“An accident!” she screamed. “Your mother. Come quickly!”
Roberta Carter was buried three days later, and everyone in Peyton Place sympathized with the bereaved family.
“What a shame,” said the town. “She was the soul of goodness, Roberta was.”
“And how terrible for Jennifer. She and Roberta were so close. Roberta told me herself how much she thought of Ted's wife.”
“I know it. Why, Roberta just lived for the time when Jennifer would have her first baby.”
“It's terrible. You don't often see a mother and daughter-in-law as close as Jennifer and Roberta were.”
The following Friday, Ted and Jennifer boarded the train for Boston. As Harmon said, Ted couldn't stay forever, he had his career to think of. Jennifer wore a wide-brimmed black hat with a veil that hid her little smile. Ted helped her up the steps and onto the train. Inwardly, he shuddered when he touched her. In his heart he harbored a terrible suspicion. He would spend the rest of his life—the rest of his eminently successful life—in dark wonder.
9
ALLISON KNEW THAT LEWIS was dead. Even in the dark depths of her drugged sleep she knew it. When they had brought her broken body into the receiving room at the hospital she had been calling for Lewis, and had continued to call for him until Matt Swain arrived and injected a sedative.
Now, a week later, Constance and Mike sat by her bedside. Allison was still under sedation. Constance stared at her bruised face with tears in her eyes. According to Matt Swain's medical report, Allison had four broken ribs and a crushed collarbone and had suffered a fairly severe concussion. But Constance knew that the tortured, anguished look on Allison's face, the sudden starts, the way she turned her head, was not the result of her physical injuries. Allison was the captive of the terrible, haunting dreams of her drugged sleep.
Constance and Mike came and sat at her bedside every afternoon and evening. Matt let them come only during the regular hospital visiting hours. If he had permitted, Constance would have been there twenty-four hours a day.
“She's young. She'll heal quickly enough,” Matt told Constance.
“It's not her broken bones I'm thinking about,” Constance said.
“And what makes you think I am, Connie?” Matt blustered. “How much of a goddamn fool do you take me for?”
“I'm sorry, Matt,” Connie said.
“Damn well should be,” he said, and stormed off down the hospital corridor, his white coat flying out around him.
Stephanie stayed with them through the first week and then had to go to New York, promising to come back as soon as Constance or Allison needed her. When Constance said good-by to her, they both cried; and Mike stood by, a helpless look on his face, saying, “Everything's going to be all right, everything's going to be all right.”
It was on the second day after the accident that Mike came home with the police report, the results of what had been uncovered by the State Police's examination of the car.
“The accelerator stuck,” Mike said. “Allison hasn't had enough experience as a driver to know that you just stick the toe of your shoe under it and push it up. I suspect she stepped down on it, thinking that would release it. But, of course, it didn't.”
Constance sat listening quietly, with her hands in her lap. “Judging by the tire marks on the road,” Mike went on, “the police think she then tried to stop the car by applying the brakes. It went out of control. She was probably doing eighty to ninety miles an hour by that time.”
“Oh God,” said Connie.
“They know where the car went off the road, but they can only guess how many times it rolled over. Four or five times, they think, until the trees stopped it.”
The car was completely demolished, unsalvageable; and Lewis’ body had been found inside. Allison had been thrown clear, she had fallen on the grassy bank and had slid and rolled to the bottom. A car full of teen-agers had come upon the scene minutes after it happened. They had found Allison trying to pull open the buckled door of the car, trying to get to Lewis.
She knew he was dead. She threw her head from side to side on the pillow, trying to shake the horror of her dreams. Horrible as anything else was the feeling of helplessness that came over her as the car begin to careen along the road, its tires screaming. There was nothing she could do, nothing.
“Lewis,” she had cried, “Lewis, what is happening?”
She remembered his hand moving slowly toward the steering wheel, to help her control the car. And then they began to turn over. That was all she remembered, but, hour after hour, the dream of those hideous moments pursued her. And deep in her unconscious brain, at the very center of her being, was the knowledge that Lewis was dead.
Early in the morning of her second week in the hospital, that time of day when the nurses begin to turn off lights, Allison woke and found Matt Swain watching her.
“Good morning, Allison,” he said. And he spoke to her as gently as he had ever spoken to anyone in his life.
Allison began to cry, weakly; the tears welled up and spilled over and ran down her face. “Tell me, Matt,” she said, her voice a cracked whisper. “Tell me.”
“You know,” he said.
“Tell me!”
“He is dead, Allison,” Matt said.
Matt took her hand. She pulled it away. “I don't want to hear any of your consoling words, Doctor,” she said. “Words aren't going to help me.” Her voice was flat and dead. She closed her eyes.
“Allison,” Matt said, “Allison, whether you help me or not, I am going to make you well. Make no mistake about that.”
Constance brought books and magazines, and returned the next day to find them untouched. And, in the same way, the food trays brought in by the nurses were returned to the kitchen.
Matt Swain came in and stood by the foot of the bed, stood silently until Allison looked up and met his eyes. Then he said, “If what you're trying to do is commit suicide, Allison, there are simpler and less painful ways of doing it.”
