Peyton Place Page 5

  “Wish to Christ I had a drink,” he said fervently and moved toward the double front doors of the grade school.

  It was five minutes to three and time for him to take up his position by the bell rope.

  “Wish to Christ I had a drink, and that's for sure,” said Kenny and mounted the wooden front steps of the school.

  Kenny's words, since they had been addressed to his bell and therefore uttered in loud, carrying tones, drifted easily through the windows of the classroom where Miss Elsie Thornton presided over the eighth grade. Several boys laughed out loud and a few girls grinned, but this amusement was short lived. Miss Thornton was a firm believer in the theory that if a child were given the inch, he would rapidly take the proverbial mile, so, although it was Friday afternoon and she was very tired, she restored quick order to her room.

  “Is there anyone here who would like to spend the thirty minutes after dismissal with me?” she asked.

  The boys and girls, ranging in age from twelve to fourteen, fell silent, but as soon as the first note sounded from Kenny's bell, they began to scrape and shuffle their feet. Miss Thornton rapped sharply on her desk with a ruler.

  “You will be quiet until I dismiss you,” she ordered. “Now. Are your desks cleared?”

  “Yes, Miss Thornton.” The answer came in a discordant chorus.

  “You may stand.”

  Forty-two pairs of feet clomped into position in the aisles between the desks. Miss Thornton waited until all backs were straight, all heads turned to the front and all feet quiet.

  “Dismissed,” she said, and as always, as soon as that word was out of her mouth, had the ridiculous feeling that she should duck and protect her head with her arms.

  Within five seconds the classroom was empty and Miss Thornton relaxed with a sigh. Kenny's bell still sang joyously and the teacher reflected with humor that Kenny always rang the three o'clock dismissal bell with a special fervor, while at eight-thirty in the morning he made the same bell toll mournfully.

  If I thought it would solve anything, said Miss Thornton to herself, making a determined effort to relax the area between her shoulder blades, I, too, would wish to Christ that I had a drink.

  Smiling a little, she stood and moved to one of the windows to watch the children leave the schoolyard. Outside, the crowd had begun to separate into smaller groups and pairs, and Miss Thornton noticed only one child who walked alone. This was Allison MacKenzie, who broke away from the throng as soon as she reached the pavement and hurried down Maple Street by herself.

  A peculiar child, mused Miss Thornton, looking at Allison's disappearing back. One given to moods of depression which seemed particularly odd in one so young. It was odd, too, that Allison hadn't one friend in the entire school, except for Selena Cross. They made a peculiar pair, those two, Selena with her dark, gypsyish beauty, her thirteen-year-old eyes as old as time, and Allison MacKenzie, still plump with residual babyhood, her eyes wide open, guileless and questioning, above that painfully sensitive mouth. Get yourself a shell, Allison, my dear, thought Miss Thornton. Find one without cracks or weaknesses so that you will be able to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Good Lord, I am tired!

  Rodney Harrington came barreling out of the school, not slowing his pace when he saw little Norman Page standing directly in his path.

  Damned little bully, thought Miss Thornton savagely.

  She despised Rodney Harrington, and it was a credit to her character and to her teaching that no one, least of all Rodney himself, suspected this fact. Rodney was an oversized fourteen-year-old with a mass of black, curly hair and a heavy-lipped mouth. Miss Thornton had heard a few of her more aware eighth grade girls refer to Rodney as “adorable,” a sentiment with which she was not in accord. She would have gotten a great deal of pleasure out of giving him a sound thrashing. In Miss Thornton's vast mental file of school children, Rodney was classified as A Troublemaker.

  He's too big for his age, she thought, and too sure of himself and of his father's money and position behind him. He'll get his comeuppance someday.

  Miss Thornton bit the inside of her lip and spoke severely to herself. He is only a child. He may turn out all right.

  But she knew Leslie Harrington, Rodney's father, and doubted her own words.

  Little Norman Page was felled by the oncoming Rodney. He went flat on the ground and began to cry, remaining prone until Ted Carter came along to help him up.

