The Carousel (37 page)

“Jesus,” Dan said. “You’re sure you heard it right?”

“I’m hardly apt to forget that scene.”

“Did Happy hear it?”

“No, she was in the hall telephoning for help.”

“So you kept the promise,” Dan said. “But then yesterday you broke it. Why?”

Ian looked him straight in the eye. “Frankly, I was furious that you went back on your word about the sale. It flashed through my mind that if I were to tell you about Sally, you would pay me back by doing what I want, that you would appreciate my having kept quiet during all the investigation.”

“Yes,” Dan said, with a bitter smile, “quid pro quo.”

“Just about.”

“Well, but if I were unwilling to pay you back, you would have told.”

“Not at all. Never. I swear I would not. What good would it do to send Sally to prison, or even to risk a prison sentence? Wrecking your children wouldn’t bring Father back.” He mused. “Even if it hadn’t been an accident.”

“It was an accident, Ian.”

“All right, I believe you. I also know that plenty of people would say he deserved it, accident or not.”

To that Dan gave no answer. Deserved it! My baby girl! And again came that image: black braids, red ribbons, chubby legs in white socks. Once more his eyes filled; he hadn’t had wet eyes since the day of his parents’ funeral.

“What’s the use?” cried Ian, throwing up his hands. “It’s over. The harm can’t be undone. He’s buried, along with the good he did and the harm he did. We can’t bring him back; if I could, I would beg him to tell me why. For God’s sake, why? But there’s no answer.… I suppose
you’ve taken Tina someplace to repair the damage.”

“Yes, and we’d appreciate it if you kept that strictly to yourself. We don’t want Tina to become a public victim.”

“You don’t have to tell me, Dan. Do you think I would hurt your kid? Well, we grew up together. I’ve got my ways, but I’ve got my limits, too.”

It was overwhelming. Mind and body, accustomed to a predictable routine, an orderly environment, all the ingredients of respectability and responsibility, needed more than the last twenty-four hours to comprehend that a bomb had been dropped upon the Greys of Hawthorne.

And Dan looked around the room where three generations of those Greys had done their work. His glance stopped at a vase of daffodils on Ian’s desk; they were a reminder that the days had been growing longer and that the grim sky outside would again turn blue. Spring. But for us, he asked himself, what spring?

“She wants to give herself up,” he said abruptly.

“She can’t do that. There’s no sense in it.”

“She says she can’t live with herself.”

“Let me talk to her.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Dan—”

“Yes?”

“It’s suddenly become so unimportant, but—we have to give those people an answer.”

“About the sale.” His mind had been so far
from the woods and the sale that he had to jerk it back into focus. And he made a neutral palms-up gesture, saying, “It doesn’t matter to me, except that I promised Clive.”

“An academic problem. He won’t be here much longer, poor guy, as I’ve already said.”

“I don’t know about that, but if it’s so, that sort of gives you the answer, doesn’t it?”

“Okay. Then we’ll wait. They’re not coming for another month, anyway.”

“Do you still want the money that badly?” Dan asked curiously.

“Twenty-eight million, brother. Half goes to the IRS, then divide the other half among us and—”

Funny how a man can be so large-minded as Ian had shown himself to be just now and still be so greedy! It must be some gene, like having a gift for music or an allergy to shrimp.

He finished Ian’s sentence: “And you would still have a fortune, more than you need.”

“I hate to say this, Dan, but if Sally does anything foolish, you’ll need every cent of that and more for lawyers.”

Dan struggled to swallow the thing, the lump in his throat that was simply stuck there, growing larger.

“I can’t work today,” he said. “I have to get back. I have to be with her.”

“Sure, sure. Go ahead.”

He put out his hand, which Ian took, pressing hard, and then he went home.

March 1991

I
n the silent house Sally went from room to room, with the heavy, patient Newfoundland padding behind her. She ought to have taken the children to the neighbor’s birthday party herself, but the energy just hadn’t been there, so Nanny had taken them instead. The energy was never there anymore.

At every mirror she stopped, in the unfounded hope that the next one would show a less devastating image. It was not a question of vanity; that sort of thing belonged now to another phase of her life, a phase to which she could never return. It was a question of terror.

This was how she would look in prison, or worse. She had already lost twenty pounds since that night in December, and would no doubt lose more. A study in gray and black, she thought now: gray skin and black hair, the hair that, standing out
on either side of her cheeks like a pair of fans, had once reminded Dan of an ancient Egyptian portrait.

She remembered every detail of that day, from the first glancing encounter in the shop with the silver carousel, to the café where they had sat drinking cup after cup of coffee until it was almost dark. She remembered the slow walk together under the burgeoning trees, the famous view from the terrace outside the Jeu de Paume to the Arc de Triomphe, a tiny boy and a tiny dog sitting together in a stroller, and the old woman selling violets out of a wicker basket. She remembered everything.

Well wrapped in a thick tweed skirt and a twin set of sweaters, she was still shivering; the wind that swept the bare trees, so that they swayed to it as if begging mercy, had crept through every crack of wood and fissure of brick into the house itself. Or perhaps, she thought, it is only because I am so thin that I am so cold.

In the kitchen it seemed to be warmer. And putting the kettle on to boil, she sat down to wait for a tall mug of tea. Kitchens were homelike; their very walls drew themselves around you. It seemed as if no harm could reach a person, here in the heart of the house with the kettle singing, the bananas heaped in the old blue bowl, and the dog so comfortably asleep under the table.

At home, her parents’ home, they had kept cats. The white one, appropriately called Blanche, had owned her perch on the window ledge where
she liked to groom herself in the sun, licking each pink paw in turn. Then there had been Cordelia, after Blanche, and Emma and Mathilda. Saturday mornings in that house meant pancakes and bacon; in a jug at the center of the round table there was always a handful of something green, in summer whatever was in bloom and in winter a sprig of holly or pine.

