“You are young, Lewis,” she said. “You are young when you are with me because you have love to give. A man is old only when he's exhausted his store of love.”
“I wish that were true, Allison. How I wish that was true! It would make us contemporaries. I've spent as little love in my nearly fifty years of life as you have in half that time. I want to tell you about this, Allison, not only because you have a right to know but because I want to tell you.”
He told Allison of his loveless marriage to a neurotic wife. “I married young,” he said, “young and full of hope. Because I loved her I hoped she would change. But she never has. We should have got a divorce twenty years ago, but then my son was born and for a long time that was enough for me.” Lewis was so unused to revealing himself that it embarrassed him; he paused often and shifted the silverware beside his plate. “I gave up all thought of personal happiness. We drifted along. My son's at college now. And my wife … she is very much an inhabitant of her own world. A world she has created out of her own neuroses. Madness, I should say, but it's not a fashionable word any more, is it? Nice women, women of good family, don't go mad; they have neuroses. Only peasants are susceptible to madness these days.” He looked down at Allison's hand in his. “You will have gathered by now that I stay with her out of pity. But don't let me give you the impression that it is a noble thing to do,” he said, sarcastic at his own expense. “It's not an act of courage or sacrifice, Allison. Believe me. It's an act of weakness, I'm afraid. The courageous thing would be for me to leave her. But I haven't yet had the strength to do that. Instead, like a weakling, I sit and wait for her to commit suicide or get run over by a car. I have the absurd dream that one day I will be free of her without doing anything myself.”
“It may happen yet, darling,” Allison said, reassuring him.
“Oh, Allison, don't let me draw you into my silly dreams. Nothing happens but what we make happen.”
“I don't care, Lewis. I don't care about any of that. Just love me and everything will be all right.”
He smiled his love to her, but behind the sadness of his eyes he thought, Oh God, how young she is. How young she is.
That night Allison slept in his arms and felt safe, protected from a menacing world.
3
SHORTLY BEFORE ONE O'CLOCK the following afternoon, Allison sat next to Paul Morris at the bar of a Third Avenue restaurant called Kelly's. It had a floor made of small hexagonal tiles, and the old gas chandeliers, converted to electricity, were still in use.
“Brody's been coming here for twenty years,” Paul told Allison. “He made the place fashionable.”
“I lived in New York for over a year,” said Allison, “and never heard of it. It must be very, very fashionable indeed.”
Paul picked up his drink and was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Look, doll, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth or keep them out, for that matter, but don't mention the fact that you once lived in New York to Brody.”
“But what if he asks me?” demanded Allison.
“Then hedge,” said Paul, and put up a hand to stop the words that came to her lips. “Look, you're a clever kid. You've written a novel that has not only been published but is going to be a best seller. You're smart enough with words when you want to be, and I want you to be extra, super smart with Brody. Don't tell him about living in New York. And another thing. During the war Brody got the Pulitzer for news coverage in Italy. You might remember to mention that. It's his pride and joy and not many people remember it.”
“How did you happen to remember?” asked Allison.
“Trade secret,” smiled Paul, “but I'll tell you. Ever since I set this interview up, I've been reading stories by and about Jim Brody. I've studied everything about him so carefully that I bet I could tell you what color pajamas he wears to bed.”
Jim Brody was a big, hearty-looking man who looked as if he enjoyed food and good jokes. When he walked into Kelly's, practically everybody there waved and called out a greeting to him. A waiter removed a “Reserved” sign from a back table and another waiter put down a huge glass of beer before Brody had even had time to take his coat off.
“Here we go, honey,” whispered Paul Morris. “Smile.”
“I can't,” Allison whispered back. “I'm too scared.”
“Yes, you can and no, you're not,” said Paul and led her to Jim Brody's table.
“Hi,” said Brody, barely glancing at Allison as Paul introduced her. “Sit down.”
