The Carousel (33 page)

“I didn’t think it had,” said Dr. Lisle.

“No, of course not.”

Worse and worse. I am a wreck, Sally thought.

“Doctor, why has Tina never said anything to me when she told you so readily?”

“Number one, she didn’t tell me readily. When some of it came out accidentally through her play, I took the clue and went on from there. Number two, as to why she didn’t tell you, I would say it was because she feared you would punish her.”

“But we’re not punishing parents. We’re quite the opposite.”

“Tina is a very bright child. You had told her not to let anyone touch her and she—at least in her mind—had disobeyed. Besides, you yourself
said she had been threatened if ever she told, and cajoled with the silver carousel. It’s not so simple, Mrs. Grey.”

Yes, it’s simple, Sally thought, despairing. It’s a long, straight, dark tunnel with no light at the end. That’s what it is.

“Have you asked Tina whether she will come back to me?”

“She will come. If you were a man I’m almost sure she would not, but when I asked her whether she would go to play games with the lady, she agreed. Doctor, Dr. Lisle, tell me, will she ever get over this? Do people ever—” Her voice broke.

“They don’t forget, but they can be taught how to live with it and, when they are old enough, to understand it.”

“You haven’t said anything about forgiveness, I notice.”

“Now we get into the realm of the spiritual,” Katie Lisle said, smiling, “and I’m not a preacher. I can only try to heal.”

“Do you really think Tina can grow up and be well and happy and like—like other people?”

The doctor smiled again. “Yes,” she said, “yes, I do.”

Little Tina! I have done everything I can for you.

On the way home, Sally passed the route to the cemetery where Oliver Grey reposed in a granite mausoleum. She raised her fist.

“I didn’t mean to do it, but I did it and you deserved it, Oliver Grey.”

* * *

For the last few nights she had dreamed and for the last few days, in random moments, had seen before her eyes a tall, gray fortress-prison on a hill. Like the image on a computer screen, it blinked on and blinked away. And she knew, in the depths of her being she knew, that this was her future come to show itself to her.

So it was time to tell everything to Dan. She would start with Amanda’s tale and proceed from there to Tina’s and her own.

“I saw Dr. Lisle today,” she began. “You remember, we agreed on the first of the year.”

“We did. It’s okay.” And he studied her, frowning a little. “Poor Sal! You’re done in. Things have piled up too high, the worry over Tina, and now Oliver. I wish I could just take you away to lie on a beach and do nothing.”

“Take me out for a walk in the snow now. I need to talk to you.”

The snow was firm underfoot and the stars bright overhead. With no other walkers out and no other traffic, the night was so still and pure that it seemed an act of vandalism to speak what she had to speak. Nevertheless, it had to be done. So she opened her lips and began, “When Amanda came to live at Hawthorne …”

Dan heard her without interruption to the end.

“And after she left, Lucille was killed. Amanda believes she killed herself.”

“That’s it?” asked Dan.

“That’s it.”

“Well, shall I tell you what I think? I think she’s
gone clean off her rocker. She was always eccentric. Ever since I was old enough to be any judge, I thought so. Eccentric. Unstable.”

“But don’t you see, this was the reason why?”

He came to a halt facing Sally. “No, absolutely not. This is simply another cooked-up, recovered-memory affair. I’m not saying they’re all cooked up, I know better than that.” Angrily, he kicked at the snowbank on the side of the road. “We discussed this kind of thing before, when Tina first saw that woman. But this one is very definitely cooked up and I’m sure I know why.”

She wished he wouldn’t call Dr. Lisle “that woman,” but there were more important issues to deal with right now, so she let it pass, saying only, “Dan, this wasn’t cooked up. I was there. If you could have seen Amanda’s face, and how she cried! She was broken apart.”

“Well, I’m broken apart too, when I think of Oliver. A man only in his sixties, with so many more good years and so much good he could have done! I’m not wasting my sympathy on my sister. This story is absolutely crazy, Sally, and I’m amazed that you fell for it.”

Taking hold of his lapel, she looked into his eyes. The light was so clear that she could read his righteous indignation in them.

“Listen to me,” she insisted, “believe me, Dan, she was telling the truth. There are things you simply
know
, and I know this.”

“Sweet Sally, you’re a softy,” he said, relenting. “You always were.”

“You’ve never said that about me before. You’ve always said I was a clever businesswoman.”

“Yes, but you’re soft all the same. A marshmallow. That’s what’s lovable about you. But you can’t allow yourself to be hoodwinked by a gush of tears, Sally. Amanda is just mad as a hornet because we won’t sell her share of the stock, and she wanted to make trouble for Oliver. Damn!” He kicked again at the snowbank. “Well, let her be patient a little longer, because as soon as the forest is sold, she’ll get her money.”

“I wish you’d believe me, Dan.”

Sally knew she sounded piteous, but the computer was flashing the iron-gray fortress-prison on the screen before her eyes, and she had lost her strength to combat him.

“Is it possible,” he said angrily, “that Amanda could have gone out to Red Hill after she left you?” Then, seeing the horror on her face, he corrected himself. “No, I forgot I asked you before and it’s as crazy as Amanda’s story. Let’s go in. It’s freezing out here.”

So quickly had he dismissed her! Still, she supposed, you couldn’t blame him. What if somebody were to tell her that her own father—it would be unthinkable.

Sometime soon, though, she would have to try again; she would have to relate the other part, by far the worst part, of the story. But not now. She ached for sleep, a few hours of forgetfulness. If only the fortress-prison did not loom again in her dreams …

February 1991

A
manda jumped off the cable car on the peak of Nob Hill. The soothing air of spring touched her face and she was not yet ready to go indoors. In a small park where children were still playing, she sat down; an extraordinary sense of lightness came to her as she watched them.

