For Love of Audrey Rose

by Frank De Felitta

  “You mean this whole room is just for—?”

  “That’s right. These are the births since January, Nineteen Seventy-three. New York is a very fertile place. Follow me. Nineteen Seventy-five is at the end of the hall.”

  As they passed into the far end of the corridor, a wing opened up to view, and along the entire wall were ceiling-high metal cabinets, gray and green, with stepladders available in front. Janice paused. The vista was depressing, even overwhelming. If each cabinet was full, Janice reasoned, then the accumulated total of births would have to exceed a hundred thousand.

  “Well, grab yourself a bunch of patience. This is Nineteen Seventy-five. What month was the infant born?”

  “February.”

  The girl strolled to the western bank of cabinets, where the front labels read “February.”

  “What day?”

  “The 3rd.”

  “Okay, that’s your drawer up there. Get yourself a ladder. What it is, is a cross-index to registration number; you can go to the main bank behind my desk and look up the infant.”

  Janice stared upward at the huge files, the dusty metal still showing where old tape had been affixed, torn away, and never washed. “How many numbers are in one drawer?”

  “Never counted. I would imagine quite a few thousand. Like I said. New York must be a busy place at night. Good luck.”

  The girl walked slowly back up the corridor, leaving Janice to wonder whether she was supposed to remove the drawer or take a note pad up to it. The answer was solved for her when it became clear that the drawer was permanently attached to its runners. Janice climbed back down, retrieved a pen and note pad from her purse, and climbed back up the stepladder. Perusing through the cards to find the beginning of the February 3 entries, she discovered to her dismay that each card was coated with scores of registrations, all entered in the most minuscule type she had ever seen. Worse, the entries had been accumulated in order of registration number and not time of birth, so that she would have to go through what conservatively looked like at least four thousand different numbers.

  “Jesus Christ, Bill,” she moaned aloud.

  After each number was the sex of the child, the exact time of delivery, family name, and two cross-reference numbers that made no sense to her.

  With a deep intake of breath, Janice leaned forward, peered into the first card and began. The numbers were so small, the type so cramped, that though she squinted, it began to blur into a mass of tangled lines. It helped for her to close one eye.

  After ten minutes, Janice found it easier simply to run her finger down the “Time” column, and if it read “10” on the hour, she stopped. Then she checked the AM or PM symbol behind it. If it was AM, she carefully examined the minute column. In this way, she rapidly dispensed with hundreds of numbers.

  She rested her eyes. Shifting weight, she began again, with a new burst of enthusiasm. Half an hour went by, close to eight hundred registrations, until water film began forming like tears in her eyelids, but the closest she came to Ivy’s death instant was 10:50 in the morning.

  “Big job,” commented the girl below her.

  “What?”

  The girl held up two mugs of steaming coffee.

  “Take a break. Have some coffee. Then I’ll give you a hand. My name is Cathy.”

  “That’s awfully kind of you,” Janice said.

  She stepped gratefully down from the ladder and accepted a mug. Cathy smiled.

  “I had no idea it would be like this,” Janice confessed. “I imagined it would be like checking a book out in a library.”

  “It’s a real labyrinth here,” Cathy admitted.

  Now Janice became aware of the extraordinary dimensions of the combined halls, and the fact that they were the only two people in it, dwarfed by tons of records.

  “You looking for somebody you know?” Cathy asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Lots of mothers, they come here, looking for the kids they’ve given to adoption.”

  “It’s not my own child I’m looking for.”

  “You sure? Cause it’s not my business and I’d be fired for saying this, but that sort of thing just gets ugly and there’s no way it can succeed.”

  “Well, I promise you, that’s not what I’m here for,” Janice said.

  “Lots of times we have people from NYU or Columbia doing research. You a college person?”

  “No.”

  “Writer?”

  “Not that, either.”

  “Well, I got to admit, you got me really curious.”

  Janice laughed, but she became uncomfortable under Cathy’s scrutiny.

  “Let’s just say it’s a kind of coincidence I’m looking for,” Janice finally said.

