Rosemary's Baby (12 page)

“Perhaps we can have dinner together soon,” Hutch said; and Guy, agreeing, went to get his coat.

Rosemary said, “Don’t forget to look up tannis root.”

“I won’t,” Hutch said. “And you tell Dr. Sapirstein to check his scale; I still think you’ve lost more than three pounds.”

“Don’t be silly,” Rosemary said. “Doctors’ scales aren’t wrong.”

Guy, holding open a coat, said, “It’s not mine, it must be yours.”

“Right you are,” Hutch said. Turning, he put his arms back into it. “Have you thought about names yet,” he asked Rosemary, “or is it too soon?”

“Andrew or Douglas if it’s a boy,” she said. “Melinda or Sarah if it’s a girl.”

“‘Sarah?’” Guy said. “What happened to ‘Susan’?” He gave Hutch his hat.

Rosemary offered her cheek for Hutch’s kiss.

“I do hope the pain stops soon,” he said.

“It will,” she said, smiling. “Don’t worry.”

Guy said, “It’s a pretty common condition.”

Hutch felt his pockets. “Is there another one of these around?” he asked, and showed them a brown fur-lined glove and felt his pockets again.

Rosemary looked around at the floor and Guy went to the closet and looked down on the floor and up onto the shelf. “I don’t see it, Hutch,” he said.

“Nuisance,” Hutch said. “I probably left it at City Center. I’ll stop back there. Let’s really have that dinner, shall we?”

“Definitely,” Guy said, and Rosemary said, “Next week.”

They watched him around the first turn of the hallway and then stepped back inside and closed the door.

“That was a nice surprise,” Guy said. “Was he here long?”

“Not very,” Rosemary said. “Guess what he said.”

“What?”

“I look terrible.”

“Good old Hutch,” Guy said, “spreading cheer wherever he goes.” Rosemary looked at him questioningly. “Well he
is
a professional crepe-hanger, honey,” he said. “Remember how he tried to sour us on moving in here?”

“He isn’t a professional crepe-hanger,” Rosemary said, going into the kitchen to clear the table.

Guy leaned against the door jamb. “Then he sure is one of the top-ranking amateurs,” he said.

A few minutes later he put his coat on and went out for a newspaper.

The telephone rang at ten-thirty that evening, when Rosemary was in bed reading and Guy was in the den watching television. He answered the call and a minute later brought the phone into the bedroom. “Hutch wants to speak to you,” he said, putting the phone on the bed and crouching to plug it in. “I told him you were resting but he said it couldn’t wait.”

Rosemary picked up the receiver. “Hutch?” she said.

“Hello, Rosemary,” Hutch said. “Tell me, dear, do you go out at all or do you stay in your apartment all day?”

“Well I haven’t
been
going out,” she said, looking at Guy; “but I could. Why?” Guy looked back at her, frowning, listening.

“There’s something I want to speak to you about,” Hutch said. “Can you meet me tomorrow morning at eleven in front of the Seagram Building?”

“Yes, if you want me to,” she said. “What is it? Can’t you tell me now?”

“I’d rather not,” he said. “It’s nothing terribly important so don’t brood about it. We can have a late brunch or early lunch if you’d like.”

“That would be nice.”

“Good. Eleven o’clock then, in front of the Seagram Building.”

“Right. Did you get your glove?”

“No, they didn’t have it,” he said, “but it’s time I got some new ones anyway. Good night, Rosemary. Sleep well.”

“You too. Good night.”

She hung up.

“What was that?” Guy asked.

“He wants me to meet him tomorrow morning. He has something he wants to talk to me about.”

“And he didn’t say what?”

“Not a word.”

Guy shook his head, smiling. “I think those boys’ adventure stories are going to his head,” he said. “Where are you meeting him?”

“In front of the Seagram Building at eleven o’clock.”

Guy unplugged the phone and went out with it to the den; almost immediately, though, he was back. “You’re the pregnant one and I’m the one with yens,” he said, plugging the phone back in and putting it on the night table. “I’m going to go out and get an ice cream cone. Do you want one?”

“Okay,” Rosemary said.

“Vanilla?”

“Fine.”

“I’ll be as quick as I can.”

