Marjorie Morningstar (34 page)

“I beg your pardon?”

“ ‘We’ll chat some more about the Sigelmans.’ Just dripping with venom.”

“It was a small joke for your benefit. Sorry if it seemed anything else.”

She looked up at him. He pressed her waist slightly, his face in the habitual cast
of satiric good humor. “What are you looking at, Margie? You’ll get a crick in your
neck.”

“Trying to figure you out.”

“Oh, that dreary game. Well, the face is no help. Look, I’m not upset, or surprised,
or mad, or anything, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“I have a memory, you know,” Marjorie said. “I remember what you said about the mothers.
The frightful giveaways, the same face as the daughter twenty years later, with all
the beauty gone and just the horrible dullness left.”

“I like your mother.”

“Oh yes! The way you were bristling at her…”

“Well, that’s a reflex. The mouse and the cat. I haven’t been through that business
in eight or nine years, I’d almost forgotten how it went.”

“Mom’s being particularly left-footed tonight.”

“Now look, Marjorie, don’t start apologizing for your mother. She’s fine. In fact
she’s perfect. Had she been any different I’d have been disappointed. She has a Shakespearean
exactness and intensity of character. All is as it should be. I don’t know, I guess
I’m irresistibly drawn by the authentic. I like you both.”

“Oh fine. Lumping me with my mother. I’m really lost.”

“I love you,” Noel said in a different voice. She looked once quickly into his eyes
and stopped talking. They danced. After a while she saw her parents sitting on the
folding chairs, watching her. When the music ended Noel said, “You’d better make up
your mind what the script is, my darling, and then stick to it. Do you want to dance
with other guys, or sit with your folks, or what? Don’t get into knots, don’t worry
about my feelings, just do exactly what you want to do. Your folks are sitting over
there, right behind you, following all your moves.”

“I know where they are. I want to dance with you.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

“And the inquisition?”

“Let me handle that.”

The next number began. He took her in his arms. “All right, then.”

Shattering blasts of Mexican music brought her awake the next morning; she half started
out of the blankets and then fell back with a groan, glancing at her wristwatch and
covering her ears. The loudspeaker for the women’s area hung in a tree directly over
Marjorie’s bungalow. It was Fiesta Day. It was exactly eight o’clock. Mercilessly
the office had started the music on the dot.

Her temples were throbbing. In her irritation and tension last night she had drunk
several highballs after the ale. The fingers in her ears were of no avail whatever
in shutting out the
Mexican Hat Dance
raging and crashing overhead. The loudspeaker seemed to be inside her head, leaping
about with excess power. She staggered to the medicine chest and swallowed two aspirins,
noting unhappily that the air felt warm through her flimsy nightgown. A white bar
of light thrust through the trees and the screened window of the bathroom, hurting
her eyes. She moaned. Cavorting about the camp all day, in greasy brown makeup and
a heavy Mexican costume, promised to be hot nasty work, not suited to her state of
nerves.

She had invited her parents to come on the fiesta weekend, calculating that the excitement
and fuss would distract their attention from herself and Noel, especially since Samson-Aaron
had been recruited to play the toreador in the bullfight. The first Sunday in August
was Fiesta Day at South Wind, and the annual custom was to give the bullfighter role
to the fattest man in the camp. The Uncle had had no competition. The toreador’s costume,
outsize though it was, had had to be enlarged to fit him. He was the vastest of all
the toreadors, and—Noel had told Marjorie—with his natural bent for foolery he promised
to be the funniest.

She was wriggling into the green flouncy skirt of her costume when she remembered
that she had Greech’s permission to go rowing with her father before getting to work
as a señorita. “I’m losing my mind,” she muttered. She put on her bathing suit and
went to the bar for a cup of coffee, feeling no desire for breakfast. Workmen out
on the lawn were hammering bright decorations on the little booths for dispensing
tamales, enchiladas, and rum drinks, and over the noise of the hammers the loudspeakers
merrily blared a cascading rumba. The coffee and the aspirins lifted and soothed Marjorie’s
spirits. Seeing her father come out on the boat dock in a bathing suit and a sombrero
(sombreros were distributed free by the management on Fiesta Day), she finished her
second cup and hurried to meet him.

“Señor Morgenstern at your service, my dear,” the father said with a bow. The sombrero
was set on the back of his head, showing his gray hair.

