Blanche awoke with a sick feeling in her stomach and, little by little, memories from the night before made their way into her consciousness. She remembered the nightmare with Danny and his Baby Jane doll. An awful chill ran through her body and her eyes darted fearfully towards the door. With pleasant surprise she realized she was in her own room and in her own bed. Try as she might, she could not recall exactly how she'd ended up there. She did remember opening the one and only bottle of whiskey in the house and starting to empty it with feverish haste. Another image returned to her mind, and turning her head to the side, she noticed the nearly empty bottle of sleeping pills on her night-stand.
Instantly she reached for the glass of water next to it. She nearly spilled it in her clumsy eagerness, and then pulled back her hand at a painfully intrusive memory. It was exactly like when she'd spilled the glass at her old home back on Hillside Terrace. With suffocating dread she recalled Jane's cruel obliviousness to her desperate pleading.
There was a sound in the gallery, and Blanche wiped quickly at her eyes in case a tear had escaped, unnoticed.
The graceful young figure that swept into the room made its way to the windows and pulled back the curtains. Blanche closed her eyes against the harsh daylight.
"Good morning, Miss Blanche!" Lynn said pleasantly, passing the bed again and walking over to the night-stand. "You must be feeling terrible after last night." She picked up the glass and handed it to Blanche. "I'm making breakfast, and after that I'll come in here to help you. Okay?"
Blanche's consent was muffled by the water.
"You need something to get your mind off of it," Lynn mentioned kindly as she pulled the nightgown over Blanche's head.
She'd grown accustomed to her job as Miss Blanche's maid and, as far as she was concerned, there was no awkwardness between the two of them any more. Lynn had learned to cook Miss Blanche's favourite foods and to avert her eyes from the woman's naked body during dressing. And it seemed to her that a certain amount of embarrassment had also dissolved on Blanche's part.
"Like what?" Blanche asked, a hint of defeated hopelessness in her tone, as she picked up her slip from the bed and started to put it on. "I can't knit. That used to help me forget my problems. I could let the needles do their work and let my mind wander freely, but now it only ever returns to him. It's like I'm still his prisoner."
Lynn listened with studious compassion as Miss Blanche spoke. A silly little idea was insistently taking shape in her head. She took the lilac dress Miss Blanche had chosen for the day and faced the older woman. "You must not think like that," she declared firmly and waited for Miss Blanche to finish with her slip and raise her arms.
"I can't help it," replied Blanche thinly and received, in return, a dress that was thrown over her head.
Lynn pulled it down to her waist and looked the former actress in the eyes. "I know, Miss Blanche," she agreed, forcing her own thoughts away from her brother. "But I might have an idea that could help." She was met with an interested look on the older woman's part.
"Really?" Blanche pressed her hands down on the armrests and raised herself from her chair. "Would you like to share it?"
Lynn pulled the dress down over her legs. "Not yet."
And no matter how relentlessly Blanche tried to guess, she couldn't figure out what Lynn was planning.
Blanche was sitting on one of the two sofas in the living room, a teacup on the small coffee table in front of her and her hands occupied with her knitting. To keep her mind from wandering to gloomy recollections, an old record was playing love songs. Lynn came bustling out of her room and into the living room. "You're not ready yet," she stated blankly when she noticed the older woman.
Blanche turned her head and answered nonchalantly, "I'm not coming." Lynn was on her way to the market for some food; the actress, however, was not in the least interested in going out. She'd learned from Pauline, who had called her in the hospital, that her disappearance had, once again, reached the papers, and she did not want to relive the already familiar experience of being recognized everywhere as the victim of a deranged psychopath.
"But I can't leave you here alone," Lynn reasoned with a pleading note in her voice, sitting into Blanche's empty wheel chair for a better view of her vis-à-vis' face. "It never ends well. And after last time..." Her eyes fell on Blanche's needles and for a moment she watched fixedly as they created the sleeve of her light green cardigan-to-be with incredible speed and ease. "Why don't you come with me? You said yourself that you were nearly out of yarn."
Blanche replied with a sad smile, "I don't want people to stare at me the way they do."
Lynn forced her eyes up from the swift needles and upon her friend's despondent face. Blanche could see a hundred different emotions flashing through the girl's eyes. She could see clearly that no matter what she said, her young friend would never forgive herself for failing to look after her properly. If only she knew how to tell the girl that she didn't blame her, not at all. And after last night—an incident the two of them had wordlessly agreed not to mention in the future—Blanche felt nothing but gratitude towards the young girl.
"But…" A quiet word rolled over Lynn's lips, her eyes held a forlorn plea in them. She couldn't bring herself to repeat herself, but neither did she dare leave her employer alone in the house.
A kind little smile curved Blanche's lips. She couldn't think of a way to answer Lynn's naive although, admittedly, well-founded fears. To a certain extent they even warmed her heart. No one, save for Bill, had ever cared for her the way Lynn did—not Edna, certainly not Jane, and not even her own mother. Blanche had grown deeply fond of the girl, but she hadn't expected Lynn to return her feelings quite so earnestly. This was all quite an overwhelming change from the care Blanche had known up to only a half a year ago.
