The Carousel (3 page)

“Hold it, Father!” said Sally, reaching for her
Leica, which was under her chair. “Look up at me and then blow out the candles. Don’t worry about moving. This camera is fast, fast.”

All this was ritual, as was Oliver’s benign, concluding remark about peace and harmony.

“This is what life is all about, a family gathered together in peace and harmony.” He pushed his chair back. “Shall we go inside?” “Inside” meant of course the library, where liqueurs would be served in spite of the fact that in 1990 hardly anyone drank liqueurs anymore, and where the gifts would be opened. Like all rooms in the Big House, the library was large, and like most of them, it had a fireplace. In this one tonight, a hearty fire burned. Chairs and two sofas made a semicircle in front of it, where a silver coffee service had been set on a low table. Propped against the curve of the piano at the far end of the room was the family’s joint gift.

Happy said, “Sally, you open it for Father. It was your idea and you arranged it, so you deserve the honor.”

Sally shook her head. “I don’t deserve any more than anybody else. You do it, Happy.”

Two vertical anxiety lines formed between Dan’s eyes when he looked at Sally, but he said nothing. Happy cut the string, and the paper fell away from a painting of a large, rambling log house, a palatial Adirondack “camp.”

“Red Hill at my favorite time of year! All those oaks and sumacs—it’s beautiful!” Oliver exclaimed.

“We thought,” Ian said, “you might like to be reminded of it when you’re not there, since you’ve got a picture of Hawthorne when you’re at Red Hill.”

“Perfect. A beautiful present, and I thank you all. I’m going to hang it in my upstairs den.”

The fire crackled. Outdoors the March wind roared, making the room, in contrast, even warmer and brighter. On the floor-to-ceiling shelves crowded books made a mosaic of soft colors. More books lay on well-waxed tables. Both shelves and tables, as well as cabinets, displayed collections and curios, Roman coins, enamel miniatures of eighteenth-century courtiers, gem-studded thimbles, a black silk Japanese fan, an old parchment-colored globe, a silver carousel.

Clive, who adored their child, said to Sally and Dan, “Your Tina is crazy about the carousel.”

And Dan, still with that faint look of concern, put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Think, if it hadn’t been for the twin of this thing, we wouldn’t be here together.”

“Your lucky day, Dan,” said Ian, coming alongside.

His eyes always seemed to roll downward, not so overtly as to insult his cousin’s wife, but enough to make her aware that he was judging her, reckoning her as a sexual object. And then, raising his head to the level of hers, his eyes would widen ever so slightly with a kind of conspiratorial sparkle.

“My lucky day, too,” Sally retorted, a trifle too sharply.

At parties, discreetly, Ian flirted, even with a young waitress passing hors d’oeuvres. Sally was almost sure she had seen him a few years ago picking up a woman at a salad bar while Happy was at the table. And Happy adored him so! Was it possible that she didn’t see? More likely, she did not want to see. And an old saying came to mind—French, was it?—about there always being one who loves and one who is loved. She had repeated it once to Dan, and he had replied that it was not always so, that it was surely not true of themselves.

A sudden pity for Happy rose in Sally, and she walked deliberately to sit beside her, saying, “Tina loved the yellow dress. You’re so sweet to think of her all the time.”

“I never can resist buying things in the children’s department. I could just see her in that yellow with those black braids of hers. Besides, since the baby came, she needs an unexpected present, a little extra attention.”

“Yes,” said Sally.

“Not that you and Dan don’t give it to her.” Happy was pouring coffee. “Sit here, Clive, and have some cookies. I know you want some, and it’s nobody’s business but yours,” she said firmly, adding to the rest of the group, “so no comments.”

An object of compassion, Clive was thinking as he bit into an almond macaroon, that’s what it’s come down to. Or what it’s always been. Of
course, Happy’s admonition was directed at Ian. Once Oliver, not aware that Clive was within hearing, had talked to Ian about “being kinder to your brother.”

And Ian replied, “I am kind to him. It’s just that he always thinks he’s being slighted.” Whereupon Oliver, my father who loves me and is loved by me, only sighed and sighed again, “I know.”

