Carousel Ride Page 2

“You’re too kind, Mrs. Coles; thank you for the invitation. But I need to pick-up a friend at the airport later this evening.” He didn’t mention that the friend was his wife, six weeks estranged but still close enough to pick up from her Christmas trip to her family in New England.

  Mrs. Coles smiled. “You kids are so busy these days! We used to spend our Sundays sitting on the porch watching the sun slowly sink in the sky.”

  “Sounds great!” Zach said. He often longed for a slower pace than his undergraduate schedule granted.

  “Sounds booooooring,” Mrs. Coles laughed. “Because it was! You kids get out there and live—that’s what youth is for.”

  “We’ll try, Mom,” Becca said over her shoulder as she led Zach down the hall and out into the bright spring-like day in the middle of winter.

  Once they were inside Becca’s car and driving downtown through thinly travelled backstreets, Becca glanced over at Zach with an apologetic tilt of her head. “Sorry if I surprised you with those introductions to my parents. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “It was the right thing to do—would’ve been impolite not to say hello.”

  “You seemed hesitant.”

  “If I’d known, I would’ve dressed a little nicer.”

  Becca laughed. “They meet all my friends as they are, for better or worse. Had one exchange student in skintight leather pants and a pink ruffled shirt. They still haven’t recovered from that one!”

  “I must’ve looked plain by comparison.”

  “Aw, Zach, don’t be like that. They loved you. Mom practically put dinner back on the table.”

  “I now see where you get your grace and courtesy.”

  “Mom’s a natural. I have to work at it.”

  “And your self-possession comes from your dad.”

  She offered a simple nod. “If I have it, that’s where it comes from.”

  She turned right into a parking lot beside a sign reading Crawford Park. The gravel lot was nearly full of station wagons, with children chased by shouting mothers scurrying in several directions. Becca slowed the car to a crawl before easing into one of the few available spots. “Welcome to Crawford Park, oldest in downtown Greensboro and still the nicest.”

  Zach nodded and reached for his doorknob. “Can’t wait.”

  Becca caught his near wrist and pulled him toward her across the car’s console. “Will you wait just a minute if I ask?” she whispered from inches away.

  Zach scrunched up his face in exaggerated deliberation. “Depends on what the petitioner is offering.”

  She locked her lips on his in a prolonged and slippery kiss, her hand massaging the back of his neck and up into his hair.

  Though a bit startled by this more romantic and demonstrative Becca, Zach had no intention of discouraging her. Her unconstrained love and physical affection directed squarely at him pretty well defined his idea of bliss. He’d known for months she was all he’d ever want; he was delighted to see that, today at least, she returned that ardor.

  Becca leaned back just a little. “Sufficient offering?” she whispered.

  Zach hesitated. “I don’t know. Might need a little more persuading.”

  She laughed and pushed him away. “You’re awful, Mr. Sandstrom. Give you an inch—”

  “—and I want to take her home with me,” Zach finished, his voice—indeed, his mind and whole body—still in the haze left from the kiss and the smell of her skin.

  Becca shook her head. “Come on. Let’s get some fresh air.” She opened her door and jumped out of the car and ran around to open his door and tug him up out of his seat.

  Zach could only laugh—a child’s laugh of pure joy and thanks.

  They strolled along the park’s dirt paths and across bright fields luxuriously warm in the afternoon sun, the grass brown but dry after a week without rain or snow. Children chased one another across those fields, swung on swing sets in the skeletal shade of majestic willow oaks, scaled steel-pipe jungle gyms—all while watched over by attentive parents. A handful of younger and childless couples wove their way through these activities—walking dogs on leashes, one pair tossing a Frisbee till the girl got frustrated and stormed away in a huff after the disc sailed through her outstretched hands and her boyfriend made fun of her. Becca and Zach wandered through this idyll, sometimes hand in hand, sometimes Becca racing ahead and turning to urge Zach on.

