Chapter 9
For several days Judy found a relative quiet in affairs at Garlock Heights. Sarah continued not to die and somehow there seemed to be less open expectation she'd fail to live from evening until morning. To Judy, in fact, the older woman's imminent death became an issue of considerable doubt. Still, the puzzling lapses into what Sarah's doctor called "comatose withdrawal" continued to occur and he declined to revise his opinion that she had only a short time to live.
Oliver's will had specified a sixty-day period that was to elapse between his death and the execution of the provisions for distribution of his estate. Mike, Lowell and Edith remained at the house, then, for two reasons. They were guests of the estate pending that final distribution and they waited for Sarah to die.
On Sarah's private insistence, Judy sorted Colleen's wardrobe into two parts. The clothing Colleen had worn around the house in her role as housekeeper, she put to one side for disposal. The rest-the expensive, beautiful garments that puzzled Judy so-she tried on one by one, wearing each into Sarah's room for her opinion. And she had to agree with Sarah they might have been sewed for her, so perfectly did they fit.
"You wear them, dear. They're yours," Sarah told her. "That's what Colleen would have wanted."
Judy consented reluctantly. They'd been bought for Colleen to wear, she felt, whoever had selected them-whoever had paid for them, for that matter-and she felt it was some kind of sacrilege to assume a role by wearing them. But when she slipped into one of the quiet, elegant creations in her own apartment and studied herself in the mirror, her throat did ache at the astonishing transformation. Except for the silver-blonde shimmer of her hair, where Colleen's had been as black as Edith's, she could have passed for a younger version of her dead mother. And she admitted to herself she made a lovely and a desirable vision.
It was during that period of indecision (which she did her best to hide from Sarah) that Sarah, herself, underwent a curious change in condition. She began leaving her bed to spend longer and longer intervals with Judy in the little apartment. The procedure was always the same. Sarah's door and the interconnecting door to the tiny room Judy had originally occupied had to be securely locked, as well as the hall door to Judy's present apartment. Then and only then, Sarah would have Judy help her out of bed and into the apartment. Still with Judy's help, she began to walk back and forth in the apartment, rebuilding control in the limbs that had been so useless from the time of the accident.
Judy was convinced Sarah's moving about was a sure sign the indomitable woman was going to recover. She said so more than once. But Sarah merely laughed dryly and countered that she'd decided to spend the last of her energy in activity, rather than hoarding it to delay the inevitable end.
Judy spent increasing amounts of time in the library, as well. Her absorption in Oliver's journals had become an obsession. He'd evidently had a phobia about recording events. The journal she'd been reading on the day Mike had first made love to her had been one of a set devoted to the growth of Oliver's financial structure. But there were other sets, some devoted to more personal histories and others less. The difficulty was in assembling individual sets and arranging them in order; Oliver had apparently meant to discourage any such ordering during his lifetime and had not only avoided titles or any other identifying headings, but had failed to date his entries. She discovered only slowly that he'd had his own device for dating. At irregular intervals-and always in the body of the notes he'd made-he'd referred to some current event. Those events she found were traceable to the pages of his complete file of The Christian Science Monitor. By finding that newspaper's description of the event Oliver had mentioned she found she could date every entry.
In that set of journals she gradually assembled concerning his private life, she gradually became convinced she actually had a subset that belonged by itself. In it, Oliver had sketched the chronicle of a long-enduring relationship nobody had suggested to Judy. Although he'd avoided even his carefully designed date code of current events in that record, it was clear a major portion of his emotional satisfaction had come from his relationship with a mistress. It was equally clear the relationship had covered a far longer period of his life than anybody believed. The unfortunate incident of his mistress' pregnancy was bluntly described, and Judy discovered he'd met that emergency in exactly the same way he'd handled Colleen's own pregnancy, providing for somebody his journal didn't identify to take and raise the child. And in painful keeping with his practice of isolating the contents of one set of journals from those of another, he never did refer to Colleen by name as that illegitimate child, nor mention in his documentation of his private life with his mistress the fact he'd brought Collen to live at Garlock Heights. In the end, Judy found that set of journals a romance as poignant as any romantic novel she'd read and she wondered often who and where that mistress was. She had a frustrating sense, too, of Oliver's having omitted the last chapter of his account, since he didn't recount any kind of dissolution of the relationship.
She mentioned her absorption in Oliver's journals to Sarah without touching on that particular account. Sarah seized on that as another occasion to reminisce, and she sent Judy to the master apartment, where she and Oliver had lived out their married life, for the albums she'd kept. She showed them to Judy, many of the photographs or other souvenirs reminding her of moments she delighted in reliving. And it was from the early albums that Judy learned her mother had at one time been as blonde as she, herself.
