What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (4 page)

Blanche looked down, shielding her eyes from Mrs. Stitt’s gaze, afraid she might reveal the fear that had suddenly come alive inside her. Jane is my sister, she told herself sternly, she has taken care of me and stayed with me and protected me all these years. The least I can do is try to understand. She’s my own sister.…

She may be your own sister, honey, your own flesh and blood, but you’ve got to face it, deep down inside she hates you like poison and nothing would please her more than to see you get it right in the neck.

The words echoed suddenly into her mind from far, far back in the past. It was Martin Stagg who had said them to her. She had been working on a picture, and he had called her into his office…

I know, it’s a hard thing to admit to yourself, but Janie’s so crazy with jealousy she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

Marty had been the producer of the picture, a big, bluff man with a large, knowing heart and an uncanny instinct for picture making and its people. When one of Marty’s performers was in trouble, he was always anxious to understand and help.

Why do you think she pulls these drunks all the time—and going out and making a show of herself in public? Look how many times, just this last year, she’s got herself tossed in the can. Four, five times? Five. Next time, maybe the boys won’t get there fast enough to hush it up. And whose career is it going to reflect on? Hers? Hell, no, her career was washed up before she was even twelve years old. You’re the one who’s going to take the rap. And will she be sorry? Look—why does she have all those tantrums on the set and hold up shooting? Why is she always so sick every time Publicity sets up a personal for you, and you have to stay home and take care of her?

And don’t think I’m not sympathetic to the whole problem. She was a star, one of the real biggies, and in a tough racket, too. I give her credit. She probably kept your whole family in chips, and not just pocket change, either. So just think what it must be like for her now. It’s like her life was over before it even got started. Everyone yelling and making a fuss over her and then, all of a sudden, nothing. I’ve never seen a kid star yet pull out of it without some kind of scar to show for it. And it’s twice as bad for Janie. Here you are—her kid sister—a bigger star than she ever was. How do you think she feels, tagging along in your shade all the time? She knows damn well the only reason she works is because of that clause in your contract. Hell, the whole world knows it! Honey, think how it’s twisting her up inside. I don’t care what kind of good intentions you’ve got, you aren’t doing her any kindness. Now, look—take my advice, let’s get rid of that clause. The front office is willing to buy her off with a good piece of change—I know that for a fact—and the publicity boys will make it look right. Come on—before she cracks up completely and does you some real damage—let her off the hook, huh?…

But she had refused Marty’s advice. She had promised Jane, she
told him, and she wasn’t going to go back on her word. And now, suddenly, thirty years later, his words were as distinct in her mind as the day he said them. Because of the old movies, of course, and the fan letters. Another confirmation that she was right: she and Jane needed to leave the old house and all its lingering, unhappy memories as soon as possible.…

“Your sister is not a well woman, Miss Blanche.”

Again Blanche forced herself to look up into Mrs. Stitt’s anxious face.

“Miss Blanche, somebody’s got to tell you straight out, and I guess it’s got to be me. Your sister needs—well, she needs some kind of—attention. And I don’t care if you fire me for saying it, I
don’t
! It’s for your own good. When she gets into these—sulks—of hers, I just don’t know how you stand it. She gives me the shivers. Maybe, being close to her all the time, you just don’t notice like anyone else would. But just in the time I’ve been here it’s plain that she’s a lot worse.…”

Blanche looked up sharply. “Worse? How do you mean, Edna?”

Mrs. Stitt touched the pocket of her apron. “This sort of thing. And the way she acts generally—like a little, spoiled kid sometimes. And how she tries to stop me from doing the things you tell me so she can make me do something else. It’s hard to say exactly but—but it’s getting—worse. I don’t mind telling you, now the subject’s open—I’d have quit this job flat a long time ago except for you. She’s just too hard to get on with—with the drinking and all that.…”

Blanche pulled herself forward in her chair, feeling an urgent need—a compulsion, really—to say something in Jane’s defense. “Edna, I’m sure it isn’t anything—serious. I think I understand Jane. She’s always been moody, and she’s been under a strain lately——”

“Maybe so,” Mrs. Stitt broke in, “but I still say you’d be smart
to have her see your doctor. Oh, I know it’s a hard thing for you to see. Shut up here in this house all the time, you’ve got no way to make a comparison—but lately, Miss Blanche—well, I just worry about you.…”

“Oh, Edna!”

