Peyton Place (26 page)

The surprising thing, thought Constance as she leaned against Tom's shoulder two years later, was not that he had spoken as he had, but that she had obeyed him.

“All right,” she had said, exasperated with his persistence. “All
right!”

She had put on her bathing suit in her bedroom and only for a moment, when she caught her reflection in the mirror of her dressing table, did she pause.

What am I doing? she had asked herself.

Something I want to do, for a change, she had answered the face in the mirror.

Resolutely, she fastened the straps of her bathing suit into place, slipped on a cotton dress and a pair of sandals, and ran down the stairs to where Tomas Makris stood waiting in the hall.

“Did you lock your door?” he asked when they were outside.

“That's another thing you'll have to learn about small-town living,” she told him. “If you take to locking your door in Peyton Place, people will begin to think that you have something to hide.”

“I see,” he said. “I should have realized. It must be for this same reason that people here never draw the curtains in their living room windows when the lights are on inside. How do you like the car?”

“Not bad,” she said. “It's certainly not new though, is it?”

“Chevvies,” he said, “like good wines, are supposed to improve with age. Honest. That's what the used car salesman told me.”

He drove to the lake he had spoken of, eight miles from town, and whether the fact that the place was deserted was due to the hour or, as Tom said later, to their almost miraculous good luck, Constance did not know. She knew only that when he had turned off the car lights and cut the motor, the darkness and quiet of the place were unearthly.

“How are we supposed to see to get down to the beach?” she whispered.

“What are you whispering about?” he asked in a normal tone, startling her. “I have a flashlight.”

“Oh.” Constance cleared her throat and wondered if the first few minutes in a dark, parked car were as awkward for everyone as they were for her.

“Come on,” he said, and took her hand to lead her.

It was the first time he had ever touched her, and she felt his grip in her hand, in her wrist, through her whole arm. They dropped the clothes they had worn over their bathing suits on the beach and went into the water together. Now that Constance's eyes had become accustomed to the dark, she could see almost plainly, and what she saw was Tomas Makris standing at her side, massive, naked from the waist up, and evil looking. With a silent cry of fright, she dived into the water and swam away from him.

Oh, God, she thought, why did I ever come? How am I going to get home? Why didn't I stay home in the first place?

She swam until she was exhausted. Her body quivered with fear and chill, and when she swam close enough to the shore to stand, she saw that he was already on the beach, waiting for her. He did not move toward her as she came out of the water toward him, nor did he offer her the towel which he held in his hand. Nervously, she took off her bathing cap and shook her head to loosen her hair.

“My,” she said, with a strained little laugh. “It was cold, wasn't it?”

“Untie the top of your bathing suit,” he said harshly. “I want to feel your breasts against me when I kiss you.”

Two years later, sitting in a car at Tomas Makris’ side, Constance MacKenzie shivered again as uncontrollably as she had shivered that night.

“Don't think about it,” said Tom gently. “That part is all over with now. Now we are us, and we understand one another. Don't, baby,” he said, as she shuddered again. “Don't think about it.”

She shook her head and gripped his arm, but she could not help but think about it. Not five minutes before, they had passed the place where it had happened, and Constance could recall it in every detail.

She had stood like a statue, one hand on the back of her neck where she had put it to fluff out her hair, when he spoke. He did not speak again, but when she did not move he stepped in front of her and untied the top strap of her bathing suit. With one motion of his hand, she was naked to the waist, and he pulled her against him without even looking at her. He kissed her brutally, torturously, as if he hoped to awaken a response in her with pain that gentleness could not arouse. His hands were in her hair, but his thumbs were under her jawbone, at either side of her face, so that she could not twist her head from side to side. She felt her knees beginning to give under her, and still he kissed her, holding her upright with his hands tangled in her hair. When he lifted his bruising, hurtful mouth at last, he picked her up, carried her to the car and slammed the door behind her. She was still crumpled, half naked, on the front seat, when he drove up in front of her house. Without a word, he carried her out of the car, and she could not utter a sound. He carried her into the living room where the lights still blazed in front of the open, uncurtained windows and dropped her onto the chintz-covered couch.

