He had pegged the situation so well that I couldn’t help but answer. “She told me I was a good writer and that I’d be someone someday. She was like an older sister.”
“An imaginary friend.”
“She gave me encouragement.”
“And now?”
I had to think about that. The answer wasn’t as simple. “We argue a lot now,” I said. “It’s like she’s pushing me to do things for the wrong reasons. She wants me to be angry.”
“Angry?”
“About every little thing that’s wrong with Middle River. Omie said Grace was using me as a vehicle for fulfillment, but if fulfillment means revenge, I can’t do that, because there are things wrong with every town, if you dig deep enough. And there’s another thing: being angry is exhausting. I don’t want to be that way for the next twenty years. Nothing is perfect. No man is perfect.” I paused, realizing I was arguing with Grace. “By the way, she thinks you’re gorgeous. She was telling me that way back when I first saw you running.”
“She was, was she?” James asked, pleased in a very male sort of way. “What else did she say about me?”
“She asked questions—where did you live, were you married, that kind of thing. She kept telling me to run faster to catch up.”
“Good advice.”
“She also called you Archenemy Number One. She liked the drama of that. She still thinks I should be writing a book about what’s happened here. That’s mostly what we argue about.”
James was silent. A frown crossed his brow. Finally he said, “It would make a good book.”
“I told you I wouldn’t,” I said in a fierce burst. “I told her I wouldn’t. I told my sisters I wouldn’t.”
“But you’ve earned the right—”
“I don’t want to write a book about this, James. I’ve lived it. Why would I want to relive it?”
“Isn’t that what authors do?”
“Some. But not me. And certainly not in this case. Besides, the story isn’t over. It remains to be seen what finally happens to the mill, once word about this is fully out.”
“I know that,” James said with a return of gravity. “But that brings us full circle. Whatever does happen, I want you with me.”
Exasperated, I tossed a hand in the air. “How can you tell?”
“I can tell. I know. You’re different from any woman I’ve known.”
“Uh-huh. Different, bizarre, prickly—oh, and what was it your dad said before—unbalanced?”
“He was dead wrong.”
“But how do you know?” I asked, suddenly distracted. He was unbuttoning that pale blue shirt. “What are you doing?”
“I want you to feel something.”
“James,” I said in a half whisper and with a glance around. The day was definitely winding down, but it still had a ways to go. “Here?”
Catching my hand, he slipped it inside his shirt. “Feel that?”
I did. Omigod. I did. I felt the roughness of chest hair on warm, firm skin, but that wasn’t what he meant. It was his heart, beating strongly against my palm.
“That is what happens to me when I’m with you. It’s like I’m more alive than I was the minute before.”
I wanted to cry and say, Yes! Yes! That’s how it is! But I was frightened. Too much was happening too soon. Even aside from the three very logical reasons I had listed earlier, there was the one about love.
Love—yikes! I hadn’t come to Middle River for love. Moreover, had I known that first night that I would find love here, I might have turned right around and driven back to Washington.
Did I love James? How could I possibly know that? I hadn’t seen him in the life situations that a couple faced.
My parents had loved each other. I wanted what they had. And yes, I wanted the perfect Adam that Grace had sought. Maybe James was it. But could I tell now, when we were riding an adrenaline rush after beating Sandy and Aidan? How many people do you know who came together in unusual circumstances and thought they were madly in love, only to find that when they got into the nitty-gritty of living together, they were incompatible?
Besides, James hadn’t said the word love. Had he. I don’t ask that. I say it. It is fact.
Leaving that hand on his heart, I touched his face with my free one, put my soul in my voice, and begged, “I need time, James. Can you give me that?”
It took four months, during which I vacillated between falling more and more deeply in love and fighting what I felt. It was scary. I had liked people before. I had even loved people. But nothing compared with my feelings for James. They crept into every aspect of my life, from running to eating to reading to sleeping to working to being with friends. And to sex. Can’t forget that. It kept getting better. Can you believe that?
Oh, we discovered differences. I like my coffee black, he likes his light. I like mine in a ceramic mug, he likes his in a travel mug. I like Starbucks, he prefers Dunkin’ Donuts. And that’s only coffee. There were other differences—like his taking jelly beans over chocolate any day—but they were trivial when it came to the Big Picture.
First, Mia. By early fall she was walking, and let me tell you, there was nothing better than returning to Middle River after a week or two in D.C. and having Mia make a bee-line for me with her little arms raised for a lift and a hug. I suspect that she and I bonded over James, but bond we did—and if you’re thinking how convenient it was now for James to have someone to take care of Mia when he was late at work or preoccupied or tired, don’t. I happily took care of her, because I loved the child, but he rarely missed time with her. He genuinely enjoyed feeding and playing and bathing, and if there was a bad diaper—I mean, a really bad diaper—he never asked me to do it, he just did it himself. And I let him. Hey, I’m no glutton for punishment. But my point here is that we shared the chores. Never once did I feel used.
