Rosemary’s Baby

Two

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 needl 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 LauraLouise 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 palmupward 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-andwhite 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 overthe-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. Andyl 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 goldenyellow, with neither whites nor irises; all golden-yellow, with vertical black-slit pupils.

She looked at him.

He looked at her, golden-yellowly, and then at the swaying upside-down crucifix.

She looked at them watching her and knife-in-hand screamed at them,

“What have you done to his eyes?”

They stirred and looked to Roman.

“He has His Father’s eyes,” he said.

She looked at him, looked at Guy-whose eyes were hidden behind a hand -looked at Roman again. “What are you talking about?” she said. “Guy’s eyes are brown, they’re normal! What have you done to him, you maniacs?” She moved from the bassinet, ready to kill them.

“Satan is His Father, not Guy,” Roman said. “Satan is His Father, who came up from Hell and begat a Son of mortal woman! To avenge the iniquities visited by the God worshipers upon His never-doubting followers!”

“Hail Satan,” Mr. Wees said.

“Satan is His Father and His name is Adrian!” Roman cried, his voice growing louder and prouder, his bearing more strong and forceful. “He shall overthrow the mighty and lay waste their temples! He shall redeem the despised and wreak vengeance in the name of the burned and the tortured!”

“Hail Adrian,” they said. “Hail Adrian.” “Hail Adrian.” And “Hail Satan.” “Hail Satan.” “Hail Adrian.” “Hail Satan.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said.

Minnie said, “He chose you out of all the world, Rosemary. Out of all the women in the whole world, He chose you. He brought you and Guy to your apartment there, He made that foolish what’s-her-name, Terry, made her get all scared and silly so we had to change our plans, He arranged everything that had to be arranged, ‘cause He wanted you to be the mother of His only living Son.”

“His power is stronger than stronger,” Roman said.

“Hail Satan,” Helen Wees said.

“His might will last longer than longer.”

“Hair Satan,” the Japanese said.

Laura-Louise uncovered her mouth. Guy looked out at Rosemary from under his hand.

“No,” she said, “no,” the knife hanging at her side. “No. It can’t be. No.”

“Go look at His hands,” Minnie said. “And His feet.”

“And His tail,” Laura-Louise said.

“And the buds of His horns,” Minnie said.

“Oh God,” Rosemary said.

“God’s dead,” Roman said.

She turned to the bassinet, let fall the knife, turned back to the watching coven. “Oh God!” she said and covered her face. “Oh God!” And raised her fists and screamed to the ceiling: “Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!”

“God is DEAD!” Roman thundered. “God is dead and Satan lives! The year is One, the first year of our Lord! The year is One, God is done! The year is One, Adrian’s begun!”

“Hail Satan!” they cried. “Hail Adrian!” “Hail Adrian!” “Hail Satan!”

She backed away-“No, no”-backed farther and farther away until she was between two bridge tables. A chair was behind her; she sat down on it and stared at them. “No.”

Mr. Fountain hurried out and down the hallway. Guy and Mr. Wees hurried after him.

Minnie went over and, grunting as she stooped, picked up the knife. She took it out to the kitchen.

Laura-Louise went to the bassinet and rocked it possessively, making faces into it. The black taffeta rustled; the wheels squeaked.

She sat there and stared. “No,” she said.

The dream. The dream. It had been true. The yellow eyes she had looked up into. “Oh God,” she said.

Roman came over to her. “Clare is just putting on,” he said, “holding his heart that way over Leah. He’s not that sorry. Nobody really liked her; she was stingy, emotionally as well as financially. Why don’t you help us out, Rosemary, be a real mother to Adrian; and we’ll fix it so you don’t get punished for killing her. So that nobody ever even finds out about it. You don’t have to join if you don’t want to; just be a mother to your baby.” He bent over and whispered: “Minnie and Laura-Louise are too old. It’s not right.”

She looked at him.

He stood straight again. “Think about it, Rosemary,” he said.

“I didn’t kill her,” she said..

“Oh?”

“I just gave her pills,” she said. “She’s asleep.”

“Oh,” he said.

The doorbell rang.

“Excuse me,” he said, and went to answer it. “Think about it anyway,” he said over his shoulder.

“Oh God,” she said.

“Shut up with your ‘Oh God’s’ or we’ll kill you,” Laura-Louise said, rocking the bassinet. “Milk or no milk.”

“You shut up,” Helen Wees said, coming to Rosemary and putting a dampened handkerchief in her hand. “Rosemary is His mother, no matter how she behaves,” she said. “You remember that, and show some respect.”

Laura-Louise said something under her breath.

Rosemary wiped her forehead and cheeks with the cool handkerchief. The Japanese, sitting across the room on a hassock, caught her eye and grinned and ducked his head. He held up an opened camera into which he was putting film, and moved it back and forth in the direction of the bassinet, grinning and nodding. She looked down and started to cry. She wiped at her eyes.

