Constance filled his cup. “There,” she said. “Is that reward enough for you?”
“Ask me later,” Mike told her in a stage whisper.
Allison laughed. “Sometimes I feel like you two are my children,” she said.
She asked Mike how he was enjoying his teaching job in White River.
He made a face. “If my wife could support me in the manner to which I've grown accustomed, I'd give up that job with just one minute's notice.”
Connie put her arm around his shoulders. “You should have swallowed your pride and your honor when the school board here told you they were sorry and wanted you back,” she said.
“What's this?” Allison cried.
“It happened just after you left,” Constance explained. “Mike's being fired became such a scandal in educational circles that even Roberta got scared. Also, the new principal turned out to be an absolute dud.”
“They came to me, Roberta and poor old Charlie, with their hats in their hands—and, let me tell you, Roberta looks better with it in her hands than on her head—and offered me my old job,” Mike said.
“Mike told them he wouldn't take the job back until they agreed to a few demands he had to make.”
“It'll do them good to stew in their own juice for a year,” said Mike. “Besides, they'll need that long to make up their minds to give me everything I asked for.”
“Everything like what?” asked Allison.
“Like tenure and a thousand dollar a year raise every year for the next five years.” replied Mike.
“Charlie Partridge is all for it,” said Connie. “But he can't convince Marion. Roberta is on the fence.”
“Well see,” Mike said.
“Yes, but when?” asked Allison.
“In March,” replied Mike. “When the new contracts come out.”
“Thank God it'll be in March,” said Allison. “In April the group from Hollywood will be here, and I don't imagine that they'll do anything to improve our public relations with Peyton Place.”
“They're really coming then?” asked Connie.
“Yes,” replied Allison. “God help us all.”
“I heard that it was quite a session when the advance guard met with the selectmen,” said Mike. “Tishman's representative was a man named Blanding …” Mike went on.
“Conrad Blanding,” said Allison. “He's the director.”
“Well, Blanding told old Tom Perkins that all the studio wanted to do was use the town for a few weeks, and in return they'd leave approximately a hundred thousand dollars of their money behind. But old Tom wasn't impressed.”
“He wouldn't be,” Connie said. “He's New England through and through. What's good enough for his grandfather is good enough for his grandchildren. I wish some of these people would get over the idea that progress is sinful. I'm surprised Tom Perkins hasn't organized hatchet parties to smash up every TV set in Peyton Place.”
“Stop interrupting with your seditious talk,” Mike said. “If you're not careful, I'll have you run out of town on a rail.” He returned to Allison and continued his account.
“Perkins told Blanding that Peyton Place had managed to get along very well without outside money for a good many years and that as far as he was concerned we could all stagger along for another century or two without any help from Hollywood.”
“I warned Arthur Tishman,” said Allison. “But he took one look at photographs of the castle and made up his mind. And when Arthur makes up his mind, nothing can shake it.”
“Well, it'll give the town something new to talk about,” Mike said. “Maybe they'll give Marion Partridge a job as an extra—”
“She could play one of the witches,” Connie said. “She wouldn't even need make-up.”
“—and she'll forget about me and my job,” Mike finished, a look of exaggerated patience on his face while he waited through Constance's interruption.
“Nitwit,” she said. “You can help me with dinner while Allison goes up and unpacks. And there's time for a nap, darling, if you're feeling tired,” she said to Allison.
“Perhaps I will lie down for an hour,” Allison said, and went up to her room.
Her room was the same, exactly as she had remembered it, exactly as she had imagined it during those lonely nights in the expensive hotels in New York and California. It was a simple room, still full of reminders of her girlhood.
Her luggage, which Mike had stacked neatly at the foot of her bed, seemed a violation of the simple spirit of the room. The luggage was new, it was full of new things. It had nothing to do with the Allison MacKenzie whose room this was, with the Allison MacKenzie who had gone to movies with Selena, taken walks with Norman and dreamed childhood's peculiar dreams.
The luggage seemed to Allison a dreadful reminder of how much her life had changed. She lay down on her bed and thought, I live in two worlds now, I am a completely divided person. There is the world of Peyton Place, and I will never be so much at home anywhere else. And there is the outside world of New York and Hollywood in which I play a role, as surely as any actress does.
Except with Lewis. That is the one genuine aspect of the other world.
When her plane had landed at La Guardia, Lewis was waiting for her. All the way back to the city they held hands and just stared at each other, as if their eyes could never get enough of the sight of each other.
At the apartment hotel where she had reserved her suite of rooms, the manager awaited her in the lobby and welcomed her back. Bellboys ran to get her luggage from the car. And when they were finally alone, a small bottle of champagne cooling in a silver bucket, she then had to phone Constance.
It was only after this was done that Lewis finally took her in his arms. It was as if they waited till all the petty little details were out of the way, and they would not have to be interrupted by anyone or for anything, that they turned to each other.
“My God, darling!” Lewis said. “How I've missed you!”
“Oh, I know, I know,” Allison said.
“I couldn't sleep nights for missing you. Talking to you on the phone, and you so many miles away, was a torture. And yet I had to phone you. It was better than nothing.”
