Behind Closed Doors

Since Millie told Grace about how Jack pushed her down the stairs, Grace has been compelled to intensify her efforts to get away. She asks Jack if she can go on a shopping trip with him and then begs a policeman for help. However, the policeman knows Jack and asks him if everything is all right. The whole village seems to have been told that Grace is mentally unstable, making it ever more difficult for her to get away. Jack is also a respected member of the community who defends battered women, and is therefore perceived as the most unlikely man to abuse his wife.

After her pleas fall on deaf ears, Grace is again unable to see Millie and she decides to toe the line for a while. As a reward for her good behavior, Jack also tells Grace that she can paint again. His only requirement is that he gets to pick her subject. He wants her to paint a portrait. Unsure of what Jack wants her to paint, Grace still agrees because she wants to make art again. Jack gives her a photograph of a past client—she is bloody, bruised, and grotesque. Grace is appalled, but if she doesn’t make the photograph into a painting, she won’t be able to see Millie. Once she is done with this one, she will paint more, until Jack decides that she has produced enough of them. The only way that Grace can handle painting the woman is by imagining her without the cuts, bruises, and swelling. As she paints this woman and the next ones, the fact that Jack has never lost a case sticks with her. These women inspire her to get out of her horrific situation.

When Grace learns that they’ll be having dinner with his work colleagues, she plans another attempt to get help. She thinks people who are not his close friends will be more likely to believe her, and perhaps there is even somebody who wants to see his career hit a tailspin.

In the middle of the night, she uses small nail scissors to cut out words from the pages of the books he has given her to read. She piles the individual words into a sentence—“Please help me I am being held captive get police”—and secures them together with a hair tie (184). She will leave it on the table after dinner and hopefully someone will pick it up after they’ve left. However, she forgets to hide it from Jack on the way out of the house and he finds it in her bag. After that, he moves her into the smaller bedroom and begins to starve her.

Grace wakes up in the basement after being forced to sleep there. They are going to see Millie. She has only seventy-four days before Millie will come to live with them and she doesn’t know how to get out of her predicament. Even if they do get to eat at the hotel and are able to slip into the restrooms, Grace won’t have anything new to tell her.

When they arrive at the school, Janice tells them that Millie’s sleeping pills are helping her. She also tells them that once Millie is living with them, she is happy to visit Millie at the house whenever they need a break. Before they leave for lunch, Janice says that Millie has been talking nonstop in class about how much she loves the hotel and she has been asked to do a report on it for Monday. In addition, Mrs. Goodrich is thinking of holding the end-of-school staff appreciation dinner at the hotel. Now, Millie has to research it.

After lunch at the hotel, Millie says that she has to go to the restroom and she needs Grace to help her because she has her period. Jack lets them go, though he waits in the hallway near the restroom.

Once in the safety of the women’s restroom, Millie gives Grace a tissue full of her sleeping pills. She says that she never took them. Grace wonders why she saved them. Millie says she didn’t need them, she pretended. She got them for Grace. Her sister, puzzled, asks why she would need them. Millie responds, “‘It simple, Grace. We kill Jorj Koony’” (190).

Grace and Jack go back to Thailand. Grace doesn’t dare trying to escape this time. She is again only permitted to go outside to take staged photographs. When Jack is gone from the room, he is out getting pleasure from the fear of others in some unknown location, beating up women or watching someone else do the same.

Grace’s anger at her situation and Jack’s actions boil over when they get back. She hits him over the head with a bottle of wine half an hour before Diane and Adam are expected for dinner. Enraged, he cancels their plans and says he will now show Grace Millie’s room. Instead of taking her upstairs to the tidy yellow room she’s seen before, he drags her to a part of the basement she didn’t know existed. It is past the utility room, and through a storeroom: the entrance is a steel door behind shelving. The room is unfurnished, painted a deep red, and decorated with all of the portraits of battered women that he made her paint. This is where Millie will be living.

To punish Grace, he makes her stay down there. The door does not have a handle on the inside and she bangs on it. From the other side, Jack says that she should keep on doing that because it excites him. Grace has a panic attack and when she comes to, she starts to look for a way out. It’s futile, Jack interjects, still standing outside. She regrets thinking that the yellow bedroom he created for Millie showed that he might have some sort of sense of decency.

Back in the bathroom at the hotel, Millie insists that they should use the sleeping pills on Jack. Grace insists that they shouldn’t kill anyone, and says they should flush the pills down a toilet. Millie points out that in Agatha Christie stories, people often die, including by an overdose of sleeping pills.

