Some Came Running

by James Jones

  “Adopt a child!” she said, managing to look embarrassed, but really giggling inside. “What on earth would we want to adopt a child for?”

  “Well now, wait a minute,” Frank said, and stuffed his mouth with steak. “Let me explain,” he said around it. Under the drinks, he was acting a little bit lordly now—not nastily, just enjoyably. Such children they all were, she thought.

  They were going to have a good bit of money now, he explained, and they pretty big business interests. Why shouldn’t there be a Hirsh to carry it on?

  “Hell,” he said, “I can see it now. Frank Hirsh and Son Enterprises.”

  “What about Dawnie?” she said, still smiling to herself. “How would it affect her?”

  “Hell, it wouldn’t affect her at all. She’ll be in college. Would it?” he said.

  “No-o, I suppose not,” Agnes said. She cut another bite of steak. “I don’t know if I would be adequate to the task, though,” she said.

  “Hell, of course you would. Matter of fact, we’re only just now gettin to be old enough and wise enough to raise a kid. We really weren’t with Dawnie. Not that she didn’t turn out fine,” he hastened to add.

  “That’s true,” she agreed. “But I don’t know. Sometimes they are a lot of bother in a home. Maybe you wouldn’t want to come home if it was noisy and got all cluttered up,” she smiled. Sometimes he was so cute, really cute, not “cute,” that she just couldn’t resist deviling him a little.

  “Nonsense!” he said. “You know better than that, Agnes. Hell, I’d probably be here all the time. So much you’d get sick of me, I bet.”

  “Yes, I’m sure I would,” she said, and then had to laugh.

  “Now, we wouldn’t have to get a regular little baby,” Frank said. “We could get a slightly older one.”

  “A younger child, three or under, is supposed to be the best,” Agnes said. “Then it wouldn’t know it had been adopted. Or wouldn’t care, by the time it grew older,” she said smiling.

  “Hell,” Frank said, “even that don’t matter. We could do like I read in the Reader’s Digest, about this man and his wife who adopted an older kid. They told it that it was better off than other kids, because real parents had to take what they got; while they got to pick theirs,” Frank said. “Well, what do you say?”

  “Well, why not?” Agnes smiled. “It might be fun. At least, we can look into it, can’t we?”

  In the end, that was the way they left it when they went to bed. Frank would look into it. And Agnes would get some books on it and start reading up, in case they did do anything with it. But both of them already knew they were going to do it.

  “We’ll have to talk to Dawnie about it,” Agnes said, happily. But she already knew what Dawn would say; Dawnie would be delighted. And what the hell? she thought, why not? She could already see ahead of her, down the years, how it was going to be. Their lives would be that happiness together that people were always hoping they would have, but never seemed to. She knew it as surely as she had ever known anything in her life, she thought vigorously. Because she would make it that! They both would.

  When they went to bed, Frank, of course, did not want any more sex after all. He was too tired, and a little too drunk, and he never said a word about it. Neither did she. And after getting him in bed, she was able to get the copy of Dawn’s sex book back upstairs where it belonged. In a way, she was glad Dawnie had it. It wouldn’t hurt her to know a little something about men—just so long as she didn’t get to thinking that sex itself was important. She would have to talk to her, she reminded herself, about that.

  Chapter 49

  WHEN HER MOTHER FINALLY told Dawn about the prospective plans for adopting a “baby brother,” Wallace French Dennis’s mistress was not very surprised. She had been aware for some time that there was a second honeymoon going on and it was quite obvious that her folks were sleeping together again. She did not view this new state of affairs as alarming or ridiculous. In fact, she thought it was rather cute of them, at their age. And it amused her that they should try so clumsily to hide it from her. She knew, of course, all about the Geneve Lowe affair and she was glad to see that both their vanities were finally allowing them to get back together again. And she was not in the least upset by the prospect of them adopting a baby—as she noted Agnes had obviously expected her to be.

  “Why, I think it’s a wonderful idea, Mother!” she exclaimed. The two of them were sitting at the dining room table with the big floor fan going. “After all, you and Daddy are going to need somebody around here to be with, after I’m gone. And it won’t be too long until I’m gone. I think it would be a splendid thing.”

