“Go on, Miss Pontois. Just say anything that comes into your mind.”
Miss Pontois pressed her thin lips together and shut her eyes against panic. Today it had not been difficult to talk. Up until this very minute the sentences had seemed to bubble up in her. Then, without warning, the name had been there, each familiar letter clawing at her thoughts like tentacles.
“Say anything at all. It doesn’t matter how unimportant it may seem.”
Theresa.
Miss Pontois felt the cold, electric prick of fear. Then, suddenly, it was all right, because she felt herself suspended several feet above the couch, looking down at herself, looking down at Dr. Wagner with his gold pencil poised over the notebook, looking at the situation as though she were not part of it.
“—perhaps we’ve had enough for one day.”
Miss Pontois recognized the reprieve, and lost no time gathering up her heavy purse and frayed fur jacket. Hurrying from the building, she felt herself pursued by some terrible, undefined danger. The fact that it had already grown dark increased her sense of apprehension.
At the corner of Madison Avenue, she paused for a moment, debating whether or not to take a cab. She was still undecided when a bus pulled up. Impulsively, Miss Pontois boarded it, reminding herself that, after all, she and Phyllis had to watch their money more closely now.
Not that they had to pinch pennies. Phyllis had a good job at an advertising agency, and Miss Pontois was able to contribute toward expenses with her alteration business. Nevertheless, they couldn’t afford unnecessary extravagances.
The bus was crowded and overheated. As Miss Pontois pushed her way to the back, she told herself for the hundredth time that these visits to Dr. Wagner certainly came under the heading of unnecessary extravagance. She had said so from the very beginning. But Phyllis had insisted.
Why?
The unexpected question startled Miss Pontois, Instinctively, she began marshaling her thoughts against the insidious, subconscious attack. Phyllis was only doing it for her good. Phyllis was trying to help her over this period of—well, nervousness. There was nothing her child wouldn’t do for her.
“But Phyllis is not your child. Miss Pontois.” Dr. Wagner’s voice filtered through the muffled sounds of traffic. “It’s true you took care of her most of her life, but you undertook to care for her in the capacity of governess. Naturally the relationship changed and developed through the years. Now she is your friend. But she is not your child. She doesn’t belong to you.” The gold pencil tapped out a dull rhythm on the notebook. “You must begin to face things, Miss Pontois. Any situation can be handled once you face it.”
Miss Pontois felt the heat rise in her face. She wasn’t going back to Dr. Wagner any more. Phyllis couldn’t make her. Oh, she knew very well the child would try. Phyllis had a stubborn streak in her. Sometimes she could be almost as stubborn as Theresa.
It seemed to Miss Pontois that the bus lurched suddenly, as she again thought of Phyllis’ sister. She felt her purse slip from under her arm, but managed to retrieve it immediately. Balancing herself against the post near the exit, she dipped her hand quickly inside. Reassurance came as she touched the cool metal of the 12-inch shears. Miss Pontois had taken to slipping the shears into her purse shortly after she and Phyllis had moved. Not that the new apartment wasn’t pleasant enough. True, the building itself had a run-down look indicative of a landlord grappling with rent control. But even so. Miss Pontois found it quite acceptable.
Her single objection was the fact that it was too far east. After dark, the last long crosstown blocks with their closed shops and ominous doorways filled her with dread. And this particular evening, the last two long blocks seemed even more ominous than usual. She found herself taking a firm grip on her purse as she hurried past the darkened antique shop, past the small butcher shop where, invariably, a solitary chicken hung by its neck in the dirt-streaked window.
At the corner of Second Avenue she paused for breath, watching almost gratefully the stream of southbound headlights. Then she crossed the street and started down the final stretch of darkness. Ahead of her were six brownstone houses in varying stages of neglect. The windows of the last house had been boarded up. Which was no doubt why the lurking figure caught her attention.
Later, Miss Pontois realized that terror had come before recognition. For it was only when she was in full flight, her fur jacket thumping crazily against her sides, that Miss Pontois identified the shadowy form as Theresa.
Once inside the apartment, she leaned exhausted against the front door, trying to shut out the terrible pursuing image.
“Ponte, is that you?” Phyllis’ voice called from the bedroom.
“I…I’m home,” Miss Pontois managed finally. And she knew she wouldn’t have gotten the words out at all if it weren’t for Phyllis’ picture. From the foyer table the well-loved photograph looked back at her with deep, wondering expression, so like Phillip…
“Ponte, what’s the matter? You’re white as a sheet.”
Her glance swung from the picture to Phyllis herself. The dark eyes were filled with puzzled concern. Suddenly, Miss Pontois found herself probing behind the concern. Did Phyllis know? And if so, how long had she been concealing the knowledge that Theresa was back?
