Some Came Running (165 page)

God! It was a far cry from the marriage he had once envisioned for himself, wasn’t it? He couldn’t blame Ginnie really, and maybe that was the very source of his lack of strength. He could do an awful lot with that “sad pathetic little love affair” now, he thought sourly. God, what an ass he had been. No wonder Bob French was so emphatic about it ruining the book! Leaving the combat stuff strictly alone, he started working—on those late nights—on the love affair, having in mind to change the peasant girl. His new little peasant girl was going to be more like women really were—was going to take up with her little private to get food for the rest of her family. And from her little private, she was going to move up, whenever she got the chance: first to a corporal, then a sergeant, then finally even to a major. He worked at rewriting it doggedly, and he was able to relieve himself of a great deal of the vindictiveness and malice and dislike that he felt for Ginnie in the doing of it. Even though he felt guilty, too. But when he was done, it would be about as devastating as the combat stuff, by God!

Marriage. Happy marriage. Why did his marriage have to be so different from other peoples’? Frank and Agnes were happily married—even though Frank did—or at least used to—step out on his wife. What the hell was wrong with
him?

Why, for Christ’s sake, even little Dawnie, who was just a green kid, and whom he had not even seen since almost a year before her marriage, even she had a happy marriage. She and Jim Shotridge were still living up there in Champaign, still going to college, and apparently they were still completely happy. Why couldn’t he be? And now he’d heard they’d had a baby.

Marriage. Happy marriage. He would sit up at night, dog-tired from the shell factory—while Ginnie went to the movies by herself, or went to visit people, or even had people in to visit her and he could hear them in the other room—and he would drive himself to work on the book. Because it was his only hope. Without that, there was—nothing.

Marriage. Happy marriage. And even little Dawnie had a baby—those damned green kids had a baby.

T
HEY HAD.
And it was the sweetest, cuddliest, most beautiful baby that had ever been born on the face of the earth. Both Mrs Dawn Hirsh Shotridge and her husband, James H Shotridge, were thoroughly agreed on that (and thoroughly agreed on everything else, too), but most of all they were agreed on Miss Diana Sue Shotridge, age six months. And on that afternoon in late August of 1950 when Dave Hirsh had thought of them briefly, but bitterly, while résuméing his own troubles, they were both showing Diana Sue off to an interviewer from
Weight
Inc. and having their pictures taken by the photographer who accompanied him, for an article on young married college students.

Dawnie and Shotridge lived on campus where a Quonset hut village had been set up for married students. In the summer of 1949 when they had first moved to the campus, Dawnie and Shotridge had decided immediately that they would rather live there than to take an apartment. They could easily have afforded an apartment in town, because both Harry Shotridge and Frank would gladly have financed them in it. But Dawnie and Shotridge had chosen the Quonset village anyway. Because, with all the beautiful wedding gifts they had, they could decorate their little three-room Quonset apartment as beautifully as an apartment in town; and here, they were able to be amongst their own set: the young married students. And it was a wonderful way of life: They entertained for each other, and helped each other out with their babysitting, and lived a quiet simple life different from the rather frantic kiddishness of the unmarrieds. And, in fact, this very thing was the subject of the
Weight
magazine series of articles.

They, Dawnie and Shotridge, had come up to school for the summer course of 1949 more or less out of necessity: When she had been going to Western Reserve, Shotridge had spent so much time over there that he’d flunked out three subjects and had to make them up. But then they both liked it so well they had decided to go right on this summer, too. Because after all, she was in her second-semester junior year now; this fall, she would be a senior and graduate next spring. Without those two summer terms, she would only be a first-semester junior this fall. As for Shotridge, after he had made up those three dropped subjects, he had risen steadily up in his class, and he would graduate at mid-term this coming year. He intended to stay and pick up some extra credits the next semester until Dawnie graduated. Then, as he was Air Force Administrative ROTC, and high up in his class, they would probably have to do their stint in service. They hoped to be able to spend their two years in Paris. Or at least in France. All this information they imparted to the
Weight
Inc. man, as the photographer moved around clicking his two Leicas.

