The Carousel (25 page)

“No. I’ve had to let him fool around a little whenever he felt a bit better, but he barely could. It was all in his head. It was nothing. But he doesn’t know enough to realize that. Anyway, this is the last thing he’d ever suspect.”

“I feel like dirt, Roxanne.”

“You might at least say something glad about the child I’m going to give you. You must have been wanting one all this time. Most men do.”

“Women think more about it,” he said, dodging around the subject. “Of course, I hope it will be well, and that you will be, too.”

“You haven’t suggested an abortion, I notice.”

“It is not my choice.”

She pressed the subject. “You could act a little bit glad about the baby.”

Fool. How could he be glad? “It’s the situation, Roxanne. I’m terribly, terribly worried.”

They stood there facing each other, ready to go and yet held back. Yes, he was thinking, I have wanted a child. But not hers. There lay the bitter irony. If it should turn out to be the finest boy in the world, it still would not be his, it would be Clive’s. And if Clive should die, she would marry
again in a couple of years. Transformed as she now was, the beautiful widowed Mrs. Grey would have no shortage of takers. His thoughts moved swiftly, as swiftly, he thought grimly, as the nanoseconds in Clive’s physics books. Suppose, for some reason, she did not want to marry but preferred to cling to him? He would be trapped and tied to her. She would have a hold upon him till the last day of his life or beyond, when the hold would be transferred to Happy. At that last thought, he groaned inside.

“You look like death,” she said.

“Right now I feel like it.”

He was hearing his father’s voice:
Your brother’s wife! That slut … And your own wonderful wife, Elizabeth … I should have thought you’d gotten that sort of thing out of your system before you married.… I lived a clean life, I had my fun, although not with my brother’s wife. And after that, your mother was the only one.…

That was Father in one of his lofty Victorian moments. As if Victorians actually lived the way they talked! And still, his father would be rightly horrified by this.

“If you ever let anybody know and Clive finds out, you’ll kill him,” he said.

“Are you crazy? What do you think I’m going to do, put an announcement in the paper?”

Her eyes were hard. She was angry at him, and he understood why. A pregnant woman wanted attention and praise, some acknowledgment from
the father of the coming miracle. And he remembered Dan’s pride.

So he said to her very gently, “Don’t be angry at me. A part of me is glad about the baby, while the other part is what you see. I only meant, don’t even confide in your sister. Don’t trust anybody. Can you imagine what will happen if this leaks out? Father and Clive and Happy—”

Now she interrupted. “For her sake alone—not to mention Clive, whom I care about more than you may believe—I’d be careful. I’m not as rotten as you may think I am.”

He interrupted, “I don’t think you’re rotten, Roxanne!”

No, she wasn’t a “good” person like Happy or Sally, but she certainly wasn’t “bad,” either.

“She’s been very nice to me, giving me her recipes and everything, when she could have snubbed me. You don’t have to worry, Ian.” She tossed her head. “Besides, if you don’t believe how good I can be, you sure as hell know that I know where my bread is buttered.”

This was the more familiar side of her, and he nodded. “Oh, I’ve no doubt you do. None at all.”

She frowned. “Speaking of that, though, how is my bread going to be buttered if Clive should die?”

“Don’t bury the man yet, please.”

“I’m not doing anything of the kind. But people die. And he’s sick, and I’m having a baby, so I ought to know.”

“What you’re asking me is what’s in his will,”
Ian said bluntly. “I don’t know what’s in it. Ask him.”

People were not supposed to think about wills—although of course they did and always had done so—until someone died. Then they found out what had been left to them.

“That’s a hell of a thing to ask a man in the shape he’s in. Don’t tell me you have no idea what he’s done about it. You do have an idea and you just don’t want to tell me.”

To Ian, the subject was most distasteful. “Well,” he said reluctantly, “he’s always said that he wanted to leave something to Tina, and I suppose he must have added Susannah.”

The words had dropped inadvertently from his mouth, and in that very moment, he knew he had made a big mistake.

“The hell you say! Whatever he’s got goes to me and
my
kid. Those girls have their own father, not my kid’s father.”

