“I'm going to move away,” said Allison, “as fast as ever I can after I finish high school. I'm going to go to Barnard College. That's in New York City.”
“Not me,” said Kathy ungrammatically. “I'm never going away from here. I'm going to marry Lew and live in Peyton Place forever and have a huge family. You know what?”
“No. What?”
“Lew and I are going to buy a house after we get married.”
“What's so extra about that? All married people buy houses eventually. It's all part of the whole stultifying, stupid pattern.”
“We never owned a house. We've lived in nineteen different houses since I was born, and we never owned a one. My mother wants to buy the house that we're renting now, but my father's credit is no good. Mr. Humphrey said so, down at the bank. I guess he'd have let Daddy have the money anyway, but Mr. Harrington wouldn't let him. Mr. Harrington says my father is a poor risk.”
“Buy a house like Nellie's shack,” said Allison, raising her voice cruelly so that Nellie would be sure to hear. She had not forgiven Nellie for the remarks which Nellie had made about Norman and Evelyn Page.
“How much would a house like that cost?” asked Kathy seriously.
Nellie did not answer, nor did she look at Allison. She looked down into the dishwater in the sink and rubbed the vein in her left arm.
“Oh, practically nothing,” said Allison in the same unnecessarily loud tone. “My goodness, anybody can own a shack. Lew could be a drunken bum and leave you, and you could be a crazy old woman with pus in your veins, but you could still own a shack. Anybody can own a shack, even crazy, insane people who have the crazy, insane idea that they're better than other people.”
At last, Kathy realized that friction surrounded her. She turned first to look at Nellie, then she turned to Allison.
“You're mean, Allison,” she said soberly. “And cruel.”
“So are a lot of other people,” cried Allison, ashamed at being caught so obviously in an act of unkindness, but unable to back down now. “People who call other people names, for instance, and tell filthy lies about them. I suppose that's not mean and cruel!”
“You are supposed to turn the other cheek,” said Kathy virtuously, enjoying this feeling of righteousness at someone else's expense. “I've heard Reverend Fitzgerald say so a thousand times, and so have you.”
“Maybe so,” cried Allison furiously. “But I've read about plucking out the eye that offends you. That goes for people whom you consider your friends but who go around sticking up for others.”
“If you mean me, Allison MacKenzie, come right out and say so. Don't be such a little sneak.”
“Oh!” gasped Allison, outraged. “Now I'm a sneak, am I? Well, I do mean you, Kathy Ellsworth. There. I think that you're silly and stupid with your rented house and your dumb boy friend Lewis Welles, and your eternal talk about getting married and having babies, babies, babies!”
“Well!” said Kathy, standing up and maintaining what she was pleased to refer to as “an icy calm,” “Well! I'm certainly glad that I found out what you think of me before it was too late! Good-by!”
Kathy walked majestically out of the kitchen door, twitching her flat hips indignantly. She did not explain what she meant about finding out what Allison thought of her “before it was too late.” Nor did Allison stop to wonder. It was a beautiful exit line, and both girls accepted it as such without question. Kathy walked down Beech Street with her nose in the air, hoping desperately that Allison was watching, and Allison burst into tears.
“Now see what you've done!” she said to Nellie Cross. “If it weren't for you, my best friend wouldn't be mad at me. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be crying and making my eyes all red. I'm supposed to pack a lunch and meet Norman in an hour. What will he do when he sees me all disheveled and red-eyed? Answer me that.”
“Humph,” said Nellie. “He'll prob'ly take one look at you and run home to his ma. The minute Evelyn sees him comin', she'll start right in unbuttonin’ her dress.” To Nellie, also, there were things which were unforgivable. Primarily, she could not forgive Allison for the way the girl seemed to look constantly for opportunities to criticize Lucas who had, since leaving town, become a paragon of virtue in Nellie's eyes. The second reason for Nellie's unwillingness to forgive was because of something Allison had said. She could not rightly remember what it was, but whenever she thought of it, the pus-filled lump in her head began to throb. It was throbbing now, and Nellie turned to Allison and cackled. “You can bet your life on that, honey,” she said. “Evelyn don't need to no more than see that snot-nose kid of hers comin’ near but what she gets ready to feed him.”
