Some Came Running (100 page)

More than any other thing, that shopping trip had shocked her with an electric jolt into the realization that summer was almost gone, and that here she was, right smack into the first of September, without yet having done a single thing about running off to New York as she had planned. The applications had all been sent in to Cleveland, and she was already accepted at Western Reserve. Now, the clothes she was to take with her reposed, solid and real, in the backseat behind her. Driving home through the bright brassy gold of September, filled with its own poignancy of the end of summer as it prepares itself to shade off into fall, Dawn was seized by a panicky terror so deep that it made her want to just open the car door and jump out. She had put it off all summer, and time had run out. Now it had reached the point where she either had to act—or else admit she was not going to.

She had never meant to let it get this far. That was what terrified her. She had meant originally to leave with Wally some time in June soon after graduation. But then they hadn’t, and then she had kept putting it off. It had been such a lovely, wonderful summer she had just hated to end it. Swimming, the long car rides, the hot afternoons of tennis, golf at the Country Club where Frank had got Wally in to play, horseback riding, and then sex and love somewhere in the woods on the way back home in the cool red of evening. It had been the most wonderful summer of her entire life. And she had not wanted to end it. She had never known it could be like this.

And now here it was ended anyway, almost, and she was forced back to a weakened position where she no longer had the initiative, was being forced to act. It wasn’t fair!

Sitting tense and silent beside her mother as Agnes drove, Dawn stared hollow-eyed out, watching the flat Indiana countryside, and wishing they could get home to Wally. All this, added to the top of them deciding to adopt the boy, had broken her completely and all she could think about was Wally. If only Agnes would drive a little! and not just amble! Wally, Wally.

She did not see him that evening when they finally got home. Completely exhausted, she only ate a little something and went straight to bed. But before she went to bed, she called him to tell him she was home and asked to see him in the morning.

“But you know I work in the mornings, Dawnie,” he protested.

“I know,” she said. It was reassuring just to hear his voice. “I know, but this is important. Terribly important.”

“My God!” Wally said. “You’re not—?”

“No, no!” Dawn said, fighting to keep from going into hysterics. “I simply must see you! I’d come over now, but I’m too worn out to think. I know how you feel about your mornings, but this won’t wait.”

“Well, all right,” Wally said. “I’ll come over and pick you up around seven-thirty.”

“Goodby,” she said, trying to put into her voice all the love and relief she felt.

“Goodby,” he answered, in the same way.

When she got up in the morning, she was feeling some better, but every time she thought about what she had to do—or equally bad, not do—she got a sick weightless feeling as if she were someplace where gravity no longer existed. The truth was, she was afraid. The truth was, she didn’t want to go to New York. She didn’t want to do anything. She only wanted this lovely, wonderful summer to go on and on. But it was already over. And if she didn’t go to New York, she would not only be backing down, but she would be reneging on everything she had ever stood for. She simply had to go. And only Wally could help her. They had talked about it a number of times, and he had never said he wouldn’t go. She clung to that. Wally would back her up. Wally would help her, Wally could fix it, and when he picked her up promptly at seven-thirty she did not even wait but began pouring it all out to him as soon as she was in the old car. What they would have to do, she told him, was leave in the next two or three days. Plan it all right down to the last dollar, get everything packed up, and put it into execution. Otherwise, it would be too late. Within a week, she would be leaving for school. Agnes was going to drive her up and see that she got settled in. It would have to be before then.

“Where are we going?” she said suddenly, looking around.

“What? I don’t know,” Wally said, looking around himself. “I was just drivin.”

He had, as if from instinct and having done it so many times before this summer, driven out southeast on the road to the Country Club. They looked warmly at each other. Then he turned left on the road that led to the Club, up the long hill to where the Clubhouse stood on top the hill, and then the miles and miles of woods beyond. He did not turn in at the Clubhouse but kept on toward the woods, his face showing nothing.

The sudden burst of talking had quieted her down some now, and she was thinking hard.

“I don’t suppose there’s really much of any chance of you getting your mom to let you take the car, is there?” she said.

“No,” Wally said. “Not any chance at all.”

