Marjorie Morningstar (25 page)

His family, already seated in the box, looked Marjorie over very critically. One glance
at the dresses of the mother and sister told Marjorie that the Wronkens were well-to-do.
“I feel very odd,” Marjorie said to the mother and father. “I told Wally he ought
to give this great honor to a girl who knew him better—”

“I don’t see how he could have picked a prettier partner,” the father said.

Mrs. Wronken merely smiled.

Marjorie was a little surprised by some of the wit in the show. The actors were ungainly
and smirking, and she was not amused by the knobby knees and hairy legs of the dancing
chorus, which constituted the main charm of the evening for the audience. She had
seen too many Varsity Shows. But the songs rhymed well, and there were excellent jokes
sprinkled in the book, an otherwise foolish business about dictators, Greek gods,
and Hollywood. From time to time she glanced at Wally beside her, his face a dim white
triangle in the shadows of the box, his glasses glittering toward the stage, and wondered
where he buried the sense and sophistication these lines showed.

When the lights went up at the end of the first act Mrs. Wronken, her eyes agleam,
took her son’s hand. “It’s brilliant, brilliant, Wally. Where did you ever learn to
write like that?”

“Pretty off-color, some of that humor, son,” said his father.

Marjorie said, “Really, Wally, it’s awfully good—”

A fat young man in a tuxedo came through the curtains of the box. “Well, Wally, it’s
going great, don’t you think?” It took Marjorie a moment to realize that this was
Billy Ehrmann. She had stopped making dates with him, as with the other West Side
boys, in her preoccupation with Marsha. He was heavier, especially in the face, and
looked much older.

Wally said, “I think it’s coming off all right.” He introduced Ehrmann to his family
as the manager of the show. “Billy, I guess you know Marjorie Morgenstern—”

Billy turned. “For crying out loud!
Marge!
”

“Hello, Billy—”

“Say, you look
marvelous
. Gosh, it’s been a year, hasn’t it? Why, if I’d dreamed you felt like seeing this
show, why, I—” He became aware of his babbling tone and looked around sheepishly.
“Margie and I are old friends—Say, Wally, I didn’t mean to crash your party, the thing
is my brother Saul came after all. He doesn’t want to just barge in on your box, but
if you feel like—”

Wally was on his feet, seizing Marjorie’s hand. “He did come? Let’s go, Marge. I’ve
got to hear what he thinks.”

Half dragged, Marjorie followed him out of the box. Leaning against the wall in the
corridor, hugging his elbow and smoking a cigarette, was Noel Airman. Marjorie actually
staggered; she had to hang on to Wally’s arm. There wasn’t the slightest doubt that
it was Airman. In a rather worn greenish tweed suit and a tan sweater, pale and a
little tired, he appeared among the chattering pimply collegians in tuxedos like an
eagle among sparrows. “Wally, it’s good to see you. Congratulations.” He held out
his hand and came forward with the charming smile that Marjorie had been seeing for
months in her visions. “You’re not a college boy after tonight. Welcome to the ranks
of unemployed writers.”

Wally said, “It’s all a lot of kid stuff, isn’t it, Noel?”

“Wally, this is your first piece. Nobody’s looking for
Of Thee I Sing
. It’s all right, and you’re going to be all right.” His look wandered to Marjorie,
and rested on her without recognition. Marjorie could not imagine what was keeping
her from fainting. She was quite numb, quite stunned.

“This is Margie Morgenstern, Noel,” Wally said. “Don’t you remember her? She came
over from the kids’ camp with Marsha one night—”

Noel’s face livened. “Why, sure. The girl in the purple dress. The dramatic counselor.
Hello.”

“Hello.”

“How’s Marsha? Haven’t seen her in a long while.”

“Neither have I.” He didn’t seem quite so fantastically tall, she was thinking, when
she wore high heels.

Billy Ehrmann said, “Saul, I told you about Marjorie long ago.”

Noel turned and smiled at him. “What, Billy, is this
Marjorie
?”

“That’s Marjorie,” said Billy with a sad shrug.

“Well. I see. I can hardly blame you.”

Marjorie blurted, unable to help herself, “Is your name Saul, or Noel? Or am I being
very stupid?”

