What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (14 page)

“What happened?”

Del met his gaze across the table, pleased that she had managed to capture his interest so completely. “Well, it all started at one of those big parties, you know one of those big Hollywood parties where there are a lot of movie people. It was at some big producer’s house, there was a lot to drink and all that. Anyway, Jane Hudson got drunk and started right in to make a fool of herself—like she always did—she was famous for it—only this time, well, I guess Blanche just decided she’d had all she could stand. They said she grabbed her right there in front of everybody—that Blanche grabbed Jane—and she told her to go and get her coat because they were going home.

“Well, that was bad enough. You can imagine. There was a big squabble between the two of them, and then finally when they got out of the house and out to the car, it started all over again. Jane was bound she was going to drive home, and Blanche was bound she wasn’t. In the end, though, Blanche gave in—I guess just because she was so embarrassed and anxious to get out of there. And so—the next thing anybody heard the next morning there had been this awful accident, and Blanche was crippled up in the hospital.”

“Well, then—it was just an accident.”

“Well, yes, but then the real story began to leak out. Where it happened was right at the front gates to their own yard—a pair of big fancy iron things, they said they were, in front of the driveway.
Nobody ever said what happened in so many words, but there wasn’t much doubt about it. When Blanche and Jane Hudson got home that night, Blanche got out of the car to work this trick gadget that made the gate open, and Jane Hudson tried to run her down and kill her. She just waited until Blanche was standing in front of those gates and she stepped down on the gas and drove right into her. It gives me the shivers just to think about it.”

Edwin stared at her in doubt and horror.

“But that isn’t the worst,” Del rattled on. “After she hit Blanche, she just jumped out of the car and ran off. Imagine that; it’s a wonder, the way the car was smashed up she wasn’t killed herself. And I guess she would have been except she was so drunk. You know how drunk people never get hurt in a wreck because they’re all relaxed? Anyway, she must have known Blanche was hurt bad and she just went off and left her there to die. Her own sister!

“Later on they found her in some cheap hotel downtown, drunk as a lord and out of her head. They tried to smooth it over by saying she had gone into shock and didn’t remember anything. They said she didn’t mean to hurt Blanche, that her foot just slipped on the gas. But there were some on the inside who seemed to think different. Everybody knew Jane Hudson was jealous of Blanche and was always trying to mess things up for her.”

Del paused, shook her head. “But the awful part is that Blanche Hudson
would
have died, too, right there in the street like a dog, only she managed to crawl up onto a neighbor’s porch and get help. Now if that isn’t the worst thing you ever heard…”

Edwin lowered his gaze to his plate. “It’s probably just another studio story,” he said. “In those days they made a big scandal out of everything.”

“I even heard they had to put her away for a while after the accident,” Del persisted, “this Jane Hudson you’re so crazy about.”

“
Crazy
about?” Edwin looked up, angered. “I don’t believe it, that’s all. It was just an accident, like they said.”

“Well, a lot of people said it wasn’t—people who should know.”

“Maybe I’ll ask her about it next time I see her,” Edwin said.

Del’s gaze came up sharply, striking hard against his. “You’re going to see a woman like that again? A woman who’d try to kill her own sister?”

Edwin began to laugh then. The laughter came chokingly, bursting from him in a broken torrent. He laughed so hard he had to brace himself against the table. Across from him, Del watched with growing alarm.

“Edwin?…”

He shook his head, letting the laughter die out of him slowly, wiping the tears from his eyes.

“Don’t worry,” he said, his voice still unsteady with the remains of his hysterical mirth. “I’m not going to see her again. You’re right, you’re absolutely right, you shouldn’t hang out with deadly types—not the quick-killing kind. Give me that old slow poison every time, because blood’s a hell of a lot thicker than arsenic.”

Del frowned in bewilderment. “You shouldn’t talk like that,” she said.

Edwin didn’t answer. He had said he didn’t believe the story. But he did believe it. He believed it partly because it explained so much about Jane Hudson that had baffled him, and partly just because he wanted to. It established a kind of kinship between him and Jane Hudson; they both had good reasons to not like themselves; they were both outcasts. And—even if belatedly—that made them friends.

“Did Blanche Hudson show herself any while you were there?”

