Marjorie Morningstar (22 page)

It’s much more popular than

Nevertheless it’s not as good. It’s doggerel, honey, not light verse, you see. Most
popular songs are doggerel—vulgar or stupid or pleasant or ingenious, as the case
may be. Porter writes light verse.”

“What would you call
Moon Madness
?” the dancer said.

“Why doggerel, of course, trash of the worst sort. But please remember I wrote it
in about three minutes when you and Bert showed up with that jungle dance. I can do
slightly better.”

He slouched very low in his chair, with one arm hung over the back, making his points
with short graceful gestures of a lean hand. He spoke with conviction, yet with a
gentlemanly lightness, almost a negligence, as though to cancel any tone of dogmatism
or intentional smartness in his words. His pronunciation was free of New York tones.
If anything, it had a slight British fall of pitch and slur of
r
’s, but it seemed entirely unaffected.

The dancer said, “What exactly is the difference between light verse and doggerel?”

“The difference between a real apple and a wax one,” said Airman. “Or the difference
between art and craft, if you will, or the difference between an actress playing Juliet
on stage and yanking her girdle off in the dressing room. I’m being very fuzzy, I
know. When a man spouts metaphors it’s usually because he’s having trouble with plain
English.—Listen.” He sauntered to the piano. “Wally, stop abusing that instrument
and let me at it.”

The boy slid off the stool without a word and shambled to the table, hands in pockets.
Airman played
Love for Sale
. Then he went over it again line by line, pointing out the values of vowels and consonants
at each turn of the song, showing the structure of the imagery, underlining the irony
of the phrases. After that he began to play the most popular song of the time, a jigging
ballad about a brokenhearted lover. He seemed to render it with all seriousness, yet
soon everybody around the table was laughing. He emphasized the wrongly placed vowels,
the cheap words, the grammatical errors, with faint elegance, and the contrast was
killingly funny.

Marjorie laughed louder than anyone. She was transported with pleasure at her own
acuteness in understanding Airman. She felt she had come into the circle of wit and
charm in the world that she had always dreamed of. Airman was a fantastic being in
her eyes. She found it hard to believe that she was sitting in the same room with
this man, breathing the same air. She perfectly understood why women were as insane
about him as Marsha said. She had no thought of flirting with him, of ever being any
more to him than a blurry adolescent visitor. She would as soon have thought of flirting
with a cardinal.

Wally got out of his chair and dropped into the one beside Marjorie. “Care to dance,
Miss Morgenstern?”

“Well—a little later, do you mind? I love the way he plays.”

“Sure,” said the boy with deep gloom. “Plays like a streak, doesn’t he? I’m taking
lessons.”

“You’ll get there, I’m sure. Say, have you seen Marsha and Carlos Ringel? Know where
they are?”

“Gosh, no.” Wally hugged his elbow in a ludicrous unconscious caricature of Airman’s
gesture. He held his head a little to one side like Airman too, but with an entirely
different, ungainly effect, because his head was big and his shoulders narrow. “Maybe
they’re dancing. If we took a turn on the dance floor we’d see—”

“All right,” Marjorie said with a weary sigh.

“Do you go to Columbia?” she said when they were shuffling among the tanned brightly
dressed couples. Marsha was not in sight.

“Yes,” he said, surprised. “How—”

“You dance that way.” She did not add that his dancing was a stumbling parody of Sandy
Goldstone’s style.

Airman was no longer at the piano when they came back to the bar. Two guests, a man
and a woman, were on the piano bench together, playing
Chopsticks
. “Looks like everybody’s taken off,” said Wally. “Care for a drink?”

Marjorie’s watch read quarter past one. “Well—I guess I’d better, till Marsha shows
up. Thanks.”

They sat at a table by a window. The floodlights were off; the night looked very black;
the moon was gone. She noticed that the glass was smeary. “Lord, is it raining?”

“Sure looks it.”

At a quarter to two she was sleepy, angry, and full of loathsome suspicion of Marsha.
Wally’s answers to her questions were growing feeble. “Another beer?” he said, in
a lull of their makeshift talk about Broadway shows.

“No, no, thanks. Look, could you show me the way to Karen Blair’s cottage?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s go.” She was out of the chair and slipping through the door before the boy
stood. Wet grass brushed her ankles, soaking her stockings. The air was full of an
unpleasant drizzle, blown slanting by a strong wind.

