Marjorie Morningstar (5 page)

Marjorie immediately ran into the furtive sex fumbling that all boys her own age considered
natural and in fact obligatory. She was upset the first couple of times it happened.
But her instinct, backed up by her mother’s vague but horrid warnings, made her reject
these advances with a strong arm. She found dates disappointing once the first thrill
of having them was past. The pleasure lay mostly in the fact that she was doing grown-up
things, and in the theatrical fun of dressing and painting herself. Most of the boys
she met were pimpled gangling fools. They kept trying to kiss and hug and paw her;
and when she fought off these compliments, they sulked. None of them remotely tempted
her to try out the sex excitements promised in movies and magazine stories. It often
seemed to her, in the first eight months of her fifteenth year, that all males were
nasty louts, and that she would have to live and die an old maid for her fastidiousness.
She faced the prospect cheerfully. It was during this time of her life that she worked
up a number of bright arguments against marriage, and made fun of sex, and declared
that instead of becoming some man’s dishwasher and cook she was going to be a career
woman.

She then met George Drobes.

He came into her life via the Bronx YMHA. Marjorie went there to see an amateur production
of
Desire under the Elms
, in the company of a boy whose name was now blotted from memory, but whom she remembered
for buck teeth and wet hands. After the play there was dancing. George Drobes cut
in on Marjorie. Her first impression of him was that he had pleasantly dry palms.
Then she realized, with a little shock, that she was dancing with an adult, not a
boy. She had danced with men before—uncles, and aging cousins in their twenties—but
this was the first time a grown man had approached her in the open arena of life.

George cut in on her several times, and eventually asked for her telephone number,
having danced her out into a quiet corridor. Marjorie was dazzled. She had not yet
grown to her full height; George was a head taller than herself. She did not see the
glasses and the reddened nose; she did not hear the snuffle. She saw an earnest, well-spoken
man of twenty paying court to herself, a girl fifteen and a half, hardly past hanging
by her heels in playgrounds, popping bubble gum, and cutting out pictures of stars
in movie magazines. George had a narrow bony face, thin lips, and bushy dark hair.
His smile was sweet and faintly melancholy. She gave him her telephone number, and
for a while they went on with a halting delicious conversation. But he was too big,
too powerful, too flopping a fish for her inexpert hands. She could think of nothing
but her own age, and at last she blurted it out. George was astounded; he had taken
her for eighteen, he said. The conversation died. He took her back to the wet-handed
boy and cut in on her no more. Marjorie could hardly sleep that night for thinking
of George, and hating herself for mishandling him.

During the next couple of weeks, whenever the telephone rang, crimson rays seemed
to shoot out of it, and Marjorie would fling herself at it. But it was never the marvelous
twenty-year-old man. Then one rainy evening almost a month later, when she had given
up hope, he really did call. He was clumsy and abrupt. Did she remember him? Was she
well? Would she come with him to a formal dance at the City College gymnasium? Marjorie
answered yes, yes, yes, in painful gasps—and it was over. She stood with the receiver
in her hands, numb with joy.

She had to tell her mother, of course. It took Mrs. Morgenstern only a few minutes
to extract from the shaky girl everything she knew about George Drobes. The mother
was less impressed than Marjorie had been to learn that he was twenty years old, a
college man, and a bacteriologist; nor was she quite so thrilled at the girl’s being
invited to a college formal dance before reaching sixteen. “If this fellow is as marvelous
as you say, why should he want to bother with a baby like you?”

“Mom, you’ll never look at the good side of anything. Isn’t it just possible that
he could like me?”

The mother at last gave a grudging consent to the date, and even became a little infected
with the girl’s exhilaration when they shopped for an evening dress in downtown department
stores. Marjorie thought about nothing but the dance for two weeks. There were tremendous
debates over hair-dos and makeup and color of shoes and exposure of bosom. The day
of the dance was cyclonic in the Morgenstern household, with Marjorie fretting and
foaming at the center. Then all at once, an hour before George was supposed to arrive,
quiet ensued. The eternity passed, the time came, the doorbell rang; and she tripped
to answer it, a shiny-eyed child of fifteen and a half, with a bosom precociously
full and panting under the flouncy blue tulle of her dress.

