What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (29 page)

The doorbell rang.

Orvil looked at the dinosaur uncertainly. It was trembling badly; apparently any strange sound threw the poor thing into a violent state of panic. The doorbell ran again. Orvil put the animal quickly inside the crate amongst the fragments of the egg and put the top on loosely enough to give it air. In the darkness it would feel hidden and safe. That done he hurried back to the living room.

Conveniently, the newsmen arrived almost in a body. There were seven of them all together, five reporters and two photographers, and Orvil had never seen so many hand-painted neckties all at one time in his life. They all yelled at him at once.

“Just a minute!” Orvil said, holding up his hand. “Just a minute, gentlemen!” Silence followed. “I must ask you to be very quiet. I know it may seem odd to you, but the dinosaur is extremely sensitive and easily frightened. Now, if you’ll just be perfectly quiet, I’ll get the animal and bring it in to you.” He turned away and started through the hall into the kitchen. There was a tug at his sleeve and he turned to find Meg beside him.

“Orvil!” she cried. “You mustn’t do this, dear,
please
! There isn’t any dinosaur, there just isn’t! It’s all in your imagination no matter how real it seems to you!”

“You’ll be sorry you said that,” Orvil said sternly. He stepped around her and into the kitchen.

“Please, Orvil!” Meg pleaded, following after him. “Think of me! Do you think a girl wants to marry a fellow who—who has
dinosaurs
!” She made a vague gesture with her hand. “Besides, how could one of those big enormous things even get into a little house like this?”

“If you had studied dinosaurs,” Orvil said frigidly, “you would have learned that they were all sizes. Some of them were no bigger than an ordinary house cat. And besides that—!”

Suddenly he stopped, staring down at the crate in hollow-eyed futility. The lid had been shoved aside and it was empty.

“Oh, no!” Orvil moaned.

“Please listen, dear,” Meg went on. “I know it must have been a shock when you found the egg broken. I know how proud you were of it. But you mustn’t retreat into unreality. There isn’t any dinosaur, Orvil!”

“There
is
!” Orvil said, suddenly shouting. “There
is
a dinosaur!”

As he spoke, however, his gaze moved across the room to the door that led out to the back yard and up the hillside. Here he stopped, filled with horror. The door was standing slightly ajar, open just enough to permit the outward passage of a small dinosaur. Like a dream-walker Orvil moved to the door and stared hauntedly out into the empty distance.

“It’s gone,” he whispered numbly. “It’s run away!”

Meg moved to his side and took his hand gently in hers. “Of course it’s gone, dear,” she said. “Why don’t you go out now and tell those men it was only a joke? Tell them it was a publicity stunt for the picture. For me, dear.”

Orvil turned to her slowly and for a moment he looked down into her anxious, searching eyes. Then he shook his head. “I will not!” he said and, turning, he fled out the back door, across the yard and up the slope of the hill.

It was nearly an hour later when Orvil returned. His face and hands were scratched and his clothing was torn, but he was empty handed. He felt even worse than he looked.

As he approached the back yard, Meg ran to meet him, great tears welling in her eyes.

“Now, do you believe me?” she cried. “Can’t you believe that it doesn’t exist? Say you do, Orvil! Please!”

Orvil started to answer her, but he held the words back as he saw the two white-uniformed men approaching them across the lawn, each from an opposite direction. He looked down into Meg’s tormented eyes and his gaze softened and grew merely sad. He sighed, as though with a great weariness.

“All right,” he said, “I believe you. I guess I just went off my nut for a little bit.”

“Oh, Orvil!” Meg cried and twined her arms around his neck.

With all that emotional momentum built up, Orvil and Meg were married just three days later. The ceremony took place in Carmel by the Sea, where they remained for their honeymoon and spent an idyllic week in a cottage surrounded by twisted cypress and the sound of the surf. There were moments when Orvil became preoccupied and pensive, but Meg understood and did not intrude. They followed developments mainly by watching the newspapers.

Actually the business about the dinosaur didn’t turn out badly. The reporters were pretty cutting to Orvil, but they still gave Mr. Grossbeck’s picture considerable mention, and the studio, in appreciation, called Orvil long distance to offer him a job in the publicity department. Really it was all for the best, and when Orvil and Meg returned to Orvil’s little cottage in Hollywood they hadn’t a serious worry in the world.

As a wedding present Meg had sent the egg out to be patched for Orvil and when it was delivered she gave it to him. He was tremendously touched. A tear came to his eye, and Meg, sensing a tender, private moment, left him alone.

For a time, Orvil sat holding the egg, then, putting it down, he got up and crossed slowly to the window that faced out on the back yard and the hillside. Wistfully, he turned his eyes to the distance.

Suddenly he straightened, alert to the last nerve. His eyes searched the yard rapidly and with growing joy. He had detected that a good deal of the green foliage had disappeared from the trees and shrubs. It appeared to have been chewed off—systematically and to a level about as high as a man’s shoulder. Orvil threw open the window and inclined his ear toward the hill.

Presently, after some moment, he was rewarded by a faint and far-away hissing. He stood there for a long time, just smiling quietly to himself.

Dinosaurs, Orvil was thinking, were notorious for growing very large very swiftly. Shortly, it appeared, the dinosaur in the back yard was going to be so large that a lot of people would no longer be able to ignore it. It might, in fact, get so big that it would scare the hell out of practically everybody. His smile grew even wider, and he wondered what they would all have to say to him then…

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Copyright © 2013 by Mitch Douglas and Judith F. Beckman

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Copyright © 1960 by Henry Farrell

“The Debut of Larry Richards” and “First, the Egg” copyright © 2013 by Calvin Mitchell Douglas and Judith F. Beckman

“What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte?” and “Henry Farrell and the Story of Baby Jane” copyright © 2013 by Calvin Mitchell Douglas

Grand Central Publishing Edition

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Second ebook edition: October 2013

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ISBN 978-1-4555-4717-3

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