Marjorie Morningstar (14 page)

Marjorie blushed, smiled, bowed her head. Mrs. Zelenko downed her brandy and said,
suddenly looking thoughtful, “Marsha, don’t you think Mr. Klabber might be interested
in Marjorie?”

“Why, I hadn’t—Say, that’s a marvelous idea, absolutely marvelous,” Marsha exclaimed.
“Gad, he’ll go mad over her.”

“Who’s Mr. Klabber?” said Marjorie.

“Oh—somebody,” said Marsha, with a broad wink at her mother.

“A connection,” said Mr. Zelenko, looking mysterious.

“I’ll just get him to come to
The Mikado
,” said Marsha.

“That’ll do it. He only has to see her perform once,” said Mrs. Zelenko.

“Oh please, this isn’t fair, tell me who he is—”

Marsha shook her head. “If nothing came of it you’d only be disappointed. No, sugar
bun, forget it. Drink your brandy.”

When Marjorie left half an hour later the Zelenkos were in the midst of a violent
discussion of modern art. Marsha, even as she accompanied her to the door, was shouting,
“Alex, you know perfectly well Rouault is a commercial phony. ’Bye, Margie, it’s been
heaven, see you at lunch, okay? And how about Picasso’s ceramics, Alex, for Christ’s
sake?” The door closed.

On the dim landing outside the apartment Marjorie paused, buttoning her coat. She
was startled in a moment to see a pair of eyes glittering at her from a crack in the
door across the hallway. Nervously she headed for the stairs, and as she did so a
crone in a shapeless brown garment that was neither a dress nor a slip nor anything
else Marjorie could recognize darted at her, shaking a bony finger high in the air.
“I am old,” she squeaked, “I am seeck person. I vant sleep. Good people all asleep
now. You bad people like
them
.” She pointed at the Zelenkos’ door. “Stay up late, noise, noise, noise—” This, clearly,
was the Angel of Death. Marjorie, her spine prickling, dodged past her and ran down
the stairs. The Angel screeched after her, “Bad people! Bad! Bad! BAD!”

The night was chilly, and the moon shone pallidly over Ninety-second Street. Walking
home, and riding up in the elevator, Marjorie kept wondering who Mr. Klabber might
be; a movie talent scout was her most hopeful guess.

When she came into the apartment she received a smart shock. Uncle Samson-Aaron was
in the living room, drinking tea with her parents. It was the first time he had come—had
been allowed to come—to visit them at the El Dorado. He was a ghost from the Bronx
past.

“Havaya, Modgerie?” said Uncle Samson-Aaron, his fleshy red cheeks shining. “Havaya?
Say, our Modgerie has become a something, a lady. Ven ve hear about a vedding, Modgerie?”

“Hello, Uncle, you’re looking well,” Marjorie said, wondering whether he would pull
a Hershey bar out of his pocket and give it to her, as he always had since her babyhood.

“I look vell? Thank you, I look like a cholera.
You
look vell. You look, I don’t know, a few years ago I held you on my knee and now
you look like a regular wampire from the movies—”

“Sit down, Marjorie, have some tea,” said her mother. “Have another piece of cake,
Samson-Aaron.”

Uncle Samson-Aaron leaned forward and cut himself a vast triangle from the chocolate
cake on the coffee table. His paunch, always huge, now appeared to extend out beyond
his knees. His blue serge trousers and brown jacket were shiny tight, and the skin
on his hands and face was shiny tight. He grinned his sweet foolish scraggly-mustached
grin at Marjorie. “Uncle Samson-Aaron, same old gobbage pail, hey Modgerie?” He forked
a piece of cake the size of a fist into his mouth.

Marjorie warily accepted a cup of tea from her mother and sat. The presence of Samson-Aaron
in the El Dorado was disturbing; she was anxious to find out what it meant.

Samson-Aaron Feder had never been known to her as anything but The Uncle. She had
other uncles, but he and he alone was The Uncle. When she and Seth had been tiny children,
Samson-Aaron had been the family babysitter. He was invited to dinner, gorged himself,
and paid for his meal by staying with the children while the parents went out. Usually
it was on Friday night. One of her earliest memories was cuddling in Samson-Aaron’s
lap in the tiny warm kitchen by the soft sad glow of dying Sabbath candles, drowsing
while he crooned Jewish lullabies to her. As he crooned Samson-Aaron would gnaw on
a chicken leg or wing from the icebox, and nip at the brown bottle of fiery liquid
with the strong smell. Even now the smell of rye whiskey could suddenly set her thinking
of the Friday nights of her childhood.

