The Carousel (6 page)

Todd helped. When the few dishes had been removed to the kitchen, he walked around the living room.

“You’ve got a miniature museum here. This Bonnard’s a treasure, the meadow and the hedgerows, and this little still life, the green grapes—beautiful stuff, Amanda.”

“Unsolicited gifts.”

“The Grey Foundation made a very generous gift to the museum here a few years ago, six exceptional American primitives.”

“The best of everything, always,” she said wryly.

“What is it about your family, Amanda? I keep getting these hints, but nothing more.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, wishing he would stop his discomfiting questions. She gave a little shrug. “Anyway, I do have a family, my mother’s people, the cousins down in San Jose. Where you picked me up last Thanksgiving weekend. Phyllis and Dick were really like a father and mother, keeping track of me at school, taking me home over vacations, doing the dentist and clothes business and all the rest. They were wonderful and sweet to Dan, too, when he visited in the summers. Sweet people.”

“But the other side? You never visit them, do you? Not even your brother?”

“He comes here. Years ago when I first came west, I missed him terribly. But when people are
three thousand miles apart, they lose touch. Things can”—she hesitated—“even grow cold, even a trifle sour sometimes. Sad but true.”

The blue eyes shone kindly within the gold-wire circles. “Yes, it is sad when things go sour and cold in a family. The world’s a cold place. You need each other. As you grow older, even more.”

Her words, in spite of her, came out with a wry, sharp twist. “I’ve been managing rather well all on my own, I think.”

“Oh, ‘managing,’ of course. What I’m talking about is closeness. Take my brother, for instance. We’re as different as can be; we argue like hell over politics and things, but all the same, we’re close as two fingers on the same hand. And when my kid sister got a grant to study sculpture in Rome, it was a personal triumph for me, silly as that may sound. But it was.”

He was lecturing her, and she didn’t like it. Of course he meant well, but today was a wrong day, and had been altogether wrong from the beginning. And he kept on.

“The Greys seem to do a lot of good. My brother went to a medical meeting in New York and told me about the Grey Cancer Research—”

She blurted, “Let them hand
me
some of their philanthropy for a change so I can do something with my own philanthropy! You know what I do. That time you went down to the settlement house, when I brought that poor little thing in off the street, you saw her, weighed ninety pounds soaking wet, rouged like a clown, impertinent and
bold and scared to death, fresh from the boondocks out of some ‘dysfunctional’ family, as they call it. Just plain horror—” She stopped.

“Yes, I saw,” Todd said gravely. “She wasn’t any older than my niece in junior high. Tragedy.”

“Exactly. ‘There but for the grace of God,’ et cetera. What’s needed is people who care enough to come to the rescue and undo the damage. And money’s needed, naturally. Always money. I’ve learned so much ever since I took that one course, Todd. You don’t need to be a trained social worker. I can hire them for the hands-on work while I run the thing and pay for it. There are seven girls living now with two staff in that house I rented downtown. And you should see how they’ve—what can I say?—flowered? Five are back in school, one has a job, and we lost one back to the streets.”

“Pretty good record, I’d say.”

“I took two on vacation before I knew you, did I ever tell you? Took them camping in Yosemite, in the high meadows. They were like a dog who’s been tied up. When it’s suddenly unchained, it can’t stop running and looking and sniffing. I think the grandeur overwhelmed them, only they didn’t have the vocabulary to express it. At night when I was alone, I cried. That’s why I want that land we saw today.”

“I understand, Amanda, I really do. But I still say you’ll have to compromise.”

“I don’t want to compromise! Why should I? Dammit, the money’s there! You should see that
place, that Hawthorne. Talk of the British aristocracy, the landed gentry! I don’t live that way.”

“I have the impression you don’t want to, anyhow.”

“I don’t, but that’s no reason why I shouldn’t have the means to do it
if
I should want to. As it is, I want the money for a better purpose.”

“You’d need millions before you were through. To buy the land, to build and to maintain. Millions.”

“All right, let them buy me out. I own a quarter of Grey’s Foods, from orange groves to potato chips.”

“Have you discussed it with them?”

“Last month, with my cousin. My brother wasn’t there, not that it would have made any difference. They hang together. The answer was, naturally, no. The explanation? They haven’t got the cash to buy me out.”