“I hate, loathe and despise you, Nellie Cross,” cried Allison hysterically. “You're crazy as a loon. Crazier than Miss Hester Goodale, and I'm going to tell my mother not to let you come here to work any more.”
Then Nellie remembered the second reason that she was unable to forgive Allison. Allison had said she was crazy. That was it, thought Nellie. She had known it was something wicked like that.
“You're so crazy that you should be locked up in the asylum down at Concord,” Allison shouted, her voice high and rough with anger, and hurt, and tears. “I don't blame Lucas for running off and leaving you. He knew that you'd end up in a padded cell down at Concord. And I hope you do. It would serve you just exactly right!”
Allison ran sobbing out of the kitchen and up the stairs to her room. Nellie stood and gazed sightlessly out of the window over the sink.
“That ain't true,” she said at last. “Ain't a bit of truth in it. That ain't why Lucas done like he done.”
But her head throbbed violently, and the soapsuds in the sink were suddenly thick and slimy, like pus.
Allison stood motionless in the middle of her bedroom floor. Deliberately, she inhaled and exhaled in deep breaths until the pain of anger in her chest and throat was eased, then she went into the bathroom and held a wet washcloth over her eyes. She would not, she decided, allow anyone to spoil her day. Back in her bedroom, she powdered her face carefully and applied the small amount of lipstick which Constance permitted, then she went back down to the kitchen. Silently, without even looking at Nellie who still stood in front of the sink, Allison began to make sandwiches. When she had finished packing the picnic hamper, she sat and gazed sullenly out of the window, waiting for Norman. When finally she heard the jangling ring of his bicycle bell, she picked up the hamper and walked out the door without a word. Nellie did not raise her head, not even when Allison took her bicycle off the back porch as noisily as possible, letting the vehicle clatter against each step.
Allison and Norman divided the burdens of picnicking evenly between their two bicycle baskets and pedaled off.
“I hope you didn't get up on the wrong side of the bed,” said Allison crossly. “Everyone else seems to have done so.”
“Not I,” said Norman and grinned. “Who's everybody?”
“Oh, Kathy and Nellie. My mother, too, I suppose. And even if she didn't she'll probably be as cranky as the others by suppertime. It's so hot.”
“And dry,” added Norman as they pedaled down Elm Street and turned into the highway. “I heard Mr. Frazier say that the state militia has been alerted in case of a forest fire. Look.”
He pointed to the hills toward the east, and Allison's eyes followed his direction.
“I know it,” she sighed. “Everyone's been waiting for days and days. Maybe it'll rain tomorrow.”
The sky was a bright blue, as polished and hard looking as enamel, and it held an enormous sun which was persistent and impossible to look upon because of its hurtful brightness. In all this blue and yellow harshness, no cloud could survive, and not a trace or a wisp of whiteness was to be seen.
“It won't rain,” said Norman.
He did not think of it particularly, but his was a statement being spoken all over town that day. The farmers, who long ago had lost all hope of saving their crops, stood with unc
hanged faces in front of the Citizens’ National Bank. Their faces were no different than they had been in the spring, when the men had seeded the earth. But if a deep crease or two in a neck, or carved deep in the skin from nose to mouth, showed gray now, this was understandable. A farmer could not go out for long to stand and gaze at his burnt fields without getting a bit of dust on him somewhere. The farmers stood in front of the bank, waiting for Dexter Humphrey to come in and sit behind his desk in the mortgage loans department, and they looked up at the sky and said, “It won't rain.” They said it in the same tone which they would have used had it been raining for a week, and were they expressing their opinion of the next day's weather.
“No, I guess it won't rain,” said Allison MacKenzie, pushing her sunglasses back onto the slippery bridge of her nose. “Let's push awhile, Norman. It's too hot to pedal.”
