Return to Peyton Place

by Grace Metalious

  She came to his bed in nightgowns that covered her completely, and it took his most gentle efforts before she let him undress her. She seemed to be terrified of showing herself and sometimes her body quivered like a frightened bird when he uncovered her breasts to caress her.

  “No!” she cried, as he opened the buttons on her gown. “Oh, no, don't. Turn off the light, darling. Don't.”

  “Yes, I will,” he said against her throat.

  “Teach me,” said Jennifer. “Make me open my mouth, if you can. Maybe I won't let you.”

  “Come here.”

  She moved away from him and began to redo the buttons on her nightgown.

  “No,” she said. “I'm not going to let you.”

  He pulled her to him roughly.

  “Be sweet,” he pleaded. “Please, be sweet.”

  She laughed up into his face and taunted him. “Listen to my big brave man begging for favors. Sit up, Fido, Mamma give you liver.”

  Ted jumped out of bed and yanked the blankets off her.

  “You little bitch,” he said harshly, his hands trembling. “You little bitch.”

  He grabbed her nightgown at the neckline and tore it from her body and his hands left angry, red marks against her white skin.

  “You love it,” he said into her mouth, bruising her lips as he bit into them. “You love it and you know it.”

  And then it was Jennifer who was insatiable. Her body heaved and her eyes glittered.

  “Hit me,” she cried. “Hit me.”

  “You're goddamned right I'll hit you,” said Ted. “I'd like to kill you.”

  He used his belt on her until her back and buttocks and thighs were covered with welts and when he finally took her, her lips were red with blood from his shoulder and she fainted.

  “Dear God, what have I done,” cried Ted.

  He began to weep. “I'll never do it again, darling. Never. My God, I'm no better than an animal. I'll never do it again. Please. Please forgive me.”

  Ted slept at last, the sleep of exhaustion, and for a long time Jennifer lay awake in the dark, smiling. She touched the welts on her thighs, running her fingers over them hard so that the pain burned all through her and her teeth gleamed white in the dark room. She moved so that her back scraped against the sheet, hurting her, and her nipples grew rigid and she felt the tightening of excitement between her legs.

  “Again,” she whispered into Ted's ear. “Again.”

  But Ted did not awaken. He stirred in his sleep and his hand found her breast and covered it gently. And finally, Jennifer, too, slept.

  In the narrow bed in the storage room, Roberta bit her lips to try to stop her trembling. She was stiff with horror and with the effort she was making to keep herself silent.

  I knew it, she thought. I knew something was wrong with that girl. She's crazy, that's what she is, making Ted do a thing like that. Ted was never that kind of boy. He was good and clean. Oh, dear God, what am I to do?

  She waited another half hour and then she let herself out of the storage room and crept back to her own bed, but it did not comfort her. She could not stop trembling.

  She's crazy. Jennifer is crazy. She's making Ted crazy. Oh, dear God, help me. I've got to do something.

  But when the sun rose on another gray, threatening day, she had had no answer to her prayer.

  8

  I’M GOING TO REMEMBER every single thing that happens, thought Allison MacKenzie, as the train pulled away from the Peyton Place railroad station. Everything has to stay very sharp and clear this time, so that when I'm old I'll be able to remember every little detail. Too many things happen, and when they do people always say, “I'll never forget,” but they do, and then the image blurs with time and finally they don't remember very much about anything. I suppose that's why some people keep journals and diaries. They do it so they can never forget what happened to them. But I'll remember everything without writing it down. When I'm very old, I'll remember how it was the day I left Peyton Place to go to New York to sign a contract for my first book.

  Allison had gone to bed late the night before her trip, and even then she had been unable to sleep, and she had awakened early. When she had gone to her bedroom window the tops of the snow-covered trees outside were just turning pink.

  In the east, the sky was the color of a pale, pale winter rose. She breathed deep the cold snow smell, almost sweet; she thought she could taste it on the back of her tongue.

