Rosemary’s Baby

Eight

Dr. Sapirstein was amazed. “Fantastic,” he said. “Absolutely fantastic. What did you say the name was, ‘Machado’?”

“Marcato,” Rosemary said.

“Fantastic,” Dr. Sapirstein said. “I had no idea whatsoever. I think he told me once that his father was a coffee importer. Yes, I remember him going on about different grades and different ways of grinding the beans.”

“He told Guy that he was a producer.”

,Dr. Sapirstein shook his head. “It’s no wonder he’s ashamed of the truth,” he said. “And it’s no wonder that you’re upset at having discovered it. I’m as sure as I am of anything on earth that Roman doesn’t hold any of his father’s weird beliefs, but I can understand completely how disturbed you must be to have him for a close neighbor.”

“I don’t want anything more to do with him or Minnie,” Rosemary said. “Maybe I’m being unfair, but I don’t want to take even the slightest chance where the baby’s safety is concerned.”

“Absolutely,” Dr. Sapirstein said. “Any mother would feel the same way.”

Rosemary leaned forward. “Is there any chance at all,” she said, “that Minnie put something harmful in the drink or in those little cakes?”

Dr. Sapirstein laughed. “I’m sorry, dear,” he said; “I don’t mean to laugh, but really, she’s such a kind old woman and so concerned for the baby’s well-being . . . No, there’s no chance at all that she gave you anything harmful. I would have seen evidence of it long ago, in you or in the baby.”

“I called her on the house phone and told her I wasn’t feeling well. I won’t take anything else from her.”

“You won’t have to,” Dr. Sapirstein said. “I can give you some pills that will be more than adequate in these last few weeks. In a way this may be the answer to Minnie and Roman’s problem too.”

“What do you mean?” Rosemary said.

“They want to go away,” Dr. Sapirstein said, “and rather soon. Roman isn’t well, you know. In fact, and in the strictest of confidence, he hasn’t got more than a month or two left to him. He wants to pay a last visit to a few of his favorite cities and they were afraid you might take offense at their leaving on the eve of the baby’s birth, so to speak. They broached the subject to me the night before last, wanted to know how I thought you would take it. They don’t want to upset you by telling you the real reason for the trip.”

“I’m sorry to hear that Roman isn’t well,” Rosemary said.

“But glad at the prospect of his leaving?” Dr. Sapirstein smiled. “A perfectly reasonable reaction,” he said, “all things considered. Suppose we do this, Rosemary: I’ll tell them that I’ve sounded you out and you aren’t at all offended by the idea of their going; and until they do go-they mentioned Sunday as a possibility-you continue as before, not letting Roman know that you’ve learned his true identity. I’m sure he would be embarrassed and unhappy if he knew, and it seems a shame to upset him when it’s only a matter of three or four more days.”

Rosemary was silent for a moment, and then she said, “Are you sure they’ll be leaving on Sunday?”

“I know they’d like to,” Dr. Sapirstein said.

Rosemary considered. “All right,” she said; “I’ll go on as before, but only until Sunday.”

“If you’d like,” Dr. Sapirstein said, “I can have those pills sent over to you tomorrow morning; you can get Minnie to leave the drink and the cake with you and throw them away and take a pill instead.”

“That would be wonderful,” Rosemary said. “I’d be much happier that way.”

“That’s the main thing at this stage,” Dr. Sapirstein said, “keeping you happy.”

Rosemary smiled. “If it’s a boy,” she said, “I may just name him Abraham Sapirstein Woodhouse.”

“God forbid,” Dr. Sapirstein said.

Guy, when he heard the news, was as pleased as Rosemary. “I’m sorry Roman is on his last lap,” he said, “but I’m glad for your sake that they’re going away. I’m sure you’ll feel more relaxed now.”

“Oh, I will,” Rosemary said. “I feel better already, just knowing about it.”

