Peyton Place (41 page)

“Well, that's that,” said Seth Buswell to Matthew Swain. “Now perhaps things will return to normal in Peyton Place. It was a bad time while it lasted, but now it is over.”

Dr. Swain looked beyond the town to where the fires still burned in the hills.

“No,” he said. “It's not over.”

Allison MacKenzie remained in the hospital for five days. For the first two days of these five, she was in what Dr. Swain described to Constance as a state of shock. She answered when spoken to and ate when food was placed before her, but afterward she had no conscious memory of her words or actions.

“She is going to be all right,” the doctor told Constance. “She's only escaped, for a little while, into a shadow world. It's a fine place, extremely comfortable and provided by Nature for those exhausted by battle, or terror, or grief.”

On the third day, Allison emerged from her vague dreaminess. When Matthew Swain arrived at the hospital, he found her lying face down on the bed, her head hidden in the pillow to muffle the sounds of her weeping.

“Now, Allison,” he said, placing his hand gently on the back of her neck, “what seems to be the matter?”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, a habit which Nurse Mary Kelley considered highly unprofessional but one from which many patients seemed to derive comfort.

“Tell me what the trouble is, Allison,” he said.

She turned on to her back and covered her swollen, red face with her hands.

“I did it!” she sobbed. “I killed Nellie!”

Her words came in a flood, and the doctor listened silently while Allison wept and lacerated herself and gave way to her agony of guilt and shame. When she had finished, he took both her hands in one of his and bent over to wipe her wet face with his handkerchief.

“It is indeed a sorry thing,” he said, as he daubed at her cheeks, “when we are not given the opportunity to right our wrongs before it is too late. Unfortunately, this is something which happens to most of us, so you must stop thinking, Allison, that you are alone in what you have done. You wronged your friend Nellie when you said the things you said to her, but you must abandon the idea that you killed her. Nellie was ill, horribly, incurably ill, and that is why she did as she did.”

“I knew she was sick,” said Allison, and sighed with a sobbing breath. “She told me she had pus in all her veins, and that this sickness was something called the clap. Lucas gave it to her, she told me.”

“Nellie had cancer,” said the doctor, and Allison had not the shrewd eye of Selena to discern his lie. “There was nothing to be done for her, and she knew it. I don't want you to repeat to anyone else what Nellie told you about her illness. It was only an excuse she made. She didn't want anyone to know what the matter with her really was.”

“I won't tell,” promised Allison, and turned her face away from the doctor. “The way I feel, I don't care if I never talk to anyone again.”

Dr. Swain laughed and turned her face back toward himself. “This is not the end of the world, my dear,” he said. “In a little while you will begin to forget.”

“I'll never be able to forget,” said Allison, and began to cry again.

“Yes, you will,” he said softly. “There have been many remarks made about time, and life, and most of these have become bromides. What writers call clichés. You'll have to avoid them like the plague if you plan to write, Allison. But, do you know something? When people scoff at the triteness of great remarks, I can't help but think that perhaps it was truth which caused repetition until the words of wisdom became overused and trite, and finally came to be called bromides. ‘Time heals all wounds’ is so trite that 1 suppose many people would laugh at my use of it. Still, I know that it is true.”

His voice had become so soft that it seemed to Allison as if the doctor had forgotten her presence entirely, that he was not talking to her at all. It was as though he were musing out loud, but only for himself. At Allison's age, it still came as a shock to her that there were people other than herself, who thought thoughts worth musing upon.

“Time heals all wounds,” repeated the doctor. “And all life is like the seasons of the year. It is set in a pattern, like time, and each life follows its own pattern, from spring through winter, to spring again.”

“I never thought of it like that,” Allison interrupted. “I have often thought of life in terms of the seasons, but when winter comes, the life, like the year, is over. I don't understand when you say ‘to spring again.’”

Matthew Swain shook himself a little and smiled. “I was thinking,” he said, “of the second spring which a man's children bring to his life.”

