The Painted Room

by Tina Mikals

Chapter 19

  The Juggler

  Carlisle put his hands behind his head and stretched out in the boat. Sheila opened a satchel of small shells and shiny beads she was carrying and examined each one.

  May lay down on her stomach and looked into the glassy water. She could see clear down to where yellow and black striped fish played and danced on the sandy bottom. She draped her hand over the side and watched the wake left behind by her fingers trailing through the smooth water. She was bored.

  All of a sudden, she felt Carlisle grab her ankle. She hadn't realized she had been kicking her feet up and down until then, rocking the boat gently. She propped herself up and looked around at him.

  He was sitting bolt upright, his face a putty color. With an apology, he let go of her leg.

  She grinned at him. "How ya feeling?"

  Putting his elbows on his bent knees, he dropped his head in his hands. "Like the wrath of God."

  "Is it a doozy?"

  "The dooziest. What's in those provisions they packed us?"

  "You can't be hungry," she said.

  "Why do you always have to argue? Just look for me, will you?"

  She opened the wooden box with the provisions in it. Inside, there was a small quantity of food wrapped in white linen napkins. There were also two bottles in the box. The bottle of clear glass she took to be water, but the one of green glass she dropped over the side of the boat. "I see what you were after now. Hair of the dog?"

  Carlisle watched the bottle sink, scattering a school of yellow striped angelfish which darted in every direction. "It would of helped," he said wretchedly, putting his head in his hands again.

  "I think you're better off this way."

  "You're completely heartless, May."

  "Not completely," she said quietly. "You look like hell, you know. Did you go to sleep in your clothes?"

  "I assume so; I woke up in them. Did you both get back to your tent alright?"

  "We're here, aren't we?"

  "I should have walked you. I'm sorry. I feel so—I'm glad you didn't come to any trouble."

  "You don't remember a darn thing, do you?" she said, smirking.

  He picked up on the accusatory note in her voice and misinterpreted her meaning. "I hope I didn't offend you in any way."

  "I'll say you did!"

  He drew his hands slowly away from his head. "I'm truly sorry. There's no excuse for it," he said.

  "You bet there isn't! You called me a nag." She had expected him to apologize again, but he started chuckling in a pathetic way.

  "Just what are you laughing at?"

  "Oh May, can you ever forgive me?"

  That was better. "No. I like to hold a grudge for a while. You should keep away from the booze. You always drink everything in front of you?"

  "Now you're being a nag," he said, lying down again.

  Across from her in the boat, Sheila just kept playing with her shells like an idiot. She wasn't any fun to talk to anymore. Funny how you could miss someone so much who was sitting just a few feet from you.

  May turned over on her stomach again and stared out at the flat water. "I wish I had a book right now," she mumbled.

  Carlisle surprised her when he answered, "I'm not much of a reader myself." She hadn't expected any conversation from him. Either he was trying to make up for insulting her or trying to keep his mind off how he was feeling at the moment. "My wife read to me sometimes in the evening, but my mind usually wandered off somewhere. There were times I think she would have been better off just reading to herself. I liked listening to her anyway."

  "And painting her?"

  "Yes, and painting her," he said softly.

  She thought briefly about telling him about his wife, then changed the subject by asking, "Hey, how'd you get from being a railroad tycoon to being a painter?"

  She heard him laugh. "Tycoon!"

  "Well?"

  "Why don't you help Sheila make a necklace?"

  "I don't want to. I'm talking to you. I'm just going to keep bothering you until you answer, so you might as well just give up."

  "I'm trying to sleep," he said. "I have a headache."

  "I know that already. What I'd like to know is what you did for the railroad to make all that money?"

  "My father worked for the railroad," he said obscurely.

  "You inherited your money?"

  He snorted a laugh. "No."

  "That doesn't make any sense," she said.

  "My father was a manager for the railroad. He had done fairly well. Sometime after I got married he thought I was ready to try it too."

  "So, did you?"

  "For a while."

  "What happened?"

  "It wasn't the right line of work for me."

  "Oh, I see," she said.

  "You know, May, there are times when I could swear I hear a whirr and click coming from your head. And it wasn't what you're thinking."

  "What am I thinking?" she asked innocently. That he was always either drunk or hungover? She didn't feel like going down that road again.

  "If you want the truth of it, it was all those meetings and deadlines. It was a nuisance keeping them all straight. I tried anyhow." He reached up with one hand and brushed the soft silk of the canopy with the tips of his fingers.

  "Oh."

  "I think you mean, 'Eureka'. I distinctly heard a whirr and click again."

  "No it's just—I was just thinking they have a name for that kind of problem now. When you're easily distracted and can't keep track of things."

  "What? Boredom?" he said, lifting his head up and looking at her.

  "Never mind. It doesn't matter. So if you didn't make your money that way, how did you make it?"

  He settled back down with his hands clasped behind his head again. May watched his feet wiggle. After a time she heard him say, "One thing I never argued with my father about was money. That was something he knew better than anything else. If he said there was money in the railroad, then there was. So I invested in it."

  "Stocks, you mean?"

  "Mergers. You don't really want to know the particulars, do you?"

  "Yes, actually, I do."

  He thought for a bit. "Well, one time I was taking a trip with my brother—"

  "You have a brother?" she interrupted. "What's his name?"