My kid’s father.
Trouble had already started. Most certainly there would be no Grey’s Foods stock for Roxanne if Clive should die. That stock was to be handed down, to be kept for the Greys’ own blood, from generation to generation. So the question was how much Clive owned outside of the stock. He had always been a saver, and as a money man, he had undoubtedly made good investments. But he had also spent a fortune on that house. It was quite possible that he had spent himself dry. Infatuated to the point of madness, it was even probable. In that case, his widow—
But why
do we speak as if he were dead or even soon to die? He might live to ninety, for all we know
—in that case, he would leave her the house, but you can’t eat a house, nor can you live on the interest you’d get from selling it, live well enough to satisfy her, that is, now that she had had a taste of plenty. Ian’s head was spinning. Roxanne would sue! Sue whom? Why, the father of her child, of course, Mr. Ian Grey.

He began to sweat. There in the chilly room, with his overcoat already on, he burned. Now suddenly this new possibility overshadowed every other trouble. What had been gloomy gray was now blackest black. His fear of losing the forest deal with its bag of gold and his fear of Amanda’s raid on the company treasury had shrunk in comparison with this possible, or probable, menace of Roxanne.

She burst into tears. “Ian! I’m scared. What’s to become of me if Clive dies? I don’t want to leave the house, everything will be taken away, I’d lose everything, I’d be like Cinderella at midnight.” And she flung herself at him, weeping against his shoulder. “I know you think that’s all there is to me, just two greedy hands, but you do know, don’t you, that I’ve been good to him? I don’t only take, I give. I make him happy. You can ask him, he’ll tell you how very, very happy he is.”

He wouldn’t be very happy if he could hear all this.

Deep, frightened sobs came from her chest; she
was panicked. And he patted her back, soothing and murmuring.

“Nobody needs to ask. He tells people all the time.”

“Just when I’ve gotten used to everything, I have to think about losing it all.”

Unable to disengage himself from her leaning weight and her clinging arms, he stood there. And in spite of all the claims that were tearing at his brain, there was room for some faint pity; she had been plucked from the mud and placed on top of the mountain. No wonder she feared the fall. And he stood there, still stroking her back and murmuring. “You’re way ahead of yourself. You’ve no need to be afraid.”

She raised her head, reached for the handkerchief in his breast pocket, and dried her eyes, still sobbing, “I love you, Ian. I always will.”

Mechanically, as if his hand were moving of its own accord, he kept on stroking her back. He was beginning to arrange his thoughts, not even looking at her.

You treat a problem logically, as in geometry. This results from that, and that from something else, and so it goes until you grasp the answer. Now, here what is needed is money enough to keep Roxanne quiet in any and every circumstance. What is needed is to buy out Amanda because if we do not, the result is obvious. So we get back to the forest deal. Now that, miracle of miracles, Dan’s given up, the only holdout is Clive, who is convinced, and no doubt he’s right, that
the sale will break Father’s heart. But Clive doesn’t know that there’s something else that would make a far bigger crack in Father’s heart.… That’s what has to be prevented, and Roxanne is the only one who can do it.

“I love you so, Ian. You don’t know how much.”

That’s right, he thought, I don’t know. Everything is in flux. Where money is the issue, who can know?

“I want to talk to you,” he said. “Let’s take off our coats and sit.”

“I have to get home. He’s been sitting there alone all day, waiting for me, poor soul. I hardly ever leave him now. He needs me and I feel so guilty about him anyway. He thinks I’ve gone to the dentist and then to take my sister to lunch. She’s back from school. I’ve got to hurry home.”

“This won’t take long if you pay attention. Clive must have told you something about business. About the people who want to build that new community in part of Grey’s Woods.”

“Well, you’ve told me something, and I’ve read a little about it in the paper. Clive hasn’t said much. I know you’ve been wanting him to agree with you, that’s all.”

“All right, I’ll explain more.”

When he had given her the outline of events, making them as simple as possible, she exclaimed, “Who the hell is this Amanda person anyway, that you’re all afraid of?”

“We’re not afraid. We just don’t want to be tied up in the courts for ten years.”

“Why can’t your father talk some sense into her?”