He waited for Allison to speak. She closed her eyes and turned her head away.
He made his voice sound rough and brutal; even he was shocked by the sound of it. “In this hospital, I'm the boss. What I say goes. When you get home, when I discharge you from this place, you can do what you like with yourself. It'll be no affair of mine. But you're not leaving here until I say so.”
He put his hands behind his back and leaned forward, the stethoscope like a black noose around his neck, his white coat billowing open like a tent.
“You have your choice, Allison. You'll eat what is brought to you, what I have prescribed for you, the nourishment that will bring you back to health; or I will have your hands tied to the bed and stick needles into you and feed you intravenously. It's up to you.”
He signaled the nurse who was waiting at the door with a tray of food. She rustled into the room, set down the tray and cranked up the bed. Unwillingly but inexorably, Allison was raised to a sitting position. Matt went to the window and opened the curtains, flooding the room with light. The nurse put the tray on the bed table and pushed it up to Allison.
Allison sat and looked at it, as if it were something dangerous and full of menace.
Matt said to himself, Well, if this doesn't work, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. Aloud, he said, “This news is going to make your mother very happy, Allison.”
Allison did not look at him. She picked up the spoon and slowly began to eat the broth.
Matt Swain walked out of the room. In the corridor he leaned against a wall and wiped his forehead. If you hadn't been a doctor, you'd have made a damn good actor, he said, congratulating himself.
In December, Mike came in the new car the insurance company had bought him and took Allison home. She was shaky on her feet but, with Mike's arm supporting her, she walked to the car. When Mike opened the door she began to cry; she turned her head into Mike's shoulder and sobbed: “Oh, Mike, I can't, I can't!”
Mike sp
oke soothing, meaningless words into her ear, like a mother crooning to a baby, and gently eased her into the car. He ran around the other side and slid under the wheel. Then, driving very slowly, he took her home.
Constance had made up the sofa in the living room with blankets and pillows; a fire burned cheerily. Allison looked around her, as if she had never seen this house before and was wary of it.
If only she would tell me, Constance thought, looking at her daughter, her heart breaking for Allison. If I only dared to tell her that I know.
And Allison, lying on the sofa, with Constance and Mike fussing around her, was filled with bitter thoughts. She felt that her body had betrayed her by getting well again. And that she was betraying Lewis by being alive when he was dead.
David and Stephanie wrote to her, Brad Holmes and Arthur Tishman sent messages and flowers. But she wrote to no one. She read a great deal. Constance wrote to David and Brad, and they kept a steady stream of all the new novels coming into the house. During the day she prowled around the house, walking from room to room, always returning to the sofa. The sofa had become for her the protected place.
Like Road's End when I was a girl, she thought. Road's End. It had truly been road's end for Lewis.
And sometimes she thought: Now you are free. Now you can have all the experience of life that you wanted. You can go anywhere, see everything, do anything. You are free.
And when this thought came she pushed it quickly away, repelled by it. It is like dancing on Lewis’ grave, she thought, and hated herself for having such thoughts.
Two weeks before Christmas, Constance asked Allison if she'd like to have David and Stephanie up for the holidays.
Allison shook her head. “I don't want to see anyone yet,” she said.
At night, Constance and Mike lay in their bed and listened to the sounds of Allison, prowling about the house, drinking coffee in the kitchen. When they came down in the morning, every morning, there was a coffee cup in the sink and a pile of books on the table. Allison only slept when she took a sleeping pill.
When Constance went to Matt Swain, all he could say was, “I have faith in Allison. We'll just have to be patient, Connie, and bear up and see her through this bad time.”
Connie nodded.
Matt said, “Connie, you can just tell me to mind my own damned business if you want to, but was there something between Allison and Lewis Jackman?”
“Mind your own damned business, Matt,” Connie said, and smiled for the first time in weeks.
Looking back on it, Connie thought it was probably Matt who had broken the ice and started things moving again. She walked home with a livelier step, and when she opened the door she was struck by the stagnant odor of the house. It smells like a place where life has come to a standstill, she thought. It's wrong, it's all wrong. I must do something.
As she passed the living room she saw Allison lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling, her eyes full of nothingness. Connie went into the kitchen and began to heat the coffee.
She went to the living-room door and said to Allison, “I'm heating the coffee. Would you like a cup?”
“I don't care.”
“Well, have one then, darling. I like company.”
She filled the cups and brought them in and set them on the coffee table next to Allison's sofa. Allison sat up and Constance sat down beside her.
“It's cold out,” Connie said. “And I think it's going to snow. I'll be glad when this year is over and Mike will be able to stop commuting to White River. It's only nine miles, but when winter comes I begin to worry.”
Allison did not say anything.
Connie sipped her coffee. “Mmm, that tastes good. I needed something hot. Would you like some cookies?”
“No, thank you, Mother.”
Connie looked up then and saw the first snowflakes flatten themselves against the windowpane. Allison followed her glance, saw the snow and got up. She went to the window and looked out.