Once again, Miss Pontois experienced a sense of shock as the unframed, unwanted questions stabbed at her convictions. But this was inconceivable. Phyllis wouldn’t hide anything from her. Phyllis always told her everything. Besides, she knew her child so well that she could catch and identify even the most subtle shadings of emotion. Surely if Theresa had been in touch with Phyllis, she would know it at once and with certainty.
Why, from the very beginning, from the time she had come to take care of the two girls, she had always been able to detect Theresa’s influence on Phyllis. In fact, within a matter of months she had even been able to anticipate it and to prevent it. And it was due to her constant vigilance that Theresa’s ruthlessness had never taken root in Phyllis’ personality.
“I…just had the strangest experience,” Miss Pontois began tentatively.
“What happened?”
Wasn’t the question a shade too urgent? A shade too tense? Miss Pontois hesitated, and covered her hesitation by hanging her coat in the guest closet. When she turned back to Phyllis, her decision had been made. She was not going to mention Theresa…not yet.
Her glance slid away from the girl’s alert, waiting expression. Change the subject, she told herself. Get Phyllis thinking about something else.
“You know, Phyllis, these sessions with Dr. Wagner are really quite unnecessary.”
“Now, Ponte,” Phyllis began placatingly, “it’s rough, of course. It will be for a while. But you’ve got to stick with it. You’ve got to.” This time the urgency was unmistakable.
“Why? I’m not sick.”
“You know you haven’t been the same since…since Dad died.”
Well, that much at least was true. Part of the world gets cut away and the edges grow back again, and you find yourself in a different world. But that doesn’t mean you’re sick.
“He can help you,” Phyllis said. “He’s such a wonderful doctor.”
Miss Pontois sniffed sarcastically and went on back to her own room. Relieved that Phyllis hadn’t followed her, she gently closed the door. Doctors! What good were doctors. Doctors couldn’t bring Phillip back. And all those years ago, when Miss Pontois had been a girl, when she had been known by her own name, Eugenie (not affectionately as Ponte, or mistakenly as Miss Pontirr—but Eugenie) all those years ago doctors had also not been able to bring back the young man she was going to marry.
She had watched him struggle in the gray waters of the lake. And there was nothing she could do, nothing but hang onto the overturned canoe and watch. Only she seemed to be seeing everything from somewhere above the water…watching him and watching herself, too.
This was the first time Miss Pontois experienced the curious, suspended feeling. The second time had been a year ago, driving away from the hospital…driving away from Phillip. She remembered clearly the way she had felt, as though she were hanging above the East River Drive, watching herself in the ugly green taxicab.
It had all happened so suddenly…the headache, the sleep that wasn’t sleep with the eyes open and rolling, unseeing…the ambulance. And yet they had been watching for death. But not for the father—for the mother, for Terry. Terry had been dying for over two years. The Mister had never been sick a day in his life.
For this reason, Miss Pontois had never been able to shake off the feeling, unreasonable as it was, that Terry had planned it that way—a Terry Carroll creation. The hated phrase slipped back into her mind, and she saw Terry at the peak of her career as a designer, presenting her newest and sleekest gown to the enormously wealthy and invariably too stout customer.
A Terry Carroll creation. There was truth in the phrase. And in time, Miss Pontois found that it applied to much more than Terry’s genius for fashion. It encompassed her power over people and situations. The woman had an almost diabolic ability to make things come out her way. And her way would certainly have demanded Phillip’s death before her own. She would never have left Phillip to Miss Pontois.
It was this fact that gave Miss Pontois the irrational yet persistent feeling that Terry had directed the sequence of events, including the ironic detail that Terry herself was spared the terrible knowledge of what had happened. Already lost in the advanced stages of senility, she was protected even from the awareness of her own impending death.
However, Miss Pontois was forced to take into consideration the one discordant note belying any such pre-arrangement. Terry’s illness and the timing of Phillip’s death could not possibly have been a Terry Carroll creation for one simple reason—never would this proud and aggressive woman have chosen for herself the slobbering helplessness of senility.
“It’s all a matter of the supply of blood to the brain,” the doctor had said as kindly as possible. “There is nothing that can be done. It’s a matter of time.” Time. Time enough for Phillip to have died first.
Miss Pontois eased out of the impractical and expensive black slip Phillip had bought her five years ago. Every few months she went over the lace border, carefully mending the places where the lace sometimes pulled loose.
There was a light tapping on her door. Miss Pontois slipped into one of the freshly starched swirl aprons she usually wore around the apartment. “Come in, dear.” Her voice was casual. For a moment she had almost forgotten the frantic flight down the dark street.
Phyllis pushed open the door, but didn’t enter the room. “Ponte, I’ll be home early…by the time you’ve had your bath and watched some TV.”
She remembered now. Phyllis had phoned in the early afternoon to tell her she wouldn’t be home for dinner.