Apparently Dr. Sapirstein didn’t waste any time in telling Roman about Rosemary’s supposed feelings, for that same evening Minnie and Roman stopped by and broke the news that they were going to Europe. “Sunday morning at ten,” Roman said. “We fly directly to Paris, where we’ll stay for a week or so, and then we’ll go on to Zurich, Venice, and the loveliest city in all the world, Dubrovnik, in Yugoslavia.”

“I’m green with envy,” Guy said.

Roman said to Rosemary, “I gather this doesn’t come as a complete bolt from the blue, does it, my dear?” A conspirator’s gleam winked from his deep-socketed eyes.

“Dr. Sapirstein mentioned you were thinking of going,” Rosemary said.

Minnie said, “We’d have loved to stay till the baby came-“

“You’d be foolish to,” Rosemary said, “now that the hot weather is here.”

“We’ll send you all kinds of pictures,” Guy said.

“But when Roman gets the wanderlust,” Minnie said, “there’s just no holding him.”

“It’s true, it’s true,” Roman said. “After a lifetime of traveling I find it all but impossible to stay in one city for more than a year; and it’s been fourteen months now since we came back from Japan and the Philippines.”

He told them about Dubrovnik’s special charms, and Madrid’s, and the Isle of Skye’s. Rosemary watched him, wondering which he really was, an amiable old talker or the mad son of a mad father.

The next day Minnie made no fuss at all about leaving the drink and the cake; she was on her way out with a long list of going-away jobs to do. Rosemary offered to pick up a dress at the cleaner’s for her and buy toothpaste and Dramamine. When she threw away the drink and the cake and took one of the large white capsules Dr. Sapirstein had sent, she felt just the slightest bit ridiculous.

On Saturday morning Minnie said, “You know, don’t you, about who Roman’s father was.”

Rosemary nodded, surprised.

“I could tell by the way you turned sort of cool to us,” Minnie said. “Oh, don’t apologize, dear; you’re not the first and you won’t be the last. I can’t say that I really blame you. Oh, I could kill that crazy old man if he wasn’t dead already! He’s been the bane in poor Roman’s existence! That’s why he likes to travel so much; he always wants to leave a place before people can find out who he is. Don’t let on to him that you know, will you? He’s so fond of you and Guy, it would near about break his heart. I want him to have a real happy trip with no sorrows, because there aren’t likely to be many more. Trips, I mean. Would you like the perishables in my icebox? Send Guy over later on and I’ll load him up.”

Laura-Louise gave a bon voyage party Saturday night in her small dark tannis-smelling apartment on the twelfth floor. The Weeses and the Gilmores came, and Mrs. Sabatini with her cat Flash, and Dr. Shand. (How had Guy known that it vas Dr. Shand who played the recorder? Rosemary wondered.

And that it was a recorder, not a flute or a clarinet? She would have to ask him.) Roman told of his and Minnie’s planned itinerary, surprising Mrs. Sabatini, who couldn’t believe they were bypassing Rome and Florence. Laura-Louise served home-made cookies and a mildly alcoholic fruit punch. Conversation turned to tornadoes and civil rights. Rosemary, watching and listening to these people who were much like her aunts and uncles in Omaha, found it hard to maintain her belief that they were in fact a coven of witches. Little Mr. Wees, listening to Guy talking about Martin Luther King; could such a feeble old man, even in his dreams, imagine himself a caster of spells, a maker of charms? And dowdy old women like Laura-Louise and Minnie and Helen Wees; could they really bring themselves to cavort naked in mock-religious orgies? (Yet hadn’t she seen them that way, seen all of them naked? No, no, that was a dream, a wild dream that she’d had a long, long time ago.)

The Fountains phoned a good-by to Minnie and Roman, and so did Dr. Sapirstein and two or three other people whose names Rosemary didn’t know. Laura-Louise brought out a gift that everyone had chipped in for, a transistor radio in a pigskin carrying case, and Roman accepted it with an eloquent thank-you speech, his voice breaking. He knows he’s going to die, Rosemary thought, and was genuinely sorry for him.

