What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (9 page)

When she reached up into the niche, she discovered with a pang of disappointment that the phone was just beyond her touch. But then, seeing the cord, she put her hand out to it and grasped it. Taking care to direct the thrust away from herself, she pulled.

After only a moment’s resistance, the instrument slid forward
to the brink, teetered there briefly and then spilled forward and down, striking the carpeted floor with a muted clatter.

Blanche drew the instrument into her lap and squeezed her eyes tight shut in an effort to clear her teeming thoughts. Then, pressing the receiver to her ear, she dialed and waited. There was a series of faint buzzing sounds, a click, and then a pleasant female voice: “Dr. Shelby’s office. May I help you?”

Blanche leaned tensely forward, tipping the phone with both hands. “Miss Hilt?” she breathed. “Miss Hilt, this is Blanche Hudson. I—is the doctor there? I’ve got to talk to him. It’s—it’s about Jane—my sister.… It’s terribly important—urgent——” Knowing she was on the verge of senseless babbling, she brought herself abruptly into check. “Is he there?”

“Well—” a note of hesitation came into Miss Hilt’s voice—“he’s with a patient at the moment…”

“But I’ve got to talk to him!” Blanche cried. “I’ve
got
to!”

There was a slight pause, and then Miss Hilt said, “I’ll try to get him—if you’ll just hold on…”

There was a click and then silence. It seemed an eternity before the second click sounded, bringing the line back to life again. The voice that spoke this time was low-pitched, reassuring, friendly.

“Miss Hudson? Miss Hilt says you’re a little upset about something. What seems to be the trouble?”

“Doctor Shelby——” Blanche paused. Her thoughts were still muddled and unclear. How could she make him understand? “Doctor Shelby, I’m afraid… I mean it’s—it’s Jane… she’s… Doctor, I’ve got to see you right away. It’s so important! Can you come out here to the house?”

“Well, yes,” Dr. Shelby said, “I suppose so—if it’s really that urgent. But—has there been some sort of accident?”

“No.” Blanche shook her head. “I can’t explain, not now, not on the phone, but—you’ve got to come right away before Jane comes back.… Doctor—you will come, won’t you?”

“Well—yes, of course. But can’t you give me some idea of what to expect? If Jane’s out of the house now—can’t she come down here to the office? If I want to make an examination—or need to take tests——”

“No,” Blanche broke in urgently, “no, you don’t understand. It’s—not physical. She’d never come down there—not voluntarily. And I’m helpless.…”

“Then it’s some sort of—emotional disturbance, is that it?”

Blanche seized gratefully on the phrase. “Yes, yes, that’s it. She’s emotionally disturbed.”

“Is she violent?”

“Violent?” Blanche pressed a hand to her brow, still trying to clear her thoughts. The important thing, she told herself, was to get him here to the house before Jane returned and found her downstairs. It didn’t matter what she said now. “Yes,” she said, “yes, she is. You must come at once.”

“Perhaps I should send the police——”

“No!” Blanche cried in alarm. “You don’t understand. We’ll see about the police after——”

She broke off, her whole body gripped in a sudden convulsion of horror. There had been some change there in the hallway, a lessening of the dimness, a letting in of light.… A door had been opened somewhere behind her. Turning fearfully, a cold sweat breaking out on her forehead, she looked back along the hallway. The kitchen door, as she caught her first glimpse of it, was open only a crack. Now, however, as she faced it fully, it swung open all the way. Blurred by her own fright, she saw Jane’s hunched figure silhouetted there in the open doorway.

“Miss Hudson?” Dr. Shelby was saying on the phone. “Are you sure?”

Blanche answered distractedly, her attention frozen upon Jane. “Yes,” she said thinly, “yes.…”

“Very well. I’ll be there just as soon as I possibly can.”

There was a click and then the hum of the dead line. Blanche lowered the receiver from her ear, but continued to hold it limply in her hand.

“Jane…” she breathed. How long had she been standing there? How much had she heard? “Jane, I—I got downstairs all by myself. I never really thought I’d be able to do it—not——”

As Jane came up to her, she let the phone fall unheeded from her hand. In an unreasoning compulsion for flight, she reached one hand to the doorjamb, the other to the niche. She tried to pull herself up and onto her feet, but her strength now was utterly gone. As she let go, a hand lashed out of the pressing dimness and struck her sharply across the face. She collapsed to the floor, catching herself painfully on one elbow. With a shudder of fright she twisted about and looked up.

