Peyton Place by Grace Metalious

Author:Grace Metalious
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Northeastern University Press
Published: 2012-05-09T01:01:02.651000+00:00

♦ 10 ♦

The next morning, when Tom left his apartment to go out, Reverend Fitzgerald was nowhere to be seen. This was unusual because it was Saturday, and every Saturday morning found the minister hard at work in his small flower garden at the side of the house. Tom stood on the front porch and listened curiously. The town was full of summer morning sounds. Somewhere a lawn mower was being pushed, and from farther away came the scrape of roller skates against cement. Very faintly, from perhaps as far as Depot Street, there came an echo of someone practicing the chromatic scales on the piano, and from behind Tom, coming from Reverend Fitzgerald's quarters, there was the uneven chatter of typewriter keys. All together, thought Tom, a very normal Saturday morning. But where was Fitzgerald? The sound that was missing was the clip of the minister's garden shears, as he cut and snipped and pruned. Tom shrugged and swung down the front steps of the house. It was nothing that concerned him. If the Congregationalist minister was spending the morning in cutting out paper dolls that had the shape of a robed Pope, it was no business of Tom's.

At any other time, in any other place, Tom could and would have gone to someone in a position of authority and said: “Your minister is ill. He is in no condition to lead a flock of searching souls, for he has lost his way. He is ill and needs help,” but in Peyton Place, on a sunny Saturday morning in July, Tom shrugged and walked off down Elm Street. He had learned the hard way, the wisdom of minding his own business, at the first town meeting he had attended the year after his arrival in Peyton Place. At that time, he had attempted to state his opinion on town zoning. When he had finished speaking, a man had stood up and looked him up and down.

“You on the voting check list in this town, Mr.–?”

The inquirer had asked his question in a slow drawl, and had let the end of his question peter out, as if he had forgotten Tom's name.

Then Tom had understood. He had seen that the privilege of outspoken criticism, the privilege of rectifying a faulty condition, were privileges allowed only to the older residents, and that by “Older Residents,” Peyton Place meant people whose grandparents had been born in the town. Tom had laughed at the fact that this was so, but he had not attempted to criticize or correct again. He contented himself with observation, and with the realization that he had made two friends at his first town meeting, Seth Buswell and Matthew Swain.

Now as he passed the building that housed the Peyton Place Times, Tom glanced in through the glass window that was between Seth's office and the street. Seth was sitting at his desk and sitting next to Seth, in the visitor's chair, was Allison MacKenzie. She was dressed in a polished, starched cotton dress, and she was wearing a pair of white gloves.

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