“Oh, I don’t mean she’s really—off—or anything like that—I’m not saying
that
—but she does get—well, irresponsible. This thing this morning—it’s not so important just by itself but—well, I get to thinking about what could happen to you alone in this house with her sometimes—especially when she gets to drinking—and I lay awake at night. I do, for a fact!”

Blanche looked up at Mrs. Stitt in helpless desperation. She dared not let the woman go on like this. Perhaps it was true; perhaps, just as you developed a tolerance for pain through long familiarity, you could also develop a tolerance for eccentricity. But Jane was her own sister, the only person she had, really, in the whole world. She refused to believe that Jane’s spells were beginning to be dangerous. For one thing they weren’t really so very frequent; Blanche had come to accept them as a kind of infirmity that she must put up with just as Jane put up with her invalidism. Of the two of them, Jane had gotten all the worst of it; imprisoned all these years with a helpless, cheerless cripple performing the duties, really, of a servant. It was only natural that it should be too much for her sometimes and that she should rebel.
If I had only listened to Marty thirty years ago,
Blanche cried within herself;
If I didn’t know in my own heart that it’s really all my own fault…
She gazed up at Mrs. Stitt, rubbing one hand in agitation across the back of the other.

“You must be exaggerating,” she said with an abruptness she didn’t intend. “There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

Instantly sensitive to her tone, Mrs. Stitt flushed a deep crimson and looked down awkwardly at her hands. “You’re right, Miss Blanche,” she said, “it’s none of my business. I guess I just ought to learn to keep my big mouth shut.”

Blanche reached out in quick distress. “Oh, Edna—no! I appreciate your concern. I honestly do, more than you know, but——” Sensing, she thought, some subtle shifting of the shadows out in the hall, she broke off. After a moment’s hesitation, she returned her gaze to Mrs. Stitt. “Where’s Jane?”

“Downstairs.” Mrs. Stitt spoke absently, still absorbed in her own embarrassment. “Miss Blanche, I apologize. I shouldn’t have butted in like this. I knew I shouldn’t when I started in, but—well, if you’ll just try to forget it…”

“Oh, please, Edna, I don’t want to worry about it. You haven’t done anything wrong.” She felt a strong anxiety to have the woman leave the room and be away from her. “You really haven’t.”

“Anyhow, I thought you’d want the letters—I thought you’d be glad to have them.”

“Oh, I am! But I’m sure it was just a mistake, Jane’s throwing them out. I’m sure of it.”

Nodding, Mrs. Stitt edged toward the door. “Well,” she said uneasily, “if I’m ever going to get finished up, I’d better get back downstairs.” At the doorway she hesitated, turned back. “Oh, yes, I guess I’d better tell you now. I can’t come but in the morning next Friday. I have to go downtown about jury duty. They’ll let me off all right, because I have to make my own living. But I have to go down when they say just the same.”

Blanche smiled. “Of course, Edna.”

“But I can come on Monday morning, too—just for the morning—if that’s all right with you? That ought to be some help…”

“That’ll be fine,” Blanche said hastily. “Thank you for telling me.”

For a long moment after Mrs. Stitt had gone Blanche sat in brooding silence, her previous mood of well-being completely gone. She started to turn back to the window, but stopped, thinking she detected, a second time, some slight movement out in the
hall. And then, remembering the letters, she gathered them up from her lap and slipped them into her pocket.

Leaving her hand against the letters for comfort, she tried to calm herself. Even so, she heard a distant voice screaming faintly against some obscure inner ear.

I got the talent!
it cried.
Even if nobody cared… And I’ve still got it!