  Little Norman Page. Funny, thought Miss Thornton, but I've never heard an adult refer to Norman without that prefix. It has almost become part of his name.

  Norman, the schoolteacher observed, seemed to be constructed entirely of angles. His cheekbones were prominent in his little face, and as he wiped at his wet eyes, his elbows stuck out in sharp, bony points.

  Ted Carter was brushing at Norman's trousers. “You're O.K., Norman,” his voice came through the schoolroom window. “Come on, you're O.K. Stop crying now and g'wan home. You're O.K.”

  Ted was thirteen years old, tall and broad for his age, with the stamp of adulthood already on his features. Of all the boys in Miss Thornton's eighth grade, Ted's voice was the only one which had “changed” completely so that when he spoke it was in a rich baritone that never cracked or went high unexpectedly.

  “Why don't you pick on someone your own size?” Ted asked, turning toward Rodney Harrington.

  “Ha, ha,” said Rodney sulkily. “You, f'rinstance?”

  Ted moved another step closer to Rodney. “Yeah, me,” he said.

  “Oh, beat it,” said Rodney. “I wouldn't waste my time.”

  But, Miss Thornton noticed with satisfaction, it was Rodney who “beat it.” He strolled cockily out of the schoolyard with an overdeveloped seventh grade girl named Betty Anderson at his heels.

  “Why don'cha mind your own business,” yelled Betty over her shoulder to Ted.

  Little Norman Page snuffled. He took a clean white handkerchief from his back trouser pocket and blew his nose gently.

  “Thank you, Ted,” he said shyly. “Thank you very much.”

  “Oh, scram,” said Ted Carter. “G'wan home before your old lady comes looking for you.”

  Norman's chin quivered anew. “Could I walk with you, Ted?” he asked. “Just until Rodney's out of sight? Please?”

  “Rodney's got other things on his mind besides you right now,” said Ted brutally. “He's forgotten that you're even alive.”

  Scooping his books up off the ground, Ted ran to catch up with Selena Cross, who was now halfway up Maple Street. He did not look around for Norman, who picked up his own books and moved slowly out of the schoolyard.

  Miss Thornton felt suddenly too tired to move. She leaned her head against the window frame and stared absently at the empty yard outside. She knew the families of her school children, the kind of homes they lived in and the environments in which they were raised.

  Why do I try? she wondered. What chance have any of these children to break out of the pattern in which they were born?

  At times like this, when Miss Thornton was very tired, she felt that she fought a losing battle with ignorance and was overcome with a sense of futility and helplessness. What sense was there in nagging a boy into memorizing the dates of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire when the boy, grown, would milk cows for a living, as had his father and grandfather before him. What logic was there in pounding decimal fractions into the head of a girl who would eventually need to count only to number the months of each pregnancy?

  Years before, when Miss Thornton had been graduated from Smith College, she had decided to remain in her native New England to teach.

  “You won't have much opportunity to be radical up there,” the dean had told her.

  Elsie Thornton had smiled. “They are my people and I understand them. I'll know what to do.”

  The dean had smiled, too, from her heights of superior knowledge. “When you discover how to break the bone of the shell-backed New Englander, Elsie
, you will become world famous. Anyone who does something for the first time in history becomes famous.”

  “I've lived in New England all my life,” said Elsie Thornton, “and I have never heard anyone actually say, ‘What was good enough for my father is good enough for me.’ That is a decadent attitude and a terrible cliché, both of which have been unfairly saddled on the New Englander.”

  “Good luck, Elsie,” said the dean sadly.

  Kenny Stearns crossed Miss Thornton's line of vision, and abruptly her chain of thought broke.

  Nonsense, she told herself briskly. I have a roomful of fine, intelligent children who come from families no different from other families. I'll feel better on Monday.

  She went to the closet and took out her hat which was seeing service for the seventh autumn in a row. Looking at the worn brown felt in her hand, she was reminded of Dr. Matthew Swain.

  “I'd be able to tell a schoolteacher anywhere,” he had told her.

  “Really, Matt?” she had laughed at him. “Do we all, then, have the same look of frustration?”

