Peyton Place (32 page)

“Fine.”

She watched him walk down Elm Street, a tall figure in an open-necked sports shirt and tan slacks. She wondered, for the millionth time, what Allison would think about having him for a stepfather, and her mind went from that to the child who was now sixteen, although she still believed herself to be only fifteen, and who should know better, at her age, than to pursue such a flighty course as writing for a living.

In Seth Buswell's office, Allison MacKenzie was feeling far from flighty. She fidgeted nervously with the zipper closing on the brief case she had brought with her. After much soul searching and discussion, she and Kathy Ellsworth had chosen six of what they called, “The Best of Allison MacKenzie,” and Allison had taken the six stories from the brief case and handed them to the newspaper editor.

Seth leaned back in his chair and pulled at his lower lip while he read. Allison's stories were thinly disguised portraits of local characters, and Seth pulled at his lip to hide a smile.

Brother! he thought, would these cause a sensation on my front page!

Allison had written up Miss Hester Goodale as a witch who kept the bones of her dead lover hidden in her cellar. She had made the Page Girls into religious fanatics, and turned poor old Clayton Frazier into a lecherous devil. Leslie Harrington was a dictator who came to a bad end, but Matthew Swain was a twinkling, determinedly good-natured creature who devoted his life to Doing Good. Marion Partridge was portrayed as a bosomy club lady with a secret vice. Marion, according to Allison, took snuff on the sly.

Brother! thought Seth Buswell, as he set aside the last of Allison's stories. He cleared his throat and looked at the girl who sat nervously waiting for his decision.

“What did you have in mind, Allison?” he asked. “You know, don't you, that I hire a few out of town correspondents for news in different communities, and that I do all the local stuff myself?”

“I wasn't thinking of writing anything like social items,” began Allison, and Seth heaved a silent sigh of relief. “I was thinking that perhaps I could write a little story for you every week. There are a lot of things to write stories about in Peyton Place.”

God help my circulation, thought Seth, glancing down at the stories on his desk.

“What kind of stories?” he asked. “Fiction?”

“Oh, no,” said Allison. “Fact stories. About points of interest in the community, and things like that.”

“Did you ever think about a historical type of column?” asked Seth. “You know, Elm Street as it was fifty years ago, that sort of thing?”

“No, I hadn't thought of it,” said Allison, enthusiasm showing in her voice. “But it's a fine idea. We could call it ‘Peyton Place Then and Now,’ and you could put it in a box on the front page.”

Nothing reticent about this kid, thought Seth. A box on the front page, yet!

“We could try it,” he said cautiously. “We could run it a few weeks and see how it goes over.”

“Oh, Mr. Buswell!” cried Allison jumping up. “When? When could we start?”

That tears it, thought Seth. “Write something up this week,” he said. “I'll try it on Friday.”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Buswell. I'll start right away. I'll go home and start thinking up things right now.”

“Hold on a minute,” said Seth. “Aren't you going to ask me what I'll pay?”

“Pay?” cried Allison. “You don't have to pay me. I'll do it for nothing and count it as a privilege.”

“That's no way to talk, Allison. If people like your writing, they should be willing to pay for it. I'll give you two dollars for every article of yours that I print.”

For a moment, Seth was afraid that the child would either burst into tears or throw up. Her face went white, then pink, then whiter than before.

“Oh, thank you,” she said breathlessly. “Thank you, Mr. Buswell.”

“And Allison,” called Seth after the figure that was making for his office door. “It's going to be too hot to write this week end. Wait ’til Monday. Maybe it will rain before then.”

Allison ran out of the building that housed the
Peyton Place Times
and ran straight into the figure of Tomas Makris. She would have fallen if he had not grasped her elbows and steadied her.

“I've got a job,” she cried. “I've got a job writing, Mr. Makris. For money. On the paper!”

Over Allison's head, Tom looked through the window into Seth's office. The newspaper editor was bent over the stories that Allison had left behind, and this time he was smiling openly.

“Well,” said Tom, looking down into Allison's face that had gone white again, “that calls for a celebration. Everybody's first job calls for a celebration. Come on into Prescott's and I'll buy you a Coke.”

He led Allison into the drugstore, and her elbow, still cupped in his hand, trembled. The color was beginning to come back into her face, but she could not stop chattering.