I
’m sorry,” the voice on the telephone said. “Mr. Hanley is talking to a client right now. May I take a message?”

“Well, no—except that I called—Blanche Hudson. My number——”

“Oh, Miss Hudson—if it’s anything urgent, I know Mr. Hanley will want me to call him.”

“Oh, no. No, it’s nothing urgent at all. But I would like to talk to him when he’s free.”

“Surely, Miss Hudson. I’ll have him call you back. Probably within a half an hour. Is that all right?”

“Yes, perfectly,” Blanche said. And then she paused. “Oh—well, you might just tell him I’ve decided to sell the house. That should surprise him. Tell him I’m ready to sell to the first buyer.”

The voice on the phone took on a slightly puzzled tone. “All right, I’ll tell him. And I’ll have him call you.”

Blanche said good-bye and then, just as she was going to hang up, hesitated, listening. Though the secretary had already hung up, there was still a sound of contact on the line, a faint, whispered breathing. It continued for a moment or two and then, with a faint click, disappeared.

With a frown of concern Blanche lifted the phone from her lap and placed it on the desk. She had purposely brought it into her room from the hallway so that Jane wouldn’t overhear her from downstairs. There was no really good reason for this, she supposed,
or none at least of which she was consciously aware. It just seemed better to discuss the matter of selling the house privately with Bert before mentioning it to Jane. There was time enough to tell Jane when she was sure of what actually could be done. Then, too, there was no telling; with Jane in her present state, the idea of moving might upset her all the more.

There was no sense, either, in being annoyed with Jane for eavesdropping; even confronted with it she would only deny it and then do it again at the very first opportunity. But it was annoying, knowing that from now on all her telephone conversations would be monitored from downstairs. Also she wondered—and with a faint feeling of apprehension—what Jane’s reaction to selling the house might actually be, now that she knew. Turning her chair to face the window, Blanche let her eyes trace the intricate pattern of the grillwork against the sharp blue of the sky. Circles within circles, strong straight lines swerving off suddenly, tapering away into nothing. Like life itself. Like reason and unreason.… Blanche cast the thought from her, pulling her gaze quickly back into the room.

She looked back at the phone, suddenly certain in her own mind that Jane, having come upon the information about selling the house as she had, would surely oppose the idea. From experience Blanche knew that anything originating with her at the moment was sure to meet with Jane’s automatic disapproval. And anything that Blanche had planned in secret—well, there were bound to be repercussions from that!

Blanche curled her hands tightly around the arms of her chair. She had made up her mind; she was determined. She only had to think of some way to allay Jane’s opposition before it began. If she could just make Jane believe that she herself opposed the plan. If she could make her think that Bert was forcing a sale against her own objection… for financial reasons…

She nodded to herself, certain she had found the right way to win Jane over. Once Jane believed Blanche was against selling the house, she would support the idea. At least she wouldn’t bother
to make a fuss about it. Blanche looked across to the push button fixed to the side of the bedside table. Frowning, she started in that direction. And then, abruptly, she stopped and turned her head toward the open doorway:

As the song echoed with distant and terrible sweetness up the stairway and into the room, Blanche remained perfectly still, listening. Eyes closed, she simply sat there, as if transfixed, and then a slight shudder passed through her wasted body.

She stood in the center of the room, a squat pudding of a woman in a soiled cotton house dress patterned with faded lilacs and daffodils. On her feet she wore flat-heeled sandals of red patent leather and bobby socks of pale pink. Above the rolled tops of the socks the whitish flesh of her age-thickened legs was heavily scored with broken blue veins. In the dyed, cherry-red ringlets of her hair was an enormous satin bow of such a vivid blue that even there in the dimness it seemed to generate a radiance all its own. Posing her hands close to her face, almost in an attitude of prayer, she assumed an expression of mawkish sweetness.

“Now, when I’m very good,” she recited, “An’ I do jus’ as I’m told…”

Across the room, her reflection, captured with merciful softness in the wall-length mirror, postured just as sweetly and mouthed the words back at her:

“I’m Mama’s li’l angel, Pa says I’m good as gold.”