Guy insisted on lending a hand the next morning despite Roman’s protests; he set the alarm clock for eight-thirty and, when it went off, hopped into chinos and a T shirt and went around to Minnie and Roman’s door. Rosemary went with him in her peppermint-striped smock. There was little to carry; two suitcases and a hatbox. Minnie wore a camera and Roman his new radio. “Anyone who needs more than one suitcase,” he said as he double-locked their door, “is a tourist, not a traveler.”

On the sidewalk, while the doorman blew his whistle at oncoming cars, Roman checked through tickets, passport, traveler’s checks, and French currency. Minnie took Rosemary by the shoulders. “No matter where we are,” she said, “our thoughts are going to be with you every minute, darling, till you’re all happy and thin again with your sweet little boy or girl lying safe in your arms.”

“Thank you,” Rosemary said, and kissed Minnie’s cheek. “Thank you for everything.”

“You make Guy send us lots of pictures, you hear?” Minnie said, kissing Rosemary back.

“I will. I will,” Rosemary said.

Minnie turned to Guy. Roman took Rosemary’s hand. “I won’t wish you luck,” he said, “because you won’t need it. You’re going to have a happy, happy life.”

She kissed him. “Have a wonderful trip,” she said, “and come back safely.”

“Perhaps,” he said, smiling. “But I may stay on in Dubrovnik, or Pescara or maybe Mallorca. We shall see, we shall see . . .”

“Come back,” Rosemary said, and found herself meaning it. She kissed him again.

A taxi came. Guy and the doorman stowed the suitcases beside the driver. Minnie shouldered and grunted her way in, sweating under the arms of her white dress. Roman folded himself in beside her. “Kennedy Airport,” he said; “the TWA Building.”

There were more good-by’s and kisses through open windows, and then Rosemary and Guy stood waving at the taxi that sped away with hands ungloved and white-gloved waving from either side of it.

Rosemary felt less happy than she had expected.

That afternoon she looked for All Of Them Witches, to reread parts of it and perhaps find it foolish and laughable. The book was gone. It wasn’t atop the Kinsey Reports or anywhere else that she could see. She asked Guy and he told her he had put it in the garbage Thursday morning.

“I’m sorry, honey,” he said, “but I just didn’t want you reading any more of that stuff and upsetting yourself.”

She was surprised and annoyed. “Guy,” she said, “Hutch gave me that book. He left it to me.”

“I didn’t think about that part of it,” Guy said. “I just didn’t want you upsetting yourself. I’m sorry.”

“That’s a terrible thing to do.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about Hutch.”

“Even if he hadn’t given it to me, you don’t throw away another person’s books. If I want to read something, I want to read it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

It bothered her all day long. And she had forgotten something that she meant to ask him; that bothered her too.

She remembered it in the evening, while they were walking back from La Scala, a restaurant not far from the house. “How did you know Dr. Shand plays the recorder?” she said.

He didn’t understand.

“The other day,” she said, “when I read the book and we argued about it; you said that Dr. Shand just happened to play the recorder. How did you know?”

“Oh,” Guy said. “He told me. A long time ago. And I said we’d heard a flute or something through the wall once or twice, and he said that was him. How did you think I knew?”

“I didn’t think,” Rosemary said. “I just wondered, that’s all.”

She couldn’t sleep. She lay awake on her back and frowned at the ceiling. The baby inside her was sleeping fine, but she couldn’t; she felt unsettled and worried, without knowing what she was worried about.

Well the baby of course, and whether everything would go the way it should. She had cheated on her exercises lately. No more of that; solemn promise.

It was really Monday already, the thirteenth. Fifteen more days. Two weeks. Probably all women felt edgy and unsettled two weeks before. And couldn’t sleep from being sick and tired of sleeping on their backs! The first thing she was going to do after it was all over was sleep twenty-four solid hours on her stomach, hugging a pillow, with her face snuggled deep down into it.

She heard a sound in Minnie and Roman’s apartment, but it must have been from the floor above or the floor below. Sounds were masked and confused with the air conditioner going.

They were in Paris already. Lucky them. Some day she and Guy would go, with their three lovely children.

The baby woke up and began moving.