Edwin glanced up, startled. Then he shook his head. Blanche Hudson hadn’t shown herself. As far as he could remember there hadn’t been even so much as a sound to indicate her presence in the house. And Jane Hudson hadn’t even mentioned her. It was curious. And then there flashed into his mind the empty silver frame on the mantel and the ruined photograph in the piano bench.

“She was an awful rich woman,” Del was saying. “Blanche Hudson really made a pile. And now—I guess they’re just closed
away together up there in that big house. But can you imagine it, the two of them living together after what happened? Wouldn’t that be awful?”

Edwin nodded thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said, “that would be awful.”

“But I guess misery loves company.”

Edwin looked away. Maybe he would be seeing Jane Hudson again after all. If her sister had been a big star and had invested her money well… Maybe he should be a bit more persistent, a little less sensitive about today’s slight. Jane Hudson had hired him and promised him a salary. If he could just get to her sister, Blanche, who undoubtedly controlled the money… Glancing back at Del, he smiled. Misery, it was quite true, did love company. He knew all about that.

J
ane awoke in darkness, her heart pounding. All around her was a threat of something, a terrible, encircling danger. Her head throbbed, and there was a bad taste in her mouth. She reached out in a frightened, tentative effort to determine where she was. Her hand touched a warm softness, and then it came to her that she was lying on the divan in the living room. And then, fragmentarily, she began to remember.

“Edwin?” she called. “Edwin?…”

There was no answer. And then she realized that there could be none because he was not there. He had been there though—Edwin, Edwin Flagg—but he had gone away. And then—she had gone up the stairs—to where Mrs. Stitt lay in the hall…

And then it all came back to her—her decision to wait until it was dark when it would be safer. She had sat with her hands clasped tight together, making herself plan it. She would wait for the darkness, and when it came… But now the darkness had come: it was here.

By clawing at the back of the divan she managed to pull herself up into a sitting position. Pain stabbed inside her head and even there in the darkness there appeared a dull, ringing redness. Mrs. Stitt. Edna. She held her breath against the name, trying to make it leave her mind. Just to think the name made her want to cry, on and on, helplessly. Getting to her feet, she made her way unsteadily through the darkness into the hall.

In the kitchen, she found the light switch and turned it on. The room sprang into being with cruel clarity. The litter on the drain. The bottles, two of them, one all but empty. And the ice tray full, now, of tepid water. The rest of it, though, was clean and neat. Mrs. Stitt… She crossed the room, opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.

Next to the utility sink, leaning against it, was the wheel chair, the light collapsible one Blanche had bought to carry in the car for the times when she had to go out. Jane reached out to it. But then her hand faltered and fell away.

How did it all happen? How had she been able to do such terrible things? She hadn’t meant to hurt anyone. But they had been at her, deviling her, forcing her. It wasn’t her fault—if only someone somewhere would understand that. Tears coursed freely down her cheeks and fell into the lower darkness.

“Edwin…”

He was a nice person, a good person, mild and polite. But they would never be friends now. She cringed inwardly before the thought of what Edwin Flagg, in his goodness, would think of her if he knew the terrible things she had done. Turning away from the thought, she reached out and picked up the chair. If she could just get through this last terrible part of it, she promised herself, this would be the end of it. Tomorrow she would wake up and she would be different. She would be good—like Edwin—and she would never do anything bad again. Never, never again.

On the deck of the ocean liner, the girl with the lovely sooty eyes turned to the young man with the dark, wavy hair and smiled. Stars glinted in her eyes, her hair held its halo of moonlight.

“Oh, Mike,” she breathed, “what a silly little fool I’ve been. Do you think you’ll ever be able to forgive me?”

“Forgive you?” the young man said. “Kathy Anderson, I can do a lot better than just forgive you—if you’ll just give me the chance.”

They fell into each other’s arms and kissed. The night sobbed with music. The scene faded.
THE END
.

Mrs. Bates rose from her chair with a little sigh of pleasure and crossed to turn off the set. It was a lovely picture, even now after all these years. The movies had seemed so much pleasanter in those days, so much prettier. Probably because of the depression and all the troubles everyone was having; people had needed to see pretty things to take their minds off themselves.

