Rosemary's Baby and Son of Rosemary by Ira Levin

Author:Ira Levin [Levin, Ira]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-1755-9
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

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 Lautréamont 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.

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