He went out, and Rosemary leaned back against her pillows, looking ahead at nothing with her book forgotten in her lap. What was it Hutch wanted to talk about? Nothing terribly important, he had said. But it must be something not
un
important too, or else he wouldn’t have summoned her as he had. Was it something about Joan?—or one of the other girls who had shared the apartment?

Far away she heard the Castevets’ doorbell give one short ring. Probably it was Guy, asking them if they wanted ice cream or a morning paper. Nice of him.

The pain sharpened inside her.

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
Rosemary called Minnie on the house phone and asked her not to bring the drink over at eleven o’clock; she was on her way out and wouldn’t be back until one or two.

“Why, that’s fine, dear,” Minnie said. “Don’t you worry about a thing. You don’t have to take it at no fixed time; just so you take it
sometime
, that’s all. You go on out. It’s a nice day and it’ll do you good to get some fresh air. Buzz me when you get back and I’ll bring the drink in then.”

It was indeed a nice day; sunny, cold, clear, and invigorating. Rosemary walked through it slowly, ready to smile, as if she weren’t carrying her pain inside her. Salvation Army Santa Clauses were on every corner, shaking their bells in their fool-nobody costumes. Stores all had their Christmas windows; Park Avenue had its center line of trees.

She reached the Seagram Building at a quarter of eleven and, because she was early and there was no sign yet of Hutch, sat for a while on the low wall at the side of the building’s forecourt, taking the sun on her face and listening with pleasure to busy footsteps and snatches of conversation, to cars and trucks and a helicopter’s racketing. The dress beneath her coat was—for the first satisfying time—snug over her stomach; maybe after lunch she would go to Bloomingdale’s and look at maternity dresses. She was glad Hutch had called her out this way (but what did he want to talk about?); pain, even constant pain, was no excuse for staying indoors as much as she had. She would fight it from now on, fight it with air and sunlight and activity, not succumb to it in Bramford gloom under the well-meant pamperings of Minnie and Guy and Roman.
Pain, begone!
she thought;
I will have no more of thee!
The pain stayed, immune to Positive Thinking.

At five of eleven she went and stood by the building’s glass doors, at the edge of their heavy flow of traffic. Hutch would probably be coming from inside, she thought, from an earlier appointment; or else why had he chosen here rather than someplace else for their meeting? She scouted the outcoming faces as best she could, saw him but was mistaken, then saw a man she had dated before she met Guy and was mistaken again. She kept looking, stretching now and then on tiptoes; not anxiously, for she knew that even if she failed to see him, Hutch would see her.

He hadn’t come by five after eleven, nor by ten after. At a quarter after she went inside to look at the building’s directory, thinking she might see a name there that he had mentioned at one time or another and to which she might make a call of inquiry. The directory proved to be far too large and many-named for careful reading, though; she skimmed over its crowded columns and, seeing nothing familiar, went outside again.

She went back to the low wall and sat where she had sat before, this time watching the front of the building and glancing over occasionally at the shallow steps leading up from the sidewalk. Men and women met other men and women, but there was no sign of Hutch, who was rarely if ever late for appointments.

At eleven-forty Rosemary went back into the building and was sent by a maintenance man down to the basement, where at the end of a white institutional corridor there was a pleasant lounge area with black modern chairs, an abstract mural, and a single stainless-steel phone booth. A Negro girl was in the booth, but she finished soon and came out with a friendly smile. Rosemary slipped in and dialed the number at the apartment. After five rings Service answered; there were no messages for Rosemary, and the one message for Guy was from a Rudy Horn, not a Mr. Hutchins. She had another dime and used it to call Hutch’s number, thinking that his service might know where he was or have a message from him. On the first ring a woman answered with a worried non-service “Yes?”

“Is this Edward Hutchins’ apartment?” Rosemary asked.

“Yes. Who is this, please?” She sounded like a woman neither young nor old—in her forties, perhaps.

Rosemary said, “My name is Rosemary Woodhouse. I had an eleven o’clock appointment with Mr. Hutchins and he hasn’t shown up yet. Do you have any idea whether he’s coming or not?”

There was silence, and more of it. “Hello?” Rosemary said.

“Hutch has told me about you, Rosemary,” the woman said. “My name is Grace Cardiff. I’m a friend of his. He was taken ill last night. Or early this morning, to be exact.”

