Marjorie Morningstar (69 page)

Marjorie said, “How do you feel?”

“Absolutely floating, what do you think?” Marsha stared at her and smiled slyly. “Oh,
listen, I’d better warn you. You-know-who is here, after all.”

“I saw him as I came in.”

“I’m sorry. I swear it isn’t my doing. Lou got carried away at rehearsal and invited
him, and then I couldn’t very well—”

“Marsha, really, it’s quite all right.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“He didn’t see me.”

“Well, for crying out loud, what are you sitting here with me for? Go on out there.
There are some other cute boys. Lou’s partner Milton Schwartz isn’t bad, if you can
stand lawyers.
I
can’t, but it’s too late now, of course—”

The cousins giggled and the oldest, who had something like a hare lip, said indistinctly,
“Marsha, you haven’t changed one bit.”

Marjorie said, “I’d just as lief stay here and hold your hand—”

“Sugar bun, I have a cousin on each hand, and one to hold my head if I start throwing
up. Shoo. Scat. Go out and make the men feel good. Just don’t start anything with
the rabbi. I don’t want him unfrocked before he ties the knot.” Marjorie went out
amid the giggling of the cousins, leaving Marsha perched laughing on the bed, her
head thrown back, her knees drawn up, directly under the gloomy picture of Mrs. Michaelson.

There were rows of empty gilt folding chairs in the living room. The guests were jammed
around the sides of the room and in the foyer, laughing and talking loudly. The air
was heavy with tobacco smoke and women’s perfume. They were a middle-aged crowd, the
men running to dark suits, double chins, baldness, and cigars, and the women to fine
dresses ruined by bulging figures. Obviously they were all, or almost all, Michaelson’s
friends and relatives. They looked, Marjorie thought, like customers in a Broadway
restaurant: well-to-do, pleased with themselves, and dull, with interchangeable faces.
Noel wasn’t in the room. She worked her way to the window seat—the Michaelson cushion
was purple, the Morgenstern cushion had been green and gold—and sat as she had sat
for hundreds of evenings in her seventeenth and eighteenth years, hands folded in
her lap and ankles crossed, looking through blurry panes at the black park and the
flaring city. The automobiles, as always, reminded her of beetles as they ran along
the twisting lamplit park roads, their headlights phosphorescent in the rain. The
skyscrapers below Fifty-ninth Street loomed black, pierced with square yellow windows,
and swathed in a pinkish fog. The view stirred an ache in Marjorie. This was the lost
city. Here it was, unchanged, unconquered, and she was past twenty-one. She had sat
like this by the window at seventeen, thinking that twenty-one was the golden time,
the time when fame and money and a brilliant marriage would burst over her in an iridescent
shower. It had seemed to her then that twenty-two was the start of the downward slope;
that twenty-four was an autumn year; that thirty was decrepitude. She could remember
these thoughts across the stretch of lost time and smile at them. But how much wiser
was she now? What was the truth about herself, her life, her hopes, her dream of becoming
Marjorie Morningstar?

“You’re Marjorie Morgenstern.” It was a pleasant voice, and a young one, cutting through
the chatter behind her. The young man held two highball glasses in his hands. He wore
a dark gray suit, and he had a handsome round face that might have been girlish, except
for the solid square jaw. Thick black hair framed his forehead in a round line. He
was about Noel’s age.

“Yes, I’m Marjorie Morgenstern.”

“I hope you like scotch and soda.”

“At the moment I could go quite mad about one. Thank you.” She took the glass and
drank deeply. “This is very nice of you.”

“I’m Milton Schwartz.”

“Oh? Lou’s law partner.”

“Right.”

“The man he plays handball with.”

Schwartz smiled. “That’s a good police-court way to identify me. I plead guilty to
playing handball with Lou Michaelson.” He looked at her for a moment. “You know me,
Marjorie. At least I know you. We’ve danced. Two whole dances.”

“Oh?”

“At the Ninety-second Street Y. The dance after the play. The night you played Nora
in
A Doll’s House
.”

She regarded him more carefully. He might indeed be any one of the hundreds of boys
she had danced with at one time or another since her fifteenth year; not bad-looking,
with Jewish light and warmth in the eyes, and an urbane alertness about the face,
the posture.

Noel Airman crossed her line of vision beyond Milton Schwartz’s shoulder. Hands in
the pockets of his worn gray flannel trousers, Noel was lounging through the knots
of guests toward a large black reading stand in a corner of the room. She turned brightly
to Schwartz. “Of course. I should have remembered. I was pretty numb that night. It
was such a bad show—”

“Except for you it was pretty bad. But you were radiant.”