“The lights,” she gasped finally. “Turn off the lights.”

When the room was dark he came to her. “Which room is yours?” he asked coldly.

“The one at the end of the hall,” she said, through her chattering teeth. “But it doesn't matter, because you'll never see the inside of it. Get out of my house. Get away from me–”

He carried her, struggling, up the dark stairway, and when he reached the second floor, he kicked open the door of her room with his foot.

“I'll have you arrested,” she stammered. “I'll have you arrested and put in jail for breaking and entering and rape–”

He stood her on the floor beside the bed and slapped her a stunning blow across the mouth with the back of his hand.

“Don't open your mouth again,” he said quietly. “Just keep your mouth shut.”

He bent over her and ripped the still wet bathing suit from her body, and in the dark, she heard the sound of his zipper opening as he took off his trunks.

“Now,” he said. “Now.”

It was like a nightmare from which she could not wake until, at last, when the blackness at her window began to thin to pale gray, she felt the first red gush of shamed pleasure that lifted her, lifted her, lifted her and then dropped her down into unconsciousness.

It depressed Constance MacKenzie to relive this memory, and it shamed her to remember that she had uttered only one desperate question during that whole, long night.

“Did you lock the door?” she had cried.

And Tom, laughing deep in his throat, had replied against her breasts, “Yes. Don't worry. I locked it.”

Looking at him now, as he drove quickly along the road that led away from Peyton Place, Constance wondered again at this man whom she had not yet begun to know.

“What?” he inquired, again reading her mind.

“I was thinking,” she said, “that after two years, I really don't know you very well.”

Tom laughed and turned into the graveled drive in front of the restaurant they had come to visit. As he helped her out of the car he lifted her chin and kissed her gently.

“I love you,” he said. “What else is there to know?”

Constance smiled. “Nothing else that really matters,” she said.

Much later, as they returned to Peyton Place, she did not even glance at the dimly lit hospital. It was only when Tom parked the car in front of her house and she saw Anita Titus waiting for her that she felt an uneasy foreshadowing of disaster.

‘Your phone's been ringing all evening,” said Anita, who was Constance's next door neighbor and on the same telephone party line. “The hospital's been trying to reach you.”

“Allison!” cried Constance. “Something has happened to Allison!”

She ran from the car and up her front walk, forgetting her gloves and purse, and leaving Tom to cope with Anita. For a long moment he stood and gazed after this woman who hurried into her own house in order to listen in on Constance's telephone call.

Christ, he thought angrily, I haven't met ten people in this goddamned town who don't need to spend the next year douching out their goddamned souls.

When he went into the house, Constance was already in contact with the hospital.

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she was saying relievedly. “Oh, yes. Thank you for calling me.”

“What is it?” he asked, lighting two cigarettes.

“Selena Cross,” said Constance. “Dr. Swain performed an emergency appendectomy on her this evening. She had the hospital call me to say that she wouldn't be able to open the store in the morning. Imagine her thinking of the store at a time like that.”

Nurse Mary Kelley closed the door on a sleeping Selena Cross and went quietly, on large, white-shod feet that looked incapable of such quietness, to the desk in the first floor hall. She sat down, adjusting her cap nervously, and sighed as she molded her hips to the straight chair. Once her legs were hidden by the kneehole desk, she spread her thighs cautiously. In the summer, when it was very hot, the insides of her thighs were always chafed. Nothing seemed to help her at these times, neither powder, nor dry cornstarch, nor zinc oxide ointment. She just suffered, and her temper grew short. Now, in addition to night duty and the July humidity and the thighs that hurt as if they had been burned by fire every time she took a step, she was being forced to put a code of medical ethics to the test for the first time in her career. Mary Kelley had been a serious student. She knew all about the ethics that were meat for so many novels and motion pictures and bull sessions in student nurses’ quarters.