  Cathy shrugged. “Well, nothing else makes sense around here, either.”

  By a mutual signal, they began. Cathy pulled a second stepladder to the file and, referring to the time that Janice wrote on a slip of paper, began to search through the rear files of the spacious drawer. They worked quickly, flipping cards back with mechanical monotony, pausing now and then to refresh their eyes.

  In ten minutes, Cathy found a 10:43 and noted down the registration number. Janice peered over at the card to verify it. Her heart began to race. Somehow the number jumped upward from the mass of numbers and letters as though it belonged to her personally.

  Fifteen minutes later, Janice came across another 10:43, but a peculiar symbol followed it. Cathy stopped to look at it.

  “I think that means deceased,” Cathy said. “Copy the number and we’ll check it in the main bank.”

  When they were through, fingers sore, backs twisted, they stepped down to the main floor. Cathy slammed the drawer shut, and it was like an explosion that burst over their ears.

  Janice had a premonition that the other baby did, in fact, die at or before childbirth. Leaving exactly one child born at the minute Ivy’s vital functions permanently ceased. It would have been better, Janice thought, if there had been a thousand possibilities. Or none. Either way, there would have been no way to trace. Reluctantly, she followed the girl back up the corridor. They edged past the desk and went to a squat, black bin divided into internal ridges, labels affixed in poor handwriting to the outside.

  Cathy checked one of the registration numbers, rolled through a hundred circular containers of microfilm, and finally pulled out a loose-wrapped strip of black film. While Janice watched, she fitted it into a machine, pulled the blinds shut, and turned on the machine light. Wheeling rapidly, Cathy came to the number.

  Henderson, no name. Father: James McAlister Henderson. Mother: Marcia Elise Hinton Henderson. Hospital: Columbia University Medical. Time: 10:43 AM. February 3, 1975. Signature of presiding doctor, James E. Kindermann.

  Where there were spaces for more information, Dr. Kindermann had scrawled in: surgical delivery—malformed central nervous system: medulla. Time of death: February 10, 1975. See City of New York Certificate #348689682.

  “Poor thing,” Cathy said softly.

  “That leaves only one other possibility.”

  “I’ll get it for you now.”

  Janice watched the microfilm blur in the bright rectangle of the machine’s projection frame. Cathy whipped the microfilm into a roll, clipped it, and replaced it. In a few seconds, she returned with a second clip. Transfixed, Janice leaned forward as the birth certificates in negative tones raced by, streaks of white jumping through the viewing rectangle, and then Cathy slowed and the columns began to be discernible, moving slower and slower into the oblivion of the cutoff. At last Cathy stopped.

  “There she is.”

  Janice bent forward even farther.

  Hernandez, Juanita Flores Ynez. Father: Patrizio Gomez y Ruiz Hernandez. Mother: Rosa Hernandez. Hospital: Bronx General. Time: 10:43 AM. February 3, 1975. Signature of presiding doctor, Herbert M. Weissberg. Weight: 5 lbs. 11 oz. Slight jaundice. Religion: Roman Catholic. 385 118th Street, New York City, New York. Stamped: Office
of the clerk of the City of New York. There was more, the mother’s maiden name, and so forth, but Janice only saw the infant’s name. And the address. There was even a reproduction of a scrollwork over the certificate, an imitation banner with furled ends, an obsolete vestige of generations of custom that somehow the city had not exterminated.

  As she scrawled the information, Janice realized that the little girl already had two connections to her. The instant of birth and her religion. Janice smiled. Apart from that, it was all part of permutations and probabilities.

  “Tell me honestly,” Cathy demanded, smiling, “what are you going to do with that?”

  “This address? I’ll tell you, Cathy, I don’t know.”

  Puzzled, Cathy could not help but laugh.

  Janice turned to go, but Cathy objected.

  “You have to sign the register,” she said, smiling.

  “Sorry.”

  Janice initialed the last column after her name, where Cathy had written in the time.

  “You have good security here,” Janice observed.

