Some Came Running (135 page)

Just for a moment, out of the corner of his eye, Wally gave his mom a sharp glance and she, smiling pleasantly, looked back at him the same way. Then he faced front and folded his arms in the blue gabardine suit and stared straight ahead studying the lavishly flower-decorated chancel. He had known he was out of his depth the moment he saw the usher, and that
right
arm—and all these people. He had sort of suspected it before that, when he saw all the cars. He just hoped he hadn’t done anything conspicuous. He knew next to nothing about weddings. Directly in front of him, on the end of the first pew, was a wide open space where nobody was sitting which he did not know the purpose of. Suddenly, he realized he ought to be talking and smiling and not sitting like a lump, and he turned to his mom. Smiling at her, although at the moment he hated her guts, he bent over to her and asked about the empty space in front of him and learned that this was reserved for the bride’s parents. So they would be sitting right behind Frank and Agnes. His mom was smiling at him very pleasantly, and then turned to say something to the person on her left; and after a moment or two, feeling a little more at ease, Wally allowed himself to look around a little.

When he did, his heart sank. They were sitting amongst scads of Hirshes. He recognized Frank’s three brothers from New York and Chicago and St Louis by their faces. All three were there with their wives and children. And he recognized Frank’s twin sister, Francine, from Hollywood, with her husband and her children. Beside her was sitting Old Mrs Hirsh, Frank’s mother. Dawnie’s grandmother. Apparently, every Hirsh in the world was here. He had had no idea of the magnitude of all of it. Also sitting all around them, “within the ribbon,” were numberless other people whom he did not recognize; but by questioning his mom—who knew every damned one of them, of course—he learned that these were numerous cousins and distant relatives of both the Hirshes and Agnes’s family, the Townses. Wally’s heart sank even further. Farther away in the church, both within and without the ribbon, he could recognize just about every person of consequence in Parkman and in Cray County. And for that matter—his mom whispered to him—there were even a number of important people here from Springfield. Clark Hibbard and his wife were here, “within the ribbon,” of course, and right next to them Clark’s wife’s father and mother, and next to them a big dark Greek man by himself whom even Wally’s mother didn’t know. Wally’s heart had sunk about as far as it could go. He had had no idea. And the magnitude of it all overwhelmed him even more so than had the sense of Officiality, of finality, he had got from looking at the invitation. He suddenly felt lost in a sea of people, all of them more important than he was.

Further off yet—just barely “within the ribbon,” in fact—he saw Edith Barclay, Frank’s office girl, and her grandmother Old Janie Staley, and a note of surprised kindness rose up out of the depths of his resentment: At least, Frank and Agnes weren’t snobs. Then, closer in from them, and still “within the ribbon,” he saw Gwen and Bob French, and with a sudden start realized for the first time that he had not seen Dave. Dave was not here! He looked closely all through the relatives again, but neither Dave nor Old Man Herschmidt, Frank’s father, were among them. Old Man Herschmidt he would have expected to be absent; their feud had been a joke in Parkman for twenty years. But to not invite Dave! A sudden wild, blazing fury of hatred flamed up in Wally, not only at Frank and Agnes, but at all of
them,
Clark Hibbard and his father-in-law and that self-contained-looking Greek man, at everybody here. Not to invite Dave! Dave, the best mind, and the
only
real thinker, in their whole damned family, the only
real
artist. A sense of warm protective affection for Dave slid over him. Hell, he didn’t care about himself. So he was insignificant. But Dave! Dave, who had already published one story this year, and had sold another! Dave, who was his greatest competition! Well! he thought stiffly. If that was the way they were, the hell with them. He would sit here at their damned wedding, and be polite, and wait it out; but that was all and to hell with all of them.