Weight: The Magazine of Opinion
was the biggest as well as the first of all the big picture-story magazines. And now
Weight
had decided to do a big series of picture stories on this peculiar new phenomenon: the young married students, and their young families. And Dawnie and Shotridge and their Quonset village at the University of Illinois had been selected as one of their examples.

Sitting in her expensively decorated living room while the
Weight
interviewer fired his questions at them and the photographer continued to go around snapping his two Leicas, Dawnie could not help but feel that they—she and Shotridge and little Diana Sue—were a pretty excellent example for their story. Most of the kids didn’t have quite as much money as they did. However, no one would have known it to look at them. They very carefully kept it in the background—in everything except the decoration of the little apartment, and the parties they threw for their friends who didn’t have as much—but other than that, it was unnoticeable and they preferred it that way, not only because they liked living in the Quonset village, but also because they did not want to embarrass their friends. But beyond that extra money, Dawnie felt
Weight
Inc. could not have picked a better example of college marriage. And as the
Weight
man questioned Shotridge, and Shotridge amiably expounded his views of what their life was like, Dawnie looked contentedly at her husband and then over at her daughter, playing in her playpen. Little Diana Sue looked back at her with her wide blue eyes and then gurgled happily, and everything in Dawnie—her happiness, her contentment, her pleasure—swelled up powerfully.

“Hold it!” the photographer said. “I missed that. Here: Look back at the baby and think just exactly what you were thinking before.”

So Dawnie looked back at Diana Sue, and thought about her baby and everything that it entailed. And Dawnie could not help feeling sorry for all the poor women who had never had the delicious experience of motherhood. Looking at Baby Diana Sue, Dawnie already knew what her baby was going to be, when she grew up. Diana Sue was going to be a prima ballerina: She already had, at six months, the potential beauty, the coordination, the intelligence, and not only all of that the little imp was a natural-born actress. And Diana Sue knew her picture was being taken—don’t think she didn’t—she posed and primped herself with all the aplomb of a successful prima ballerina already! Yes, she knew what her baby was going to be. And she was deliciously proud and pleased.

“Fine!” the photographer said. “That’s exactly what I wanted! Now, if you’ll just pick the baby up. Maybe we could get a shot of you changing it.”

“Well, wouldn’t that be—sort of . . .” Dawn said hesitantly.

“Oh no. We’d shoot it right, you know. And it’d make a good picture.”

“All right,” Dawnie smiled. She picked her up out of the playpen, while Diana Sue chortled happily, and carried her in on the bed where she always changed her.

“Fine!” the photographer said. “Fine! We won’t use all of these pictures, you see. May not use any of you folks, actually, even. But we have to have a lot of variety to choose from.”

“We don’t care if we’re not pictured in your magazine, Mr Beckett,” Dawnie smiled, and went to changing her little baby, her beloved own little baby. “We’re just about as happy as we could be,” she smiled; “and I don’t think anything could add or detract from it.”

“Yeah, sure,” the photographer said, and smiled encouragingly. “Fine!” He began clicking his Leica vigorously. “Maybe later on, we can get a shot of you all in your car out front. Is that your new red Dodge out there?”

“Yes,” Dawnie smiled. “It was a wedding present from my father.”

“Your father’s Frank Hirsh, isn’t he?” the photographer said, still clicking. “From down in Parkman?”

“Why, yes! Do you know Daddy?”

“I met ’im once, in Springfield,” the photographer said. “When I was shooting a big important businessman’s meeting there.” And he mentioned the names of the Greek and Clark Hibbard’s father-in-law. “Your father’s got influential friends.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Dawnie smiled, “but he’s very nice to us.

“Yeah, sure,” the photographer said, and took his camera down and smiled. “Well, I guess that’ll do for that one. Well now, let’s see, what else do I need? You do the cooking yourself, don’t you?”

Dawn could not help but smile at that. “Yes,” she said simply.

