SHE WALKED up Park to Eighty-first Street, where she found a glass-walled phone booth. She called Dr. Hill. It was very hot in the booth.
A service answered. Rosemary gave her name and the phone number. “Please ask him to call me back right away,” she said. “It’s an emergency and I’m in a phone booth.”
“All right,” the woman said and clicked to silence.
Rosemary hung up and then lifted the receiver again but kept a hidden finger on the hook. She held the receiver to her ear as if listening, so that no one should come along and ask her to give up the phone. The baby kicked and twisted in her. She was sweating. Quickly, please, Dr. Hill. Call me. Rescue me.
All of them. All of them. They were all in it together. Guy, Dr. Sapirstein, Minnie, and Roman. All of them witches. All Of Them Witches. Using her to produce a baby for them, so that they could take it and—Don’t you worry, Andy-or-Jenny, I’ll kill them before I let them touch you!
The phone rang. She jumped her finger from the hook. “Yes?”
“Is this Mrs. Woodhouse?” It was the service again.
“Where’s Dr. Hill?” she said.
“Did I get the name right?” the woman asked. “Is it ‘Rosemary Woodhouse’?”
“Yes!”
“And you’re Dr. Hill’s patient?”
She explained about the one visit back in the fall. “Please, please,” she said, “he has to speak to me! It’s important! It’s—please. Please tell him to call me.”
“All right,” the woman said.
Holding the hook again, Rosemary wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. Please, Dr. Hill. She cracked open the door for air and then pushed it closed again as a woman came near and waited. “Oh, I didn’t know that,” Rosemary said to the mouthpiece, her finger on the hook. “Really? What else did he say?” Sweat trickled down her back and from under her arms. The baby turned and rolled.
It had been a mistake to use a phone so near Dr. Sapirstein’s office. She should have gone to Madison or Lexington. “That’s wonderful,” she said. “Did he say anything else?” At this very moment he might be out of the door and looking for her, and wouldn’t the nearest phone booth be the first place he’d look? She should have gotten right into a taxi, gotten far away. She put her back as much as she could in the direction he would come from if he came. The woman outside was walking away, thank God.
And now, too, Guy would be coming home. He would see the suitcase gone and call Dr. Sapirstein, thinking she was in the hospital. Soon the two of them would be looking for her. And all the others too; the Weeses, the—
“Yes?”—stopping the ring in its middle.
“Mrs. Woodhouse?”
It was Dr. Hill, Dr. Savior-Rescuer-Kildare-Wonderful-Hill. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for calling me.”
“I thought you were in California,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I went to another doctor, one some friends sent me to, and he isn’t good, Dr. Hill; he’s been lying to me and giving me unusual kinds of—drinks and capsules. The baby is due on Tuesday—remember, you told me, June twenty-eighth?—and I want you to deliver it. I’ll pay you whatever you want, the same as if I’d been coming to you all along.”
“Mrs. Woodhouse—”
“Please, let me talk to you,” she said, hearing refusal. “Let me come and explain what’s been going on. I can’t stay too long where I am right now. My husband and this doctor and the people who sent me to him, they’ve all been involved in—well, in a plot; I know that sounds crazy, Doctor, and you’re probably thinking, ‘My God, this poor girl has completely flipped,’ but I haven’t flipped, Doctor, I swear by all the saints I haven’t. Now and then there are plots against people, aren’t there?”
“Yes, I suppose there are,” he said.
“There’s one against me and my baby,” she said, “and if you’ll let me come talk to you I’ll tell you about it. And I’m not going to ask you to do anything unusual or wrong or anything; all I want you to do is get me into a hospital and deliver my baby for me.”
He said, “Come to my office tomorrow after—”
“Now,” she said. “Now. Right now. They’re going to be looking for me.”
“Mrs. Woodhouse,” he said, “I’m not at my office now, I’m home. I’ve been up since yesterday morning and—”
“I beg you,” she said. “I beg you.”
He was silent.
She said, “I’ll come there and explain to you. I can’t stay here.”
“My office at eight o’clock,” he said. “Will that be all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Thank you. Dr. Hill?”
“Yes?”
