The Carousel

by Belva Plain

  “I’m glad to hear it. I understand that he doesn’t want to sell the forest to that group.”

  “I don’t know.” Sally did know, but she was annoyed at these attempts to draw her out. “I told you, I don’t get involved in the affairs of Grey’s Foods.” And then, having given this blunt reply, she softened it by plucking something out of her memory. “Dan boasts about your college commencement honors. He said you did wonderfully all the way through.”

  “Oh yes, but I can’t say I had a wonderful time doing it. I was never popular. I was really not very attractive.”

  “I find that hard to believe. You’re a lot more than merely attractive now.”

  Sally was extremely uncomfortable. In truth, these intimate, gloomy revelations repelled her, and she moved to change the subject.

  “Would you like to see the house? I’ll give you the tour if you want.”

  “The house and the children, of course.”

  Amanda was appreciating Sally’s row of photographs on the wall above Dan’s desk in the upstairs office, when Susannah in her pink bathrobe came tottering into the room.

  Nanny, following on her heels, cried out, “Would you believe it? She’s getting too fast for me. Hold on, miss, your hair’s still wet. Let me dry it.” For Susannah was laughing, wrestling away from Nanny and the towel.

  “There. Now go to your mommy.”

  Sally picked her up. “This is Amanda. Can you wave to her, like this?”

  Five fingers wiggled toward Amanda, who wiggled back.

  “May I hold her, or will she be terrified of me?”

  “She’ll go to you. Most babies this age are terrified of strangers, but for some reason, this one seldom is. Try her.”

  Amanda held out her arms, and Susannah allowed herself to be transferred.

  “The beauty!” Amanda cried. “Look at you! You’re adorable. She’s adorable, Sally. How old is she?”

  Sally said proudly, “One, and she seems to have no fears.”

  Amanda nodded. “She’ll meet life easily, I predict. Look at that smile. Now, where is Tina?”

  Nanny answered. “Playing. She’s a bit cranky today,” and she directed a tactful look toward Sally. “I’m trying to get her downstairs for supper.”

  “Perhaps we’d better let her alone, then,” suggested Sally.

  “Let’s see her,” Amanda said. “Who cares whether she’s cranky? We all get like that. God knows, I do.”

  Sally thought it more prudent to explain that something a bit more than “cranky” was meant.

  “We’ve been having a little problem with her lately. Nothing serious,” she quickly amended, “but every now and then she has a stubborn spell when she simply refuses to talk. Nothing serious,” she repeated, “just annoying.”

  “I won’t be annoyed,” Amanda said.

  While crossing the hall, they heard the music-box tinkle of “The Blue Danube” waltz.

  Tina was standing beside the carousel. At the sight of her mother with a stranger, she ran straight out of the room.

  “Tina, come back and say hello,” said Sally, knowing very well that no attention would be paid. She turned to Amanda and apologized. “Yes, it’s one of her cranky days. We’ll let her go down with Nanny. She’ll be in a better humor after her supper,” she explained, without being at all sure of any better humor.

  The carousel was still playing. “Damn thing,” she said, turning it off. “It’s a present from Hawthorne. I get so sick of hearing that tune.”

  Amanda had covered her face with her hands. She was just standing there, trembling.

  “What is it?” cried Sally.

  “That awful thing. That awful thing was mine, a present to me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Amanda was staring at the carousel as if she had been stricken and paralyzed.

  Sally cried, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Amanda shook her head. “Nothing, nothing important. I’m sorry … I was just thinking. I’m sorry.”

  “But you’re ill! It has to be something. You’re frightening the life out of me!”

  “No, no, forget it. I don’t want to come to your house and make trouble.” This was most strange behavior, and Sally wished Dan were there to cope with his sister.

  Nevertheless, taking Amanda’s arm, she said kindly, “If I can help you, it will have been no trouble at all. But if you leave me with a mystery after scaring me so, I’ll have to say it was a lot of trouble. Please, I need to know.”