“Surely Billy told you about his black-sheep brother, one time or another?” Noel said
with a laugh. “He told me all about you, God knows.”

Marjorie recalled now, as one recalls pieces of an old dream, that Billy when drunk
had once spoken of an older brother who had flunked out of law school, changed his
name, and become a writer. He was saying to Wally, “That patter song of Mars and Aphrodite
is funny, Wally. Let’s use it in the Decoration Day show.”

Wally beamed. “Really? Is it that good? Say, you’ll stay around for the second act,
won’t you, Noel? There’s another pretty good number next to closing.”

“Wouldn’t miss it, Wally. See you later.”

Marjorie could not have recounted afterward a single detail of the second act of Wally’s
musical comedy. She sat in the dark box, digesting in a daze the startling news that
Noel Airman was Saul Ehrmann, Billy Ehrmann’s rascally older brother. She concentrated
on trying to recall exactly what Billy had said about his brother, but she could dredge
up few additional facts from her memory. He had talked about him only once, in a conversation
on the sofa of the fraternity house, at the weary end of a Thanksgiving dance two
years ago. She had been arguing with him about popular songs, and to bolster his authority
he had drunkenly declared that he knew more than she because he had a brother in the
business. He had then poured out an incoherent tale of a brilliant scapegrace who
had deliberately failed at school, revelled around Europe for years, and drifted at
last into Tin Pan Alley. She remembered that another time when she asked Billy to
tell her more about his brother he became ill at ease and changed the subject.

She was struggling with the impression that there was something odd in Airman’s appearance
tonight, something abnormal, which she had not noticed at South Wind. He was as handsome
as ever; and in city clothes he looked, if anything, more elegant than he had at the
camp. What was wrong? She began scrutinizing the audience, and saw him sitting on
the far side of the ballroom, slouched low in his seat, his arms folded, watching
the play with his head aslant. From then on she mainly watched him.

After the show the ballroom floor was cleared for dancing. Noel was waiting at the
foot of the mezzanine stairs, topcoat over his arm, to congratulate Wally. In a moment,
giddily, she found herself in his arms, dancing; for Wally took his mother out on
the floor, and Noel at once tossed his coat on a chair and held out his hand to Marjorie.

They danced in silence for a while. Marjorie lacked the strength to utter a word.
She had danced with a great many young men, but never before had she felt so weightless,
so skimming. He was, as Marsha had said, a perfect dancer. After a while Airman said,
“You’ve been rather hard on my brother Billy, haven’t you?”

“Why, not at all.”

“He was shattered last year. And he’s all shaky again tonight, just from seeing you.
He says so.”

“Oh, he just likes to talk that way,” she said. “I’m very fond of Billy.”

Noel leaned away and looked down at her. “Fond, eh? Sounds fatal.”

“Well, I’m not picking and choosing words. You know what I mean.” The blood was tingling
in her face.

“I certainly do. If you’d said that you hated him, that he was a swine, a cad, I’d
advise him to persevere. But if you’re really fond of him—”

“Don’t tell him to persevere, please.” After another silence she said, “How did you
like Wally’s show?”

“Very inventive and gay.”

“Marsha used to play and sing your South Wind numbers all the time. I loved them.
Wally’s a long way from writing things like that.”

He cocked his head at her wryly. “I’m a little older, you know.”

“Are you going back to South Wind this summer?”

“It looks that way.”

“I guess you’ll be my boss, then. I’ve got a job on the social staff.”

“Have you now?” He held her away from him, and his look was detached and amused. “That’s
fine. Going to be one of Greech’s office slaves?”

“Also do a little acting, I hope. It seems like a perfect place to learn.”

“You can learn a lot at South Wind. I’m not sure about learning to act, but—Well,
Wally must be in heaven, eh? He went over to your camp half a dozen times last summer
to try to see you, and always got thrown out.”

“I never knew that.”

“I suppose he’s too shy to tell you.” He held her close again and they danced. There
was nothing in his dancing but easy politeness. The music was ending, and sadness
came flowing over her. What a botch it was turning out! He classed her as a girl for
Wally or Billy. The way he held her, the way he talked to her, told her that. Nothing,
nothing she could decently say or do would change it.