  Allison wet her fingers and then brushed them across the thick slab of snow on the outside window ledge. The snow stuck to her hand and she put her fingers quickly into her mouth.

  It's going to be sunny but cold, she thought, and nothing will melt away or change while I'm gone. It will all be the same when I come back.

  She ran downstairs to the kitchen to start the coffee and she paused as she was setting the pot on the stove.

  Except me, she thought suddenly. I'll be changed. I won't be the same.

  Suddenly, it was terribly important that she look at everything, and that she remember everything she saw. She sat down abruptly at the kitchen table. Her mother almost always kept a yellow cloth on that table, and a low copper bowl filled with yellow flowers.

  She does it so that even on cloudy days we eat breakfast at a table full of sunshine, thought Allison in amazement. I never realized that before. And in the living room the colors are subdued and relaxed so that you want to lean back and put your feet up, but in the bedrooms they are very soft so that when you lie down nothing glares on your eye. And all the curtains are really picture frames. I've got to remember everything just the way it looks this morning.

  The gas burner on the stove made a hissing sound as the coffee boiled over.

  “Damn it!” cried Allison, jumping up.

  “And what cloud were you on?” said Constance, coming into the kitchen. “I could smell coffee all over the house.”

  “I was thinking that I'd better hurry and get dressed,” said Allison.

  “Sit down and have some coffee,” said Constance, laughing. “It's more than two hours until your train leaves.”

  “Good morning, Famous Author,” said Mike Rossi, coming into the kitchen. “Good morning, Famous Author's mother.”

  Constance kissed him. “Good morning, Maker of Bad Jokes Early in the Morning and of Which There Is No More Revolting Creature.”

  “That talkative so early?” asked Mike. “This is going to be a day!”

  “Yes, it is,” said Allison, “and I've got to dress.”

  “You've got to eat something first,” said Constance.

  “I can't,” objected Allison. “I'll throw up on the train if I do. Hurry up, Mother. You have to dress, too.”

  Mike and Constance drove her to the station, and all of them went inside while Mike bought Allison's ticket.

  “Clear through to New York, eh?” asked Mr. Rhodes. “Round trip?”

  “Nope,” said Mike. “One way.”

  “Save money, buyin’ the round trip,” said Mr. Rhodes. “How long she gonna be gone?”

  “Who?” asked Mike.

  “Why, Allison, of course,” said Mr. Rhodes. “She's the one goin’, ain't she?”

  “Yep.”

  “Goin’ down to get that book of hers sold, ain't she?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, it don't take forever to sell somethin’ like that. Saves to buy the round trip.”

  “But she may decide to fly back, or drive, or walk, for that matter.”

  “Don't make no difference. She can cash in the ticket, if she don't use it.”

  “All right,” said Mike, resignedly. “One round-trip ticket for New York.”

  “That man had me running around in circles when I first came here,” said Mike when they were outside, “and I've never managed to get the best of him yet. And how the hell does he know why Allison is going to New York?”

  “Everybody in town knows,” said Constance. “Does that surprise you?”

>   “No,” Mike admitted. “But I've never been able to figure out how it happens. If somebody farts on Chestnut Street, the guy in the stockroom at the Mills knows about it in a matter of seconds.”

  “You're vulgar,” said Constance.

  “I know it,” said Mike.

  Allison stood still and from far away she heard the whistle of the train.

  It's coming across the river, she thought. And the arch of the trestle is black and sharp against the sky. By now a passenger must have looked out the window to see Samuel's Castle far above him.

  “What's that big place up there?” the passenger asked.

  “Why, that's the Peyton Place,” replied the conductor. “Got a whole town named for the feller built that castle, just down the line.”

  Allison stood very still in the cold, watching and listening, and at last the faraway sounds were a roar and the train rounded a curve in the track and came straight toward her through the towering banks of snow.