Now that the picture was over, however, Mrs. Bates felt restless. She was alone tonight; Harriett had gone off somewhere with some relative from out of town. She looked out through the French doors and across the garden to the Hudson house. It was so dark over there, so quiet. A vision of the girl with the sooty eyes rose in her mind. No matter what Blanche Hudson’s life was now, it was surely some compensation to her to know that she once had been that beautiful creature on the screen, that she had worn all those lovely, expensive clothes and walked through all those wonderful, exquisite rooms. Life, then, must have been a dream come true, an experience so perfect that it would touch all her days for the rest of her life. Crossing to the glass-paned doors, Mrs. Bates opened the nearest and looked out into the night. There was a full moon, white and high in the heavens. A mild breeze touched her cheek. Perhaps, she thought, since it was so nice out, a short walk would tire her and help her to sleep.

Slipping a light coat over her shoulders, she moved down the length of the walk, stepped out into the quiet street and started up the hill. The Hudson house loomed large and ghostly in the moonlight, and again the vision of Blanche Hudson as she had been in the picture rose in Mrs. Bates’s mind. How lovely she had been; surely such beauty never really faded away, not entirely.

Perhaps, she thought as she moved along beside the hedge, one of the windows on the other side of the house would be lighted and she would look in and catch a glimpse of Blanche Hudson.… She smiled at her own foolishness; she was behaving exactly like some glamour-starved high-school kid. Still, she supposed her curiosity was only natural; at least Harriett seemed to share it and
understand it. Approaching the front of the house, she peered up the drive. It was quite dark; there didn’t seem to be a light on anywhere.

Disappointed, she moved on, emerging shortly into the ragged circle of dim radiance that emanated from the suspended light at the center of the intersection. Here she hesitated for a moment, then turned away to her left, keeping to the wall that enclosed the Hudson’s yard.

She had taken only a few steps in that direction when she heard a sound and looked up ahead to see the gate to the back yard swing open. She stopped and waited as, dimly, two figures, one of them seated in a wheel chair and pushed by the other, emerged through the gateway and out into the street. She started forward, then stopped again, watching, as the figures turned away in the direction of the garage.

After her encounter with Jane Hudson that morning, Mrs. Bates was not eager to approach her again; the woman had certainly given her nothing to go on in the way of neighborly friendliness. But surely, she reasoned, Blanche Hudson was not like her sister. And there was still the clipping to be used as an instrument of introduction. Raising her hand, she started forward.

“Miss Hudson!”

The shadowed figures, close now to the open door of the garage, stopped abruptly. Jane Hudson whirled about, peering through the darkness at Mrs. Bates’s approach. Turning back to the wheel chair, she very rapidly and very deliberately pushed it ahead of her into the obscuring darkness of the garage. Mrs. Bates stopped short with a gasp of astonishment.

For a moment she could only think to retreat, but then hot anger began to boil up inside her and with it a determination to force Jane Hudson to offer her a polite and civil introduction to her sister. Hastening to the garage, she peered inside just in time to see the light go on in the car as Jane Hudson opened its door. She saw, too, with a sense of wonderment that the figure in the wheel chair, despite the
mildness of the evening, was swathed from head to toe in a heavy blanket.
My sister
, Jane Hudson had said,
is going away
.…

“Miss Hudson…” Mrs. Bates said.

Jane Hudson froze for a moment where she was and then quickly slammed the car door, cutting off the light. There were quick footsteps and then she appeared in the lighter area just inside the doorway. Looking out, she cast Mrs. Bates a glance of pure fury and then, with no pretext of having any real excuse for doing so, she reached up and pulled the garage door down, directly in Mrs. Bates’s face.

Mrs. Bates could hardly believe it. For a minute she was too stunned even to move. An impulse rose sharply in her to take hold of the handle of the door and hurl it open again. Oh, couldn’t she just tell Jane Hudson a thing or two! And Blanche Hudson, too, for that matter! When it came to simple common courtesy… And then, aware of the stillness from inside the garage, she was struck with the wild absurdity of the situation. Were the two of them so terrified of her that they were actually cowering in there in the darkness, shivering in their boots for fear she would come and hunt them out? Just who did they think they were?

In a new flush of anger Mrs. Bates turned and stalked away from the garage in the direction of the corner. Just wait, she thought furiously, just wait till I tell Harriett! Why, I’ve never been so insulted in all my life!

