Peyton Place

by Grace Metalious

  Small towns are notorious for their long memories and their sharp tongues, and Peyton Place did not spare Bobbie Quimby and Harmon Carter. It was years before the words hurled at them began to soften, and the epithets hurled by Peyton Place ran the gamut from “Whore” and “Pimp” to “Harlot” and “White Slaver.” It was many years before the house on Maple Street was forgotten as “The Quimby Place” and called by its now correct name of “The Carter House,” and it was as many years before Mrs. Carter succeeded in making Peyton Place call her “Roberta” instead of the frivolous and, to her, harlotish-sounding name of “Bobbie.” Even now, when she was over fifty, and had been married to Harmon for more than thirty years, and had a son sixteen years old, there were still those who remembered. It was because of these that Roberta and Harmon Carter were hard pressed for sympathetic listeners whenever they spoke of “all they had done” for their son Ted. It was because of the old-timers, the ones with the long, long memories who had the habit of passing on scandalous stories to their young, that Peyton Place cheered for Ted Carter. When the boy insisted on working part time after school and during the summer vacations, Peyton Place approved.

  “Young Carter ain't goin’ to live on Old Doc Quimby's money,” said the town, “the way his folks always did.”

  When Peyton Place noticed young Ted Carter walking down Elm Street on a hot July night with a box of candy under his arm, bound for the hospital where his sweetheart lay sick, they approved and cheered him on.

  “Nice boy, young Carter is,” said the town. “Like to see him make a go of it with Selena Cross. She's a nice enough girl, for a shack girl.”

  But it was the humiliation to Roberta and Harmon that Peyton Place loved. To see young Carter take up with a shack girl, after his people had worked so hard to escape the same environment that had spawned Selena, had a certain beauty, a poetic justice.

  A comeuppance, the town called it. Roberta and Harmon Carter were getting their comeuppance at long last.

  ♦ 8 ♦

  Ted Carter hurried down Elm Street and eventually came to the broad, three-lane highway which was called Route 406 and which was the main road between Peyton Place and White River. It was on this highway, a mile from the center of town, that the Peyton Place hospital was located. Ted walked rapidly, with the wrapped box of candy for Selena under one arm, and his other arm swinging back and forth in rhythm with his stride. In two years, he had fulfilled the promise of size that had been his at fourteen. Now he was only a scant inch under six feet tall, and he weighed close to a hundred and seventy pounds. Although his chest and shoulders were as broad as those of a man much older, he gave the impression of leanness, for years of sports and outdoor work had kept fat to a minimum and made his body hard and muscular.

  Ted Carter's Was the kind of body that older people look upon with satisfaction. Things can't be so bad, they said, when this country can produce young men like that. In the summer of 1939, when the stage whispers of war in Europe were already audible to the pessimists in America, those who believed that world conflict was inevitable could look at Ted Carter and be comforted. Things won't be so bad, they said, as long as we have big, healthy boys like that to send to war. Because Ted Carter's body had none of the loose-jointedness, the clumsily put together look of many sixteen-year-olds, his was the envy of every adolescent in Peyton Place. Because of it, and also because of his outstanding talent at sports, other, less fortunate, sixteen-year-olds forgave him his good marks in school, his charm, his easy way of making friends, and the good manners which many mothers flung constantly into the faces of sloppy talking, often discourteous sons.

