Marjorie Morningstar (13 page)

“Marsha, he’s terribly sweet and fine—”

“Yes, yes, to be sure. You’re well out of it, dear. Poor guy. He came close to grabbing
himself off a good thing. Kitten-snatching has its points. Except, of course, it’s
such a horrible humiliation when the snatch fails.”

“Well, I’m not sure I agree about George, but—anyway, don’t you think I ought to stop
seeing Sandy? I do.”

Marsha sat upright and glared at her. “Are you INSANE?”

“But—I’m not at all sure I love him—or that he loves me. You’re right about that.
Besides, his family will never have any part of me. He’s just killing time with me,
until—”

“LET HIM!” Marsha turned to the ceiling again. “What’ll I do with her? Margie, you
see the shows with this fellow, you sit in the orchestra, you go to the good night
clubs, he doesn’t try to make you—what do you want, eggs in your beer? Sweetie, you’re
like a dumb Indian sitting on oil land, I swear you are. Everything else aside, what
a connection he is!”

“Connection for what? I don’t want to work as a Lamm’s salesgirl—”

The doorbell rang. Marsha glanced at her watch. “Ye gods, the folks already. D’you
know we’ve been jawing for hours?” She rolled off the bed as the bell rang again.
“Coming, coming!—Damn them, they forget the key five nights out of six. Come on and
meet them, Marge.”

Marsha’s father was small and white-haired, her mother was big and blond, and they
were both carrying brown paper bags. Mr. Zelenko’s dull purple suit was not very pressed,
nor his flowered red tie very straight. “Well, well,” he said with a good-natured
grin which completely changed the sad set of his face, “so this is the famous Marjorie
Morningstar.”

Mrs. Zelenko gave her husband a jolt with an elbow that staggered him. “All right,
Big Mouth, that was supposed to be a secret.” She smiled graciously at Marjorie. “Hello,
dear. You might as well know that in this family there are no secrets. But outside
these walls, they could rake the flesh off our bones and we wouldn’t talk.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Marjorie said.

“Food?” said Marsha, nosing into the paper bags her parents put down on the sofa.

“Delicatessen,” said the mother. “We didn’t have dinner. How about you?”

“I had a couple of dogs at Nedick’s but I’m starved,” said Marsha.

“Fine. Get a few plates, glasses, and a bottle opener,” said the mother. “It’s all
here.—You’ll join us, Margie?”

“I had dinner, thank you.”

Mr. Zelenko said, “Nonsense. A glass of beer and a corned beef sandwich, what is that?
Strictly kosher, by the way, only kind of delicatessen we eat, it’s the freshest and
the purest, you know.” He pulled a fat green pickle out of a paper bag and took a
large bite of it.

“Hog, wait for the rest of us,” said Mrs. Zelenko, taking a bright green enamel Buddha
off a gate-leg table, and unfolding the table.

“Hors d’oeuvre doesn’t count,” said Mr. Zelenko, dropping into a dilapidated armchair.
He brandished the pickle at Marjorie. “Margie, my dear, we’re going to have to work
over your religious problem. First off, we’ll have you read some Ingersoll, I think—then
Haeckel, maybe a little Voltaire—and soon you’ll be enjoying ham and eggs like any
other sensible person.”

“Let the girl alone,” said Mrs. Zelenko, tying an apron over her billowing red skirt
and embroidered peasant blouse. “She has principles, let her stick to them. You could
do with a few principles yourself.—Come on, let’s eat.”

Marjorie was strangely reminded of Mi Fong’s restaurant as she sat at the tiny table
in the cramped living room with the Zelenkos, eating potato salad, cold cuts, and
pickle. The room was dimly lit like the Chinese place, though the prevailing color
was orange rather than red. It was decorated with an astonishing variety of foreign
materials and objects—among them a metal African mask, a coconut, a bird cage without
a bird, a large brass hookah, a small ragged rug hung on the wall, a huge round Mexican
copper plate, and the Chinese screen painted by Mrs. Mi Fong, a blurry affair on which
the dragons and the ladies in kimonos appeared to have melted and run together before
hardening. There was an exotic smell, too, a mixture of old settled-in Turkish tobacco
smoke, aging musty upholstery, spicy food, and the pungent furniture polish of the
piano. The piano dominated the room; indeed, it took up almost half the floor space,
black, shiny, and portentous.