“We'll have a week together now, darling, and after Thanksgiving I'll be back for good and all. But I have to spend some time with Constance and Mike. And I want to be with them for a while, Lewis. I need it. These last few weeks have been exhausting.”
Lewis opened the bottle of champagne. “Well start building you up with this,” he said. “It's full of vitamins, as you know.”
She smiled at him and looked around the high-ceilinged, beautifully proportioned room. It had come to seem almost like her second home, not because of its grandeur but because of the hours she had shared here with Lewis. The terrace doors were closed against the cold; the chairs and table had been taken away from the terrace. It looked bleak and deserted.
She picked up an empty glass and Lewis filled it for her. They toasted each other wordlessly, with their eyes alone. Allison felt the cold liquid explode against the roof of her mouth and send bubbles of warmth coursing through her veins.
When Allison had finished her second glass she broke away from Lewis’ arms, and, picking up the champagne bottle, went into the bedroom. Lewis undressed her and when she was standing naked before him he raised his glass to her beauty and drank. In bed together, they finished the bottle, their thighs touching under the blankets and Lewis’ arm around her shoulders.
“Shall I order another bottle sent up, darling?” Allison asked.
“Do you think we need it?”
Allison smiled. “I don't think we needed the first one. But it was very nice.”
She dropped her empty glass on the rug as Lewis touched her breast and stroked the smooth soft flesh.
“Oh, Lewis, darling, darling,” she whispered.
But he paid no attention to her urgency and caressed her with his hands and bit her ear lobes until she cried out. She felt she w
ould suffocate and she threw off the blankets. Words of love came from her mouth in a fierce whisper. She closed her eyes and when he pushed her over she felt the whole world was turning with her. She put her arms around him and drew him to her.
There has never been anything like this, she thought, never, never, never. She rose upward on a curving wave until all thought was driven out of her and only love filled her, tirelessly, until she was replete with love and helpless in his arms and her face glistened with tears of joy.
2
ON THE DAY AFTER Allison returned to Peyton Place, Peter Drake backed his car out of his garage and drove toward the Cross house to pick up Selena and Joey. Peter rolled up his window against the cold wind that stripped the last leaves from the tortured trees.
Elm Street was deserted. The only moving thing that Peter could see was a torn sheet of newspaper that blew against a curbstone in front of the bank. Peter thought he had never seen a lonelier sight in his life.
Connie's house will be warm and cheerful and good smelling, thought Peter. Maybe Selena will be able to relax today.
He did not give voice, even silently, to his other hope.
Maybe today Selena will be over Tim Randlett for good. Maybe today she'll decide that she wants to marry me after all.
Peter Drake was what Peyton Place described as a “well-set-up” man. He was moderately tall, with good shoulders and square hands. His hair was dark brown and his eyes matched it almost exactly. As an attorney in Peyton Place, Peter was not quite as well set up as he looked. Into his office came the people whom Charles Partridge was too busy to see. The ones with rather insignificant problems and the ones with no money. The only way that Peter managed to make a living was by traveling to the surrounding towns and taking the cases of the people there; but he clung stubbornly to Peyton Place.
Peter had never meant for it to happen that way. When he had undertaken the job of defending Selena Cross at her trial for the murder of Lucas, he had planned to make this his last case in northern New England. But when it was over, he had lingered. The job with a law firm in Connecticut that had been waiting for him was soon filled by someone else, and when, a few weeks later, he was offered another job with a firm in Massachusetts, he turned it down.
I'm out of my mind, he told himself often and angrily during the years that followed.
But he was in love with Selena and believed that, in time, she would come to love him.
In the beginning, he had waited while she recovered from the dreadful experience of Lucas Cross. Then he had waited for her to forget the defection of Ted Carter. Now he was waiting for her to stop remembering Tim Randlett.
“I'm stuck,” he had once confessed to Constance Rossi. “I love her and I always will and there's not a damned thing I can do about it. And don't think I haven't tried, because I have. I've almost taken jobs away from here. I've almost become involved with other girls. I've almost convinced myself that I could get over her. Almost. But I've never made it.”
“Have you ever told any of this to Selena?” asked Connie.
“Many times,” said Peter. “And every time she tells me that I'd be better off without her. That she's no good for me.” He shrugged helplessly. “It never does any good,” he said. “I still wait and hope.”
Peter stopped his car in front of Selena's house and made his way up the walk to the front door.
”Come in, Counselor!” cried Selena, flinging the door open for him. “Welcome!”
She was holding a glass in her hand, and Peter knew it was not her first drink of the day.
“Hail, the conquering hero comes, Joey,” called Selena. “Fix him a drink. Well, don't just stand there, Peter. Come in.”
Behind her back, Joey looked at Peter and hunched his shoulders as he poured liquor into a glass.
“Here, Joey,” said Selena. “Freshen mine, will you? I have to finish dressing.”
“You look wonderful, Selena,” said Peter.
For a moment, she looked completely sober. “Don't lie, Peter,” she said. “I look like a hag and I know it.”