The room, when it was built, had been intended as a rehearsal
room for Blanche, a room in which she could practice the scenes, the songs and dances she would be required to perform in her pictures. Blanche had been intent upon her career; the room had been her own idea.

After Blanche’s accident, the room had, of course, lost its reason for being and as a consequence had remained, through the years, almost totally untouched. The hardwood floor had never been carpeted, the baby grand piano remained angled carefully into the corner next to the windows where the keyboard would catch the light. The iron sconces on the walls still contained, at the ends of short mock candles, orange-tinted bulbs shaped to resemble fat, pointed flames. The mirrored wall, through the years, had reflected little but dim emptiness and silently settling dust.

Jane, however, had found a use of her own for the room. Here it was that she came at intervals to seek the lost moments of her childhood and to escape the harsh disillusionment of the gathering years. Often at twilight she came into the room to sit, not on the piano bench which was the only seat in the room, but on the floor. Narrowing her eyes to abet the deception of the lowering light, she would gaze deeply and steadily into the mirror across the room until she had summoned from its false depths that fragment of the past which she sought. Most often, as she sat there, the mirror was transformed slowly into the ocean, and the floor upon which she sat, cross-legged, as a child would sit playing a child’s game, was the beach. Suddenly, then it was summer. It was vacation time. There was the sound of the rolling surf. And her father was nearby.

Don’t stay in the sun too long, sweetheart! We can’t have the star of the family down with sunburn!

He called out to her from the porch of the cottage, his face anxious, as always for her safety and well-being.

Don’t go out too far out, Janie! A big wave might come up and carry you off!

That was her favorite daydream, the one about the beach and the ocean. Sometimes she could sit there on the floor for a solid hour, just listening to the breaking of the waves and the sound of her father’s voice. Lately, though, she found herself more forcefully drawn to another part of the past. She had brought out all the old scrapbooks, full of her pictures and clippings, and the music and recitations that she had performed on the stage.

“But when I’m very bad…”

Suddenly remembering the line that had escaped her, she placed her hands flatly on her hips, spread her feet wide apart to achieve a stance of aggressive tomboy belligerence. Her voice was lowered to a strained and unconvincing bass.

“An’ I answer back and sass…”

Her sagging, child’s face took on an expression of frowning, contracted evil. She wagged her head back and forth in a show of pert defiance, and the twin wattles of her jowls loosely echoed the absurd motion, as did the preposterous bow nested in her garish curls.

“Then Ma says I’m a devil…”

Holding out one blunt, pointing finger, she shook it in a demonstration of a child’s impression of stern parental remonstrance.

“Pa says I’ve got my brass…”

Dropping her hands and folding them before her in a gesture of angelic composure, she took a precise step forward, as to a row of footlights, and addressed her mirrored self with a look of round-eyed enquiry.

“Now I wish you’d please to tell me, Since I’m much too young to know…”

The sound of a buzzer gritted into the room from the direction of the hallway outside, and she broke off. She frowned, and in the mirror her reflected self frowned back. Making no further move, she remained perfectly still where she was, listening. There followed a prolonged interval of silence and then, like the sound
of some angry and determined insect, the buzzer sounded again. At that, she whirled about. Yanking the ribbon from her hair, scowling, she hurled it across the room where it struck the curved side of the piano and dropped to the floor.

Crossing to the door, she hurled it open and glared out into the dim enclosure of the hallway. To her right, in the direction of the kitchen, the buzzer sounded again. After a brief pause, she turned back into the room, crossed swiftly to the piano, lifted the protective lid on the keyboard. Quite deliberately and with all the petulant force she could muster she slammed it closed again. The resultant sound, a discordant crash, radiated noisomely out into the hallway and beyond into the other parts of the house.