“Principles, she says I have no principles, Margie,” said Mr. Zelenko, holding a pastrami
sandwich in one hand and a pickle in the other, and biting at them alternately. “People
who think they have principles are either fools or hypocrites. Therefore, they’re
fair game for enlightened people like me, because all hypocrites should be destroyed,
and even the Bible tells us not to suffer fools. Of course this gives me an advantage
over most people, but I can’t help that.”

“That’s how it happens he’s a multimillionaire,” said Mrs. Zelenko to Marjorie.

“I thought you didn’t believe in the Bible,” Marjorie said to the father. She was
drinking beer with her cold cuts, and beginning to enjoy herself very much. There
was something delightfully fresh and gay about an improvised delicatessen supper at
eleven at night. She could not conceive of such a lark in her own home. The hot dinner
at seven came as certainly as sunset, and thirty days out of thirty-one her parents
were asleep at ten.

“I don’t, but it has some bright sayings in it,” said Mr. Zelenko. “A book doesn’t
survive four thousand years without having an occasional gleam of merit. I prefer
The Greek Anthology
for wisdom, and Plato for profundity, and Darwin and Einstein for factual information,
of course.” Mr. Zelenko while saying this made himself another sandwich containing
some six layers of sliced tongue.

Marsha said, “Oh, shut up, Alex, you’re shocking Margie. Pass that beer.”

Marjorie was more shocked to hear Marsha call her father by his first name than she
had been by the fun poked at the Bible. In her own house her parents’ first names
were sacrosanct; they were Papa and Mama even to each other. When they used “Rose”
or “Arnold” it was a sign that a fight was coming on.

Mr. Zelenko passed the beer. “So far as being a multimillionaire goes,” he said, “I’ve
been defeated by two things—lack of connections, and scale. Mainly scale. My ideas,
executed on the scale of millions, would have made millions. Executed on the scale
of a few hundreds, they’ve lost the hundreds. I’m like a battleship with sixteen-inch
guns that can’t fight because it only carries buckshot.”

“How was the concert?” Marsha said.

“Horrible. Frances is falling apart,” said Mrs. Zelenko. “I think she was drunk. She
could go to jail for what she did to the Bach Chaconne.”

“I liked it,” said Mr. Zelenko, taking a long drink of beer.

“Oh, you, Mr. Tin Ear,” said his wife angrily.

“Who is Frances?” said Marjorie.

Marsha mentioned the name of a famous concert pianist.

“We went back afterwards,” said Mrs. Zelenko. “I’m telling you she was shaking as
though she had Parkinson’s disease. And her breath! Frances always did like her nip,
but it’s getting out of hand.”

“Maybe you should try her brand of whiskey,” said Mr. Zelenko mildly. “Forty-two cities,
booked solid through December—”

“I am not a concert pianist,” snapped Mrs. Zelenko. “And that’s why I can play Bach.
When I play, it’s as though Bach is listening, Bach himself, not twelve hundred yawning
potbellied mink-coated perfumed idiots who don’t know a piano from a ukulele.”

She threw down her napkin, marched to the piano and struck a chord which startled
Marjorie right out of her seat. Mrs. Zelenko crashed ahead into music that was obviously
Bach: arid, tremendously powerful, and icily formal. The playing, to Marjorie, seemed
masterly. It was unfortunate that the room was so small; the effect was something
like sitting inside the piano. The slamming and crashing went on and on, and every
time Mrs. Zelenko hit a certain high note the African mask on the wall came alive
with a weird brief ping. Marsha and her father continued to eat while they listened
to the music. At one point Mr. Zelenko winked at Marjorie, leaned toward her, and
shouted, making himself barely audible above the blast-furnace din of the piano, “I
knew I’d needle her into playing. Marvelous, isn’t it? Ten times as good as Frances,
really.”

“It’s lovely,” Marjorie screamed.

“She’s an authentic genius,” Mr. Zelenko bellowed. “There’s no room for playing like
that on the concert stage. That’s a dirty mountebank’s racket.”

“Shut up while I’m trying to play,” yelled Mrs. Zelenko, not pausing her impassioned
pounding.

Evidently it was one of Bach’s longer compositions, for after ten minutes it showed
no signs of letting up. Marjorie’s head began to throb. Marsha and her father had
between them disposed of all the food and beer, and now they were lolling on the sofa,
smoking Turkish cigarettes, and listening with half-closed eyes. Despite the discomfort
of the too-loud piano Marjorie was deriving some enjoyment from the music, to her
surprise. She had always considered Bach a composer of mere dry jigging exercises,
but she now heard, or thought she heard, moments of passionate melody and traces of
a magnificent colonnaded structure of sound. But she half suspected that she was simply
trying to appreciate something that was not there. It was hard to be sure of anything
except that her ears were ringing and the top of her head evidently trying to open
across the middle.