  "What's that got to do with the story?"

  "I just want to know. What's his name?"

  "Seamus. After my father."

  "My brother Charley is a junior too. You can continue."

  "Thank you. Well, on the trip we had to make several stops and change trains. At the time, there were a lot of little companies with a little amount of track and a few stops and all on different time schedules. It was quite a nuisance if you had to go any distance, let me tell you. So when Seamus and I were waiting at a stop with a whole lot of other unhappy passengers, I got an idea."

  "Which was?"

  "Buy up the companies. I pooled whatever I had saved, borrowed as much as anyone would lend me, and that's what I did. As many as I could, until I had one enormous company with a whole lot of track, a whole lot of stops and all on only one blessed schedule. It worked like a charm."

  "You did well, then."

  "I made a fortune," he said with a glint in his eyes.

  "Your father must have been happy."

  "You could say that."

  "Oh please. I bet you could of cooked eggs on his head."

  "I don't know," he said smiling. "I never tried, but now, I kind of wish I'd thought of it."

  "Oh well, hindsight's twenty-twenty. Hmm. Let me guess. He didn't think you'd earned it?"

  "Touché. You know, you really should take up fencing, May."

  "I'm thinking about it."

  "The truth of it is, he was right. There was a huge amount of luck involved."

  "Yeah, and a heck of a lot of risk, too."

  "But how could I lose? Everything was already there: the trains, the tracks, the conducto
rs. The only real work was in coordinating the lines. Some of the old timers had a hard time, of course. They were used to things the way they were."

  "You fired your own father?"

  "Heavens no."

  "Your father didn't happen to lend you any money for this idea, did he?" she asked.

  "My brother did."

  "Your father was probably steaming mad jealous he didn't think of it himself even if he would have never had the guts to do anything about it if he had. Or maybe he was just mad because you proved him wrong. You didn't do anything at all his way and you still didn't fall on your face."

  "Does it help knowing all this information?" he asked.

  "Yes, I like to know about people."

  "Figure them out, you mean."

  "Maybe."

  "People aren't like trains, May. They don't run on tracks. Once you figure someone out, that doesn't mean they'll stay where you put them. You can't eliminate every surprise. It just makes it worse in the end when you think they'll jump one way and they do something entirely different than what you expect. I learned that much in fencing."

  "That doesn't make sense," she said.

  "Believe me nothing and no one is as predictable as you think they are—not even yourself. Please, no more questions. My head is starting to throb again."

  A shadow fell across May's face. Sheila held out a necklace of delicate pink shells. "Here May, I made it for you."

  She took it from her. "Thanks."

  "You, too, Mr. Carlisle." Sheila handed him his own. "Is that okay? It's not too, I don't know—girlie, is it? Maybe it is."

  He sat up, smiled and took it from her. "It's lovely, Sheila. Welcome back."

  "You don't have to wear it if you don't want."

  "Really?" he asked, the necklace still dangling from his hand.

  "Yeah, really, it's okay, honest. My feelings won't be hurt."

  "Thanks," he said, putting it in his pocket.

  For the rest of the morning, May and Sheila spent the time chatting, while Carlisle drifted off to sleep. At lunchtime the girls began opening up some of the provisions.

  Carlisle propped himself up on his elbows. "What've we got?"

  "I hope our talking didn't disturb your sleep," said Sheila.

  "Not at all. Though I admit I had quite forgotten how much girls your age could giggle."

  "Well," said May, "it looks like mostly fruit. No golden apples, thank goodness. There's a little bread, some cheese and, lucky us, moon cakes."

  "We'll set some aside for later," Carlisle said, sitting up, "for when we hit land. Are you done with that satchel, Sheila?"

  Sheila dumped out the rest of the shells from the leather bag and handed it to him.

  "We'll put some fruit and some of the cakes in here and take it with us when we leave."

  "Aye, aye, captain," said May, saluting him.

  "Who wants what?" he said, juggling one red apple and two green ones. The three pieces of fruit danced in the air a few seconds before the red apple flew off sideways into the water.

  Sheila leaned over the boat and snatched the apple up before it drifted too far away. She handed it back to Carlisle.

  He rubbed the apple on his shirt. "I think I'll take red," he said, leaning back on the cushions.

  "Good choice," said May.

  Sheila settled back with a moon cake in her hands.

  "How can you stand those?" she asked.

  "I love them. They make me feel all cozy like I'm back home."

  Home? What did Sheila have to say that for? How many days had it been anyway?

  May felt like a turtle who had misplaced her shell. Without all the familiar things that normally surrounded her, she felt uncertain of who she was anymore. She stared at the green apple in her hands, her appetite gone.

  Carlisle took one last bite of his apple and threw the core into the water. He picked out three more apples from the sac. "Hey," he said, nudging May's arm with the back of his hand. "I'm out of practice, but here goes anyway."

  He kept the apples in the air longer this time, but gradually his tosses grew more and more erratic until he could no longer predict where each piece of fruit would fall. He lost control of the game and all three apples tumbled down onto the soft cushions inside the boat.

  "Maybe you should just stick to fencing," said May.

  "What would be the fun of that?"

  "You're already good at it," she said before taking a bite of her apple.