Marjorie Morningstar (70 page)

Marjorie, her breath all but knocked out by the sudden attack, gasped, “You’re just
crazy, that’s all. Noel doesn’t care two hoots about me, and—”

“Oh, shut up, he’s
insane
about you!”

“All right, and if he is, what do you want me to do—sleep with him like all his other
trollops? And then let him kick me out when he’s had all he wants?”

“YES, God damn you, YES! If you’re not woman enough to hold him, all you deserve is
to be kicked out. What do you think he is, one of your puking little temple dates?
He’s a MAN. If you can make him marry you, okay. And if you can’t, that’s your tough
luck! Find out what he’s like. Let him find out what you’re like.
Live
your life, you poor boob. I’ll tell you a great big secret, Marjorie dear—
there’s no hell
. You won’t burn. Nothing will happen to you, except you’ll pile up a thousand memories
to warm you when you’re an old crock. And what’s more, if you’ve got what it takes
you’ll snag yourself a husband—a bloody Prince Charming of a husband, not only witty
and good-looking but rich and famous, which Noel Airman is damn well going to be….
Lord, look at you. You’re staring at me as though I had horns and a tail. All right,
don’t
listen to me. Do as you damn please. What do I care? Go to your temple dances and
marry Sammy Lefkowitz, the brassiere manufacturer’s son. It’s probably all you deserve.”

The knocking at the door had been going on for several seconds, but Marjorie, transfixed,
had been unable to interrupt. Now it turned to pounding, and Mrs. Zelenko’s indistinct
voice called, “Marsha, Marsha dear, for heaven’s sake, it’s past six-thirty!”

“Oh God.” Marsha whirled to the mirror. “Go out there, sugar bun. Keep them at bay,
will you? Just for two minutes while I do something about these red holes I’ve got
for eyes.”

“Sure I will.” Marjorie hesitated, and said to Marsha’s back, “Good luck, Marsha.
God bless you.”

Marsha turned, looked forlornly at her, caught her in her arms, and kissed her. “Oh
baby, baby darling. Forget it, forget everything I said. Goodbye, sugar bun. I can’t
tell you why I’ve always loved you, and why I fuss so over you. I should have had
a brother or a sister. I’ve had nobody. You’ll be all right no matter what you do,
I’m sure. You’re God’s favorite, Marjorie Morningstar. Go along with you.”

Marjorie slipped out through the door, and held off the fretting mother and cousins
until Marsha called, “Okay, Marge, let the firing squad in.” They brushed past her,
twittering angrily and anxiously.

A hush had fallen in the apartment; as she walked toward the foyer, Marjorie’s heels
ticked on the parquet floor. She was rounding the bend in the hallway when she heard
a queer noise from the living room, starting low and sliding up eerily, like the wail
of an epileptic. The sound rose and fell and swelled and faded, and after a few moments
Marjorie realized that she was hearing some kind of music. The noises were coalescing
into the wedding song
Oh Promise Me
, played on some bizarre instrument, too full-bodied to be an ocarina or a musical
saw, too quavery to be an electric organ. It sounded at one moment like a cello, at
the next like a flute, and at the next like nothing so much as a cat dying under the
wheels of a car. She came tiptoeing into the foyer, and a long arm circled her waist:
she shuddered. Noel pulled her close, whispering, “Don’t go in now, wait till she
finishes.”

“What in God’s name is that, Noel?”

“It’s a theremin.”

“A what?”