All these things are part of you; these they can never take away. They can lock you up for as long as they want in the gray fortress-prison, but these things will stay with you, these childhood houses and people, your first independent proud success, your love for Dan and the days when your children were born.

The hot tea warmed her hands, which clasped the mug, but the chill still ran in her veins. It was the chill of dread. And, she told herself in total honesty, it is not merely the dread of what will be done to me—although it is that, too—but mainly it is an awful grief because of the children and Dan, and because of my parents, who as yet have a pristine image of my happiness. If it were my suffering alone, it would be bearable, and even though I am not especially brave, I would bear it, just as Clive bears the cancer that sooner or later will kill him.

Hearing the sound of a car in the driveway, she knew it would be Dan; he had left work early to call for Nanny and the girls at the party. She was making a mess of his workdays; if it were possible, she knew, he would give up work altogether to
stay at home and watch her. That morning he had absolutely forbidden her to go out today, and she wondered whether it was because she looked so ill or whether in some uncanny fashion, he had sensed the change in her, her final resolve to speak out.

When she glanced up at the clock she noted the date on the calendar hanging below it. It was a memorable date, the day on which Dr. Lisle had told her that Tina had been molested and also the birthday of the monster who had done it. Beyond the red silk curtains, there had been a strong March wind like the one that was howling now. And somebody had remarked upon the carousel, the duplicate of the one that had brought Dan and her together. It all came back to her.

But the day, thank God, was memorable now for a better reason: Tina had at last been making some real, positive improvements. There was still far to go, that was true, yet the direction was clear and unmistakable.

The family now burst into the kitchen. Right away Nanny gave the thumbs-up sign, meaning that Tina had done well at the party. The girls put their loot bags, filled with miniature Hershey bars, plastic dolls, rubber balls, and sundries, on the table, while Sally unbuttoned their Sunday coats.

Tina had an announcement. “I told Jennifer my sister is better than hers.”

“What makes you say that?” asked Sally.

“Because. My sister’s bigger and knows more words. Her sister’s dumb.”

“Dumb,” said Susannah. “Dumb, dumb, dumb.”

Tina laughed. “You see!”

Tina’s laugh! It was worth gold. Gold and diamonds and pearls. Tina’s long-lost gurgle of a laugh, with her cheeks puffed and her mischievous eyes gleaming.

And Sally gathered the two girls in her arms, hugging, rocking, and laughing with them.

Dan, watching, had a look on his face that broke her heart.

Almost every night it seemed, no matter how they tried to fill the space of time with something else, they returned to the same subject.

“It’s Amanda’s endurance that I can’t get over,” Sally said. “To live with that all these years! And no one had sense enough to see her suffering and try to find the cause.”

“But as you said, she never wanted to reveal it.”

“Yes, the Greys’ pride, she told me.”

“Pride,” Dan said bitterly. “It turned her into an angry woman.”

“She had plenty to be angry about.… And you remember nothing?”

“Just phrases here and there, servants’ whispers, long after she had left. They called her a ‘difficult girl.’ I didn’t think much about it. I didn’t even have much more than a quick impression of the day she left. It was all so sudden. Nobody had ever said she wasn’t going to stay on at Hawthorne with me. I remember, I can still see her standing in the front hall with suitcases and a little poodle in a
carrier. I was trying not to cry—Uncle Oliver said boys don’t cry—but of course I did cry awfully. It was hard. First the helicopter crash, Dad and Mom disappearing, not even any bodies left, and now Amanda going away. It was hard. Yes.” Dan nodded. “But then, as children do, I got over it. I got happy. I had a good life at Hawthorne.”

“Didn’t you think it was strange that she didn’t come home at all?”

“Well, there were those nice relatives in California, and I went there to visit every summer. Amanda didn’t want to come home and Uncle Oliver said that was okay, that she shouldn’t be forced to do anything against her will.”

For Sally, there was a kind of comfort in thinking about Amanda. She had somehow survived; at least she hadn’t foundered. Therefore, with the love and the care that Tina was being given, she ought to do very much better, ought to do more than merely survive.

“I wish I had known Amanda,” Sally said. “She’s a valiant woman, and a loving one too, I suspect. Think of how she withdrew her claim to the stock and apologized for having made it in the first place.”

Dan agreed. “Let’s invite her for a long stay as soon as spring warms up. I’d like that. In fact, let’s phone her now and ask her.”

Sally put up her arm. “No, wait. We don’t know what will be happening this next month or two.”

“If you’re back on that theme, Sally, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Dan, you have to hear it.” Her voice sank very low. “I can’t go on like this much longer. In fact, not any longer.”

They were in their bedroom. She was lying back on the little sofa at the foot of the bed, and now he came to sit at her feet.

“Listen to me,” he said earnestly, “and tell me the truth. You’re worried because Ian knows. Isn’t that it?”

“No, I trust Ian. He wouldn’t hurt the children or me. It’s not on account of him at all. It’s on account of me.”

“Sally! It was an accident!” he cried. And he reproached her. “You’re torturing yourself needlessly. Can’t you put it in a compartment and lock it away in your head?”

“You wouldn’t say that if you were a lawyer.”

“Then I’m glad I’m not.”

“But we all live under the law.”

“Please don’t lecture me.”

“I’m not. Maybe I sound pious or something, but there is such a thing as conscience and mine nags me day and night. Day and night, Dan.”

“He deserved to die.”

“I know, but not at my hands.”

“Your hands.” He bent down and kissed them, murmuring, “Sally, you’ll kill me and the little girls. I beg you, don’t do this terrible thing to us. And what good will it do anyway for you to go
through a trial and be judged, and God forbid, be sent to prison? What will it prove?”