“Buenos días, señor,” she said. “I’ve got to get to work in an hour, so let’s hurry.
How’s Mama?”

“Fine. She’s watching the Uncle rehearse the bullfight. Such foolishness—”

Marjorie had not been in a rowboat all summer. It moved over the water much more sluggishly
and heavily than a canoe. The brim of the sombrero flapped as Mr. Morgenstern pulled
at the oars. The sun was very hot, though it was not yet nine. She thought her father
must be uncomfortable in his one-piece bathing suit, a black baggy woolen garment
which accentuated the dead office white of his thin arms and legs. She wanted to suggest
that he roll the suit down to his waist, but an awkward shyness stopped her.

When they were well away from the shore he slid the dripping oars back into the boat
and pressed his hand over the middle of his chest. “Whew. Getting old. I used to love
rowing more than anything. We would come down from the Bronx every Sunday, your mother
and I, and row in Central Park. I would row for hours. It was before you were born.
I used to point at the big houses on Fifth Avenue and say, ‘See, that’s where we’ll
live some day.’ Listen, we came pretty close, after all—Central Park West.” He sighed
deeply and smiled at her in a defensive sad way. She was thinking how marked her father’s
accent really was. When she lived at home she was too used to it to take notice. “Twenty-three
years ago. Seems like a lifetime to you, doesn’t it, my darling? It goes by fast,
I warn you. I’ll tell you something strange, I’m not much different from what I was
then. I don’t feel like a different person. It’s just that the machine is wearing
out. Twenty-three years. Twenty-three years ago I was twenty-eight. Probably your
friend Noel’s age.”

The mention of Noel’s name gave her a little nervous throb. “He’s twenty-nine.”

“Hm. Of course I was an old married man, not a bachelor.”

She lit a cigarette and lounged sideways on the thwart, her back against one gunwale
and her legs dangling over the other, wondering tensely whether her father would dare
discuss Noel. He had never once talked about any of her romances with her; the subject
seemed to paralyze him with bashfulness. He was looking at her with his eyes crinkled
in a half-smile. “Did you put on a little weight? Or is it just the bathing suit?”

“It’s me. I’m getting big as a hippo. It’s horrible.”

“Don’t be foolish. You’re a beautiful girl. Except—well, girl isn’t the word any more,
Marjorie, you’re a woman. When did it happen? It seems to me like last year you were
running around the house calling your toy elephant a ‘helfanet.’ You probably don’t
even remember.”

Marjorie smiled. “You and Mom have talked about that ‘helfanet’ so often, I think
I do remember.”

Mr. Morgenstern shook his head and took off the sombrero. “The sun is good. A little
sun on my face won’t hurt me.”

“Dad, why don’t you take a vacation? You look so tired. And you’re so white.”

“That’s what your mother keeps saying. You’re both right.” He leaned forward, his
elbows on his knees, turning the sombrero slowly in his hands. Marjorie suddenly thought
of George Drobes and the brown hat. George seemed to be as remote in time as the “helfanet.”
The father said, “Tell you the truth, Margie, two, three days away from the business
I get terribly restless.”

“You should learn to delegate the responsibility, Dad. For your own sake you’ve got
to.”

He gave a mournful little laugh. “Well, it looks like Seth is too lazy to be a doctor
after all. Another seven years, he’ll be in the business, then I can take it easy.
What’s seven years?”

“Good Lord, Dad, in seven years I’ll be twenty-seven. An antique.”

“Well, you’ll see. It goes by before you can turn around. I hope by then you’ll have
a couple of children. The younger you have them the better. The more you have the
better. Marjorie, if I had breath before I died to tell you one thing, I’d say to
you, ‘Have children!’ ”

She laughed. “That’s because you have such nice ones.”

“No, because it’s the truth. Nothing else in life stands up, in the long run.”

“Well, then it’s all pointless, isn’t it? You raise children, so that
they
can raise children, who will
also
raise children—what is it all getting at?”

“Yes, yes, darling, I once said that too. When you have your first child, you’ll know.”