I suppose, Clive thought now, taking another macaroon, I probably do think I’m being slighted even when it’s not so; one gets in the habit. Everyone is, after all, so polite, so generous with compliments. For am I not the genius with figures? “Genius”! What do they know about the marvel of numbers, their tricks that are so honest and so clean; there’s nothing devious about numbers; they tell no lies, give no flattery. Those so very respectful employees do not know that I know what they call me: the half-pint, whereas Ian is the gallon.

Why do I have these waves of—yes, admit it—hatred of Ian? And none at all for Dan, who also has everything I don’t have? Ian sits there talking low-voiced to our father, with his long legs crossed, at ease; at the same time he is probably savoring the memory of his latest woman. Not that I can ever prove anything, and yet I know. I know. For me, a purchased woman now and then, I hating myself for the purchase, while his women will be beautiful, as why should they not be? Look at him! Tell me, to what accursed ancestor do I
owe this body of mine? And I am getting bald, too.

Clive turned, then, to observation. Had it not become his role in a social situation, removed as he was from the active center, to analyze and observe? Very little escaped him. Tonight, he saw, Sally was withdrawn from them all, staring across the room at nothing. It was not like her. She was a striking young woman, with her very white skin and very black hair, vivacious and ready with clever anecdotes about the people and places that she and her camera had seen. He wondered what was wrong tonight, what she was seeing in the empty air.

She was looking not into empty air, but at the silver carousel. After the shock of this day, a kind of nostalgic melancholy had come over her.…

The woman in the antique shop said, “It’s solid silver, you know, a nineteenth-century piece made by a court jeweler in Vienna. A rare treasure.”

“And a rare price, too,” the young man retorted. “No, I’m only looking because we have its twin at home. My uncle bought his in Vienna years ago.”

“This one plays ‘Voices of Spring.’ ”

“Ours plays ‘The Blue Danube’ waltz.”

It was just then that their eyes met. She was used to being looked at and knew how to turn away. That time she did not turn away, and they went out together.

They were in Paris. The afternoon light was turning a clouded sky from blue to an opalescent
green. He asked her name. She hesitated. He was proper-looking in his dark blue business suit, striped tie, and polished shoes. He was tall and muscular, with sandy hair and a good-humored sunburnt face. Still, she was wary.

“Stupid question. Why should you tell me your name? You shouldn’t. I’ll tell you mine, though. Here’s my card.”

“ ‘Daniel R. Grey,’ ” she read, and under that, “ ‘Grey’s Foods, International Division.’ That’s you? The coffee, the pizza, and the preserves?”

He nodded. “I’m here in France to buy a chocolate company. Wonderful chocolate stuffed with marrons and liqueurs and other good things.”

Of course, anybody could pick up a business card. And yet, there was something about the man that said “Believe me.”

“I’m Sally Morrow. I’m a photographer. I do celebrities and authors for book jackets, stuff like that. I’ve just given myself a week’s vacation in Paris.”

“Will you give yourself an hour to have coffee with me? I have a favorite place on the Île de la Cité. We can sit in the sun and watch the people.”

A pickup, she thought, that’s all this is. And yet, what harm can come from sitting outdoors in a public square?

No harm at all. Six months later, they were married.…

Dan got up and crossed the room toward her. “What is it? You look far away. You look sad.”

She wanted to stand and put her arms around
him, wanted to say I love you, I’m so grateful for you, I’m so terribly scared, and I don’t want to dump all my fear on you.

But she said only, “I was just reminiscing, seeing the carousel on the shelf.”

“And that made you sad?”

“But I’m not sad. Really. Truly.” She smiled brightly, willing her face to sparkle.

“I said,” Ian called, “I said, Dan—”

Dan blinked. “Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I had another call from that Swedish consortium today.”

Instantly alert, Dan said, “I thought that proposition was dead.”

“It did seem so, but there’s been a revival. Some powerful money, British and Dutch, is eager to participate. They want to start talking again.”

Dan shook his head. “I don’t want to talk, Ian. I haven’t changed my mind.”

“But you haven’t heard what they’re offering. Twenty-eight million.” Waiting for a reaction and getting none, Ian added, “That’s if we sell it all off, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t.”

Dan said then, “I gave you plenty of reasons when this came up a year and a half ago.”

“We didn’t have an offer like this one then.”

“If it were twice the size now, I would still say no.”

