Marjorie Morningstar (67 page)

Marsha’s voice, jovial and muffled, called out, “Is that the divine Morningstar? Be
with you in thirty seconds.”

The father came in from the kitchen, scratching his thick white hair. “Who bought
all that other delicatessen in the kitchen, and why? We have enough to feed an army.”

“I did,” said the little gray uncle.

The father said, “Oh, hello. I didn’t know you were coming too.”

“It’s all a mix-up, it doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Zelenko said, still holding Marjorie’s
two hands and beaming. “Darling, I know you girls are going out for lunch, but do
come back and talk to us old folks afterward, won’t you? I’m dying to hear all about
your theatre career—”

“I can dispose of that in about two seconds, Mrs. Zelenko. It’s non-existent.”

“I don’t believe it. All beginnings are hard, but if I ever had confidence in the
future of anybody—”

Marsha came into the room, shoulders up, mincing like a model. Marjorie was truly
astonished to see this slim tanned woman in a Persian lamb jacket, striking black
Paris dress, and killingly stylish tiny hat and veil. Only the wide smile and eager
eyes were Marsha’s. “Well! My long-lost darling!” She threw her arms around Marjorie,
giving off fumes of costly perfume, then stood back and surveyed Marjorie in a swift
shiny-eyed glance. “You louse, why do I bother? No girl who values her ego should
ever be seen with you.” She had quite the largest diamond on her left hand that Marjorie
had ever seen.

“Don’t say that, Marsha, I think you look grand,” said the uncle.

Mr. Zelenko said, “Why are you going out to lunch, anyway? We have enough food, more
than enough—”

“Delicatessen, all this family knows is delicatessen,” Marsha said. “If I ever nurse
a baby, I’ll probably give it mustard out of one breast and beer out of the other.
No, thanks.”

“Don’t be so funny,” said the mother, with a glance at the uncle. “I didn’t have time
to cook this morning and you know why, Miss Lazy-bones—”

The man in the chair laughed and said, “I bought a lot of fish and cheese, Marsha.
There’s a fine smoked whitefish—”

“Oh, never mind, Lou, the girls want to gab about you, naturally,” Mrs. Zelenko said.
“Let them go.”

“How about introducing me to Marjorie, Marsh? I’ve heard so much about her,” the man
said, getting out of the chair. He wore a creased gray suit and was slightly shorter
than Marsha.

Marsha glanced from one parent to another. “What? Didn’t either of you two nitwits
think of
introducing
Lou and Marge, for Christ’s sake? Marjorie, this is my fiancé—Lou Michaelson.”

The little man held out his hand. He had a friendly sweet smile that was almost boyish,
despite the worn face and the curly gray hair. His small teeth were widely separated
and he had two gold caps in front. “Hello, Marjorie. This is a real pleasure after
everything Marsha’s told me. You’re just as pretty as she said. Naturally I’m prejudiced,
so I can’t agree you outshine her.”

Marjorie was too surprised to say anything. She mechanically shook hands.

“Imagine that. You just let Lou
sit
there,” Marsha said.

Mr. Zelenko said, “I was in the kitchen, trying to sort out the food. There’s at least
forty bagels—”

Lou Michaelson said, “Marsha told me there wasn’t anything in the house to eat. I
just thought I’d surprise you, and bring some lunch—”

Marsha said, “Oh, what’s the difference, for crying out loud? We’re off.” She threw
an arm around Mr. Michaelson, kissed his ear, and rubbed off the lipstick. “Meet me
at five at the Plaza for a drink?”

“This is the day I play handball with Milt, dear.”

“When don’t you play handball with Milt? I think you’re trying to cure me of the cocktail
habit, my friend.” Her tone was affectionate and bantering. She said to Marjorie,
“These health fiends.”

“Well, I can call it off today,” Mr. Michaelson said slowly. (He said everything slowly.)
“It’s only Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Except it does me a lot of good, you
know, Marsh.”

“Bless you, sure it does. You just trot on up to your little old Y, and beat Milt
to pieces. Meet me at the Pierre six-thirty.”

“It’s a date, Marsh.”

When the two girls came out to the bright sunny street, Marsha no longer appeared
so transformed. The heavy features of the face were the same, after all, though Marsha
had quite starved away the pudginess. So Marjorie thought, as the girls blinked and
smiled at each other in the first shock of sunlight.

“Game to walk, or do we take a cab?” Marsha said. “It’s such a marvelous day.”

“Walk, by all means.”