“What would you do,” the students had been fond of asking one another in the long hours after the lights had been put out, “if you saw a doctor make a mistake in the O.R.? A mistake that resulted in the death of a patient?”

“I'd never tell,” they assured each other. “After all, everyone makes mistakes. If a carpenter or a plumber makes a mistake, no one is going to ruin him for it. A doctor can make mistakes. Why should he be ruined, or disgraced, or sued?”

“Nurses never tell,” they said. “And they see mistakes every day. They keeps their mouths shut. It's ethics.”

Mary Kelley, sitting spread-legged at the first floor desk, stared down at her hands which were large, square and naked looking in the night dimness of the Peyton Place hospital.

It never stopped there, she remembered, the noble-sounding talk about medical ethics.

“But what if it wasn't a mistake?” they asked one another. “What if a doctor was drunk, or did something deliberately?”

“What if it was your own mother and he killed her to put her out of her misery if she was suffering from some incurable disease?”

“Supposing the doctor had a daughter and his daughter had an illegitimate child and he let the baby die during delivery?”

“I'd never tell,” they said solemnly. “You just don't tell on doctors. That's ethics.”

Mary Kelley stirred in her chair and spread her legs as far apart as the kneehole in the desk would allow. It all sounded so fine in theory, she thought. It had always sounded fine and beautiful during the bull sessions in the nurses’ quarters. Talk was cheap. It cost nothing to give voice to what you wanted people to think you believed. Mary wondered if medical ethics could be compared to the question of tolerance. When you talked you said that Negroes were as good as anybody. You said that Negroes should never be discriminated against, and that if you ever fell in love with one, you'd marry him proudly. But all the while you were talking, you wondered what you would
really
do if some big, black, handsome nigger came up and asked you for a date. When you talked you declared that if you fell in love with a Protestant who refused to change his religion for you, that you would marry him anyway and love him for having the courage of his convictions. You would marry him over parental objections and the objections of the Church, and you would cope intelligently with the problem of a mixed marriage. You knew that you were safe in saying these things, for there hadn't been a nigger living in Peyton Place for over a hundred years, and you didn't date boys who were not Catholics. You said that you knew what you would do if confronted with an unethical doctor, but what, wondered Mary Kelley, putting her face in her large, square hands, did you really do when it happened?

For a moment, she pondered the advisability of going straight to Father O'Brien and confessing to him the sin in which she had taken part this night. She pictured the big, blue-jowled face of the priest, and the narrow, black eyes that could pierce like knives. What if she told him and he refused to give her absolution? What if he said, “Deliver this doctor into the hands of the law, for only in this way can I wash the sin from your soul”? Mary Kelley pictured the face of Doc Swain, his good, kind face, and the hands that she had regarded as next to those of Christ in their gentleness. She had, really, not been able to help herself, for The Doc had not offered her a choice.

“Prep her,” he had said, indicating Selena Cross. “I've got to yank her appendix.”

Mary's thighs were hurting, her temper was short and she had been annoyed, as always, by The Doc's unprofessional language. He never used the more polished, mysterious words of medicine if he could help it. She had been full of protests.

What about an assistant? she had queried. An anesthetist? An extra nurse? She was alone on night duty in the almost empty hospital. What if there were only three patients in bed at the time? It wasn't right to leave those three unattended while she helped The Doc! What if the telephone rang now that it was evening and the daytime secretary gone? What if someone called up and no one answered the phone? It wouldn't look right, she had told The Doc, if there should be an emergency and there was no one on duty at the desk.

“Goddamn it!” roared The Doc. “Stop your jaw-flapping and do as I say!”

Mary didn't mind when The Doc roared. It was just his way, and a good nurse never interfered with a doctor's way any more than she tried to tell him what to do in the O.R. She had tried, though, later, with Selena Cross unconscious on the table.

“Doc,” she had whispered. “Doc, what're you doing?”

He had straightened up and looked at her, his eyes blazing, blue and furious, over his mask.