“My husband may call you and ask if I called.”
“I’m not going to speak to anyone,” he said. “I’m going to take a nap.”
“Would you tell your service? Not to say that I called? Doctor?”
“All right, I will,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Eight o’clock.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
A man with his back to the booth turned as she came out; he wasn’t Dr. Sapirstein though, he was somebody else.
She walked to Lexington Avenue and uptown to Eighty-sixth Street, where she went into the theater there, used the ladies’ room, and then sat numbly in the safe cool darkness facing a loud color movie. After a while she got up and went with her suitcase to a phone booth, where she placed a person-to-person collect call to her brother Brian. There was no answer. She went back with her suitcase and sat in a different seat. The baby was quiet, sleeping. The movie changed to something with Keenan Wynn.
At twenty of eight she left the theater and took a taxi to Dr. Hill’s office on West Seventy-second Street. It would be safe to go in, she thought; they would be watching Joan’s place and Hugh and Elise’s, but not Dr. Hill’s office at eight o’clock, not if his service had said she hadn’t called. To be sure, though, she asked the driver to wait and watch until she was inside the door.
Nobody stopped her. Dr. Hill opened the door himself, more pleasantly than she had expected after his reluctance on the telephone. He had grown a moustache, blond and hardly noticeable, but he still looked like Dr. Kildare. He was wearing a blue-and-yellow-plaid sport shirt.
They went into his consulting room, which was a quarter the size of Dr. Sapirstein’s, and there Rosemary told him her story. She sat with her hands on the chair arms and her ankles crossed and spoke quietly and calmly, knowing that any suggestion of hysteria would make him disbelieve her and think her mad. She told him about Adrian Marcato and Minnie and Roman; about the months of pain she had suffered and the herbal drinks and the little white cakes; about Hutch and All Of Them Witches and the Fantasticks tickets and black candles and Donald Baumgart’s necktie. She tried to keep everything coherent and in sequence but she couldn’t. She got it all out without getting hysterical though; Dr. Shand’s recorder and Guy throwing away the book and Miss Lark’s final unwitting revelation.
“Maybe the coma and the blindness were only coincidences,” she said, “or maybe they do have some kind of ESP way of hurting people. But that’s not important. The important thing is that they want the baby. I’m sure they do.”
“It certainly seems that way,” Dr. Hill said, “especially in light of the interest they’ve taken in it right from the beginning.”
Rosemary shut her eyes and could have cried. He believed her. He didn’t think she was mad. She opened her eyes and looked at him, staying calm and composed. He was writing. Did all his patients love him? Her palms were wet; she slid them from the chair arms and pressed them against her dress.
“The doctor’s name is Shand, you say,” Dr. Hill said.
“No, Dr. Shand is just one of the group,” Rosemary said. “One of the coven. The doctor is Dr. Sapirstein.”
“Abraham Sapirstein?”
“Yes,” Rosemary said uneasily. “Do you know him?”
“I’ve met him once or twice,” Dr. Hill said, writing more.
“Looking at him,” Rosemary said, “or even talking to him, you would never think he—”
“Never in a million years,” Dr. Hill said, putting down his pen, “which is why we’re told not to judge books by their covers. Would you like to go into Mount Sinai right now, this evening?”
Rosemary smiled. “I would love to,” she said. “Is it possible?”
“It’ll take some wire-pulling and arguing,” Dr. Hill said. He rose and went to the open door of his examining room. “I want you to lie down and get some rest,” he said, reaching into the darkened room behind him. It blinked into ice-blue fluorescent light. “I’ll see what I can do and then I’ll check you over.”
Rosemary hefted herself up and went with her handbag into the examining room. “Anything they’ve got,” she said. “Even a broom closet.”
“I’m sure we can do better than that,” Dr. Hill said. He came in after her and turned on an air conditioner in the room’s blue-curtained window. It was a noisy one.
“Shall I undress?” Rosemary asked.
“No, not yet,” Dr. Hill said. “This is going to take a good half-hour of high-powered telephoning. Just lie down and rest.” He went out and closed the door.