“Theremin. Sh.” He put his finger over her lips, and moved with her to the archway
of the living room. The guests were seated in silent rows, facing the windows. Luba
Wolono, tall and fearsome, alone at the far end of the room, was waving white hands
in the air over the black thing like a diathermy machine. It looked even odder now,
because a metal pole two feet high stood in a socket at one end, and a loop of metal
jutted out sidewise at the other. She was making the music simply by moving her hands
in empty air. Whenever her hand approached the pole, the note became higher; when
she pulled it away, it dropped, sometimes to a bass rumble. She made the sound loud
or soft by moving her other hand up or down over the loop. Spectacular though the
stunt was, she was either not good at this legerdemain or the machine was innately
not very musical, for the sobs and slides and groans, from note to note, were hideous
to hear. Noel drew her away from the arch and leaned against the wall, his arm still
around her waist. “There’s only one person in the world who can really make it sound
like anything, Clara Rockmore. I heard her at a recital, she does wonders with it.
This woman’s even gotten up like her, but—”

“How on earth does it work?”

“It’s an electronic gadget. You wave your hands in a magnetic field, and make a disturbance
that gets translated into music, after a fashion. There was a lot of talk for a while
about it being the instrument of the future, and all that nonsense—”

The theremin slid up to a weird off-pitch high note and hung there, pulsing and, as
it were, gasping,
Wah wah wah
. “I just can’t stand it,” Marjorie said.

He patted her shoulder. “There’s a hell of a moral lesson in the thing, honey, if
you’re interested in morality this afternoon. In theory it’s the perfect instrument.
You can draw out one note forever. Unlimited loud or soft effects. Infinite range
of pitch, you can go higher than the human ear can hear and lower than a double bassoon.
None of the reediness of wind instruments, no breathing problem. No roughness as in
the strings, no bowing problem. All the virtues, no drawbacks. And the damn thing’s
unplayable. Think it over, dear, when you pick a husband.”

She murmured, “It’s a wonder you don’t play it.” He chuckled, and pulled her ear.

When the song ended, Noel and Marjorie slipped into seats in the back row. Luba Wolono
remained immobile at the theremin. There was a rustle of talk among the guests, and
the rabbi stood, placing himself between the windows, facing the aisle. Four men in
black skullcaps rose, holding up a little purple canopy on four unsteady sticks. The
rabbi turned to Luba Wolono and nodded. Her hands began to saw the air, and a sort
of Hindu version of the Lohengrin wedding music streamed out of the theremin, in eerie
keening glissandos.

Leading the bridal procession into the living room came the best man, big, bald, gold
chain across his vest, chest thrown out, portly stomach pulled in. Next came the Packovitch
girls with little bouquets of jonquils, staring at the theremin player, glancing at
each other, and biting their lips to suppress their giggles, not with complete success.
Then came Mrs. Zelenko, and Lou Michaelson. The procession piled up at the head of
the aisle, and the canopy on the four sticks swayed and joggled. Marjorie in this
moment changed her mind completely about her own wedding, and decided to have the
hugest and most splendid ceremony she could engineer, instead of a modest home affair.

The theremin began to wail and groan
Here Comes the Bride
. Marsha came in holding the arm of little white-headed Mr. Zelenko, on whose face
unregarded tears trickled. She walked past Marjorie with a dead-calm expression, eyes
steady behind the little veil; paced up to the side of Lou Michaelson under the wavering
canopy, and halted. At the rabbi’s nod, Luba Wolono dropped her arms in mid-melody,
and the theremin expired with a grunt. Marsha’s father and her bridegroom, standing
on either side of her, were of about the same height and build. They wore identical
black suits, and their hair was almost the same color. From the back it was hard to
tell which was which.

It was a traditional ceremony, and it ended in the traditional way, with Lou Michaelson
crushing under his heel a wineglass wrapped in paper. At the sound of breaking glass,
the guests applauded, cheered, and surged forward. “Good luck! Good luck! Good luck!”
There was a rush to shake Lou’s hand and kiss the bride under the wavering canopy.
The theremin began whooping in a grotesque simulation of joy.

“That confounded breaking of a glass. It always shocks me,” Noel said. “Doesn’t it
you? Leave it to the Jews to work up a spine-chilling symbol for all occasions.”

Marjorie said, “My father once told me it’s a reminder of the destruction of the temple.”