That was a very good question. That Father, with all his prestige and his very bearing, which commanded so much respect in public places before he had even given his name, could not deal with an impetuous, eccentric young woman like Amanda was a puzzle.

“He has a bad heart, and the worst thing for him is to get involved in an argument” was his reply, all of which was true. “So you see,” he concluded, “how important it is that Clive not delay the forest deal. That way, we’ll get the money to satisfy Amanda, and—” Here he gave Roxanne a long, serious, significant look. “There’ll be plenty for you whether Clive dies or lives. Either way—and may he live long—we’ll establish a trust for you and you’ll be taken care of for life.”

Her eyes were wide and glowing, while a little smile went quite out of control and spread across her face.

“But only, only,” he warned sternly, emphatically and for the third or fourth time, “if you can get Clive to go along. Now, get home and do it. I’m sure you can. You’ll know how.”

“Don’t worry. He does everything I ask, and he’ll do this, too.”

Let us hope, he said to himself. Otherwise, he would have two albatrosses around his neck,
Amanda and Roxanne both. Hungry for money, that’s all they were. Hungry for money. The curse. The root of all evil. Believe it or not, he didn’t even care about having that pot of gold for himself anymore. He needed it only to get rid of them.

“Now, hurry,” he said. “It’s late and they’re predicting snow.”

Putting her arms around his neck, she raised her lips for a kiss.

“Roxanne, there’s no time,” he said after brushing her lips.

“That wasn’t a kiss! When I love you so! I get desperate for you sometimes, do you know that? You’re everything to me. If I ever lose you—”

“Roxanne,” he said impatiently as he opened the door, “come on, come on.”

Still she lingered a moment. “I’ve even come to care for this awful room. After all, it’s the only place where we can be alone together. When can we do it again?”

“First things first. I’ve told you what I need. I need you to go back and talk sense into Clive.”

In the parking lot they separated, and Ian sped away. He just wanted to get home to Happy, so smart and pretty and good, a woman who would let him alone, would be content and busy, not whining or crying for love or asking for money.

Clive had been lying on the sofa for most of the day, reading, dozing, reading some more, watching some television, and watching the fire. Now
and then he got up to put on a fresh log. It was such a pleasure to see the rush of sparks, the orange flare and then the dying down into a steady, homelike snap and crackle. Once he went into the tiny, perfect kitchen and made himself a pot of herbal tea, which he carried back to the fireside to enjoy with some of Roxanne’s lemon cookies.

He loved the cottage. In a very different way, it was just as satisfying to him as his fine house in suburban Scythia. It was a log cabin, an elemental structure, and he had conceived it himself. The forest was all around him, so close that when the windows were open, you were able to hear its rustle. Even on a still day, the forest rustled. Most people didn’t know that. And his horses—there were two now, his own and Roxanne’s—had stables just up the rise behind Father’s house. There was so much to enjoy.

And he was getting better. He felt he was. Slowly, strength was returning. With a little luck, he’d soon be able to ride again. With a little more luck, his hair, such as there was of it, ought to be coming back. On sudden impulse, he went to the mirror in the bathroom. There was no sign of hair yet, only a shiny, knobby skull. When you had hair, you didn’t know that a skull was not smoothly rounded like a ball. Oh, it was ugly. He was ugly. Now with his cheeks so thin and sunken, his chin appeared to have receded; even though that wasn’t plausible, since chins don’t move about, it seemed so. And his teeth looked enormous, like a horse’s teeth.

Anxiety wrinkled his forehead. What could Roxanne, a ravishing, radiant woman like Roxanne, really think of him? Truly, in her heart of hearts, in the place that people, no matter how smiling and kind, never do reveal? He worried about it almost all the time. Yet there was no sense in worrying; worry didn’t answer your questions. Better simply to enjoy what you had without analyzing the whys and wherefores.

She was having his baby. In spite of the sickness that had attacked him like some savage, lurking criminal, he had achieved this wonderful thing: a baby that belonged to him, to him and Roxanne.

They hadn’t made love in weeks. Or was it longer? Between the surgery and all the treatments, he had lost track of time. It must be hard for a healthy young woman like her to go so long without any loving. Well, give him another couple of months, and he would be as good as new.