  A conductor was on the platform between two cars, leaning out, one gloved hand clinging to a rail on the side of the car, and one foot a step lower than the other. His high-crowned cap had a brass plate on the front that read “Boston and Maine R.R.”

  “Peyton Place,” called the conductor, “Peyton Place.”

  His voice seemed to echo down the long tunnel of snow and to rise over and around Allison so that the sound came back to her filled with an ineffable sadness, and she felt the old, familiar sting behind her eyelids.

  “Good-by, darling,” said Constance. “Be careful now, and call me as soon as you get there.”

  Allison turned to her almost with a start.

  “Good-by, Mother,” she said, and put her arms around Constance. “Yes, I'll call you.” She turned to Mike.

  “’By, Poppa.”

  Mike bent and kissed her. “So long, Gertie. Good luck.”

  Her bags were already on the platform and the conductor was holding her elbow to help her up the steps.

  “Don't forget to go to Saks for my shirts,” Constance called. “I wrote down the size and colors for you.”

  “—’BO'O-AARD!”

  Go back! Allison thought in sudden panic. Go back to what you have and hold onto it tight! Nothing is going to be the same when you get back. Run! She was on the platform and the train was moving. Her mother was waving, the winter sun on her golden hair. Jump, Allison! Run! Mike had one arm raised, waving, the other around Constance's shoulder. Get off, Allison!

  “Seats in the forward car, Miss,” said the conductor, and held the door open for her.

  And then it was too late. Allison found a seat next to a window and turned her head quickly to wave to Mike and her mother.

  “Don't forget to call me,” Constance was shouting. “Good-by, darling.”

  But Allison could not hear the words. She only saw that her mother's lips were moving and that her hand was still raised; then she was gone and the train was moving very fast.

  Not enough sleep and too much coffee, thought Allison as she tried to relax. But it was not until the train had stopped at Boston and she had transferred to the New York train at South Station that her stomach stopped quivering. Of all the ridiculous things! she scolded herself. Anybody would think I was going to be away from home for ten years instead of five days. Even the snow won't be any different when I get back, let alone anything else. Of all the foolishness!

  She ate lunch in the dining car and returned to her seat; the train moved with a soothing motion, lulling her anxieties and fears.

  I'm going to New York! she thought. I'm an author. Not just a writer for the magazines, but An Author! I made it!

  Her nervousness was gone now; she relaxed and watched the frozen landscape slide past her window, and recalled her meeting with Norman Page the day before.

  They had bumped into each other outside Seth Buswell's office.

  “I'm supposed to be back at work,” said Norman, “but this calls for a celebration. Come on over to Hyde's and I'll buy you a cup of coffee. It's wonderful news about your book being published, Allison. Wonderful. I'm so very glad for you.”

  Behind the plate-glass window of his office, Seth Buswell looked at his watch and made a threatening come-in-here gesture at Norman, but Allison stuck her tongue out at him and Seth laughed, and Allison and Norman crossed the street to the diner.

  Norman Page no longer used his crutches when he walked, and Peyton Place marveled at his recovery.

  “Got guts, that boy,” they said.

  “Yep. Nobody'd ever think he'd been hit during the war at all.”

  “It certainly was a terrible thing, his getting all shot up like that.”

  “Ayeh. But he come through it good. Walks just like everybody else now.”

  When Peyton Place discussed Norman Page, Matthew Swain and Seth Buswell did not take part in the conversation, nor did they look at one another lest a glance betray the terrible secret they shared with Norman and his mother, Evelyn.

  “Except nobody has to worry about Evelyn giving anything away,” said Seth Buswell. “She's told herself that lie so long and so often that now she really believes that Norman was wounded in the war.”

  “Less said about the whole thing the better,” said Matt Swain gruffly.

  Norman Page had not received a leg wound in battle. He had been discharged as a psychoneurotic, and Evelyn had made the trip, alone, to bring her son home. She had taken him directly from the Army hospital to a large, midtown hotel in New York City and there she had begun to school him in the things he must say and do at home. Norman had been wounded in battle. His right leg had been practically shot out from under him. He must practice with the crutches she had bought for him and never, never let anyone know that he had been discharged from the Army for any other reason than his leg. When Norman had protested she had screamed at him.