Wally said in the darkness at her elbow, “You need a raincoat.”

“No, don’t bother.” But he led her around through the foyer to the gloomy empty auditorium,
ran up into the stage, and returned in a moment with a yellow slicker. They walked
out into the drizzling night, and her feet made slushing noises in her shoes. “I don’t
envy you the canoe trip back,” Wally said. He stopped when they came to the trees.
“You go about fifty feet and turn sharp left—”

“Well, come along.”

“I—well, I’d better not. It’s the girls’ side, they walk around with nothing on in
those cottages.”

Marjorie smiled and held out her hand. “Thanks for being so helpful.”

“Helpful? I—” He seemed to choke. “Suppose you don’t find Marsha? Would you like me
to take you back in a canoe? I’ll be glad to.”

“But Marsha’s bound to show up.”

He lit a cigarette with an odd furtive gesture, hunching over the flame to protect
it from the drizzle. “Well, listen, you’re going to change, aren’t you? I’ll wait
here. If Marsha hasn’t come by the time you’re ready I’ll take you back.”

“You’ll get soaked—”

“I am soaked. It’s warm. It’s very pleasant. Go ahead.”

The singers’ cottage was empty. To put on the orange and green uniform again gave
Marjorie a turn of disgust, but she did so quickly. She was closing her bag when Marsha
came in, streaming rain, her hair in streaks, a man’s tan raincoat over her shoulders.
“Well, well, beat me back, hey? I looked for you in the bar.”

Marjorie busied herself over the clasps of the bag. She knew, though, that Marsha
was standing still and staring at her. After a moment the fat girl threw off the coat,
stretched and yawned. “Well, time to go back to Devil’s Island. This is the part I
hate. Seems it rains half the time when I’m going back.—But it’s worth it, don’t you
think?”

Marjorie swung her bag to the floor and walked to the doorway. “I’ll be back in a
moment.”

“Where are you going?” Marsha stepped out of her skirt.

“Oh, not far. Wally Wronken is waiting in the rain to paddle me across the lake in
a canoe. He wasn’t sure you’d show up at all.”

Marsha laughed lightly. “So, you wound up with Wally. Sugar bun, really, you can do
better than that. Almost at random. Poor little Wally.”

“What’s wrong with Wally?”

“Oh, really, pet. That sad imitation of Noel he does, like a monkey with glasses.
And he’s just a little young, don’t you think?”

“It’s sometimes an advantage to have a young date. They expect less.” She opened the
door.

Marsha strode at her. “Just a minute, dear. In a bit of a temper, aren’t you?” Her
tan flesh bulged like dough around the tight edges of her pink brassiere and girdle
and over the tops of her stockings.

Marjorie said, “Am I supposed to ignore the fact that you vanished for hours?”

“Look, pet, I owe you no accounting for my time and you owe me none for yours. I don’t
know what you’ve been doing with little Wally. I couldn’t care less. I brought you
here to have yourself some fun. What you did with your time is no—”

“You and I were supposed to be here together—I thought.”

“I didn’t undertake to wet-nurse you through the evening, girl. Or believe me, I wouldn’t
have asked you to come.”

How ugly this fat girl was in her straining underwear, with her lip lifted in the
strange mirthless grin, Marjorie thought. “Where have you been, Marsha?”

“Are you sure you’d like to know?”

Marjorie felt a little panicky at the shiny staring look of Marsha. “I daresay I wouldn’t—let’s
go back to camp.”

She turned toward the door, when Marsha’s hand grasped her elbow and spun her around.
“No, just you wait a bit, sugar bun.” The fat girl was grinning openly. “What you’re
apparently thinking is that I’ve been in bed with Carlos all this time.”

“Look, Marsha, I don’t want to—”

“Sweetie, when you grow up just a bit you’ll learn that it doesn’t take hours. I’ve
been in bed with Carlos, all right, but just for the last half hour or so. Fun, too.
Do you mind so terribly much?” She stared at Marjorie’s blank face impudently, yet
there was something sad, something wistful in her expression. “The rest of the time
we were at a drunken brawl in one of the staff bunks. I knew it would offend your
tender sensibilities, that’s why I didn’t drag you along. Is it all clear now?—No
comment? Well, dear, I’ll tell you one thing more and we’ll consider the subject closed.
His wife is a monster, see, a psychotic white-haired hag. He’d marry me in a second
if his wife would die or get a brainstorm and let him go. I cried myself to sleep
for months on end because the hag wouldn’t divorce him. And now, d’you want to know
something, I’m beginning to be glad. Carlos is all right, but I’m not at all sure
I want to marry him.”

