Marjorie Morningstar (12 page)

Marjorie took the cigarette and puffed at it awkwardly. It burned her tongue, and
she didn’t enjoy it, but she smoked it down.

The cab stopped at a brownstone house midway between Central Park West and Columbus
Avenue. Marjorie had walked past it dozens of times, never imagining that anybody
who lived in such a house could have any connection with her life. The block was lined
with them. Most of them were cheap boardinghouses. The shabby people who came in and
out of them looked like small-towners down on their luck and stranded in New York.
In the windows the usual sights were fat dusty cats, unhealthy geraniums, and wrinkled
old ladies peeking through grimy curtains. “Come on up,” Marsha said, “meet my folks.
My mother would love to meet you, I know—”

Marjorie glanced at her wristwatch. “Another time. It’s after nine, my mom will be
wondering what’s happened to me.”

The girls clasped hands. Marsha said, “We’re having lunch at the drugstore tomorrow.
I just decided that. Or are we? Is your free hour twelve to one?”

“It is. I’d love to.”

Marjorie walked home in something of a daze, not unlike the feeling after first meeting
a handsome boy. It took her a long time to fall asleep that night. She tossed and
turned, repeating in her mind the things Marsha had said. As she sank into sleep she
seemed still to be hearing that energetic, swooping voice talking about the theatre.

What they continued to talk most about, in the days that followed, was the theatre.
But the real bond between them was mutual admiration.

Marsha did almost all the talking. She talked and talked and talked, yet it seemed
to Marjorie that she could never hear enough of this girl’s worldly wisdom, vulgar
sharp wit, and intimate gossip about well-known people. Best of all Marjorie liked
the long stretches of conversation about herself: her talent, her charm, her promise,
with interminable technical discussion of her acting after every rehearsal. The hours
flew when they were together; it was very like a romance.

Marjorie was thrust even more into Marsha’s company by events at home. Preparations
were under way for her brother Seth’s bar-mitzva, scheduled for the Saturday before
The Mikado
performance. In Marjorie’s view there was no comparing the importance of the two
events. Her debut in the college show loomed as large in her mind as an opening night
on Broadway; the bar-mitzva was a mere birthday party for a thirteen-year-old boy,
with some religious frills. But obviously in the Morgenstern household nobody else
thought as she did. Her parents seemed unaware that she was rehearsing at all. It
astonished Marjorie to see how her mother’s interest in her comings and goings dropped
off. Even when she returned from dates with Sandy there were no eager question periods.
Usually she found her parents at the dining-room table poring over guest lists or
arguing about caterers’ estimates. They would greet Marjorie abstractedly and go on
with their talk:

“But Rose, Kupman will do it for seventeen hundred. Lowenstein wants two thousand.”

“Yes, and maybe that’s why every woman in my Federation chapter uses Lowenstein. First
class is first class. How many bar-mitzvas are we going to have in this family?”

The girl had always imagined that she hated her mother’s inquisitiveness; but she
found she actually missed the cross-examinations. They had made the smallest details
of her life seem urgent; they had put her in the position of having important secrets.
Now suddenly she had no secrets, because her mother had no curiosity. An unfamiliar
sensation came over her at times—jealousy of Seth, and of boys in general. Bar-mitzvas
were not for girls. Her own birthday, which fell three weeks before Seth’s, was going
unmentioned. All her life Marjorie had been the darling, the problem, the center of
the household; her brother, a healthy even-tempered boy spending all his time at school
or in the street, had never before challenged her for the spotlight. So Marsha came
along at a fortunate time to flatter Marjorie, make much of her, and restore her good
humor.

It seemed to Marjorie that she had never heard so much Hebrew in her life. The house
rang with the ancient tongue. Seth was studying for his part in the ceremony as he
did everything else nowadays—efficiently, thoroughly, and with ease. He had to learn
a number of prayers, and a long reading from a prophetic book in a bizarre chant,
and he was constantly practicing aloud. Sometimes a tutor came and chanted with him,
sometimes in the evening Mr. Morgenstern chimed in, and all three discordantly bayed
the melody. Marjorie heard the chant so often that she came to know it by heart. She
was vexed to catch herself chanting as she walked along the street. With an effort
of the will she would change over to Gilbert and Sullivan. Marjorie had had desultory
Hebrew lessons as a girl, but at twelve, to her great rejoicing, she had been permitted
to discontinue them. She had always been bored by the thick black letters that had
to be read backward. Her Bible lessons had made her yawn until the tears ran. All
of it had seemed an echo of the Stone Age, no more a part of the world of movies,
boys, ice cream, and lipstick than the dinosaur skeletons in the museum. Seth, however,
had taken to Hebrew from the first and had done well with it, though otherwise he
had been a plain street boy, grimy and wild, concerned mainly with ball games, candy,
baseball scores, black eyes, and bloody noses.