“Well, we’ll just have to do without it then,” she said. “That only means we’ll have to take less stuff, that’s all. We ought to be able to get by on two suitcases apiece, anyway. And your typewriter,” she added.

“What’ll we use for money?” Wally said.

“Well, I have a little over three hundred hoarded away that I’ve been saving the past year. And we’ll have what’s left of your thousand dollars.”

“I don’t know if they’ll let me keep it, if I leave.”

“Why, of course, they will!” Dawn said. “It’s yours. You won it. There’s nothing in the scholarship that says you have to live in Parkman.”

“No. But I’m supposed to be a student at the college. I won’t be a student anymore if I leave.”

“But wouldn’t Gwen fix it for you so you could keep it?”

“I don’t know if she would or not.”

“Hmm,” Dawn said, thinking. “It’s complicated, isn’t it? Well, then we’ll just have to get along without it,” she said. It was strange how much stronger she was, just being near him. But then he was so calm, and—and solid.

They had passed the Club’s woods park and were going on down the twisting gravel road that led down into the other hills. “We’ll still have enough out of mine to get us there and keep us going until we can get jobs,” Dawn said. “They say jobs are very easy to get in the Village.”

“We’ll have to get married right away then, hunh? before we leave,” Wally said.

“No, we won’t. We can get married when we get there,” she said. “Or we don’t even have to get married at all. Greenwich Village isn’t Parkman,” she smiled at him. “Anyway, I don’t want to get married. I think I much prefer being your mistress. It’s lots more romantic.”

“Ahhh, Dawnie!” Wally groaned, and turned upon her a look of pure torment.

She was still thinking hard, and it took a moment for the meaning of it to register on her. When it did, it froze her into a kind of startled, breathless shock. “Why, Wally!” she said.

He did not say anything but turned back to negotiate a sharp curve.

“Oh, Wally!” she said, feeling a kind of dismayed aimlessness. “Oh my! Why, Wally! you don’t even want to go, do you?”

For a moment, he did not say anything. Then he took a deep breath “No. No, damn it, I don’t.”

Her mind still drawing a sort of aimless total blank, Dawn babbled the first thing that came into her head. “But of course. I never even thought. All your interests are here. Your work with Gwen, your book, your scholarship. How silly of me.”

Wally paid no attention to this, and went on with his point. “It isn’t even sensible, Dawnie,” he said. “Don’t you see that? ”

“Of course. Of course, you’re right. I just wasn’t thinking. I was just thinking about—” She stopped. Well, what had she been thinking about?

“What would we live on?” Wally said in a kind of desperate voice. “Where would we live? Some cheap tenement or something; while you tried to break into acting and I tried to write and hold a job, too. Honestly, Dawnie, it just wouldn’t even be sensible.”

“You couldn’t write in New York?” she said.

“I— How do I know?” he said. “I wouldn’t have Gwen’s help there. She helps me a lot. I’m— So how do I know whether I could or not? Certainly, trying to hold down a job would cut down on my time and energy I could give it.”

“But you can write here?” Dawn said.

Wally snorted, a kind of nervous laugh. “Well—if you call what I do writing,” he said. “Yes. Yes, I guess you could say.” He had stopped the car, pulling it off in a wide spot on the road, and turned to face her.

“But would you go anyway?” Dawn said. She herself was still facing front, through the windshield. “I mean, because I asked you?”

“No,” he said; “no, I don’t think I would, Dawnie.”

“Would you marry me, though? If we stayed here?” she said.

“I— Well—sure. Yes,” he said. “I guess.” He looked puzzled. “But you yourself just said—”

“But you wouldn’t want to.”

“No, that’s not it at all,” he said. “But what would happen? Would you want to move in our house with me and my mom? Would you want us to move in with your folks? Your dad would want me to go to work for him in his damned store the minute we got hitched. Is that what you want?”

“Good God, no!” Dawn said.

“Well, you see? You got to think of those things.”

“It’s just that it’s all rather hard for me to understand, you see,” she said. “Then, the truth is, you never have really loved me at all, have you? You’ve just been—uh—you’ve just been ‘trifling’ with me, isn’t that right?”

