Peyton Place

BOOK TWO

BOOK TWO Two years had passed since that graduation night. They had passed quickly for Allison. The work was much harder in high school and this provided a mental stimulation for her that had been lacking in the grades. Somehow, too, she had come to accept herself and the world around her more calmly, and while she still had periods of fear and resentment, they were fewer and less wretchedly painful than before. She had also developed a new, insatiable curiosity. Two years earlier she had been content to let books answer her questions, but now she tried to learn from people. She asked questions of everyone whom she dared to approach, and the most sympathetic of these was Nellie Cross. "How did you ever come to marry Lucas, anyway?" she asked Nellie one day. "You're always cusping him and talking as if you hated him. How come you married him at all?" Nellie looked up from the brass candlestick that she was polishing , and she was quiet for so long that to anyone but Allison it might have seemed that she had not heard or that she was ignoring the question. But Allison knew that neither of these was true. If Nellie was sympathetic to Allison's questions, Allison had learned to be patient with Nellie's inarticulateness. "I dunno that I ever did come to it, like you say," said Nellie finally. "Marryin' Lucas wa'nt nothin' I ever come to. It was just one of those things that happened." "Nothing/' said Allison positively, "ever just happens. There is a law of cause and effect that applies to everything and everybody ." Nellie smiled and put the candlestick down on the mantelpiece in the MacKenzie living room. "You talk good, honey," she said. "Mighty good, with them big words and all. It's like music, listenin' to you." Allison tried not to look pleased, but she felt the way she often did at school when she received an A in composition from Mr. Makris. Nellie's wholehearted and absolute appreciation of Allison was the basis of their friendship, but Allison never admitted 129 that this was so. She said, instead, that she "just loved" Nellie Cross. "Now that I think of it," said Nellie, "there most likely was a reason why I married Lucas. I had Selena. Tiny, she was then. Just barely six weeks old. My first husband, Curtis Chamberlain he was, got himself killed by a mess of falling logs. Fell off a truck, the logs did, and killed old Curt deader than hell. Well, there I was, out to there carryin' Selena, and right after she was born I met Lucas. He was alone, too. His wife died havin' Paul. It seemed like a good idea at the time, my marryin' Lucas, I mean. He was alone with Paul, and I was alone with Selena. Don't do for a woman to be alone, or a man either. Besides, what could I do? I wa'nt in no shape to work right then, bein' as how I just had a baby, and Lucas was after me." She began to cackle, and for a moment Allison was afraid that Nellie would begin to get vague and go off on a conversational tangent the way she often did these days, but Nellie stopped her weird laughter and went on talking. "More fool was I," she said. "I went from the fryin' pan right straight into hell. Lucas always drank, and fought, and chased the wimmin. And I was worse off than before." "But didn't you love him?" asked Allison. "Just at first?" "Well, Lucas and me wa'nt married too damned long before I got pregnant the first time. Lost that one. Miscarriage, The Doc said. Lucas went out and got drunker than hell. Said I was still grievin' for Curtis, Lucas did, but that wa'nt true. Anyways, I got in the family way again and then I had Joey, and after that Lucas didn't seem to feel so bad over Curtis no more. There's some say you gotta love a man to get a child by him. I dunno. Maybe this love you're talkin' about is what kept me by Lucas all these years. I coulda left him. I always worked anyway, and he always drunk up most of his pay, so it wouldn't have made no difference." "But how could you stay with him?" asked Allison. "How come you...