“Jane!” she whispered. “Oh, please!” At the sight of Jane’s face she turned away again, covering her eyes with her hands.

“Who brought you down here?” Jane’s voice hurled at her in an angry rasp. “Who’s in this house?”

Blanche shook her head in desperate denial. “There isn’t anyone. Oh, Jane, listen…!”

Again the hand lashed out, striking her with senseless rage across the back of the head.

“I
heard
you! I heard what you were saying about me! You think I don’t know what’s going on—what you’re trying to do to me!”

Blanche looked up, tears of fright streaming down her face. “Please—Jane—I’m not trying to do anything! It’s just——” A third time the hand shot out, hitting her, this time, glancingly across the cheek and the nose. A stabbing pain shot through her head, driving the words from her mind. “Don’t, Jane, don’t——!”

And then she was grasped roughly beneath the arms and lifted to her feet.

“Oh, don’t! Please——!”

She was being dragged, pulled, through the hallway and out
into the living room. There was a crash, presumably the chair in the doorway being knocked aside, and the thought fleetingly passed through her mind that she had never before realized the full measure of Jane’s strength.

Then Jane was forcing her up the steps. Her own voice seemed to come to her from a great distance, thin with pain, pleading with Jane to leave her alone. She fell and the edge of the step caught her with knifelike sharpness between the ribs, but Jane’s angry hands only caught her up again and dragged her on. After what seemed an age, her chair loomed dimly before her, and she was whirled about and hurled into it. She fell back into the seat jarringly, limply, moaning with fright and pain.

“Jane!” she rasped, but the name was lost beneath the tearing sound of her own harsh breathing.

The chair moved, spinning her about so that she fell to one side against the arm. The dark mouth of the hallway gaped before her, rushed at her and swallowed her up.

There was a moment of blurred darkness, and then she was careering crazily into her room. Out of the streaking confusion, her bed materialized, hurled itself forward, struck against the arm of her chair. At the impact, the room spun suddenly around, and she was thrown again against the arm of the chair. The door to the hallway appeared as a swiftly diminishing black patch in the grayness before her, and she knew that she was hurtling backwards toward the opposite wall. With a sob of alarm, she reached out to the spinning wheels, but instinct stopped her from touching them lest she burn her hands. And then she struck the wall, and received an almost paralyzing blow in the small of the back.

Gasping for breath, she struggled to right herself in the chair but was unable to do so. She lay panting against the arm, her eyes fixed on the figure in the doorway.

“Jane,” she gasped, “listen…”

For a long moment Jane simply stood there, staring. Then she reached for the door.

“Jane!”

The glittering eyes returned in her direction. “Just don’t wait for any doctor to come and help you,” Jane said. “Just don’t wait for anyone.”

“Jane—Jane! Wait!”

The door slammed. There was a prolonged moment of silence followed by the sound of the key scraping into the lock.

“Jane!” Blanche cried. “Oh, Jane—God in heaven!—Don’t lock me in! Jane!” She stared in horror at the blank face of the door. “Oh, please,” she whimpered, “Jane…”

As the room began to reel around her again, she pushed back hard against the arms of the chair. But it continued relentlessly, whirling, swirling, bringing with it an awful darkness that wound itself tighter and tighter around her and squeezed the air painfully from her lungs.

In the lower hallway, Jane picked up the phone, righted it and dialed. When she received an answer, she made her voice low, gave it a soft note of urgent secretiveness that made it sound remarkably like Blanche’s.

“This is Miss Hudson,” she said. “Please let me speak to the doctor.”

“Oh…” The nurse spoke with obvious surprise. “Just a minute, Miss Hudson.”

There was a prolonged pause and then Dr. Shelby came onto the line. “I’m on my way right now, Miss Hudson. Miss Hilt just caught me at the elevator.”

“Dr. Shelby——” Jane paused, made her voice still quieter. “I don’t want Jane to hear.… Doctor… I’m sorry… I—I won’t need you after all. It was all a silly misunderstanding.… I’m just glad I caught you in time.”

