For Love of Audrey Rose (33 page)

“I suppose the best thing would be to bring back Juanita,” she suggested.

“No. Absolutely not. That would trigger off the same obsessions as before. The secret of the transfer mechanism is that the emotional charge becomes slightly weaker. That is why we must try to deal through the transfer object.”

“Well, then find a doll that
looks
like Juanita!”

Dr. Geddes smiled warily. “I see you remain cynical about the whole thing. I don’t blame you. Bill’s case was terribly underestimated for a long time. Still, I wanted you to know that there may be a brighter future, even a partial cure.”

“A partial cure? What does that mean?”

“Living at home. Minor medications for the depression. Psychotherapy to explore the guilt piecemeal. A long, slow recovery.”

“How many years?”

“Difficult to say. Five. Ten, possibly.”

Janice stared at Dr. Geddes. His projection seemed worse than the disease. Not for Bill. For her. She could not hide the resentment bubbling slowly from the depths of her feelings. That she should spend ten years caring for someone who barely resembled the man she had loved and married, who hurled abuse at her—pornographic abuse—and she knew she would not, could not, refuse even the smallest part of that fate.

When she arrived home, she stared at the walls for nearly an hour. With a heavy heart, she dragged herself up the stairs into the studio that once had been Ivy’s room, and began sketching. Then she turned on the radio. After another hour, the antidote of work performed its magic, and she rapidly filled pages with watercolor treatments. As night fell, her thoughts turned, once again, to Elliot Hoover.

Hoover must be in the United States still. She felt it. She felt him thinking of her, aware of her. He had promised to contact her when he knew what to do. That might take another week, another month, another year. But the time would come, and knowing it would come made the night softer, less desolate. The radio sent easy melodies through the room, and she worked until 3:30, then showered and slept easily. There were no dreams, only a vague presentiment that Elliot Hoover had been there during the night.

Elliot Hoover woke in the slums of Pittsburgh with a vague presentiment that Janice had been with him during the night. It was still dark. No sun appeared over the black silhouettes of tenement roofs. Only the cold ribbons of blue and dark gray of the winter clouds. He huddled in an army blanket on the edge of a cot, shivering. He rubbed his eyes, trying to restore energy to them.

Far away came the shrill, drunken hoots of a young man. Then the crash of a bottle. Hoover reached over to a small propane stove, lit it, and then shoved a beaker of cold coffee over the flame. He was oblivious to the bits of plaster falling from the roof when a cat scampered over it.

The autumn had turned to ice. Christmas and New Year’s had passed in oblivion. Elliot Hoover was still driven by the image of Bill Templeton, who, under the scrutiny of no less than four physicians, had thrown himself forward like a rabid dog, teeth bared. Hoover felt the healed scars along his neck. He filled his cup with tepid coffee and drank it.

The images came, as they always came in the predawn, rapid and confused, like a commercial for insanity. There had been the flight to Florida, the long, purposeless days along the beach, barefoot but still wearing the absurd brown suit he had bought in Calcutta. Days in Catholic churches, gazing at violently painted plaster saints. Afternoons in a dubious meditation center. And alone in cheap motels, thinking, just thinking, ignoring the television sets blaring through the walls of his room.

Hoover spit out the grounds that inevitably filtered into his coffee. Why had he stayed away from New York? It had something to do with growing forward, not regressing. One’s
karma
improved with severance of ties to the earth. And besides, what could Janice possibly gain by his presence? He had as yet discovered no formula to solve Bill’s problem.

Hoover showered, shaved, and went to the closet. The brown suit, badly torn and shockingly filthy, still hung on the rack among the newer garments. There were oil spots on the elbows, courtesy of the Greyhound bus ride back to the north. Was it Kansas City where he had been pushed into the mud by a drunken day laborer? Or was it in Wheeling? Hoover tried to recall when he had first realized that the drifting would have to come to an end. He remembered standing at a truck stop, picking up a ride west, not east to New York, sharing the cab with a dull, hostile driver who was red-eyed from dodging highway patrols and weigh stations. Somewhere during those confused days, the filth and grit of the country seeped into the brown suit. That was why, when he arrived in Pittsburgh, the police stopped him on sight and shoved him into the drunk tank, there being no room anywhere else.

