Marjorie Morningstar (6 page)

“It’s not refined for girls to smoke cigarettes,” said the mother. “Married women,
maybe. Not girls. Get married first, then you can smoke your head off.”

“That’s right,” said George. “I think a cigarette makes a girl look hard.”

Mrs. Morgenstern said, “What are you talking about? Nothing could make Marjorie look
hard.”

“Well, I don’t think so either. But if anything could, cigarettes could.”

“Nothing could,” said the mother.

“George,” said Marjorie, “for heaven’s sake put down that hat.”

“I didn’t know I still had it,” said George, looking at the hat. It went on turning
in his hands. Marjorie snatched it and put it on a table beside her.

“Does your father ride horseback too?” Mrs. Morgenstern said to Sandy.

“Well, Dad’s more of a golf player, but when we started going to Arizona he took up
riding. Nothing much to do there but ride. He got pretty good at it. He usually does,
whatever he goes in for.”

“Your father keeps himself in shape. Smart man,” said Mr. Morgenstern, rolling his
cigar in his fingers.

“Beats me at everything, pretty near. Won’t play tennis with me because I can hold
my own at that. Dad doesn’t like to lose.”

“He sounds like a very fine person,” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “A big businessman, but
he finds time to play games with his son.”

Sandy looked a little less self-assured, almost sheepish. He pulled a cigarette out
of his shirt pocket and lit it with a flick of a yellow metal lighter. “Well, Dad
says he’s going to make a man of me if it kills him. He thinks I’m pretty hopeless.”

Mrs. Morgenstern laughed. “I’ll bet he doesn’t. He’s just toughening you up to step
into his shoes.”

“Well, I know. But I’d rather be a doctor, you see.”

George, who was sitting in a mournful slump, looked up with interest. “Are you premed?”

“Sort of. Not officially yet, so as to avoid family arguments, but I’m taking all
the courses.”

Mrs. Morgenstern said, “Well, to be a doctor is a fine thing. But to give up a million-dollar
business to study for seven years and then sit around in a dinky office for ten more
before you make a decent living—” She shrugged, and smiled. “You’ll think better of
it when the time comes.”

Sandy twisted his mouth. “You’re on Dad’s side. That’s exactly what he says.”

“I’m on your side,” said George. “I’m a bacteriologist, myself. I’d rather take blood
counts in a charity ward than run R. H. Macy’s.”

“That may be,” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “Wait till somebody asks you to run Macy’s.”

“I would have liked to be a doctor,” said Mr. Morgenstern.

“Every man you talk to wanted to be a doctor or a writer,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.
“It’s like a disease. And still half of the doctors are starving, and all of the writers.
And why? Because most people are healthy, and hardly anybody reads books. It’s that
simple. Business is what keeps the world going. And still nobody has a good word for
business.”

Marjorie said to Sandy with a laugh, “This is an old family fight. Dad wants my brother
Seth to be a doctor. Mom wants him to carry on the business.”

“And what does Seth want to do?” said Sandy.

“He has a fine ambition,” said the mother. “He wants to be the first man to fly to
the moon.”

Sandy burst out laughing. “I’m all for him.” He rose, and offered his hand to George.
“Got to go. Nice meeting you. Are you on a hospital staff?”

With a ghost of a grin, George said, “Regard me as a horrible example. I’ve succumbed.
I’m in my father’s business. But only temporarily, I hope.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Sandy.

“Take my word for it,” George said. “The pressures close in on you as you get older.”

“I guess they do,” Sandy said, more distantly.

“After all, George,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, “an auto supply store in the Bronx isn’t
Lamm’s.”

Marjorie said with a cutting edge in her voice, “The principle is exactly the same,
Mom.”

“Oh, the principle,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.

Marjorie limped with Sandy to the door, preventing her mother with a fierce look from
accompanying them.

“Thanks for lunch—that is, thank your mom for me,” said Sandy.

“Thank you for bringing me home,” said Marjorie, opening the door and ringing for
the elevator. “I hope Vera won’t be too angry with you.”

