Marjorie Morningstar (2 page)

She ripped the page out of the book, folded it, and locked it in the rosewood box
where she kept George’s love letters. Then, singing, she disappeared into the foggy
bathroom.

Mrs. Morgenstern had eaten breakfast several hours earlier with her husband, who was
unable to sleep once the day dawned, Sunday or not. Calculating the time it would
take her daughter to shower and dress, she placed herself at the breakfast table again
a few seconds before Marjorie came out of her room. In her hand was a cup of steaming
coffee. She was not lying in wait to grill Marjorie. Surely she was entitled to an
extra cup of coffee on Sunday morning.

“Hello, Mother dear.” Marjorie draped her jacket on the arm of a chair.

Mrs. Morgenstern put down her coffee.

“My God.” “My God what?” Marjorie dully dropped into the chair.

“That sweater, Marjorie.”

“What about it? Don’t you like the color?” She knew what her mother didn’t like. She
had spent the last few minutes at the mirror worrying about the sweater. It perfectly
matched her British boots and breeches and tweed jacket, and the russet band on her
perky hat—all new, all being worn for the first time. It had looked charming in the
shop, this cat-smooth russet cashmere, and the size was correct. But the fit was snug;
mighty snug. Marjorie knew that a pretty girl in a tight sweater created a commotion.
It was very vexing, she thought, and so silly; in the South Seas nobody would think
twice about it. She had decided to brave it out. Her mother might not like the sweater,
but Sandy Goldstone probably would.

“Marjorie, people will think—I don’t know what they’ll think.”

“I’m a big girl, Mama.”

“That’s just what’s bothering me, dear.”

“Mom, for your information girls don’t ride horses in pink quilted housecoats that
make them look like tubs. They wear sweaters.”

Mrs. Morgenstern, short and stout, was wearing a pink quilted housecoat. But this
kind of argumentation was standard between them; she took no offense. “Well, Papa
will never let you out of the house. Is that all you’re having for breakfast? Black
coffee? You’ll be a nervous wreck by the time you’re twenty-one. Have a bun, at least.—Who
was at the dance?”

“The junior class of Columbia College, Mama, about two hundred and fifty boys, with
girls.”

“Anybody we know?”

“No.”

“How can you say that? Wasn’t Rosalind Green there?”

“Of course she was.”

“Well, we know her.” Marjorie said nothing. “How is it you’re going riding? I thought
your lessons were on Tuesday.”

“I just decided to go today.”

“Who with?”

“Billy Ehrmann.”

“How come you’re wearing your new riding habit?”

“Why not? Spring is here.”

“You don’t have to impress Billy Ehrmann.”

“Well, I’ve got to start wearing it sometime.”

“Yes, once you’ve learned to ride. But what’s the point, just for a lesson in the
armory?”

Here Mrs. Morgenstern was driving to a material point. Marjorie had been taking the
armory lessons in a borrowed old habit of an El Dorado neighbor, Rosalind Green. Her
mother had bought her the new outfit on the understanding that she wasn’t to wear
it until she graduated to the bridle paths of the park. Marjorie could lie to her
mother cheerfully, and with a good conscience, but she had several minor lies going,
and it seemed a weariness to take on another. “Mom, I’m not going to the armory. We’re
going riding in the park.”

“What? You’ve only had three lessons. You’re not ready. You’ll fall off the horse
and break your neck.”

“That’ll be something to look forward to.” The girl put her cup down with a clink
and poured more coffee.

“Marjorie, I am not going to let you go riding in the park with that fat clumsy Billy
Ehrmann. He probably can’t ride any better than you.”

“Mother, please. We’re riding with two other couples and a groom. We’ll be safer than
in the armory.”

“Who are the others?”

“Well, there’s Rosalind and Phil.”

“Who else?”

“Oh, some fraternity brother of theirs.” Marjorie was determined to let her mother
know nothing whatever about Sandy Goldstone.

“Who?”

“Oh, some fellow. I don’t know his name. I know he’s a very good rider.”

“How do you know that, if you don’t even know his name?”

“For heaven’s sake, Mom! Billy and Phil said so.”

“Was he at the dance? Did you meet him there?”

“I think maybe I did. I don’t know. I met a hundred boys.”