Hoover smiled as he buttoned his shirt. Now he had other coats, other trousers. But the brown suit reminded him of Janice, of Calcutta, their nights together in the South of India. And anyway, when the Pittsburgh police checked his identity and learned he was a man of wealth and property, they quickly had the suit dry-cleaned by way of apology. Hoover chuckled out loud, and the sound was strange in the large building as it died to a melancholy, lonely echo.

As he had left the police station, Hoover pulled the coat closely around his throat, ducked into the fierce wind that promised sleet or snow before the day was out, and walked along the sidewalks of the city. Something had led him back to Pittsburgh. Why had he not flown to Benares from Florida? Was it some kind of habit, a yearning, even a kind of nostalgia? Hoover found himself walking along stately rows of elms, where the suburban homes were not so very new anymore, and the elms had grown from spindly, protected saplings, girdled by wire mesh, into massive, and now bare explosions of branches. Then he knew why he had returned to the city.

His home lay across a gently sloping yard, filled with dead leaves, curiously unpleasant leaves, curled and dusty. It seemed as though nothing had really changed in the eight years. A bit dirtier; the garage needed to be scrubbed; some trimming required on the hedge that curved around into the backyard; but it was still the home Hoover vividly remembered.

He remained rooted and let the chill wind blow through him. It was as though he had just been inspecting new plans for additions to the pig-iron distribution systems along the Allegheny—a late meeting with charts, wearing his gray wool three-piece suit, in his office overlooking the industrial wasteland in all its magnificence at the curve in the river—and now he had come home for the day, and Sylvia was inside cooking, or studying French, or preparing a cocktail for him.

And the door would open. Audrey Rose would come running up to him, throw her small arms around his neck, and he would lift her up off the ground and happily trundle her back inside. Audrey Rose. The small girl with the dark hair, the black eyes, the sly gamin of his heart. A secretive girl, with a secret life. She shared it with him on condition that he told no one. They were only little-girl secrets, joyful mysteries. So self-assured, life held no terror for her then.

Hoover wiped his eyes. The masters of the Ganges were right. One never truly severs one’s heart from the places wherein one has learned to love. But the mind can transcend such attachments, that was the instruction. So Hoover came back to watch the house with its sloping redwood porch and its large picture windows. He walked through the parks where he and Audrey Rose had run, and along the small stream that eventually cut its way into their backyard. He willed all the memories, good and bad, to return, in order to make peace with them. He even rented a car and drove along the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the very spot where, so many years before, Sylvia’s car had hurtled over the embankment and down the steep incline, carrying both her and Audrey Rose to their fiery deaths. He stood among the fat green weeds and clods of earth and forced his mind to conjure the terrible image of Audrey Rose, his darling, trapped within the burning wreckage, her tiny fists pounding and pounding against the scorched panes of glass, and screaming: “DADDYDADDYDADDYHOTHOTHOT!”

In time he did make peace with the memories. They nestled within him like warm friends, and the torment slowly dissipated.

But there was one paradox. Sometimes he imagined the life as it had been with Sylvia—the intelligent, somewhat retiring woman who had shared his deepest hopes and dreams. But now, to his own confusion, after eight years, he had difficulty recalling the features of her face.

He pictured coming into the house, listening to the Bartok string
concerti,
putting his arm around her—but no clear face was there, hardly any memory at all of her figure. It disturbed him. Instead of his wife, there was now a vague sensation of Janice Templeton.

That was even more true now, he thought as he combed his hair, examining his face in the mirror. It was Janice who accompanied him through the horrors of the slums. It was Janice who believed in him, waited for him, needed him. Without her, he would have no faith, no attempt would have been possible. But now, as he caught a glimpse of the teenagers drunk in the streets outside, the old man sleeping on an iced porch in nothing but a greasy overcoat, the smoke pouring from factories just beyond the low tenement houses, he felt a purified faith, an ability to act that knew no obstacles. And more—the true purpose behind his seemingly accidental return to Pittsburgh.

