Marjorie Morningstar (26 page)

“Or very conceited.”

“Both. One trait doesn’t exclude the other. Look at Shaw.”

“Well, don’t be so obvious about it, my boy, at least till you’ve got a beard like
Shaw’s. It’s not attractive in you.”

“Don’t you call me ‘my boy.’ Do you know the exact difference in our ages? One year,
three weeks, and five days.”

“That might as well be ten years, Wally, when the girl’s the older one.”

He slumped over his coffee, a picture of gloom. “It’s true. But it shouldn’t be, Marge.
It’s a miserable trick of time, a mistake in simple arithmetic by the gods. It shouldn’t
mean anything at all.”

“If you behave we can be very good friends. I like you. Don’t look so tragic.”

“Well, all right, I’m willing to play Marchbanks to your Candida—for the time being.”

“No, thanks. Candida at nineteen, indeed! You’d have to be four years old, at that
rate. Sometimes you act four. Just be yourself and let me be myself. Don’t get silly
ideas about me, that’s the main thing. I’m just another girl.”

He looked at her, his head tilted in Noel’s way. “Okay,” he said, “you’re just another
girl. I’ll have to remember that.”

The Vagabonds did their last show early in April, and after that Marjorie had nothing
to do with herself but go to school and wait for life to begin again at South Wind.

College was beginning to seem a worn-out game to her. She was bored, bored in her
very soul, with the overheated classrooms, the scarred chairs with one bloated arm
for writing, the gongs ringing at the dragging end of dragging hours, the smell of
chalk dust, the cramping weight of textbooks under an arm, the corridors full of giggling
freshmen with smeary lipstick, the frumpy teachers nagging forever about numbers and
words. She had been going to school since she was six. In the dismal routine of the
free city colleges, which squeezed out graduating classes like sausages every six
months, she would graduate next February. Several of her classmates were getting married,
and did not intend to return after the summer for the last half year. She would have
done the same gladly, had she had someone to marry.

She was invited to a few of the weddings. Each time it was a shock to see a Hunter
senior transformed into a bride floating in a white brilliant mist, on the arm of
an awkward trapped-looking young man in formal clothes. It made Marjorie feel that
time was closing a vise on her. She could not help comparing the bridegrooms to Noel
Airman, and the comparison made them seem pretty poor prizes; but what consolation
was that? She meant nothing to Airman.

Several of the Vagabonds kept calling her for dates, but it was so dull to be with
them that she could hardly stay awake; she much preferred to sit at home reading.
She went through all the novels at the nearest lending library and then began reading
old novels, just to have something to read; and she was rather astonished to find
that books like
Anna Karenina
and
Madame Bovary
were spellbinding. Perversely, perhaps to prove to herself that the indifferent marks
in her college work had been a matter of choice and not of ability, she worked hard
at her studies, though she had never been less interested in them. She took a grouchy
satisfaction in accumulating a number of A’s.

She went for long walks on Riverside Drive. The soft April air blowing across the
blue river, the smell of the blossoming cherry and crab-apple trees, the swaying of
their bunched pink branches, filled her with bitter-sweet melancholy. Often she would
slip a book of poetry in her pocket, and would drop on a bench, after walking far,
to read Byron or Shelley or Keats. Her yearning for Noel had opened her heart to the
magic in these old words, which had been so dryly chopped up and rammed down her throat
all her life by the inhuman hags who taught English.

Sometimes she walked over to Central Park. Every yellow splash of forsythia reminded
her of Marsha, and the wonderful first months of their friendship. The horseback riders
splattering by on the muddy bridle paths brought back the picture of herself, a scared
and foolhardy seventeen, bumping along on Prince Charming, and then falling off. She
could remember how wise and mature and desirable a man Sandy Gold-stone had seemed;
she could remember just as clearly how he had dwindled to an ineffectual fool. She
would stare up at the windows of her old apartment in the El Dorado, and wonder if
some bright-eyed girl of seventeen was standing behind the white curtains in a nightgown,
gloating over the golden look of the world.

Wally telephoned one May morning after a long silence. “Ever been to the Cloisters?”

“No. What’s the Cloisters?”

“The Cloisters is heaven on earth. Let’s drive up there tomorrow morning. The lilacs
are in bloom. I want you to see the lilacs.”