She almost fainted when she saw George. He was in an army officer’s uniform, all glittering
brass buttons and brown male power and glory. He himself had been too nervous on the
telephone to mention that it was a Reserve Officers Training Corps dance.

The military apparition overpowered her family. Mrs. Morgenstern was more polite than
she had ever been to one of Marjorie’s escorts. The father stared at George with something
like awe, and said nothing. Marjorie’s younger brother, Seth, a lively urchin of eleven
whose face shone from a harsh last-minute scrubbing, kept saluting and prancing in
circles, humming
The Stars and Stripes Forever
. As for Marjorie, the only thought that pierced her fog of delight was that the living
room was a wretched cramped hole and the furniture terribly dowdy; she couldn’t understand
why she hadn’t noticed it long ago.

There was no end to the wonders of George Drobes. It turned out that he had his father’s
car for the occasion, an old Chevrolet painted a bright false green, which he drove
with practiced ease. Moreover he had a name for the car, Penelope. She thought this
was an incredibly clever and whimsical touch. Her father drove a new blue Buick, but
nobody had ever had the imagination to give it a name. It was just a machine, nothing
like this glamorous lovable Penelope. Sitting beside George in the front seat of Penelope,
Marjorie felt twenty-five years old.

The dance was a delirium. The very air in the college gymnasium seemed to be blue
and gauzy like her dress, and when she danced she seemed to be standing still, wrapped
in George’s strong arms, while the great bare walls and the handsome officers and
the beautiful girls and the punching bags and monkey bars and wrestling mats and rowing
machines wheeled round and round her gently in time to the music.

On the way home, George stopped the car in Bronx Park, in a leafy dark nook filled
with smells of springtime; and Marjorie found that there was more to kissing than
the pecking wet foolishness of party games, that this touch of mouth to mouth could
be sweet. It didn’t seem wrong to kiss George. He was gentle and kind. Between kisses
he poured out his heart to her. He had tried for weeks to forget her, he said, convinced
that she was too young for him. But it had been impossible. He had invited her to
the dance to prove to himself that she couldn’t fit into his life. Instead he was
falling more and more in love with her. Who could deny that she had been the loveliest
girl at the dance, the most poised, the most intelligent? What did age matter, when
a girl had everything?

“Oh, you’ve just gone crazy, George.”

“Yes. I’ll never get over it either. I’ll wait five years, Marjorie, ten, whatever
you say. You’re my girl. There’ll never be anyone else.”

Hearing such words, Marjorie surrendered herself to the pleasant process of kissing
George without further fear. She had never experienced such bliss. How could she deny
the evidence of her senses? For her, too, there would never be anyone else.

In the months that followed, George consolidated his position. He lived only a few
subway stops from Marjorie. Walks in the park, movie dates, and casual meetings at
ice cream parlors or at the neighborhood library were simple to arrange. George soon
came to enjoy a great added advantage: Mrs. Morgenstern openly opposed him, saying
that Marjorie would do much better one of these days. This would probably have been
enough in itself to make the girl adore him. But George did have persisting attractions
in his own right. He was—at least by Marjorie’s sixteen-year-old standards—adult,
witty, gracious, and suave. He had Penelope. And he thrilled Marjorie as she had never
been thrilled before. In time their relationship included some rather warm necking
sessions. But he was considerate. The advance of intimacy was very slow, and each
step seemed natural when it happened. The necking was often preceded by George’s reading
aloud of some poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, which he did quite well in a husky
voice.

Then Marjorie moved to Central Park West.

She smiled brightly at Sandy when George rang the doorbell, and hobbled to answer
it before her mother could stop her.

George stood in the doorway in the usual gray suit with the usual red tie, holding
in his hand the battered brown hat, the only one he owned, with the threads coming
loose on the band. It still gave Marjorie a thrill to open the door to George, though
he no longer quite stunned her with his godlike masculinity. His smile was the same—wide,
sweet, a little more melancholy than it had been before he had given up bacteria for
auto supplies. She felt a bit ashamed because Sandy Goldstone was in the dining room
wearing riding clothes. “Hi, George. Come in.”