The day at the agency had been especially long and even more filled with desperate interviews than was usual. There had been one in particular, a runaway, sixteen years old, a delicate girl, sensitive and secretive. She had seen this girl twice before and been unable to pry much information from her. But something today had lit a lamp in her own mind and before she knew it, words had come tumbling from her mouth.

“I was molested,” she confessed. “My uncle did it to me when I was younger than you. I was
ashamed to let anyone know, and that was my big mistake.”

The girl had looked at her with such eyes—the startled eyes of some poor caught animal—and burst into tears. And after a while, with Amanda’s arm around her shoulders, she had begun at last to talk.

It might not have been professional, and very likely was not, she thought now, but it had worked. The girl had agreed to see a doctor and go to live in the home, shelter or halfway house or whatever you wanted to call it, that Amanda supported.

Thinking about all this, she was swept again by that extraordinary sense of lightness. She sat until it was almost dark, thinking about many things, and was still thinking, over her solitary supper, about that odd sensation of lightness.

“Sheba,” she said to the cat, who had curled itself over her ankle, “it is because a secret is a very heavy thing and that I’ve carried mine for too many years. So I had to get rid of it. But do not think that lightness means automatic happiness, whatever happiness means, for that matter. No, it does not. It only frees the mind to work more intelligently.”

When she had eaten, she went to sit by the window where the view spread widely over the bay to the bridge and the far, far East. When the cat sprang up beside her, turning up to her its heart-shaped little face and its wise green eyes, she spoke to it again.

“How that man lived with
his
secrets, I shall never fathom. I hope he sweated in agony through every sleepless night. But most probably he did not. It’s funny, it took me all these years to come to a resolution: that I would go there and face him, accuse him and make him pay. Of course, as Sally said, it would have been blackmail, and that is a very ugly thing. So his death spared me from doing that ugly thing, or shall I say ‘cheated me’? At any rate, it’s over.

“And here’s another funny thing: I do not want the money anymore. It isn’t worth the struggle. I have enough, more than enough. As Todd once said—I wonder what’s become of him? It’s been almost a year since he was here, sitting in that chair. ‘You’re getting your fair share,’ he told me, and he was right. The lawyer thought I was a fool yesterday when I phoned him to say that
I
was dropping the case against Grey’s Foods. ‘They’re loaded,’ he said. ‘They’re bound to give you something if only for nuisance value.’ Nuisance value! No, I don’t want to be anyone’s nuisance. I think too much of myself for that. ‘But we can take over the business,’ he said. ‘I’ve already got people with plenty of cash, Amanda.’ No, the case is closed.

“And I feel good about it, Sheba. I never really wanted to hurt Dan, or any person who hadn’t ever hurt me. Especially now, because something tells me that Dan is in terrible trouble.”

She stood and went to the telephone, picked it up and put it down, uncertain what to do. The
message to Dan about the company stock was simple; indeed, it would be a pleasure to feel again how reasonable, how magnanimous she really wanted to be. There was something else, though, which had been troubling her for over a month now, ever since, on that day of tumult, she had left Scythia.

I do believe Sally did it, she said to herself for the hundredth time. Remember how carefully she let me know that she had gone to the movies that night? She was so nervous that she could barely speak. Unless I am an utter fool …

There was too much coincidence for it to be coincidence. That man’s death, her own story, which Sally had heard with such visible horror, the carousel, Tina’s sick behavior, and at the last moment on the stairs, the horror again on Sally’s face as if, in that very instant, the truth had struck her down … It all fitted.

They don’t miss a thing, those detectives. They even gave me a hard time simply because I hadn’t returned the rented car until the morning after I was at Dan’s house. They will surely find out what happened. They may lie low for months but they will come up with the proof.

My God, poor girl, poor children, my poor brother!

This time she took up the telephone and dialed. It was evening in the East and Dan would probably be at home. When someone answered, who she guessed was the nanny, she asked to speak
to him. After a short delay, it was Sally who came to the telephone and offered to take the message.

“Well, it’s something about the business and you said you never have anything to do with it,” Amanda said.

“That’s so, but I can take a message.” Sally hesitated. “The fact is, Amanda, that Dan doesn’t want to talk to you. He’s very angry, angry and hurt. I told him about Oliver and he doesn’t believe it.”

“But you do?”

“Yes, yes I do.” Again she hesitated. “Dan loved Oliver so much, you see. He feels such gratitude, such respect, and he’s infuriated that you can say such things about him.”

With all the gentleness, there was fire in Sally. She wasn’t afraid of an unpleasant truth. She could have covered up by saying that Dan had guests or wasn’t feeling well, but she had not. She had been direct. Amanda liked that. And then, in the instant, she thought, it is this very quality that makes me all the more sure that she took things into her own hands that night.

“I understand,” she said, meaning it. “Then please tell Dan, and he can tell the others, that I withdraw the lawsuit I was planning, that I am satisfied with the financial arrangements we have always had, and that for my part they can do what they will with the forest.”

Sally was astonished. “But your project, your work with needy girls! The acreage you want to buy, and all your plans!”

“Dan told me once in an argument that my plans were grandiose, and they were. I can be just as helpful, perhaps more so, on a much smaller scale.”

Dan had also accused her of wanting to be admired and he hadn’t been far wrong there, either.

“I didn’t really need all that money. I only wanted to torture Oliver.”

“I understand very well,” Sally said in a voice so low that Amanda was not sure she had heard, and asked her to repeat it.

When she had done so, Amanda asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

At once the answering voice became brisk with the intonation of surprise. “Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?”