“Don’t worry about me, Phyllis,” she said sincerely. “Just have a good time.” The girl threw her a quick kiss, her nose crinkling up into Phillip’s smile.
It wasn’t until she heard the front door slam that Miss Pontois realized Phyllis hadn’t told her whom she was going to meet. Her thoughts careened back to the conversation on the telephone. She was certain of it. Phyllis hadn’t mentioned meeting anyone.
Miss Pontois ran from the bedroom. Frantically, she pulled at the front door. “Phyllis…”
The girl turned, startled, as the elevator door slid open. She was meeting a few of the girls from the office, Phyllis said, in answer to Miss Pontois’ question. It sounded quite natural, except that Miss Pontois saw the girl’s right hand fly forward in a little gesture of confusion. She saw the good navy suit and the mink stole caught up smartly, the way Miss Pontois had taught her to wear it. And just as Phyllis stepped into the elevator, she saw the gold earrings. Phyllis was wearing Terry’s earrings.
Back in the apartment. Miss Pontois’ cold fingers circled the black wrought iron railing which separated the foyer from the sunken living room. She stood, swaying for a moment, like a bewildered actress who has forgotten her lines. Then she walked down the three steps onto the oriental carpet. Her carpet. She and Phillip had chosen it together because Terry, naturally, had been too busy to spare the time. Together they had picked out the blue Chippendale sofa and the rest of the furniture—her furniture.
Miss Pontois lifted her chin defiantly, as if she were answering an accusation. She could almost hear Dr. Wagner’s precise syllables: “…but it’s not your furniture. Miss Pontois. It doesn’t belong to you.”
Belonging. It was a curious word, a word that eluded the probing of the gold pencil. Miss Pontois smiled a secret, crafty smile. To which woman had Phillip really belonged? Dr. Wagner would never be able to answer that question, because Miss Pontois was never going to supply the necessary information. She would never tell him what had happened the night Terry had left on a business trip. Nobody knew about that night. Nobody except, perhaps, Theresa.
Miss Pontois sank to her knees on the bright patterned carpet. She rested her head against the blue velvet pillow of the couch. That night both girls had gone out. But Theresa had returned early to the silent apartment, to the locked bedroom door.
The frightening thing was that Theresa had never said anything. At first Miss Pontois was terrorized by the girl’s refusal to admit what she knew. It gave her the feeling that Theresa was biding her time, waiting for the ultimate, the vulnerable moment.
However, Miss Pontois soon discovered that her new relationship with Phillip took care of her fear, transforming it, inevitably, into a growing sense of triumph. Before long it even became possible for her to ignore Theresa. In fact, the disassociation became so complete that when Theresa finally moved away, the girl’s actual physical absence tended to make very little difference in Miss Pontois’ life.
Abruptly lifting her head from the blue pillow. Miss Pontois tried to remember the reasons Theresa had given for leaving home. Why was it she seemed to get these blank spots lately? Firmly, but without conviction, she told herself that Theresa had joined the Red Cross. In the 1940s so many girls were joining the Red Cross. Miss Pontois pressed the back of her hand against her forehead. After all, she hadn’t paid too much attention to the surface explanation for Theresa’s departure, because deep down was the triumphant knowledge of the real reason.
And when the war was over, and Theresa still didn’t return. Miss Pontois continued to enjoy her private sense of triumph. Eventually, she grew quite proficient at ignoring the occasional twisting fear that someday there would be a reckoning…someday Theresa would come back.
Miss Pontois shivered. Suddenly the living room seemed alien to her, as if Theresa had already invaded it. She got up slowly and went into her bedroom. It was the one room Theresa had rarely entered. And, even now, in this new apartment, Miss Pontois experienced the old sense of relief as she closed the bedroom door.
Sitting on the white wing chair, which had once been in the living room, she began reviewing the events of the past few hours. So much had happened so quickly. First there had been the name and the way the name had come to her in Dr. Wagner’s office. That’s when it had started.
And yet not really then. She began to understand that the name had come only because the atmosphere of Theresa had already begun to envelop her again. She wondered, vaguely, how long Theresa had been back. But that wasn’t important. She mustn’t waste time on unimportant speculations. The fact remained that Theresa was here, and that Phyllis had gone to meet her. Of so much she was certain. Only the presence of Theresa could adequately explain Phyllis’ strange reticence. Only Theresa could have induced her to wear the earrings.
“I don’t believe in false sentimentality,” Phyllis had said when Miss Pontois suggested that she keep something of her mother’s. “I didn’t feel close to my mother when she was alive. I don’t feel close to her now.” Nevertheless, at Miss Pontois’ insistence, Phyllis had chosen at random from the pathetically few remaining possessions. Packed away in the familiar striped dress box, ornately lettered T. Carroll, were a pair of multi-colored summer shoes, a red quilted robe, a box of tarnished costume jewelry—and the earrings.
