The Carousel

by Belva Plain

  His laconic speech was often curt. Sometimes, it seemed to Sally now, you catch him looking at you and feel he’s having strange thoughts; you can’t tell whether he likes you or not.

  There was no doubt about his liking Tina. Helping herself again from a plate of marshmallows, she had just dipped one into an overfilled cup of chocolate, then dropped the wet marshmallow onto the rug.

  “Oh dear, look what you’ve done. It’ll stain,” said Sally.

  “That’s okay,” Clive said. “It was an accident. Somebody’ll clean it.”

  Sally was not sure it was an accident. Tina had her own ways of getting attention, and spilling things was one of them. However, this was neither the time nor the place to make an issue of it.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Clive said, “have I mentioned it to you?—that I’m going to build a cottage for myself up at Red Hill. It’ll be only a quarter of a mile from the main house, but still, it’ll give me privacy. I’ve been feeling a need for something of my own, where I can get up at five in the morning without disturbing Father or his guests and go out riding. I might even stay there part time in the winter and commute to work.”

  “That’s a long commute,” Dan observed doubtfully.

  “Sixty miles are nothing on the open road, especially early in the morning. It’ll be worth the price to be able to ride alone out through the woods in the winter. Down here at the riding academy there are always too many people. I love the winter silence up there, not a sound, not even birds, and on a still day, not even the wind.”

  Dan nodded. “I see you know, then, how I feel about the woods. Not that I’m as solitary as you, but I can empathize with you. That’s more than your brother does, with his plans for Grey’s Woods.”

  Clive’s response was surprising. “He’d leave part of it. After all, it wouldn’t be the entire tract.”

  “Part of it!” exclaimed Dan. “You’re satisfied with that?”

  Clive shrugged. “Whatever Father wants.”

  “But he won’t commit himself. You heard him say so quite definitely. It was on his birthday here in this room. He’s leaving it all to the three of us.”

  Tina had been wandering about, touching things while Sally kept watching to prevent damage to any treasures. Now she sprang up to rescue the silver carousel.

  “I want to hear it. Play it,” Tina commanded. And when Sally refused, telling her that it was not a toy, she kicked her mother on the ankle.

  This time Dan sprang up. “See here, we will not have this, Tina. You may be tired, you may be upset about something, but you may not hurt people. Go sit in that chair and be quiet until we’re ready to go home.”

  “Tina’s a good girl. Come sit here on my lap,” Clive coaxed. “Someday, if you’re a really good girl, maybe you can have the carousel to keep.”

  Sally’s and Dan’s exasperated glances met, and Dan began, “No, she has to learn—”

  But Tina was already on Clive’s lap, where she sat triumphantly scattering cookie crumbs over him and onto the floor.

  Offended and uneasy, Sally sat on the edge of the chair, wanting to leave. But Dan was tenacious and wanted, she understood, to get back to the subject that troubled him.

  “Whatever Oliver thinks, you said, but since he hasn’t told us—at least I haven’t heard anything—where are we?”

  “Oh, somewhere in the middle,” Clive replied. He was stroking one of Tina’s long braids.

  Dan persisted. “In the middle of Grey’s Woods, do you mean? I’m surprised that you can even consider Ian’s idea. Especially since you so often don’t agree with him.”

  “It’s not what I consider. It’s Father. He told me last week that maybe, after all, it might be a good thing to take the money and give Amanda what she wants. Cheaper than costly litigation.”

  “That’s been said before, and I don’t agree.”

  “It was just a thought. Father isn’t sure.”

  “I don’t think we should fold up under threats, no matter whose.”

  “Perhaps not.” And Clive gave the customary shrug that said he was bored with the subject.

  The discussion was getting nowhere, so Sally intervened. “You’ve plenty of time to make up your minds, all of you. Months. Tina’s had no nap, it’s been a long day, and I’m tired.”