“Thank you—”

“I’m not being polite. Actually your performance wasn’t good for the show. You were
so much better than the others, the whole effect became worse than it might have been.
Sort of like throwing a white light on a painted set.”

“Why, thank you again, that’s very nicely put.”

Schwartz was rolling the highball glass between his palms. “I wanted to say a lot
to you that night. That’s why I cut in. But then I got tongue-tied at the idea of
dancing with a professional actress. I’ve always been a bug on dramatics, and—”

“I’m not a professional. Not by a long shot.”

Noel was poking and peering at the black stand, which, Marjorie now realized, might
be a piece of electric equipment, possibly a diathermy machine. What on earth was
it doing in the living room?

Schwartz said, “Don’t say that. I know a good bit about you. I used to work with the
Vagabonds. I went backstage that night and got the low-down on you. The legal mind
at work. I tried to call you for a date three or four times after that, but I got
discouraged. You were never at home, and—”

She flashed a brilliant smile at Schwartz and laughed as though he had made a devilishly
clever joke. Noel’s eyes had moved for a fraction of a second toward her, and away
again. She laid a hand on Schwartz’s arm. “It was sweet of you to go to all that trouble.
I wish I’d known.”

He scanned her face, his mouth moving in a slow pleasant smile. “You’ll think I’m
a fool, but when Marsha mentioned at the office last week, quite by accident, that
her friend Marjorie Morgenstern was coming to the wedding, I all but knocked her down,
hugging her.”

“Did you really? I must have been better as Nora than I thought. Don’t forget, those
were Ibsen’s lines. I’m just a would-be bit player, just another West End Avenue girl.
If you’re cherishing any other picture of me, you’ll be sorry you ever got to know
me any better.” She said all this with great vivacity, her eyes fixed on Schwartz’s.

He said, “There’s no end to how much better I’d like to know you.”

“I thought lawyers were slow to commit themselves.”

“You came alone tonight, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Let me take you home, or out, or anything you say, after this is over.”

She hesitated. Nothing could annoy Noel more, of course. “That’s very kind of you….”

“Marjorie! Marjorie, please!” Mrs. Zelenko was waving at her from the middle of the
room, smiling very brightly.

“Excuse me,” she said to Schwartz.

Marsha’s mother slipped an arm through hers, and drew her out of the living room;
Noel Airman and Milton Schwartz both looked after her. The three Packovitch girls
were whispering together in a corner of the foyer. They noticed Marjorie and whispered
more excitedly behind their hands. Mrs. Zelenko muttered, “Don’t look concerned or
anything. It’s nothing at all, bridal nerves, I guess. I had a bad case of it ten
minutes before my own ceremony, heaven knows. But you’d better talk to her—she’s asking
for you—”

“Of course.”

Rounding the corner of the hallway, they encountered Lou Michaelson, with two men
in black. His wavy gray hair was oiled down and sharply parted, showing freckles on
his scalp. He introduced the rabbi and the best man to Marjorie. “Just a few more
minutes,” he said, with a flustered smile that uncovered one gold tooth. “I can’t
believe it. How’s Marsha, Mom?”

“Wonderful, wonderful, Lou. We’re just going to her.”

The mother opened the door of the bedroom carefully. Marsha lay face down on the bed,
under the picture of Mrs. Michaelson. She said in a strange voice, grainy and dry,
“I just want to talk to Marjorie, Tonia. You can go along.”

“Marsha dear, I’ll do anything—”

“I’m perfectly okay. I’m wonderful. Goodbye.”

Mrs. Zelenko shrugged at Marjorie and went out. When the door closed Marsha sat up,
clutching Marjorie’s handkerchief. Her eyes were moist and reddish. The little white
hat was askew over one ear. “Have you ever been closed in on by a herd of bellowing
buffalo? My dear cousins were beginning to oppress me. I had to get rid of them, or
jump out of the window. And I couldn’t do that. Think what the rain would do to this
sweet little hat. Twenty-seven dollars shot to hell.” She laughed. “Well, la Morningstar,
are you nervous? I’m not. Calmest bride you ever heard of. Well? Sit down, for heaven’s
sake, don’t stand there looking at me.”

Marjorie sat by her on the bed.

Marsha said, “What time is it?”

“Twenty past six.”

“Ten minutes, hey? Just time for one more cigarette.” She took a crumpled pack from
the bed, lit one, and inhaled with a hiss. “My last cigarette as a free girl. Next
one I smoke will be smoked by Mrs. Michaelson.” She gestured with the cigarette toward
the picture of Lou’s mother. “That was her name, too. Mrs. Michaelson. Could anything
be queerer? The old girl must be turning over in her grave like a cement mixer.”

