Rosemary's Baby (19 page)

She would call Brian. Or Joan or Elise or Grace Cardiff. Someone.

We’re not through yet, Andy!

She stopped the car at nine, then at six, then halfway past seven, and then close enough to seven to open the gate and the door and step four inches down.

She walked through the turns of hallway as quickly as she could. A contraction came but she marched right through it, paying no heed.

The service elevator’s indicator blinked from four to five and she knew it was Guy and Dr. Sapirstein coming up to intercept her.

So of course the key wouldn’t go into the lock.

But finally did, and she was inside, slamming the door as the elevator door opened, hooking in the chain as Guy’s key went into the lock. She turned the bolt and the key turned it right back again. The door opened and pushed in against the chain.

“Open up, Ro,” Guy said.

“Go to hell,” she said.

“I’m not going to hurt you, honey.”

“You promised them the baby. Get away.”

“I didn’t promise them anything,” he said. “What are you talking about? Promised who?”

“Rosemary,” Dr. Sapirstein said.

“You too. Get away.”

“You seem to have imagined some sort of conspiracy against you.”

“Get away,” she said, and pushed the door shut and bolted it.

It stayed bolted.

She backed away, watching it, and then went into the bedroom.

It was nine-thirty.

She wasn’t sure of Brian’s number and her address book was in the lobby or Guy’s pocket, so the operator had to get Omaha Information. When the call was finally put through there was still no answer. “Do you want me to try again in twenty minutes?” the operator asked.

“Yes, please,” Rosemary said; “in
five
minutes.”

“I can’t try again in five minutes,” the operator said, “but I’ll try in twenty minutes if you want me to.”

“Yes, please,” Rosemary said and hung up.

She called Joan, and Joan was out too.

Elise and Hugh’s number was—she didn’t know. Information took forever to answer but, having answered, supplied it quickly. She dialed it and got an answering service. They were away for the weekend. “Are they anywhere where I can reach them? This is an emergency.”

“Is this Mr. Dunstan’s secretary?”

“No, I’m a close friend. It’s very important that I speak to them.”

“They’re on Fire Island,” the woman said. “I can give you a number.”

“Please.”

She memorized it, hung up, and was about to dial it when she heard whispers outside the doorway and footsteps on the vinyl floor. She stood up.

Guy and Mr. Fountain came into the room—“Honey, we’re
not
going to hurt you,” Guy said—and behind them Dr. Sapirstein with a loaded hypodermic, the needle up and dripping, his thumb at the plunger. And Dr. Shand and Mrs. Fountain and Mrs. Gilmore. “We’re your friends,” Mrs. Gilmore said, and Mrs. Fountain said, “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Rosemary; honest and truly there isn’t.”

“This is nothing but a mild sedative,” Dr. Sapirstein said. “To calm you down so that you can get a good night’s sleep.”

She was between the bed and the wall, and too gross to climb over the bed and evade them.

They came toward her—“You know I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you, Ro”—and she picked up the phone and struck with the receiver at Guy’s head. He caught her wrist and Mr. Fountain caught her other arm and the phone fell as he pulled her around with startling strength. “
Help me, somebod—
” she screamed, and a handkerchief or something was jammed into her mouth and held there by a small strong hand.

They dragged her away from the bed so Dr. Sapirstein could come in front of her with the hypodermic and a dab of cotton, and a contraction far more grueling than any of the others clamped her middle and clenched shut her eyes. She held her breath, then sucked air in through her nostrils in quick little pulls. A hand felt her belly, deft all-over finger-tipping, and Dr. Sapirstein said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute now; we happen to be in labor here.”

Silence; and someone outside the room whispered the news: “She’s in labor!”

She opened her eyes and stared at Dr. Sapirstein, dragging air through her nostrils, her middle relaxing. He nodded to her, and suddenly took her arm that Mr. Fountain was holding, touched it with cotton, and stabbed it with the needle.

She took the injection without trying to move, too afraid, too stunned.

He withdrew the needle and rubbed the spot with his thumb and then with the cotton.

The women, she saw, were turning down the bed.

Here?

Here?

It was supposed to be Doctors Hospital! Doctors Hospital, with equipment and nurses and everything clean and sterile!

They held her while she struggled, Guy saying in her ear, “You’ll be all right, honey, I swear to God you will! I swear to God you’re going to be perfectly all right! Don’t go on fighting like this, Ro, please don’t! I give you my absolute word of honor you’re going to be perfectly all right!”

And then there was another contraction.

And then she was on the bed, with Dr. Sapirstein giving her another injection.

And Mrs. Gilmore wiped her forehead.

