Marjorie Morningstar (20 page)

The other counselors, mostly scrubbed dumpy girls with muscular bodies, regarded Marsha
as an eccentric, and her canoe excursions—which they knew about but never reported—as
unwholesome and dangerous foolishness. Marjorie had at last forced Marsha to admit
all this in an acrimonious quarrel, late one night in the second week. Even then,
Marsha had tried to cover herself by calling the other counselors cowardly lumps,
sexless clods, and so forth. Marjorie had walked out on her in disgust while she was
talking, and the two girls had hardly spoken for a week.

But the sun was bright and warm at Tamarack, the smell of the pine needles delightful,
the sleep in the mountain air sweet, and Mr. Klabber’s meals excellent and huge. Moreover,
Marjorie had scored an instant great success with her shows, and was admired and popular,
so her spirits were good. She worked hard, and handled her little actresses with natural
good humor and grace. Mr. Klabber frankly said she was the best dramatic counselor
he had ever had. She was unavoidably thrown together backstage with Marsha, who painted
the scenery and sewed the costumes with a squad of stage-struck girls. Her grudge
melted in the workaday joking backstage, though her attitude toward the fat girl remained
tinged with distrust.

Marsha had importuned her day after day to try a canoe excursion to South Wind with
her, swearing by all the gods that it was the simplest, safest, gayest kind of escapade
imaginable. Marjorie had resisted for weeks. But tonight, at last, she had given in.
After four weeks of twittering little girls, of orange blouses and green bloomers,
of the dull elephantine small talk of the other counselors, and of Mr. Klabber’s prosy
piety, she was famished for a little fun. Marsha had promised to get her safely to
the other shore without the necessity of swimming in the dark. Carlos Ringel, the
set designer of the South Wind shows, would meet them at the raft, she said.

Marsha paddled in silence for perhaps a quarter of an hour before Marjorie saw the
low flat black streak on the water. “There’s the raft,” she said, “and no sign of
Carlos Ringel.”

“Now, dear, don’t fret. Carlos will be there.”

After another long pause filled with discreet rhythmic plashing, Marjorie said, “What
do we do, exactly, if we run into this—this Mr. Greech?”

“Why, honey, you’re just another guest. There’s a thousand of them. He doesn’t know
all their faces. Course, the sooner we get out of these horrible duds the better.
We go from the cove straight to the singers’ cottage, where we dress. It isn’t a hundred
feet and it’s all bushes and shadows.”

“What does he look like?”

“Who, Greech? Satan.”

“Oh, really.”

“I mean it. Satan with a potbelly and white knickers. You’ll see.”

Marjorie uttered a small involuntary groan, pulling the sweater more closely around
her. Marsha said, “For Pete’s sake, sugar bun, why are you so nervous? What’s the
worst that can happen to you? Do you think he’ll eat you? Or that Klabber will? Stop
being a child. We’re going to have a hell of a marvelous time tonight, and don’t you
forget it.”

“Marsha, I’d rather not get kicked off the first job I’ve ever held for moral turpitude,
that’s all.”

The fat girl giggled. “Moral turpitude. Baby doll, your idea of moral turpitude is
having two helpings of pie after dinner. But I love you just the same. Now you relax,
do you hear?”

As the canoe drew nearer the raft, the adult camp began to come alive with little
lights, like a lawn full of fireflies. Voices and women’s laughter came floating over
the water with the music. The floodlights showed a mass of red canoes—there seemed
to be hundreds of them—beached bottoms up in serried lines along the shore. The social
hall was floodlit too, a snowy modernistic building with a huge gilded round shell
at the back. Above the entrance a broad white shaft towered up through the trees,
with enormous letters on it in slender gilded script, SOUTH WIND MUSIC HALL. The swimming
dock reached far out into the lake, a sweeping arc lit by red and green lanterns.

Marsha pointed with her paddle at a canoe emerging from a shadowy part of the shore.
“There comes Carlos, Old Faithful himself—grumbling like anything, I bet, but there
he is.”

They came alongside the bobbing, clanking wooden raft which was built on oil drums,
and Marjorie’s hand was clasped by a thickset black figure. “Easy does it,” said a
rasping voice, and she stepped first on a dripping drum and then on the burlap-covered
raft. Marsha climbed out of the canoe with Marjorie’s suitcase.