Allison had lost weight. Her face had lost the last of its youthful flesh. Looking at her, Connie thought, You're a woman now, Allison. She followed Allison to the window. They stood side by side and looked out at the snow falling from the dense, low, late afternoon sky.
“Why is snow always exciting?” Allison asked, hardly realizing she was speaking aloud.
“Maybe it's because it reminds us of childhood,” Connie said, “of the days when the world was our oyster and life was a beautiful dream without end.”
“It has ended for me,” Allison said, and, throwing her arms around her mother, she began to cry. Constance held her close and stroked her hair.
“Cry, baby,” she said, “cry.” She held her daughter in her arms and thought, She's crying the last of her youth way. Perhaps after the shock of being born, Constance thought, there comes the shock of realizing one is adult, of accepting age and its responsibilities and surrendering to the idea of death.
“Oh, Mother,” Allison sobbed. “I loved him. I loved him.”
Then Constance led her to the sofa and held her hand. They looked at the fire, and Allison spoke at last and told Connie all about herself and Lewis.
When she was finished, Constance kissed her and dried her tears. Then she said, “Now you must live for him, Allison. And don't think you're the first woman who ever had to make that decision. You haven't a child to live for, as I had. But you have your talent. You must start working again, darling.”
“I'm going to try, Mother. I'm going to try.”
And in the days that followed she did try. As the snow fell and drifted around the house, she sat for hours before her typewriter, staring at the blank, white paper. But what little she wrote she scratched out. It's so hard to get back into it, she thought. Usually she ended up by drawing pictures on her note pad.
“But at least,” Connie said to Mike, “at least she's trying. And she's talking more.”
Mike was home all day now, for Christmas vacation had begun; his determinedly cheerful presence was good for Allison. They spent hours sitting at the kitchen table talking about Allison's work, and her inability to get her second novel started.
“Maybe I've got second novel fever,” Allison said.
“Could be,” Mike granted. “But I think writing is like any other job. When you've been away from it for a long time, it takes a while to get back into the swing of it. You're not so different from the lumberman who has had a three months’ layoff. He has to get his muscles toned up again, and you've got to get your mind and temper toned up.”
“Sometimes I think I'm written out and don't have anything more to say.”
Mike laughed. “If you never moved out of Peyton Place, you'd have enough material to keep you going for two lifetimes.”
On Christmas Day, surrounded by the debris and litter of gift wrappings, they were having dinner when there was a sharp rapping on the door.
Mike raised his eyebrows and stood up. Constance said, “Now who can that be?”
“Probably some kids out for tricks or treats,” Mike said. Bending down quickly, he kissed Constance and said, “And a Happy Halloween to you, my dear.”
“Oh, if I only had something to throw,” Connie said, as he walked to the front door. The rapping continued and Mike shouted, “I'm coming, I'm coming.”
There was a silence after the door had been opened. Then they heard Mike say, “You are either Rita Moore or the loveliest apparition I've ever seen.”
Allison jumped to her feet as she heard Rita's clear, ringing laugh.
“It can't be anyone else,” said Allison to her mother's inquiring look.
Rita swept into the room. She was wearing a black greatcoat lined with fur, its high, wide collar framing her beautiful face that glowed with the cold.
“Well, I'm glad to see you on your feet,” she said to Allison. “I heard in New York that you were doing the Elizabeth Barrett Browning bit.” And before Allison could answer, Rita turned to Mike and handed him the wicker hamper she was ca
rrying. “Here, Mr. MacKenzie, it's full of champagne and I don't think it will have to be cooled. The taxi I took from White River was refrigerated.”
“Taxi!” Allison said. “How did you get anyone to drive you over here on Christmas Day?”
“Not only drive me over, darling. But he's going to wait at some crony's house and then drive me back in time to catch the Boston train. And it cost me only twenty-five dollars, one autograph and my best smile.”
Mike stood next to her with the hamper of champagne in his hands. “You should have phoned, Miss Moore. I'd have been glad to come over for you.”
“Oh, Mr. MacKenzie,” Rita said, “you are nice.”
“He's like that all the time. A regular boy scout,” Constance said.
“You've gathered, Rita, that these are my parents,” Allison said. “Mike and Constance Rossi.”
“Rossi,” said Rita. She turned to Mike. “And I've been calling you MacKenzie. I am sorry.”
“Oh, that's all right,” Mike said. “Of course, I'd have killed anyone else.” Mike took the hamper into the kitchen.
Rita joined them at the table.
“Now,” Allison said, “what in the world are you doing here of all places?”
“Well, I was in New York and I heard about your smashup and I just decided I wanted to have a good old-fashioned white Christmas dinner and so I came. Besides, I've been curious about the background of your story.”
“How does it look to you?”
“It looks awfully like New England,” said Rita. “Is it supposed to? I mean, when anything is so like I expect it to be, I'm sure it must be a fake.”
Mike came in with the champagne and four glasses. “By the time we've finished this bottle, Miss Moore,” he said, “I'm going to be able to tell you just how much I adore you. Right here in front of my wife I shall tell you.”
“That's the best way,” Rita said. “It's no good having secrets from your wife.”
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