  “No,” he had replied, “but all of you do look overworked, underpaid, poorly dressed and underfed. Why do you do it, Elsie? Why don't you go down to Boston or somewhere like that? With your intelligence and education you could get a good-paying job in business.”

  Miss Thornton had shrugged. “Oh, I don't know, Matt. I just love teaching, I guess.”

  But in her mind then, as now, was the hope which kept her at her job, just as it has kept teachers working for hundreds of years.

  If I can teach something to one child, if I can awaken in only one child a sense of beauty, a joy in truth, an admission of ignorance and a thirst for knowledge, then I am fulfilled.

  One child, thought Miss Thornton, adjusting her old brown felt, and her mind fastened with love on Allison MacKenzie.

  ♦ 3 ♦

  Allison MacKenzie left the schoolyard quickly, not stopping to talk with anyone. She made her way up Maple Street and walked east on Elm, avoiding the Thrifty Corner Apparel Shoppe which her mother owned and operated. Allison walked rapidly until she had left the stores and houses of Peyton Place behind her. She climbed the long, gently sloping hill behind Memorial Park and came, eventually, to a place where the paved road ended. Beyond the pavement, the land fell away in a sharp decline and was covered with rocks and bushes. The drop off was barred with a wide wooden board which rested at either end on a base resembling an outsized sawhorse. The crosspiece had red letters printed on it. ROAD'S END. These words had always satisfied something in Allison. She reflected that the board could have read, PAVEMENT ENDS or CAUTION–DROP OFF, and she was glad that someone had thought to label this place ROAD'S END.

  Allison luxuriated in the fact that she had two whole days, plus what was left of this beautiful afternoon, in which to be free from the hatefulness that was school. In the time of this short vacation she would be free to walk up here to the end of the road, to be by herself and to think her own thoughts. For a little while she could find pleasure here and forget that her pleasures would be considered babyish and silly by older, more mature twelve-year-old girls.

  The afternoon was beautiful with the lazy, blue beauty of Indian summer. Allison said the words “October afternoon” over and over to herself. They were like a narcotic, soothing her, filling her with peace. “October afternoon,” she said, sighing, and sat down on the board that had ROAD'S END lettered on its side.

  Now that she was quiet and unafraid, she could pretend that she was a child again, and not a twelve-year-old who would be entering high school in less than another year, and who should be interested now in clothes and boys and pale rose lipstick. The delights of childhood were all around her, and here on the hill she did not feel that she was peculiar and different from her contemporaries. But away from this place she was awkward, loveless, pitifully aware that she lacked the attraction and poise which she believed that every other girl her age possessed.

  Very rarely, she felt a shred of this same secret, lonely happiness at school, when the class was reading a book or a story which pleased her. Then she would look up quickly from the printed page to find Miss Thornton looking at her, and their eyes would meet and hold and smile. She was careful not to let this happiness show, for she knew that the other girls in her class would laugh to let her know that this kind of joy was wrong, and that they would tag it with their favorite word of condemnation—babyish.

  There would not be many more days of contentment for Allison, for now she was twelve and soon would have to begin spending her life with people like the girls at school. She would be surrounded by them, and have to try hard to be one of them. She was sure that they would never accept her. They would laugh at her, ridicule her, and she would find herself living in a world where she was the only odd and different member of the population.

  If Allison MacKenzie had been asked to define the vague “they” to whom she referred in her mind, she would have answered, “Everybody except Miss Thornton and Selena Cross, and sometimes even Selena.” For Selena was beautiful while Allison believed herself an unattractive girl, plump in the wrong places, flat in the wrong spots, too long in the legs and too round in the face. She knew that she was shy and all thumbs and had a headful of silly dreams. That was the way everybody saw her, except Miss Thornton, and that was only because Miss Thornton was so ugly and plain herself. Selena would smile and try to dismiss Allison's inadequacies with a wave of her hand. “You're O.K., kid,” Selena would say, but Allison could not always believe her friend. Somewhere along the path of approaching maturity she had lost her sense of being loved and of belonging to a particular niche in the world. The measure of her misery was in the fact that she thought these things had never been hers to lose.