She said impatiently, “If what you say is so, then why can’t you explain it to me
right now? So far as I’m concerned, children would be a nuisance before I’m thirty.
By then I ought to be about ready to retire from the human race and become a breeding
machine.” (This was a phrase she had picked up from Noel—an apt one, she thought.)
“But before that, I want to have everything else in life worth having. Any moron can
have children. They all do, regularly as rabbits.”

“I see.” The father nodded slowly. He perched the sombrero on top of his head. He
made her feel obscurely ashamed, sitting there in the silly long black bathing suit
and the silly hat, with his sagging belly, thin limbs, and dull white skin. Only his
face was familiar. It was a little like coming on him in the bath. Her instinct was
to avert her eyes. “Tell me, Marjorie, what is it in life that’s so worth having?”

“All right, I’ll tell you. Fun is worth having. And love. And beauty. And travel.
And success—My God, there is so much worth having, Dad!” It felt very queer to be
talking to her father about herself in earnest, as though he were Noel Airman or Marsha
Zelenko. It was like blurting confidences to a new friend whom she wasn’t sure she
could trust. But she was enjoying it. “The finest foods are worth having, the finest
wines, the loveliest places, the best music, the best books, the best art. Amounting
to something. Being well known, being myself, being distinguished, being important,
using all my abilities, instead of becoming just one more of the millions of human
cows! Children, sure, when I’ve had my life and I’m not fit for anything else any
more. Oh, don’t misunderstand me, Dad.” Her tone softened as he seemed to flinch.
“I’m sure I’ll love them once I have them, and all my values will change, and I’ll
be content to settle down to nag my daughter to be a good girl and wash her ears and
not use the telephone so much, just like Mom. But Dad,
think
about it. Is that the best I can ever be? Look at me! I’m just beginning. Am I so
unfit for anything else? Must I turn into Mom overnight?”

“Your mother has been a pretty happy woman, I think,” said Mr. Morgenstern, clearing
his throat. “Despite all you think she missed. Talk to her.”

“Oh, Dad.
Me
talk to her? You know it’s hopeless.”

“She’s a smart woman. You may not like some of her ways, but—”

“Listen, I love her, Dad. But I can’t talk to her. I’ve never been able to, and I
never will be able to. We’re two cats in a sack, that’s all.”

“It’s too bad. There’s a lot she could tell you, a lot.” He pushed the hat back on
his head. “Should I row some more?”

“Why? It’s nice, just drifting.”

“How do you intend to get all these fine things, darling?”

“Acting. You know that.”

“It’s a very uncertain trade. Most theatre people starve.” He smiled. “A rich husband
is a better bet.”

“Maybe I’ll be one of the exceptional actresses. I can try.”

After a silence he said, “Well, it’s very interesting. We should talk to each other
like this more often.”

“Yes, we should, Dad.”

“I’ll tell you, Margie, most of those things you say are worth having, I don’t know
about. You have a better education than I did. Music, books, wine, art, all that—I’ll
tell you, I think if you’re happy they must be nice to have, but if you’re unhappy
they don’t help much. The main thing is happiness. Love, sure, I agree with you. But
love means children, just as I said.”

“Not necessarily, Dad, except for Catholics.” She was mischievously amused and also
a little sorry when he turned red.

“Yes, Marjorie, you know an awful lot, I realize that. I’m glad you’re so well educated.
Only when you’re really in love, you want them, that’s the point.”

“Well, there we don’t agree, Dad. There are different ways of being in love.”

He pushed the oars out through the locks and began to row slowly. He was looking at
his moving hands when he spoke again. “About travel, though, you have something there.
Once you have children you don’t travel. No.” He paused. “Strangely enough, your mother
and I were talking about that very thing last night. We couldn’t sleep. We—well, you
know, we were talking. We were saying that after all, going to Hunter, you’ve—well,
you’ve never been anywhere. And it being a free school, you’ve saved us maybe a thousand
dollars or so by not going out of town. So—well, the idea is, would you like to travel?
I think we could arrange it. We’re not that poor.”

He had turned the boat so that the white sun was directly in her eyes. She squinted
at him, shading her brow. “What’s all this? Would I like to travel? I’d give an arm
to travel.”

“Well, if you want to travel, why don’t you?” he said rapidly. “Take yourself six,
seven hundred dollars. Make a trip out West. California, Yellowstone Park, the Grand
Canyon. You’re old enough to travel by yourself. You’ll meet all kinds of interesting
people.”