Roman came in holding the arm of a robust, handsome, dark-skinned man in a snow-white suit and white shoes. He carried a large box wrapped in light blue paper patterned with Teddy bears and candy canes. Musical sounds came from it. Everyone gathered to meet him and shake his hand. “Worried,” they said, and “pleasure,” and “airport,” and “Stavropoulos,” and “occasion.” Laura-Louise brought the box to the bassinet. She held it up for the baby to see, shook it for him to hear, and put it on the window seat with many other boxes similarly wrapped and a few that were wrapped in black with black ribbon.

“Just after midnight on June twenty-fifth,” Roman said. “Exactly half the year ‘round from you-know. Isn’t it perfect?”

“But why are you surprised?” the newcomer asked with both his hands outstretched. “Didn’t Edmond Lautreamont predict June twenty-fifth three hundred years ago?”

“Indeed he did,” Roman said, smiling, “but it’s such a novelty for one of his predictions to prove accurate!” Everyone laughed. “Come, my friend,” Roman said, drawing the newcomer forward, “come see Him. Come see the Child.”

They went to the bassinet, where Laura-Louise waited with a shopkeeper’s smile, and they closed around it and looked into it silently. After a few moments the newcomer lowered himself to his knees.

Guy and Mr. Wees came in.

They waited in the archway until the newcomer had risen, and then Guy came over to Rosemary. “She’ll be all right,” he said; “Abe is in there with her.” He stood looking down at her, his hands rubbing at his sides. “They promised me you wouldn’t be hurt,” he said. “And you haven’t been, really.

I mean, suppose you’d had a baby and lost it; wouldn’t it be the same? And we’re getting so much in return, Ro.”

She put the handkerchief on the table and looked at him. As hard as she could she spat at him.

He flushed and turned away, wiping at the front of his jacket. Roman caught him and introduced him to the newcomer, Argyron Stavropoulos.

“How proud you must be,” Stavropoulos said, clasping Guy’s hand in both his own. “But surely that isn’t the mother there? Why in the name of-“ Roman drew him away and spoke in his ear.

“Here,” Minnie said, and offered Rosemary a mug of steaming tea. “Drink this and you’ll feel a little better.”

Rosemary looked at it, and looked up at Minnie. “What’s in it?” she said; “tannis root?”

“Nothing is in it,” Minnie said. “Except sugar and lemon. It’s plain ordinary Lipton tea. You drink it.” She put it down by the handkerchief.

The thing to do was kill it. Obviously. Wait till they were all sitting at the other end, then run over, push away Laura-Louise, and grab it and throw it out the window. And jump out after it. Mother Slays Baby and Self at Bramford.

Save the world from God-knows-what. From Satan-knows-what.

A tail! The buds of his horns!

She wanted to scream, to die.

She would do it, throw it out and jump.

They were all milling around now. Pleasant cocktail party. The Japanese was taking pictures; of Guy, of Stavropoulos, of Laura-Louise holding the baby.

She turned away, not wanting to see.

Those eyes! Like an animal’s, a tiger’s, not like a human being’s!

He wasn’t a human being, of course. He was-some kind of a half-breed.

And how dear and sweet he had looked before he had opened those yellow eyes! The tiny chin, a bit like Brian’s; the sweet mouth; all that lovely orangered hair . . . It would be nice to look at him again, if only he wouldn’t open those yellow animal-eyes.

She tasted the tea. It was tea.

No, she couldn’t throw him out the window. He was her baby, no matter who the father was. What she had to do was go to someone who would understand. Like a priest. Yes, that was the answer; a priest. It was a problem for the Church to handle. For the Pope and all the cardinals to deal with, not stupid Rosemary Reilly from Omaha.

Killing was wrong, no matter what.

She drank more tea.

He began whimpering because Laura-Louise was rocking the bassinet too fast, so of course the idiot began rocking it faster.

She stood it as long as she could and then got up and went over.

“Get away from here,” Laura-Louise said. “Don’t you come near Him. Roman!”

“You’re rocking him too fast,” she said.

“Sit down!” Laura-Louise said, and to Roman, “Get her out of here. Put her back where she belongs.”

Rosemary said, “She’s rocking him too fast; that’s why he’s whimpering.”

“Mind your own business!” Laura-Louise said.

“Let Rosemary rock Him,” Roman said.

Laura-Louise stared at him.

“Go on,” he said, standing behind the bassinet’s hood. “Sit down with the others. Let Rosemary rock Him.”

“She’s liable-“

“Sit down with the others, Laura-Louise.”

She huffed, and marched away.

“Rock Him,” Roman said to Rosemary, smiling. He moved the bassinet back and forth toward her, holding it by the hood.