  With all his blessings, including everything his parents did for him, Ted Carter should have had the happy, open-faced look of a carefree youngster, but there was none of the child in his face as he walked rapidly toward the Peyton Place hospital. There was a suggestion of shadow on his cheeks and chin, although he had shaved carefully before supper, and there were two diagonal lines in the skin between his eyebrows. He frowned, not because he was upset or angry as he remembered the scene of a short time before with his parents, but because he was perplexed. As he put it to himself, walking along, he just didn't understand his folks. Ever since he could remember, he had been making his own decisions. His folks had said that they were proud of his common sense, and they had never had cause to interfere with him. It was only in the last two years that they had begun to find fault and to criticize. Yet all they ever criticized was his going with Selena, while everything else remained as it always had been. When he had wanted to go to work for Mr. Shapiro, his folks had not interfered. They had told him to go ahead, if he wanted, although the work on a chicken farm was hard and tedious, and Mr. Shapiro was Jewish and hard to work for. They had not tried to influence him when he had started looking around for a used car to buy, and he knew that they would approve his choice if he found one he wanted. Everything he had always wanted to do had always been all right with his folks, so why, he wondered, were they so unyielding, so downright mean and stupid, about Selena? Certainly, since they had always trusted his common sense before, they should do so now. They should be able to realize that he was no dumb kid out for what he could get from a girl. He was planning a career in the law—and his plans included Selena—remaining in his home town to go into practice with Old Charlie, and eventual success in his chosen field. Certainly, his folks should realize that a plan such as his had no room in it for foolishness. He had discussed his hopes in detail and at length with old Charlie Partridge, and the laywer had no fault to find with them.

  “It's good to know what you want,” Charles Partridge had said. “You go right ahead, boy. When you get done at law school, you come on back here to Peyton Place. I'll need a bright young feller to help me out by then.”

  “You couldn't do better than Selena Cross,” Charles Partridge had said. “Not for looks and not for brains. You go ahead, boy. It's good to know what you want in this world.”

  Since Ted truly loved Selena Cross and had told his parents so, they should realize that he had enough sense and self-control to keep his hands off her until after they were married. Not that it wasn't difficult, at times, but his folks should realize that Ted's plan had no room in it for foolish mistakes. He had explained all this to Selena long ago, and she had seen the common sense in it. Why, then, couldn't he convince his folks of this, after two years of trying?

  The Carters seldom fought between themselves; the swearing and shouting of this evening's scene had been the rare exception rather than the rule. Instead, they argued sensibly, rationally and continually, but it always ended with Ted on one side of the fence and his parents on the other.

  It was perplexing, thought Ted, as he walked along the gravel edge of the highway. The only thing he could do was to stick by what he thought was right for him, and hope that his folks would come to see his way of thinking. It would be different, he thought, if they could present one sensible argument against Selena. He was willing, just as he had always been, to listen to reason. But they could say nothing against Selena except that she lived in a shack and that she was the daughter of a drunkard. Ted couldn't see what that had to do with anything. As he pointed out to his folks, both of them had lived in shacks not much better than Selena's when they had been young, and it hadn't harmed them any. As for drinking, old man Welch, Roberta's father, had been one of the most notorious drunkards in town, and that hadn't left any taint on either Ted or his mother. The only other argument his folks had was that people were bound to talk if he kept on with Selena. People were bound to talk anyway, Ted had told them. Look at the way some people still talked about his mother's first husband. People always talked, and they always would. As long as a man worked hard, did not steal or get a girl in trouble, there was nothing that people could say that could harm him much. Ted pointed out carefully, and in detail, the stories he had heard about his mother and father and Old Doc Quimby. He did this to illustrate to them how little talk mattered. Talk,
he said, had not harmed his parents, in the long run. They had everything they wanted. His father was head bookkeeper at the mill, and they lived in a nice house in a good neighborhood. They could see, couldn't they, how little talk really amounted to, in the long run?

  It was always at this point that an argument between the Carters fell apart. Ted's parents either fell silent altogether so that the tension in their house was almost as palpable as fog, or else they began to talk disjointedly, foolishly. He just didn't know, they said. He was too young. He just did not realize.

  Ted Carter walked into the Peyton Place hospital with his head up and a smile on his face. He realized, all right. He realized that he loved Selena Cross so much that the thought of life without her was the same as thinking about being dead.

  Selena was sitting up in a chair in the private room to which Dr. Swain had assigned her. She was wearing the bright red robe that Constance MacKenzie had brought her the day after the operation, and her dark hair was brushed out loosely around her shoulders. Ted's heart lifted as he entered the room and looked at her. She looked like herself again. For the first time in the whole, long week since the operation, she looked like the Selena of before, who had never had a sick day in her life. Her lips were red again, and the shine was back in her eyes. Ted bent over her chair and kissed her gently.

