Return to Peyton Place by Grace Metalious Page A

back. But she couldn't begin to fight until she knew what she was up against. And it did not take her long to find a way.
    Roberta smiled to herself as she turned back the blankets on the big double bed in Ted's old room. She spread an extra quilt across the foot of the bed, and then she went very quietly to the room next door. It was a small room, containing a bed, dresser and one chair, and had originally been used as a maid's room when old Dr. Quimby, Roberta's first husband, had been alive. In later years, Roberta had used it as a place to store extra blankets and dishes and other odds and ends which a family accumulates over the years.
    Harmon Carter and Ted would have been surprised indeed to see the narrow bed freshly made up and to find the hot-air grate open. It was a good-sized grate, fully twelve inches square, and Roberta had examined it carefully from both rooms. When it was dark in the storage room, no one could possibly tell, without getting down on all fours under Ted's bed, that the lever had been moved and that the squares in the grate were now open. Roberta had occupied the bed in the storage room every time Jennifer and Ted came to Peyton Place to visit. In six months she had heard many things. She knew that Ted had nothing to say about the apartment that he and Jennifer rented in Cambridge. It was a lovely apartment, large and sunny. Roberta had seen it herself, but Ted was not comfortable there because Jennifer's father paid the rent.
    â€œDamn it, it makes me feel kept,” said Ted.
    â€œWhat would you have us do?” demanded Jennifer. “Would you move me into some furnished room and support me on what you could earn as a part-time soda jerk or gas station attendant?”
    â€œLots of guys work their way through,” said Ted. “A little work never killed anybody. I've always worked.”
    â€œWhat if you fell down on your grades?” asked Jennifer. “Daddy's firm doesn't take in people who got bad grades at law school. Not that they object to a nice, gentlemanly ‘C’ once in a while, but they don't like men who make a habit of getting marks like that. Oh, darling,” she said, her voice dreamy and gentle now, “someday it's going to be Burbank, Burrell, Archibald and Carter. Won't that be wonderful? Won't it make a little pride swallowing now worth while?”
    â€œBurbank, Burrell, Archibald and Carter,” said Ted. “Yes, darling. It'll make everything worth while.”
    Roberta was pleased when she heard that from her side of the grate. Her Ted had never been a small thinker and he wasn't going to become one now. And it wasn't as if the Burbanks did everything for the children. She and Harmon sent them a nice check every week. There had been a few bad moments, too, during Roberta's eavesdropping. Once, Jennifer had questioned Ted about Selena Cross.
    â€œWere you in love with her?” asked Jennifer.
    Roberta held her breath as Ted hesitated. “No,” he said at last, and Roberta let out a silent sigh. “We went around together a few times, but that's all.”
    â€œIs she pretty?”
    â€œShe's all right.”
    â€œIs she prettier than I?”
    â€œSweetheart, no one in the world is prettier than you.”
    Roberta had listened shamelessly as her son made love to his wife and once she had almost felt sorry for him. Jennifer seemed to be awfully wishy-washy about sex, and sometimes she had sounded frightened and it had taken Ted hours to calm her and then arouse her gently so that she let him take her. It hadn't been that way with Harmon and her, Roberta remembered, smiling in the dark. But then, too much sex wasn't good for a man who had to keep his mind on his books. Luckily, Harmon had never been a student. In six months Roberta had heard the children making love only three times, and after each time, Ted had been pale and shaky the next day. Yes, thought Roberta, it was a good thing that Jennifer was a little