The Carousel (19 page)

“No. Although he did make one himself, didn’t he?” Sally teased.

“Big deal. You know what I meant. With all respects to Oliver, Ian’s not like Oliver in that way. I can’t understand why he’s acting like this. He hasn’t even been in Clive’s house, and it’s over a month now. I’ve told him he’s being damned rude. Practically everybody we know has been there. Of course, they’re all curious, we know that. But what’s the difference?”

“Does he explain himself at all?”

“Oh, he hinted something once about a man’s buying a wife, and if that’s what a man wants to do, good luck to him.”

“I hope so, and to her, too. You really can’t dislike her. At least, I can’t.”

“I have a feeling it’s not going to be easy sailing for them. I have a feeling that Clive’s a sick man, sicker than he wants to admit.”

It crossed Sally’s mind that Happy might also have feelings about Tina. She had, after all, seen and heard plenty at the nursery school. But Happy would be too polite to speak of the subject unless
spoken to. And Sally, resolved to preserve Tina’s privacy, had no intention of speaking to anyone.

Back to the current subject of Clive’s marriage, she reflected, “It’s really extraordinary. Dan never expected him to be married at all, while I never ruled it out. People marry so much later these days, although goodness knows we didn’t. I expected him to bring back some quiet, unobtrusive intellectual out of a library or a laboratory.”

“Well,” said Happy, repeating in her careful way, “it just goes to show, you never, never know, do you?”

In the airy, mirrored dressing room, Roxanne stood looking at herself. Clive was right. Simplicity was richer-looking. And with a grimace, she remembered the red satin dress, too slippery, too loud, too ruffled, too low-cut, that she had worn at their first dinner. This plain white linen, which had cost three times as much as the other, was far more flattering to her skin, her figure, and her hair.

Carefully, guarding against lipstick stains, she took it off and put it away. Three sides of the large closet were lined with clothes, silks, cottons, linens, a Scottish tweed suit ready for fall, a leather jacket bought in Italy, and shoes and bags and the pale straw hat in which she had been married. Three or four times during every day she was drawn to this closet simply to look again at all her beautiful things. They made her so happy! As she had said, it was like a dream.

Yet, when you wake up from such dreams, you are not always happy.… She thought: The truth is that I feel—well, I feel nasty. I feel as if I had stolen all this. Well, haven’t I? Can he really believe I went mad with love for him? Or that I am dying for night to come so that we can get into that Chippendale or whatever-you-call-it bed together? It isn’t exactly comfortable to know that you’re a liar or to put on a smiling act when you’re taking a walk or eating your dinner, a passionate act when you’re in bed. Yes, I feel nasty.

She walked to the window. Below lay the rolling lawn and the stand of spruce with which Clive said he had “fallen in love.” Colorado blue spruce, they were. Well, a tree was a tree. But they were pretty.

She walked back thinking, as long as he didn’t know the truth, as long as he was never hurt, was it so bad of her, after all? Poor guy. He tried so hard to please. There was so much kindness in him. It made you want to be good to him. She would never hurt him, never take his happiness away. It would be, as they said, like taking candy from a baby. No. She would satisfy him in every way. She would pay her bill fairly.

The visit today had gone very well. They were nice women, not snobs at all. A lot of women in their place would be. Damn right they would be. Women were cats, especially if you were better-looking than they were. But these two were not cats.

It took some acting, though, to be natural in
front of Ian’s wife. Now came that nasty feeling again. Funny, it had never bothered her before to think about her. But seeing the woman was another matter. Still, things like this happened every day. You read about it in the advice columns all the time: The wife goes to the office party and shakes hands with the polite secretary, while the husband looks on.…

But what a wonderful thing it would be to have this house and Ian, too! There was a simmering in Roxanne’s chest, as if her blood were heating up when she thought of what could have been—if only he had been willing. What was wrong with the man? They were mad about each other, couldn’t stay away from each other. Her blood began to boil.… She had to calm herself.

“Calm down, Roxanne,” she said. “Put on a pair of shorts and go lie in the hammock with a magazine.”