“Oh,” said Allison, eager not so much to listen, now, as to express ideas of her own. “Sometimes,” she said, “I've thought of each life as a tree. First there are the little green leaves, that's when you're little, and then there are the big green leaves. That is when you are older, the way I am now. Then there is the time of Indian summer and fall, when the leaves are bright and beautiful, and that's when you're really grown and can do all the things you've always wanted to do. Then there are no leaves at all, and it's winter. Then you are dead, and it's over.”

“But what about the next spring?” asked the doctor. “It comes, you know. Always. I've done some thinking about trees myself,” he admitted with a smile. “Whenever I look at a tree and I take the time to stop and think, I'm always reminded of a poem I read once. I can't remember the name of it, or the name of the man who wrote it, but it had to do with a tree. Somewhere in that poem it says, I saw the starry Tree Eternity, Put forth the blossom Time.’ Maybe that's a bromide, too. But sometimes it comforts me even more than the one about time healing all wounds, in a different way, of course. Sometimes, it makes me feel pretty good to think of all of us living our lives as blossoms of time on a tree called Eternity.”

Allison did not speak again. She closed her eyes and thought of Dr. Swain's poem, and suddenly it did not seem to matter so much that Norman Page had not come to visit her in the hospital, and that her mother had said wretched, cruel things to her.

I saw the starry Tree Eternity, Put forth the blossom Time, thought Allison. She was asleep when Matthew Swain closed the door behind him and stepped out into the corridor.

“How's she look to you, Doc?” asked Nurse Mary Kelley.

“Fine,” said the doctor. “She can go home before the week is out.”

Mary Kelley looked at him sharply. “You ought to go home yourself,” she told him. “You look exhausted. Terrible about Nellie Cross, isn't it?”

“Yes,” said the doctor.

Mary Kelley sighed. “And the fires are still going strong. It's been an awful week.”

As the doctor was leaving the hospital, he caught a glimpse of himself in the plate glass front doors. The reflection of his tired, lined face looked back at him, and Matthew Swain turned away.

Physician, heal thyself, he was thinking as he walked quickly to his car.

Because she did not leave the hospital until the Friday following the Saturday when Nellie had died, Allison was spared the ugliness of Nellie's funeral and the first sight of the consequences it had left behind in Peyton Place. Norman Page was not as fortunate. He had been forced to attend Nellie's bleak funeral with his mother who went more in protest of Reverend Fitzgerald's behavior than from a desire to see Nellie comfortably buried. Then he had had to listen to Evelyn explain her opinion of the Congregationalist minister, often and in detail, for the rest of the week. Norman's mother, it seemed, could not abide folks who were not “morally and spiritually strong.” Whatever that meant, thought Norman resentfully as he sat down on the curbstone opposite the house of Miss Hester Goodale on Depot Street. He could remember the time when he had been terrified of Miss Hester, and Allison had laughed at him and tried to frighten him even more by saying that Miss Hester was a witch. Norman poked at a fat beetle with a stick and wished that he could go to see Allison, but her mother would not allow it any more than his own mother would let him go. He had missed Allison. During the short time when they had been “best friends,” they had told each other everything about themselves. Norman had even told her about his father and mother, or at least he had told her everything he knew about them, and he had never told that to anyone else. Allison had not laughed.

