by Ira Levin
“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.
CHAPTER 2
IT WAS ALIVE.
It was in Minnie and Roman’s apartment.
They were keeping it there, feeding it her milk and please God taking care of it, because, as well as she remembered from Hutch’s book, August first was one of their special days, Lammas or Leamas, with special maniacal rituals. Or maybe they were keeping it until Minnie and Roman came back from Europe. For their share.
But it was still alive.
She stopped taking the pills they gave her. She tucked them down into the fold between her thumb and her palm and faked the swallowing, and later pushed the pills as far as she could between the mattress and the box spring beneath it.
She felt stronger and more wide-awake.
Hang on, Andy! I’m coming!
She had learned her lesson with Dr. Hill. This time she would turn to no one, would expect no one to believe her and be her savior. Not the police, not Joan or the Dunstans or Grace Cardiff, not even Brian. Guy was too good an actor, Dr. Sapirstein too famous a doctor; between the two of them they’d have even him, even Brian, thinking she had some kind of post-losing-the-baby madness. This time she would do it alone, would go in there and get him herself, with her longest sharpest kitchen knife to fend away those maniacs.
And she was one up on them. Because she knew—and they didn’t know she knew—that there was a secret way from the one apartment to the other. The door had been chained that night—she knew that as she knew the hand she was looking at was a hand, not a bird or a battleship—and still they had all come pouring in. So there had to be another way.
Which could only be the linen closet, barricaded by dead Mrs. Gardenia, who surely had died of the same witchery that had frozen and killed poor Hutch. The closet had been put there to break the one big apartment into two smaller ones, and if Mrs. Gardenia had belonged to the coven—she’d given Minnie her herbs; hadn’t Terry said so?—then what was more logical than to open the back of the closet in some way and go to and fro with so many steps saved and the Bruhns and Dubin-and-DeVore never knowing of the traffic?
It was the linen closet.
In a dream long ago she had been carried through it. That had been no dream; it had been a sign from heaven, a divine message to be stored away and remembered now for assurance in a time of trial.
Oh Father in heaven, forgive me for doubting! Forgive me for turning from you, Merciful Father, and help me, help me in my hour of need! Oh Jesus, dear Jesus, help me save my innocent baby!
The pills, of course, were the answer. She squirmed her arm in under the mattress and caught them out one by one. Eight of them, all alike; small white tablets scored across the middle for breaking in half. Whatever they were, three a day had kept her limp and docile; eight at once, surely, would send Laura-Louise or Helen Wees into sound sleep. She brushed the pills clean, folded them up in a piece of magazine cover, and tucked them away at the bottom of her box of
tissues.
She pretended still to be limp and docile; ate her meals and looked at magazines and pumped out her milk.
It was Leah Fountain who was there when everything was right. She came in after Helen Wees had gone out with the milk and said, “Hi, Rosemary! I’ve been letting the other girls have the fun of visiting with you, but now I’m going to take a turn. You’re in a regular movie theater here! Is there anything good on tonight?”
Nobody else was in the apartment. Guy had gone to meet Allan and have some contracts explained to him.
They watched a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers picture, and during a break Leah went into the kitchen and brought back two cups of coffee. “I’m a little hungry too,” Rosemary said when Leah had put the cups on the night table. “Would you mind very much fixing me a cheese sandwich?”
“Of course I wouldn’t mind, dear,” Leah said. “How do you like it, with lettuce and mayonnaise?”
She went out again and Rosemary got the fold of magazine cover from her tissue box. There were eleven pills in it now. She slid them all into Leah’s cup and stirred the coffee with her own spoon, which she then wiped off with a tissue. She picked up her own coffee, but it shook so much that she had to put it down again.
She was sitting and sipping calmly though when Leah came in with the sandwich. “Thanks, Leah,” she said, “that looks great. The coffee’s a little bitter; I guess it was sitting too long.”
“Shall I make fresh?” Leah asked.
“No, it’s not that bad,” Rosemary said.