Allison sat next to Paul Morris. He fools you, she thought, looking at Brody. He's so big and friendly looking, like a Saint Bernard, except for his eyes. His eyes are cold and they see everything.
“Want a beer?” Brody asked.
“I'll have one,” said Paul. “Miss MacKenzie doesn't drink.”
How can he lie like that and still smile? wondered Allison, shocked, as she remembered the dry martini she had just had at the bar.
“How old are you?” asked Brody.
Before Allison could answer, Paul took a slip of paper from an inside pocket of his suit coat.
“I wrote down all the biographical stuff, Jim,” he said. “Thought it might save time.”
Brody took the paper and studied it. “Nineteen, hm-m?” he asked, glancing up at Allison.
For a moment she was speechless. She was twenty-three years old and was just opening her mouth to say so when Brody spoke again.
“You look even younger than that,” he said. “Been writing long?”
“Ever since high school,” she said.
“Ever sell anything?”
“Just short stories. To the magazines.”
“What kind of stories?”
“Oh, you know. Just silly, frothy things for a lot of empty-headed women.”
Brody smiled. “Be careful how you talk about American women,” he said. “A helluva lot of them read my column.”
“Not the same ones who read my stories,” said Allison. “You write about real things and real people.”
“And your stories weren't real?”
“I suppose they were, to the people who read them, but they never were to me. In my stories, all the heroines were blond and beautiful with green eyes and fabulous figures, and all the men were tall, dark and handsome with square, cleft chins and tweed jackets.”
Brody threw back his head and laughed, and under the table Paul Morris gave Allison's hand a gentle squeeze of congratulations.
“Well, you certainly don't have characters like that in your novel,” Brody said. “I read it last night. Where'd a kid your age learn so much about smut?”
Allison was suddenly and thoroughly angry. “I'm very sorry that you think my book is smutty, Mr. Brody,” she said. “I never intended it to be. All I tried to do was to be truthful and to give an accurate picture of small towns as I know them to be. The things that happen in Samuel's Castle happen everywhere, and I should think a man who's smart enough to get the Pulitzer would know that.”
“Oh,” said Brody, with a smile. “You know about the Pulitzer.”
“Yes,” Allison lied, praying that she was right. “I remember when you got it. Your picture was in all the papers.”
Why, it isn't hard at all, she thought in surprise. I can lie every bit as well as Paul when I put my mind to it.
“You've a good memory,” said Brody. “Most people remember the column I wrote yesterday and that's as far back as they go.” A waiter put another glass of beer in front of him and Brody picked it up. “Tell me, Miss MacKenzie,” he said, wiping a tiny mustache of foam from his top lip, “what are people in your home town going to say about your book?”
“They have already said it,” said Allison. “Mr. Jackman, my publisher, sent advance copies to a few people in town and the word circulated very quickly.”
“And what have they said?” asked Brody.
Allison's fists clenched and her eyes burned with remembered rage.
“They say that I should be run
out of town,” she said and her voice quivered. “They say that my mother should sell her house and that my father should lose his job and that we should all leave Peyton Place forever.”
“And will you?” Brody asked. “Leave town, I mean.”
“Never!” cried Allison. “I was born in Peyton Place and I'm going to live there just as long as it suits me.”
Brody looked at her. “I was born in a small town in Indiana,” he said. “When people in small towns get riled up they can make things pretty unpleasant for whoever got them mad.”
“I know it,” said Allison.
Brody drained his glass and another was waiting. “Well, to get back to my first question. I used the wrong word, so I'll rephrase. Where did a girl your age learn so much about sex and sneakiness and perversion?”
“If you come from a small town you don't have to ask me that, Mr. Brody,” said Allison. “There are no secrets in a small town.”
“Then what you're saying is that Peyton Place taught you everything you know.”
“That most certainly is not what I said, Mr. Brody. I merely reminded you what small towns are like.”
Brody smiled. “Cagey, aren't you?”