Rosemary went to the day bed at the far end of the room and sat down heavily on its blue-covered softness. She put her handbag on a chair.
God bless Dr. Hill.
She would make a sampler to that effect some day.
She shook off her sandals and lay back gratefully. The air conditioner sent a small stream of coolness to her; the baby turned over slowly and lazily, as if feeling it.
Everything’s okay now, Andy-or-Jenny. We’re going to be in a nice clean bed at Mount Sinai Hospital, with no visitors and—
Money. She sat up, opened her handbag, and found Guy’s money that she had taken. There was a hundred and eighty dollars. Plus sixteen-and-change of her own. It would be enough, certainly, for any advance payments that had to be made, and if more were needed Brian would wire it or Hugh and Elise would lend it to her. Or Joan. Or Grace Cardiff. She had plenty of people she could turn to.
She took the capsules out, put the money back in, and closed the handbag; and then she lay back again on the day bed, with the handbag and the bottle of capsules on the chair beside her. She would give the capsules to Dr. Hill; he would analyze them and make sure there was nothing harmful in them. There couldn’t be. They would want the baby to be healthy, wouldn’t they, for their insane rituals?
She shivered.
The—monsters.
And Guy.
Unspeakable, unspeakable.
Her middle hardened in a straining contraction, the strongest one yet. She breathed shallowly until it ended.
Making three that day.
She would tell Dr. Hill.
She was living with Brian and Dodie in a large contemporary house in Los Angeles, and Andy had just started talking (though only four months old) when Dr. Hill looked in and she was in his examining room again, lying on the day bed in the coolness of the air conditioner. She shielded her eyes with her hand and smiled at him. “I’ve been sleeping,” she said.
He pushed the door all the way open and withdrew. Dr. Sapirstein and Guy came in.
Rosemary sat up, lowering her hand from her eyes.
They came and stood close to her. Guy’s face was stony and blank. He looked at the walls, only at the walls, not at her. Dr. Sapirstein said, “Come with us quietly, Rosemary. Don’t argue or make a scene, because if you say anything more about witches or witchcraft we’re going to be forced to take you to a mental hospital. The facilities there for delivering the baby will be less than the best. You don’t want that, do you? So put your shoes on.”
“We’re just going to take you home,” Guy said, finally looking at her. “No one’s going to hurt you.”
“Or the baby,” Dr. Sapirstein said. “Put your shoes on.” He picked up the bottle of capsules, looked at it, and put it in his pocket.
She put her sandals on and he gave her her handbag.
They went out, Dr. Sapirstein holding her arm, Guy touching her other elbow.
Dr. Hill had her suitcase. He gave it to Guy.
“She’s fine now,” Dr. Sapirstein said. “We’re going to go home and rest.”
Dr. Hill smiled at her. “That’s all it takes, nine times out of ten,” he said.
She looked at him and said nothing.
“Thank you for your trouble, Doctor,” Dr. Sapirstein said, and Guy said, “It’s a shame you had to come in here and—”
“I’m glad I could be of help, sir,” Dr. Hill said to Dr. Sapirstein, opening the front door.
They had a car. Mr. Gilmore was driving it. Rosemary sat between Guy and Dr. Sapirstein in back.
Nobody spoke.
They drove to the Bramford.
The elevator man smiled at her as they crossed the lobby toward him. Diego. Smiled because he liked her, favored her over some of the other tenants.
The smile, reminding her of her individuality, wakened something in her, revived something.
She snicked open her handbag at her side, worked a finger through her key ring, and, near the elevator door, turned the handbag all the way over, spilling out everything except the keys. Rolling lipstick, coins, Guy’s tens and twenties fluttering, everything. She looked down stupidly.
They picked things up, Guy and Dr. Sapirstein, while she stood mute, pregnant-helpless. Diego came out of the elevator, making tongue-teeth sounds of concern. He bent and helped. She backed in to get out of the way and, watching them, toed the big round floor button. The rolling door rolled. She pulled closed the inner gate.
Diego grabbed for the door but saved his fingers; smacked on the outside of it. “Hey, Mrs. Woodhouse!”
Sorry, Diego.
She pushed the handle and the car lurched upward.
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!