Marjorie could hardly look at the other girl. The conversation was weirdly dreamlike—Marsha
in her underwear in the bright light in the strange room, rain clattering on the roof,
herself in Klabber’s green bloomers and orange blouse, her eyes smarting for sleep,
her whole body trembling. “Marsha,” she said with difficulty, “I’m not sophisticated,
I know, but it’s wrong, isn’t it? I mean, he’s a married man, and—”

Marsha uttered a foul obscenity. Then she laughed in a surprisingly good-humored way.
“Oh Lord, now you will think I’m depraved.” She dropped on to a bed, and her look
was quite friendly. “I’ve been
so
careful with my language around you, too, haven’t I, now? Honey, all I can tell you
is, you’ve got so much to learn that I pity you. Really, your folks have given you
a terrible upbringing. You seem to live in some pink-and-white dreamworld where all
the men are Galahads and all the girls are lily maids of Astolat except they eat kosher
food. Margie, you’re an infant. The world is all like South Wind, just a lot of eating,
maneuvering, guzzling, and fornicating, and everybody is like me and Carlos, loused
up, grabbing what fun we can. Nothing matters as much as it seems to, sugar bun, believe
me—nothing shakes the world, it just goes on and on in the old ways.”

There was a heavy rush of rain on the roof. Marjorie said, “Wally’ll drown. I have
to go chase him off—”

“Sure, do that. Carlos is waiting for us in the boathouse.” She added as Marjorie
opened the door, “I hated to shock you, baby, but really, it had to come sooner or
later, and I think it’ll do you good.” She had wriggled swiftly into the camp costume.
She stood now under the electric bulb in her baggy blouse and bloomers, her arms akimbo,
a forlorn puckish smile on her face.

She looked like an overgrown schoolgirl, Marjorie thought. It was impossible to connect
her with the grand conception of adultery. Marjorie’s irritation melted in an impulse
of pity. She said, “I’m shocked, yes. It’s all new to me. And he’s—he’s old, Marsha,
you know. But it’s none of my business, and—come on, aren’t you about ready? I’ll
wait.”

They arrived back at Tamarack soaking wet, and nauseous from the tossing of the wind-whipped
water. Marjorie climbed the hill to her cabin with lead-heavy limbs, dried herself,
fell into bed, and slept till noon. The sun blazing in her face woke her. She sat
up, blinked at the light, and peered out of the window; and she saw, on the far shore
of the azure lake, the lawns and towers of South Wind, green and golden in the sunshine.

Maxwell Greech sat in his New York office on a gloomy afternoon of the following March,
going through his accumulated mail, mostly bills. Scrawled on his calendar of appointments
were two names:

Though a noisy steam radiator kept the narrow room roasting hot, his neck was wrapped
in a worn brown muffler. Outside the rattling window snow whirled, seagulls screeched,
and steamships slipped past the Statue of Liberty with melancholy howls. Greech had
leased this office in a tall old building overlooking New York Bay in his early years
as a lawyer. He had drifted into the managing of South Wind as a result of the bankruptcy
of its first owners; now he had all but abandoned the law, and the camp was his career,
his passion, his life. Everybody at South Wind hated him, but he loved South Wind.

Bored by the mail, he glanced at his calendar for the afternoon, and grunted with
glum pleasure. Greech had encountered some tough opponents during the morning—a wholesale
butcher, a delegate from the waiters’ union, the mortgage manager of a bank—and he
looked forward to the relaxation of breaking a couple of butterflies. He flipped a
switch on his desk. “Anybody out there yet?”

The speaker answered tinnily, “Wally Wronken just came, sir.”

“Send him in.”

In a blue overcoat flecked with melting snow, clutching a pigskin briefcase, Wally
looked older than he had in the summer; but not old enough, Greech decided at a glance,
to give any trouble. The boy said he wanted to be a writer this year, not a mere stagehand.
Eagerly he pulled his new credentials from the briefcase. There was a clipping from
the Columbia
Spectator
: