Peyton Place

by Grace Metalious

  A few months later, when she received word of Norman's impending discharge, she passed the word around town that she was going down to Boston to await the ship which would bring “Norman's poor, broken body home to her.” For two weeks after Norman was medically discharged, she remained in a Boston hotel with her son, coaching him in the role he must play when the two of them returned home.

  “Do you want everyone in town to think of you as crazy?” she cried, when Norman protested. “Crazy the way Hester Goodale was crazy?

  “Do you want everyone up home to think of you as a coward who ran under fire?

  “Do you want to disgrace the both of us so that we can never hold up our heads again?

  “Do you want to give the Page Girls something on us that they can really talk about?

  “You do what Mother says, dear. Have I ever steered you a false course?”

  Norman, weary to death in mind, body, soul and spirit, finally nodded in acquiescence, and Evelyn telephoned the joyous news to Peyton Place that she was bringing Norman home. After the welcoming ceremonies and the banquet, she congratulated him enthusiastically on the fine tone with which he had delivered his speech, and for days afterward, she propped him up in a chair in the living room, with his “bad leg” extended on a matching ottoman, and smiled tearfully at the friends who came to visit him. Even the Page Girls came, with their fat faces neatly powdered and their bulky bodies encased in black silk. Caroline carried a jar of homemade soup and Charlotte held a bottle of homemade dandelion wine.

  “We have come to see Oakleigh's boy,” they told Evelyn.

  The house was empty at the time, except for Norman, so that Evelyn finally had a chance to taunt her dead husband's daughters.

  “Afraid of what Peyton Place would say, weren't you, if you hesitated to come to see your war-wounded brother?”

  Since this was the truth, the Page Girls had no ready answer. They withstood another five minutes of Evelyn's tongue-lashing without flinching before she let them into the living room where Norman sat. It was the first time that the girls had ever been in Evelyn's house. Their faces, their attitude, their soft voices, when they spoke to the child they had maligned for years, made every speck of effort involved in Evelyn's “little subterfuge” well worth while.

  “You see?” she told Norman triumphantly, when the Page Girls had gone. “What did I tell you? Isn't it better this way than if folks went around thinking that you were crazy?”

  As for Norman, he felt as if he moved through an unreal world. He continued to suffer from nightmares, not all of them to do with the war. He still dreamed the old, recurrent dream about Miss Hester Goodale and her tomcat. In his dream, Miss Hester always wore the face of his mother, while the two people whom she watched through the gap in the hedge were no longer Mr. and Mrs. Card, but Allison MacKenzie and Norman. In his dream, when he stroked Allison's abdomen he would feel a tight excitement in his genitals but always, just at the moment of release, Allison's abdomen would burst open and spew forth millions of slimy blue worms. The worms were deadly poisonous, and Norman would begin to run. He would run and run, until he could run no longer, while the worms crawled swiftly after him. Sometimes he woke up at this point, covered with sweat and choking with fear, but most of the time he succeeded in reaching the arms of his mother before he awoke. It was always at that moment, when he reached his mother, that Norman reached a climax in the excitement engendered by Allison. At such times, Norman awoke to warmth and wetness and a sense that his mother had saved him from a terrible danger.

  In time, the “stiffness” disappeared from Norman's “bad leg,” and he began to look around for something to do. Finally, Seth Buswell offered him a job as a combination bookkeeper and circulation manager on the Times, and Norman went to work. He worked faithfully every day and carried his pay check home to his mother, uncashed, at the end of every week.

  It was Norman's circumspect behavior which really “showed up” Rodney Harrington in the town's eyes, for Rodney had not gone to war. As soon as the draft had become a reality, Leslie Harrington had found a job for his son in the Cumberland Mills of enough importance so that Rodney was classified as “essential” to the war effort as a civilian. There was a lot of ugly talk in Peyton Place about that. There were some who said that the three men on the local draft board lived in houses with mortgages held by Leslie Harrington, and, furthermore, that the sons of these men worked in jobs also considered as “essential” in the mills.