It was growing cooler now. A wind was making a delightful, sleepy sound above her head. Slowly, she began to feel the loveliness of this green peace. Slowly, it was bringing ease to the tumult within her. After all, you couldn’t have
everything
, could you? So she would close her eyes for a while, then get up and make a chocolate cake, a surprise for Clive’s dessert. It was a pleasure to see how he enjoyed desserts.

“Well, well, Sleeping Beauty. Wake up, you bitch.”

Ian, wearing a business suit, had set his attaché case on the ground and folded his arms across his
chest. He glowered. For a second when he moved, she thought he was going to strike her.

“Don’t look so scared, I’m not going to kill you, although you deserve it. But you’re not worth my spending a lifetime in prison,” he said.

Her heart was hammering and pains like pinpricks darted all through her body from arms to legs.

“Well, have you got anything to say for yourself?”

She had to wet her lips, her mouth was so dry, before she was able to reply. “I could ask you the same.”

“Go ahead and ask it. This is what I have to say for myself:
I
never lied to
you.
I
never tricked
you.
I said what I meant, and I meant what I said.”

He was so strong, standing there as if he owned the earth. Like a prince, a lord, with his mouth set hard and his eyes flashing, he defied her. As he always had.

And suddenly, with the pain still pricking, she was emboldened. “I never tricked you. I told you on that last night that if you weren’t willing to marry me, you could go to hell. Plain and simple, Ian.”

“And then you did this. You tricked poor Clive. A bastard’s trick.”

“Don’t you call me a bastard.” She got up from the hammock and stood tall. “I haven’t tricked him any more than you’ve tricked Happy.”

“There’s no comparison, you fool, you sneak thief,” Ian shouted.

“I think there is. And anyway, shut up. Clive may be coming home any minute.”

“What difference does that make? I have a right to visit my sister-in-law at her new home,” he sneered.

“I wondered how long it was going to take for you to get up enough courage to pay a visit. It was beginning to look mighty queer.”

“I was afraid you’d have a heart attack when you saw me.”

“You’re the one who seemed more apt to have one the day we went to your father’s house.”

“That wasn’t my heart. It was an attack of nausea. I wanted to vomit. I did vomit. That any woman could be so foul as to pull a dirty stunt on a poor, unsuspecting jerk like my brother—”

“ ‘Jerk’? You used to tell me he was a genius.”

“In mathematics. You know damn well what I mean.”

“Well, I don’t call him a jerk. The only word you used exactly right just now is ‘unsuspecting.’ ”

“You mean he has no idea we ever even met before?”

“What are you, a retard? Of course that’s what I mean.”

“And what’s more he never will know?”

“Of course that’s what I mean.”

“Don’t be too sure of it. Maybe he ought to know.”

Roxanne waggled her finger, the left-hand finger that wore the diamond. “Uh-uh. Never. You
don’t want Happy to find out, so you’ll never, never open your mouth. I have no fear of that.”

When Ian was silent, she poked his chest gently with her finger, this time the forefinger, and gave him a smile. “Come on, let’s get along. Here we are, nice and cozy, and your brother’s happy as a clam.”

“Make that a lark. It sounds better.”

“You see he’s a new person, don’t you? He’s getting something out of life.”

“And of course you aren’t getting anything, are you?” said Ian, looking toward the glassed-in garden room and the little goldfish pool under the willows.

“Oh, I’m getting plenty. I don’t deny that’s what it’s about. But I’ve made a bargain, and I’ll stick with it. He treats me like a queen. And I don’t mean only because he buys things like this house. There’s a lot more to it than that. He respects me. That’s why I’m really fond of him. He trusts me, and I’ll never let him down. I swear I won’t.”

For a few silent minutes they stood facing each other, facing in each an unbelievable new reality. Ian looked Roxanne up and down from head to foot and back. Unflinching, she looked straight into his eyes.

“By God!” he exclaimed. “Maybe I do believe you. Maybe miracles do happen.”

“You can believe me.”

“He never asks any questions?”

“What kind does he have any reason to ask?”

“Well, about your mink, for instance.”

“He hasn’t seen it. This is August. Anyway, I gave it to my stepmother. It earned respect. My relatives won’t dare drop in here or bother us. They’ll wait till they’re invited. They know there’ll be more goodies now and then if they behave.”