  “I—I was just stunned for a minute, that’s all. It’s dreadful for me to come to your house and do this to you. I’m awfully sorry.”

  Amanda was looking at Sally with the expression people wear when they are making an estimate or considering a decision to purchase something. The brilliant eyes, Dan’s eyes, met Sally’s and stayed.

  “I have never, never in all my life told this to anyone. And I’m wondering whether I should even tell you.”

  “As you please. But whatever it is that can do to you what it did just now should be told to somebody before it goes off like a bomb and blows you apart.”

  “I know. You’re a very kind woman, Sally. I remember telling you that once after I had seen your photographs.”

  “Thank you. I try to be kind.”

  Two large, slow tears slid down Amanda’s cheeks. “Many, many times I’ve thought I must tell, but when the moment comes, I’m never able to.”

  “Are you able now?”

  Of course Sally was curious; anybody would be. Yet in another way, she did not want to hear more. Her own worries weighed heavily enough.

  Amanda drew a long sigh. “Yes,” she answered. “I’m able.” Then she gave a wry little laugh. “You’d better make yourself comfortable because it’s not a short story.

  “It was the sight of the carousel,” she began. “It was given to me when I was twelve, a bribe, the price of silence, although I didn’t need it. I would have kept silence anyway. And I have.

  “And there were so many people, friends and those distant relatives who came to the memorial service for my parents, so well meaning, so comforting. ‘You will be in the best home a girl could have,’ they said, ‘living at Hawthorne in such a family.’ I was told that over and over. Even the servants at Hawthorne used to say so.

  “Nobody understood why I cried so much all the year I was there, why I was so rebellious and full of anger. But I was scared, so scared. I used to sit alone in my room, or sometimes under a tree with a book that I wasn’t able to read because the words all ran together.”

  The words were all running together now, in a slow, monotonous stream. Amanda’s eyes were half shut, her fingers playing with the clasp of her purse. And Sally was mesmerized by the sight of her pain, as when seeing on television a flood of refugees, the walking wounded, and although you cannot bear the sight of them, you are unable to look away.

  “People tried for a plausible explanation of my behavior: the horrible deaths of my father and mother, and I only twelve, at the sensitive start of adolescence. Aunt Lucille could not have been more gentle with me. Every day she spent hours trying to distract me with walks, lessons, little trips, dresses and new books. She didn’t know about the nights, nights when she was downstairs playing the piano or at the weekly meeting of her women’s club …”

  Finish, finish, Sally said inaudibly. For God’s sake hurry and say what you have to say.

  But the voice resumed its own dreamy pace. “I was in my bed. He came the first time just to sit on the edge of it and talk. He held my hand, and I was grateful for the warmth of his touch. ‘You’re lonesome,’ he said, ‘I will come again.’ And he came again. The next time he held his hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming.… At twelve a girl thinks she knows everything about life and sex, doesn’t she? But she knows nothing. There’s nothing written that can tell you what it is like to have—to have that happen.”

  Sally was abruptly aware of her own body, of her heartbeat and
rigid spine; leaning forward, as if to hear more clearly, she wrapped her long sweater in tight concealment of that body, as if to protect it. Her frightened eyes fastened themselves on the other woman, whose own drifting gaze went far beyond and away from this place.

  “I cannot forget the smallest detail of that room. There was a branch that tapped at one of the windows all that winter. The curtains were white dotted Swiss. The tiebacks were held by painted metal pansies. The clock on the dresser clicked at the half hour and the hour. I used to lie awake to listen for it, listen for footsteps coming lightly down the hall, and then for the turn of the knob. There was no lock on the door.

  “One night he brought me the silver carousel. I had admired it and played with it, so he gave it to me. Yes, it was a bribe. There were threats, too. ‘If you tell, Amanda, nobody will believe you. And God will punish you, anyway, for what you have done.’ That’s how it was.”

  A terrible anger surged into Sally’s throat, and she thought she was tasting blood. If Clive had done this to Amanda, why not, then, Tina?