She stood still and looked at him. “You’re trying to-get me to be his mother,” she said.

“Aren’t you His mother?” Roman said. “Go on. Just rock Him till He stops complaining.”

She let the black-covered handle come into her hand, and closed her fingers around it. For a few moments they rocked the bassinet between them, then Roman let go and she rocked it alone, nice and slowly. She glanced at the baby, saw his yellow eyes, and looked to the window. “You should oil the wheels,” she said. “That could bother him too.”

“I will,” Roman said. “You see? He’s stopped complaining. He knows who you are.”

“Don’t be silly,” Rosemary said, and looked at the baby again. He was watching her. His eyes weren’t that bad really, now that she was prepared for them. It was the surprise that had upset her. They were pretty in a way. “What are his hands like?” she asked, rocking him.

“They’re very nice,” Roman said. “He has claws, but they’re very tiny and pearly. The mitts are only so He doesn’t scratch Himself, not because His hands aren’t attractive.”

“He looks worried,” she said.

Dr. Sapirstein came over. “A night of surprises,” he said.

“Go away,” she said, “or I’m going to spit in your face.”

“Go away, Abe,” Roman said, and Dr. Sapirstein nodded and went away.

“Not you,” Rosemary said to the baby. “It’s not your fault. I’m angry at them, because they tricked me and lied to me. Don’t look so worried; I’m not going to hurt you.”

“He knows that,” Roman said.

“Then what does he look so worried for?” Rosemary said. “The poor little thing. Look at him.”

“In a minute,” Roman said. “I have to attend to my guests. I’ll be right back.” He backed away, leaving her alone.

“Word of honor I’m not going to hurt you,” she said to the baby. She bent over and untied the neck of his gown. “Laura-Louise made this too tight, didn’t she. I’ll make it a little looser and then you’ll be more comfortable. You have a very cute chin; are you aware of that fact? You have strange yellow eyes, but you have a very cute chin.”

She tied the gown more comfortably for him.

Poor little creature.

He couldn’t be all bad, he just couldn’t. Even if he was half Satan, wasn’t he half her as well, half decent, ordinary, sensible, human being? If she worked against them, exerted a good influence to counteract their bad one . . .

“You have a room of your own, do you know that?” she said, undoing the blanket around him, which was also too tight. “It has white-and-yellow wallpaper and a white crib with yellow bumpers, and there isn’t one drop of witchy old black in the whole place. We’ll show it to you when you’re ready for your next feeding. In case you’re curious, I happen to be the lady who’s been supplying all that milk you’ve been drinking. I’ll bet you thought it comes in bottles, didn’t you. Well it doesn’t; it comes in mothers, and I’m yours. That’s right, Mr. Worry-face. You seem to greet the idea with no enthusiasm whatsoever.”

Silence made her look up. They were gathering around to watch her, stopping at a respectful distance.

She felt herself blushing and turned back to tucking the blanket around the baby. “Let them watch,” she said; “we don’t care, do we? We just want to be all cozy and comfortable, like so. There. Better?”

“Hail Rosemary,” Helen Wees said.

The others took it up. “Hail Rosemary.” “Hail Rosemary.” Minnie and Stavropoulos and Dr. Sapirstein. “Hail Rosemary.” Guy said it too. “Hail Rosemary.” Laura-Louise moved her lips but made no sound.

“Hail Rosemary, mother of Adrian!” Roman said.

She looked up from the bassinet. “It’s Andrew,” she said. “Andrew John Woodhouse.”

“Adrian Steven,” Roman said.

Guy said, “Roman, look,” and Stavropoulos, at Roman’s other side, touched his arm and said, “Is the name of so great an importance?”

“It is. Yes. It is,” Roman said. “His name is Adrian Steven.”

Rosemary said, “I understand why you’d like to call him that, but I’m sorry; you can’t. His name is Andrew John. He’s my child, not yours, and this is one point that I’m not even going to argue about. This and the clothes. He can’t wear black all the time.”

Roman opened his mouth but Minnie said “Hail Andrew” in a loud voice, looking right at him.

Everyone else said “Hail Andrew” and “Hail Rosemary, mother of Andrew” and “Hail Satan.”

Rosemary tickled the baby’s tummy. “You didn’t like ‘Adrian,’ did you?” she asked him. “I should think not. ‘Adrian Steven’! Will you please stop looking so worried?” She poked the tip of his nose. “Do you know how to smile yet, Andy? Do you? Come on, little funny-eyes Andy, can you smile? Can you smile for Mommy?” She tapped the silver ornament and set it swinging. “Come on, Andy,” she said. “One little smile. Come on, Andy-candy.”

The Japanese slipped forward with his camera, crouched, and took two three four pictures in quick succession.