“Marsha, don’t say such things. You’ll make a wonderful wife for Lou.”

Marsha looked at her with unnaturally wide eyes. “Why is it, I wonder, that I was
destined never to have anything I really wanted?”

With a catch in her voice, Marjorie said, “Look, dear, when the time comes for me
to take the fatal step I’ll probably have an attack of the dismals twice as bad as
this—”

“It doesn’t seem to me I’ve ever wanted so much. A friend, a good job, a fellow—”
Marsha made strange sharp sounds like a cough; but she wasn’t coughing. She seemed
to be laughing. She put her arms around Marjorie, pressing her tight, and she cried
desperately. The straw of her hat scratched Marjorie’s cheek.

It was very hot and uncomfortable to be hugged by Marsha, but there was nothing to
do but pat her shoulder and murmur soothing words. “I’m so alone, darling,” Marsha
sobbed. “So absolutely alone. You’ll never know what it means. I’ve always been alone.
So alone, so damned alone. And now I’ll always be alone. Forever, till I die.”

Marjorie started to cry too, yet she resented this sudden closeness with Marsha, and
tried to fight down her pity. She felt that Marsha was taking advantage of her. “Don’t
go on like that. Good Lord, I thought you were such a tough bird. You’re going to
be very happy and you know it. Stop crying, Marsha, you’ve got me doing it. We’ll
both ruin our faces. There’s nothing to cry about. You should be very happy.”

Marsha withdrew from her and sat bowed on the edge of the bed, crying and crying.
Marjorie took away the cigarette that was burning down in her fingers, and crushed
it. After a minute or so Marsha blew her nose and sighed. “Ye gods, I needed that.
I feel five thousand per cent better.” She got up and began to work on her face at
the mirror. “I’ve been fighting it off and fighting it off. How could I cry with those
fat gloating harpies around, my sweet maids of honor? Thanks, dear, you saved my life.”

Marjorie said, “Well, live and learn. I’d have bet you’d be the last girl in the world
to get maidenly hysterics. I guess we’re all human.”

Marsha turned on her. White powder smudged around her eyes gave her a clown-like look.
“What the hell! Don’t you suppose I have feelings? Do you think I’m a lizard or something?”

“Darling, it’s perfectly natural—”

“Oh, sure. Natural for everybody except Marsha Zelenko, hey? The girl with the rubber
heart. Listen, kid, when it comes to insensitivity you’re the world’s champion for
your weight and size.” She blinked and shook her head. “Oh, look, I don’t want to
be mean. I’m all in a stew, you’ve got to forgive me—” She dabbed at her face with
the powder puff. “But the hell with it, I’m going to tell you something, Marjorie,
even if you never speak to me again. Lou didn’t invite Noel Airman tonight. I did.”

Marjorie said, “Frankly, I surmised as much. I wish you wouldn’t give it another thought,
that’s all.”

Marsha faced her, lipstick in hand. “Just like that. Don’t give it another thought.
Have you any idea how infuriating it is to me to think of you discarding Noel Airman?
How on earth can you do it? That’s what I keep asking myself. Where do you get the
willpower? What runs in your veins, anyway—ammonia? It isn’t blood, that’s for sure.
You’re madly in love with the man. He loves you the way he’s never loved any girl
and probably never will. Do you know what I’d have given for one hour of such a love
affair? With such a man? My eyes.”

“Marsha, it really isn’t—”

“I know, I know, I know, it really isn’t any of my damned business. What do I care?
I’ve got to say this or I’ll explode. I’ll probably never see you after tonight. I
know all too well what you must think of my marrying Lou Michaelson—”

“I like Lou, Marsha, I swear I do, you’re being hysterical—”

“I like him, too. I’m marrying him because life only lasts so long, and I’m damn tired.
I could kiss his hands for being willing to take over, and be good to me, and let
me relax, and give my folks what they want. I don’t have a Noel Airman in love with
me. If I had I’d follow him like a dog. I’d support him. I’d ask him to walk on me
every morning, just to feel the weight of his shoes. Oh, Marjorie, you fool, you fool,
don’t you know that you’ll be dead a long long time? That you’ll be old and dried
up and sick a long long time? You’ve got all of God’s gold at your feet, all He ever
gives anybody in this filthy world, youth and good looks and a wonderful lover, and
you kick it all aside like garbage just because Noel doesn’t go to synagogue twice
a day or something. I tell you, you’re the fool of fools, Marjorie. You’ll die screaming
curses at yourself. That is, if you’re not too withered and stupid by then to realize
what you did to yourself when you were young and alive and pretty and had your chance—”