  “Really kiss me,” she said, laughing up at him, and he did.

  “I guess you're all better,” he said. “Nothing wrong with a girl who can kiss like that.”

  It was wrong, thought Selena, for her to be this happy. But she could not help it. Her room was full of flowers, from friends she did not even know she had, and Mrs. MacKenzie had come to see her every day. Allison had come, too, and Miss Elsie Thornton, carrying a book and a little plant of African violets. There was an enormous, formal bouquet of glads and roses from Mr. and Mrs. Partridge, which had surprised Selena, for she had not been in Marion's house for over two years, since the time when she used to go on Tuesdays to do Mrs. Partridge's ironing. But best of all, creating her happiness and sustaining it, was the news that Dr. Swain had brought her that morning. Lucas was gone. Lucas had left town in the night, a week ago, and he was never coming back. Selena felt as if she had put down a load that she had carried for years. She had actually twitched her shoulders several times during the day, after The Doc had told her the news, and she believed that she could feel a lightness there that she had not known it was possible to feel.

  If it was wrong to be this happy, thought Selena, she wanted to be wrong all the rest of her life. When Ted talked, she could close her eyes and see her future stretching out before her as smooth as satin ribbon and as calm as the wide Connecticut River in summer. She had thought carefully about the other, the ugliness of a week ago, and she had expected to feel horror or shame. All she had felt was an overwhelming, grateful sense of relief. Her practical mind decided to forget it, to think no more about it than one would think of a cut suffered long ago, during childhood. It was over and done with, and she would not even be able to find a scar unless she looked hard for it.

  “Oh, Ted,” she said, shiny eyed. “I can go home tomorrow.”

  I can go home, she thought, and only Joey and my mother will be there.

  “I think I'll buy that Ford I was looking at,” said Ted. “I'll buy it tomorrow and come to fetch you home in style.”

  “How much are they asking for it?” asked Selena.

  Ted told her, and they began to discuss the advisability of investing so much capital in a used car. They realized that they sounded like old, married people when they talked this way, and it gave each of them a sense of warmth that nothing else could. They held hands and decided that the Ford wasn't a bad buy, providing that Jinks, the garageowner, guaranteed them a good price if they should want to trade next year.

  Ted kissed Selena good night at nine o'clock and walked out of the Peyton Place hospital with a silent whistle on his lips. When he was halfway to town his happiness would no longer let him be still. He uttered a loud war whoop, without caring if anyone heard and thought him crazy, and ran all the way to Elm Street.

  “Evening, sir,” he said to the man he met just before he turned the corner into Maple Street.

  Reverend Fitzgerald, of the Congregational church, started as if someone had put a gun against his ribs.

  “Oh!” he said. “Oh, Ted. You startled me for a minute. How are you?”

  “Very well, sir,” said Ted, and waited for the minister's next question. It came, as it always did.

  “Er, Carter,” said Reverend Fitzgerald. “Carter, I didn't see you in church last Sunday. Will we see you this Sunday?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Ted.

  It was odd, thought Ted a few minutes later as he approached his house, that no matter whom Reverend Fitzgerald talked to, he always asked that same question. Every Sunday, the Congregational church was jammed to the doors, but every time Reverend Fitzgerald met a Congregationalist, he always asked the same question. Will we see you next Sunday?

  Ted shrugged. It was, he supposed, just one of the eccentricities that people had. The minister asked his question; the old men in front of the courthouse swore and talked dirty; his father hated Jews and shack dwellers. Everyone had an eccentricity of some kind, Ted imagined, and went into his house. His parents were sitting in the living room. Harmon was reading and Roberta was knitting. No one spoke.

  ♦ 9 ♦

  Reverend Fitzgerald glanced up at the second-story windows of the parsonage before he went into the house. The lights upstairs were burning, which meant that Tomas Makris was at home.