Jane turned her gaze upward, listening as the discord fell away into silence. The buzzer did not sound again. Looking back into the mirror, tilting her head into an attitude of arch coquetry, she affected a smile of vapid prettiness. Then, with a brief bobbing curtsy, she let the smile drop quickly away. Turning, she left the room, entered the hallway and moved in the direction of the kitchen. As she did so, her eyes again lifted toward the ceiling in the direction of Blanche’s room, catching the light, it seemed, with a kind of hard brightness.

A few minutes later, when she re-entered the hallway, she was carrying a large lacquered lunch tray covered with a spotless white napkin. Moving briskly past the door to the rehearsal room, she entered the living room, a large, long room with a high vaulted ceiling and faced along the west wall with a stairway leading up to a shallow hanging gallery. Opposite the stairway was a tall, ornate fireplace of pink Italian marble. The front wall of the room was punctuated closely with tall French windows arched at the top, and at one end by the front door, a heavy, intricately paneled slab of dark mahogany. Through the windows could be seen a narrow concrete terrace with a marble balustrade from the center of which a set of steep steps descended to the innermost curve of a circular drive.

The room was furnished with a conglomerate mixture of colors and styles. Before the fireplace stood an enormous, gaping divan of faded green velvet, the front surfaces of the arms decorated with rectangles of elaborately carved wood. Adjacent to this was a matching chair, and between the two crouched a coffee table of gleaming blond wood. Against the inner wall of the stairway stood a heavy, carved library table, and next to that a matching chair with a leather seat. Breaking the tall opening of one of the French windows was a television set, of white plastic smaller than the one in Blanche’s room. The drapes, bunched thickly between the windows, were of a gaudy rose-splashed fabric which was painfully at war with the rug, a large, intricately patterned oblong of rich Oriental reds and blues. From within the boundaries of a gleaming silver frame on the mantel, the blonde girl with the lovely sooty eyes smiled down upon the scene with an expression of fixed emptiness.

Making her way across the room, Jane started up the stairs, propelling her stocky body upward with separate, angry, forward thrusts. Now the great, glamorous movie star wanted her lunch—the great star of the silver screen who thought that just because her silly old pictures were showing on television she could start shoving people around again.…

At the sound of Jane’s footsteps on the stairs, Blanche turned her chair quickly toward the open doorway. She would have to be very careful. She would have to consider everything she said very carefully. Once Jane was allowed to take a position on the matter of selling the house, there would be no budging her. She had always been stubborn in her notions, absolutely unmovable. Blanche’s hand gripped the arm of her chair as Jane neared the doorway.

With no glance in Blanche’s direction, Jane carried the tray into the room and put it down on the desk with a deliberate abruptness, so as to produce a small angry clattering of china and silver.
Immediately, she turned and started out again, but Blanche, moving forward, held out a hand to detain her.

“Jane…” Even to herself her voice sounded thin and unnatural. “Jane, I wasn’t ringing for lunch—thank you for bringing it—but there’s something I want to—to discuss with you.”

At the doorway Jane turned and looked back, her eyes dull now and unrevealing. For a moment Blanche could only stare at her, at the dumpy, defeated figure in the shapeless dress, at the preposterous dyed hair with its hard reddish sheen, and at the childish face seamed with age and bitterness. Seeing all this—compelled somehow at this moment to see it—Blanche was filled with a curious mixture of fear and pity. She turned her gaze downward to her hands.

“Jane, I’m afraid I’ve had some bad news. There have been certain reverses lately—financial reverses, you understand, and—according to Bert Hanley we’re going to have to give up this house. I’ve already——” She paused, aware of a subtle quickening in Jane’s attitude. “I should have told you sooner, I know that, but Bert kept thinking that things might change and——”

“When did you talk to Bert Hanley?”

Startled Blanche glanced up to find the dark eyes full upon her, level, alive, waiting, and she felt a sudden breathlessness.

“Why—it was last week, it seems to me.…”

Jane, staring at her unblinkingly, just perceptibly shook her head. “Bert Hanley didn’t call here last week. And you didn’t call him. I know.”

“I—well, no, we didn’t talk on the phone,” Blanche fumbled. “He wrote me a letter, actually. But that doesn’t make any difference.…”