She turned and went quickly into her room and closed the door behind her.
“When did it start, Joey?” asked Peter.
Joey handed him a glass. “I guess she never really sobered up from last night,” he said. “She didn't eat any supper. I found her sitting there, with the lights out and a glass in her hand.”
It had started at the end of August, Peter remembered. And since then, Selena had not once gone to bed sober.
“Don't worry too much about it,” Connie had told Peter. “Women have different ways of getting over unfortunate love affairs. Selena is hiding right now. Trying to pretend nothing is wrong. Give her a little time. She's a sensible girl. She'll snap out of it.”
But the weeks went by and Selena did not snap out of it. She started drinking in the morning to clear her head, she told Joey, and Peter had caught her drinking in the back room of the Thrifty Corner.
“For Christ's sake, Selena,” he had said. “What do you suppose Connie would say about this?”
Selena whirled on him. “Mind your own damned business,” she said. “If Connie Rossi has any objections to the way I run her store, let her tell me herself.”
“You're acting like a fool,” said Peter angrily.
“Perhaps that's because I am one and always have been,” said Selena.
“Drinking never solved anybody's problems,” said Peter.
“Maybe not,” said Selena, “but it does bring a measure of forgetfulness.”
In desperation, Peter had gone to Matthew Swain.
“Believe me, Peter,” said the doctor, “if I knew anything, I'd tell you and ethics be damned. But I don't know a bit more than you do. A couple of tourists, folks from Ohio, found her lying on the side of the highway, and since this was the closest town they brought her here to the hospital. She had fainted on the road. Her face was banged up some, where she hit the gravel, and she was suffering from too much sun, but outside of that there wasn't anything the matter with her. The next day I tried to find out what the hell had happened, but she wouldn't say a word. That actor fellow, Randlett, came over to the hospital to see her, but when I told her he was waiting she just turned her face to the wall and told me she didn't want to see him. He didn't believe it at first, but he finally went away. Joey told me that he went to the house after I sent her home, but Selena called Buck McCracken and told him that there was a man ringing her doorbell and that the sheriff should get rid of him. Then I heard that the summer theater was closing up. Right around Labor Day, that was, and I went up to Silver Lake to see this Randlett. He shut up like a clam when I started questioning him. Wouldn't tell me a thing. The next thing I knew, the whole kit and kaboodle of them had gone off to New York. And good riddance, I say. Selena was getting along fine before Randlett hove into view.”
“She's drinking,” Peter told him. “Too much. Every day and every night.”
Matthew Swain sighed. “I'll talk to her,” he promised.
But it did no good.
“Doc, don't worry about me,” Selena said. “Just go back to Chestnut Street and forget that you ever heard of me.”
Matthew felt his stomach tighten. He remembered the night, a long time ago, when he had tried to interfere when Lucas had been drunk and beating his wife. A very young Selena had looked up at him.
“Go on home, Doc,” she had said. “Go back to Chestnut Street. Nobody sent for you.”
“Selena, I only want to help you,” said Matthew.
Selena poured another drink. “Doc, there are some people who are born crippled, aren't there? I mean, with only one leg or one arm or no eyes?”
“Yes,” said the doctor.
“Well, then,” said Selena, “why is it unreasonable to suppose that other people are born with something wrong and twisted inside?”
“What do you mean?” asked Matthew.
Selena smiled. “I mean something evil, like a desire to c
ommit murder, for instance.”
“Selena, all that was a long, long time ago. You only did what you had to do to protect yourself. Anyone would have done the same. Forget all that. Put it behind you.”
Selena squinted at the remaining liquor in her glass.
“Go home, Doc,” she said wearily. “Go home. Nobody sent for you.”
Matthew Swain stood up to leave, but he paused at her front door.
“That stuff never solved anything for anybody,” he said.
Selena giggled. “That's what Peter always says,” she said. “And I always agree with him. I only point out to him that, while it may not solve anything, it blunts the edges a little. Good-by, Doc.”
Selena came out of her room. “I'm ready,” she said gaily. “Let's go. Will you get my coat, Joey, while I finish my drink?”
“Sure,” said Joey.
“Maybe we'd better bring a bottle of our own in case Mike Rossi has been forgetful,” said Selena. “There's nothing worse than a party that runs out of liquor.”
“I'm sure that Mike has a well-stocked bar,” said Peter.
“Oh dear,” said Selena. “Look who's getting all stuffy.”
“Selena, I'm not getting stuffy,” said Peter.
“Well, I don't care if you are,” she said. “Go ahead and get stuffy if you want to. I won't stop you.”
The afternoon seemed interminable to Peter. Selena was like a toy that had been wound too tightly and would soon snap and break into a mass of pieces and twisted wire. She pecked at her dinner but her glass was filled to the brim.
In the kitchen, Allison said softly to Connie, “Why didn't you tell me about Selena?”
“I thought it would pass,” said Connie.
“How long has she been drinking like this?”
“Ever since Tim Randlett left town.”
“Good God.”
“Yes,” said Connie. “Let's just hope that she gets over it soon.”
“Has anyone tried talking to her?”
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