“Not unless you want to think of me that way,” said Allison. “I was trying to be truthful.”
They ordered lunch then, and Brody asked her casual questions about Peyton Place and the people who lived there.
“Must be quite a town,” he said as he stood up to leave. “I'll have to go up there for a visit one of these days.”
When he had gone, Paul Morris took Allison's hand and squeezed it hard.
“You did it, sweetheart!” he said.
Allison was tired and angry. “What was the idea of telling him that I'm nineteen years old?” she demanded. “I'm twenty-three, and you know it.”
“Honey, that's publicity,” said Paul Morris, “and nine-tenths of all publicity is nothing but pretty stories someone made up sitting in an office just like mine. Look. Do you really believe all the crap you read in movie magazines about the stars? Do you really think that our sexy sirens are in their early twenties, that they attend P.T.A. meetings and get up every morning to make breakfast for their kiddies?”
“I never thought much about it one way or the other,” said Allison irritably.
“Well, start thinking, sweetheart,” said Paul. “Publicity is used to create an illusion about a place, a thing or a person. An illusion that people will believe because they want to believe it. Publicity is a means of selling merchandise and the merchandise can be a hotel room in Miami, a box of soap powder, or a human being. We're going to sell you, Allison, because if we do it well enough we will, in turn, sell copies of your book.”
Allison looked at him in horror. “I'm not something on a bargain counter!” she cried. “I'm a person. Me!”
Paul put a hand on her arm. “Honey, I know that and you know that, and everybody in the world knows that everybody else is a person. But what we are going to do with you is to make you into a very special person. One that millions of people will recognize. They'll know your name, your face and your book. In short, we are going to try to make you into a celebrity.”
Allison said, “Now that I'm of age again, I'd like a drink, please.”
“You can't have one right now. After today, people here are going to remember that you sat with Jim Brody and that you didn't drink with him. In fact, he'll probably put the fact that you don't drink in his column, so you can't turn around now and do anything to disturb the illusion.”
“This is ridiculous,” said Allison.
“Is it?” asked Paul. “Listen. We're going to sell you as a genius type. A sweet, untouched, young girl from the country who lived for years with a situation until she could not stand the sham and hypocrisy of it any longer and exploded into print with the truth. Now the public already has the idea that sweet, untouched girl geniuses don't drink, so whenever you are in a place where people might remember, you don't drink. It's as simple as that.”
“The whole thing is nothing but outrageous lies!” said Allison.
“Not really,” said Paul. “Don't things happen in Peyton Place the way they happen in your novel?”
“Of course they do,” said Allison. “But I certainly never meant to imply—”
“Look, doll. You want your book to sell, don't you?”
“Yes, but I still don't see—”
Again he cut her off. “Leave it to me,” he said. “And talk to everyone I introduce you to just the way you talked to Brody. Do what I tell you and together we'll make Samuel's Castle into the biggest thing that ever hit the book business.” He glanced at his watch. “Come on,” he said. “We're due over at C.B.S. in twenty minutes. You're going to be interviewed by Jane Dodge. Her show is on in the morning but she tapes all her interviews.”
“I've heard her,” said Allison. “She has the loveliest, deep voice.”
“That's right,” said Paul. “The voice of an angel and the soul of a true bitch. Come on. I hope we can get a cab.”
“With Jane,” said Paul, before they went into the studio, “don't belittle women's magazines, women's organizations or women's anything. She's a professional Woman and has made a big, profitable business out of it.”
Jane Dodge wore a large hat, long black gloves and used an ebony cigarette holder. She was so sleek and had been made up with such precision that she looked to Allison like a manufactured article.
“For Christ's sake, Jake,” Jane was yelling, as Paul led Allison over to her, “are you going to screw around all afternoon or do we get a show taped?”
“Almost ready, Jane,” said the man named Jake.