Tomorrow was Saturday. She felt that Wally should be discouraged, but this was hardly
a date, a Saturday-morning drive to look at lilacs. “Well, sure, Wally. It’s nice
of you to think of me.”

Next morning it was pouring rain. She perched on the window seat of her bedroom in
a lounging robe, reading a new novel greedily. It was a very agreeable way to pass
the time, with rain clattering on the panes and the blue-gray light of a storm falling
across the page. The hero of the novel looked like Noel Airman, even to the red-blond
hair, and he was the same kind of dashing reprobate. When the doorbell rang she paid
no attention to it. In a moment her mother poked her head into the room. “That boy
Wally is here. Says you have a date to go driving. Is he crazy, coming out in this
rain?”

“Oh, Lord. Tell him to wait a minute, Mom.” She glanced at herself in the full-length
mirror on the closet door. Her hair was combed, but her face was wanly empty of makeup,
and the robe was simply a maroon wool thing, not quite covering the frilly bottom
of her nightgown. To show herself in this condition to a date was impossible; but
she hated to get all dressed and painted just to tell Wally to go home and stop being
an idiot. She decided that Wally wasn’t a date, exactly, more like a younger brother;
and she went out into the living room tying the belt of her robe more closely. He
was sitting at the piano in his yellow raincoat, gaily playing one of Noel’s songs.
“Wally, sometimes I think you have no sense. D’you expect me to go driving in this
weather?”

“Why, sure, Marge. This rain is a break. We’ll have the Cloisters all to ourselves.”

“You’ll have it all to yourself, boy. I know enough to stay in out of the wet if you
don’t.”

The narrow shoulders sagged; the big head drooped; the long nose seemed to grow longer.
She had seen dogs make this instant change from frisky joy to deep gloom, but never
a human being. “Oh, look, Wally, I’m glad you came, just give me a minute to put on
some clothes. We’ll sit around and drink coffee and talk about the summer.”

“Okay,” he said mournfully.

When she came out again, hastily dressed as for a school day, he was slouched in an
armchair, still wearing the raincoat. “What’s the matter with you?” she said.

“Marge, I guess you haven’t ever lived in the country. The best time to look at flowers
is in the rain.”

“I don’t think you’ll ever smile again,” she said, laughing, “if we don’t go to see
those lilacs.”

“Well, I do believe you’ll like them.”

“What the devil. I’ve done stupider things. Let’s go.”

As often happens, Marjorie was glad Wally had dragged her out, once they were driving
along the river. She had forgotten how snug and exciting it was to roll through a
rainstorm in a car, especially a new powerful one like Wally’s father’s Buick; to
be dry, and cushioned at one’s ease, while the storm whistled at the windows and beat
on the roof, and the windshield wipers danced to and fro, wiping patches of clarity
in a blurred gray world. She accepted a mentholated cigarette and curled on the seat.
She did not have the habit of smoking yet, but mentholated cigarettes always seemed
less sinful to her, almost medicine or candy. “This is fun,” she said. “Sorry I was
a slug about it.”

“This is nothing,” Wally said happily. “Wait.”

They passed under the colossal piers of the bridge, turned away from the bubbling
black river, and drove through an arch and up a steep rocky road. “See?” he said,
as they pulled into a deserted parking space. “Saturday morning, but we have it to
ourselves.”

The medieval museum on the bluff overlooking the Hudson was new to Marjorie. Strolling
through the Gothic corridors, she said, “How on earth did you discover this?”

“Fine arts course.”

Their steps echoed in the dank stone galleries. The gorgeous tapestries, the great
wooden saints and madonnas, the jeweled swords and suits of armor, the vaulted halls,
all woke in her mind the atmosphere of the novel she had been reading; she could picture
turning a corner in one of these empty corridors and coming on the tall blond hero.
Wally, shambling along in his flat-footed way, with his hands in the pockets of his
yellow raincoat, and the straight black hair falling over his eyes, was a comic misfit
in this setting. But she was feeling very kindly toward him, all the same. He was
giving her the kind of explorer’s pleasure Marsha had first opened to her when they
had gone to concerts and art galleries together.

They had coffee in a bleak empty dining room. “Game for a walk in the gardens?” Wally
said. “I think the rain’s letting up.”

“Sure, I’m game.”