  She was cross, and she knew it. It bothered her to see Tina sitting on Clive’s lap.…

  As they rose to depart, Clive said, “When my house, my log house, is ready next fall, I’ll invite Tina to stay and go riding with me. You’ll bring the pony along, Tina, but only if you’ll give the pony a name that your Daddy and Mommy will approve of. I had a mare once named Rosalie. How does that sound to you?”

  “Okay,” said Tina with a yawn.

  “That’s settled, then. Rosalie and you will visit me at Red Hill.”

  “Just Tina and yourself?” There was an edge to Sally’s voice. “Really, Clive! Who would take care of her?”

  “The caretaker’s wife is a very responsible woman. You’d have no cause to worry, Sally.”

  “We’ll see. The fall is a long way off.”

  Except for the new pony, it had not been a very satisfying afternoon for anyone. There were too many and various undercurrents.…

  “I don’t want Tina ever to stay with Clive at that cottage,” Sally said, whispering, although the child already lay asleep on the far rear seat of the station wagon.

  “A couple of days’ adventure like that visit at your parents’ house would be good for her.”

  “Clive isn’t my mother. There’s no comparison.”

  “What harm would there be? The Merzes have been at Red Hill for years, and they even have a granddaughter there who could play with Tina.”

  Sally’s own thoughts disturbed her. They were sordid and dark. It occurred to her that maybe she was not even being rational. Yet she spoke out.

  “I don’t like the way Clive behaves with Tina.”

  “Oh, you’re right,” Dan agreed. “He does interfere too much, and it did annoy me. But you can see how he loves her. Having no one of his own, I can understand and make allowances.”

  “Why has he no one of his own? The way he lives … He’s just strange, Dan, strange. I never saw it before as clearly as I did today.”

  “I didn’t see anything different about him today. What are you talking about?”

  “Did you like seeing Tina on his lap?”

  “For God’s sake, Sally, what are you driving at?”

  “I’m driving at something, I’m not sure what. You never see him with anyone, male or female. Where does he go? What does he do?”

  “Do? Go? What the devil do I know? He goes out. I don’t ask him where.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “I still don’t know what you’re getting at, but obviously you’re hinting at something dirty, aren’t you?”

  She was silent. The words wouldn’t form themselves in her mouth. Yet, having gone this far, she had to answer him.

  “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.”

  “Really, Sally, it’s dirty of you to talk this way about a decent man, or even to think it. Clive’s all right. He’s got his odd ways, but he’s okay. I grew up with him, and I ought to know.”

  “You were a little boy, and he was—what?—eighteen when you were brought here?”

  “Clive’s all right, I said.”

  Dan was angry and hurt. He was intensely loyal, and she was offending his loyalty, which surely she did not want to do. Yet what was on her mind would not stay there, and words did finally form themselves.

  “Do you suppose—oh, hear me out and don’t be so angry with me—that the first doctor, that Dr. Lisle could possibly have been right about Tina?”

  Dan jumped on the seat. “For God’s sake, you almost drove me off the road! Clive? Clive? Is that what you mean? You must be going crazy, Sally.”

  The reaction startled her. Perhaps he was right. It was a dreadful thing that she had just said. />
  “I’m sorry. Sorry to have the thought. It just came to me this afternoon, I swear. It’s a hateful thought. I wish I didn’t have it. But people can’t stop their thoughts.”

  “Hateful is right, to accuse a decent person, even in your mind. Listen, you had your answer from the top, from Dr. Vanderwater. Forget that woman and her damn theories. Forget the whole business. Gee, poor Clive, of all people!”

  She thought, then said, “It was a moment’s aberration. Forget I said it, will you?”

  “Of course, of course I will.”

  “Truce?”

  “Come on, Sally. I’ve forgotten it already. We’re all okay.”

  An aberration, yes. Crazy thoughts. She was even beginning to feel hot shame at having had them. She had nothing really tangible to go by. Not really. So she would say no more.

  Nevertheless, quietly and secretly, she would contrive to prevent Tina from any such stay at Red Hill. This she resolved. It might be completely absurd and probably was; nevertheless, it was her resolve. She was the mother and had to take a stand. Sometimes a woman had to be devious with her husband, even with one as wise and good, as beloved, as Dan.