She turned to meet Allison. “Oh, hello, sweetie,” she said. “We'll be able to get going if that dumb bastard ever gets things organized.”
Her sharp, quick eyes behind green, harlequin-glasses scanned the sheet of notes Paul Morris had handed her and she mumbled under her breath.
“Nineteen. Peyton Place. Only child. First book.”
Allison stood watching her, her heart thumping.
“Ready, Jane.”
Jane Dodge watched the nervous man named Jake and at a signal from him she began to speak in the deep, soft voice that Allison remembered.
“And now, ladies,” she said into a microphone, “it gives me great pleasure to introduce all of you to a little girl I met several years ago in New England. Her name is Allison MacKenzie and she's only nineteen, but my little friend has managed to fool quite a few of us. She is the author of the sensational new best seller, Samuel's Castle and, girls, if you haven't had an opportunity to read this marvelous book yet, let the dishes go and run to your bookstore. Well. Good morning, Allison. How are you, dear?”
When it was over, Allison's knees were trembling and all she wanted to do was to get out of the hot, stuffy studio and into the fresh air.
“Paul, sweetie,” Jane Dodge said. “Leave a copy of that book for me, will you?”
Paul took a copy of Samuel's Castle from his briefcase and put it on Jane's desk.
“Thanks a lot, Jane,” he said. “It was a great interview.”
Allison could not take her eyes off the book Paul had put down.
“Haven't you read it?” she asked Jane.
Jane looked at her in astonishment and then she began to laugh.
“Sweetie,” she said, “with the rat race the way it is these days, I don't even have time to read Lenny Lyons any more.”
When Allison and Paul were outside, she turned to him.
“I know men who work in the woods who don't have the vocabulary of that woman,” she said. “And as for two-faced hypocrisy, Jane Dodge would make the women of Peyton Place look like children.”
“Could be,” said Paul cheerfully, “but thousands of women listen to her every morning. And when they listen tomorrow morning they'll hear you. And then they'll run out and buy Samuel's Castle because Jane told them to. Because anyone who's a friend of dear old Janie'
s is a friend of theirs.”
What a dirty business this is, Allison thought wearily. And I am part of it now. I have given in to it without a struggle. I want my book to be read. I want it to be a best seller. And so I do these awful things. How easy it is to become a liar and a fraud when you are able to tell yourself you're doing it with the best intentions.
Paul hailed a taxi, but Allison said she wanted to walk. Paul's last words as he drove off were, “Allison, we are going to sell one hell of a lot of books.”
Walking crosstown to meet David she felt a moment of fierce hatred for Paul. But it's not Paul, she told herself, he's only doing the job he was hired to do. And he's doing it damn well. It's me. I've become a huckster. I'm not doing the job I trained myself to do. I should be home with Mike and Constance writing my new novel.
But now it was not only the excitement of publication that kept her mind from her work, now there was also Lewis Jackman. For the first time since she met Paul at Kelly's did she think of Lewis, so caught up had she been in the hectic business of publicity. Now, walking the busy street in the bright spring weather, she remembered his voice and the touch of his hands. This is the thing that matters, she told herself, not a few lies to people who make a living out of lying. What's growing between Lewis and me, that is what matters.
As she walked toward the café where David waited for her she thought of him with a pang of guilt. But we don't choose an object for our love, she told herself. Love chooses us. Lovers can always find an excuse for the hurt they do to others, she thought. And the excuse is always love itself.
She met David at an Italian coffeehouse in the West Fifties, a dark place with guttering candles on marble-topped tables. The walls were covered with a dark red cloth that absorbed what little light there was. There were mirrors, speckled and yellowed with age, in which she saw her face, wavering and dark, as if seen through smoke. At the back, the only bright object in the place, stood a great, ornate, silver coffee machine. When the operator depressed one of its long handles, steam hissed through tightly locked coffee grounds and a delicious elixir, the very essence of coffee, dripped drop by drop from a silver faucet into a small cup.
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