“Is he a good dancer?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where does he live?”

“Mom, I’m late. I said I don’t know the boy—”

The telephone rang, and with immense relief Marjorie sprang into the foyer. “Hello?”

“Hello, pooch.”

The proprietary nickname and the odd twangy voice brought the usual pleasurable warmth
to Marjorie, mingled this time with a dim feeling of guilt. “Oh—hello, George, how
are you?”

“What’s the matter? Did I wake you up?”

“No, George. Matter of fact, I was just going out, so excuse me if—”

“Out?”

“Just out in the park. Riding.”

“Well, well. Riding in Central Park. You’ll be joining the Junior League next.”

“Don’t be funny.”

“Well, how was the Columbia dance?”

“It was miserable, thanks.” Her mother, she saw, had come to the doorway of the dining
room and was openly listening to the conversation. Marjorie made her tone more affectionate.
“I never realized how young a crowd of college juniors could look and act.”

“Well, sure, how old can they be?” said George with a relieved lift in his voice.
“Nineteen, average. Less, some of them. I warned you you’d be bored stiff.” George
Drobes was twenty-two, and a graduate of City College. “Well, pooch, when am I going
to see you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Today?”

“I’ve got a ton of homework, dear.”

“But you say you’re going riding.”

“Just for an hour. Then I’ll be at the desk all day, really, George.”

“Take off another hour.”

“Dear, I’d love to—it’s just such a long trip from the Bronx down here, just for an
hour—”

“I’m not doing anything. It’s Sunday. It’s been almost two weeks—Look, I’d just about
decided to go to the art museum anyway. I’ve got the car. I’ll drop by. If you feel
like it, we’ll go for a drive in the country. If you don’t, why I’ll just go on to
the museum.”

“Well—”

“See you about one or so, okay, pooch?”

“All right, George, sure. Love to see you.” She hung up.

“What’s the matter between you and George all of a sudden?” said Mrs. Morgenstern
with pleasure.

“Absolutely nothing. Mother, I wonder whether you know that people don’t usually listen
to other people’s phone conversations?”

“I’m not people. I’m your mother. You don’t have anything to hide from me, do you?”

“There’s a thing called privacy, that’s all.”

“I hope the great love isn’t beginning to cool off.”

“It certainly is not!”

“I haven’t seen him in such a long time. Does he still have that red nose?”

“He does not have a red nose.”

“Bronx Park East is a long way from Central Park West,” said Mrs. Morgenstern with
a majestic sigh. Marjorie made for the door. “Listen, Marjorie, don’t be foolish.
The first time in the park anything can happen. Don’t wear the new outfit.”

Marjorie’s hand was on the doorknob. “Clothes don’t do anybody any good hanging in
the closet.” She opened the door. “Goodbye, Mom. I won’t be home for lunch.”

“Where will you eat?”

“Tavern on the Green.”

“Listen,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, “Billy’s friend, this fellow who’s such a good rider,
will like you just as well in the other outfit.”

Marjorie’s heart sank. “I can’t imagine what you’re talking about, Mom. Goodbye.”

Her exit, which she made with a fine airy wave of the hand, was spoiled as soon as
she closed the door. She had no money. The stable was at Sixty-sixth Street, and she
was late. She had to go back in and ask her mother for taxi fare. “Well, I’m glad
I’m still good for something in your life,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, “even if it’s only
money. What’s happened to your allowance this week?”

“Mom, you know my allowance only runs from Saturday to Saturday.”

The mother was fumbling in a large black patent-leather purse. “It’s a good thing
your father’s business doesn’t run from Saturday to Saturday.”

“Might as well give me the rest of my allowance, Mom. Then I won’t have to trouble
you again.”

“No trouble, I assure you.” Mrs. Morgenstern drew another dollar and a half from the
purse. She always managed, thought Marjorie, to make the payment of the allowance
a triumph. Marjorie often felt that she would go hungry and barefoot rather than ask
for her allowance again. A hundred times she had planned to gain independence by writing
short stories, or tutoring, or getting a weekend job as a salesgirl. These plans usually
sprouted just before she had to ask for her allowance, and tended to wither right
after she got it.

“Thank you, Mother,” she said, remotely cool and formal as she accepted the money.