"Of course!" Sarah laughed. "Didn't I ever tell you that? Gorgeous blonde hair! Then, one day, Oliver decided it wasn't appropriate for a housekeeper to be blonde. And Colleen turned into a brunette. Just like that. My dear, Oliver was God."
Judy shuddered at the absolute power her grandfather had exercised over Garlock Heights. She was glad, for the first time, that she hadn't been allowed to stay with her mother to grow up in the shadow of such an absolute tyrant. But she resolved her reluctance to wear her mother's clothes. Whoever Colleen's secret lover had been, she'd dressed for him the way Oliver's mistress-and Colleen's mother-must have dressed for Oliver.
The evening of the day she decided she'd start wearing the beautiful clothes, she carried out her intention by dressing in one of the special dresses for dinner. She selected a simply cut, chic dress of powder blue. The neckline was especially appealing to her, although she realized it imparted a highly suggestive air to her appearance.
She went downstairs early to help Edith with the preparation and serving of the meal. Edith was engrossed in cutting up the greens for the salad when Judy entered the kitchen.
"Sorry I'm late," Judy told her. "What can I do first?"
"The table." Edith didn't look up. "Honestly, I don't see how that woman did it! She didn't spend half the time we do, and she always did twice as much! I think she must have been a witch."
"Edith! That's an awful thing to say about a dead woman!"
Ignoring Judy's exclamation, Edith went on, almost mumbling to herself. "Say what they want, there are such things, you know. And Garlock Heights is just the sort of place you'd find one. It always was so...well, so much a part of some other world."
"You don't really believe that, do you?"
Edith muttered darkly. "They're finding out that's not at all as impossible as they thought. Sure, there's witches! And that woman was just the type."
Judy bit her lip and dug her nails into her palms. Edith didn't realize the mother-daughter relationship, of course. But if she'd just look up, she'd see by Judy's expression what she was doing. Instead, she wielded the wicked-looking, wedge-shaped knife as if she were using it on Colleen.
Edith continued. "Mark my word, drowning isn't the way to kill a witch. I can see it now-her not even fighting, just looking up through the water with a kind of surprised, half-am used expression. Wondering why and knowing it didn't matter because she'd...." She scraped the shredded greens into a pile as she rambled, then straightened and glanced at Judy. Her voice failed in mid-sentence. Her dark eyes flared open and her jaw dropped. The flush drained from her face to leave it a pasty, dead-looking gray. For a moment, she stared without so much as drawing a breath. Then she advanced woodenly toward Judy, the knife before her and her mouth working silently.
"No!" Judy cried out. "No! You did it! She was right! You can even stand here and tell me how my mother looked while you were drowning her! You did it! You killed her!"
Edith's face worked terribly. Her eyes bulged and her mouth twisted into an ugly caricature of the firm mouth that had caressed Judy's breast. She began to pant.
"You can't be! You just can't! You are! God have mercy, you are!" She dropped the salad knife as she passed the sideboard and her fingers closed over the handle of the silver carving knife. She continued to advance, her eyes glazed.
Judy retreated. "No, Edith! No! Don't!" She screamed.
Edith's stunned expression cleared. Judy shrieked as Sarah's daughter approached. And a look of fury darkened Edith's eyes.
"Shut up, stupid! Goddamn it, shut up!"
Judy screamed again.
"Shut up, I say!" Edith lunged.
Judy whirled and ran. She heard the other follow her into the hallway and knew Edith's longer stride would enable the enraged woman to overtake her. She reached the doorway to the living room and darted through it into Lowell's arms.
"Omigod, Lowell!" She gasped. "Lowell! Save me, Lowell! She's trying to kill me!"
"What!" Lowell held her tightly. "Christ, you gave me a start!"
Edith's voice was cool and emotionless. "She's hysterical. Do what you can to calm her."
"What's the problem?" asked Lowell.
"I said something about witches and turned around with a knife in my hand. I guess she thought I was going to cut her up for dinner."
Lowell chuckled softly. "A silver knife, I trust."
Edith stiffened. "You said she gave you a start. Tell me, brother dear, what did you think when she burst through that door?"
Lowell hesitated momentarily. "I was daydreaming," he said finally, a defensive note in his voice.
"So you were daydreaming! What did you think?"
He held Judy at arm's length. A crease appeared between his eyes. "For just an instant I thought...Well, it could have been fifteen years ago, Sis. Colleen. Look at her close and it's not, of course, but. . . "
Edith nodded slowly. "That woman was a witch. I used to tell you that."
Lowell laughed softly. "Every time I turned around. Okay, everything's under control now."
Edith turned away. "Just see she's calmed down when she comes to the table. You know what hysteria does to me."
"Sure. Sure, Sis. An hour, maybe?"
"It's an hour until dinner time, isn't it? Of course, it'll be an hour."
"Then she'll be calm. No hysteria."