Somehow, she wasn't even quite sure how, Blanche had managed to persuade Lynn to leave the house alone. Despite the young woman's concerns, everything went quite splendidly at first. Blanche finished the sleeve she'd been working on. After setting her work down with happy contentment, the actress considered turning on the TV, but at this hour there probably wouldn't have been anything interesting on, so instead she climbed back into her wheel chair and steered herself across the room to the kitchen table. She'd seen Lynn bring in the newspaper and that was what she was looking for.
But as soon as her fingers curled around the paper's edge and raised it enough to see the headlines, she dropped it as if it had burned her hand. "Violated star returns home!" "Victim of dangerous psychopath rests at home after recovery in hospital!" "Hudson is well again!" Blanche even backed away from the table a little in surprise. It had been a sound idea for her to not go out today.
An unexpected fleeting thought passed through her mind that she had forgotten to ask Lynn about how her mother was taking the whole situation. Blanche could hardly be the only one appalled by the press's take on the situation. The girl had told her vaguely about her mother's reaction at the hospital but Blanche couldn't have been paying much attention at the time, so she decided to ask Lynn about her mother as soon as she got back.
The next thing she did was going over to the bookcase at the start of the gallery and trying to reach the book she and Lynn had bought sometime before the Danny incident. However, she soon had to admit that if she didn't want to prove Lynn right and repeat her earlier feat of falling out of her chair, she would have to give up and return to her knitting.
Her mood had deteriorated considerably since Lynn had left, and as she passed the grand piano standing in the corner of the living room, a ghastly shudder seized her body. She was reminded of Lynn's claim of being able to play a little—a declaration the young maid had made back when they were moving into the new house. But at the same time she remembered vividly the haunting splitting racket her sister had often made with the reluctant help of the old grand. Perhaps if Lynn could play her something, Blanche could attempt to forget those horrible times.
Fortunately, Lynn returned quite soon. Blanche couldn't help thinking the girl was a lot faster without having to drag her along. She was surprised to see a taxi driver stumbling into the house behind Lynn, carrying a rather large cardboard box with him.
"Where d'ya want it, Miss?" the man spoke in a heavy Northern accent. Lynn gestured towards the kitchen and the man dropped the box carefully beside the counter.
Once he turned, his eyes fixed upon Blanche's face. For a moment they stayed there and stared in mute wonder. Then they moved downwards over her lilac house dress and to her wasted legs, and up again. "How are you, Miss?" he said politely, his eyes widening in recognition.
"Quite bewildered, to tell the truth," Blanche replied softly, wrapping her arms around her abdomen in unreasoning discomfort. The last time a man had studied her with such awestruck interest, she had been wound up on Danny's bed.
"You'll understand everything very soon," Lynn promised her quickly and, turning to the driver again, added, "Thank you." Blanche was certain Lynn had noticed her reaction to the stranger's presence, and she was grateful when the girl dismissed him.
The driver nodded, "Good day," to both of the women and walked out of the door.
Blanche sighed in relief, feeling quite ridiculous for her own feelings. The events of this past year had properly shaken her up. And the hollow feeling of fear returned when she thought of the ordeal that awaited her at Jane's sanatorium in only a few days. In spite of how strongly she had protested against cutting her sister out of her life at first, Blanche wasn't at all fond of the idea of having to deal with Jane's condition now.
Lynn was quick. When Blanche returned to the present after only a moment's musings, the young woman had already opened the top of the large cardboard box. "Now, would you mind telling me what all of this is about?" Blanche asked gently.
The secretive and yet excited smirk on Lynn's lips told her the girl was planning something exceptionally mischievous. Blanche didn't like surprises; she never had—ever since her childhood when her father had often surprised Jane with something magnificent and little Blanche had been left standing beside them, a tiny hand clutched in her mother's larger one and bitter tears in her eyes. In addition to that, she hadn't been very delighted when Jane had brought her a rotten bird on her lunch plate or when she'd sprinkled sand over her food. And although Blanche knew Lynn would never do anything like that, she could do nothing about the sickening dread filling her.
Lynn didn't notice Blanche's stricken expression until she'd already taken the contents of the box out of their wrapping. "What's the matter, Miss Blanche?" she asked in immediate concern. "Nothing happened while I was out, did it?"
There was such deep, raw worry in her tone that Blanche felt she needed to hurry up and reassure her. "No-no, of course not!" she said quickly, and her eyes turned from the girl in front of her to the new piece of furniture beside her. "I-I just don't know what to- to think about…" She studied the tall bar stool with uneasy suspicion.
"This is for you," Lynn declared, gesturing proudly towards the new chair. Blanche's clueless expression prompted her to explain further. "From this you can reach the kitchen counter easily. Miss Blanche, I'm going to teach you to cook."