Wearily, Jane carried the wheel chair back into the porch and returned it to its place beside the sink. Making her way into the kitchen, she turned on the light and stood for a moment looking down at her begrimed skirt and shoes. For a moment it threatened to come back to her, that terrible moment in the darkness there in the park when she had dragged Edna Stitt’s body from the car and sent it rolling down and down into the pitch-blackness of the ravine. But then, shoving the memory back and away from her
where it belonged, she turned her attention to the sink and the nearly depleted bottle that stood there. Picking it up, she tilted it to her mouth and drank deeply. The liquor burned her throat bringing tears to her eyes, and she brought the bottle down again with a quick gasp for air.

Coughing, she carried the whisky to the table and sat down. It had been so awful out there in the darkness.… Taking off her beret, she dropped it to the table. The brilliants in the pin winked up at her, catching her eye, and she stared down into their glinting, many-pointed brightness with a kind of blind fascination.

Nothing, she thought sadly, was ever really what it seemed to be. The stones in the pin contained no light of their own and yet they caught up the sad yellow glow from the ceiling and transformed it into this dancing brilliance. But they did not really catch and hold it.

Nothing could ever really be caught and held—and possessed. Sometimes you thought you had a thing—but then part of it—or all of it—always got away. Life itself could not be possessed, really, not even a minute of it. She saw it with sudden clarity; life kept slipping away from you, it kept shifting and changing, like the dancing lights in the false stones, shifting and changing and shooting off into the shadows without you. It was all just a reflection. People were only reflections. When the light was falling in your direction you could really believe sometimes that you had found yourself and that all the sudden brightness and aliveness was really you. And then, just when you were beginning to be sure, the light went away again, and the reflection—which had seemed to be you—had vanished and gone. And so you waited for the next roving beam of brightness, always thinking that this time you would catch it and hold it and know once and for all just who and what you really were. But while you waited, while you wandered there in the darkness—then you couldn’t even find the shape or the heart of yourself—and that was terrible, and you were afraid.…

Jane’s face, as she sat there, seemed to hang haggardly upon itself like a tattered cloth. Her eyes were dull, shielded from the light by the forward inclination of her head. She was lost. Lost and terribly frightened. In her fright, she turned back upon the bleak vista of the day, trying to discover by what wrong turning she had arrived at this final moment of lonely desolation.

Once the way was known to her, perhaps she would be able to retrace the minutes like steps so that tomorrow she would arrive back at today’s bright beginning. The harder she stared, though, the more obscure the path became to her. It was a shadowed lane that she had traveled blindly.

She had been led, helplessly, by elements and forces beyond herself. None of it was her fault; it had been forced on her, relentlessly, cruelly. But forced or not, she saw in her fright that she must turn back, or turn in a new direction; she must escape while escape was still possible. Blinking, she stared harder, harder.…

She was not alone in this day. Edwin Flagg was here, too—just back a bit, just there where the shadows began to deepen—rotund, smiling, watchful. His lips were full and moist with murmurs of polite agreement, so that when he turned to life’s light he gave off the bright golden reflection of promise. But when she reached back to him, trying to make him see her and help her, he turned away, watching her covertly from the corner of his eye with a secret frown of disgust.

He knew. Edwin knew what she had done. He was good and so he had a special sensitivity to evil. And now he stood ready to flee at the first step she might take in his direction. He would not clasp her outstretched hand and lead her back through the darkness to safety; he would not guide her back past the worst shadows of all from the black depths of which Mrs. Stitt kept shouting angry red words too awful even to hear.

But there was help back there somewhere. There had to be, because there was light there, a
real
light that was its own source. If this could be reached, if she could only hurl herself swiftly
through the dark terror that surrounded her to its outer perimeter, she would be safe; by twisting and turning she would catch some of the light and she would find herself, if only for a moment, and run into that bright tranquillity where the shadows dared not come. The past cried out to her, bidding her be swift and to fly like a burning meteor through the darkness into the light. And then suddenly there was the way she had been searching for all along—there just beyond Edwin Flagg. As the light turned casting its beam in a new direction, Blanche appeared, holding out her hand, offering it to her.…

“Blanche!” Jane cried out suddenly, her voice shrill with both fright and relief. “Oh, Blanche!…”

You are sisters,
her father’s voice answered her,
the same flesh and blood. And that means that you’ve always got to stick together, no matter what.