“But——”

“I know… but it’s all right now. She—Jane—she’s been to a
doctor by herself… another doctor… and it’s much better that way.…”

“Well”—a note of thinly disguised irritation came into the doctor’s voice—“of course if she’s under someone else’s care——”

“Yes,” Jane said quickly, “she is. So it wouldn’t really be right for you to—to interfere, would it?”

Hanging up, she replaced the phone in the niche, then turned back purposefully toward the living room and the stairs.

F
ind something in the ads?”

Edwin Flagg turned cumbersomely on the piano bench and watched his mother as she put his lunch tray down on the card table beside the piano. Without answering, he dropped the newspaper beside him.

Del Flagg straightened, wiping her hands across the skirt of her faded house dress, drawing them slowly and with a grotesque suggestion of sensuousness across her age-widened hips and up to her waist.

“Didn’t I see you mark something?”

The soft, fleshy folds of Edwin’s face seemed to contract slightly with an expression of cold loathing. Nothing ever got past old Del. He couldn’t make a move without her knowing. It was a wonder she didn’t follow him into the bathroom. Resignedly he picked up the newspaper and handed it to her.

“Here—this here.”

“Oh, wonderful!”

Edwin’s pale blue eyes brightened briefly with pain. She hadn’t even read it yet and she was gushing already. If he just belched, she had to run out and tell the neighbors.

“No big deal,” he said. “Good grief!”

Del Flagg lifted her myopic gaze from the newspaper with an expression of hurt bewilderment. It was the same expression she always showed him when he was curt with her.

Snorting against the effort, Edwin moved again on the bench so as to face the table. He reached out and picked up a thick tuna sandwich. As he chewed, he let his gaze rove unhappily around the room. The old rocker with the frayed cane back. The broken-down divan with its sleezy elasticized slip cover. The yellowing five-and-dime print of
The End of the Trail.
The hideous TV lamp—fashioned of plaster of Paris to represent an Indian tepee—which, when it was turned on, gave forth a grisly red light. Edwin’s gaze, picking critically at these items, lingered briefly with each, then moved on to the next with an expression of increased melancholy.

The apartment, one of ten that formed a side-street court, was old and depressing, a poor dwelling in a poor section of town. And here it was that Edwin had lived from the time of his very first recollection. Here, with Del close beside him, poor, simple-minded, impoverished, blindly adoring Del, he had lived out all the thirty years of his life. And ugly though the apartment itself was inside, the world immediately outside was still uglier. The central sidewalk that connected the units of the court was cracked and uneven, bordered on either side by narrow patches of parched and dying grass and weeds. The untended oleander bushes, one of which stood beside the shallow porch of each unit, were scraggly and shapeless, their leaves dingied over with dust and soot. In this atmosphere Edwin had fashioned a life which, in reality, was only a retreat from life.

It was here, too, years earlier, that Edwin had learned of his own illegitimacy. This knowledge had not been given him by Del, but hurled at him as a cruel epithet by the neighborhood children. From that day forward, hugging his hurt and shame deep inside him where he hoped even Del would never see it, Edwin had borne toward his mother a disgust and hatred equal in intensity perhaps only to her love for him. It was then that Edwin had begun his systematic retreat from a world that, to his child’s understanding, could only find him despicable and obscene.

Having inherited from his unidentified father an intelligence in all ways superior to Del’s, Edwin had learned early how to use his mother’s doting and uncritical affection to his own selfish advantage. In school he took up the study of music with the avowed intention of making this his life’s work. Already dedicated then to a musical career, he was safe, upon graduation, from the tedious and terrifying necessity of venturing out into the world in search of a living.

If, in the ten years following, Edwin failed to realize any profit from his musical compositions, it was only because his was the kind of genius not appreciated on the commercial market. Not that Edwin himself was ever called upon to make any such excuses; Del was always eager and happy to supply them for him. Indeed, through the years, it was not Edwin who apologized to Del for his lack of success but the other way around. And this was just as Edwin had planned it.

Meanwhile, Del made a living for them as a household domestic. This way she had managed through the years to provide adequately for at least their basic needs—well enough, certainly, for Edwin to pursue his “career” without interruption. Things had gone along smoothly, if dully—until this last year.