The first time Miss Pontois had seen her, Terry had been wearing them—the gold earrings and the inevitable red dress that dramatized her shining black hair. It was the Mister, however, whom Miss Pontois met first. Seated in the show room, opposite the mirrored wall, he began asking her the routine questions.
Miss Pontois liked to think of those first moments with Phillip, not as an interview, but as a conversation of discovery—a conversation which was interrupted by the arrival of Terry. She had appeared before them reflected in the mirrored wall.
It seemed significant to Miss Pontois that the first time she was exposed to Terry it was to a reflection of her. For it appeared that her life was to become surrounded by reflections of this intense, neurotic woman.
“Terry…” Phillip turned to his wife, and Miss Pontois had the curious sensation that a part of his personality had vanished, absorbed in the supercharged atmosphere. “Terry—this young lady is answering our ad.”
Terry. Miss Pontois rejected the nickname immediately. This woman wasn’t the type for nicknames. It was like finding a nickname for a black panther.
“This is Miss Pontois,” the Mister said.
“Miss Pontiss,” Terry repeated mistakenly, and the husky voice with the peculiar rasping quality made the mispronunciation even more irritating. Miss Pontois had never been able to determine whether or not the error was deliberate. But from that moment on she was rarely to be called by her correct name.
Terry pushed at the strands of straight hair escaping the not quite invisible net. “It will be far from an easy job. Miss Pontiss.”
“Yet she’s such a lovable girl,” the Mister interrupted. He had been talking about Phyllis, of course. And his wife had been talking about Theresa.
The Mister gave her cab fare and jotted down the address. It was uptown in the nineties. When she arrived at the apartment, it was Theresa who greeted her, throwing a small wooden block at her. Miss Pontois ducked, but not soon enough. The blood spurted from her cheek, and Phyllis started to cry. She picked the little girl up in her arms and began comforting her.
“Phil,” she said, “little Phil.” She relished but failed to identify the delicious sensation that came to her as she spoke the name. “Don’t cry like that, darling. After all, you didn’t do it. It was Theresa.”
Her feeling of guilt, because she’d placed the blame as she had, was almost immediate. However, her conscience was somewhat soothed by the fact that Theresa had vanished. Nevertheless, she sensed that the child was hiding somewhere, watching her. And now Theresa was back again. From somewhere in the city she was watching—waiting for the opportunity to strike.
On the other hand, this time Miss Pontois had been given an opportunity to anticipate the attack and, consequently, to defend herself. Of course, she would need to have a more definite idea of what Theresa was up to. For this. Miss Pontois knew she would have to rely on her ingenuity and watchfulness. She would have to recognize each unrelated, misshapen piece of the puzzle as it presented itself.
Relaxed, somewhat, by the very orderliness of her thoughts, Miss Pontois began to prepare for bed. Her immediate problem, she realized, was one of self-control. She mustn’t tip her hand. If Phyllis should find out that she knew about Theresa, her important advantage would be lost. From now on, she must be careful not to react to the changes in Phyllis’ behavior, however difficult this might be.
Miss Pontois soon discovered, however, that it was equally difficult to control her reactions when Phyllis’ behavior followed the accustomed pattern. Because she was now geared for change, the usual unnerved her almost as much as the unusual.
For instance, all the following morning and afternoon she waited for Phyllis to call and give some excuse for not being home to dinner. But Phyllis didn’t call. Instead she came home at the accustomed time.
Seated across from Phyllis at the dinette table. Miss Pontois found herself hard pressed to meet this challenge of the ordinary. She resorted, finally, to a barrage of chatter.
“I spent all afternoon on Mrs. Hadley’s dinner dress. I simply can’t keep up with her dieting. I no sooner get her alterations finished than she loses ten pounds…or gains them. Have you an idea what ten pounds does to a figure?”
She watched Phyllis push the food around on her plate. “Ponte…if you really wanted to, you could build up a business for yourself—not just alterations. After all, once I was grown up and out of your hair, you spent all those years working with Dad and Mother.” Now Phyllis looked at her eagerly. “Why, I remember lots of times your suggestions were even better than Mother’s.”
“No!” Denial was fierce and instinctive. Years ago, Miss Pontois had learned the price of offering a better suggestion than Terry’s. She could still hear the husky voice, shrill enough to penetrate the fitting rooms: “I didn’t ask for your opinion. Miss Pontois. There are times when you are too quick to forget that you are a paid servant.” Later, of course, there were always the tears, the apologies, the inevitable lavish gift with which Terry tried to make up for her outbursts.
Phyllis had stopped eating. Miss Pontois sipped her water and tried to rid her mind of the sharp thrust of memory.