Second, work. To this day I’m in awe of the way James addressed the mercury problem. He did it—really did it—used profits from the mill to provide for the people who had been hurt, and he did it in a way that made lawsuits unnecessary. He was generous to a fault. Naturally, neither Sandy nor Aidan was pleased. They accused him of stealing the guts from the mill, but James stuck to his guns. He brought in experts to handle the legal and economic angles, and they got it right.
As for my work, it didn’t matter where I lived. I actually did all of the proofing for my book in James’s home office because even with Mia and the nanny around, it was quieter there than in my city condo.
Third, family. James’s was difficult, the proverbial thorn in his side, because neither Sandy nor Aidan took defeat lightly. Once they got their second wind after the takeover, they pushed and prodded, strong-armed Cyrus and Harry to their side, and generally did their best to sabotage what James had planned. In theory, it would have worked. With eight on the board, there was no tie-breaker. One had never been needed before. Now, though, James outfoxed his father by naming a representative from Middle River as the ninth member, and he did it in headlines on the front page of the Middle River Times. Once that happened, it was too late. Middle River would have raised holy hell if Sandy had nullified the appointment.
And my family? Unbelievable. Sabina got her job back. And Phoebe very slowly recovered, though that process continues as I write this. How did they take to James as my significant other? Easily. Like they weren’t at all surprised. Like the new light in which they viewed me was perfectly compatible with how they viewed James. Like they loved the idea of adding a Meade to the family.
The last took me most by surprise. I had assumed that they felt the Meade-Barnes antipathy as strongly as I did. I had assumed that the whole town felt it. But it was me. My mind. My anger. When I let go of that anger, I could see TRUTH #10: What’s in a name? Not a helluva lot. It isn’t the name that matters. It’s the person.
Speaking of persons, want to know what my sister Sabina did? She convinced James to let her take Mia for a weekend (this, in mid October) so that
he could surprise me in Washington. And was I ever surprised! James was deep into the mercury settlements at the time, and might have used the weekend I was gone to crash. Yet there he was at the door of the condo, replete with chocolate pennies and the warmest brown eyes. He wanted to meet Greg, he said. He wanted to meet Berri, Jocelyn, and Amanda. He wanted to see where I slept when I wasn’t with him, wanted to see what it was that I loved about Washington.
Naturally, everything in Washington was better with James there.
I want to tell you about that, but first, let me add one more thing about Sabina. What she and I had found in each other, in those few days between her firing and James’s coup, continued to grow. She actually became one of my closest friends, which made it easier for me to make the break.
So. Washington.
I love Washington. I always will. But even back in August, when I returned to be with Greg and his broken leg that one weekend, something had changed. Run as I might all over the city, as I had done that weekend and continued to do during the time I spent there in the fall, trying to remind myself of all that I loved and convince myself that there was absolutely no other place on earth where I could live, it didn’t work. Yes, I had friends in D.C. But they had frequent-flyer numbers, too. And New Hampshire welcomed visitors. After he met James (and likely saw where my heart was leaning), Greg came. So did Berri. And each week that I spent in Middle River, I made another friend.
So the good news was that now I had two homes, rather than one. Do we count this as TRUTH #11?
Why not? Because I was wrong in this instance, too. When James asked me to live with him, I assumed it meant giving up my Washington life. The truth is that between phone, fax, FedEx, digital cameras, and the Internet, geography has been redefined. Isolationists can babble all they want about the evils of globalism, but the world has become a smaller place. My Washington life goes on, though I have now sold my share of the condo to Greg and moved north.
Which brings me to Middle River. It’s a fabulous town. But you’re not surprised to hear me say that, are you? And I’ll be honest. It helps to be in love with one of the leaders of the town and know that even if I never wrote another book, I wouldn’t have a financial worry in the world. Folks on th’other side may not be as bullish on Middle River as I am, but they would agree with me about one thing: Middle River is home.
And that was what I told Grace. It was a flurrying day in December. I was home for the holidays (yes, home—it rolls off the tongue like honey), and I had been thinking about Grace a lot. We hadn’t talked since that day in August when I had shut her out. I was feeling guilty for that, was feeling that there was unfinished business between us. Since she wouldn’t come to me, I went to her.
Grace Metalious is buried in Gilmanton, the small town where she lived for longer stretches of her adult life than anywhere else. The town is south of the Lakes Region, which makes it a good drive from Middle River. James knew I was planning to go. I had been talking about it, had printed directions from MapQuest, had Xed out the date on the calendar. When the weather that day dawned iffy, he insisted on driving me there himself.
It was a bleak winter day. The trees were bare, their once colorful leaves now faded and dry at their feet, covered with a blanket of snow that was thin but growing. Once we passed under the iron arch that marked the cemetery’s entrance, we had no trouble finding her stone. It stood alone in an open patch, but there were evergreens nearby and a gentle slope with trees that would be green again come spring, and beyond the trees the peaceful water of Meetinghouse Pond, near frozen now and still.
The setting was one Grace might have described in a book to be read by ten million people. But she was here all alone, her name the only one on the stone.
James parked. He stayed in the car while I pulled up my hood and walked over that frail covering of snow. I had brought gerbera daisies; of all the flowers I had considered at the McCreedys’ store, these seemed to best suit Grace. They were wildly vivid, a mix of reds, oranges, yellows, and pinks, but they were simple in form. A contradiction? No more so than Grace.