The building he purchased, and in which he was now living, was an abandoned motel, condemned by the city, but still standing after thirteen years of neglect. In three more hours, the workmen would arrive, bringing more trucks of wiring, planks, and plaster. Inevitably, the neighborhood children would cluster around the piles of sand that accumulated at the base of the motel. The noise would be, as usual, deafening. But as Elliot Hoover walked slowly through the wet, rotted debris in the hall, the moldy newspaper and bottles strewn in the corners, the icy pipes visible through dilapidated walls, there was not the slightest sense of depression. There was only the feeling of going forward. A mandate for construction. These dark corridors, he hoped, would help save the world, even if only in a small way.

Rounding a corner of unlit darkness where the walls of two adjoining rooms had given away entirely and frozen ivy twirled among the rusted nails and bits of timber, Hoover stopped short. In a sudden flash he sensed Janice by his side, smiling at him, approving all he was attempting. A warmth radiated through his body. If she was indeed here in spirit with him, he thought, then his work was bound to succeed and be the pride of them both. Eagerly, he blew into his frozen hands and paced the sodden hallways, impatiently waiting for the workmen to arrive.

20

E
lliot Hoover was well pleased. A smell of fresh paint greeted him. As the workmen passed him, carrying glass for the windows, he examined the pastel yellow and green walls of the corridors. A warm, sensuous light dappled through the budding branches outside.

He was well pleased, too, with the two men who had joined his staff. One was named Hirsch, a conscientious objector in the Vietnam War, who wore his sandy-colored hair in a long ponytail. The other was Mr. Radimanath, a North Indian, father of a bookseller in Bombay. Mr. Radimanath looked like Nehru and shuffled along the newly-laid carpets in his slippers, head down, urgently, as though answering a silent summon.

And there was much to do. Hoover drew them into his office, where he issued instructions, drafted letters, negotiated long legal forms. Mr. Radimanath gently closed the red curtains behind the desk. They drank jasmine tea and rested on cushions. The sounds of the slums drifted from his consciousness.

Elliot Hoover, in his trance, felt the memories of his legal battles disintegrate. The arguments with the workmen, the vandalism of the neighborhood children, and the threatening inquiries of the county health association, all faded like a distant sunset on the horizon. The teachings of his first guru returned, not so much in words, but in the form of a spiritual harness that reestablished itself within. The trance became deeper, darker. He felt the proximity of souls he had never known, passed down for countless millennia. Abruptly, he opened his eyes.

“Excuse me, Mr. Hoover,” said a workman, peering in holding two boards under his arm, “but could you show us about this here swimming pool?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“That’s quite all right.”

In the cellar of the former motel, the supporting floor beams had been removed, and now a gaping hole, vaguely rectangular, leered out of floodlights perched in the muddy bottom.

“The whirlpool should go here,” Hoover said, pointing. “Orient the blueprints from this angle. Do you see? The swimming lanes will go across to the north.”

“Right you are, sir. Now, about the heating…”

“Yes, yes. It must be heated to the precise degree specified.”

“It’ll be expensive as hell. I hope you know that.”

“Any more questions?”

The workman shook his head. He did not like Hoover. He did not like Mr. Radimanath. Above all, he did not like Hirsch, who struck him as effeminate. Nevertheless, the job was handsomely paid. Hoover was in a hurry.

Hoover inspected the exterior yard, piled with debris, derelict with muddy tires, newspaper, bottles, and stiff rags. Children of the neighborhood watched him. How favored they were, Hoover thought to himself. Even as they judged him crazy, they were blessed by the gift of healthy spirit and lively mind.

Huge rolls of security fence were carried to the yard and unrolled, and pipes were slammed into the earth to hold it. Hoses ran water, created mud holes everywhere. Cement covered Hoover’s shoes. Some of the children threw stones, but he did not mind. For they were blessed with the light within the mind, a light he himself had doused in Bill Templeton.

Blueprints were brought for his inspection. Bizarre red and yellow shapes were carried to the yard, partially covered in brown paper, waiting for installation. Hoover’s eyes crept to the children again. They found him amusing. He studied them carefully, how their animal nature mingled uneasily with the innocence of their lives.