“A historical type thing,” she was saying, “and for money. Just like a real writer.”

Looking at her, in her trembling excitement, Tom felt suddenly very old.

“I was going to start right away, this afternoon,” Allison was saying. “But I'll wait until tomorrow. I promised Norman that I'd go on a picnic with him this afternoon. Isn't that funny, Mr. Makris? I'd forgotten all about the picnic until just this minute. I was so excited about the job. Wait until I tell Norman! He'll just die! Norman writes, too, you know. Poems. I'll have to hurry. I promised Norman that I'd bring the lunch. Isn't that crazy? I just remembered about the picnic!”

Foolishness, eh? thought Tom, remembering Constance's remark. When an adolescent forgets something as romantic as a picnic with another adolescent in the excitement generated by the thought of writing for money, it is difficult to regard it as foolishness any longer.

“Thanks for the Coke, Mr. Makris,” said Allison, and she was gone, in a swirl of polished cotton skirts.

Tom put a dime down on Prescott's soda fountain.

Goddamn it, he thought, still feeling old, this waiting has gone on long enough. I'll talk to her again tonight. Two more years to wait is too long. Too much wasted time. We're not getting any younger.

Allison ran up the front steps of her house and into the front hall, letting the screen door slam behind her.

“Nellie!” she called. “Nellie, where are you?”

There was no answer, but Allison heard a rattling from the back of the house which meant that Nellie was in the kitchen, doing her regular Saturday morning job of straightening out the cabinets. Allison did not call out again, but ran up the stairs to her room, unbuttoning her dress as she went. She changed into a pair of brief shorts and a sleeveless blouse and, still running, went down to the kitchen.

“Nellie!” she shouted. “Nellie, I've got a job! A job writing. For money!”

Nellie Cross, on her hands and knees in front of a low kitchen cabinet, looked up at her.

“Oh, yeah?” she asked, without interest.

“Oh, Nellie,” said Allison. “Is it one of your bad days?”

“Same as any other,” said Nellie sullenly. “Ain't nobody feels good when they got nothin’ but pus in all their veins.”

This was something recent with Nellie, but it disturbed Allison no more than had some of Nellie's previous ideas. It was just different, and Allison accepted it calmly. During the last week, Nellie had gone from cursing Lucas and all other men to believing that she was afflicted with a strange disease.

“It's the clap,” she told Allison, nodding her head sagely. “Lucas give it to me, just before he run away.”

Lucas Cross, Allison knew, had disappeared from Peyton Place a week before, and his going had caused a flurry of talk in the town for a few days. The consensus of local opinion was that Lucas’ going was good riddance to bad rubbish, but, to everyone's surprise, Nellie did not go along with this view. She had gone from cursing Lucas as a sonofabitch to defending him as a man put upon by the forces of society, wronged by bad companions and seduced by diseased women.

“I should think you'd be glad to be rid of him,” Allison had said when Nellie told her of Lucas’ disappearance. “It would have been better for you if he had gone long ago.”

“He wouldna gone now, except he give me the clap and was ascared I'd tell on him. I wouldna told on Lucas, not even if them people from the health department down at Concord was to cut me to pieces. Pus in all my veins, that's what Lucas left me with. He couldn't help it, poor man. He caught it off some hoor, that's what he done. He couldn't help it. He was drunk and forgot himself, is all.”

At frequent intervals, the pus in Nellie's veins hardened into lumps which were very painful, and which caused, Allison had learned in the past week, what Nellie referred as as “one of her bad days.”

“Yep,” she replied to Allison's question, “a real bad day. Them lumps is all through my whole system. I don't know how I'll get through this day.”

“I'm so sorry, Nellie,” said Allison, eager to get the conversation back to herself. “But aren't you surprised about my job?”

“Nope,” said Nellie, spreading fresh paper on the floor of the low cabinet. “I always said you was good at makin’ up stories. I ain't surprised. You want to eat?”

“No. I've got to pack a lunch. Norman and I are going on a picnic.”

“Humph,” said Nellie.

“What?” demanded Allison sharply.

“Humph,” repeated Nellie.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Allison, more sharply than before.