She had loved the Uncle then. She was ten or perhaps eleven when she realized that
he was considered by her parents, and by all the family, a fool, a failure, and a
ridiculous glutton. Before that she had thought his love of food and drink was a charming
trait, a source of great lively fun. At the seders, the big family gatherings on Passover
eve, it was the annual joke that whatever was left on anybody’s plate or in anybody’s
glass was passed on to Samson-Aaron. Marjorie was fascinated by his gargantuan appetite.
Sometimes she would purposely heap her plate and then eat only a little of it just
to watch the Uncle gobble up the rest. Perspiration dripping from his forehead, his
eyes gleaming, he would shout, “No dishes to vash! Samson-Aaron is here!”—and the
plates would go rattling down to his place among the children at the foot of the table.
His vitality seemed inexhaustible. When he had eaten and drunk enough for seven men
he would lead the singing of the rollicking syncopated hymns, waving his arms and
adding wild trills to the happy chorus.

For Marjorie, Samson-Aaron had always been the soul, the visible symbol, of that group
of vague people called The Family, whom she had seen often in her childhood, though
lately only once or twice a year. They had peculiar Yiddish names—Aunt Shosha, Aunt
Dvosha, Uncle Shmulka, Uncle Avromka. One ran a candy store, another was a tailor,
another worked in a laundry; the occupations of the rest were equally humble. Her
father, by common recognition, was the aristocrat among them, the one who had achieved
success in America. He always sat with Marjorie and her mother at the head of the
table when the family gathered nowadays; and Samson-Aaron always sat at the foot,
among the new crop of children, who loved him and played with him just as Marjorie
and her cousins had. There had been some slight question about the Uncle’s status
when his one son, an English instructor at a small upstate college, had published
a novel. In the first impact of the event it had appeared that Samson-Aaron might
move as much as halfway up the board. But the novel, a highly grim involved work which
Marjorie could not finish, had fallen dead, despite the praise in the tattered clippings
which the Uncle carried in his wallet; and Samson-Aaron had stayed at the foot of
the table.

“How’s Geoffrey, Uncle?” Marjorie said as Samson-Aaron cut himself more cake without
being asked.

“Ven do I ever see Geoffrey? Vunce in three years? I suppose he’s fine. Geoffrey…
That name in my mouth still tastes funny. Vy did he have to change it? Milton isn’t
an American name?”

“Geoffrey is better for a writer of books,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.

“For a college teacher Milton is good enough,” said Samson-Aaron. “Better he should
never have written that book. Do you know how much he made from it, after he vorked
two years? Four hundred forty dollars. I said to him, ‘Milton, I’m an old nobody,
but is it proper to write a story vit a boy and a girl getting into bed ven they’re
not married? Is it nice?’ He says to me, ‘Pa, that’s true life.’ I said, ‘Milton,
all I know is decent people vunt like it.’—So I’m an old nobody, he starts talking
about something else, and sucks on his pipe. So he makes four hundred forty dollars
for two years’ hard vork. True life. Geoffrey Quill. A cholera.”

“That’s no way to talk about your boy,” said Mr. Morgenstern. “He accomplished something.
He’s a writer. A book is a book.”

“That’s right, we’re proud of him. The whole family is,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.

“An accomplishment? Vot? A mishmash, a person can’t make head or tail out of it. Tolstoy
I can understand. I told Milton, ‘Read Tolstoy!’ He says, ‘Pop, Tolstoy wrote horizontal,
I write vertical.’ Did you ever hear of such a thing? I said to him, ‘You should only
live to write horizontal like Tolstoy.’ He makes a face and sucks his pipe. Accomplishment.
You know vot I call accomplishment? A home, a good Jewish wife, children—”

“Let’s see your wallet. I bet you’ve still got all the clippings,” said Mr. Morgenstern.

The Uncle looked at him with a slow sheepish smile. “Excuse me, he’s my son, my only
child, I love him. But don’t talk to me about accomplishment.”

“All the same,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, “we’re expecting him at the bar-mitzva.”

Marjorie now perceived what Uncle Samson-Aaron was doing in the El Dorado. She said
to her mother, “Haven’t you invited Geoffrey yet?”

“I don’t want to send him a printed invitation that he can drop in the wastebasket.
I want him to
come
. The Uncle can make sure he comes.”

“Vot can I do?” said Samson-Aaron, washing down a huge bite of cake with a slosh of
tea. “Get out a court order on my own son he should come to Seth’s bar-mitzva? Vot
does he care vot I say? If I threaten to come up to Albany and show myself to his
friends, maybe that vould scare him enough to come.”