  Chapter Five

  May 1990

  Some fifty-five miles from Scythia down the state highway, then left and north onto a two-lane blacktop road, on the edge of a bleak wooden town, stood a dingy compound of brown structures: a sandwich shack, a gas station, and the Happy Hours Motel. A floodlight in the parking lot protected the two cars that stood there and filtered through the shades onto the bed where Ian Grey lay sleeping.

  The first buzz from his wristwatch alarm woke him at ten o’clock. He had actually not been sleeping very soundly, although ordinarily, after making love, he slept like a rock. But that depended on the location. In Las Vegas last year with Roxanne, or on that weekend at the Waldorf in New York, there had been no need to worry about getting home at a plausible hour before midnight.

  He had better wake her, although it seemed a pity to disturb such lovely peace. One cheek and one hand were buried in the chestnut hair that spread across the pillow. How he loved to bury his own face in that hair! Against the blanket lay her other arm, on which, in the ribbon of glare from the window, there glittered a pair of gold-and-diamond bracelets, last year’s and this year’s gifts, one for each year since they had met. Her new mink coat was draped over a chair. She would wear it, he supposed, as long as chilly nights could provide the slightest excuse. And he chuckled soundlessly. Greedy little gold digger! Yet she loved him. She really loved him.

  He knew her inside out. He knew the whole pathetic story about her mother’s death, her father’s prompt remarriage to a woman only six years older than Roxanne, the two new babies and the senile grandfather, brought to live in the miserably overcrowded house. He knew how she guarded her younger sister, who was still in high school. Out of curiosity he had driven past her house. With a broken-down porch and in need of paint, it was not far from the plant, where she worked in the shipping department. Her family had worked at Grey’s Foods for three generations.

  So you might ask, he thought, how I met Roxanne. The executive offices and the shipping warehouse were hardly side by side, after all. They had met in a restaurant where a group of friends had taken her to celebrate her birthday. They had met at the circular salad bar in the center of the room. Looking across from the shrimp bowl, he had seen directly into the most startling eyes he had ever beheld, pure black, deep as a northern lake, and with such lashes! Thick and curly and long! He had just stared.

  “Well,” she said, “well, well. And how are you?”

  “Pleased,” he said. “Very pleased.” And he had let her see his own eyes traveling downward over white cleavage, shapely bare shoulders, and swelling hips.

  Her lovely mouth smiled. “That’s nice.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Roxanne Mélisande.”

  He was amused. “Say it again? ‘May’ what?”

  “Not ‘May’; it’s ‘Me’ with a little mark over it. French, you know?”

  “Come on, don’t kid me. You’re not French.” And he gave her the wide-eyed look suggestive of passion, that never—or almost never—failed to bring response in kind.

  She laughed. “You’re not French either. What’s your name?”

  “Ian.”

  “That’s a queer name too. How do you spell it?”

  “I-a-n. It’s Scottish.”

  Since they were monopolizing the shrimp bowl, he had to act quickly and move on. “When we go to the dessert table later, I’ll get in line behind you. Slip your phone number to me, okay?”

  “Okay. I saw you before at your table. Is the blond one your girlfriend or your wife?”

  “Girlfriend.”

  “Like hell. She’s your wife. I can tell. She’s pretty.”

  “Never mind. Are you going to leave your number?”

  “What do you think?”

  Of course she would leave it. She had later even taken care to watch him drive away with Happy, had probably marked down his license number, too, to find out who he was. In her place, he would have done the same. It was a game, as exciting as roulette at Monte Carlo and a lot more fun.

  The room was cold now, and it would be good to fall back under the covers, but it was already ten after ten, and time to get up. Five more minutes, he thought. Then I’ll wake her. The women always hated to get up. It was different for them; they did not have to hurry home.

  Sometimes they passed in review before his mind’s eye, and he wondered what had become of them, the dark, hot Armenian—or Gypsy, was she?—or the cold blonde, almost six feet tall, with the scornful gaze that said You don’t dare touch me, until he had touched her.

