“Tell me!”
“Your sister had a slight accident in town a few weeks back. We thought it would be best, until she... got over it to...” Priscilla shrugged. “Your father thought it would be best.”
“What kind of an accident?”
“A small one.”
“Then why won’t you let her drive?”
“Amanda, I don’t like the way you’re talking to me.”
“That’s too bad, Mother, and I’m sorry. What kind of an accident did she have?”
“She hit someone.”
“What!”
“Don’t start imagining a terrible accident, Amanda. The woman wasn’t hurt at all. But we felt it was best—”
“Where was this? The accident.”
“On the old Courtney Road.”
“What was she doing there?”
“Just driving. Just out for a drive.”
“And the woman?”
“Was walking, Amanda. By the side of the road.”
“And Penny hit her? That’s the widest road in Otter Falls!”
“I suppose it is.”
“How’d she happen to—?”
“I don’t know, Amanda.”
“Did she hit her deliberately?”
“Of course not!”
“Did she?”
“No.” Priscilla scowled at her daughter. “Are you this rude in New York? You seem to have forgotten all your manners, Amanda. Of course, I suppose all your friends—”
“Penny needs a doctor,” Amanda said.
“She does not need a doctor! She’s as sane as—” The word startled Priscilla. She closed her mouth instantly.
“Yes,” Amanda said.
Priscilla did not answer.
“I’m going to call a doctor,” Amanda said.
“You’re going to do nothing of the sort. This is still my house. You live in New York.”
“My sister lives here.”
“It’s a little late to be thinking of her.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then I suggest you ignore it.”
“No! What do you mean?”
“You chose to live in New York, Amanda. All right, live there. We are quite capable of taking care of ourselves. And Penny.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“You understand me very well, daughter. We have never had any trouble communicating.”
“Yes,” Amanda said, nodding. “Yes, I understand you perfectly.”
“Fine. I’ll go inside now. It gets a little chilly—”
“What happened, Mother? Did I spoil your plans for me? Was I supposed to come back to Otter Falls and marry the local butcher? And play piano for him beautifully every afternoon?”
“I had no plans for you, Amanda,” her mother said.
“Is that what happened?” Amanda said bitterly. “Well, I’m terribly sorry. I’m really so terribly sorry, Mother, that I chose my own life. But Penny is still my sister! And you’re not going to pretend she’s all right, Mother, the way you pretended I was going to school just to learn how to play piano, you’re not going to do that to her, Mother.”
“Penny is my daughter,” Priscilla said flatly.
“And so am I,” Amanda said.
The words hung on the afternoon air. Priscilla did not answer. Amanda stared at her mother long and hard.
At last she said, “You’re made of stone.”
“Thank you, daughter.”
“You’re a stonehearted bitch,” Amanda said, and she enjoyed the words, enjoying hurling them in her mother’s face.
The laugh shattered the April air. Amanda heard it with more than her ears. It hit her body like a closed fist. She turned toward the house instantly and heard the laugh again, a high, rising, hysterical laugh that came from the upper-story windows. Her eyes widened. She felt suddenly cold, suddenly bloodless. The laugh came a third time, hanging liquidly in the near dusk, trailing off into a hollow echo. The house, she thought. Penny, she thought. And then she said aloud, “The baby! Kate!”
She broke into a run across the lawn. She had covered this same ground a thousand times as a child, knew every rock and every blade of grass, but now the earth resisted her, seemed to cling to her as the laugh erupted in the silence again, she clattered up the front steps, fumbled with the doorknob, she could not open the door, she grasped the knob again, it seemed slippery in her hand and suddenly the door opened and she fell into the entrance foyer and saw her own frightening reflection in the hall mirror, wide-eyed, startled, where? she thought, the steps, she ran for the steps and tripped over the hall rug, scrambled to her feet again as a new sound joined the laughter, the sound of Kate screaming, she clutched for the banister, pulled back her skirt and took the steps two at a time, losing one shoe as she ran for the upstairs corridor and Kate’s bedroom.
They were sitting in the middle of the floor, mother and daughter. Penny was laughing. She held a lock of the child’s long blond hair in one hand, and a scissors in the other, and she snipped the lock quickly, and then held her fingers wide as the blond tresses fell to the floor to join the scraps of hair on the scatter rug. The child was sobbing, watching her mother, watching the scissors as they moved toward her head again, her face streaked with tears, her eyes puzzled and afraid.
“Penny!” Amanda said.
Her sister turned. There was vacancy in her eyes. She smiled absently and said, “I’m cutting it off.”
“Penny, give me the scissors,” Amanda said. She held out her hand.
The smile left Penny’s mouth. She frowned and rose from the rug. Beside her, Kate began crying again.
“Penny,” Amanda said softly, but there was fear in her voice now. The fear leaped the distance between them and seemed to ignite something in Penny’s eyes. She gripped the scissors tight in her fist and lunged across the room. Amanda saw the wicked pointed ends of the double blades, saw the utterly incredible vacant horror in Penny’s eyes, a look of terrible lost loneliness, and then the scissors flashed toward her breast. She seized Penny’s wrist and stopped the thrust, felt the unnatural strength in her sister’s arm. Penny punched her suddenly and viciously with her left fist, hitting Amanda over the eye and sending her sprawling to the rug, tumbling over Kate, suddenly spitting out the child’s hair, feeling the hair clinging to her face and her lips as Penny whirled on her, smiling now, smiling a deadly cold controlled mechanical smile.
“Penny!”
She drew back the scissors, ready to lunge.
“Penny!”
Her sister began laughing, the same high hysterical laugh that had tumbled from the house and invaded the quiet garden. She pushed the scissors at Amanda clumsily, almost blindly, tearing the sleeve of Amanda’s blouse, raking her arm, and Amanda thought, This is my sister, this is Penny, this is Penny, this is Penny, fought the idea until it burst from her fingers in a wild open-handed swing that caught Penny on the side of her face and rocked her head backward. She slapped her again, and again, swinging her arm while Penny laughed uncontrollably, and then the laughter turned to sobs and the scissors dropped from her fingers and she fell to the floor beside Amanda and threw herself into her arms. And they sat together in the center of Kate’s bedroom, sister and sister, Penny in her arms weeping, Amanda sobbing and stroking her hair, and the five-year-old child watching them in wide-eyed bewilderment.
They drove Penny to the Minneapolis General Hospital Psychiatric Clinic the next day. She sat on the back seat of the automobile and said nothing, brooding silently, staring through the window. Only once did she say anything, a shouted incoherency, and then she fell into her dark silence again. At the hospital, they told the resident psychiatrist about the events of the day before. He listened patiently, looking at Penny all the while. She sat stiffly in the chair beside his desk, sullenly studying the floor. When he talked to her, she did not answer him. The only notes he made were on superficial things like Penny’s age and marital status, the number of people in the family, things a general practitioner might have asked when confronted with a case of the measles. He told Amanda he would like to keep Penny there for observation, and he said that a psychiatric social worker would undoubtedly visit the house in Otter Falls within the next week to talk to her parents. In the meantime, he cautioned them against undue alarm. This could, after all, be just a temporary thing.