“He’s not that bad,” said Mr. Morgenstern. “Why do you say such things? He sends you
money every month like clockwork, and what does he make, after all?”

“He’s a good boy, he has a good heart, I have notting against him,” said Samson-Aaron.
He mopped his pink brow with a large blue handkerchief, regarding the remaining cake
longingly (there wasn’t much), and leaned back on the sofa with a wheeze. “I don’t
know, nowadays I have no appetite.”

“If nothing else will work on him,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, “you might mention who
it was who put him through college and kept his father off relief.”

Samson-Aaron’s cherubic mouth pulled downward into bitter lines. He looked appealingly
at Mrs. Morgenstern and nodded slowly and sadly. Then he turned to Marjorie with his
old sweet foolish grin. There was a black gap of two teeth missing, the girl noticed
with a qualm. “A fine uncle you’ve got, ha, Modgerie? Not only couldn’t support his
son, couldn’t even support himself. Samson-Aaron the gobbage pail. No dishes to vash.”

“Oh, Uncle—” Marjorie said helplessly.

“It’s true. And I came to America to become a millionaire. Say, listen, if everybody
vas a millionaire, vare vould they get night vatchmen? Notting vould be safe at night.”
He stood. “It reminds me I’ve got to go to vork.—But a nickel, Modgerie, a nickel
I alvays had, to buy you a Hershey bar ven I came to this house. No Hershey bar, no
Samson-Aaron. Right?”

Marjorie threw her arms around the fat old man and kissed his damp shiny cheek. He
smelled faintly of the chocolate cake. “Right, Uncle. Where’s my Hershey tonight?”

“A Hershey? Vot you vant now is a husband, darling, and that the Uncle can’t bring
in the pocket.” He patted her shoulder and turned to Mrs. Morgenstern. “Vun vay or
another, Geoffrey vill come to the bar-mitzva. Satisfied?”

“Is it a promise?”

“It’s a promise. From Samson-Aaron a promise.”

“I’m satisfied,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, regarding him critically. “Tell me this, do
you have a suit to wear for the bar-mitzva?”

The Uncle glanced down wryly at himself. “You think I’ll come to the Riverside Plaza
like a night vatchman? I still have the suit, the good suit you bought me for Milton’s
graduation. Ven do I vear it except for bar-mitzvas and veddings?”

“Good,” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “Make sure it’s cleaned and pressed. And get a haircut,
and your mustache trimmed, and—
you
know—”

“I know.” He ambled to the door and turned around. His paunch was enormous. He grinned
at Marjorie. “Next time I vear the good suit—your vedding. Yes? Modgerie’s vedding.”

“Marjorie has no intentions of getting married just yet—”

“Make it snappy, darling. Samson-Aaron is getting old. I vant you should have a little
girl, I can bring her a Hershey bar. A nickel in the pocket I have nowadays. Thanks
to my son—Geoffrey Quill, the vertical writer.”

When he had gone Marjorie said, “Where does he work, this time of night?”

“Work!” said her father, shrugging his shoulders. “A jobber who owes me some money
has a warehouse, and Samson-Aaron sleeps there at night with a time clock in his lap.
That’s his work—this week. He goes from one place to another.”

Mrs. Morgenstern, gathering up the tea things, said, “He’ll bring Geoffrey, that’s
the main thing. He doesn’t make promises, but when he does, they’re promises.”

“Why on earth do you want Geoffrey so badly?” said the girl. “What difference does
it make?”

“Because I want him at a certain table with some particularly fine people, that’s
all.”

“The Goldstones,” said the father.

“Not only them,” said the mother, with a vexed glance at the girl.

“Mom! Mom, have you invited the Goldstones?”

“Why not? They’re friends of mine, aren’t they?”

“Sandy, too, no doubt?”

“Why should I leave out Sandy? Did you have a fight with him, or something?”

The girl said, “Oh, God,” and sank on the window seat with her forehead against the
glass. “The Goldstones and the family—well, that fixes everything—”

Mrs. Morgenstern put the dishes down with a sharp clatter.

“The finest people will be at that table. The Goldstones, your father’s banker Bill
Connelly and his wife, Geoffrey, yourself, and the Robisons from Philadelphia. What’s
wrong—”

“The Robisons? The parents of Seth’s little girl friend at camp?”

“Yes, the Robisons. They like Seth, and they like your father and me, strange as that
seems, even though they own twenty office buildings in Philadelphia. And if you’re
ashamed of our family, Marjorie, I’m not. Next time we start talking about who’s a
snob, remember that.”