Leah sat down beside the bed, took her cup, and stirred it and tasted. “Mm,” she said and wrinkled her nose; she nodded, agreeing with Rosemary.
“It’s drinkable though,” Rosemary said.
They watched the movie, and after two more breaks Leah’s head drooped and snapped up sharply. She put down her cup and saucer, the cup two-thirds empty. Rosemary ate the last piece of her sandwich and watched Fred Astaire and two other people dancing on turntables in a glossy unreal fun house.
During the next section of the movie Leah fell asleep.
“Leah?” Rosemary said.
The elderly woman sat snoring, her chin to her chest, her hands palm-upward in her lap. Her lavender-tinted hair, a wig, had slipped forward; sparse white hairs stuck out at the back of her neck.
Rosemary got out of bed, slid her feet into slippers, and put on the blue-and-white quilted housecoat she had bought for the hospital. Going quietly out of the bedroom, she closed the door almost all the way and went to the front door of the apartment and quietly chained and bolted it.
She then went into the kitchen and, from her knife rack, took the longest sharpest knife—a nearly new carving knife with a curved and pointed steel blade and a heavy bone handle with a brass butt. Holding it point-down at her side, she left the kitchen and went down the hallway to the linen-closet door.
As soon as she opened it she knew she was right. The shelves looked neat and orderly enough, but the contents of two of them had been interchanged; the bath towels and hand towels were where the winter blankets ought to have been and vice versa.
She laid the knife on the bathroom threshold and took everything out of the closet except what was on the fixed top shelf. She put towels and linens on the floor, and large and small boxes, and then lifted out the four gingham-covered shelves she had decorated and placed there a thousand thousand years ago.
The back of the closet, below the top shelf, was a single large white-painted panel framed with narrow white molding. Standing close and leaning aside for better light, Rosemary saw that where the panel and the molding met, the paint was broken in a continuous line. She pressed at one side of the panel and then at the other; pressed harder, and it swung inward on scraping hinges. Within was darkness; another closet, with a wire hanger glinting on the floor and one bright spot of light, a keyhole. Pushing the panel all the way open, Rosemary stepped into the second closet and ducked down. Through the keyhole she saw, at a distance of about twenty feet, a small curio cabinet that stood at a jog in the hallway of Minnie and Roman’s apartment.
She tried the door. It opened.
She closed it and backed out through her own closet and got the knife; then went in and through again, looked out again through the keyhole, and opened the door just the least bit.
Then opened it wide, holding the knife shoulder-high, point forward.
The hallway was empty, but there were distant voices from the living room. The bathroom was on her right, its door open, dark. Minnie and Roman’s bedroom was on the left, with a bedside lamp burning. There was no crib, no baby.
She went cautiously down the hallway. A door on the right was locked; another, on the left, was a linen closet.
Over the curio cabinet hung a small but vivid oil painting of a church in flames. Before, there had been only a clean space and a hook; now there was this shocking painting. St. Patrick’s, it looked like, with yellow and orange flames bursting from its windows and soaring through its gutted roof.
Where had she seen it? A church burning…
In the dream. The one where they had carried her through the linen closet. Guy and somebody else. “You’ve got her too high.” To a ballroom where a church was burning. Where that church was burning.
But how could it be?
Had she really been carried through the closet, seen the painting as they carried her past it?
Find Andy. Find Andy. Find Andy.
Knife high, she followed the jog to the left and the right. Other doors were locked. There was another painting; nude men and women dancing in a circle. Ahead were the foyer and the front door, the archway on the right to the living room. The voices were louder. “Not if he’s still waiting for a plane, he isn’t!” Mr. Fountain said, and there was laughter and then hushing.
In the dream ballroom Jackie Kennedy had spoken kindly to her and gone away, and then all of them had been there, the whole coven, naked and singing in a circle around her. Had it been a real thing that had really happened? Roman in a black robe had drawn designs on her. Dr. Sapirstein had held a cup of red paint for him. Red paint? Blood?