“Building the business up again would take some doing,” she said finally. “You know perfectly well, Phyllis, that things had been going downhill for a long time. All those rich old women were dying off…”
“But they have daughters…and granddaughters. You could start building something again if you wanted to do it.” Phyllis paused, and Miss Pontois found herself waiting with a sudden and peculiar sense of dread. “The trouble is, you don’t seem to want anything. You’re too caught up in the past.”
“How can you say that!” Miss Pontois’ voice sounded high and strange in her own ears. “I’m doing very well with the alteration business. We’ve moved to a new apartment—”
“Yes!” There was a raw, scraping sound as Phyllis pushed back her chair. “We moved… us…we. That’s what I mean. You’re too dependent on me.”
Phyllis paused, and Miss Pontois became aware of an unnatural silence, as if the low, steady hum of living had been abruptly cut off. She stood up and began clearing the table, conscious that Phyllis was trailing after her into the kitchen.
“Suppose you let me take over the dishes tonight,” Miss Pontois spoke into the dead, echoless vacuum. She needed to be alone. She needed to examine what Phyllis had said. Somewhere in the protest, in the veiled accusation, there must be another piece of the ugly jigsaw puzzle.
“Thanks for the reprieve, Ponte.” Phyllis was smiling self-consciously. “As a matter of fact, I want to wash my hair.”
Almost before she realized she was speaking, the familiar warning was out. “You’ll catch cold!” Miss Pontois said. And then, more hesitantly, almost apologetically, “It’ll never dry before you go to bed. You always get those sore throats.”
“I won’t get a sore throat. Honestly, Ponte, when are you going to stop treating me like a baby?” Phyllis was still smiling, but something was wrong. Once again, Miss Pontois had the curious sensation they were talking into an echoless void.
Phyllis left the kitchen, and Miss Pontois turned the hot water on full force, as though the very sound of it could penetrate the inward sense of silence. Slowly, she began turning over the things Phyllis had said, examining each word for its hidden meaning, its revealing clue. “You’re too dependent on me.” There was an insistence about the phrase, and she returned to it again and again.
Suppose she was dependent on Phyllis. What was so terrible about that? Miss Pontois turned off the water and began slipping dishes into the foam. There had been a time when it was the other way around. All those years when Miss Pontois had been a kind of buffer, softening the impact of the constant jarring conflicts between Phyllis and her mother. “I hate her, Ponte!” Phyllis would say. And Miss Pontois would find herself reciting all the right objections to such an attitude, controlling as best she could the strange, warm feeling of security she found in the girl’s reaction to her mother.
Miss Pontois set the last dish to drain in the rubber rack. She was getting nowhere. She was going around in circles. But she mustn’t panic. Perhaps if she kept busy… She decided to spend a few hours working on Mrs. Hadley’s dinner dress. She might even be able to finish it tonight. Besides, she could think better when she was busy in “the workroom.”
“The workroom,” a fairly large back room—and the main reason for taking the apartment—was adequately equipped with objects salvaged when T. Carroll, Incorporated had collapsed. There was an overhead fluorescent light, a large work table, two antiquated yet surprisingly efficient sewing machines, and a group of headless, stout dressmaking figures.
These stood huddled in a corner, as if they had suddenly taken refuge from a common terror. Most of the figures belonged to customers who had vanished years before. Some of them, as Miss Pontois had pointed out to Phyllis, had simply died off. Others had literally been driven away by Terry. At first the Mister had been unable, and later unwilling to explain the increasingly irrational outbursts which were to vent themselves, finally, in the tiny room with the barred window.
However, it wasn’t the barred window that was to haunt Miss Pontois for the rest of her life. It was the door—the door with the little round hole conveniently carved out at eye level. More than once she had waked up in the middle of the night, cold with terror, having dreamed that she was locked up and at the mercy of the watching, faceless eye. Involuntarily, she would reach out to the remembered door, seeing again, with sickening vividness, the gouged-out pattern made by angry, clawing hands.
Miss Pontois rubbed at her eyes. She had always hated the dead, unnatural glare of fluorescent lighting. Directly in front of her stood Mrs. Hadley’s headless figure draped in the red taffeta dinner dress. Suddenly Miss Pontois was conscious of a pain in her right temple. It passed almost at once, leaving Miss Pontois suspended slightly above herself. She was looking down at Mrs. Hadley’s macabre, red-draped form. She was watching her own hand as it picked up the sheers. Once she even imagined that she cried out. But the small, throaty sound in no way impeded the downward, slashing action.
“My goodness! What happened!” Phyllis’ voice brought Miss Pontois abruptly back to herself. The girl stood in the doorway, a Turkish towel wrapped around her head.