“I mean humph, that's what I mean,” said Nellie. “Them Pages, humph. That Evelyn Page, always so high and mighty. She married Oakleigh because he was an old man and she thought she'd get his money when he died. Well, he fooled her. Left her, he did, left her flatter than a pancake as soon as them girls of his told him to. Evelyn Page never had nothin’ to be high and mighty about. Her husband left her same as mine left me, ‘cept that Oakleigh didn't have no excuse for it, and Lucas did.”

“You stop talking like that, Nellie Cross!” said Allison. “Mrs. Page is a perfectly fine lady, and it wasn't her fault if Norman's father left her.”

“Fine lady my foot!” snorted Nellie. “Tit-fed that son of hers ’til he was four years old. That kid had teeth as solid as the ones in your head right now, and perfectly fine lady Evelyn Page was still nursin’ him and lovin’ every minute of it! Old Oakleigh never had teeth like Norman had at four years old. No wonder perfectly fine lady Evelyn Page hated to wean that child!”

Allison's face was white and her voice low and furious. “You're a filthy-minded old woman, Nellie Cross,” she said. “You don't only have pus in your veins, you have it in your brain. It'll make you crazy, Nellie, that's what it will do. You'll go stark, raving crazy, as crazy as Miss Hester Goodale, and it'll serve you right for talking so mean about people.”

“Your mother worked hard to raise you right,” cried Nellie. “She didn't raise you to go runnin’ out with boys that was tit-fed at four years old. It ain't right, Allison, for you to be runnin’ out with that Page boy. All them Pages is trash. Plain, dirty, queer trash. Always was.”

“I don't even want to talk to you, you crazy old woman,” said Allison. “And I don't want you to say another word about Norman or his family to me!”

She flounced around the kitchen, slamming pans as she put eggs on to boil, and banging the refrigerator repeatedly as she took out food to make sandwiches. When she had finished, she packed everything into a picnic hamper and ran out of the kitchen, leaving a mess behind for Nellie to clean up.

Nellie sighed and stood up, staring down at the vein in the bend of her elbow. It was lumpy. She took one step forward and stopped, putting her hand to her head. Her fingers searched frantically through her stringy hair, and at last they found the lump. It was a big lump, as big as an egg, and it pulsated like a boil.

Crazy. The word burned Nellie's consciousness like hot fat. Crazy. Soon the lump in her head would burst and spread pus all over her brain and she would be crazy, just as Allison had said.

Nellie Cross sat down on the floor in the MacKenzie kitchen and began to whimper.

“Lucas,” she whimpered aloud. “Lucas, just you look here and see what you done.”

Allison and Norman pushed their bicycles ahead of them, for it was too hot to pedal uphill. The bicycles were heavy because the baskets attached to them were loaded with the picnic hamper, a six-bottle carton of Coca-Cola, a cotton patchwork quilt, two bathing suits, four towels and a thick volume entitled,
Important English Poets.
Allison and Norman pushed and panted, and the July heat rose, shimmering, from the highway that led away from Peyton Place.

“We should have settled for Meadow Pond,” said Norman, pushing his sunglasses back into place on his nose.

“We wouldn't be able to get near the water at Meadow,” said Allison, raising one hand from her bicycle handle bars to lift the heavy hair that clung to her damp neck. “Every kid in town will be at Meadow this afternoon. I'd rather stay home than go there.”

“It can't be much farther,” said Norman philosophically. “The bend in the river is exactly one mile beyond the hospital, and we've certainly come almost that by now.”

“It's not much farther,” agreed Allison, “We passed the mills ages ago.”

After what seemed an eternity in the summer afternoon, they came at last to the bend in the Connecticut River. Gratefully, they pushed their bicycles into the shade of the giant trees that grew close to the water's edge, and sank down on the soft, dry pine needles that covered the ground.

“I thought we'd never get here,” said Allison, puffing out her bottom lip and blowing at a strand of hair that fell on her forehead.

“Neither did I,” said Norman. “It was worth it, though. There isn't another soul around for miles. Listen to the quiet.”

When they had rested, he said, “Let's push our bikes into the woods a ways. Then no one will be able to see them from the highway, and no one will know we're here.”

“O.K.,” said Allison. “There's a place up just a little way. The trees grow farther back from the water, and there's a sort of sandy beach. You can't see it from the road.”