“Oh hell now, Hayato,” Minnie said, “you’re just making fun of me! ‘Pulling my leg’ is what we say over here.”
Minnie? Back from Europe? And Roman too? But only yesterday there had been a card from Dubrovnik saying they were staying on!
Had they ever really been away?
She was at the archway now, could see the bookshelves and file cabinets and bridge tables laden with newspapers and stacked envelopes. The coven was at the other end, laughing, talking softly. Ice cubes clinked.
She bettered her grip on the knife and moved a step forward. She stopped, staring.
Across the room, in the one large window bay, stood a black bassinet. Black and only black it was; skirted with black taffeta, hooded and flounced with black organza. A silver ornament turned on a black ribbon pinned to its black hood.
Dead? But no, even as she feared it, the stiff organza trembled, the silver ornament quivered.
He was in there. In that monstrous perverted witches’ bassinet.
The silver ornament was a crucifix hanging upside down, with the black ribbon wound and knotted around Jesus’ ankles.
The thought of her baby lying helpless amid sacrilege and horror brought tears to Rosemary’s eyes, and suddenly a longing dragged at her to do nothing but collapse and weep, to surrender completely before such elaborate and unspeakable evil. She withstood it though; she shut her eyes tight to stop the tears, said a quick Hail Mary, and drew together all her resolve and all her hatred too; hatred of Minnie, Roman, Guy, Dr. Sapirstein—of all of them who had conspired to steal Andy away from her and make their loathsome uses of him. She wiped her hands on her housecoat, threw back her hair, found a fresh grip on the knife’s thick handle, and stepped out where they could every one of them see her and know she had come.
Insanely, they didn’t. They went right on talking, listening, sipping,
pleasantly partying, as if she were a ghost, or back in her bed dreaming; Minnie, Roman, Guy (contracts!), Mr. Fountain, the Weeses, Laura-Louise, and a studious-looking young Japanese with eyeglasses—all gathered under an over-the-mantel portrait of Adrian Marcato. He alone saw her. He stood glaring at her, motionless, powerful; but powerless, a painting.
Then Roman saw her too; put down his drink and touched Minnie’s arm. Silence sprang up, and those who sat with their backs toward her turned around questioningly. Guy started to rise but sat down again. Laura-Louise clapped her hands to her mouth and began squealing. Helen Wees said, “Get back in bed, Rosemary; you know you aren’t supposed to be up and around.” Either mad or trying psychology.
“Is the mother?” the Japanese asked, and when Roman nodded, said “Ah, sssssssssssss,” and looked at Rosemary with interest.
“She killed Leah,” Mr. Fountain said, standing up. “She killed my Leah. Did you? Where is she? Did you kill my Leah?”
Rosemary stared at them, at Guy. He looked down, red-faced.
She gripped the knife tighter. “Yes,” she said, “I killed her. I stabbed her to death. And I cleaned my knife and I’ll stab to death whoever comes near me. Tell them how sharp it is, Guy!”
He said nothing. Mr. Fountain sat down, a hand to his heart. Laura-Louise squealed.
Watching them, she started across the room toward the bassinet.
“Rosemary,” Roman said.
“Shut up,” she said.
“Before you look at—”
“Shut up,” she said. “You’re in Dubrovnik. I don’t hear you.”
“Let her,” Minnie said.
She watched them until she was by the bassinet, which was angled in their direction. With her free hand she caught the black-covered handle at the foot of it and swung the bassinet slowly, gently, around to face her. Taffeta rustled; the back wheels squeaked.
Asleep and sweet, so small and rosy-faced, Andy lay wrapped in a snug black blanket with little black mitts ribbon-tied around his wrists. Orange-red hair he had, a surprising amount of it, silky-clean and brushed. Andy! Oh, Andy! She reached out to him, her knife turning away; his lips pouted and he opened his eyes and looked at her. His eyes were golden-yellow, all golden-yellow, with neither whites nor irises; all golden-yellow, with vertical black-slit pupils.