They came to the bend in the river at last, and they did much as they had done on previous visits to this place, but there was a subtle difference to this particular day. It was as if each of them sensed vaguely that the Saturday afternoons of youth are few, and precious, and this feeling which neither of them could have defined or described made every moment of this time together too short, too quickly gone, yet clearer and more sharply edged than any other. They swam and ate and read, and Norman brushed Allison's long hair. He put his face against it and told her that it was like silk. Like corn silk in August, when the season had not been dry. For a while, they pretended that they were Robinson Crusoe and Friday, but later they decided that they were both Thoreau, and that the Connecticut River was Walden Pond.
“Let's stay all day,” said Allison. “I brought plenty of food to eat.”
“Let's stay until dark,” said Norman. “We both have lights on our bikes. We can get back easily enough.”
“We could see the moon come up,” said Allison, enthused.
“Except that we're facing the wrong way,” said Norman practically. “The moon doesn't come up over Vermont. It rises from the opposite direction.”
“We could pretend,” said Allison.
“Yes, we could do that,” agreed Norman.
“Oh, what a beautiful day!” exclaimed Allison, stretching her arms wide. “How can anyone be cranky or mean on a day like this!”
“I wasn't,” said Norman.
“I was,” said Allison, and for a moment the sun seemed less bright. “I was perfectly beastly to Nellie Cross. I'll have to make it up to her on Monday.”
The shadow of Allison's shame departed quickly on the feet of her good resolution. The sun returned to its brightness, and Allison grasped Norman's hand.
“Let's run,” she cried happily. “I feel so good I could run for an hour without getting tired,” and she had no premonition that this was the last day of her childhood.
During the minutes when Allison and Norman were running down the strip of sandy beach on the shore of the Connecticut River, Nellie Cross stepped away from the sink in the MacKenzie kitchen and sat down on the floor. It had seemed only a few minutes that she had been standing as Allison had left her, but she was tired. Her head, she felt, had grown enormous, and she held it carefully on her neck so that it would not fall off and break into pieces on the clean linoleum. She leaned back against a cabinet, and it seemed perfectly natural to her to sit calmly on the kitchen floor on a hot Saturday afternoon, resting her feet which ached from standing too long in one place. She stretched her legs straight out and folded her arms against her chest.
It wa'nt goin’ to hurt nothin’, she thought, if she just let her mind dwell on Lucas for a minute, and it might make her feel better. Sometimes it did.
But she couldn't seem to think too clearly about Lucas, right this minute. There was so much else going on in her monstrous huge, pus-filled head.
Not that she blamed Lucas for that. It wa'nt his fault that he'd gone and caught the clap off that whore woman, and it was no more than right that he should give the sickness to his wife. Where else could a man leave a thing like that to get rid of it, if he couldn't leave it with his own wife?
But there was something else. Something she should be able to remember. Now what was it? Nellie Cross sat still, first opening her eyes wide and then closing them tightly. Her mouth pursed with the effort to remember, and a line of sweat appeared over her top lip. At last, she shrugged.
Didn't do no good to struggle. Try as she might, her poor head just wouldn't let her think what it was that she should rightly remember. It was somethin’ to do with havin’ a baby, and she'd be a monkey's uncle if she could recall anythin’ else. She could remember layin’ on the bed and twistin’ and turnin’ with the pain of it. Doc Swain was right there, though, same as he always was when you needed him. Stayed all night, he must've, although she couldn't rightly remember havin’ seen him when it come daylight. That was all right, though. She didn't need him no more when it come day. It was all over by then, and she could hear little Joey cryin’. Funny, though, the way little Joey had come in from outside. She could see him plain as anythin’, walkin’ through the door and bawlin’ that his pa was gone. It was after that when she saw the pus for the first time. It was right after Joey'd come in, because that's when she got up and went outside to the privy. That's when she seen it for the first time. Runnin’ out of her like a river it was, all yellow and thick. That's when she knew it was no baby she was gettin’ the night