Wally was waiting for them at the ballroom door beside the chair where Noel’s coat
lay. As Noel bowed, his arms at his sides, saying goodbye, Marjorie suddenly saw what
it was that had seemed odd to her before. It was his left arm, the one he usually
held bent, hugging the elbow. When it hung straight down it appeared a little shorter
than the other arm; and unless she was mistaken, it was a little crooked.

Billy Ehrmann telephoned her a few evenings later, saying plaintively, “As long as
you seem to be in circulation again, I thought I’d try my luck.”

When he came he looked around at the elaborate furnishings from the El Dorado, crammed
and jumbled in the new apartment, and said politely that it was a very nice place.
He made her more self-conscious about her family’s comedown than she had ever been
before. “Don’t take off your coat,” she said. “We’ll go somewhere. Maybe Old Casablanca.”

Billy protested, begging her to let him take her to the Stork Club. But she felt guilty
about going out with him, and was quieting her conscience by suggesting the cheapest
place she knew, so to Old Casablanca they went. It was a decayed restaurant on Broadway,
only a couple of blocks from her home, where three shabby musicians ground out gloomy
music every night for collegians short of funds. The walls, irregular and jagged plaster
simulating a grotto, were painted dead blue, and the lights were blue. The dance floor
was full of skinny boys in threadbare jackets and dirty white shoes, clutching dowdy
girls with sagging hemlines, all shuffling and swaying in the sepulchral light. Marjorie
and Billy chatted over beer and rubbery hamburgers, and she casually mentioned that
she was going to spend the summer at South Wind.

“South Wind? My brother Saul’s the social director there!”

Marjorie nodded. “I knew Noel Airman was. I didn’t know he was your brother Saul until
the other night.”

Billy smiled crookedly, grunted, and tossed his head to one side. In that fugitive
moment Marjorie saw the brotherly resemblance. “Noel Airman. Great name, isn’t it?”
He began to play with the ketchup bottle.

“You hardly ever mentioned him.”

“He’s kind of a sore point in the family, Marge, with one thing and another.”

“What’s the matter with his arm?”

“Oh, you noticed that? He covers it pretty well. It’s a thing they call Erb’s palsy.
He’s had it from birth. Comes from a forceps delivery. Lots of people have it. You’ve
seen ’em with arms all short and bent. Well, Saul’s wasn’t too bad, and he exercised
like a fiend and got it corrected more or less. That’s another thing he blames on
my father. Claims Dad got in this doctor who was no good just because he was an old
school pal—”

“He and your father don’t get along?”

“Well, you know, Dad being a judge and all, he wanted Saul to study law. Saul wanted
to be a philosophy teacher, or so he says now, but I think he wanted to be anything
but a lawyer just to spite Dad—Well, the hell with Noel Airman, do you mind? Take
an old friend’s advice and just steer clear of him this summer, that’s all.”

“Have no fear.”

“Look, I’ll say this for Saul, it’s not that he’s bum or anything. If women fell down
right and left wherever I walked I’d take advantage of it the same way, I’m sure—Come
on, there’s a rumba, let’s dance.”

Billy telephoned her two or three times after that. She was as pleasant as possible,
but she had a legitimate excuse in the Vagabond rehearsals, and he soon became discouraged.

It was different with Walter Wronken; he was persistent and disarming. “Look,” he
said once over the telephone, “let us assume I’m too young for you, and too funny-looking.
It doesn’t follow that you should cut me off. We’re still interested in the same things,
and I’m not disgusting company. You can’t imagine what capital you’re accumulating
in heaven by seeing me occasionally. You’re keeping me alive. You’d give a pint of
blood to me if I were dying, wouldn’t you?”

And she would laugh at such extravagance and agree to see him. For a while he could
banter only over the telephone, and would dry up in her presence; but he became a
little freer after spending several evenings with her. Once he embarrassed her by
coming uninvited to a Vagabond rehearsal; he might have been the son of the director,
so young did he look in that group. She scolded him, but allowed him to come out for
coffee with her afterward, and she was struck by the shrewdness of his comments, especially
on her own playing. He completely grasped what she was trying to do with her part.

“You have lots of sense—about some things,” she said, raising her voice over the clatter
of cutlery. They were in an Automat. She had insisted on paying for her own coffee,
and there was a little soreness between them.

“I’m brilliant.” He bit a doughnut in half as though he were angry at it.