  The position which Leslie Harrington had enjoyed for years, and which had begun to be undermined in 1939, was seriously in danger by the spring of 1944. People who had considered it folly, and worse, for the Ellsworths to sue Leslie back in ’39, began to change their minds soon afterward. With quiet courage, Kathy had harmed Leslie far more than she could have done with words. She had married Lewis Welles shortly before his induction into the Army, and she had become pregnant at once. During the war, there were a good many people in town who felt a thick shame whenever they watched Kathy Welles walk down Elm Street, pushing a baby buggy with her one hand. They looked at Kathy, who awaited the return of Lewis with a hope that never faltered, not even during the dark days of Bataan and Corregidor, and they began to wonder about Leslie Harrington, who could well have afforded to make things a little easier for Kathy.

  “Twenty-five hundred dollars,” said Peyton Place. “Don't seem like much, even if he did take care of her medical bills besides.”

  “Leslie Harrington would sooner sell his soul than part with a dollar.”

  “Don't seem right, somehow. Her with her husband gone off to the war, and Leslie with his son right at home.”

  “Kathy Welles got the short end of that stick, all right. Even thirty thousand dollars wouldn't've put her arm back on, but it would've made things a mite easier. She coulda hired someone to help her around the house, and to take care of her baby. I hear she whips around that house of hers so good and so fast that she don't really need two arms.”

  “It's a shame though, the way Leslie Harrington got away with it so cheap. His son is a great hand for gettin’ away with things, too. Look at the way he's stayed out of the war, and the way he always seems to have plenty of gas to hell around in his car. Gas is rationed to everybody else.”

  “Rodney was always a great hand for gettin’ away with things. Remember Betty Anderson?”

  “I hear tell he's got some girl down to Concord now. Goes to see her every night, I hear.”

  “He'll get his, one of these day. So will Leslie. The Harringtons have been due for their comeuppance for a long time.”

  Yet, Leslie Harrington was never able to put his finger on the moment when he had begun to lose his grip on Peyton Place. He was inclined to believe that it had been when the AF of L succeeded in unionizing the mills, a thing unheard of, even undreamed of, in Peyton Place. Leslie had roared and threatened to close down the mills and put everyone out of work forever, but he had, unfortunately for him, signed contracts with the government which precluded his doing so, and the mill hands knew it. Everything, according to Leslie, had begun to fall apart with the unionizing of the mills. Business at the bank had fallen off, as people began to transfer their mortgages to a bank in a town ten miles to the south. Once, Leslie would have fired a man for doing this, but with the union in command, he was unable to do as he would have liked. It had been Tomas Makris, or so Leslie had heard, who had informed the mill hands of the bank in another town which was eager for new business, and even against this perfidy, Leslie was helpless. He had been defeated when he had run for the school board that spring, a fact which had left him dazed for weeks, and the school board in control now thought that Tom was the best headmaster Peyton Place had ever had. In the spring of 1944, Leslie Harrington lived with fear, and his only comfort was his son, whom he had managed to save from the war.

  “I'll get even,” he raved to Rodney. “Just you wait ’til this goddamned war is over with. Wait and see how long the goddamned union lasts i
n my mills then. I'll fire every sonofabitch who works for me now, and I'll import a whole new population to Peyton Place.”

  But Peter Drake, the young attorney who had fought Leslie in the case of Ellsworth vs. Harrington, took another view.

  “The backbone of Chestnut Street is broken,” said Drake. “When one vertebra is out of kilter, the whole spine ceases to function efficiently.”

  Rodney Harrington, however, was not concerned with either the mills, the backbone of Chestnut Street or the changes in Peyton Place. He was, as always, concerned primarily with himself. He had two sets of attitudes, each completely separate and distinct from the other. The first set was comprised of the attitudes which he knew it was politic for him to hold, and the second of those which he actually did hold. It was an attitude of the first set which often prompted him to say, “There is nothing more frustrating than an essential war job. I feel so utterly useless, safe here in America, while our boys are fighting for their lives overseas.” He usually said this to some pretty girl who consoled him eagerly by telling him that he was most essential to her.