Though Grace denies wanting to use them, she begins to think as Millie speaks. The chances of sneaking Jack enough of these pills to kill him are very low. However, whatever Grace does, she can’t involve her sister. She tells Millie that she is going to flush them, and she goes into a stall, pretending to, but shoves the tissue full of pills into her shoe instead, pushing it up as far as she can into the toe.

When she comes out of the stall, Millie is devastated because she thinks that the pills are gone. Millie says, “‘Grace stupid!’ […] ‘Can’t kill Jorj Koony now!’” (198). Grace assures her that she will tell the police, though she knows that doing so won’t work. She says that she will find a way out of this mess before Millie comes to live with them. Grace makes Millie promise that she will continue to keep the secret that Jack is evil. Millie is in tears; they go back out to see if Jack will buy them ice cream.

As they’re walking to get the ice cream in a park near the hotel, Grace’s foot is hurting because her toes are smashed against the pills and she knows that she can’t walk around the park for half the day. She suggests that they go to the movies instead. Jack agrees, but wonders what’s wrong with Millie, who looks incredibly depressed. Millie says that Grace won’t let her kill George Clooney. Jack looks mystified.

Grace saves the conversation by saying that Millie wanted to come see the house and Grace told her it wasn’t possible. Millie quickly picks up on the lie and agrees. Jack tells Millie that if she visits the house, she will love it so much she might never want to leave, especially because she has a yellow room. After the movie, they take Millie back to the school.

Jack tells Janice that the next weekend they will be taking Millie to see their house and her new bedroom. Afraid that Jack will just keep Millie at the house after he has her there, Grace invites Janice to come see it, too. Grace also suggests that they come in two weekends so that they can celebrate Millie’s eighteenth birthday. They will have a party with cake and balloons.

On the way home, Jack tells Grace that inviting Janice will make it hard on her. Grace responds by saying that she only invited Janice so that Janice can tell Mrs. Goodrich what a good set-up they have for Millie. “‘That’s very noble of you,’” Jack says, “‘[b]ut now I have to ask myself why you should choose to be so noble, given the circumstances’” (207). Grace responds that she has accepted that he will never let her escape. Jack says that he will miss her “‘amusing’” escape attempts (207). However, Grace feels as if she is actually one step ahead of Jack, appearing to be docile, but actually planning to strike.

When they get into the house, the phone is ringing. It’s Esther, inquiring to see if Grace is feeling better after the incident at the dinner party the night before. Jack actually gives Grace the phone, and she has to speak to Esther. Her friend wants to console Grace about her supposed miscarriage. It seems that Esther wants to be friends and she keeps talking, asking how their visit with Millie went. Grace decides to go with it. She tells Esther about the birthday party. Esther wants to bring Millie a card. Grace realizes that her friend has given her the perfect way for everyone to meet Millie so that Jack cannot keep her out of sight, and people can put a name to a face and make a connection before Jack makes her disappear.

Grace makes it sound like Esther has suggested a birthday party for Millie that will involve other guests. She sets the birthday party at 3pm so that she and Jack have time to have lunch with just Millie and Janice. When she hangs up, she tells Jack that Esther practically made her have the party and invite Adam and Diane, as well, and all of their children.

When they go upstairs, Grace has to distract Jack in order to be able to get the tissue full of pills out of her shoe. When she’s changing, she suggests that the neighbors will be able to see Millie in the garden during her party and wonder who she is. She points to a window on the first floor, from which the neighbors might be able to see into the garden. As he looks, she takes the tissue from her shoe and puts it into the waistband of her pajamas. After Jack leaves, Grace sticks it under the mattress. 

Grace is locked in the basement, reflecting, after she hit Jack over the head with the wine bottle and was punished for it. She didn’t realize that Jack’s plan was to lock Millie into a basement. She thought that she would be able to more closely watch over Millie and protect her: “To know the extent of his depravation was bad enough, but the fear that he would leave [Grace] there to die of dehydration, like Molly did, that [she] might not get out in time to save Millie, broke [Grace]” (216). So after Jack finally let her out of the basement, she was willing to go to any lengths to not be put down there again.

Jack begins to set challenges for her—like cooking a flawless meal at a dinner party—that he knows she will fail. Then he throws her down in the basement and tells her to imagine what it will be like for Millie in there.