I propped the flowers in the snow so that they rested against the protruding base of the large granite stone. The name Metalious was printed in block letters high on that stone and, beneath the surname, a smaller Grace. Beneath that were the years of her birth and death, nothing else.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I was not nice last time we talked. I cut you off. But you deserved better. You were a good friend to me when I needed one.”
I paused. A red squirrel cheeped away somewhere in the trees, and though the lightly falling snow muted the woods, the breeze caused a creak now and again. My parka rustled when I drew it tighter around me. But I didn’t hear Grace.
“I’ve learned so much,” I went on in that same quiet voice. “Mostly it’s about me and how bullheaded I’ve been about certain things. I’m good at writing books. So are you. But we trip up when it comes to personal gripes.”
I paused again. Still Grace didn’t reply.
“Remember when we had that last big argument? It was after the fire, after I’d spent the night with James. You said I loved him, and I denied it, and you kept badgering, goading me to say what it was I wanted in life, and I just didn’t know. I know now. A lot of what I want is what you had. I want books, and I want children, and I want James. But there’s something else I want, and maybe it’s what you never had. You wrote about Peyton Place, and I lived Peyton Place, and the two of us kept coming back to Peyton Place, even though we swore we hated it. So what is its appeal? It’s home, Grace, home.”
The breeze whipped a handful of snowflakes at my face, and for a minute I wondered if that was Grace’s way of telling me to pack up my brilliant insights and leave. But there was something soothing in the aftermath of that brush with cold. I felt cleansed.
“You had started to say something to me that day. You know, the last time we talked. It was after the meeting at the mill. I was sitting in my car waiting for James to come out, and you kept saying, I just want you to know…just want you to know…What did you want me to know?”
I waited, but she didn’t answer.
So I whispered, “Can you hear me, Grace?”
After another minute, I smiled sadly and let out a misty breath. Grace was dead.
And still I stood looking at her stone, though the cold seeped in and I started to shiver. In time, I looked at the trees, then the pond, then the stone again. This time my eyes were drawn to the daisies I had brought. I was glad I had chosen these. They were so bright, they fairly glowed in the snow.
Releasing a final misty breath, I turned and looked back. There at the end of the boxy track in the snow left by my Uggs, like so many crumbs leading me home, was the big, warm SUV with James inside.
“I just want you to know…” I whispered a final time, because my boots wouldn’t move yet, “just want you to know…” I paused. What to say? That I would miss her? That she would forever be part of me? That I wouldn’t have been who I am today without her, and that I loved her for that?
I didn’t say any of it. I didn’t need to. If the spirit of Grace was anywhere near this place, she would know.
With that realization, my boots came unglued and I started back toward the car. The walking was easier than it should have been, because I had been relieved of a weight. I had needed to come here. Now I could move on.
Lighthearted and more eager with each step, I was halfway to James when it came to me. He’s the one. That was what Grace had wanted to say. I could hear it now. He’s the perfect one.
I don’t know about perfect. There was the thing about drinking coffee from a travel mug in the comfort of his own kitchen. But I could forgive him that.
Smiling at the thought, I jogged over the snow. When the door opened, I slipped inside.
“I saw the starry tree Eternity, put forth the blossom Time, she thought, and remembered Matthew Swain and the many, many friends who were part of Peyton Place.
I lose my sense of proportion too easily, she admitted to herself. I let everything get too big, too important and world shaking. Only here do I realize the littleness of the things that can touch me.”
From Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious
A Note from the Publisher
Afterword
When we hear the words “Peyton Place,” certain images come to mind: debauchery in small-town America, the pent-up passions that lurk behind white-picket fences, and sensational scandal. Banned across the globe and denounced as “moral filth,” coveted by curious teenagers and hidden under the pillows of desperate housewives, Grace Metalious’s Peyton Place was nothing less than a bombshell of a book at the time of its publication in 1956. Its provocative energy has since permeated our whole culture, touching everything from art and politics to gender relations and the role of women in society. Its enduring impact can still be felt today. As film director John Waters put it, Peyton Place was “the first dirty book the baby-boom generation ever read; the ‘shocker’ they never got over.”
But in the beginning, the bombshell had trouble getting off the ground. Turned down by five publishers, the book finally found a champion in Kitty Messner, a straight-shooting feminist and one of the only women to serve as president of a major publishing house. Messner knew a good thing when she saw it.
With an unprecedented first printing of a million copies, the book went on to sell well over 10 million, making Peyton Place the biggest bestseller of its time—and still one of the top bestsellers of the twentieth century. No matter how hard the obscenity police tried to block its path, the book just bulldozed on through, delighting and titillating its countless devoted readers. But Peyton Place was much more than just its notorious reputation as a “dirty” book. It was a revolution.
“Sinclair Lewis would no doubt have hailed Grace Metalious as a sister-in-arms against the false fronts and bourgeois pretensions of allegedly respectable communities.”
Looking for Peyton Place Page 40