But lately Seth had been changing. He had gone away to summer camp short and chubby,
and had returned a brown elongated stranger, tall as his sister, annoyingly self-possessed.
He danced with a smoothness that amazed her, and he actually had dates with prim painted
little girls of eleven and twelve. He accepted the vortex of bar-mitzva preparations
around him quite calmly, with no trace of stage fright at the prospect of his performance.
She told Marsha about these changes, and talked so much of her brother that Marsha
asked to meet him. Marjorie had her friend up to tea on Sunday afternoon. Seth talked
to Marsha coolly, unperturbed by her ironic teasing; and when he went back to his
chant she said that he was an absolute charmer, and that having no brother or sister
was the tragedy of her life.

It happened that Mrs. Morgenstern came home before Marsha left, and so met the fat
girl for the first time. She evinced a flicker of her old interest in Marjorie’s doings,
cross-examining Marsha about her background. When Marsha was gone the mother announced
that she didn’t like her much.

“Why not?” said Marjorie, bristling.

“What kind of people live in those brownstone houses? You’ve met her parents?”

“No, I haven’t, and I think that’s the most snobbish remark I’ve ever heard, Mom.”

“All right. I’m a snob. I’m this, I’m that. She doesn’t look quite clean, that’s all.”

“Okay, I’ll never bring her up here again!” exclaimed Marjorie, enraged at her mother’s
unerring hit on Marsha’s one unfortunate weakness.

“You’ll get tired of her soon enough, the sooner the better.”

“That’s how much you know. We’ll be friends for life.”

Helen Johannsen encountered her in a corridor next morning and invited her to lunch.
Marjorie hesitated; she had begun meeting Marsha every day in the drugstore for the
noon hour. But she was flattered, and she knew the fat girl would understand, so she
accepted. Helen took her to a genteel tearoom favored by the faculty. For a while
the lunch was very pleasant. They chatted about
The Mikado
, the school newspaper, the sororities, and the yearbook. Helen disclosed no inside
information, and seemed unaware of her own great spider web of power, talking of these
things as though they were light fun.

Then she said, rather abruptly, “I see you’ve made friends with Marsha Zelenko.”

“Yes.”

“She’s very clever.”

“We have loads of fun.”

“You met her at the rehearsals, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“I want to tell you a couple of things. I know Marsha well. She’s all right in some
ways. Don’t take her too seriously, and don’t lend her money.” Helen kept her eyes
on Marjorie’s stiffening face.

Marjorie said dryly, “Marsha is my friend.”

“I know.” Helen gathered up her purse and gloves. “I’ll say no more.—How’s Sandy,
by the way?”

“Just fine.”

“He graduates this June, doesn’t he? What’s he going to do?”

“Go into his father’s business, I guess.”

“Oh? He’s given up Peru?”

Marjorie said blankly, “Peru?”

“Didn’t he tell you? He had it all worked out. He was going to get an agency to sell
electrical appliances in Peru. He said there was a fortune in it.”

“He’s given up Peru,” said Marjorie. “Right now he wants to be either a doctor or
a forest ranger. He’s not sure which.”

They both chuckled. “He’s nice, though,” Helen said.

Marsha Zelenko came out of the drugstore as the two girls were walking past on the
street. She waved airily, they both waved back, and she went another way. At the rehearsal
that afternoon Marsha sauntered up to Marjorie. “Well, well, lunching with the big
shot, hey, instead of poor no-account me?”

“Marsha, she asked me—”

“Darling, by all means, you must never miss any chance to improve your connections.
Did she happen to say something about me, maybe?”

“You? Not a thing.”