  Perhaps, Reverend Fitzgerald hoped, he could persuade Tom to come down to sit on the porch and talk for a while.

  The Congregationalist minister smiled to himself in the darkened, first-floor hall. Two years ago, he would not have approached Tom with a ten-foot pole, let alone invite him down for a conversation. Reverend Fitzgerald had been furious when Leslie Harrington had asked about renting the apartment over the parsonage. He had refused good-naturedly, and Leslie Harrington had been just as good-naturedly insistent. A second-floor apartment had been installed in the house next to the Congregational church long before the church had bought it for a parsonage. The apartment had been built to accommodate the married son of the man who had first owned the house, and it had stood idle ever since the place had been purchased by the church. Certainly, as Reverend Fitzgerald had pointed out to Leslie Harrington, the millowner could not expect his minister to take kindly to the idea of having someone live up over his head after all his years of privacy. Harrington, though, could not remain good natured for long when he thought that he was being balked. He had a streak of vulgarity in him. He had ended up, over two years ago, by telling the minister that he was lucky to have a roof over his head at all, and that it was people like Leslie Harrington, regular, openhanded churchgoers, who made it possible for Reverend Fitzgerald to be maintained in such style.

  “We've been decent to you, Fitzgerald,” Harrington had said. “We've seen to it that you had this house, and heat, and a car and a salary. The least you can do is to not make things unpleasant for yourself. I want that upstairs apartment for the new headmaster, and I want it now.”

  Well, thought Reverend Fitzgerald, that was Leslie Harrington for you. What he could not get by fair means, he obtained by the foul expedient of threats. It was typical of Leslie Harrington to point out bluntly the reality of his regular and generous contributions to the church. And what defense did a dependent minister have against such tactics? How could the minister tell Harrington that he was afraid to have anyone in such close proximity as the upstairs apartment? A minister was supposed to spend his life in close proximity to others. How would it sound if he told Harrington, the Peyton Place Congregational Church's largest supporter, that he, Reverend Fitzgerald, was terrified of having people near him? No, it would not do at all. As the minister put it to himself, his hands were tied and his lips were sealed. He had laughed and cla
pped Leslie Harrington on the shoulder and told the busy millowner not to worry himself with such petty details. He, Reverend Fitzgerald, would get Nellie Cross to clean the upstairs apartment and get it in shape for Mr. Makris, who was due to arrive in town in three days.

  When Tom arrived, Reverend Fitzgerald waited until Leslie Harrington was gone to put his foot down.

  “See here, Mr. Makris,” he said, “I don't want any smoking or drinking or loud radio playing going on upstairs.”

  Tom laughed. “You stay downstairs, padre,” he said, unpleasantly, “and I'll stay upstairs. That way, you won't know if I drink myself senseless every night, and I won't know whether or not you worship idols in secret.”

  Reverend Fitzgerald gasped. What Tom said was not the truth, but it was a little too close to it for comfort.

  “Fitzgerald?” Tom had inquired on that night over two years ago. “Irish, isn't it?”

  “Yes”

  “Orangeman, eh?”

  “No”

  That had put an end to that particular conversation, but the Congregationalist minister had spent a few anxious weeks wondering what Tom was thinking.

  Francis Joseph Fitzgerald was an Irishman, born and bred a Catholic and raised in a tenement in East Boston. When he was in his late teens, it had pleased him to say that he had remained a Catholic until he was old enough to read. At that time, he used to say, he had discovered too many holes in Catholicism to satisfy an intelligent, intellectual man. He had renounced the Holy Roman Church and become a Protestant. His new religion had so satisfied his questioning that he decided to become a minister. It had not been easy. Protestant theological schools, he had found, were not overly eager to accept former Catholic Irishmen by the name of Fitzgerald. In the end, however, he had succeeded. Not only was he accepted by a good school, he graduated at the head of his class, and when he was ordained and sent out into the field, it had been with many high hopes and good wishes on the part of his teachers.