“That makes sense,” Todd said. “They’d have to be twenty-five percent liquid, and nobody is.”

“That’s their problem. Let them get liquid. Otherwise, I’ll sell my shares to the highest bidder. I told Ian, and he almost had a fit. Over the telephone, I could actually feel his face reddening.”

“I don’t blame him. The spectre of strangers taking a quarter interest in a family-held firm would be enough to turn a man’s face red.” Todd looked thoughtful. “But I’m surprised they don’t have a buyout agreement to keep any member from doing just that.”

“Hah! They wanted one when my generation
took over, but I’m the person who held out. They could have outvoted me, but they didn’t. The old man made them back off. I can be fierce when my rights are threatened. I will not be pushed around, Todd, I will not!” Indignation boiled. “As it is, the three men, the cousins and Dan—the men—get huge salaries. And I, the woman, what do I get?”

“Equal dividends,” Todd said promptly.

“I want my principal!”

“You’re not being reasonable, Amanda.”

She hardly heard him as she looked at her watch. “It’s seven back east. I’m going to call my brother right now. You can listen on the other extension.”

He declined. “No, I’ll go inside and turn on the television.”

Across the continent, the telephone rang. She imagined a room she had never seen. It probably had a view of the Adirondacks—those houses were practically
in
the Adirondacks—which now in April would scarcely be turning green. When the receiver was lifted, she heard a child’s angry scream, Dan’s voice saying, “Take her, Sally,” and then, “Hello.”

She plunged right in. “You can guess why I’m calling, can’t you?”

“I think I can.”

“Well, I went to see that property again today. And I want it, Dan. I really do. It’s magnificent.”

“I see it is. I read the prospectus that you sent with the photograph.”

“I thought I’d hear from you before this. I left two messages at your office.”

“It’s been about two weeks, I know, but I’ve had—some problems here. I’m sorry,” he apologized.

Dan’s even temper only increased her exasperation. “My project is important, Dan. I’m trying to bring life where there was death. Ian didn’t want to understand it. I’m hoping you will.”

“It’s a tremendous idea. But unfortunately, costs get in the way, as they do with most things. You—and we—simply can’t afford it.”

“Well, I could afford it if you paid me properly.”

“You get the same dividends we get, Amanda.”

“What about those lovely salaries you all have?”

“We work hard for them.”

“Because you’re
male
.” The instant she said it, she knew that it sounded peevish. But having begun, she had to continue. “Don’t you think I, a woman, am capable of working as hard and earning the same as all of you?”

“Of course you are. Just come do it and show us.”

“I don’t want to. I have a different goal. Buy me out and you’ll be rid of me.”

Dan’s sigh carried over the wire, yet he still spoke patiently. “No one wants to get rid of you. But your demands are unrealistic. We simply can’t afford to buy you out, and that’s the whole truth.”

“Then somebody else will do it. I’ve been inquiring
around, and I’ve already gotten some rough figures from investment bankers.”

“Amanda, listen. Must I plead with you? Would you really want to bring in strangers and wreck this old firm that has, after all, done so well by you?”

“I don’t want to wreck it, Dan, but if that’s the only way I can accomplish my aim, then that’s how it will have to be.”

“Amanda, we’d have to sell off most of our plant to give you what you want. We’d be a wagon with three wheels. It’s impossible.”

“You could borrow the money.”

“And load ourselves with debt? I feel as if I’m being hit on both sides of my head at once. And it’s all greed that’s doing it.”

“Greed! I live here in three rooms, nice ones, yes, but I buy almost nothing for myself, everything else goes into my project, and you call me ‘greedy’?”

“Maybe you’re greedy for admiration. Why must your project be so grandiose?”

“ ‘Grandiose’! Nice talk from a brother. I had thought you’d stand up for me, not against me.”

“Don’t be foolish. I am not against you.” Dan sighed again; his patience was going. “God almighty!” he exclaimed. “Between you who want to buy a piece of California that you can’t afford, and Ian who wants to sell a piece of New York State that’s been in the family for the last two centuries, I’m about to lose my marbles.”

“Ian wants to sell?”

