Janice felt an impulse to hang up but restrained it. Instead, she asked, “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter?” he mimicked. “Where the hell’ve you been, anyway? It’s all over the radio and TV!”
Janice resisted asking, “What is,” forcing Bill to continue.
“The defense’s case has collapsed!” he shouted in a delirium of hostility and joy and proceeded to fill her in on the incredible happenings of the morning. And then—Bill’s strident voice rose to a new height of emotion as he delivered the real bombshell—James Beardsley Hancock’s sudden heart attack, the defense’s key witness out of the picture, perhaps for good.…
“Congestive heart failure,” Bill blurted out. “The hospital’s last report has him deep in coma and critical. Brice Mack asked the court for a continuance till tomorrow morning in order to realign his witnesses, and damn it, Velie had to accede to his request because you weren’t there and he was afraid Mack would want to bring you on next.…”
“Oh,” Janice said.
“Velie’s pissed, Janice, and so am I. We had them off-balance, on the run. This whole damn business could have been over by morning. Now the bastards have time to regroup and re-form their strategy.”
“I’m sorry,” Janice whispered.
“Damn it.” Bill’s voice lost its edge of shrillness. “We just can’t go about doing as we damn please, Janice. We’re not living a normal life. We’re in a battle.”
“I know.” Janice’s soft reply held just the right note of ambiguity, She could feel him weighing what she’d said. When he spoke next, he was decidedly calmer.
“How’s Ivy?”
“She’s here. Would you like to speak with her?”
“How is she, Janice?” Bill insisted.
“Okay … I think.”
“You think? What does that mean? Is she sick or isn’t she?”
“Her throat’s better, and the cough is gone.”
“Well then, bring her back to the city with you!”
Janice was taken unawares. “When?”
“Now. On the next train. It shouldn’t take you long to check out of that place.”
Janice hesitated. “She’d prefer to stay in school.”
“And I’d prefer to have her home, where we can keep an eye on her.”
Janice protested. “But we’ll be in court all day.”
“She’ll be closer to us here than up there. I’ll hire a sitter or a nurse, if you want. Pack her up and take her along, okay?”
A vein was throbbing in Janice’s temple. Ivy must not return to the city. She mustn’t give in to him on this point, and yet to raise the question of why she mustn’t would only rekindle his anger and bring on a new wave of scorn and contempt for fears he considered not only foolish but traitorous.
“Janice?” Bill prodded after a too-lengthy pause. “I’ll be expecting both of you down tonight, okay?”
Janice found herself stepping back warily from the receiver, not knowing how to answer him. Then, unexpectedly, surprising herself, she thrust the phone at Ivy and told her, “Here, darling, Daddy wants to say hello.”
The happy and assured smile on her daughter’s face brought a flush of guilt to Janice’s cheeks. It was difficult to stand there quietly and to smile as Ivy chattered innocently and with total unawareness that she had been used as the stopgap in an irreconcilable situation.
“… but I can’t come home now,” Ivy beseeched. “Tomorrow’s the crowning, and I just can’t miss it. We all worked so hard on Sylvester. Please, Daddy, please let me stay!”
Her pathetic pleas to remain gradually found a receptive ear, and soon Janice saw the clouds of gloom disperse and sunshine return to her face.
“Oh, thank you, Daddy,” she cried. “And please don’t worry, I’m really feeling much better. I haven’t coughed once since we got to the room.” Ivy’s eyes flicked toward Janice. “Yes, she’s here, I’ll put her on. And, Daddy, I love you—”
Janice’s grip tightened on the phone, and hearing Bill’s breathing on the other end, she cleared her throat.
“Thanks,” he said curtly. “Thanks a lot.” His comment required no response, and she made none. “What’s this crowning all about?”
“It’s an every-year thing they do at the school, with the snowman.”
There was a short space of silence.
“You feel all right about leaving her there?”
“Yes, I do,” Janice said firmly.
His voice was downcast. “All right. Get down as soon as you can. I’ll wait dinner for you.”
“Fine.”
Janice hung up the phone and turned to Ivy.
“We must pack quickly if we’re going to get you back to school in time for dinner.”
“I’m packed already,” Ivy said a bit nervously. “Remember?”
Yes, Janice remembered. It was for an instant an effort to remember, principally because with memory returned the sickness in her heart, the feeling of dread that had relentlessly pursued her ever since Bill had left the night before. The things that had happened in—what?—less than twenty-four hours, things that Bill would surely have considered trifling and innocuous, were things which, step by step, had plunged her into a renewed state of panic and despair.
It began Sunday night, several hours after she and Ivy had gone to bed—Janice in the bedroom, Ivy next door in the sitting room. Janice had considered sharing the big bed with Ivy and would have if Ivy had wanted to, but since she didn’t mention it, Janice didn’t encourage it.
After calling out their last good-nights to each other in the darkness, Ivy had asked, “Mom, what’s her name?”
The question troubled Janice, for she knew full well to whom Ivy was referring. Still, she had needlessly asked, “Who?”
“Mr. Hoover’s little girl.”
“Audrey Rose.”
Janice could sense Ivy considering it.
“That’s pretty.”
After another moment of silence, Ivy moved a thought closer.
“Do you think she looked like me?”
“No,” Janice answered abruptly.
“How do you know?”
“He showed us a picture of her. She had black hair and dark eyes, and her face didn’t look anything like yours.” Then, putting a cap on the conversation: “Shall we get some sleep now, darling?”
“Okay. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Later Janice was awakened by a slight disturbance. It was the soft creaking of the connecting door and the dying edge of a shaft of light as it closed.
Alerted by the possibility of illness, Janice quickly rose from the bed without turning on the lamp and quietly went to the door. She opened it a crack and saw that the light emerged from the bathroom at the far end of the sitting room. Ordinarily, she would have simply called out to Ivy and asked if anything was wrong, but some inner sense, vague and unspecific, stopped her from doing so. Instead, she silently padded across the ill-lit room to a point still some distance from the bathroom, but that afforded a clear view through the half-open door, whereupon she came to an abrupt stop.
Standing naked before the wall mirror, gazing transfixed at her own dimly reflected image, was Ivy. Her budding breasts pressed close to the glass, there was a strange, mad light in her eyes as they plumbed the eyes in the mirror, seeming to seek a route through the pale and glistening orbs and beyond, into the deep, impenetrable darkness that lay on the other side. For a moment, Janice thought it was the prelude to a nightmare—her proximity to the glass, the dazed, empty expression, her trancelike immobility all seemed to point in that direction—and she was about to enter when, all of a sudden, Ivy began to giggle: tinkling, high-pitched, girlish giggles directed at the image of herself in the mirror, at the eyes that returned the opaque, vacant gaze. Janice felt her knees trembling. The sight of her daughter’s nakedness, the bizarre laughter that seemed both childishly innocent and hideously sinister were totally mesmerizing. Then the laughter stopped as abruptly as it had started, and in a soft, taunting voice, Ivy began to croon the name