The tension in Janice’s grip on Bill’s hand relaxed a bit as she slowly shook her head in the negative. Bill, convinced he had heard “green carnation,” could only stare dumbly at Hoover and wait for further information.
“My entire upbringing,” Hoover continued, “has always steered me away from a serious belief in Karma.…”
The statement was utterly baffling to Bill, it didn’t connect with his train of thought. What the hell was Karma and what did it have to do with flowers?
“But after seven years of seeking and meditating, I began to experience the reality of reincarnation and now believe, as the Koran tells us, that ‘God generates beings and sends them back, over and over again, till they return to Him.’”
“Did you say ‘reincarnation’?” Bill suddenly asked, finally linking into the drift of Hoover’s words.
“Yes, Mr. Templeton,” Hoover replied warily, “the religious belief of nearly one billion people on earth, a doctrine accepted by some of the greatest men our world has produced, from Pythagoras to Schopenhauer, from Plato to Benjamin Franklin.…”
“Oh,” Bill said lamely, swallowing the last of his drink.
“Understand, I don’t expect you to accept or believe in the ethics of Karma, any more than I did at first. What I am asking is that you keep an open mind to the things I’m about to tell you. You will doubt them, of course. You may even think I’m insane. Quite natural. I accept your skepticism beforehand. But do hear me out.”
“Okay,” Bill said. “Go ahead.”
“Ten years ago”—Hoover began his story on a note of solemnity—“there was an accident. And in this accident my wife and daughter were taken from me. It was very quick, very sudden. For a long time it left me paralyzed mentally. For a year I did nothing, went nowhere, avoided people. The vacuum they left in my life was unbearable.” A quick mote of brightness flecked his eyes. “And then, one day, I had this distinct feeling that they were near me. I felt as if my daughter, her name was Audrey Rose, was very close to me. I had never believed in life after death or the supernatural; I thought it was probably an aberration of my mind brought on by the painful loss, as if my mind were trying to compensate—to fill in the gap. But it was a good feeling, and I didn’t reject it. In fact, the sense of Audrey Rose’s closeness gained in intensity as time went on and served to put me back on my feet, brought me to the point where I could deal with life again and with people—”
“Would you care for something else?” Marie had sidled up to their table, unobserved, causing Janice to jump slightly.
“I’ll have more tea, thank you,” Hoover said.
“Do it again.” Bill said, handing her the empty glass. “Make it a double.”
Janice remained silent.
After Marie cleared the table and left, Hoover shut his eyes, composed his thoughts, and continued.
“About a year and a half after the accident I was at a dinner party and—now, please bear with me—one of the guests was a woman who claimed she could read minds. It’s called psychometrize. She’d take your ring or some other personal possession and, through it, tell you things about yourself, as psychics do, about your past, present, and future—like one of those magicians you see on the stage. I thought it was stupid, silly; people can’t do these things. Anyway, the friend who brought me to the party persuaded me to give the woman my ring, and she began telling me things about myself—very accurate things—about my past that only I knew. And then she started describing my daughter, as if she were a child of about two, and I got very upset. I started to leave when she stopped me and asked why I was so reluctant to talk about her. I told her that Audrey Rose had died in an accident and that the memory was still very painful. She laughed and shook her head.” Hoover’s voice rose in pitch slightly as he attempted to duplicate the woman’s speech. “ ‘Your daughter is alive,’ she said. ‘She’s come back.’ And she went on to describe my daughter as being a lovely blond child, living in a beautiful home in New York City. She gave Audrey Rose your daughter’s name, Ivy, combined them so dramatically that they were the same person, they were one and the same, and I thought, Oh, this is impossible! It was very shocking, upsetting, and so I left.… It was a very disturbing feeling when she told me all this.… And I told her she was crazy, she was wrong, and I took my ring back, and I left.…”
The words were spilling forth at a rapid rate. Bill felt himself wince under the viselike grip of Janice’s hand as she increased pressure apace with Hoover’s incredible statement.
Hoover filled his cup from the pot of tea and continued his story in a quieter, more controlled voice.
“Almost a year went by. I couldn’t help thinking about the incident, of course—it was natural to want to believe in such things—but I considered myself an intelligent, rational person and tried to push the whole thing away from me. But I couldn’t really. The things she said, the way she described Audrey Rose, the accuracy, it was all too convincing, and so I clung to the hope that perhaps she might be just another fraud. But I did nothing about it.”
After another slight pause, Bill thought to heighten the dramatic effect, Hoover picked up the threads of his story.
“The year was 1966; the month was December. I happened to be in New York on a business trip when I saw an ad in the Times, announcing a lecture appearance of a famous psychic at Town Hall—he was a well-known expert on paranormal phenomena and a clairvoyant as well. For some overpowering reason, I felt I had to attend. I remember giving up a ticket to Hello, Dolly!, which was the hottest show on Broadway at the time.
“The weather that night was miserable; it was almost impossible to find a cab, but I finally did and arrived at the hall as the lecture was in progress. I walked down the aisle as quietly as possible and had got to my seat when I realized that the speaker had paused in his lecture and was looking at me—studying me, actually, with a look of amazement. It took him a couple of seconds to recover his poise and continue with the lecture, which mainly centered on ESP and thought-transference experiments.”
While Hoover took a sip of tea, Bill sneaked a glance at Janice. Perspiration glazed her perfect skin; her eyes were riveted exclusively on Elliot Hoover, scrutinizing him with all the awe and uncertainty of a scientist on the brink of a fearful discovery. Bill squeezed her hand reassuringly, but the tenseness remained.
“After the lecture,” Hoover continued, “as I was about to leave the hall, he pointed his finger at me and indicated that he wanted me to wait. I joined him in his dressing room, where he immediately apologized for staring at me and told me about an aura, surrounding me, that had first caught his attention—”
“A what?”
“An aura. A kind of halo of light that emanates from certain persons and can be apprehended only by a specially attuned consciousness.”
“Oh.”
“Like the woman at the party the year before, he told me things about myself, very accurate things about my past, about my daughter, describing her as if she were alive and referring to your daughter as my daughter, all very detailed—descriptions of the kind of clothes she wore, and the friends she had—but it was my daughter, in your daughter, born again. He told me of the home she lived in, describing the living room with a large white fireplace and a lovely paneled ceiling with paintings set into it … and the room upstairs, where Ivy slept … the yellow and white gingham curtains, the bright terry-cloth bedspread … the dresser drawer that always sticks, second one from the top.…”