During the last few months Del’s health had begun to fail. Arthritis had started to develop, first in her hands and then in her shoulders, so swiftly that within a very short time her usefulness in her regular line of work was all but at an end. Lately, even the acceptance of an occasional day job was out of the question; she simply could not stand the pain. Lean days were finally upon Edwin and Del, and as Del’s slim savings dwindled, it became increasingly apparent that, simply by virtue of his superior health, the burden of their support had been shifted onto Edwin. Clearly, unless some sort of miracle intervened, which was highly improbable, Edwin was to be forced out into the world after all, to forage for some new source of supply.

This prospect, after an entire lifetime of defensive isolation,
was, to Edwin, almost too horrifying to face. He did not know where to begin, or even if he
could
begin. It was an enterprise obviously doomed to failure from the outset; Edwin in a dispirited analysis of his predicament appraised himself as all but totally unemployable.

He was so defensive before strangers he frequently found it impossible to speak to them. He did not make a good appearance, and he knew it; he was fat and awkward, pale and soft-looking. He was certainly beyond the first flush of youth; his hair had already begun to thin out, moving back upon his pinkish forehead before two constantly widening prongs. He was frightened of all men, including those younger than himself. Women, generally, disliked him instinctively, sensing his hatred for all womankind which had its roots in his hatred for Del.

But even supposing he did get up the courage to go out and look for work, what kind of work would he look for? What could he do? What could he even be trained to do? Nothing, surely, with his hands since he had to preserve his touch for the piano. He had no aptitude for figures and he was worse than hopeless with anything mechanical. The very thought of trying to be a salesman made him genuinely ill at his stomach.

Actually, there was only his music. Although Edwin had woefully abused and neglected whatever talent God had given him, he was basically a capable musician. But, still, he had no professional experience, no business contacts and he belonged to no unions. And so even the one thing he could do seemed utterly useless to him. Just what was going to happen when the last of Del’s savings were gone, Edwin did not know. Perhaps there was some sort of city or state agency that would step in in time to stave off starvation. He hoped so. At any rate he was almost certain there was nothing he could do about it.

There was, however, a moral obligation involved, and even Edwin could see that. He needed at least to make some sort of gesture. Accordingly he had taken lately to sending Del next door to
borrow Mrs. Steele’s morning paper so that he could look through the want ads. And so it was that he had come across the curious ad in the theatrical listings, seeking an accompanist-arranger.

Del Flagg, having subjected the ad to the same feverish scrutiny that a curator might have lavished upon an ancient manuscript, looked up finally and smiled.

“Why,” she said with wary brightness, “this seems just about made to order for you, don’t it?”

Without looking up, Edwin nodded. There was, according to his considered reasoning, no great danger of this particular ad leading him into the trap of gainful employment. Even putting aside his patent unemployability. Though it was true, as Del said, that the job described in the ad might have been made to order for him, he greatly doubted that such a job actually existed. Edwin was not so innocent as to believe that bona fide star performers, with contracts for supper-club and television appearances, hired their accompanists through the want ads. Still, he saw no harm in marking the ad or even, if it came to that, in enquiring into it. He would be dispatching his obligation to look for work, and when it turned out badly, no one would be able to say he hadn’t tried.

“Like your sandwich?”

Detecting in her voice a note of plaintiveness, Edwin nodded. “It’s fine.”

Del ran her hand dryly over the paper, pressing down softly against the place where he had marked the ad. Edwin divined that she had already thought of something to fret over. He had heard it said that she was pretty when she was young and doing extra work in pictures. Looking at her now, he couldn’t believe it; she was hideous, with her ratty gray hair and her wattled bulldog face. She looked up suddenly from the paper, and surprising his expression, frowned.

“You going to call?” she asked.

For a long moment he didn’t answer. And then he shrugged. “I guess.”

“Who do you suppose it is—the star, I mean?”

“I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Night clubs, too, huh?”

Edwin nodded. God, how she could go on about just any little thing. “That’s what it says. Why?”

Del studied his face broodingly. “You think night clubs are good for somebody who’s artistic?” She stroked her hand across the paper one last time and put it down beside him on the bench. “Does it just mean night clubs around here—or out of town ones, too?”