  “That’s right. Nobody comes in or goes out without signing. In person. City rules.”

  With profuse thanks, Janice left the department and returned to Des Artistes. She entered the restaurant bar, sat down, and ordered a split of Mouton Cadet. Then, hungry, she added a sandwich. Outside, the storm threatened but never came. Dense clouds swirled over the buildings, lit up from below by floodlights or red neon, like an angry, cosmic storm.

  It was in this restaurant bar, she thought, that they had first met Hoover over a year ago. He had expounded his theory of rebirth, and Bill had practically landed him a punch across the table. Now Bill was in an asylum and Hoover was gone into some distant countryside where the water stank and white cows with long horns were sacred.

  She ordered a second wine. She thought about the birth certificate. Juanita—Juanita Hernandez. It evoked an image of a tiny, tan-skinned infant, with black curly hair, eyes shut with crying. The one infant in all of New York born at precisely the wrong moment. Mercifully, she began to feel the effect of the second glass.

  As Janice wearily entered the apartment, the telephone was ringing.

  “No, not at this hour,” she pleaded to the dark rooms. “Please, Bill…”

  Turning on a lamp, she picked up the receiver.

  “Glad I caught you,” Bill said. “What did you find?”

  “Nothing, Bill.”

  “Nothing? What the hell do you mean, nothing?”

  “It’s a manual system, Bill. And there was nobody to help.”

  “God damn all hell, anyway.” Bill threw something across his room that shattered. “Look,” he said, barely controlling himself. “When can you go back there?”

  “Not for a while, Bill. We’re swamped at the studio.”

  “Janice, I need you to go tomorrow.”

  “Not tomorrow, Bill.”

  “Well, then by Wednesday. Okay?”

  “I’ll try, darling.”

  “Try? You’ve got to do more than just try! I’m sorry— please, honey, how long is this going to take?”

  Janice wondered how long she could string him along.

  “Perhaps a few weeks,” she said. “Maybe longer.”

  Bill groaned.

  “I’m doing what I can, Bill, but it’s going to take time.”

  “Right. Christ, I’m glad I’ve got you out there. You don’t know what it’s like in this chamber of horrors. By the way, I forgot to write down what the Master said. About the signs.”

  Janice explained, reading from her notes, what the Master had said about the signs: Physical, Psychological, and Religious.

  “Well, screw the psychological,” Bill said in disgust. “Any kid born in February, 1975 is less than a year old. What about the physical signs? I don’t remember a damned thing wrong with Ivy, do you? I mean, did she have a rash or something when she was born? It was all normal, wasn’t it?”

  “She was a perfect little child, Bill,” Janice lied, remembering a tiny scar just below the nape of Ivy’s smooth, white neck.

  “Think, God damn it!”

  Janice held the receiver a foot from her ear.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. “But there’s got to be a sign. Did she have any marks at all?”

  “None that I can remember.”

  “All right, all right,” he said angrily. “Let me work on it. Meanwhile, you get on back to the Hall of Records.”

  “When I can, Bill.”

  Janice stalled a week.

  The next time she visited Bill, he folded his arms, listening patiently to her explanations as to why the Hall of Records took so long to yield up its secrets. He studied her eyes intensely, examining them for the slightest flicker, the smallest indication of a lie. While in her mind she heard: Juanita Hernandez. 118th Street. Birth: normal. 10:43. February 3, 1975.

  “When you went to Westport,” Bill asked, “did Ivy look any different?”

  Confused, Janice said nothing.

  “The night you ran away from New York,” he said calmly, “you ran off to the beach with Ivy. Did she look any different?”

  “No, I don’t think so—I don’t remember.”

  “Was she in pain?”

  “No. I’m sure she felt fine. She loved the beach.”

  “Were her eyes clouded?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Were her senses unclear?”

  “Bill, I don’t understand what you’re asking!”

  Bill, flustered, referred back to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which now lay permanently open on his desk, like a small altar.

  “Those are the signs of deliverance to the Lord of

  Death,” Bill said somberly. “You say you saw none of them?”

