For Love of Audrey Rose Read Online Free PDF Page B

articulated philosophies, and they brought a kind of balm. A diffused substitute for serenity that outdid Dr. Kaplan’s Valium at any rate. Bill had nothing. He lay on the couch, eyes wide at the ceiling. From time to time, his arm jerked from nervous exhaustion.
    Janice brought some scotch and water to him, but he ignored it.
    In the morning, Janice dressed in a soft beige suit and a dark hat. Bill huddled in his dirty clothes on the couch.
    “I can’t go,” he whispered hoarsely, breaking a night-long silence.
    “No one will be there,” Janice said. “Only us. The Federicos.”
    “I can’t—I can’t go—”
    “Do you think it’s wise to stay home alone?”
    “I won’t go and have them accuse me!”
    Janice knew it was useless to argue. The cremation took place without him.
    Flames roared from gas jets arranged in a semicircle around the entire wooden casket. It was so hot that the interior walls, cast iron, flaked off in large patches. Ivy, who had fled in panic from the fire, was consumed in an obliterating flame.
    Only a few ounces of pebbly ash were left of the human body.
    Steel instruments gathered the ashes into a brass urn. The urn was placed in a small varnished mahogany chest. A thin man with sober eyes lifted the chest into a compartment in a marble wall.
    On the marble wall was a brass plate: IVY TEMPLETON— 1964–1975 No. 5693452. There was nothing else left.
    Janice stood in the marbled hall. Ivy, she silently prayed, forgive us. Forgive and understand us. She prayed for the liberty of her child’s soul. Then she added a Catholic prayer that she remembered from her own youth. When she was through, a great silence filled the chamber.
    She walked away on the arm of Russ Federico. Outside, the sun glinted on patches of snow on the small lawn. Running water glistened in the roads. It was Ivy’s kind of spring—a quick transition, full of clean snow, warmth, and icicles melting with musical drops into the muddy ground below. The crisp air breathed hope.
    At the door of Des Artistes, Carole and Russ took their leave.
    “Sure we can’t come up and sit with you?” Carole asked.
    “Thank you, but Bill wants to be alone.”
    Russ shook his head. “My father always said that grief is something you can’t work out on your own.”
    “I know, Russ,” Janice answered, “but I think it’s better if we wait until tomorrow.”
    “As you think best.”
    Stepping alone onto the ninth floor was an eerie sensation. It seemed denuded, all the life sucked out of it by death. Janice plucked up her courage and stepped into the apartment. Bill had not moved from where she had left him that morning.
    He moaned softly as she closed the door.
    She tried to get him to eat but he refused. She brought fresh clothes from the bedroom and he slowly dressed. Throughout the day, she answered the telephone, calls from family and relatives, the parents of Ivy’s friends. A small delegation of Ernie, Dominick, Mario, and several members of the restaurant staff came to pay their respects.
    Later that night, a massive bouquet of flowers arrived from the Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, with poems that expressed how the flower reincarnated the soul of the plant.
    Bill began to bite his knuckles until they grew raw and bleeding. Janice slipped a crumbled Valium into his dinner but it had no effect. He paced through the apartment, restless as a caged panther, saying nothing.
    Suddenly the wind blew and the pressure slammed the door of Ivy’s room.
    Bill stopped, frightened, and stared up at the landing, at Ivy’s door. He put his hands over his ears as though to block out inaudible screams, the scurry of twisting, pattering feet.
    At 10:30, two reporters came with questions, but Janice excused herself and closed the door. She instructed Dominick not to send up any reporters. Dominick apologized, saying they had passed themselves off as members of the family.
    By 11:30, Bill fell asleep on the couch. Exhaustion showed