before. It was the clap she'd been gettin’. Gettin’ it off her husband, like any decent woman should. Funny, though. Sometimes she could swear that it was somethin’ to do with gettin’ a baby. She was sure that she could recollect hearin’ The Doc tellin’ about a baby. Lucas’ baby, The Doc said. She could hear him sayin’ it plain as day. Lucas’ baby. Now if she could just remember when it had been. Couldn't of been too long ago, because it'd been hot then, just like now, and there hadn't been rain for a long time. The woods was dry, Lucas had told her, dry as gunpowder and just as ready to explode any time. The Doc tellin’ about a baby must of been on the same day, because her and Lucas was talkin’ while they et, about the woods bein’ dry and all. They had waited for Selena for a while, but she hadn't showed up. Off somewheres with that bastard Carter, Lucas had said. Lucas was a good father to his children, and as good to Selena as he was to his own. He didn't hold none with his kids runnin’ wild. But Selena didn't come and didn't come, not even after it turned dark. And she couldn't of been with young Carter, because he come lookin’ for her. It made Lucas kinda mad when he seen Selena wa'nt with young Carter. Off alley-cattin’ with some other bastard, Lucas had said, and in the end Carter and Joey went to look for her. God, how her head hurt! She lifted her arms and spread them as wide as she could, but her hands could not reach the sides of her aching head. It just grew bigger and bigger every second–
Allison was right. Her head was gonna bust wide open and make one helluva mess all over the clean, waxed linoleum. But that wa'nt what Allison had said, was it? She couldn't rightly remember. No. No, that wa'nt it. Allison had said somethin’ about Lucas. Somethin’ mean, like she was always doin’. And you couldn't tell that little know-it-all nothin’. She was always harpin’ about the way Lucas beat Nellie, and no matter how many times Nellie told her that a man didn't go around beatin’ a woman he didn't give a damn about, it didn't mean nothin’ to Miss Know-It-All Allison. That one always thought she knew it all. And Nellie had told her. When a man didn't give a damn about a woman, he just turned his back on her, but when he thought a lot of her, and wanted to teach her right, he beat her. Well, Allison'd find out different one of these days. So would everybody else. They'd all see that Lucas was a good man who didn't go around givin’ the clap to nobody but his own wife. Funny, though, she coulda swore it was some-thin’ to do with a baby. Lucas’ baby. Still, it couldn't of been that, because Lucas'd never go off and leave her when she was havin’ a baby. He beat her up plenty, and that showed he cared a lot for her, didn't it? Besides, there was Joey, full grown and cryin’, so it couldna had nothin’ to do wit
h havin’ a baby. Funny, though, the way she could hear The Doc plain as day.
“Nellie.”
She looked around the empty kitchen matter of factly.
“That you, Lucas?”
“Yep. I'm upstairs.”
With no sense of surprise in her mind, Nellie left the MacKenzie kitchen and mounted the stairs to the second floor. She looked into Allison's empty bedroom.
“You in here, Lucas?” she demanded.
“Over here by the window, Nellie.”
She walked to the window and looked down at the empty street below, and then she saw him.
“What're you doin’ out there, Lucas?”
“I'm dead, Nellie. I'm an angel now, Nellie. Can't you see the way I'm floatin’?”
“I see you, Lucas. You enjoyin’ yourself out there?”
“Well, there's always plenty to drink, and nobody has to work. But a man don't feel right without his woman along.”
Nellie giggled coyly. “Was you lookin’ for me, Lucas?”
“Been lookin’ for you day after day, Nellie. But you don't never stay in one place long enough for me to catch up with you, a pretty girl like you.”
“Now go on, Lucas. You was always a big one for the talk.”
“Not me, Nellie. I mean every word I'm sayin’. Come on with me, Nellie. I'm lonesome for a pretty girl like you.”
“Oh, stop that.”
“No foolin’, Nellie. You're the prettiest gal I ever seen. Go look in the mirror if you don't believe me.”
“Just for that I will, you fancy talker you.”
She went to Allison's closet and opened the door. She looked at herself in the long mirror fastened to the inside of the door.
“See, Nellie? What'd I tell you?”
He was right beside her now, blowing on the soft hair at the back of her neck. She could see him behind the reflection of the slim, pretty girl in the mirror.
“A man don't feel right without his woman,” whispered Lucas. “Come on, Nellie. It's lonesome as hell without you. My bed gets awful cold.”
Peyton Place Page 32