  “None, Bill. I’m quite sure.”

  “What about fear of holy persons? That’s a very strong sign.”

  “No. In fact, we saw some nuns and the children of the girls’ school, and Ivy became very happy.”

  Bill looked at her carefully, a strange mixture of triumph and fear in his eyes.

  “Then the death was untimely, Janice.”

  Bill looked pale. He looked exhausted. Janice realized now that there was utterly no chance that stringing out the Hall of Records ordeal would lessen his passion one iota. His finger jabbed at The Book of the Dead.

  “If you had known in Westport,” he said. “If you had had some inkling…”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Janice,” he said in a voice which did not sound familiar, “on the fifteenth of the month, if there had been a clear sky and no wind—”

  “There was a storm blowing.”

  “Ivy could have stretched out her arms, cast her shadow onto the sand.”

  Bill spread his arms, mimicking, but his body trembled with an unusual tension, and he closed his eyes until tears formed.

  “And where her heart would be, in the shadow, carve the letter A. And Ivy would stare into it, unblinking, for seven minutes. And seven times the holy benediction would be uttered….”

  “Please, darling, stop it!”

  Bill leaned back, arched his spine, and called upward, to the heavens, beyond the heavens, in a voice deep from his diaphragm.

  “Om ayuse samharakesvare hum phat!”

  Janice covered her ears with her hands.

  “Om ayuse samharakesvare hum phat!”

  Bill’s eyes glazed triumphantly. He stood up straight again.

  “And then Ivy would look up into the sky and see her after-image. If it was pale and white, she would not die. But if it was black, she was being consumed.”

  Bill paused. His words came now curiously dry, abstract, devoid of emotion. In a desultory way, he riffled through the pages of The Book of the Dead, listless.

  “But you didn’t know that, Janice,” he said.

  “And what if I had known, Bill?”

  He smiled, but only shrugged.

  “In that case,” he said,
“if it was black, there would have been counter-rituals. There are certain kinds of flasks. Reading from the texts. Crashing of the cymbals, drums, and lutes, and the sending away of the demons. You see, Janice, we could have ameliorated her fear, circumvented her untimely return.”

  He turned slowly back to her. His smile remained, but now it was sad and demonic.

  “The cycle would have stopped,” he said. “Now it only continues.”

  A name, a date, and an address flashed through Janice’s mind. She turned away. She did not want to think what Bill would do if he ever found Juanita. She believed him capable of anything. Yet, she could not bring herself to confide in Dr. Geddes. Bill would crumble one final time, and forever, if she betrayed him.

  The next day was Saturday, and Janice took the bus up Riverside Drive. She crossed to the northeast, just past the park, until she was in Spanish Harlem. Though it was cold, the day was ferociously bright, and it hurt her eyes to look down the crowded streets. Radios blared music out of the pawnshops. There was not another white person in view.

  On 118th Street were a series of small grocery stores, a laundromat, and a Pentecostal church. Opposite them was an enormous block of public housing. Janice looked in vain for the numbers. If there was a 385, the house number had long ago been ripped from the door.

  She crossed the street and went into the first entrance. A tattered sign read 200 - 300. The hall stank of mildew. Overhead were harsh, rubbery sounds, as though a child were ramming a wheeled toy repeatedly over a linoleum floor. Graffiti everywhere denoted death and crude love for whites. Janice walked slowly to a door down the hall and listened. A radio played disco music inside, the announcer speaking excitedly in a liquid Spanish.

  She knocked.

  When the door opened, a slight man with a pencil-thin mustache stood before her in his undershirt. He retreated, embarrassed before her, and then defiantly stood his ground.

  “Is Mrs. Hernandez here?” she asked hesitantly.

  He shook his head and prepared to close the door.

  “Upstairs?” she asked.

  He glared blankly at her.

  “Um, donde es Senora Hernandez?”

  The man shrugged, smiled politely but firmly, and gently closed the door.

  Just then, two boys, aged fifteen or sixteen, came up from the basement, carrying lead pipes. They stopped and stared at her.