“I decided to take some of the fullness out of the skirt,” Miss Pontois lied. She reached out her hand, and the red fabric seemed to moan under her fingers.
Phyllis came into the room and sat down on the high wooden stool near the work table.
“There’s something I want to say to you.” The towel slipped onto her shoulders and the brown hair, darker now because it was wet, tumbled in all directions over her forehead. Miss Pontois, looking at the wet-black hair, found herself thinking of Terry. “It’s kind of hard to put it into words,” Phyllis said.
“Not for you, Phyllis. Words were never hard for you. Remember the poem you wrote in the fourth grade—”
“Ponte, stop it! Stop dragging in the past!”
Miss Pontois turned away from the angry girl. When Phyllis was this way, she began to lose all resemblance to her father.
“There’s something you must understand.” Phyllis was speaking quietly now. Too quietly. “I’m doing my best to help you, but I’ve got to help myself first.”
Miss Pontois felt her body tensing against the unknown threat. When Phyllis spoke again, it was with a strange, new emphasis. “I think it would be better to have my own apartment. At least for a while.”
Miss Pontois managed not to make a single motion. She even stopped breathing, knowing that the slightest disturbance—even so much as a breath, would shatter the world.
“Ponte!”
The alarm in Phyllis’ voice released her. Suddenly her mind was moving—taking the measure of the situation. Theresa wanted to take Phyllis away from her. That much was clear. That much she could have anticipated if she had been given a little more time. Another day, even. But Theresa had always moved swiftly. Well, she was still ahead of her. She still had the advantage of knowing Theresa was back. And she must keep that advantage. Because Theresa wasn’t through yet. All her instincts told Miss Pontois that taking Phyllis away was just another fragment. She wasn’t being permitted to see the whole, ugly pattern. Not yet. Therefore she must play it smart.
“Well,” Miss Pontois said carefully, “maybe it would be a good idea. I’m not exactly the best company in the world.”
“It isn’t that. You mustn’t think...” For a moment she was afraid Phyllis was going to cry. “We’ll see each other often,” Phyllis managed finally.
Looking at the girl’s distraught expression, Miss Pontois momentarily forgot her concern with herself. Poor child. She must remember that Phyllis, too, was an instrument of Theresa’s evil will. And it was unfair that Phyllis should be made to suffer any more than was necessary. This thing was between herself and Theresa.
Miss Pontois put her arm around the girl. “We’ll start looking for a place tomorrow.”
She saw the slow flush spread over Phyllis’ cheeks. “I’ve already found a place, Ponte.”
After that, there wasn’t much more to say. It seemed the apartment consisted of one room which was already furnished. Therefore only her clothes would have to be moved. And Phyllis thought perhaps tomorrow morning… Since she wasn’t too busy at the office, she would take the day off.
Of course. It would have to be tomorrow. Trust Theresa to see that the break was quick and clean.
Because Miss Pontois was already steeling herself to the fact that she would not see Phyllis again for some time, she was startled when the girl suggested showing her the apartment the following afternoon. Phyllis even insisted on calling for her. But it wasn’t until they were on the bus, heading uptown, that Miss Pontois realized she didn’t know where they were going. She had neglected to ask the address. It came as a shock, therefore, when they got off the bus at Ninetieth Street. It was so close to the old neighborhood.
The building was a gray stone mansion which even now seemed impressive, in spite of appalling signs of disrepair.
“It’s one flight up to the front,” Phyllis said as they entered the cavernous and dimly lit vestibule. However, it wasn’t the encompassing gloom, nor the wide and treacherously uncarpeted stairway that affected Miss Pontois. These were, after all, impersonal symptoms of neglect. It was when she stepped into the high-ceilinged apartment that the intimate, choking sense of evil rose up at her.
Instinctively, her eyes searched the room. There was an absurdly large fireplace, two conventional, overstuffed chairs, two studio couches.
Her glance swung away and swung back again. Two couches! Two chests of drawers. Two people could live in this room.
Of course. The truth was so simple, she wondered why she hadn’t realized it immediately—last night when Phyllis first told her about the apartment. What better way for Theresa to keep Phyllis within the area of her influence than to share an apartment with her? Miss Pontois felt almost giddy as she walked toward one of the studio couches. She wondered if it was Theresa’s. Perhaps it was still warm from the pressure of Theresa’s body.
“Are you all right, Ponte?”
“Of course I’m all right.”
“I’ll put on some tea. Look!” Phyllis said and triumphantly raised a Venetian blind, revealing a compact pullman kitchen.
“No. No I really can’t stay.” She had to get out of here. It was possible that Theresa had planned this visit, and that she had walked into a trap. Theresa might appear at any moment, before Miss Pontois had fitted all the pieces together, before she understood the whole terrible plan.