“Carlos, this is Marjorie—”

“Hi. Hurry, kiddies, rehearsal’s started already.” He helped them into his canoe,
and impelled it toward the shore with powerful plunging strokes. Marjorie, hunched
in the bottom at his feet, was embarrassed by his silence. “Sorry to put you to all
this trouble, Mr. Ringel.”

“No trouble. Quiet now, we’re getting in close, never know when he’s skulking in the
bushes.”

The canoe crushed through sweet-smelling branches wet with dew and scraped on the
beach. “Take your friend on ahead, Marsha, I’ll get rid of the canoe.” A quick fearful
scurrying through brush and briars, and they were panting inside a brightly lit cottage,
the rafters of which were festooned with girls’ underwear, stockings, and bathing
suits. Sitting up on a bed reading
The Saturday Evening Post
was a beautiful tall blond girl, stark naked. “Hullo,” she said to Marsha. “Brought
a friend this time, hey? You’re early.”

“It’s a quarter past nine.”

The blonde glanced at her watch and yawned. “Damn, so it is. I’m due on stage in ten
minutes.” She rose and strolled around picking up clothes, not at all troubled by
the absence of blinds on the windows.

Marsha said, “This is Marjorie Morgenstern—Karen Blair.”

“Hi,” said Karen, waving a brassiere at Marjorie and then putting it on. “Help yourself
to anything—combs, powder—need underwear?”

“Thanks, I brought everything.”

“Well. Glad you aren’t all moochers on the other side of the lake.”

“What are you complaining about? I can’t get into any of your things, you beanpole,”
Marsha said.

Karen zipped shut a pair of green shorts and a white shirtwaist, and slid her feet
into moccasins. “See you, kiddies.” With a wave of long limp fingers she was gone.

“Noel Airman’s current flame,” Marsha said, taking clothes out of a closet.

“She’s stunning,” Marjorie said. “Are they going to be married?”

“What, her? Strictly a bed partner for the summer. She’s thirty-one, and dumb as a
post. Been married and divorced three times.”

“Good heavens, she doesn’t seem much more than twenty—”

“Look close around her eyes and mouth next time, honey. She sure does.”

“How old is he?”

“Noel? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, maybe.”

“He’ll be at the rehearsal, won’t he?”

“He’s directing it, dear,” said Marsha, a shade impatiently. She went into the bathroom
with an armful of clothes.

Marjorie knew that Noel Airman was the head of the entertainment staff at South Wind,
the social director who wrote and staged the shows. In the city Marsha had played
and sung at the piano many of his tunes from the camp revues. Airman sounded like
an extraordinary person indeed. Some of his musical skits had been performed in Broadway
revues. He had had a number of songs published; two of them,
Barefoot in Heaven
and
It’s Raining Kisses
, were current hits. Marjorie was much excited at the prospect of meeting such a celebrity.
As she dressed she was thinking that the blond girl was the first honest-to-goodness
mistress she had ever seen, though she had been reading books and seeing movies and
plays about them all her life. Karen Blair did not look the part, somehow. There was
a disappointing absence of any air of sin or guilt about her. Perhaps, thought Marjorie,
it was just another of Marsha’s lies.

Marsha came out of the bathroom painted and slimmed, in the brown Mexican blouse and
copper-spiked leather belt of the city days. Marjorie was used to the sight of her
in the baggy orange and green uniform. “Gad, look at you!”

“Human, eh?” Marsha said, mincing. She slipped her arm through Marjorie’s, and they
stood before the mirror together. “The two sirens from across the water. Not bad.”

“Bet you could beat that blonde’s time,” Marjorie said. “You ought to try flirting
with Noel Airman.”

“What, and have Carlos strangle me and leave my body in the bushes?”

“Oh, nonsense. What claim has he got on you?”

“Why, none in the world, the old slob—let’s go.” Marsha turned out the lights. “Now
remember, if we meet Greech ignore him. You’re just a guest. He knows me, so that’s
no problem.”

“He—he does know you?”

“Well, good grief, honey girl, I’m here three nights a week, I couldn’t go dodging
him forever. Carlos has told him some kind of cock-and-bull story. Greech makes an
exception for me. I’m supposed to have a summer cottage around here. Come on.”

The air in the dim lane was heavy with the sweet smell of mountain laurel. Marsha
walked confidently into the darkness. “This way, Marge.—So far as flirting with Noel
Airman goes, he’s not for the likes of us, baby. He’s another Moss Hart or Cole Porter.
He’ll probably marry someone like Maggie Sullavan when he gets around to it.”

