Peyton Place

She shifted her bulky black handbag to the other shoulder, tucked her dull brown hair behind her ears, straightened her spine, and gave her annoyingly pink uniform a tug. She stood there a moment more and glared at the letter “A” stuck crookedly on the old apartment door with its bits of peeling paint curling here and there like some kind of absurd party streamers. Business like, “Mrs. Gerardo?” she called through the door. “Who is it?” came the singsong reply, as if the old woman could forget the sound of her voice or why she was here. “It’s me, Susan. I’m here to pick up the boys.1

The sound of a chair could be heard faintly, sliding along the worn kitchen floor, a pause, slow footsteps crossing the shabby carpet, click, the deadbolt twisting and a slide as the bar reluctantly lets the door swing free. She stood there at the threshold in her faded blue housedress, her elderly eyes squinting into the dim hall, no makeup to obscure her years, yet her tight grey curls betrayed her one luxury in a hard life. Once a week, Mondays at 10 o’clock to be precise, Mrs. Gerardo would shuffle her way down the stairs, out the dirty glass doors of Peyton Place and make her way two blocks down to the tiny hole-in-the-wall beauty shop. Maureen would give her a bit of gossip, primp her and charge her an eighth of what a wash & set cost these days, but Mrs. Gerardo didn’t know that.2

“Come in-come in dear,” she said. “They’re in the parlor with Yapp watching the television set.” The place looked the same. Aging furniture took up most of the small living space, despite its fraying edges and cracking finish, it was still carefully polished every Saturday night in case of company. Framed prints of trout, deer and she-elk sulked along the yellowed walls in their dark mahogany frames. Doilies in pink, yellow and blue sat, looking oddly incongruous in their bright paperness; surely left over from a 75% off Easter sale at the local five and dime back in 1986. Somehow it was all a tribute the late Mr. Gerardo. The faint smell of pipe tobacco had never quite left and the tattered brown recliner that no one ever sat in seemed to watch over the room.3

A young, towheaded boy, somewhere around six or seven sat watching the Andy Griffith show on the old black & white television set. “Hey mom,” he called over his shoulder distractedly. His knees were reddened and criss-crossed with marks from the green shag, his hand never stopped idly stroking Mrs. Gerardo’s little dog, Yapp. More than anything he wanted a dog of his own. 4

He’s sitting too close to the TV again, she thought automatically with a mother’s keen abilities; probably needs glasses. Quickly, she tallied up her day’s tips from the Country Café and knew before she’d really begun that it was nowhere near enough. Shifting her bag, she pulled out a battered Styrofoam container and set it on the carefully dusted coffee table, just to the left of the yellow paper doily. “I brought you something for dinner,” she said softly. He tore his gaze from the scene with Andy sitting down at the dinner table to a wholesome, home cooked meal. “Is it fresh?” he asked plainly.5

“Mostly,” she said, taking out the pot roast sandwich and hoping he wouldn’t notice the missing corner where she’d cut away the bite marks. “I brought fries,” she said brightly. “Garbage,” he mumbled, turning back to the television with the food. She didn’t sigh, but she wanted to.6

“Where’s Ro?” she asked loudly for the benefit of Mrs. Gerardo who was listening in from her usual seat at the kitchen table. It wasn’t like she hadn’t noticed the absence of her precocious three-year-old daughter the moment she walked into the tiny efficiency apartment, or that she didn’t know exactly where Ro had gone, but it was a routine, the formality that bounded their lives. Dusty wrinkled his nose like a wizened monkey before answering, “She’s with Mr. & Mrs. Jensen again.”7

“Hmm,” was all she said, exchanging a look with the old woman. Out the door and up the hall in apartment C, little Ro sat adoringly on Mr. Jensen’s lap while he read the daily financials. It didn’t seem to matter to old Mr. Jensen that he hadn’t had a cent to his name in over 40 years, or that she was pretty sure that he couldn’t see much with his rheumy eyes and 10 years out-of-date Coke bottle glasses, they seemed content to make it up as they went along. She knew Doris was back in the stifling hot galley kitchen making the PB&J that was all Ro was deigning to eat these days so she slipped a few battered ones onto the Formica counter. Doris eyed them, but held her tongue. Too many months had gone by with them arguing over how she couldn’t afford the extra expense Ro brought to them along with her smiles.8