And the phone rang.

And Guy said, “No, just cancel it, operator.”

And there was another contraction, faint and disconnected from her floating eggshell head.

All the exercises had been for nothing. All wasted energy. This wasn’t natural childbirth at all; she wasn’t helping, she wasn’t seeing.

Oh, Andy, Andy-or-Jenny! I’m sorry, my little darling! Forgive me!

L
IGHT
.

The ceiling.

And pain between her legs.

And Guy. Sitting beside the bed, watching her with an anxious, uncertain smile.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she said back.

The pain was terrible.

And then she remembered. It was over. It was over. The baby was born.

“Is it all right?” she asked.

“Yes, fine,” he said.

“What is it?”

“A boy.”

“Really? A boy?”

He nodded.

“And it’s all right?”

“Yes.”

She let her eyes close, then managed to open them again.

“Did you call Tiffany’s?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

She let her eyes close and slept.

Later she remembered more. Laura-Louise was sitting by the bed reading the
Reader’s Digest
with a magnifying glass.

“Where is it?” she asked.

Laura-Louise jumped. “My goodness, dear,” she said, the magnifying glass at her bosom showing red ropes interwoven, “what a
start
you gave me, waking up so suddenly! My goodness!” She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

“The baby; where is it?” she asked.

“You just wait here a minute,” Laura-Louise said, getting up with the
Digest
closed on a finger. “I’ll get Guy and Doctor Abe. They’re right in the kitchen.”

“Where’s the baby?” she asked, but Laura-Louise went out the door without answering.

She tried to get up but fell back, her arms boneless. And there was pain between her legs like a bundle of knife points. She lay and waited, remembering, remembering.

It was night. Five after nine, the clock said.

They came in, Guy and Dr. Sapirstein, looking grave and resolute.

“Where’s the baby?” she asked them.

Guy came around to the side of the bed and crouched down and took her hand. “Honey,” he said.

“Where is it?”

“Honey…” He tried to say more and couldn’t. He looked across the bed for help.

Dr. Sapirstein stood looking down at her. A shred of coconut was caught in his moustache. “There were complications, Rosemary,” he said, “but nothing that will affect future births.”

“It’s—”

“Dead,” he said.

She stared at him.

He nodded.

She turned to Guy.

He nodded too.

“It was in the wrong position,” Dr. Sapirstein said. “In the hospital I might have been able to do something, but there simply wasn’t time to get you there. Trying anything here would have been—too dangerous for you.”

Guy said, “We can have others, honey, and we will, just as soon as you’re better. I promise you.”

Dr. Sapirstein said, “Absolutely. You can start on another in a very few months and the odds are thousands to one against anything similar happening. It was a tragic one-in-ten-thousand mishap; the baby itself was perfectly healthy and normal.”

Guy squeezed her hand and smiled encouragingly at her. “As soon as you’re better,” he said.

She looked at them, at Guy, at Dr. Sapirstein with the shred of coconut in his moustache. “You’re lying,” she said. “I don’t believe you. You’re both lying.”

“Honey,” Guy said.

“It didn’t die,” she said. “You took it. You’re lying. You’re witches. You’re lying. You’re lying! You’re lying!
You’re lying! You’re lying! You’re lying!
”

Guy held her shoulders to the bed and Dr. Sapirstein gave her an injection.

She ate soup and triangles of buttered white bread. Guy sat on the side of the bed, nibbling at one of the triangles. “You were crazy,” he said. “You were really ka-pow out of your mind. It happens sometimes in the last couple of weeks. That’s what Abe says. He has a name for it. Prepartum I-don’t-know, some kind of hysteria. You had it, honey, and with a vengeance.”

She said nothing. She took a spoonful of soup.

“Listen,” he said, “I know where you got the idea that Minnie and
Roman
were witches, but what made you think Abe and I had joined the party?”

She said nothing.

“That’s stupid of me, though,” he said. “I guess prepartum whatever-it-is doesn’t
need
reasons.” He took another of the triangles and bit off first one point and then another.

She said, “Why did you trade ties with Donald Baumgart?”

“Why did I—well what has
that
got to do with anything?”

“You needed one of his personal belongings,” she said, “so they could cast the spell and make him blind.”

He stared at her. “Honey,” he said, “for God’s sake what are you
talking
about?”

“You know.”

“Holy mackerel,” he said. “I traded ties with him because I liked his and didn’t like mine, and
he
liked mine and didn’t like his. I didn’t tell you about it because afterwards it seemed like a slightly faggy thing to have done and I was a little embarrassed about it.”

“Where did you get the tickets for
The Fantasticks?
” she asked him.