“Nonsense,” Phyllis was saying. “You’ve got to initiate the place. Tea you must have. As a matter of fact, I could use some myself.” She rubbed her hand over her throat. “You were right after all. Washing my hair wasn’t such a good idea.”
Miss Pontois ignored the implied apology for last night’s outburst of anger. Then a curious thing happened. For a brief second her mind seemed to go blank. She remembered watching Phyllis as she held a kettle under the cold water tap. And the next thing she knew. Miss Pontois found herself standing at the coffee table looking down at the earrings.
“I’ve got to have them adjusted.” Phyllis’ voice was startlingly close. “They’re too tight.” Miss Pontois watched the hand pick up the earrings and deposit them in one of the chests.
“There are so few things left that belonged to her,” Phyllis was saying. Again there must have been that strange jump in time, because now Miss Pontois was seated in one of the overstuffed chairs, and Phyllis was sitting on the coffee table.
“You know, Ponte, it’s a curious thing when someone dies. You begin to see them differently.”
Miss Pontois flicked her tongue over her dry lips. So now Phyllis was white-washing her mother—Phyllis, who hated false sentimentality. If Miss Pontois had ever doubted Theresa’s return, here was proof. In fact Theresa must have been back longer than she suspected, to have worked such a change in Phyllis.
“Oh, I admit Mother was a very difficult person,” Phyllis was saying, as if in answer to the unspoken accusation. “It’s only that I’m beginning to see what made her difficult. Ponte, do you realize what she did? She came here as a child…with nothing…she couldn’t even speak the language. She had to be aggressive. She had to be single minded. And Dad was a wonderful person…but he was a dreamer…”
Suddenly Miss Pontois was on her feet. The misguided defense of the mother was bad enough, but now this ... this subtle attack on Phillip.
“Theresa is back!” She heard her own voice, almost unrecognizable. Her throat hurt, and she couldn’t seem to hold her lips together. She saw Phyllis’ white face suspended over the coffee table.
“You haven’t mentioned Theresa in years.”
“She’s back. You didn’t think I knew.”
In the high-ceilinged room the shadows stirred. Miss Pontois turned and ran.
When she got home, the phone was ringing. She picked up the receiver.
“Hello,” the familiar voice said into her ear. “Hello…” the two husky-shrill syllables snaked through the wire. Trembling, Miss Pontois pressed down the cradle with her finger. Fear of the remembered voice was nothing compared with the terror of the reality. She listened again. There was a monotonous humming. The connection had been broken.
Carefully, she sat the receiver next to the phone. She wasn’t going to expose herself to that voice again. Aware of the sudden weakness in her legs, she sank down on the steps leading to the living room.
She had done it. She had tipped her hand. Phyllis would have told Theresa, of course. Her advantage was gone.
Well then, there was only one thing to do. She must take the initiative. She must face Theresa. Any situation can be handled once you face it. The unexpected application of Dr. Wagner’s words gave her a surprising sense of excitement. After all, she had always been able to cope with Theresa in the past. She had even succeeded in driving Theresa out of their lives. She would do it again, for the Mister’s sake, if for no other reason. Because look what was happening to his little girl. Look what was happening to Phyllis. She must protect Phyllis from the evil of Theresa.
Now that she had arrived at a decision, she felt energy and control flooding back through her. She even replaced the receiver on the hook and derived a certain satisfaction from the fact that she could ignore the intermittent ringing. She had won a small victory over the telephone. And it represented, in a way, a victory over Theresa.
She went to bed and slept soundly. The next morning, she found that her feeling of confidence not only persisted, but was stronger than ever. Her thoughts were clicking off unhesitatingly, dictating quick, decisive action.
She called Dr. Wagner’s office and cancelled her appointment for that afternoon, aware of how well she was handling the conversation with the nurse. She was being just casual enough, just firm enough. It was as if her whole body were a sensitive machine which could be counted upon to respond smoothly to given impulses. And for this reason she was without even the slightest sense of fear or apprehension. Her main function had become a purely responsive one. Consequently, she felt relieved of the necessity of planning ahead in any great detail. She was convinced that once she confronted Theresa, once she forced her to reveal whatever monstrous scheme she was so cleverly engaged in plotting, her own course of action would inevitably present itself.
At exactly three o’clock she left for the apartment uptown. The conviction that this was Theresa’s apartment and that she would find Theresa there had taken such complete possession of her that she felt almost as if an appointment had been made. Any stirrings of doubt were immediately put to rest by the swift, logical clicking away of her thoughts. For example, she told herself that if Theresa happened to be out, she had only to choose a strategic spot and await her return. Since Phyllis was working, it was only logical that Theresa would get home ahead of Phyllis.
Busy with, and even comforted by such thoughts, Miss Pontois walked swiftly west. So great was her preoccupation that it left her completely unaware of the violent change that had taken place in the weather. In fact she felt unusually warm, even though her thin neck was exposed to the damp, penetrating cold of the dull November afternoon.