In the end, Doris would take the money and buy more day-old bread, store-brand peanut butter and trade some cleaning for some of Alice’s homemade strawberry jam because that was the way it was. Ro was their shining star, the child they’d never had. The jam would probably be enough to last the whole year, but their neighbor Alice insisted that making strawberry jam kept her feeling young. No one could deny that Ro and Dusty were as much her kids as they belonged to everyone in Peyton Place. 9

Crammed up against the ancient orange and brown recliner at the Jensen’s was a tinny old upright that was the prize possession of everyone who lived in Peyton Place. That piano would ring through the paper thin walls, drowning out the hollow laugh track and the barking dogs in apartment D. It could stop the incessant crying from the heart broken and homesick exchange student down in F and more than that, it brought them together. 10

These people, our people, she thought. Some were old and sad; some young, just starting out with too little money and not enough hope, many were disenfranchised souls that had somehow meandered into this eddy of the universe too tired to go on and had never really left, but with that old upright none of that mattered. It didn’t matter that they struggled just to get through the days, or that they waited for the last day to come and collect them, it didn’t matter that the young ones didn’t know the songs that Doris sat and belted out with a personality and panache that was so at odds with her sharp shoulders hunched under the same plain, white blouse and black slacks that she’d worn each day for thirty years ever since she was a young secretary making her way in the world. 11

Her voice wasn’t much to speak of, it was thin and fell flat often-but the sounds, that piano called to those lost souls like a siren on the rocks. Up and down the hall, upstairs or down, they came, making their way along the creaking halls, past the overflowing ashtrays, rustling the ghosts of the long dead flowers that lived in the lobby by the door. 12

They’d hesitate, listening, wondering how they’d come to be in front of that chipped and pockmarked door with its varnish drips and unknown sounds coming from inside.13

Somehow, Ro always knew when someone had arrived. She’d hop down from Joe’s lap, give his slack jaw a chaste kiss and run to the door with glee. Her smile, lush and pink, her crooked white teeth peeking out from her puckered lips; that was the hook. After that it was all reeling them in. Doris would be bustling about offering thin slices of mostly stale lemon cake on china plates with faded roses. She’d make them all coffee, piping hot and rough. No sugar, no milk, but no one ever said anything. 14

Sometimes Susan would hand over little containers of cream or crumbled packets of sugar taken from her job, but she always did it with her eyes downturned. Still, those bits were passed along with the rest as the company gathered around taking up a bit of floor when the seats were full. One night she’d asked thoughtfully, “Why do you play Danny Boy if you’re not Irish?,” but Doris had laughed and played on even louder. 15

By 8 o’clock, the whole building would have gathered. Straight backed chairs were brought from the table for the old folks and little ones were kept out from under foot, squished onto the nearest laps. Sure Doris could play, but that wasn’t why they really came, they came for Ro. Carefully stacking yellowed sheets along the back of the old upright like a signal, all would grow silent and hushed, then little Ro would begin to play. No one could remember anyone teaching Ro to play, but one night she’d climbed up on that old wooden bench and stunned everyone. Her eyes stared at the yellowed sheets, but what came out was all her own. 16

She’d sing quietly with her little child’s voice, but she sang songs no child should sing. She sang songs of loneliness, of being too tired to keep going, songs of loss and regret, but woven in between the notes of that old piano and the songs sung in her tremulous voice, she also gave them a gift, the gift of each other.17

A long time later, Susan came in one Thursday night and found that old recliner empty, its worn cushions still holding the shape of the man. Joe was gone and Doris was never the same. Ro still came, came and sat and stared, but the keys were silent. The people drifted back to their unending laugh track, the exchange student went home, and the flowers in the lobby exhaled their last breath of life and fell to dust along the carpet.18

There is a parking lot at Peyton place today, but I still know what was once there, so it is still alive in me and I know that it was something magic.19