Sandy grinned. “She’s boiling, I’m sure.” He leaned against the door-post, fished
a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. He looked out of place in an apartment
hallway, almost like a cowhand, with his easy powerful gestures, his sunburn, the
faint horsy smell from his red shirt, and the slow clear male grin. He had even picked
up a trace of a drawl in Arizona, or maybe it was his own way of talking. If so it
was very odd in a Manhattan Jewish boy. This was Sandy at his most attractive. He
had seemed to dim out in the living room for a while, especially when he spoke of
his father.

She rang the bell again. “These elevators.”

“I’m in no hurry. You and I can have a nice little chat.”

“About what? Vera Cashman?”

He looked at her from under raised eyebrows. He reached out a long arm and mussed
her hair.

“Stop that,” she said, tossing her head.

“I like your friend George. Kind of old for you, though.”

“That’s how much you know.”

“Let me tell you something about riding a horse,” Sandy said. “You must never forget
one thing. You’re a person, and he’s a horse. That means you’re better than he is,
even though he seems to be four times as smart as you and eight times as big. Now
when it’s a question of—”

The elevator came jangling up the shaft. “Oh, dear,” said Marjorie. “And it was just
getting interesting.”

Sandy mussed her hair again. “You remind me of my kid sister.” He grinned and waved
to her from inside the elevator. “Have fun. Stay off that ankle. ’Bye.”

Marjorie returned to the living room. “When did he start to vomit?” Mr. Morgenstern
was saying to George. “After he went to bed?” The mother had left the room.

“No, right after he got home,” said George.

“Was the pain high up, or down low?”

“For heaven’s
sake
,” said Marjorie. “That ulcer again?”

“Well.” The father stood and walked out, saying, “Give my best to him, George. Tell
him to stay away from herring.”

“That Sandy seems to be a nice kid. Columbia?” said George. Marjorie nodded. “Is he
the one who took you to the dance?”

“Heavens, no. I went with a fat fool named Billy Ehrmann. He’s the one I went riding
with, too. But he just got all panicky when my foot began to hurt. So Sandy took charge
and brought me home. Sandy has a knockout of a girl. A rich Cornell blonde from Scarsdale.”

“He’d prefer you, if he were smart.”

“Everyone isn’t as smart as you.”

“How’s your ankle now?”

“I hardly notice it any more. Once the doctor got the boot off it was fine.”

“All the same,” George said, regarding the thick white lump of bandage, “I guess the
drive in the country is out, isn’t it? Too bad. I had plans.”

“Did you?”

“All kinds of plans.”

Marjorie felt a thrust of combative affection for him. “I don’t know why I can’t go,
George, if you really have plans. My ankle hardly hurts, really—”

George brightened. “Could you? I not only have plans, I’ve made a reservation, I’ve—”
He stopped short. “But it’s all got to be a surprise. Can you come?”

“I’ll ask Mama.”

The traffic crawled honking under a low orange sun between parallel green lines of
trees and gray lines of concrete. Dandelions choked the strips of lawn dividing the
auto lanes. Penelope was groaning and clanking over the top of a hill in second gear;
they were moving too slowly to travel in high. Far ahead on the winding Long Island
parkway Marjorie could see thousands of cars in two thick black streams, writhing
in a dirty blue haze of exhaust fumes.

George hit the horn, and Penelope uttered a jerky noise like the laugh of a sick old
man. “Dear, it doesn’t help to do that,” Marjorie said.

She shifted uncomfortably, crossing the bandaged ankle over the other leg. A loose
spring in the seat was pinching her. The decay of Penelope had much advanced in a
year. The green paint was cracking off in big patches of rust, the upholstery had
popped open in half a dozen places, and the glass in the windshield was held together
with surgical tape. Worst of all was the noise from underneath, a queer intermittent
rasping groan. George said it was a loose transmission, not worth fixing, and nothing
to worry about. But it worried Marjorie.

The whole excursion rather worried her. She was beginning to regret she had allowed
her mother’s objections to stampede her into going. With a ready-made excuse in the
injured ankle, she could easily have avoided this long drive on the first nice Sunday
in May, when the parkways were always horrible. But it was almost a matter of honor
to insist on doing anything that her mother opposed, the more so when George was concerned.
George himself was acting strangely. He was taking her to dinner at the Villa Marlene,
he said, the most expensive restaurant on Long Island. How could he afford it, she
wondered, and why was he doing it? He had evaded her questions with mysterious winks
and grins.