At this moment her father came into the hallway, carrying the Sunday
Times
in a disordered sheaf under his arm. He wore a red silk smoking jacket in which he
looked uncomfortable. Marjorie kissed him. “Morning, Dad. Sorry I’ve got to run.”

The father said, “Horseback… Can’t you find something less dangerous than horseback,
Margie? People get killed riding horseback.”

“Don’t worry. Marjorie will come back in one piece. ’Bye.”

Marjorie’s father had come to the United States at the age of fifteen, an orphan,
a fleck of foam on the great wave of immigration from Eastern Europe. In his first
bewildered week in a wretched cellar on the lower East Side of New York, he had become
friendly with a boy who worked for an importer of feathers. He too had gone to work
sorting and classifying feathers: filthy work that paid two dollars a week. Now, thirty-three
years later, the importer was dead, the boy who had brought him into the feather business
was Mr. Morgenstern’s partner, and the Arnold Importing Company was a well-known dealer
in feathers, straws, and other materials for ladies’ hats, a tributary of New York’s
millinery trade. From two dollars a week, Marjorie’s father had painfully worked up
to about fifteen thousand a year. Every year since his marriage he had spent every
dollar he earned on the comfort of his family and the improvement of their station
in life. Except for his part ownership of the struggling little corporation and the
salary he drew, he was a penniless man. Yet he lived on Central Park West.

“Do you think she’ll be all right?” he said, peering at the brown door through which
his daughter had vanished.

“Why not? All the kids around here ride. More coffee before it’s cleared away?”

“All right.”

At Marjorie’s vacant place in the dining room was the ruin of the bun she had half
bolted, smeared with lipstick. “Why is she suddenly so interested in horseback riding?”
said Mr. Morgenstern. “She had one lesson this week.”

“Why do you think?” His wife poured coffee from the silver pot she used on Sunday
mornings.

“Not that fat fool Billy Ehrmann?”

“There’s another boy in the party.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know. Fraternity brother of Billy. He can’t be too bad.”

The father pulled out the business section of the
Times
and glanced at it, sipping coffee. After a while he said, “What about George?”

“George, I think, is finished. Marjorie doesn’t know it yet.”

“But you know it, I suppose.”

“Yes, I do. It’s a long way down here from the Bronx.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have moved from the Bronx.”

“Now what makes you say that?” The mother looked out of the window, still pleased
and thrilled by the view of the park.

“Personally I have no objection to George. A steady boy,” the father said. “Could
fit in the business.”

“A nobody.”

“Well, I don’t like these Manhattan boys,” the father said. “They’re too smart. They’re
cold fish. I talk to them, and suddenly I remember I’ve got an accent. I can hear
it. After thirty years they make me feel like a greenhorn.” Marjorie’s father had
only a slight accent, and the mother had virtually none, yet neither sounded native-born,
and they knew they never would. “I don’t trust these boys. They look like they’d try
any smart trick with a girl they could get away with.”

“Marjorie can take care of herself.”

“She can, can she?”

Mrs. Morgenstern had been maintaining the opposite viewpoint not less recently than
two o’clock that morning while waiting up nervously for Marjorie. This kind of discussion
went on all the time between the parents. They could take either side with ease. It
all depended on which one started to criticize the daughter. The father stared at
his paper and the mother stared out of the window.

After a while the mother shrugged. “She’s entitled to the best, isn’t she? The West
Side is where the good families live. Here she has the best chances of meeting somebody
worth while. We went all over that ground.”

“She told me all about sex yesterday afternoon,” the father said. “Studied it in Hygiene,
she says. She knows the whole business like a doctor. She knows a lot more about it
than I do. Talked about chromosomes, and tubes, and eggs, and the male this, and the
female that. I was embarrassed, I’ll tell you the truth, and the strange thing is
I felt sorry for her.”

“Well, she can’t help what they teach her in school. Is it better to know nothing
at all, the way we were?”

“Maybe she knows too much. Did she ever tell you the five arguments that prove God
exists and five answers that prove he doesn’t? She learned them in a course. But she
never goes to temple except to a dance, she’s forgotten any Hebrew she ever knew,
and if she doesn’t eat bacon she eats shrimp cocktails, I’ll bet a hundred dollars
on that.”