Ian’s posture changed from ease to tension, and leaning toward Dan, he demanded, “Still worried about the trees and the birds?”

A good-natured jibe, Ian would call it if he were challenged. Ordinarily, it would not have bothered Sally; they were all used to Ian’s manner, always blunt and sometimes even rough. But today, with her nerves on edge, she resented it.

“I definitely am. We’re killing them both, right and left. And a lot more besides.”

“Frankly, I’m concerned about people, Dan.”

“I’m thinking about them too, Ian. About people hiking or just sitting and feeling the natural world around them.”

“You’re a sentimentalist.”

“I don’t think so. I think I’m highly practical. You build your ‘new city,’ you put thirty thousand people up there—isn’t that what you said last year?—and you’ll destroy the water supply God knows how far away. I’m no engineer, I can’t give exact figures, I only know, and you do too, that forests are natural cover for a water supply. But what’s the use of going over the whole thing again?”

“You admit you’re not an engineer, so why not leave water and all the rest of it to the engineers? Listen, Dan, listen—you’d like to stop progress, but it can’t be done. Set your mind on the twenty-first century.”

Gloom settled on Dan’s face. “My mind’s already on it.”

“Well, if it is, you’re aware of how the population’s growing. People are going to need roofs over their heads. This group I’m talking about has a brilliant concept, a handsome planned community, no helter-skelter growth—”

Dan interrupted. “A roof over their heads! Before you pollute the mountains, installing people miles away from their work, incidentally, why not tear down the old ramshackle factories and warehouses in the heart of town? Rebuild the town with the same kind of handsome houses, but that people can afford.”

“Okay, do that too. I’m for it. But the one has nothing to do with the other. You don’t want to cut down trees, but they’re doing it all over the world, anyway. These few more won’t make a damn bit of difference. Why should we be so holy? I’m telling you if we don’t accept this proposal, we ought to have our heads examined. Ask any man on the street whether he’d turn this offer down, and he’d laugh at you for even asking the question. ‘Why, take the money and run,’ he’d say. And he’d be right.”

“That’s your opinion, not mine.”

“Listen to me. The way we work, you flying all over the globe to keep this business running … the more I think of it, the more I’m tempted to enjoy life while I’m young, get rid of this land, liquidate the business, and find something easier to do with our lives. Give me one good reason.”

“I can give you plenty. You shock me.” Dan’s voice trembled. “Because the land has been in this family for—how many generations, Oliver?”

Suddenly Oliver looked old. His voice was tired. “First, in the eighteenth century, there was the farm in the valley, running up into the foothills. Then later when money came into the family,
they bought mountain land for a couple of pennies an acre, I suppose.” He gave a short laugh, tired too, and continued. “During the First World War my grandfather rounded out the whole, just because he loved wild places, I guess. We’ve kept it ever since.”

“Loved it,” Dan repeated with a bitter emphasis. “Yes, yes. An inheritance, a trust. Now we sit here talking, after two centuries, two centuries, mind you, of ruining it all, throwing it away for a bellyful of thousand-dollar bills.”

“Make that million-dollar bills,” Ian said.

“No matter!” Dan’s voice rose, so that one of the dogs, feeling the reverberation of it, got up and laid a head on Oliver’s knee. “No, let me finish. You asked for reasons. Liquidate this business, you said. Grey’s Foods. Four generations of labor. Grapes in the west, apples in the east. Farms, salesmen, packers, canners, bakers, truckers, bottlers—why, one of every four families in three counties has or has had a member who works for Grey’s. Talk to any of them and you’ll find out how they feel. They want their jobs, and they want their familiar environment. We’re an institution, Ian, another trust. I don’t know what the hell you can be thinking of.”

Ian laughed. “Money.”

Dan fell silent. No one moved. Happy stared into the ebbing fire, Sally looked anxiously toward her husband, Clive examined his nicotine-stained fingers, and Oliver stroked the dog’s head.

Presently, Dan asked, “Don’t you want to say anything, Oliver?”

“This is very hard on me, Dan. I guess I don’t need to tell you my feelings about the business and the land. But they’re all yours now, you young people, yours to decide among yourselves. I made that very clear to you when I turned the company over to you. I resigned. I told you I would take part in no decisions from then on and I meant it.”