To take her mind from the jam, and her headache, and George’s queerness, and Penelope’s
noise, she suggested a game of Twenty Questions. They played for over an hour, until
the traffic thinned beyond Mineola and they began running with more speed through
a charming countryside of green rolling estates and brown potato farms. She beat him
four times, which irritated him and made her feel better. Twenty Questions had always
been their favorite pastime on long rides. At first George had always beaten her;
for a while they had played even; now he rarely won. Marjorie’s college education
was fresher than his, and he had no time to read. He said at last that he was bored
with the game, and they rode in silence. The cool fresh country air cleared Marjorie’s
headache, but her uneasiness deepened as they drove along in a splashing sunset and
then in blue twilight. She tried to get George to talk, but he wouldn’t; now and then
he reached over and fondled her knee and winked. She wasn’t pleased by the possessive
gesture but she didn’t know how to stop it. George had fondled her knee hundreds of
times in the past with her enthusiastic approval.

The first view of the famous restaurant was disappointing. Marjorie had expected floodlit
vistas of garden, avenues of trees, perhaps a pond with white swans. But it was just
a weathered gray wooden house with a faded gilt sign over the doorway, a patchy little
lawn, and a few overgrown trees and lilac bushes. The parking lot in the back was
full of Cadillacs and Chryslers; Penelope, chugging into a space between two sleek
convertibles and dying with a snort and a backfire, looked strikingly out of place.
A parking attendant hurried up. With a swift glance at the car, at George’s clothes,
and at Marjorie’s bandaged ankle, he said in a German accent, “Sorry, restaurant all
full.”

“Thanks,” said George, “we have a reservation. Let’s go, Marge.”

They walked around to the front and mounted the stairs. A big gray-headed man in a
tuxedo, with a handful of huge brown menus, opened the door under the gilt sign and
blocked their way. “Sorry, restaurant all full.”

“I have a reservation. Drobes is the name.”

The man glanced at a scribbled list in his hand. “Sorry, sair. No Traub on the list.”

“Not Traub. Drobes. This is ridiculous.” George raised his voice. “I made the reservation
at noon. For six o’clock.”

The headwaiter took another look at the list. “Mr. Traub, sair,” he said in a tone
of heartbroken reproach, “it is quarter past seven.”

“That’s too bad. We got caught in the parkway jam. We’ve been driving two and a half
hours, and now we’re here and we’re hungry.”

“You have to wait, Mr. Traub. Maybe long wait.”

“Okay, we’ll wait. Come on in, Marge.”

The headwaiter stepped back, shrugging, and showed George and Marjorie through a brightly
lit dining room full of cheerful chattering diners into a shadowy parlor that served
as a bar, furnished with dingy brown plush armchairs and sofas. Now that beer and
wine were legal, restaurants like the Villa Marlene were taking further liberties
with the expiring law. In one corner at the bar a group of college boys with shaven
heads were making drunken noises. There were about a dozen other couples in the bar,
some drinking, some just sitting. They were all very well dressed, and they all had
in common an expression of suffering hunger. “Let’s have a table as soon as possible,
we’re famished,” said George.

“Sunday night bad, Mr. Traub. Do my best, sair,” said the headwaiter, addressing George
with the back of his head. He bolted away to greet some newcomers at the door, dropping
two of the menus as though by mistake on the arm of George’s chair.

After much hand-waving and finger-snapping George caught the attention of a waiter
in a red mess jacket hovering by the college boys. The waiter came, flourishing his
pad; stared at Marjorie’s slippered foot, peered down his nose at George, and said,
“What you want, sair?”

“One rye and ginger ale and one Coca-Cola.”

The waiter looked revolted, made a note, and walked back to his post by the college
boys, where he stood unmoving for perhaps fifteen minutes. George began to fidget.
Then he began to wave his hands and snap his fingers. The college boys meanwhile were
boisterously ordering another round of drinks. The waiter bowed, smiled, scribbled,
and came hurrying past George, who reached out and jabbed him in the side. The waiter
halted, looking down at George as though he had meowed.

“How the hell about those drinks?” said George.

“Coming right up, sair.”

“Why do we have to wait a quarter of an hour for them?”

“Sunday night is bad, sair.”