  “Do you want everyone in Peyton Place to think you're crazy? Think of me, Norman. At least, spare me this!”

  And Norman, weaker than he had ever been, sick and tired and beaten, had come home to a hero's welcome.

  It was Matthew Swain who realized almost at once that there was nothing the matter with Norman's leg. He had confided in Seth, and the two of them had contacted an old friend of Matt's who was a doctor in the Army. They had learned the truth, then, and had done all they could to protect Norman. No photographs of Peyton Place's hero appeared in Seth's newspaper, lest some other paper pick up the story and reprint it for its human interest.

  “If that happens, someone who was in the service with him might recognize him,” said Matthew Swain.

  So the legend that Norman Page was a war hero persisted in Peyton Place. Eventually, Norman discarded his crutches for a cane and at last he used nothing at all for support and walked upright by himself. But Evelyn Page had so thoroughly convinced herself of the truth of her own lies that often, when it was cloudy and looked like rain, she would ask her son, “How does your leg feel?” Norman always said, “Fine.”

  “Tell me all about it, Allison,” said Norman, as Corey Hyde put coffee cups down in front of them.

  “There's nothing much to tell, really,” said Allison. “I started reworking a book I had written in New York right after I came home, and now my agent has managed to sell it. It sounds so simple when I say it that way.”

  “Who?” asked Norman. “I mean, who bought it?”

  “A house called Lewis Jackman and Company. In New York.”

  “I never heard of them,” said Norman. “But then, that doesn't mean anything. About the only publishers I ever heard of are Lippincott in Philadelphia and Little, Brown, in Boston.”

  “Jackman is a very small house,” said Allison. “Brad—that's my agent, Bradley Holmes—says I'll be much better off with a small house because they'll have more time to spend on my book.”

  “What's your book about?”

  “It's always hard to describe what a book is about. It's just about a town and the people in it and what they do
and think and feel. Just an ordinary small town in northern New England.”

  “Like Peyton Place?” asked Norman.

  “If you want to think of it that way,” said Allison defensively. “But as far as I'm concerned, the town in Samuel's Castle is just like any small town anywhere.”

  “How do you know so much about small towns anywhere?” demanded Norman. “The only one you ever lived in is Peyton Place.”

  “Don't be silly, Norman,” said Allison crossly. “Small towns are small towns everywhere.”

  Suddenly, it was as if they were very young again, the way they had been in high school, when they had sat on the banks of the Connecticut River and had argued about books and people and words.

  “Remember, Norman?” asked Allison, her voice gentle. “Remember how I took you to my secret place once, up behind Road's End?”

  Norman's voice was low. “Yes,” he said, “I remember.”

  “You kissed me,” said Allison.

  “Yes.”

  “It seems so long ago.”

  “Yes.”

  Allison made herself brighten and gave a little laugh. “Well, what are we so down in the mouth about?” she asked. “It was a long time ago.”

  “You wore your hair in a pony tail and the buttercups made little, yellow shadows on your skin,” said Norman, as if she had not spoken.

  “I've got to go,” said Allison. “I'm leaving for New York tomorrow, and I've a million things to do.”

  “Yes,” said Norman. “Of course.” His eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Good luck, Allison. Don't forget to come back to us.”

  Allison leaned across the table and touched the back of his hand.

  “I won't forget, Norman,” she said gently. “I'll be back.”

  Walking home from Corey Hyde's diner, she wondered if success had already begun to change her. Road's End, buttercups, the day she kissed Norman—all that seemed so remote now. It was another world; and she was a wholly different person, not young Allison grown up but, simply, Allison. Allison sometimes felt that she had created herself, just as surely as she had created the characters in Samuel's Castle.