“I don't believe that it's true when people say my mother married my father because she thought he had money,” Norman had told Allison. “I think they were both lonely. My father's first wife had been dead for a long, long time, and my mother had never been married at all. Of course, he was much older, and folks said he should have known better than to marry a woman as young as my mother, but I can't see that being old makes you any less lonely. The Page Girls are my sisters, did you know that? Not really and truly sisters, but half sisters. Their father and my father were the same man. The Page Girls hated my mother. She told me so herself, but she never understood why. I think that it was because they were jealous. My mother was younger than they when she married my father, and of course, she was beautiful. They hated her and tried to get my father to hate her, too. It was awful, my mother said, the things the Page Girls said about her to my father. They wouldn't even have her in the house, so my father bought my mother her own house. It's the one we live in now. It was worse after I came, my mother said. Then the Page Girls tried to make everyone believe that I wasn't my father's son, and that my mother had been with another man, but my mother never said anything. She said that she would not stoop so low as to argue with anyone like the Page Girls, and that she would not fight over a man like a dog over a bone. Maybe that's why my father went back to live with the Page Girls, instead of staying at our house with us. My mother says that my father was morally and spiritually weak, whatever that means. She never spoke to him again, and I don't remember him hardly at all. When he died, the Page Girls came to tell my mother. They did not call him her husband, or my father, or their father. They said, ‘Oakleigh Page is dead,’ and my mother said, ‘God rest his morally and spiritually weak soul,’ and closed the door right in their faces. There was an awful fight about my father's money, after he was gone. But there was nothing the Page Girls could do. My father had left a paper to tell how he wanted his money divided up, and my mother got the most. That's why the Page Girls hate her more than ever now, she said. They still try to say that my mother married my father for his money, but my mother said that she married him because she was lonely, and sometimes lonely people make mistakes. She said that she is glad she did it, though, because she got me. I guess I'm all she did get, except maybe the money.”

Allison had not laughed. She had cried, and then she had told him about her own father, who was as handsome as a prince and the kindest, most considerate gentleman in the world.

It was going to be awful without Allison, thought Norman disconsolately. He wouldn't have anyone to talk to at all.

Angrily, he crushed the beetle he had been teasing. It wasn't fair! It wasn't as if he and Allison had done anything terrible, although his mother had tried hard enough to make him admit that they had. When he had confessed to kissing Allison a few times, his mother had wept and her face had turned very red, but she had pressed on anyway, trying to get him to say that he had done something else. Norman's face flamed in the hot summer quiet of Depot Street as he remembered some of his mother's questions. In the end, she had whipped him and made him promise never to see Allison again. Norman had not minded being whipped, but he was very sorry now that he had made the promise about not seeing Allison.

“Norman!”

It was Mrs. Card, who lived in the house next door to Miss Hester's. Norman raised his hand and waved to her.

“Come on over and have a lemonade,” called Mrs. Card. “It's so hot!”

Norman stood up and crossed the street. “A lemonade would taste good,” he said.

Mrs. Card had a wide-lipped mouth, and when she smiled, all her teeth showed. She smiled at Norman now and said, “Let's go out back. It's cooler there.”

Norman followed her through the house and out into the back yard. Mrs. Card was pregnant, eight and a half months gone, Norman had heard his mother say to a friend of hers. She certainly was enormous, however far gone she was, thought Norman, and he wondered why Mr. and Mrs. Card had waited so long to have a baby. They had been married for over ten years, and now Mrs. Card was pregnant for the first time.

“It's about time!” Norman had heard several people tease Mr. Card, but Mr. Card did not mind. He had a reputation for being good natured. “Any time's good enough for me!” he had replied to those who teased him.

But Norman felt sorry for Mrs. Card, especially when she groaned as she lowered herself into the long chair in the back yard. It was the kind of chair which Norman thought of as a “chayze lounge,” because “chayze” was French for chair and it was certainly a chair made for “lounging.”

“Phew!” said Mrs. Card and laughed. “Will you pour, Normie? I'm bushed.”

She always called him Normie and treated him as if he were the same age as she which, he knew, was thirty-five. Rather than pleasing him, her attitude always made him vaguely uncomfortable. He knew that his mother would not have approved of some of the things which Mrs. Card discussed with him. She spoke of pregnancy as if it were something that people discussed all the time, like the weather, and she had gone so far as to hold up her female cat, who was due to kitten anytime, and insist that “Normie” touch the animal's swollen body so that he might “feel all the tiny babies closed up inside.” It had made him slightly ill. But he had finally persuaded his mother to allow him to have a kitten, so naturally he was interested in “Clothilde” as Mrs. Card called her cat. Mrs. Card had promised him first choice of Clothilde's babies.

Norman filled a glass with lemonade and handed it to Mrs. Card. He noticed that Mrs. Card had not let herself get sloppy just because she was pregnant. Her fingernails were filed into perfect ovals, and the ovals were covered from tip to cuticle with bright red polish.