“You think of everything.”

“I want to make a nice life here. The neighbors are very friendly. I was surprised how friendly the women were to me the minute we moved in.”

“The Grey name helps a bit, don’t forget.”

“I don’t ever forget that, Ian.”

“I guess not. Clive spent a bundle here, I didn’t know he had it in him.” And picking up the attaché case, he sighed. “Well, I guess I might as well be getting along home. There’s plenty more I could say, but there’s not much point in hashing things over. Nothing would come of it. Not that there’s much good to come of this mess, anyway.”

“Okay. I have to get working on the dinner, anyhow.”

“So you’re an expert in the kitchen, too?”

“What do you mean ‘too’?”

“You know damn well what I mean. You’ve hit me where it hurts, Roxy. I can’t imagine you and Clive—”

“Cut it out,” she said smoothly. “I don’t want to hear that. Yes, I’m a good cook. I had to be if I wanted anything but take-out food at home.”

“So, what are you having tonight?”

She knew that he was lingering, finding it hard
to pull himself away. And it hurt her because she was feeling the same.

Yet, mingling with the ache, there was a sweet thrill of mean revenge as she said calmly, “We’re having boeuf à la mode with horseradish sauce.”

“Gee, you even pronounced it right. Gee!”

“And chocolate cake,” she added, ignoring the sarcasm. “It’s your wife’s recipe. She said it’s your favorite.”

Ian looked her up and down again. “You
are
the goddamned limit! Who could ever dream up a human being like you! So you’re chummy with my wife, are you?”

“I like your wife. Sally and she have been very nice. Sometimes, though, it does make me feel awful when I look at her and think of what I did.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes, I do. And then sometimes, I don’t.”

“I’m not going to see you anymore,” he said. “Ever. You understand that, I hope.”

“But you’ll have to, won’t you? I’m in the family.”

“No. The men see each other every day at the office, and the women can do what they want. We don’t need to meet at night. It comes down to only three times a year, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Father’s birthday. I guess we can manage those.”

“I’m sure we can.”

“So long, Roxanne.”

“So long.”

For a minute or two, she watched his car go
down the driveway and pass out of sight. Then she turned around and went into the house to bake the chocolate cake.

He asked himself how he would describe his feelings if he had to. They were a sickening meld of outrage, quiet disgust, and sadness. To think of that sweet flesh, pink as a melon or a peach, to think of all that vitality in Clive Grey’s meager arms. It was a physical agony. And with his right fist, Ian pounded the dashboard.

It was wrong, though, to rage at Clive, who was as much a victim as he was. Rage at the victimizer instead, the infuriating victimizer in her white shorts and halter, now safely ensconced in her nest of luxuries.

I like your wife.
The gall, the unbelievable gall! Clive said they met at the riding academy. She knew where to find him, all right. Damn her, she must have memorized every casual remark I ever made. She has all the qualities of a great CEO, the spunk, the ingenuity, the determined drive. And what a lover, besides. And what an actress. She has Clive enchanted. He’s actually been born again, the dour little man who used to hunch over his desk, who now struts, whistling, down the corridor. In the men’s room, they tell jokes about him, the kind of jokes you hear at bachelor parties the night before the wedding.

Yes, she would pull it off, he thought. As she said, she’d made her bargain. She’d slip right into the family and the life, and nobody would be any
the wiser. Except himself. And he would keep a thousand miles away from her. She was poison. The most delicious poison … And again, he struck the dashboard.

He had almost reached the crossroad leading to his own house, when he had a vision of Happy. He seemed to see her face on the other side of the windshield, hovering there ahead of him with the most lovely expression, that small smile about her eyes that was so familiar. And he thought of her being “nice” to Roxanne, all innocently being “nice,” all ignorant of her own humiliation before the other woman.

And yet, was it not he rather than Happy who had been humiliated?

Sweating now, he removed his jacket and turned the car around, heading back to the suburban shopping center, where he remembered there was a flower shop. There he ordered two dozen roses.

“Those?” he questioned. “Those little pink ones?”

“Apricot,” the old man said. “Old-fashioned, very fragrant.”