Marsha scanned her face. “Well, just in case she did, dear, just remember one thing.
I am the only girl in the class of ’34 who has never kowtowed to Helen Johannsen.
I am the class cat, full of independence and claws. Doing anything tonight?”

“Just homework, why?”

“How’s to walk around the corner after dinner and meet my folks? I’ve talked so much
about you—of course it’s not the El Dorado, but we have a lot of fun.”

“Sure, Marsha.”

When she arrived at Marsha’s house that evening, however, the parents had gone out
to a concert. The two girls lolled on the divan in Marsha’s tiny bedroom, waiting
for them to return. Marjorie ate grapes; the fat girl smoked heavy Turkish cigarettes.
Marsha asked a lot of questions about the lunch with Helen Johannsen; but Marjorie,
an old hand under cross-examination, managed to avoid repeating Helen’s criticism.

Marsha said, “Well, now, are you developing a huge crush on Helen, seeing she’s so
nice to you?”

“A crush? Hardly. But she is terrifically attractive.”

“You’re more attractive than she is.”

“Marsha, how you talk! She’s a model—”

“So what? Too much jaw and chin, dear. Strictly not for photographs, and only second
class for the cloak-and-suit trade. Oh, I sound like a cat all right, don’t I? Look,
Helen Johannsen is tops. Clever, pretty, honest, a natural leader, all that. I’ll
say it to anybody. I’ll only add to you, because you’re you, that to me she’s as exciting
as old dishwater.”

“Marsha, you’re crazy. Men swarm for tall blondes—”

“For dates, sugar bun, for dates. To see how far they can get in one night. Helen
won’t play. She’s intelligent, too, which scares them, and not intelligent enough
to make noises like a moron, which would induce them to keep trying. No dear, when
the boys want to get married they skip the big blondes and come looking for little
Marjorie Morningstar.” Marsha rolled over on her back, and her skirt slipped up, exposing
a patch of downy brown thigh above her stocking. Marjorie would have pulled her own
skirt down in such a position, but Marsha merely lit another cigarette and said with
a yawn, “I’ll bet you’ve been proposed to already.”

Marjorie turned red. Marsha laughed. “More than once, eh? Four times, more likely.”

“Good heavens, no. Even counting crazy kids just babbling at a dance”—Marjorie was
thinking of Billy Ehrmann, and of a moon-struck boy she had known in the Bronx—”there
have only been three. Only one that really mattered.”

“Listen to the girl!” Marsha said to the ceiling. She leaned up on an elbow, staring
at Marjorie. “You’re
eighteen
, punk! You’re still in the shell. And
three guys
, no matter how crazy—I haven’t had one, not one. Most girls haven’t at your age.
Please realize that. By the time you’re twenty-one you’ll be beating them off with
a club. Who was the one that mattered? Sandy Goldstone?”

“Marsha, I told you Sandy’s never proposed. Don’t you believe me? He’s never come
within a mile of it. It was someone else.” She hesitated. She had until now avoided
talking about her love life to Marsha, who seemed too sophisticated to be anything
but amused by her problems. But she missed having a confidante. Since her success
with the Columbia set she had found it awkward to talk to Rosalind Green; during the
summer they had drifted apart. “I can tell you about it, but I’m afraid you’ll be
bored to death.”

“Nothing relating to you could possibly bore me, Morningstar.”

Marjorie told her about George, and about Sandy; and she described her early experiences
too. Once started, she fairly poured it all out. Marsha listened attentively, hugging
her knees, occasionally lighting fresh cigarettes, filling the hot little room with
drifting layers of gray strong-smelling smoke. Marjorie talked on for about half an
hour, with her eyes mostly fixed on an orange and green Mexican blanket hung on the
wall; she never saw the blanket afterward, or one like it, without thinking vaguely
of George Drobes.

Marsha said, when Marjorie had finished, “Well. Quite a saga, for an eighteen-year-old.”

“It’s all a lot of foolishness, no doubt, to you—”

“On the contrary, fascinating, and very revealing, dear. About Sandy, if you want
my opinion, you’re not in love with him. Of course that may change. George was much
nearer the real thing—not that I approve of George, I hasten to say. That was your
blind-kitten stage—following the first pair of feet you could smell and hear. It’s
one of the risks of being attractive, you can get snatched up by some George or other
and married while you’re still a blind kitten, but in your case—”