  Yet in the end, when the affairs were over, they had all meant very little. Most likely, he reflected with a kind of wistfulness, it would be the same with Roxanne. But that time was not nearly close yet. She had lasted longer than any of the others, and at this moment the very idea that she might leave him, the very concept of her lying in some other man’s arms, were enough to send him into a frenzy of jealous rage. He knew himself.

  He also knew that Happy was a permanent part of his life. They had been married when he was twenty-one, just out of college. It was true that his father, having been impressed by the young girl’s refinement and charm, and impressed also by her family of old colonial stock, had pushed the marriage. But he himself had fallen in love with Happy and loved her still. That sort of love had nothing to do with sex. And in a man’s life, the two could exist simultaneously with no trouble at all. Women, especially wives, never understood that. For that matter, his father would not understand it either. Suppose—an impossible supposition—he should suggest that he might leave Happy. The old man’s words would fly like bullets. Family. Loyalty. Decency. Love. Why, he would tear the house down! And Ian thought of his mother, his lovely, gentle mother, so much like Happy …

  The five minutes were not up, but wide awake now, he rose noiselessly to dress and comb his hair in the bathroom. His hair was all mussed because Roxy liked to run her fingers through it. She liked to run her hands all over him. Remembering, he smiled at himself in the mirror.

  “Yes, you’re gorgeous, and I’m mad about you,” Roxanne said. Coming up behind him, she pressed her naked body against his back and, on tiptoes, placed her cheek against his to make a dual image in the mirror. “Don’t we make a stunning pair?”

  “Not bad at all.” He swung around and held her at arm’s length. “I love your outfit. The bracelets are just the right touch.”

  “If you love it, show me.”

  “Honey, I can’t. I’ve got to get home. I’m supposed to be at a business meeting, and they don’t last all night.”

  “It won’t take more than ten minutes.”

  “Hey, get away from me. Get some clothes on before I—”

  “All right, all right.”

  “I’d rather watch you undress, but this is nice, too
,” he said, sitting on the bed while she put on her black lace underwear. “You really love those clothes, don’t you?”

  “Why not? You’re a darling to give them to me.”

  “Do me a favor, then. Get rid of that thing you’re putting on, will you?”

  “What, this?” she said as her neck emerged from the collar of a blood-red satin blouse. “I love it.”

  “Well, I don’t. It’s cheap.”

  “Cheap! It cost enough.”

  “I don’t mean that kind of cheap.”

  “Oh, I suppose it’s not your wife’s taste.”

  Ignoring the jibe, Ian said calmly, “Don’t be insulted. I mean it for your good. I want you to learn something about clothes, like not wearing junk jewelry with real. You’re too beautiful not to do yourself justice.”

  Appeased, she said, “Okay, I’ll listen. You do so much for me, Ian, and for Michelle. Indirectly I mean. I bought her some decent clothes last week.”

  “She has no idea about us, I hope?”

  “Oh, honey, I don’t tell her everything. Of course I don’t. But she’s my sister, and I trust her. She’d never harm me, so that insures you, too.” Roxanne picked up the coat. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “How have you managed at home to explain the mink?”

  “I said it was cheap, just mink tails. They don’t know the difference. I got it on sale out of my Christmas club money, a present to myself after I’d taken care of everyone else. I said I worked overtime this year.” The for around her face made a dark frame on a pastel picture. “All my life I’ve dreamed of having something like this. It makes you feel like a queen.”

  A sudden thought of Happy made Ian smile again; devoted as she was to animals’ rights, she wouldn’t be seen in for of any kind, ever. The contrast between Happy’s horror and Roxanne’s delight was almost comical.

  Roxanne jumped and squealed. “Oh my God, a mouse! Look! Look!”

  “No, where?”

  “It ran into the closet. Shut the door, for God’s sake, Ian, before it gets out again. Shut it! Jesus, let’s get out of here!”

  “Wait, let me tie my shoes, will you?”