  “Oh, yeah?” Rodney would generally reply. “How essential? Show me, baby!”

  There were not many girls, in the man-lean spring of 1944, who refused to comply with this request.

  But one particular attitude in Rodney's second set would not be denied. He was, as he admitted privately, damned glad to be out of the war. The thought of filth, lack of good food, cramped quarters, bad clothes and, above all, regimentation, was an abhorrent one to him. Every man, Rodney was sure, who had a grain of honesty in him would agree with this attitude. Nobody wanted to go off to war any more than he did. He just happened to be luckier than most, and was damned grateful for the fact.

  And what good could a fellow do himself? Rodney wondered. Just supposing that a fellow could overlook all the disadvantages of being in the service, just what was in it for him? Look at that half-assed Norman Page. Back home from the war to a piddling little job on the paper, with nothing to show for his effort but a few tin medals and a gimpy leg. No sir, that wasn't for Rodney Harrington, not by a long shot.

  He pressed his foot down on the accelerator of his car, confident of the full gas tank and the four good tires under him as he drove swiftly toward Concord and a date with his best girl.

  She was a honey, all right, Helen was, he thought. But if he didn't get to her tonight, he was going to tell her to go blow. There were too many other girls eager to hook up with a good steady civilian, one with plenty of money and a decent car.

  With the idea of “getting to Helen” foremost in his mind, Rodney stopped at a liquor store on Concord's Main Street and bought another fifth of rum. Helen “just adored” rum when it was mixed with Coca-Cola. In addition to the rum, he had six pairs of black market nylon hose in the glove compartment of his car as extra persuasion.

  “Oh, what're these!” cried Helen a few moments later as she held up the stockings.

  Levers to pry your pants off, thought Rodney, but he said: “Pretty nylons for pretty legs,” and the inanity of it was lost on Helen, who had a nature as acquisitive as a squirrel's in autumn.

  All in all, the two spent a highly pleasant evening. By ten o'clock they were both feeling very rum-warmed and comradely.

  “You understand me so well,” purred Helen, smoothing the fingers of one of his hands with her own.

  “Do I?” he asked, circling her with one arm and resting that hand just under her breast. “Do I?” he whispered, against her cheek.

  “Yes,” said Helen, snuggling up to him. “You understand about the finer things in life. Books and music, and all that.”

  Helen's biggest trouble, thought Rodney, was that she had seen too many movies. She tried to talk and act the way she imagined a motion picture actress would, after a hard day on the lot. His kisses left her unmoved if they were not of the expert, no noses bumped variety. Too bad, thought Rodney, that they had not yet begun to make the sexual act a part of every motion picture for then Helen would have fallen into his hands like an overriped grape. He sighed and thought of the girls he had known, and left who had not been movie fans. Getting to Helen, he was afraid was going to be a long, hard process, and he was not at all sure that the game was going to be worth the candle, as someone of other had put it.

  “Hm-m,” murmured Helen, against him. “We go together like peaches and cream.”

  “Ham and eggs,” he said, beginning to massage her breast with his hand.

  “Pie and ice cream,” she giggled, moving a little under his touch.

  “Hot dogs and football games,” said Rodney, putting his other hand on her thigh.

  “Speaking of hot dogs,” said Helen, jumping up, “I'm hungry Let's go get something to eat.”

  And that, thought Rodney savagely, was that. He'd buy his a goddamned hot dog, a dozen if she wanted, but he was good damned if he was going to bother with her again after tonight.

  Helen giggled all the way down the stairs from her apartme to the car, and she giggled nerve rackingly as Rodney drove a drive-in a short way outside of the city. He did not speak.