  Allison looked across the emptiness beyond Road's End. From up here, she could see the town, spread out below her. She could see the belfry of the grade school, the church spires and the winding, blue road of the Connecticut River with the red brick mills, like growths, attached to one of its sides. She could see the gray stone pile of Samuel Peyton's castle, and she stared hard at the place for which the town had been named. Thinking of the story connected with the Peyton place, she shivered a little in the warm sun, deliberately turning her eyes away. She tried to locate the white and green cottage where she lived with her mother, but she could not distinguish her home from all the others in her neighborhood. From where Allison was sitting, her house was two miles away.

  The houses in Allison's neighborhood were simple, well constructed, one-family dwellings, most of them modeled on Cape Cod lines and painted white with green trim. Once Allison had looked up the meaning of the word “neighbor” in a book which, although she now knew better, she still thought of as belonging to one man in very peculiar circumstances: Webster's On A Bridge. A neighbor, said the book, was one who dwelt in the same vicinity with one, and for a short time Allison had been comforted. Webster's On A Bridge apparently found nothing odd in the fact that a neighbor was not a friend. There were, however, no dictionary definitions to explain why the MacKenzies had no friends anywhere in the town of Peyton Place. Allison was sure that the reason for this friendlessness was the fact that the MacKenzies were a different kind of family from most, and that therefore other people did not care to become involved with them.

  From Road's End Allison pictured the home she could not see as full of busy, popular people whose telephone rang constantly. From here, she could imagine her house as being no different from any other house—not queer in its emptiness and not all wrong, just as having no father was all wrong, and her life and herself. Only here, alone on the hill, could Allison be sure of herself—and contented.

  She hopped down from where she had been sitting and bent to pick up a small branch broken from a maple tree by the cold wind and rain of a few days before. Carefully, she broke all the twigs from the branch so that it became an almost straight stick, and as she walked, she peeled the bark from the wood until it was s
tripped clean. When this was done, she paused and put her nose against the wood's bare, green-whiteness, sniffing its fresh, wet smell, running her finger tips over its unprotected surface until she felt the dampness of sap on her hands. She walked on again, pressing the stick into the ground with each step, and pretended that she was carrying an alpenstock the way people did in pictures taken in the Swiss Alps.

  The woods on either side of Road's End were old. They were one of the few remaining stands of lumber in northern New England which had never been cut, for the town ended below Memorial Park and the terrain above had always been considered too rocky and uneven for development. Allison imagined that the paths on which she walked through these woods were the same trails that the Indians had followed before the white man had come to settle. She believed that she was the only person who ever came here, and she felt a deep sense of ownership toward the woods. She loved them and she had learned them well through every season of the year. She knew where the first arbutus trailed in the spring, when there were still large patches of snow on the ground, and she knew the quiet, shady places where the violets made purple clusters after the snows had disappeared. She knew where to find lady's-slipper, and where there was an open field, hidden in the middle of the woods, and covered in summer with buttercups and brown-eyed Susans. In a secret place, she had a rock where she could sit and watch a family of robins, and she could tell just by glancing at the trees when the time of the first killing frost had come. She could move quietly through the woods with a gracefulness that she never possessed away from them, and she imagined that other girls in the world outside felt always as she felt here, safe and sure, knowing the surroundings and belonging in them.

  Allison walked through the woods and came to the open field. The summer flowers were gone now, and tall, tough stalks of goldenrod had taken their place. The clearing was yellow with them, and as she walked through them they encircled her on all sides so that she seemed to be wading, waist deep, in goldenness. She stood still for a moment and then suddenly, with a feeling of pure ecstasy, reached out both her arms to the world around her. She looked up at the sky with its deep blueness peculiar to Indian summer and it seemed like a vast cup inverted over her alone. The maples in the woods around the field were loud with red and yellow, and a warm, gentle wind moved through their leaves. She fancied that the trees were saying, “Hello, Allison. Hello, Allison,” and she smiled. In one moment of time, precious with a lack of self consciousness, she held her arms wide and called, “Hello! Oh, hello, everything beautiful!”