Her immediate objective was to take the Madison Avenue trolley uptown. But when she arrived at Madison and 57th Street, Miss Pontois received quite a shock. The trolley tracks weren’t there.
White with this surprising realization, she allowed two buses to pass her by. It’s because of going uptown, she told herself, by way of rationalizing the error she had made. It’s because of going back where we used to live. For a moment. Miss Pontois let herself imagine the sound of the street cars the way she used to hear them from her bed at night. But of course the street cars had been discontinued many years ago.
The trip uptown was slower than she had anticipated. But she was glad of the opportunity to collect herself. And by the time she arrived at her destination, the feeling of control and energy had returned. She even managed to smile a bit over what she was beginning to think of as her “flightiness.”
Again, acting on an impulse that seemed to be coming from outside herself, she crossed the street and looked up at the gray stone building. The windows on the second floor stared back at her blindly. The drapes were drawn. Miss Pontois felt the thumping of her own heart. If the drapes were drawn, then someone was inside. Even as the thought formed itself in her mind, she saw a hand reach out and pull the window up a crack. The drapes parted for an instant and then fell together again—but not before Miss Pontois had seen the loose red sleeve of a robe.
The next thing she knew, she was standing in the half-open door of the apartment. She didn’t remember pressing the buzzer. She didn’t remember passing through the huge, gloomy vestibule. Instead, it seemed to Miss Pontois that the hated red of the robe had dissolved without a noticeable passage of time into the hot, flickering light in front of her. For a moment Miss Pontois thought that the heat and the dizzying sense of motion were coming from her own body. But then she saw that a fire was going in the fireplace. And then she saw Theresa.
“I tried to reach you last night.” The husky voice wasn’t as shrill as it had been on the phone, but there was a grating edge to it. It was so like her, so like Theresa to dispense with preliminaries, to talk as if she had never been away. But of course she hadn’t been away, not really. Because the threat of her return had always been there, like a presence, waiting for this moment.
“What are you staring at?” Theresa gave the door an impatient shove and it crashed shut.
“You always could wear her colors…”
Theresa drew the robe closer with a defiant gesture and walked toward the studio couch. “I was lying down. I have a cold.”
A pillow had been pulled from under the cheap chenille spread and the whiteness of the case seemed to keep its intensity even in the darkened room. Theresa sat on the edge of the couch and swung her feet up.
“You still hate my mother,” she said, and Miss Pontois sensed the mockery behind the malice.
“Don’t you think I have ample reason?” She was determined to match Theresa statement for statement.
But the husky voice came back at her—slow, deliberate. “The real reason, of course, is because you feel guilty…because of my father.” Here it was finally—the admission, concealed for so long, growing a dark network of roots that threatened to undermine the very foundations of Miss Pontois’ life. “That’s why you hate her…have to hate her…even though she’s dead.”
“But she isn’t dead.” Across the red shadows their eyes held. Miss Pontois felt herself pulled forward by the strange connecting force between them. She isn’t dead. She’s alive…in you.”
Theresa half rose. “Dr. Wagner is right. You’re sick, dangerously sick!” For a moment Miss Pontois stood swaying on the edge of understanding. And then knowledge exploded inside her. So this was what Theresa had been plotting. This was the total picture in all its viciousness…in all its logically conceived horror. She was to be put where Terry had been…behind the same locked door with the little round hole, and the clawed marks converging on the hole.
There was a hoarse, penetrating cry—like no sound she had ever heard. Miss Pontois watched the long shears flash and flash again. She watched herself as she looked down at the dark, hated red. It was moving now with a life of its own, staining the white pillow.
The strange sense of detachment, the peculiar suspended feeling, remained with Miss Pontois until she returned to her own apartment. It was when she switched on the lamp in the foyer that release came in the form of a new and deeper shock. On the foyer table, Theresa’s picture stared up at her from a pool of yellow light.
Somebody had been there. Somebody had switched photographs. Where then, was the other one? Miss Pontois pulled at the shallow drawer in the foyer table. The drawer fell to the floor spilling a deck of cards, a pair of glasses, a green stub of pencil. But Phyllis’ picture wasn’t there.
Where was Phyllis?
Without bothering to peel off her fabric gloves. Miss Pontois moved through the rooms in a frenzy of motion—switching on lights, spilling the contents of bureau drawers here and there, and on knobs and light switches, leaving a dark red stain.
AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT: My point of departure: I believe it was a deep emotional experience, so deep in fact, that it has not spent itself in the story but is, presently, overflowing into a novel. I guess the “gimmick” came next, a natural consequence of the fact that this particular emotion could only be expressed in the “peculiar” form of the suspense story.