Peyton Place (61 page)

“You wonder too much about Peyton Place,” said Tom. “It's just a town, Allison, like any other town. We have our characters, but so does New York and so does every other town and city.”

“I know that,” said Allison, lowering her head to watch a rabbit skitter off into the woods. “But I can't make myself feel it. It is like a lot of other things with me. I know that something is so. I can even write about it the way I think it, but I don't feel it the same way. Like love. My agent says that I write a very creditable love scene but Tom–” She raised her head to look at him. “Tom, what a difference there is between writing something or reading something, and living it.”

“The main difference is that it is easier to read or write than to live,” said Tom. “I guess that's the only real difference.”

Allison leaned against one of the gray walls which surrounded Samuel Peyton's castle. “To me, the main difference has always been that writing and reading are less painful. In fact, when I first came home, I had almost made up my mind to stick to those two and forgo living.”

Tom smiled. “But on the other hand, to coin a phrase, life is too damned short not to be lived every minute.”

“And besides, people don't have much choice anyway,” added Allison and laughed. It was the first time she had laughed over nothing much all summer. “We'd better start back,” she said. “The days are getting shorter and shorter. It'll be dark soon.”

Constance and Allison had never been comfortable with the words of sentimentality. So, when Constance noticed after dinner that the silver-framed photograph of Allison MacKenzie which had stood for so many years on the living room mantelpiece was gone, she merely turned a startled, hopeful look at her daughter. Allison smiled, and Constance smiled, and except for Tom nothing would have been said.

“Listen,” he remarked, “this is supposed to be a big scene, like Hollywood. Allison, you're supposed to break into the weeps and cry, ‘Mother!’ And Connie, you're supposed to smile through your tears and say, tremulously, of course, ‘Daughter!’ Then the two of you are supposed to fall on each other's necks and sob. Soft music and fade-out. God, what a couple of cold fish I got tangled up with!”

Allison and Constance both burst out laughing and Constance said, “Let's open that bottle of cognac I was saving for Christmas.”

The autumn rains began that night. It rained almost steadily for two weeks, and then one morning Allison awoke and knew before she got out of bed and went to her window that Indian summer had come.

“Oh!” she cried aloud, a few minutes later, as she leaned as far out the window as she could. “Oh, you came after all!”

She dressed rapidly and hardly paused to eat breakfast, and then she set out to walk to Road's End. She climbed the long sloping hill behind Memorial Park, and when she reached the top it was all there, waiting for her, as she had remembered it. She walked through the woods with her old light-footed grace, and came at last to the open field hidden in the middle of the woods. The goldenrod stood as tall, and straight, and yellow as it always had, and the same maples, loud with the paint of Indian summer, surrounded everything. Allison sat for a long time in her secret place, and reflected that even if this spot were not as secret as she had once believed, the things it said to her were still secret. She felt now the assurance of changelessness that had comforted her as a child and she smiled and touched a goldenrod's yellow head.

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.

Allison looked up at the sky, blue with the deep blueness peculiar to Indian summer, and thought of it as a cup inverted over her alone. The feeling was soothing, as it had always been, but for a single moment now, Allison felt that she no longer needed to be soothed and comforted as she once had. When she stood up and began to walk again, the sun was high with noontime brightness, and when she came to the sign with the red letters painted on its side, she had to shade her eyes with her hand to look down at the toy village that was Peyton Place.

Oh, I love you, she cried silently. I love every part of you. Your beauty and your cruelty, your kindness and ugliness. But now I know you, and you no longer frighten me. Perhaps you will again, tomorrow or the next day, but right now I love you and I am not afraid of you. Today you are just a place.

As she ran down the hill toward town, Allison fancied that the tree sang to her with the many voices of a symphony.

“Good-by, Allison! Good-by, Allison! Good-by, Allison!”

She was still running with a spate of excess energy when she reached Elm Street. Her mother called to her from the front door of the Thrifty Corner.

“Allison! I've been looking all over town for you! You have company at home. A young man all the way from New York. He says his name is David Noyes.”

“Thank you!” cried Allison and waved her hand.

She hurried, and when she reached Beech Street she ran all the way up the block to her house.

Return to Peyton Place

By GRACE METALIOUS

With a new introduction by Ardis Cameron

Hardscrabble Books

Northeastern University Press
Published by University Press of New England
Paper, 272 pp. 5½ × 8½"

ISBN 13: 978-1-55553-669-5

ISBN 10: 1-55553-669-7

The continuing story of Peyton Place
is once again available in paperback

www.upne.com