The trees were dripping copiously, so that it still seemed to be raining; but when
they walked into an open space among the flower beds they saw that the storm was over.
White clouds tumbling and rolling overhead were uncovering patches of blue. Rich perfume
rose on the damp air from purple banks of iris, and across the river a shaft of sunlight
was whitening the great cables of the bridge. A quiet breeze stirred the flowers,
shaking raindrops from them. “Ah, Lord, it’s beautiful, Wally,” Marjorie said. He
took her hand and she allowed him to hold it; if a palm could feel remote and respectful,
Wally’s did. He led her around a corner of thick bushes into a curving shadowy path
filled with a curious watery lavender light.

It was an avenue solidly arched and walled with blooming lilacs. The smell, sweet
and poignant beyond imagining, saturated the air; it struck her senses with the thrill
of music. Water dripped from the massed blooms on Marjorie’s upturned face as she
walked along the lane hand in hand with Wally. She was not sure what was rain and
what was tears on her face. She wanted to look up at lilacs and rolling white clouds
and patchy blue sky forever, breathing this sweet air. It seemed to her that, whatever
ugly illusions existed outside this lane of lilacs, there must be a God, after all,
and that He must be good.

She heard Wally say, “I kind of thought you would like it.” The voice brought her
out of a near-trance. She stopped, turned, and looked at him. He was ugly, and young,
and pathetic. He was looking at her with shining eyes.

“Wally, thank you.” She put her arms around his neck—he was taller than she, but not
much—and kissed him on the mouth. The pleasure of the kiss lay all in expressing her
gratitude, and that it did fully and satisfyingly. It meant nothing else. He held
her close while she kissed him, and loosed her the moment she stepped away. He peered
at her, his mouth slightly open. He seemed about to say something, but no words came.
They were holding each other’s hands, and raindrops were dripping on them from the
lilacs.

After a moment she uttered a low laugh. “Well, why do you look at me like that? Do
I seem so wicked? You’ve been kissed by a girl before.”

Wally said, putting the back of his hand to his forehead, “It doesn’t seem so now.”
He shook his head and laughed. “I’m going to plant lilac lanes all over town.” His
voice was very hoarse.

“It won’t help,” she said firmly, putting her arm through his, and starting to walk
again, “that was the first one and the last, my lad.”

He said nothing. When they reached the end of the lane they turned back, and paced
the length of it slowly. Rain dripped on the path with a whispering sound. “It’s no
use,” she said after a while.

“What?”

“It’s fading. I guess your nerves can’t go on vibrating that way. It’s becoming just
a lane full of lilacs.”

“Then let’s leave.” Wally quickened his steps, and they were out of the lane and in
the bright open air again.

They drove downtown in sunlight along a drying roadway, with the windows open and
warm fragrant air eddying into the Buick. “Come up and have lunch,” she said when
he stopped at her house.

“I have to go straight to the library, Marge. Term paper due Monday. Thanks anyway.”

“Thanks for the lilacs, Wally. It was pure heaven.”

She opened the door. Suddenly his hand was on her arm. “Maybe not,” he said.

She looked at him. “Maybe not what?”

“Maybe it wasn’t the last. The kiss.”

With a light laugh, she said, “Wally, darling, don’t lose sleep over it. I don’t know.
Maybe when we find such lilacs again.”

He nodded, and drove off.

She walked into an explosion when she entered the apartment. Her mother, sitting on
the edge of a chair in the living room, stood as Marjorie came in. “Hello. I hope
you had a nice time.”

“Very nice,” said Marjorie, kicking off her overshoes. A battle alarm rang in her
mind at her mother’s tone and manner.

“You generally manage to have a nice time,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, approaching with
her arms folded.

Folded arms were serious. Marjorie searched vainly in her mind for the provocation.
She had really been unusually passive and sinless in recent weeks. “I try,” she said
as she hung up her coat.

“Try. I’ll say you try. You’ll try anything. You’ll even try to go to Sodom if I’ll
let you, which I will over my dead body.”

Now Marjorie saw on the foyer table the ripped-open envelope with the South Wind emblem
in the return-address corner. She sighed. “Mom, I thought we settled long ago that
you weren’t to read my mail.” She picked up the letter and walked into the living
room. It was a mimeographed notice, signed by Greech, of a meeting of the social staff.