Once Around the Carousel

Prolog

Looking at the sand dollar in the palm of her hand, Linda wondered if her plan had turned it into some sort of talisman. She even thought it might be making her fingertips tingle. Holding magical properties or not, it had to be somewhere Titus would notice. After everything he'd done for her, she desperately wanted him to know why she and Sharon had left and that they'd gone to a safer life. Going to the upstairs hallway, she looked at the tables along the walls. In what she always thought of as Titus's little museum were art and artifacts he'd brought home from his travels. One table he'd devoted to a collection of rocks. She knew he'd notice the sand dollar there but nixed the idea. He'd gathered the rocks, stones, and chips of marble from the most exotic places in the world, and Linda had picked the sand dollar off Metuchin's public beach. Besides that, it wasn't a rock, and the disorder of mismatched sets bothered Linda deeply.

Still clutching the sand dollar, she went up to Titus's writing studio on the third floor. She might never be in his house again and wanted to take a last look out at the water from the corner room's dormer windows. Watching the late morning sun dance across the waves, she could see across the Long Island Sound to Orient Point and down the coast to Fisher's Island. Then, seeing Sharon on the beach and wanting to get back to her, she settled on tucking the sand dollar into the leather corner of Titus's desk blotter. He'd figure out what to do once he saw it there.

Now Titus would have as much information as she herself understood. Where she and Sharon would be going, where they'd end up, was still only a vague sketch in her mind. Still, she had no fiber of doubt it was their only option. That it would protect Sharon, and did anything else really matter?

On her way out, Linda went room to room one last time, making sure there were no signs she and Sharon had stayed there. She worried people would question whether Titus knew anything. But he'd been away for most of the summer, and Linda assumed no one could blame him.

Sharon's eyes were red and puffy when Linda got down to the beach, but her morning cry had ended. She was chasing away seagulls as they tried to steal the scraps of bread she was feeding to her sandpipers. "Why do seagulls have to be such bullies."

Linda smiled at her. Sharon had stood down the biggest bullies in Linda's life, but the seagulls were even meaner than a pack of junior high school girls. Then, as the song on the radio ended, the DJ came back on ranting about the concert at Woodstock. Thousands of people had descended on the small town for the festival, and it still had two days to go. Everyone, he told his listeners, should jump in their cars and join the party.

"Titus and Robin aren't coming back to help us, are they?" Sharon asked, sitting down on a lounge chair she'd pulled into the sand from Titus's beach cabana.

"I don't think so," Linda answered, saddling up beside her. "We gotta fix things ourselves. I'm pretty sure we can that we can make everything turn out the way we want, but we might be gone for a while."

"That's okay, "but we'll be together, right?" Sharon said, looking down at her belly. Alone, on the secluded beach in front of Titus's house, she'd abandoned the terrycloth cover-up she'd used for the past few weeks and was wearing only her bikini. The changes in her body stood out. She no longer looked simply pudgy. Her bulging stomach had acquired a tautness, and despite her summer tan, veins were starting to show.

"Yeah, after a while. And this time, when we come back, we'll make sure we're somewhere safe."

They stayed on the beach in front of Titus's house all day. Then, with the afternoon sun sinking lower, Linda let Sharon lay on a lounge chair while she packed their beach blanket, towels, and other things into the canvas tote bag they'd carried for the last three summers. She rolled up her beloved yoga mat and nestled it in so that it poked out, setting their radio on the top of the bag so they could still listen to it while they walked down the beach.

"We should go down to the big field," Linda said once she'd gotten rid of any signs they'd been there. "It's where we left our bikes, and we can sit under the tree where we wished your brothers away."

"Do you really think we wished them away or did my dad just send them to boarding school because he didn't want Jim touching me anymore?"

"I don't know. But we wanted them to go away, and they did."

"You're right," Sharon said, fighting back the tears.

"We're gonna make this better, Shar, I promise. And when we come back, we'll both be safe, I'm sure of it," Linda said, grabbing ahold of one handle on their tote bag. Sharon grabbed the other strap, the side closer to the water, so the shoreline's slope evened out their height.

The footfalls they left in the wet sand told much of their story. Sharon's could easily be mistaken for those of a grown woman, and Linda's left her distinctive mark in the sand. Her longer left leg occasionally scraped the sand as she swung it around, and her duck-footed right gave the appearance of someone trying to turn into the water.

As they walked, a song from the movie Midnight Cowboy came on the radio. The movie was controversial, and the local theater didn't show it. Even if it had, Linda and Sharon were too young to see an R-rated movie on their own. They both liked the song, though, even if they wavered on whether to classify it as happy or sad.

"Do you think it'll be like that, like in the song?" Sharon asked.

"I don't know. But I know we can make anything happen, so long as it's what we really want." They continued walking, and when the song came back to the chorus, they both sang.

I'm going where the sun keeps shining

Through the pouring rain

Going where the weather suits my clothes

Banking off of the northeast winds

Sailing on a summer breeze

And skipping over the ocean like a stone

Everybody's talking at me

Can't hear a word they're saying

Only the echoes of my mind

I won't let you leave my love behind

No, I won't let you leave ...