“How should I know? It isn’t my ad, you know. I didn’t put it in the paper.”

“Well—I don’t know.” She was watching him now, carefully, but trying to make her gaze blank. “Would you want to go away like that—out of town—with somebody like that?”

Edwin frowned with growing irritation. “Somebody like what?” he demanded crossly.

“Well—you know—it could be just anybody. I wouldn’t like it.”

“Well, if I want the job, and they want me for it, I suppose I’ll have to do what they want me to. Won’t I?”

Del nodded morosely. “Yeah, I guess you would—if you wanted to let yourself be like that.” Her gaze moved away evasively. “I’d be here all alone when they made you go away. It would be—funny. You know?”

Edwin’s irritation leaped inside him like a small, furious animal. Oh, God! what he wouldn’t give to be away from here—away from her—free! For the first time in his life the spark of ambition came alive for Edwin, and suddenly he wished he did not have misgivings about the ad. He wished he could believe that the job was real, was his, that he was going to be hired to play at television studios and night clubs—miles and miles away. If only the stupid old bitch could know how he would love—how he ached!—to go off and leave her behind.

“Maybe you could take me, too,” Del said, smiling at this new
inspiration. “Maybe they wouldn’t mind.…” Edwin stared at her, blinking furiously in an effort to keep from lashing out at her. “There’s just one thing, though.…”

She paused, waiting for his prompting, making him give her his complete attention. For a moment Edwin tried to resist this tactic, but as the silence grew between them he was forced to give in.

“That being?”

“It doesn’t say if this star is a man or—or a lady. It just says it’s a star. You’d think they’d figure you’d want to know, wouldn’t you?”

Edwin looked down at the table, reached out to the tray and took up a thick piece of cake. He knew what she was getting at. When, at Edwin’s birth, Del had foresworn any further association with men, she had renounced sex as sinful and bad and expected the world at large to renounce it, too. But if she was worried about Edwin’s continued celibacy, she needn’t be; he wasn’t likely to come that far out of his cocoon. Not at this late date.

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“Well, if it’s someone you’re going to be traveling with and all——”

“Oh, Christ!” Edwin exploded. “Oh, sweet, scented Christ! I haven’t
got
the job yet. I haven’t even called to ask about it. And already——”

“I didn’t mean anything,” Del said quickly, in fright, “nothing to get worked up about. I was just talking.”

Retreating into glowering silence, Edwin took a large bite of cake. For a long moment he held the crumbling dough in his mouth, sucking at its sweetness, as if in an effort to leaven the bitterness that was always there inside him. All the while, Del kept her eyes on his face, cautiously, guardedly.

“You going to call?”

He chewed a moment longer, then swallowed. “You don’t want me to, is that it?”

“No! No, I’m not saying that, sweetheart. I—I guess I’m just…
well—if you was to really go off somewhere—I guess I’d just about die of lonesomeness.”

Though Edwin did not believe in the ad’s legitimacy, the more she opposed the idea of his calling, the more imperative it became for him to do so—as a kind of confirmation of this new feeling that had begun inside him. He nodded down at the paper. “It’s the only thing that’s turned up since I started looking.”

Del nodded, her eyes bleak. “I know. I know.…” For a long moment she stood staring at him; then with a gesture of resignation, she turned away. Crossing to the old-fashioned built-in buffet that separated the living room from the dining alcove, she picked up the telephone and carried it back to him on its cord.

“I want you to do just what you want.” She stood before him, holding the phone out to him. “Go ahead and call. I don’t want you to say I talked you out of it.”

Dropping the piece of cake back onto the tray, Edwin looked down at the phone with an expression of faint dismay. Now that he had managed to get what he wanted, he was suddenly fearful. He hated this apartment and his life here with Del. But the evil here was known, and that of the world outside was yet to be discovered.

He reached out to the phone, touched the receiver, then drew back his hand. This was the nightmare plunge into the hostile unknown—the breaking away—that he had feared all his life. He could feel the moisture gathering on his forehead. Swallowing hard, he looked down at the phone and at the number marked in the newspaper. He raised his gaze slowly to Del’s, his eyes wide with a frightened appeal.