  “Clive,” she said. “Clive.”

  Amanda raised her head. “What? Clive? Ah, poor, sad Clive. Of course not. Don’t you know that I’ve been talking about Oliver?”

  For an instant, Sally’s mind went blank and, uncomprehending, she stared back at Amanda.

  “He was right,” Amanda said bitterly. “He told me no one would believe it, and I see you don’t. You’re thinking,” Amanda said, “that I am hallucinating or that I’ve had what’s called a ‘recovered memory,’ persuaded by some incompetent or dishonest therapist that this really happened to me. There are people who truly have recovered their buried memories, just as there are frauds and hysterics, but I’m none of them. I have lived consciously with this every day of my life since it happened, and I swear to you that it is all true.”

  “But Oliver. Oliver Grey?”

  “Yes, it’s like the first time someone tells a child that the man in the Santa Claus suit isn’t Santa Claus.”

  Amanda stood up and walked restlessly around the room, looking out the window, touching a book and setting it down, cradling a paperweight and putting it back. Then she said, “You’ll need to know how it ended. It was when Aunt Lucille caught him coming out of my room. I think she must have been watching before that night because when he opened my door to leave, I saw her standing right there under the hall light, waiting. Then I heard voices from their room, which was near mine. They had a terrible quarrel, and I heard her crying. I lay there frightened to death, wondering what was going to happen next, even whether I was going to be punished. And I hated him so, I hoped she would kill him.

  “In the morning she called me to her. Her eyes were red, and she said it was from her allergy. She put her arm around me and asked me whether I would like to go away to boarding school. ‘Lots of girls go.’ she said, ‘I think you’d like it, wouldn’t you? Maybe out in California near your mother’s cousins.’

  “Neither one of us, you see, was able to put the truth out into the light of day. You have to remember that this was in the sixties. People didn’t yet admit that such things happened. She was a submissive woman; even though I was only thirteen years old by then, I saw that she was. All the time she had her arm around me, we didn’t look at each other. And she went on talking about how she loved me and she knew I would be all right because the school she was thinking of was small and friendly. I would even be allowed to take my dog.

  “The night before I left, I brought all the bribes, the gold watch, the bracelet, and most of all the silver carousel, and dumped them on the floor in his study. The only thing I took with me when I left was my toy poodle, Coco. I didn’t want to leave Dan, he was such a little boy, but I could only think of how I wanted to get away from Oliver Grey. So, a few days later, I left. I remember Dan with eyes all round and tearful and astonished. ‘You’re going away, Amanda?’ he asked. I don’t remember what I told him.”

  Still—Oliver Grey! And if this is true—if—then he has done this to our Tina. Feeling faint, she grasped the arms of the chair; then, rallying, she denied the thought. This whole story was preposterous. Oliver Grey?

  “I didn’t mind so much leaving Dan, since he was having a good time living with two other boys, even though they were older. Aunt Lucille was there.” Amanda broke off for a moment as if to prepare for what was next. “She was not there long. I want you to know that she was a particularly careful driver. I remember her saying to me one day as she slowed the car down, ‘This is a dreadful spot for an accident, this sharp curve and then the culvert. A car can skid right into the river. It’s a disgrace that it hasn’t been fixed.’ Yes, I remember that well.”

  “So you really believe she killed herself.”

  “Either that, or she was so distraught that she didn’t see where she was going. But I rather believe she did it on purpose, that he had destroyed her reason. She couldn’t bear to look at her husband ever again. I’m sure I wouldn’t have.”

  Sally opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

  “I see that you still don’t quite believe me. I can’t blame you. Oliver Grey, the benefactor. Bizarre, isn’t it.”

  Then Sally found voice. “Why did you never tell anyone? All these years, there must have been people you could talk to. Now you come here, and all of a sudden you tell me.”