“
What?
”

“You said you got them from Dominick,” she said; “you didn’t.”

“Boy oh
boy
,” he said. “And that makes me a witch? I got them from a girl named Norma-something that I met at an audition and had a couple of drinks with. What did Abe do? Tie his shoelaces the wrong way?”

“He uses tannis root,” she said. “It’s a witch thing. His receptionist told me she smelled it on him.”

“Maybe Minnie gave him a good luck charm, just the way she gave you one. You mean only witches use it? That doesn’t sound very likely.”

Rosemary was silent.

“Let’s face it, darling,” Guy said, “you had the prepartum crazies. And now you’re going to rest and get over them.” He leaned closer to her and took her hand. “I know this has been the worst thing that ever happened to you,” he said, “but from now on everything’s going to be roses. Warners is within an inch of where we want them, and suddenly Universal is interested too. I’m going to get some more good reviews and then we’re going to blow this town and be in the beautiful hills of Beverly, with the pool and the spice garden and the whole schmeer. And the kids too, Ro. Scout’s honor. You heard what Abe said.” He kissed her hand. “Got to run now and get famous.”

He got up and started for the door.

“Let me see your shoulder,” she said.

He stopped and turned.

“Let me see your shoulder,” she said.

“Are you kidding?”

“No,” she said. “Let me see it. Your left shoulder.”

He looked at her and said, “All right, whatever you say, honey.”

He undid the collar of his shirt, a short-sleeved blue knit, and peeled the bottom of it up and over his head. He had a white T shirt on underneath. “I generally prefer doing this to music,” he said, and took off the T shirt too. He went close to the bed and, leaning, showed Rosemary his left shoulder. It was unmarked. There was only the faint scar of a boil or pimple. He showed her his other shoulder and his chest and his back.

“This is as far as I go without a blue light,” he said.

“All right,” she said.

He grinned. “The question now,” he said, “is do I put my shirt back on or do I go out and give Laura-Louise the thrill of a lifetime.”

Her breasts filled with milk and it was necessary to relieve them, so Dr. Sapirstein showed her how to use a rubber-bulbed breast pump, like a glass auto horn; and several times a day Laura-Louise or Helen Wees or whoever was there brought it in to her with a Pyrex measuring cup. She drew from each breast an ounce or two of thin faintly-green fluid that smelled ever so slightly of tannis root—in a process that was a final irrefutable demonstration of the baby’s absence. When the cup and the pump had been carried from the room she would lie against her pillows broken and lonely beyond tears.

Joan and Elise and Tiger came to see her, and she spoke with Brian for twenty minutes on the phone. Flowers came —roses and carnations and a yellow azalea plant—from Allan, and Mike and Pedro, and Lou and Claudia. Guy bought a new remote-control television set and put it at the foot of the bed. She watched and ate and took pills that were given to her.

A letter of sympathy came from Minnie and Roman, a page from each of them. They were in Dubrovnik.

The stitches gradually stopped hurting.

One morning, when two or three weeks had gone by, she thought she heard a baby crying. She rayed off the television and listened. There was a frail faraway wailing. Or was there? She slipped out of bed and turned off the air conditioner.

Florence Gilmore came in with the pump and the cup.

“Do you hear a baby crying?” Rosemary asked her.

Both of them listened.

Yes, there it was. A baby crying.

“No, dear, I don’t,” Florence said. “Get back into bed now; you know you’re not supposed to be walking around. Did you turn off the air conditioner? You mustn’t do that; it’s a
terrible
day. People are actually dying, it’s so hot.”

She heard it again that afternoon, and mysteriously her breasts began to leak…

“Some new people moved in,” Guy said out of nowhere that evening. “Up on eight.”

“And they have a baby,” she said.

“Yes. How did you know?”

She looked at him for a moment. “I heard it crying,” she said.

She heard it the next day. And the next.

She stopped watching television and held a book in front of her, pretending to read but only listening, listening…

It wasn’t up on eight; it was right there on seven.

And more often than not, the pump and the cup were brought to her a few minutes after the crying began; and the crying stopped a few minutes after her milk was taken away.

“What do you do with it?” she asked Laura-Louise one morning, giving her back the pump and the cup and six ounces of milk.

“Why, throw it away, of course,” Laura-Louise said, and went out.

That afternoon, as she gave Laura-Louise the cup, she said, “Wait a minute,” and started to put a used coffee spoon into it.

Laura-Louise jerked the cup away. “Don’t do that,” she said, and caught the spoon in a finger of the hand holding the pump.

“What difference does it make?” Rosemary asked.

“It’s just messy, that’s all,” Laura-Louise said.