Almost every night the midwestern bray could be heard, from the apartment which, Rosemary and Guy came to realize, had originally been the bigger front part of their own. “But it’s impossible to be a hundred per cent sure!” the woman argued, and, “If you want my opinion, we shouldn’t tell her at all; that’s my opinion!”
One Saturday night the Castevets had a party, with a dozen or so people talking and singing. Guy fell asleep easily but Rosemary lay awake until after two, hearing flat unmusical singing and a flute or clarinet that piped along beside it.
The only time Rosemary remembered Hutch’s misgivings and was made uneasy by them was when she went down to the basement every fourth day or so to do the laundry. The service elevator was in itself unsettling-small, unmanned, and given to sudden creaks and tremors-and the basement was an eerie place of once-whitewashed brick passageways where footfalls whis-
pered distantly and unseen doors thudded closed, where castoff refrigerators faced the wall under glary bulbs in wire cages.
It was here, Rosemary would remember, that a dead baby wrapped in newspaper had not so long ago been found. Whose baby had it been, and how had it died? Who had found it? Had the person who left it been caught and punished? She thought of going to the library and reading the story in old newspapers as Hutch had done; but that would have made it more real, more dreadful than it already was. To know the spot where the baby had lain, to have perhaps to walk past it on the way to the laundry room and again on the way back to the elevator, would have been unbearable. Partial ignorance, she decided, was partial bliss. Damn Hutch and his good intentions!
The laundry room would have done nicely in a prison: steamy brick walls, more bulbs in cages, and scores of deep double sinks in iron-mesh cubicles. There were coin-operated washers and dryers and, in most of the padlocked cubicles, privately owned machines. Rosemary came down on weekends or after five; earlier on weekdays a bevy of Negro laundresses ironed and gossiped and had abruptly fallen silent at her one unknowing intrusion. She had smiled all around and tried to be invisible, but they hadn’t spoken another word and she had felt self-conscious, clumsy, and Negro-oppressing.
One afternoon, when she and Guy had been in the Bramford a little over two weeks, Rosemary was sitting in the laundry room at 5:15 reading The New Yorker and waiting to add softener to the rinse water when a girl her own age came in-a dark-haired cameo-faced girl who, Rosemary realized with a start, was Anna Maria Alberghetti. She was wearing white sandals, black shorts, and an apricot silk blouse, and was carrying a yellow plastic laundry basket. Nodding at Rosemary and then not looking at her, she went to one of the washers, opened it, and began feeding dirty clothes into it.
Anna Maria Alberghetti, as far as Rosemary knew, did not live at the Bramford, but she could well have been visiting someone and helping out with the chores. A closer look, though, told Rosemary that she was mistaken; this girl’s nose was too long and sharp and there were other less definable differences of expression and carriage. The resemblance, however, was a remarkable one-and suddenly Rosemary found the girl looking at her with an embarrassed questioning smile, the washer beside her closed and filling.
“I’m sorry,” Rosemary said. “I thought you were Anna Maria Alberghetti, so I’ve been staring at you. I’m sorry.”
The girl blushed and smiled and looked at the floor a few feet to her side. “That happens a lot,” she said. “You don’t have to apologize. People have been thinking I’m Anna Maria since I was, oh, just a kid, when she first started out in Here Comes The Groom. “ She looked at Rosemary, still blushing but no longer smiling. “I don’t see a resemblance at all,” she said. “I’m of Italian parentage like she is, but no physical resemblance.”
“There’s a very strong one,” Rosemary said.
“I guess there is,” the girl said; “everyone’s always telling me. I don’t see it though. I wish I did, believe me.”
“Do you know her?” Rosemary asked.
“No.”
“The way you said ‘Anna Maria’ I thought-“
“Oh no, I just call her that. I guess from talking about her so much with everyone.” She wiped her hand on her shorts and stepped forward, holding it out and smiling. “I’m Terry Gionoffrio,” she said, “and I can’t spell it so don’t you try.”
Rosemary smiled and shook hands. “I’m Rosemary Woodhouse,” she said. “We’re new tenants here. Have you been here long?”
“I’m not a tenant at all,” the girl said. “I’m just staying with Mr. and Mrs. Castevet, up on the seventh floor. I’m their guest, sort of, since June. Oh, you know them?”
“No,” Rosemary said, smiling, “but our apartment is right behind theirs and used to be the back part of it.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” the girl said, “you’re the party that took the old lady’s apartment! Mrs.-the old lady who died!”
“Gardenia.”
“That’s right. She was a good friend of the Castevets. She used to grow herbs and things and bring them in for Mrs. Castevet to cook with.”
Rosemary nodded. “When we first looked at the apartment,” she said, “one room was full of plants.”
“And now that she’s dead,” Terry said, “Mrs. Castevet’s got a miniature greenhouse in the kitchen and grows things herself.”
“Excuse me, I have to put softener in,” Rosemary said. She got up and got the bottle from the laundry bag on the washer.
“Do you know who you look like?” Terry asked her; and Rosemary, unscrewing the cap, said, “No, who?”
“Piper Laurie.”
Rosemary laughed. “Oh, no,” she said. “It’s funny your saying that, because my husband used to date Piper Laurie before she got married.”
“No kidding? In Hollywood?”
“No, here.” Rosemary poured a capful of the softener. Terry opened the washer door and Rosemary thanked her and tossed the softener in.
“Is he an actor, your husband?” Terry asked.
Rosemary nodded complacently, capping the bottle.
“No kidding! What’s his name?”
“Guy Woodhouse,” Rosemary said. “He was in Luther and Nobody Loves An Albatross, and he does a lot of work in television.”
“Gee, I watch TV all day long,” Terry said. “I’ll bet I’ve seen him!” Glass crashed somewhere in the basement; a bottle smashing or a windowpane. “Yow,” Terry said.
Rosemary hunched her shoulders and looked uneasily toward the laundry room’s doorway. “I hate this basement,” she said.
“Me too,” Terry said. “I’m glad you’re here. If I was alone now I’d be scared stiff.”
“A delivery boy probably dropped a bottle,” Rosemary said.
Terry said; “Listen, we could come down together regular. Your door is by the service elevator, isn’t it? I could ring your bell and we could come down together. We could call each other first on the house phone.”
“That would be great,” Rosemary said. “I hate coming down here alone.”
Terry laughed happily, seemed to seek words, and then, still laughing, said, “I’ve got a good luck charm that’ll maybe do for both of us!” She pulled away the collar of her blouse, drew out a silver neckchain, and showed Rosemary on the end of it a silver filigree ball a little less than an inch in diameter.
“Oh, that’s beautiful,” Rosemary said.
“Isn’t it?” Terry said. “Mrs. Castevet gave it to me the day before yesterday. It’s three hundred years old. She grew the stuff inside it in that little greenhouse. It’s good luck, or anyway it’s supposed to be.”
Rosemary looked more closely at the charm Terry held out between thumb and fingertip. It was filled with a greenish-brown spongy substance that pressed out against the silver openwork. A bitter smell made Rosemary draw back.
Terry laughed again. “I’m not mad about the smell either,” she said. “I hope it works!”
“It’s a beautiful charm,” Rosemary said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