  They finally reached the park’s centerpiece—a brightly painted, early century carousel on a concrete pad, motionless and silent in its winter dormancy but nonetheless captivating with intricately carved wooden horses, gilded moldings, and bright brass fittings. For whatever reason, the children and their parents were avoiding the sleeping merry-go-round; and Zach and Becca had this whimsical enclave to themselves. Becca ran ahead and jumped on a white horse with a red saddle and gold harness. It was the horse Zach would have picked for her, though his choice would’ve been a nearby roan with burgundy saddle and obsidian trappings. He ran his hand over the smooth flesh of that horse on his way to sitting on an enameled white loveseat facing Becca who was laughing and swinging from side to side on her chosen mount.

  He stared with dumfounded wonder at her beauty and overflowing charms. It wasn’t enough that they were floating through their dream of romance, now they’d landed in this tangible realization of that enchantment.

  Becca stopped swinging. “What?” she asked, her eyes still glittering with that impossible vitality. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Zach could laugh then. “Just my vision of perfection.”

  “Little old me?”

  Zach nodded, his eyes locked on hers. “Young and beautiful and enthralling Becca Coles.”

  Becca wrapped her arms around the horse’s silver pole. “You suppose if I wait long enough, someone will turn this thing on and give me a ride? Just one circuit—that’s all I ask.”

  “If you wait long enough—sure. But we both might be old and gray by then.”

  “That’s the price of a ride?”

  “Sometimes,” Zach said, still smiling.

  “Then I guess I’ll pass,” she said and climbed down off the horse and took a seat beside him.

  He put his arm over her shoulders and leaned over and kissed her cheek lightly.

  She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Do you ever wish you could stop time?”

  “Depends on when.”

  “Right now.”

  “Like this carousel?”

  “Frozen in a moment of youthful beauty.”

  “This thing has to be fifty years old.”

  “Sixty-one, actually—built to honor the end of the Great War.”

  “Interesting way to recognize a military victory.”

  “The best, don’t you think—a child’s illusion out of the ashes of war?”

  “I suppose. But sixty-one is pretty old.”

  “Young in carousel years—still bright and beautiful and full of life.”

  “And frozen in the moment.”

  Becca opened her eyes and rolled her head toward him. “Like us?”

  Zach fixed that image of her face in his mind—his gift for eternity—before responding. “Sure.”

  She snuggled closer, leaned her head up under his chin. “Thanks,” she said with simple gravity.

  They sat like that, children frozen in time on a child’s frozen fantasy, for who knows how long in clock time or outside it. The sun did fall in the western sky behind their heads; but they couldn’t tell, didn’t notice the shadows of their seat and the adjacent horses slowly lengthening.

  Zach finally spoke. “You are so loved.”

  “By you?”

  “Yes, of course. But I meant by your family, your parents, especially your dad.”

  “I guess.”

  “You don’t realize how lucky you are, how rare that unconditional love is.”

  Becca shrugged into his chest. “It’s always been there.”

  “Don’t ta
ke it for granted.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Honor it.”

  “I do—with my life.”

  Zach nodded. “I can testify to that. I hope it’s never taken away.”

  “The love or my life?”

  “This moment frozen in time.”

  Just then there was a racket behind them. Zach looked over his shoulder and saw three young children—two boys and a toddling girl—and a frazzled woman weaving through the unmoving horses and diminutive ponies and interspersed loveseats. The little girl stumbled around their seat and fell into Becca’s legs before she realized those appendages were flesh, not carved wood. She glanced up in surprise and looked like she might cry. But Becca’s smile defused the child’s fear. The girl’s frown became a grin, followed by bubbling laughter.

  The woman caught up and took the child’s hand. “Sorry,” she said between gasping breaths. She pushed a strand of dark hair off her face and back behind her ear. She looked little older than Becca, despite the bevy of children. Could she be a nanny or helpful cousin?

  “Got your hands full,” Becca said as she leaned forward and gently brushed the toddler’s silken blond hair.

  The girl shook her head in frustration. “Been waiting for them to run out of energy.”

  “Maybe in another sixteen years,” Zach said.

  “Don’t say that,” the girl said in a plaintive drawl accompanied by a playful glance directed toward Zach.

  Zach returned the grin. “Or maybe a little sooner.”

  Somewhere ahead, behind the carousel’s silent organ pipes, there was a crash followed by a wail. “Mommy!” a boy’s voice shouted between sobs.

  The girl shook her head and lifted the toddler onto her hip. “Enjoy your life while you still have