His eye fell on the taped ankle. “My God, pooch—”

“It’s nothing, nothing at all. Sprained it a bit. Come on, you’re just in time for
coffee and cake.” She took his hand and pressed it warmly, trying to tell him with
this gesture that the handsome young stranger he was about to meet didn’t mean a thing
to her; and she led him into the dining room.

Mrs. Morgenstern smiled at George with her mouth muscles. Mrs. Morgenstern looked
unhappy. Sandy Goldstone rose with an amiable grin. Marjorie introduced the two young
men to each other. Sandy poked out a friendly hand. George took it as though it were
a telegram containing bad news, and shook it briefly. Marjorie pulled a chair to the
table beside her own. “Poor Sandy had the job of bringing me home after I was dumb
enough to fall off a horse. Sit down, George.” George was still standing, fumbling
his brown hat.

“I just had lunch. I’ll wait in the living room—”

“Don’t be funny.” She pulled him into the chair. “Some coffee and cake won’t kill
you.”

“Cake’s all gone,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.

“Good heavens, he can have mine,” said Marjorie. “Pour him some coffee, Mom.”

“How are your folks, George?” said Mr. Morgenstern.

“Pop’s ulcer is acting up again,” George said.

“I thought that new medicine was so good.”

“Well, it was for a while. I don’t know. He went to a wedding and ate herring.”

“Herring? Foolish.” Mr. Morgenstern had no ulcers, but feared he was getting them.
He often talked with George about his father’s ulcer while Marjorie dressed for a
date. It cheered him to hear of Mr. Drobes’ symptoms, because they were more acute
than his own. He had really decided he liked George one evening when George told him
of his father being carried off to a hospital in agony. “I hope he isn’t in the hospital
again?”

“No, but he will be if he doesn’t lay off herring, that’s for sure.”

“I like kippers myself,” said Sandy.

“You’re just lucky,” said Mr. Morgenstern, “that you’re too young to worry about ulcers.”

“Please!” broke out the mother. “Who brought up ulcers? Do we have to sit around the
lunch table talking about ulcers?” She held out a cup of coffee to George. In reaching
for it he flipped his hat off his lap, instinctively grabbed for it, hit the coffee
with his elbow, and sent it splashing across the table.

“Oh my God, Mrs. Morgenstern, I’m sorry—Oh, Lord, that’s terrible—I beg your pardon—”

“Nothing at all. Coffee stains come out, usually,” said the mother, sopping up the
brown pool with a napkin. “But that’s the last of it, and it’ll take a while to heat
some more.”

“I assure you I don’t want any. I was just taking it to be polite—”

“I really have to be going,” said Sandy.

“Don’t let me drive you away,” said George. “Stick around.”

“Who drives anybody out of this house?” said the mother. “Please, Sandy, come into
the parlor and visit for a minute.”

Sandy dropped into the most comfortable armchair in the living room, the one usually
occupied by Mr. Morgenstern. George sat on a low bench in front of the artificial
fireplace, his legs projecting bonily. He still held his hat, turning it between his
legs round and round. Marjorie waited till the others were seated, then perched herself
on a peach-colored hassock close to George.

“Marjorie, that’s hard on your ankle. Come sit by me,” said the mother.

“Oh, Mom, relax. It doesn’t bother me at all. I’m perfectly comfortable.”

Mr. Morgenstern took a cigar and extended the humidor toward the two young men. They
both declined. A silence followed, during which the only activity in the room was
Mr. Morgenstern lighting his cigar, and George turning his hat.

“Don’t you smoke, Sandy?” said the mother.

“Oh, sure, tons of cigarettes, ma’am. Just don’t feel like it at the moment, thanks.”

Mr. Morgenstern said, “You’re young enough to break the habit. Take my advice and
quit.”

“That’s what my dad says,” grinned Sandy. “He smokes twenty cigars a day.”

“Mr. Goldstone owns Lamm’s department store,” said Mrs. Morgenstern to George.

“Oh,” said George, reversing the direction of his hat.

“One of these days I’ll have to start on cigarettes,” said Marjorie. “I love the smell
of them.”

“Over my dead body,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.

“They’re not so bad,” said Sandy.