“He’s not Jewish, is he?”

“I don’t know. Probably.”

“But—‘Noel’—”

“Oh hell. I’ve known Jews named St. John.”

The lane turned and widened, and they walked out on a deserted open lawn, queerly
yellow-green under floodlights, like the grass of a stage setting. In the center of
the lawn a white concrete fountain lit by red, blue, and yellow spotlights cascaded
a foam of changing color. Rustic benches and summerhouses dotted the grass. Here and
there on the lawn were tall noble old oaks, ringed with whitewashed stones, in which
the floodlights hung. Beyond the lawn lay the lines of canoes, the red-and-green arc
of the swimming dock, and the black lake. “Good God,” murmured Marjorie, “it’s so
quiet.”

“Saturday afternoon this lawn is like Times Square.” Marsha struck across the grass
toward the social hall and Marjorie hurried at her side. “They’re all at the steak
roast now.”

“Where does everybody sleep? In those big buildings?” Instinctively she hushed her
voice. She felt a little as though she were treading on a village green in Nazi Germany.

“No, in cottages back up among the trees. The men over to the left, the girls behind
us. That large building with the glass front is the dining hall. Good food only on
weekends for the big rush of guests, otherwise garbage. The other is the administration
building where—”

A piercing whine filled the air. In unison all the oak trees croaked, “Bernice Flamm—long-distance
call in the office. Bernice Flamm.” Another whine, a click, and silence.

“Goddamn loudspeakers,” said Marsha. “They go all day and all night. Drive you crazy.”

“What separates the men and the girls? A fence or something?”

“Just foliage, dear, and upbringing,” Marsha said dryly. “They’re big boys and big
girls, you know.”

“Must make for some wild times—”

Marsha gripped her arm. “Oh, Christ. Just our luck. Greech. Coming out of the social
hall. Straight at us.”

Marjorie saw a little man in white knee pants descending the steps of the social hall.
Her legs became weak. “What do we do, turn and run?”

“Don’t be a jackass. Keep right on walking. Don’t look at him. Just walk. And for
God’s sake don’t look guilty.”

Marjorie became aware of her hands dangling at the ends of her arms, and suddenly
it seemed to her that there was no guiltless way to hold one’s hands. She slipped
them behind her back, each clutching an elbow. The figure in white knee pants drew
nearer, walking with an odd side-to-side motion, half swagger and half wobble. Marjorie
tried to avert her eyes; but like a child irresistibly drawn to peek at the monster
in a horror movie through spreading fingers, she kept glancing at Mr. Greech. He was
staring at the canoes as he walked, counting them, it seemed. In his left hand he
swung a flashlight as long as a club. Suddenly his head turned and he was looking
right at Marjorie. She thought she would faint. His eyes paused a moment, then flickered
to Marsha; his mouth drooped a little, and he walked past them without a word.

After a few seconds Marsha said, in a tone of forced gaiety, “Well, dear, see? The
bad dragon didn’t eat us.”

Her throat constricted, Marjorie said, “I thought you said he knows you.”

“He does, very well.”

“But he looked straight at you. Through you. He didn’t say hello. He didn’t say anything.”

“Sugar bun, do you talk to the dogs you pass?”

“He—you know, he
does
look like Satan? He really does. It’s amazing.”

“He would be offended if he heard you, dear. Satan looks like Max Greech.”

The high square doorway of the South Wind Music Hall was bordered in bronze with geometrical
patterns. Over the entrance was a flat bronze female nude with streaming hair, puffed
cheeks, and pursed lips. “Lady South Wind,” said Marsha, pointing. “The staff has
another name for her. Not fit for your innocent little ears.” She went up the steps,
pushed open the redwood door, and beckoned to Marjorie. “What’s the matter with you?
Come on.” Marjorie could not have said why she was hesitating. She ran up the steps
and through the door.

The lobby was decorated with posters of past shows—
South Wind Vanities, Wonderful Times, South Wind Moon, I’ll Be Seeing You, South Wind
Scandals
. She followed Marsha into a brightly lit auditorium where hundreds of yellow folding
chairs were racked around a bare dance floor. On the stage was a very fake-looking
setting of palm trees, with a red cardboard moon hanging in the background. Karen
Blair, wearing a jungle costume, was swaying her hips and her upraised arms as she
sang, in a sultry beguine rhythm,