"And Mr. Rye Whiskey doesn't help things much, talking about ghosts and spirits all the time. All the servants are a little spooked." She looked down as if ashamed.
"I can see there's more, Martha," I said quickly. "Go on, tell me the rest of it."
"It's just silly, Mrs. Stonewall. I know it's because of all that's going on around me."
"What is it, Martha? Please, don't be afraid to tell me."
"Well, I woke up late the other night and . . ."
"Yes?"
"I heard music, piano music."
I stared at her, my body growing so cold, I thought I had lost all feeling in it. For a moment I couldn't speak.
"You must have been imagining it," I said, practically whispering.
"I know, Mrs. Stonewall. I didn't even mention it to anyone before now. But don't you see, it's all part of what's been happening to your grandmother. I don't like it. She looks at me differently and she spends hours staring out the window, looking toward the maze."
"The maze!"
Martha nodded slowly.
"That's what she's doing right now," she said and stepped back. I looked at the bedroom door and then back at her. The woman looked sincerely disturbed. How could Tony not realize what was happening here? Was he so deliberately oblivious to it? He was about to lose the services of Martha Goodman.
"Perhaps if I talk to her, Martha. I'll get her to come to her senses."
"Oh, I hope so, Mrs. Stonewall, because in my opinion it might just be better for her to be somewhere where she can get more professional assistance."
I turned the handle on the bedroom door slowly, then entered Jillian's bedroom. She was right where Martha said she would be--sitting by the window, staring out toward the maze.
The heavy scent of her jasmine perfume reached me immediately and I thought, yes, yes, that was what was so different about her in her madness. She spent hours before an empty mirror frame overdoing makeup, but she hadn't put on her favorite perfume, the scent I remembered so well. Now she had.
Unlike the other times I had seen her, she wasn't wearing one of her fancy nightgowns. She sat calmly, dressed in a black chiffon blouse and a black skirt When she heard me and turned my way, she wasn't wearing any makeup at all, and her hair, although still overbleached, was brushed down rather neatly, the sides pinned back.
"So," she said. "You, too, have returned." She followed it with an efficient little laugh.
"Jillian . ."
"From that hillbilly town. Only something like this would bring you back, I know. You ran out of here, gave all this up, to become a teacher in a backward school. And now you're sorry, sorry for what you lost."
She knew who I was! She wasn't looking at me and thinking she was looking at my mother. She turned back to the window to stare out.
Martha was right--she was very different. The tone of her voice was different; the look in her eyes was different. Just the way she sat there and held herself was different. Gone was the flightiness, the mad laughter, the strange ethereal way she moved her hands and flittered about her room. It was as though she had been given shock treatment and had come crashing back into reality.
"What are you looking for, Jillian? Why do you sit at the window all day and stare out at the maze?"
She spun around. Two small bright tears shone in the corners of her cornflower-blue eyes, eyes so much like my own they made me shudder.
"Everyone hates me," she said. "Everyone's turned against me, blaming me for all the bad things." She brought her lace handkerchief to her face and delicately touched her eyes. This was the Jillian I knew, acting, performing, playing her emotions like a musician would play an instrument. Her song was "Pity me, poor me. Poor Jillian."
I sighed. "Why does everyone hate you, Jillian? What have you done?" I asked in a tired voice.
"They said I chased your mother from this house. The servants used to whisper. Oh, I knew what they said. I used to hear them. They said I was too cold to Tony, living and sleeping apart from him, not permitting him to make love to me as often as he would have liked just so I could protect my youth and beauty. I wouldn't become worn and t
ired just to satisfy a man's hunger for sexual satisfaction, his need to prove his masculinity."
"Why should the servants have cared?" I asked, thinking that it might be best to humor her. She smiled, but so coldly I felt the chill overtake me.