Edith swished out of sight and Lowell took Judy by the hand. She followed him docilely as he led her to the stairway and started upstairs.
"She ... she tried to kill me, Lowell!" she said in a low tone.
"Oh, it wasn't all that bad."
"It was! She did! That knife!"
He chuckled sympathetically. "She just forgot she had it in her hand."
She started to protest. "She didn't either! She..."
They reached the door to her apartment and Lowell led her inside. She quieted, glancing at the closed door to Sarah's room. If Sarah should happen to be dozing, Judy didn't want to awaken her.
Lowell gently pushed her into one of the simple armchairs and stood in front of her. "You've got to know Edith to understand her," he said patiently. "In the first place, she's got this thing about witchcraft. She's one of those peple who really believe there are such creatures. And something about you this afternoon...." He paused and stared at her, obviously puzzled. "Damned if I can make the connection," he muttered. "There's something about you this afternoon makes me see Colleen the way I first knew her. Every time I look at you! It's uncanny!"
"Lowell, I..."
He stopped her. "No, it's just some trick of the light or something. Anyhow, Edith's got something that bugs her a hell of a lot worse than witches. She can't stand hysteria. Get hysterical on her and she'll hang one on the side of your face so fast it'll make your head spin! The moment you got hysterical, she simply had to stop you! Hell, she forgot all about having a knife in her hand."
"When she dropped the one she had and grabbed the carving knife?"
He grunted. "Okay. She was playing it safe. If you did turn out to be a witch, she had the silver 'nail' for your heart. But you'd have had to attack her before she'd have used the knife."
"I don't believe it. No matter what you say, she was trying to kill me. She already killed Colleen! Why not me?"
Lowell sighed and shook his head. "God, Judy! You are hysterical! Nobody killed Colleen. She committed suicide!"
"Edith even described holding her under the water while she drowned!"
"She what?"
Judy repeated herself.
Lowell scowled. "Figure of speech. Imagination. She was telling how it would be if you tried to drown a witch. That's all, Judy!" He whirled and paced to the end of the room and back, staring at the floor as he did. He stooped before her and glanced up. He started and shook his head, then rubbed his eyes. "Goddamn it, Judy! Every time! Just now! You're Colleen sitting there!"
"I'm Colleen's daughter." 'You're not!"
"I am. I'm the child she had three years before you came here to live."
"Judy, what makes you think...."
"I don't think, I know." She gazed soberly into his eyes. "And Sarah knows and Colleen knew." She leaned forward and whispered urgently. "Edith knows, too! Don't you see? She hated Colleen and killed her! And she sees my mother in me, and she's going to kill me!"
"You go down to the table thinking that way and we've got real trouble, Judy." He grinned tightly. "Only one way I know to take a woman's mind off something she can't shake off. And we've got time."
She knew exactly what he meant. A hard, eager thrill washed over her. Just as Lowell had been the first, that day in the woods, he'd be the first to fuck her in her apartment. She'd have preferred it to be Mike, but there was a sort of neat justice about its being Lowell.
He glanced quickly around. "Look, we don't want to risk waking Mother. Shall we sneak down to the library?"
"Ooh, let's! I know a secret way!"
"So do I. Colleen showed it to me when I was fifteen." He started toward the bedroom.
Judy giggled. "You're going to have to work for it. I took up the platform."
"That what? Oh, yeah! What the hell did you do with it?"
She showed him the boards under her bed and he took them to the closet. In a moment, he had them re-laid and stepped onto them.
'I'll go first. Just in case you slip."
At the bottom of the ladder, he raised the lever that opened the panel into the library cupboard. Together, they crowded into the tiny closet while he closed the panel, then he pushed the door of the cupboard open and stepped noiselessly out.
He whispered to her. "Stay here while I see if anybody's out there."
She peeked, watching him move along the bookcase with a quick, silent stride. His confident carriage suggested he had little concern over anybody's being in the library. He didn't even stop to peer around the end of the shelves before stepping into the open. But he came to a sudden, startled stop the moment he had cleared the protection of the "stacks" and jerked abruptly back behind them. Slowly and cautiously, he backed toward Judy. Before she could question him, he put his finger to his lips and shook his head. He held her hand and waited without a word. Soon, they heard the main door close and Lowell released a great sigh.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Almost blew it!"
"You didn't think anybody would be here, did you."
"No." He grinned ruefully. "That Goddamn Mike! Son of a bitch looked right at me! Damn good thing he's so wrapped up in his own thoughts! Didn't even see me ... just picked up whatever it was he wanted out of the desk and started out."
"He didn't even see you?" she asked in disbelief.
He laughed. "Look right at me! Not a flicker of awareness. Can you imagine that?" He squeezed her hand. "Be with you in a second. We don't want any visitors." And he left her, going to lock the doors.