Marsha slipped an arm through hers. They went down the narrow street, holding their
hats in the gusty breeze. “It’s delicious to see you,” Marsha said, her voice lower
than it had been in the apartment, and less brassy. Marjorie pressed her arm. They
passed the gray stone walls of Central Park West and went into the park. Marsha held
up her head, sniffed the air, and sighed. “What is it about this park in March? It’s
dead, but you can always hear the horns of spring, can’t you? Look at that baby-blue
sky. I could cry.”

“Why should you cry, of all people?” Marjorie said. “You’ve got the world by the tail.
I’m awfully happy for you.”

Marsha said, laughing, “Just my luck, you know, that you’d practically trip over Lou
in my living room. I was going to tease you. Tell you he was six feet tall and looked
like Clark Gable and owned a yacht and so forth. Not but what there isn’t plenty to
brag about in Lou, but still—you know, now that you’ve seen him, it’s like you’d peeked
at the end of a mystery story. Quiet-looking, isn’t he? He’s spent a lifetime being
self-effacing, but he’s really clever, in his special way, and he’s a thoroughly wonderful
guy.” She glanced at Marjorie walking silent beside her, and her grin became a bit
wistful. “What did you think of Lou, really, Margie? Did you get any impression of
him?”

“Fiancés are all alike to outsiders, aren’t they, Marsha? I only saw him for a moment.
He seems like a very swell guy, and entirely glassy-eyed over you, which is the main
thing.”

“You’re a pretty swell guy, too,” Marsha said. Their high heels went clickety-click-click
on the stone walk, raising little sharp echoes. The water-stained benches were empty.
Nobody was in sight but a park attendant with a burlap bag, spearing old newspapers
on the muddy brown lawn. “Lou takes some knowing. He’s incredibly smart about some
things, and incredibly naïve about others. It’s really been a revelation to me that
such people exist. Not only exist, but flourish. The main thing is, as you say, he’s
a hell of a sweet person. And he certainly does think I’m the cat’s pajamas. But imagine
me hooked to a handball fiend! D’you know, when I first met him he’d just come from
playing handball? This grizzled character, hairy-chested, all rivers of sweat, and
grinning from ear to ear. He’d just beaten a twenty-one-year-old kid, a bruiser, six
feet tall. He plays with this partner of his, this Milt Schwartz, three times a week
at the Y on Ninety-second Street. What’s more, he wins as often as he loses. He’s
fifty-two, and Milt’s twenty-nine, and Milt was on the handball team at CCNY.”

“Amazing,” Marjorie said. “Did you meet Lou at the Y?”

“No, no, in Florida. At this hotel where my folks were staying. I’ve only known him
a month. This has been a real abduction on a white horse, kid. I’m still slightly
dizzy. I must have told you long ago that I was going to send my folks to Florida
some day—”

“Yes, you did—”