But it didn’t work. As soon as the flaming anger—which he had carefully not allowed to reach his smiling face—as soon as it died away for lack of new fuel, his heart sank down in him again. He did not know what he had expected when he came. He certainly had not expected everyone to get up and stare at him when he came in; and he had not expected anybody to say anything to him about Dawnie. But he hadn’t expected to be a complete nonentity, just another grain of sand on the beach. But that was what he and his mom both were. And there was no getting around it, any way you tried to look at it. Sickly, he wished he hadn’t come. And suddenly, he became aware that he had been listening to music for some time without even having been aware of it. Music from the organ and some singer he didn’t know who was standing alone in the choir loft. Sitting with his arms folded, his face a mask of that slow, heavy Slavic look which he had always hated but which stood him in good stead today, hoping desperately to look happy, and wanting only to get out, which, of course, he could not do, Wally stole a peek at his watch and saw that it was nearly four o’clock.

at four o’clock

request the honor of your presence

at the marriage of their daughter

—DAWN ANNE—

On
the other aisle across the center section there was a little stir. One of the ushers was escorting Eleanor Shotridge down the groom’s aisle, dumpy little Harry Shotridge following them. Then when the usher had returned to the back, Wally could hear the same quiet little stir on his own side; and finally, into his eyesight came the same usher escorting Agnes Hirsh. The music had stopped. Agnes was wearing a beautiful taupe outfit with matching hat and gloves, and some kind of lavender flowers. She looked neither to the right nor left. The usher seated her directly in front of Wally and went off, and right behind him came two other ushers, stringing white satin ribbons along the outsides of the pews and fencing everybody in. Hell! he couldn’t even have got up and seized Dawnie if he had wanted to. They thought of everything.

In front of him, Agnes had turned around, after first speaking to her mother-in-law and Francine on her left, and smiled warmly at him and his mom and murmured something he couldn’t hear. He smiled back and made his mouth murmur an equally meaningless sound. Agnes was already beginning to cry. And after she turned back around, his mom leaned forward and touched her sympathetically on the shoulder. Oh, she was a master, his mom! A real master! Agnes raised her own hand and touched his mom’s hand and turned her head a little and smiled tremulously. Then the measured strains of Wagner’s “Wedding March” began and the preacher came out of the vestry room and right behind him came the groom Shotridge—Mr James Harry Shotridge—and his best man who was some guy Wally didn’t know.

Behind him he heard stirrings as people turned to look, so he decided to turn and look, too. Down the aisle came the procession, first the ushers, then the six bridesmaids, all friends of Dawnie’s whom he recognized, then Shotridge’s sister, Sue, alone, then two little flower girls, then a little boy all in white carrying a cushion, ring bearer he must be, and Wally recognized him suddenly as the new little boy Walter they had adopted whom he had never seen before, and then came Dawnie on the right arm of Frank.

They paced slowly to the music, Frank’s round head flushed with excitement (and probably a few drinks) but very solemn, and Dawnie was an apparition of loveliness. Clouds of white stuff enveloped her. The high-necked dress was cut perfectly to show off those beautiful upthrust breasts. A tiny little veil in front hung almost to her eyes. She was absolutely beautiful, and Wally stared at them numbly. They walked, pacing perfectly to the music, their eyes straight ahead looking at nothing, at nobody.

Through this, and through most of all that followed, Wally watched with somewhat the same feeling of a man watching a film reel by, when the man knows nervously that the spools are a little too far apart and that the tension might snap the film. He had a feeling that at any moment the picture he was seeing might crack, and then crumble into nothing; just nothingness. The feeling was so strong in him that he kept waiting for it, and every time he blinked he was afraid that that might do it. He heard almost none of the words that were said. And when Frank, after giving her away, came back and sat down in front of him, it startled him. Gradually, both during the ceremony and afterwards when they all began to leave, Wally felt like he was shrinking, smaller and smaller, into the most utterly devastating inconsequence and triviality of his life. So much did he feel it that when he got up to follow his mom and the usher up the aisle, he was startled to find out he was still as tall as she was.

Outside, he escorted her to their old car without saying a word, helped her in it, then went around and got in himself and started up the motor. He had been her lover, he was thinking, he had been her lover. He kept saying it to himself desperately. But he had never been her lover. And he knew it. And besides that, he knew now that he had failed. When he sent her that engraved silver plate, he had failed utterly to achieve his purpose: which was to keep reminding her. Because he knew now, finally, that Dawnie herself no longer believed that she had ever slept with him. And so consequently, when she looked at his hundred-dollar silver plate, the only thing she would remember would be a kind of warm affection for her old childhood pal, Wally Dennis.