Mrs. Zelenko rose half off the piano stool, raised her hands over her head, and came
down to strike a shattering chord. The African mask pinged and fell off the wall.
The doorbell rang.

“Oh, God, hold off, Tonia, it’s the Angel of Death,” said Mr. Zelenko. He went to
the door and shouted, “Yes?” From outside came a high-pitched angry cackling in French.
He responded with equal irritation in the same tongue, and for a while a Gallic debate
yammered back and forth through the closed door. Then the outside voice faded away,
still shrieking.

“She sounds hoarse tonight,” said Mrs. Zelenko.

Mr. Zelenko smiled at Marjorie. “She lives across the hall. Frenchwoman, probably
eighty-five years old, but strong? I saw her carry a leather armchair up the stairs
by herself. Lives on oatmeal and skim milk, and reads yesterday’s papers that the
other tenants throw out. I think she’s a millionaire.”

“Oh, Alex, don’t be dumb, the Angel’s no millionaire,” said Marsha.

“Look, baby, I once caught her picking the financial page out of our garbage pail
and we got to talking stocks. The woman knows every firm that’s passed a dividend
in the last five years—I’m in the Street myself,” he said in an aside to Marjorie.
“I can tell when somebody knows what it’s about.” He hung the African mask back on
the wall and took down a balalaika that hung beside it. “Well, we can still have a
little civilized music.—How about some cherry brandy, Tonia?”

When Mrs. Zelenko brought the bottle of cherry brandy out of a back room she also
brought a large picture in a leather frame which she handed to Marjorie. “You’ve seen
her on the stage, I suppose,” she said casually.

It was a photograph of Gertrude Lawrence inscribed
To Tonia Zelenky, pianist extraordinary
.

“Gosh, that’s a wonderful thing to have,” said Marjorie.

“It’s just a joke, her writing it ‘Zelenky,’ ” said Marsha’s mother. “She was always
calling me that. She knew how to spell my name.”

Mr. Zelenko took a sip of the cherry brandy and began to sing a Russian song, accompanying
himself expertly on the balalaika. After a few bars his wife and daughter joined in;
they sat on either side of him on the sofa, swaying slightly to the music, and harmonizing
with careless sweetness. Marjorie, curled up on an armchair, felt tears rising to
her eyes. The song was plaintive, but more than that, there was a strange pathos about
the Zelenkos themselves, the little white-headed man with a face curiously expressing
cynicism and childishness at once, flanked by the fat bright unattractive daughter
and the wife who played the piano better than concert pianists and treasured an autographed
picture of Gertrude Lawrence.

Mr. Zelenko began a gay dance melody. Marsha jumped up and clumsily did some steps,
arms akimbo, head tossing. Then she broke off and said, “Alex, Alex, stop, I’ve got
a marvelous idea. Tonia, you know
The Mikado
score, don’t you?”

“Well, I haven’t played it in years, but sure—”

“Come on. Marjorie Morningstar will now do
My Object All Sublime
.”

“Wonderful,” said the father, tossing aside the balalaika and pouring himself more
cherry brandy.

Marjorie said “No, no,” as Marsha tugged her out of the armchair, but Mrs. Zelenko
was already at the piano, running through snatches of
The Mikado
.

“Come on!” Marsha said. “A real opening-night performance, now. Do all the things
we talked about.”

The mother struck up
My Object All Sublime
with grandiose vigor. The space was narrow for capering, but Marjorie went into her
number and did her best. When it was over the Zelenkos clapped and cheered.

“Why, she’s another Gertrude Lawrence,” cried Mrs. Zelenko. “Honestly, it’s Gertie
all over again, the way she holds her head and uses her eyes—”

“You’ll have a million dollars before you’re thirty, baby,” said Mr. Zelenko. “Come
to me and get it invested. Don’t be like all the other stars and die broke.”

“I
told
you she was marvelous, didn’t I?” said Marsha. She seized the brandy. “Come on, we’re
drinking to the new star.” She poured three glasses full, handed them around, and
raised her own high. “Here’s to Marjorie Morningstar, 1940’s toast of New York—discovered
by poor little Marsha Zelenko!”

“What are you talking about, 1940?” said the father scornfully. “Why seven years?
She’ll be on top of the heap in 1938, mark my words! Here’s to you, Marjorie!”