliot Hoover made no sign. The universe had swallowed him up as inexplicably as it had disgorged him. Janice stared dumbly into the future, and she found there only an endless, sterile moonscape.

Three times a week she took the long train ride to the hospital. Three times a week, Bill abused her verbally. He screamed at her, he accused her of sexual acts which she barely understood. Dr. Geddes sat calmly in his chair, observing, listening. Two orderlies discreetly stood at the door. Bill raged incoherently, and there was no limit to the explicitness of his accusations. She endured them, saying nothing. But something inside her died. Their former life, in its most intimate details, was dragged out into the mud, where it was made repulsive and loathsome.

Every visit the wound reopened. She believed—she made herself believe—in human trust, but the assaults of a demented husband crushed her. He seemed to be boundless in his vehemence. He jumped, pranced, roared, and the veins bulged apoplectically in his neck, until she longed for some dark night to cover her up.

Janice married her job. She spent days, including weekends, at Christine Daler’s Ltd. Her skills had rapidly returned and continued to develop. The summer slipped through to autumn, to the cold rains of November, beating against the studio windows. She preferred not to go home. There the silence of Ivy’s room mingled with the silence of the bedroom and whispered hopelessness in her ear.

Late one night, she listened to the murmur of the building, the battering of the sleet against black windows, the creaking of Ivy’s door.

As a child, Janice had had a fantasy when bad times came. She had called on the white figurine of Christ perched on her mother’s dresser. An absurd piece of
kitsch,
arms outspread in crass forgiveness for one and all of his forgotten lambs. But she believed then, and he came for her—outstretched arms, a painted beard and all—and served as a talisman to protect her. Now, listening to the radio turned low to keep away the permanent isolation, she did not believe. No Christ came to her through the dark skies to shield her this time.

That night, Elliot Hoover came to her in a dream. He was smiling broadly, very excited, as though he had found something. Something she would very much like to see or to have. The dream changed. They were walking through the russet autumnal fields in upstate New York. She did not know if it was Bill or Elliot Hoover walking beside her, as their daughter gamboled among the fat, ripe pumpkins in the stalks. Then the dream changed again. There was a stinking hut in South India. Elliot Hoover cleaved against her as they lay on the ground. She felt his hard, hot breathing, and she pressed his hands closer against her own breasts and nearly fainted with desire. Then something dark happened and he was gone, and she woke up. Outside the sleet fell. Ice covered the windows, and a cold draft billowed through the seams of the panes.

By Christmas, it was clear that, legally, Bill would never see the inside of a courtroom. He was declared
non compos mentis;
the sanitarium signed reams of documents, and the one small fear of an impending trial for kidnapping was removed. Bill did not observe the legal proceedings. When Dr. Geddes explained it to him, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

At the end of December, Janice sent a note to Sesh Mehrotra, asking if he had seen Elliot Hoover or knew of his whereabouts. By late January, a reply came in a battered envelope, in misspelled English, that Elliot Hoover had not returned. Had he returned, he would certainly have looked up the Mehrotra family. The letter contained best wishes.

It was on the anniversary of Juanita’s kidnapping that Dr. Geddes told her that Bill’s condition showed signs, if not of improvement, then at least of no further deterioration. Bill could not distinguish the psychiatrists from the staff members, he did not remember names, but his memory could often be otherwise surprisingly acute.

“We’ve achieved a modified success. Not a full success, but a minor amelioration of symptoms, based on substituting another symbol of Ivy.”

Janice looked up, surprised.

“We’re trying doll therapy, verbal suggestion. If we can turn his interest, even partially, to something under our control, we can relate to him through it. You see, we must come in under his umbrella of defenses.”