In the living room, the
Weight
writer was just finishing up talking to Shotridge. He came over to them, as they came back through the door and Dawnie put little Diana Sue back in the playpen. “You take him for a while,” he said, “and let me talk to her. Then we’ll get some shots of them together.”

“Okay,” the photographer said, and Dawnie sat down with the writer.

It was a very interesting interview she had with him. He was obviously an extremely intelligent man. He sat beside her on the divan—asking question after question, encouraging her to talk about her life. And as a result, Dawnie was able to air a lot of her own ideas about college marriages and marriage in general. All of her own theories that she had gradually worked out for herself in the past year. Yes, she thought marriage helped college students; helped to stabilize them and to give them a sense of mature responsibility, she smiled, looking over at Diana Sue. No, she didn’t think a college marriage had a bad effect upon students’ grades; in fact, they had found it helped to
raise
the grades: by giving the students a maturity that young, and unmarried, people often did not have. She wouldn’t have traded her marriage for any other situation on the face of the globe. As a matter of fact, the being married—even with the little baby—was even easier than living singly. She and her husband staggered their courses pretty well, so that whenever one was in class the other could be home with Diana Sue; and on those few occasions when they both couldn’t be there, one of their friends in the Quonset village would babysit for them—a favor which, of course, they themselves reciprocated. And she and her husband shared the household chores, and had lots of study time, since they preferred staying at home. On the whole, she was all for college marriages.

Dating? Oh, of course, there was lots of dating—before you were married. Everyone did. Petting? Oh, of course there were a few kisses. No, she didn’t honestly feel that the unmarried dating ever went much further than that. In spite of Doctor Kinsey, she smiled, she felt that there was really very little premarital sexuality in American colleges. Everybody was always getting alarmed about American youth and its morals, she smiled; but after all this wasn’t the Flaming Twenties: This was—well—the fifties already, wasn’t it? The “Level-Headed Fifties” they might be called, someday, Dawnie thought.

The
Weight
man scribbled notes in his notebook, and fired more questions at her and scribbled down her answers, and smiled at her encouragingly. And under his sympathetic impetus, Dawnie found herself expanding, and going more and more into what her ideas of marriage and motherhood really were. Women matured more quickly nowadays, she thought, and so there was a sooner need in them today for the fulfillment that only marriage and motherhood can bring. Then, too, with the world in the state it was in today, sitting on the edge of an atomic bomb, young people were maturing more quickly, and seeing the place that they as citizens and family-upbringers must fill.

Finally, the
Weight
man closed his notebook and said that they were done. After that, they took the other pictures, and then they left.

Dawnie and Shotridge both—once the
Weight
man and his photographer were gone—discovered that they were limp as dishrags. They sat, while Baby Diana Sue played in her playpen, and smiled at each other happily.

“Dawnie, you were wonderful,” Shotridge said finally, and came over to her and put his arms around her. “Especially when you were talking about marriage and maturity and all. I was awful proud of you, Dawnie.”

“You were pretty good yourself, Shotridge,” she said. “I was proud of you, too.”

“Yes, but not like you I wasn’t,” Shotridge protested. “When you were talking about motherhood, and how the college students were so much more level-headed—well, I thought I was just going to have to come over to you and put my arms around you right in front of them.”

“Well, I only told them the truth to the best of my ability,” Dawnie said. “I think as long as you tell people the truth, you’ll always be safe.”

“That’s true,” Shotridge said. “That’s very true. But nobody but you would ever think of it, Dawnie.”

After they had rested a little while, they talked about the trip to Parkman as soon as classes were over. It would be early September and they would be arriving just in time for the Parkman Centennial Week: the big celebration of the hundredth birthday of the founding of the city of Parkman. And, since neither of their folks had been able to see Baby Diana Sue more than a couple of times, it would be doubly nice to take her home with them and let her get to know her grandparents.

“Can’t you just see our lives stretching away ahead of us, Shotridge?” Dawnie said happily. “Always just like this: so happy, and so wonderful. People have to earn that kind of happiness, Shotridge, like we’ve earned it.”