“Of course. Those were my two obsessions, to get my mom a fur coat, and to send them
to Florida. You don’t really know them, Margie. They’re like a couple of children,
but they’re really wonderful, and what they went through to keep me going to Hunter
nobody will ever know but me. Anyway—I was going to send them to Florida or die. Well,
by this year I’d saved the money, so I sent them. And that did it. Marjorie, believe
it or not, my destiny actually hung on the fact that my father knows how to play fan-tan.
Fan-tan, can you imagine? Lou loves the game. Don’t ever call a life misspent till
it’s over, kid. My father has wasted years playing every kind of card game known to
man, and he couldn’t have done more to ensure his little daughter’s future if he’d
worked like a stevedore all those years. This thing is so fantastic, Marge, it depends
on such a hairlike thread of coincidences, that I’m absolutely convinced it’s fate.
Why did I park my folks at the Vista View Hotel, if not because it’s run-down and
cheap? What was a rich man like Lou doing at such a joint? Only Lou would have such
reasons. His mother died year before last. She started going to the Vista View thirty
years ago when it was a good hotel, and she just kept going there, and taking Lou
along. He lived with her all her life, you see, he’s never married. So, like a sleepwalker,
he went right on going to the Vista View after she died. They have a nice handball
court, he says. And he and Alex got to playing fan-tan. And then he sat with my folks
at meals because he was lonesome, and of course they bent his ear about their divine
Marsha. And he was just impressed to death with Alex’s sad old line of Voltaire and
Ingersoll and Haeckel and Clarence Darrow; he thinks my father’s a brilliant original
iconoclast. And you can’t disillusion him, because by Lou’s lights that’s just what
he is. And he thinks Tonia, of course, is the greatest pianist he’s ever heard, and
that’s true too, because he’s never heard any pianists. So along comes Marsha, the
daughter of these two brilliant personages—fortunately starved down within an inch
of her life. Kid, I ran into a rush act the like of which few females have known.
When Lou makes up his mind to do something, get out of his way. I never had a chance,
if I’d wanted a chance. I’d known him three days when he went downtown in Miami and
came back with
this
.” She waved the hand with the ring. “Nothing subtle, but persuasive in its way. I
held out for a week or so, because—Well, I don’t have to tell you what reservations
I must have had—but that’s it, and here I am, telling you about my engagement.” Marsha
laughed. “I’m a little more used to it now. There are some unexpected charms to it.
I look forward to civilizing him, honestly. It’s his mother’s fault, not his. She
was one of these shrewd old religious widows. Owned a lot of real estate, managed
it herself until she put Lou through law school, then they both managed it, and really
rolled up a fortune. She never cared about anything but business and a couple of dozen
charities that she practically ran herself. Lou’s still running them, by the way.
So he just never learned anything. He thinks I’m practically supernatural, because
of what I know about books and music and painting. And yet he’s keen, damn keen, believe
me, in his own way. You listen to him analyze the values in a building on Seventh
Avenue, let’s say, and you won’t believe your ears. He knows all about it—from how
good the credit of a mattress firm on the third floor is, to the diameter of the steam
pipes in the basement, and all about the buildings on the rest of the block, too,
on both sides of the street. I’ve already gone to work on him. I dragged him to the
opera the first night we were back in New York. Luckily it was
La Traviata
. He loved it. He couldn’t have been more amazed. He kept saying, ‘Why, it’s great,
it’s really interesting.’—Holy cow, is that
rain?
” She put her hand to her face and looked up at the sky. “Where the hell did those
clouds come from? That’s March for you.”

They scampered through spattering drops, holding their hats. They were hardly inside
the hotel lobby when a drenching shower fell in the street. They were still laughing
and panting as they settled at a window table in the dining room and ordered drinks.
The gray slanting rain was driving people from the street, scurrying with newspapers
over their heads. Even the hansom cabs were retreating from the plaza, the drivers
huddled in ponchos, the dejected horses streaming water from their tails and drooping
ears. “Am I mistaken,” Marsha said, “or is it always raining when I see you? Remember
your graduation? I expected to see Noah and his ark come floating past Schrafft’s
that afternoon.”

“Seems a hundred years ago,” Marjorie said.

“It’s just a little over a year.”

Marjorie expelled a long breath. “I know. Just a little over a year.”

Their cocktails came. Marsha said, “I can still see Noel with water dripping from
his hat… And then in Schrafft’s, ordering a pear and cottage cheese salad, and saying
it was a penance.” She paused. Marjorie lit a cigarette and sipped her drink. Marsha
drummed the fingers of her left hand on the table, and the diamond twinkled and blazed
in shots of colored fire. “Dear me, and when I think how big I was still talking that
day—wasn’t I? Sure. A year ago I was still going to be a head buyer at Lamm’s, and
then a theatrical producer some day, all that. Ah, well. Here’s to blasted dreams.”
She lifted her glass and drank.

“Marsha, you can’t regret giving up department store drudgery. Why, it’s horrible.”
She told Marsha of her brief spell as a salesclerk, making her laugh heartily with
a description of Mr. Meredith.

Marsha’s face became serious, and she stared out at the rain. “I can’t say I regret
it, sugar bun, no. Not when I’ve found a real sweetheart like Lou to take me out of
it and look after my folks. But frankly, I was all ready for Lou when I met him. I
tried for two years at Lamm’s. No go. A high IQ is a drug on the market, do you know
that? It only disables you for most jobs, which consist ninety per cent of doing some
goddamn dull thing over and over. Of course you tell yourself at first that you’re
not shining in this low menial work because you’re cut out to be a big shot, and as
soon as you get to the top you’ll show them. You tell yourself this, that is, until
you hear a dozen lamebrains, misfits, and good-for-nothings all around you saying
the same thing week in and week out. Then what? Then you tell yourself, as long as
you can, that you’re different. I don’t know. I’m ambitious, sure, but I’ve never
been able to keep up lies about myself to myself for very long. It’s taken me a while
to find out what I’m all about, but the long and short of it is, I ain’t got it.”