“Oh, he’s gotten involved with some foreign group that wants a few thousand acres of Grey’s Woods to build a new city. It’s wanton destruction, all to fill their pockets with money they don’t need.”

“Who are you to tell people what they need or don’t need? Personally, I don’t think it’s such a bad idea, assuming there’d be enough to take care of
my
needs.”

“Oh, yes.” Dan sounded bitter. “More than enough, I’d say.”

“Well, then I hope it goes through.”

“Streets and houses in a historic forest. Trees gone, habitat gone. Land that should go untouched to the state, to the public. I expected better of you, Amanda.”

“You may be concerned with deer and foxes or with trees, but I’m concerned about people.”

“You may have a different aim from Ian’s, but just now you sound like him, though it hurts me to say it.”

“So Ian and I have something in common! It looks as if, for different reasons, we’re on the same side, he and I.”

“With Clive and me holding the truncated tail of a great enterprise.”

“And a trunkful of cash, you’re forgetting.”

“That we don’t want, you’re forgetting. No,” Dan repeated, “I never expected this from you. Never.”

“It’s nothing I’d choose, believe me, but I have to look out for myself. If you don’t look out for
your wants in this world, it’s a sure thing nobody else will, Dan.”

“I don’t agree with that at all.”

“Let me tell you—”

“Let’s talk another time, Amanda, may we?”

“Okay, I’m not pressing. The property I want is part of an estate, and it’ll be months before it’s settled. I’ve got an option on it till then. So I can wait for whatever happens on your end. As long as I get what I want, I don’t care how it’s done.”

“You’ll really have to excuse me, Amanda. Good night,” Dan said.

When she hung up, Todd came back to the room.

“Did you listen?” she asked.

“I told you I wasn’t going to. Do you really think I would do that without his knowing?”

“Sorry, I didn’t think. Sometimes I don’t think. Dan’s probably furious with me. I truly didn’t want to quarrel with my brother, and the child was carrying on—”

“For a person who didn’t want to quarrel, you did a thorough job. I couldn’t help but hear your end of the conversation, and it was pretty sharp.”

Rebuked, she felt the sting of two immediate tears on either side of her nose. Seeing them, Todd put his arms around her.

“I hate to see you this way. You’ve let that thing take hold of you and almost strangle you. It’s not worth it,” he said gently, smoothing the back of her head. “And if you destroy that business, you’ll really be strangled, especially if—I heard you
say something about ‘Ian,’ and I don’t know who he is—you take sides in whatever’s going on there back east. You’re not making sense, Amanda. You have cut yourself off from those people of yours, and you may end up losing your income, too.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” she mumbled.

“I know that you, for no matter how noble a reason, want something you can’t afford. Be sensible. Don’t be the odd man out. That’s sad.”

“Odd woman out, you mean,” she sniffed, raising her head. “Funny that it’s always the woman who’s asked to give in. Always.”

“Not always. Too often, maybe, but not this time, in my opinion.”

“Right now my opinion is the one that counts, though.”

“Ah, how you love to argue. You should have been the lawyer,” he said, laughing a little, pulling her close.

She knew he meant to calm and comfort her and she wanted his comfort, that masculine heat of which there is nothing more reassuring to a woman who loves. Over the past months she had come to rely on his presence in her life; often during the day she would feel, at thought of him, the tiny twitch of her own smile, or the sudden harsh jolt at his approach on the street, or at what she had mistaken for his approach; the mistake would only serve to remind her that in a few hours he would be with her again. And she knew as one
knows
, as every nerve and every speeding rational
thought proclaims, that he was different from any who had gone before him, that he was the real, the real and final one.

And yet there were days and nights like this, when he was too positive and, no matter how gentle, too sure of himself, of his very power over her, robbing her of independence.

He raised her head to find her lips, which were closed; his, soft and persistent, were pressing hers to open. She was braced between the door and his body, demanding, swelling. His breath came faster.

“Come inside,” he murmured. “Come on, Amanda. Darling.”

She didn’t want to. Not now. It was humiliating, when her mind was so agitated and every nerve jumping. She wasn’t a pleasure machine, an engine to be turned on. Her hands pushed against his chest. Her face twisted away toward her shoulder.