  “You really do?” her mother said. It was she who was surprised.

  “But of course! What did you expect? me to throw a big tantrum?”

  “It’s only tentative, you know,” Agnes said. “We haven’t definitely decided to do it yet.”

  “Well, you should. And the sooner the better.”

  “Well, we’ll see,” her mother said. “But we both wanted to know how you felt about it first.”

  “Agnes, darling!” Dawnie said, and went over to her and put her hand on her shoulder. “Do you think I don’t know Daddy’s always wanted a son? To carry on his business? Oh, don’t look so shocked! I’m only trying to say that I think it’s the most perfect thing the two of you could do. I mean, you don’t think I’d ever want to take over Daddy’s business interests, do you?”

  “You’d still always be our little girl,” her mother said; “No, but you might have a husband someday who might want to.”

  “If I ever get married—and that’s a big if—it’ll be to someone who won’t need Daddy’s business interests, Mother. Someone who’ll be so busy with his own important work that he wouldn’t even have time for Daddy’s business if he wanted it. All I’m trying to say is that Daddy needs a son. You, both of you, do.”

  “Well, we’ll see,” Agnes said. “Maybe we can all of us talk about it.”

  “Of course!” Dawn said, feeling very protective toward them both. “We’re all of us adult grown-up people. Let’s get together and talk about it and act like it.”

  It was the last week in August when all this came up. And immediately after, Agnes had launched into a nervous high-voltage discussion about sex. Dawn would be going off to college before very long and it was time she knew certain things, she said.

  And then she proceeded to talk about sex, awkwardly and only in the most hazy general way, all as if she thought she were giving her daughter valuable and necessary information. From the heights of her own field experiences, Dawn could only look down at her pityingly, and pretend to listen attentively.

  Dawn was already exhausted by the abortive discussion of the adoption, and one of the immediate exasperated vagaries that came in her head was the picture of what her mother’s face would look like if she should suddenly tell her that she herself had been sleeping with Wally Dennis now for close onto four months. She and Wally, at seventeen and twenty respectively, apparently already knew more about sex than her parents had found out in their whole lives. Dawn could not help feeling sorry for them; they probably didn’t either one get half out of their sexual enjoyment what they should.

  For her mother’s benefit, and also to protect herself, she pretended to be embarrassed by the subject (which, in fact, was not hard to do) and wished wearily that this fiasco would soon be over with. Finally, with a sense of relief for both of them, she was sure, Agnes wound up the lecture by cautioning her to be very cautious with all boys, and Dawn agreed, heartily and embarrassedly. She had a date with Wally that afternoon to go swimming, and she left soon after. It was, she thought, probably as close as she and Agnes had ever been to understanding each other or were ever likely to be.

  But as far as them adopting the little boy went, she couldn’t have been happier about it. It was not until almost a week later—when they had talked to Frank, and the folks had more or less decided to on ahead with
it—that the real devastating force of it really hit her.

  She was being replaced. She had grown up. She was on her own.

  And from now on, she would continue to be on her own. She was, in effect, a displaced person—a regular DP. She was being kicked out of the nest. It was what she had always wanted, really, and there was a kind of pleasant excited terror about it that she enjoyed at first. But as she thought about it more and more the enjoyable terror, like a rising tone of sound that gets higher and higher until it finally squeaks out of hearing range altogether, raised its own pitch in her until it was no longer enjoyable but really and truly terrifying. Longingly, she began to look back to the time when she could have prevented it. Now it was too late. Now she had nobody to turn to except Wally, nobody at all.

  Probably, it would not have struck her nearly so forcibly had it not been for the shopping expedition. Two days after they had talked to Daddy about the adoption (she didn’t want them not to adopt him, that wasn’t it at all), Agnes had announced at breakfast that the two of them were going to Indianapolis to shop for her school things. They had driven over that morning and had spent three whole days, and a great deal of money and had driven home the last afternoon with a carload of stuff, both of them totally exhausted. She had not even had time to call and talk to Wally, who, of course, was working then, but she had talked to his mother (whom, Dawn found, she was beginning to increasingly dislike) and told her to tell him she would be gone.

  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 is
n’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.