Rosemary’s heart dropped. “Taken ill?” she said.

“Yes. He’s in a deep coma. The doctors haven’t been able to find out yet what’s causing it. He’s at St. Vincent’s Hospital.”

“Oh, that’s
awful
,” Rosemary said. “I spoke to him last night around ten-thirty and he sounded
fine
.”

“I spoke to him not much later than that,” Grace Cardiff said, “and he sounded fine to me too. But his cleaning woman came in this morning and found him unconscious on the bedroom floor.”

“And they don’t know what from?”

“Not yet. It’s early though, and I’m sure they’ll find out soon. And when they do, they’ll be able to treat him. At the moment he’s totally unresponsive.”

“How awful,” Rosemary said. “And he’s never had anything like this before?”

“Never,” Grace Cardiff said. “I’m going back to the hospital now, and if you’ll give me a number where I can reach you, I’ll let you know when there’s any change.”

“Oh, thank you,” Rosemary said. She gave the apartment number and then asked if there was anything she could do to help.

“Not really,” Grace Cardiff said. “I just finished calling his daughters, and that seems to be the sum total of what has to be done, at least until he comes to. If there should be anything else I’ll let you know.”

Rosemary came out of the Seagram Building and walked across the forecourt and down the steps and north to the corner of Fifty-third Street. She crossed Park Avenue and walked slowly toward Madison, wondering whether Hutch would live or die, and if he died, whether she (selfishness!) would ever again have anyone on whom she could so effortlessly and completely depend. She wondered too about Grace Cardiff, who sounded silver-gray and attractive; had she and Hutch been having a quiet middle-aged affair? She hoped so. Maybe this brush with death—that’s what it would be, a
brush
with death, not death itself; it couldn’t be—maybe this brush with death would nudge them both toward marriage, and turn out in the end to have been a disguised blessing. Maybe. Maybe.

She crossed Madison, and somewhere between Madison and Fifth found herself looking into a window in which a small crèche was spotlighted, with exquisite porcelain figures of Mary and the Infant and Joseph, the Magi and the shepherds and the animals of the stable. She smiled at the tender scene, laden with meaning and emotion that survived her agnosticism; and then saw in the window glass, like a veil hung before the Nativity, her own reflection smiling, with the skeletal cheeks and black-circled eyes that yesterday had alarmed Hutch and now alarmed her.

“Well
this
is what I call the long arm of coincidence!” Minnie exclaimed, and came smiling to her when Rosemary turned, in a white mock-leather coat and a red hat and her neckchained eyeglasses. “I said to myself, ‘As long as
Rosemary’s
out, I might as well go out, and do the last little bit of my Christmas shopping.’ And here
you
are and here I am! It looks like we’re just two of a kind that go the same places and do the same things! Why, what’s the matter, dear? You look so sad and downcast.”

“I just heard some bad news,” Rosemary said. “A friend of mine is very sick. In the hospital.”

“Oh, no,” Minnie said. “Who?”

“His name is Edward Hutchins,” Rosemary said.

“The one Roman met yesterday afternoon? Why, he was going on for an
hour
about what a nice intelligent man he was! Isn’t that a pity! What’s troubling him?”

Rosemary told her.

“My land,” Minnie said, “I hope it doesn’t turn out the way it did for poor Lily Gardenia! And the doctors don’t even know? Well at least they admit it; usually they cover up what they don’t know with a lot of high-flown Latin. If the money spent putting those astronauts up where they are was spent on medical research down here, we’d
all
be a lot better off, if you want
my
opinion. Do you feel all right, Rosemary?”

“The pain is a little worse,” Rosemary said.

“You poor thing. You know what I think? I think we ought to be going home now. What do you say?”

“No, no, you have to finish your Christmas shopping.”

“Oh shoot,” Minnie said, “there’s two whole weeks yet. Hold onto your ears.” She put her wrist to her mouth and blew stabbing shrillness from a whistle on a gold-chain bracelet. A taxi veered toward them. “How’s
that
for service?” she said. “A nice big Checker one too.”

Soon after, Rosemary was in the apartment again. She drank the cold sour drink from the blue-and-green-striped glass while Minnie looked on approvingly.