  “Oh, honey,” giggled Helen, chewing at the last of her hot do “Is my little old honey mad at poor little me?”

  Unaccountably, Rodney thought, he was thinking of Betty A derson. He could almost hear those same words coming from a contrite Betty on a summer night of long ago.

  “I guess not,” he said, and again he had the eerie feeling of having spoken those words before.

  “Don't you be mad at me, doll,” whispered Helen. “I'll be good to you. Just you take me back to the apartment, and I'll show you how good I can be. I'll be the best you ever had, baby, just you wait and see.”

  Playing at hard to get, in his turn, Rodney looked down at her and smiled. “How do I know?” he asked.

  And then Helen did the most exciting thing that Rodney had ever seen in all of his twenty-one years. Right there in the car, with the lights of the drive-in shining all around them and people sitting in cars not six feet away from them on either side, Helen unbuttoned her blouse and showed him one perfect breast.

  “Look at that,” she said, cupping the breast with her hand, “no bra. I've got the hardest breasts you ever played with.”

  Rodney raced the car motor violently in his eagerness to be gone from the drive-in's parking lot. Helen did not rebutton her blouse, but leaned back in the seat, leaving her breast exposed. Every few seconds, she inhaled and sat up a little, running her hand sensuously over her bare skin, flicking her nipple with a snap of a fingernail. Rodney could not keep his eyes off her. She was like something that he had read about in what he termed “dirty books.” He had never seen a woman so apparently enamored of her own body before, and to him there was something wicked, forbidden, exciting about it.

  “Let me,” he said, reaching for her as he sped along the highway toward Concord.

  She snapped her head away from him quickly. “Look out!”

  It was a scream of warning, uttered too late. When Rodney recovered himself enough to look up, the brightly lit trailer truck seemed to be right on top of him.

  ♦ 7 ♦

  Each spring, it was the duty of Dexter Humphrey, as chairman of the Budget Committee, to act as moderator at town meeting. He took this responsibility seriously, reading each item of the town warrant in sonorous tones and preceding each vote with a sepulchrally voiced question.

  “You have heard the item as listed in the warrant for this town. What is your wish in this matter?”

  The townspeople then either voted immediately or discussed the issue until it was settled.

  “The town meeting,” said Tomas Makris to the high school students every spring, “is the last example of pure democracy existing in the world today. It is the one function which remains where each man may stand up to express his ideas and opinions on the running of his town.”

  Of course, thought Tom, remembering his first year in Peyton Place, that does not mean that ea
ch will be listened to, but he is allowed to speak.

  At the town meeting held in the spring of 1944, the old, hot issue of a new grade school had not been included in the warrant because of wartime restrictions on building, but the other, equally controversial question of town zoning was in its regular position. The Budget Committee always listed the question on zoning as the very last item in the warrant, for the arguments on the issue were apt to be long and many.

  “We come now,” intoned Dexter Humphrey, “to the twenty-first and last question in the warrant.” He paused and cleared his throat.

  The townspeople, each of whom held a printed copy of the warrant, knew very well what the last question was, yet everyone waited for Dexter Humphrey to read it aloud.

  “Whether this assembly will vote to accept Article XIV, in Chapter XXXXIV, of the revised laws of this state,” said Dexter.

  A stranger might have begun to scramble furiously through the booklet in which the warrant was included, at this point, to try to locate the contents of Article XIV, Chapter XXXXIV of the revised state laws, but the townspeople knew well enough how this law read. Everyone waited for Leslie Harrington to rise to his feet, as he always did, when Dexter had finished reading the question. Never before had Leslie waited for longer than it took Dexter to read the item, and the moderator looked around now in puzzlement.

  “You have heard the item as listed in the warrant for this town,” said Dexter, staring stupidly at the front row of seats where Leslie sat. “What is your wish in this matter?”

  Surely, Leslie would now stand, glance at his gold watch as if he were pressed for time, and say the words he had always said.