“That’s a pretty harsh thing to say,” Wally said, his face breaking upward into little curves of unhappiness.

“But it’s true, though, isn’t it?” she said, surprised to find what a real icy coldness there was down inside of her someplace, to draw on. She turned then, finally, to face him.

“Well—no,” Wally said. “No, it isn’t. Dawnie, you don’t know how many times I’ve suffered and felt all empty inside, just because I knew you’d be going off to school this fall.”

“But not enough to go to New York with me. Or to keep me here with you. Oh, don’t be hurt. I’m just trying to figure it all out.”

“What can I say?” he said simply. “I guess not. If you insist on putting it that way.”

“And you’ve never really
loved
me at all. The way I’ve loved you.”

“Well, I don’t know how you’ve loved me,” he said. He seemed to be getting more and more self-confident. “If you mean have I worshipped you like a goddess, and blindly done whatever you bid me to—then I guess I haven’t. Is that the way you’ve loved me? If so, I notice you haven’t mentioned anything about you just staying in Parkman just so you could be my mistress.”

“That’s true, isn’t it?” Dawn said coldly. “Is that what you want me to do?”

“Well—no; I didn’t say that. I just wanted to point out that you never even thought of that side of it. I—”

“That’s just what you’d like, wouldn’t it be?” Dawn said. “Then you could have me right there at your beck and call anytime. The truth is, you’ve got yourself a real good setup there with your mom and you don’t want to take any chances on anything busting it up for you.

“The only thing you really lacked in that setup is that you didn’t have any regular sex that way,” she added. “And that was where I came in, I guess.” She knew it wasn’t the truth, but it was near enough the truth to make him uncomfortable, which was what she wanted.

“Well,” Wally said, in a kind of veiled magnanimous tone meant to display that he really did not believe himself what he was saying, “maybe that’s right.” She had never realized before, Dawn thought, what a really pompous person he was.

And she wanted to kick herself. She was giving him all the advantage. Just playing right into his smug, complacent hand.

“Maybe you’d better take me home,” she said.

“Okay,” Wally said. “If that’s what you say.”

“That’s what I say.”

In silence, they started on back up the long steep curving gravel road. At the clubhouse on the top, several foursomes were arranging themselves to go out, and young high school kids and college kids splashed and shouted in the pool; the same pool where they themselves had swum so many times this summer. She watched them, hardly even seeing them and thinking about the sense of power that she had had that first time they had slept together, and subsequently, all the other times. Hell, it was nothing but an illusion, a huge self-conceited illusion she had perpetrated upon herself. She had had no power over him at all. Suddenly, she began to talk.

“You know, I really depended on you a lot, Wally,” she said, carefully keeping her voice very calm now, as they drove on down the far side of the hill toward the main road. “I guess I’d never really loved anybody, until you. But then, of course, I’d never slept with anybody else. I even used to believe I never would, except for you.” His face screwed itself up, at that, and she laughed a little. “You were like a rock, right there behind me all the time. I had given you my virginity, and I knew that no matter what happened, what bad thing or terrible thing, I could always go to Wally. If I could just get to Wally, I would think. Wally’ll fix it. He’ll make it right.”

“Arghhh, Dawnie!” Wally said from his crumpled face.

“That was the way I felt when we were coming home from Indianapolis yesterday. All I could think of was to get home to Wally. I was terrified; we’d bought all the clothes, school was suddenly upon me, and I hadn’t done anything about going to New York. I didn’t have the courage, you see— I had failed myself. But I knew Wally would save me. You’d fix it.”

“Unhhhh!” Wally said in a deep baritone nasal cry. “Listen, Dawnie! If you want me to go, I’ll go! It isn’t sensible. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll go.”

“No, it was just a wild idea,” Dawn said. “I was just panicky, and I got scared. I think I was just trying to test how much you really loved me.” She gave a wistful little laugh. “So you see, if you had agreed to go, probably nothing would have ever happened anyway, and you wouldn’t have had to go after all, and everything would have been all right.”

“Oh, Dawnie!” he said. “Please don’t say things like that to me.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said sincerely. “I was only just trying to explain how I’ve always felt about you.