“Now, Wallace,” his mom said, as he drove them off, “listen carefully. I have to go to the reception, but I’m not going to stay. As soon as we get through the receiving line, I’ll head for the refreshment tables and get a glass of champagne, then speak to several people I know, and then I’ll be ready to go. You’ll have to drive me home. If you want to come back, that’s perfectly all right.”

His mom’s mouth had taken on that warped persimmonish look. “I’m not going to hang around and be a third-party wallflower,” she said. “Agnes and Eleanor are going to be best friends, and I intend to bow out quickly, before I become conspicuous. And anyway,” she said, “I don’t feel well.” She ran her fingertips across her forehead under her new hat. “Don’t feel well at all.” She was getting herself worked up into her role.

“Mom!” Wally said, much angrier than he had really intended. “I’ll drive you home! I don’t know if I’ll come back or not! Now shut up, damn it!”

Taken a little aback by the force of his tone, she did, and said no more. They were out south of town now on the road to the Country Club. On their right, they passed the stables, and Wally was sickly aware of it. How many times they had ridden there together! Dawn Anne— He turned the car and started on up the long slope to the clubhouse.

The receiving line would be the main thing. There he would meet her face to face, shake her hand he knew so well. What would she say? Oh, God! he thought, sickly. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do.

“Now remember,” his mom said, as he parked. “You congratulate the groom; but you wish the
bride
happiness.”

Wally nodded, and did not say anything.

Agnes met them at the door of the big combination lounging-and-dining room just inside the foyer. Right behind her was Eleanor Shotridge. They had really done it up. Almost all the furniture had been removed, and behind the two women on the north wall was a long table with a huge punch bowl and a myriad of little cups. Along the west wall, before a big bank of flowers and ferns, stood Shotridge, Dawnie, then Sue Shotridge and the six bridesmaids. And all along the long south wall with its french doors that looked off down the hill stood tables of just about every kind of food and drink imaginable, and waiters in white jackets behind them along the entire length of the wall. Out in the center of the room, looking like they had been posted there, stood Frank and Harry Shotridge, two curiously similar short figures, pacing and talking. Already a number of people had gone through the gauntlet and hit the serving tables and were walking around.

While they waited in the line, Wally noticed there wasn’t any waiter behind the big punch bowl on the north wall yet. Evidently, that was for later, a sort of spare.

When they got to the head of the line, the hired announcer asked their names and announced them:

“Mrs Margaret French Dennis.”

“Mr Wallace Dennis.”

His mom and Agnes shook hands and put their other arms around each other tremulously, but joyously, and his mom said: “Agnes, darling! Such an exquisitely lovely wedding!”

“Marg, darling!” Agnes said. She was still a little weepy; but bearing up bravely. “I was glad to know you were there behind me.” And his mom went on to shake hands warmly with Eleanor.

When it came his turn, Wally stuck out his hand, smiling happily: “Mrs Hirsh,” he said. “A beautiful wedding, and a beautiful bride.” He thought it sounded rather good.

“Wally dear,” Agnes said and bent forward and he got a whiff of her perfume. “We’re glad you came. It wouldn’t have been right without you and Marg.”

Just for a moment, for one sharply focused moment, Wally was positive that she knew—knew everything, from start to end, and had known for some little time. Since Christmas maybe? Not that Dawnie would ever have told her, but that she had somehow figured it all out for herself. He went on and shook hands with Eleanor. “Mrs Shotridge,” he said warmly.

Then he was walking across the long expanse of floor past the punch bowl toward the banked flowers of the west wall. In a way, he was prepared for what happened; and that was good. Very good. The singular revelation he had had walking from the church with his mom had prepared him.

But first, of course, there was Shotridge. Shotridge with his thin frame, and his thin face, and his thin voice. “Jim,” he said, making his voice deep with sincerity. “My heartiest congratulations. You’re a very lucky man.” Shotridge thanked him, and then he was standing in front of her. In front of Dawnie. Dawn Anne—