  “I didn’t intend to tell you. It was the sight of the carousel that struck me. I can see it still, that shining, fabulous toy, as it stood on a table in the library, reflected in the mirror. Venetian glass, the mirror was, with a delicate fluted border. I see it clearly. He had exquisite taste, that monster.”

  “And if it weren’t for seeing the carousel just now? You’re saying you would never have told anybody?”

  “No, I said I never had told. In the beginning, when I was at the school, I was still too shocked and ashamed. You couldn’t have dragged the story out of me. Later, I tried a few times to talk with professionals who I thought would be able to show me how to be trusting and lovable again. But when I got there, I couldn’t speak the words. Then I had worries about Dan and the other boys, too. I didn’t want them to suffer the public disgrace.” Amanda smiled. “Maybe, too, I have a trace of the damn Grey pride.”

  The room seemed suddenly too full to contain any more. The walls closed in, the air was thick and sultry with threat. If all this is true, Sally thought, then what else must be true? That he has done this to Tina … to my baby?

  Amanda spoke into the silence. “I haven’t seen him since I left here. I didn’t go to your wedding reception because I couldn’t bear to look at him. I’m going to see him now, though. I can’t get my rights from the young men, but I’m going to get them from the old one, I promise you.”

  Sally forced herself back to the moment, back from the horror that she still could not let herself believe.

  “Your rights? The buyout, you mean.”

  “Yes, every dollar and cent of it. He’ll pay.”

  “He has nothing to do with it. He leaves it all to Ian and Clive and Dan. He won’t even give his opinion.”

  “Of course he won’t. He’s afraid of me. That’s the only thing that’s given me any satisfaction, the thought that he’s lived in fear of me every day of his life.”

  “But that’s blackmail.”

  “You may call it that.”

  “And the rest of the family, the young men, as you call them. What do you think you will do to them?”

  “I can’t help it.”

  So she will bring us all down to have her revenge on him, Sally thought. And she thought of Dan’s labor, his pride and satisfaction in running the grand old company.

  Yet, can you blame her—if it is true?

  “I shiver to think of walking into that house again. That bedroom. That dining room with Lucille’s portrait. That big linen closet where I used to sit and hide behind the long tablecloths hung on a rod. I was scared, too scared to make a sound.”

  Somet
hing happened to Sally. A picture flared: Last summer under the piano, with the window curtains drawn over her, hiding, dumb …

  “I’ve never had a loving relationship with a man, even a man I love. I still have nightmares.”

  Nightmares. The cry from across the hall: Mommy! Mommy!

  Amanda returned to the window and looked out. “The snow’s coming fast. I’d better start back to the hotel.”

  “I guess you’d better,” said Sally, making no move to stop her.

  “I’ve spoiled your day. I’m truly sorry, Sally. It wasn’t a pretty story, was it?”

  “No, not pretty.”

  They were at the top of the stairs looking down when they heard the carousel. Tina must have come back.

  River so blue, da da, da da.

  Amanda stopped with her hand on the banister. “Perhaps I shouldn’t say this,” she began.

  “Say it,” Sally cried sharply. “Say it. Whatever it is.”

  “All right. Did you say Oliver gave that thing to you?”

  Sally thought she was falling, and gripped the banister. “I don’t recall what I said. It was a present for Tina, from Hawthorne. We thought it was from Clive. He adores her. He gave her a pony,” she said, faltering and scarcely able to speak.

  “A silver carousel, a museum piece. A queer gift for a child.”

  “She—loved it. She said she wanted it.”

  Amanda gave her a long look. “I advise you to see about it, Sally. Yes, you had better.”

  As soon as the front door closed, Sally ran back upstairs. “Control yourself. Don’t panic,” she said aloud. And slowing her steps to normal, she went into the room where the carousel tinkled and glittered.

  “Time for a bath.”

  She spoke cheerfully, lightly. It was important to keep everything normal when you wanted to get at the truth, not press, not hasten, not frighten.

  “No,” said Tina. “No bath.”

  “Ah, but it’s so cold out, and a hot bath will be cozy.”

  “No, I said.”