“It’s more than that. It’s—I don’t know, it must be something out of the mists of
time, out of
The Golden Bough
. I saw an uncle of mine do that when I was four and a half years old. I had dreams
about it for years. I had a feeling then, a real grisly childish fancy, that he was
symbolically breaking his bride under his foot. Hell, like any real symbol, I guess
it means whatever your mind brings to it. Let’s go grab some champagne before the
panic starts.”

Soon there was a jovial crush in the dining room around a table heaped with sliced
meats, smoked fish, roast fowls, salads, and cakes. Marsha moved through the crowd
with Lou at her side, the center of a little travelling whirlpool of gaiety. She laughed,
she hugged, she kissed people; she snapped pert answers to jokes, causing roars and
giggles. In one hand she carried a glass of champagne, in the other a smoking cigarette.
Marjorie, standing beside Noel in a corner, watched her, amazed. Marsha swept by them.
“Bless you, my children! Grab the rabbi before he leaves, why don’t you? Let’s make
it a double wedding.” With a wave of her glass and an exuberant laugh she was gone.

“She looks really happy,” Marjorie said.

“I’m sure she is,” Noel said. “This fellow is quite an improvement over Carlos Ringel,
and at one time she’d have settled for Carlos gladly.”

“Carlos Ringel was an old horror.”

Noel swirled the champagne in his glass. “Sure, but Marsha’s never had too much to
offer, has she? With Carlos she traded sex for attention. Now it’s youth for security.
When you haven’t got charm or good looks, your bargaining power is limited.”

“I think Marsha’s charming. Very charming.”

“Well, she’s what you’d call the bulging sort. You know, bulging figure, bulging eyes,
bulging appetites, bulging eagerness to please, bulging desire to get places. They’re
a type, like albinos. You run across them all the time. They attract you for a while
with their energy and bounce, but they’re really bores.”

“I hate such pigeonholing of people. It’s glib and it’s false.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Noel said. “Texans, now, are certainly Texans, aren’t they?
Good sports are good sports. And I’m afraid bulgers are bulgers.”

“And what’s my pigeonhole, I wonder?” Marjorie was feeling dizzy and loose-tongued,
having drunk a couple of glasses of champagne too fast. “Oh, excuse me, I forgot.
I’m the West End Avenue prig. The
ordinary
West End Avenue prig.”

“Don’t misquote me, please. That’s exactly what I said you weren’t.”

“Yes, you labored under the delusion that I was different, for a while. But you found
out otherwise, didn’t you, Noel?” She looked him straight in the face. The crowd had
jostled them close together. He looked at her rather sternly, with compressed lips
curving down. It was a look she knew very well; Marsha was right, this man was still
in love with her. Her body was warm and restless.

He said, “You’re a prig, true enough. But then all angels are, more or less. An angel’s
job is being holier than thou.”

“Still turning the phrases.”

“Don’t patronize me, you haunting little hag, or I’ll hit you with a bottle of champagne.”

They carried plates piled with food to the window seat in the deserted living room,
where the Negro was folding and clattering the gilt chairs into a corner. For a while
they ate in silence. Black rain lashed the window glass, and the wind sighed and whistled
through the frames. “Nice night for a stroll in the park,” Noel said. “Even the perverts
and the muggers wouldn’t go out in this.”

Marjorie leaned her hot cheek against the window. “I love to look at it. I always
did. The park road and the Broadway lights, the big hotels, they make such a wonderful
show on a rainy night. I used to live in the El Dorado, you know.”

“I know.” He lightly kissed the side of her forehead.

She glanced up at him, surprised. “What was that for?”

“Somehow that’s the most wistful remark I’ve ever heard. ‘I used to live in the El
Dorado’… So did we all, my darling. The golden place gives short leases.”

She shrugged. “You needn’t sound so plaintive. Looks to me like you’re just about
to move in again. How’s
Princess Jones
going?”

“Very well, I think.” He put aside his plate, and lit a cigarette with a new silver
lighter of a foreign make.

“I was awfully glad for you when I read about it.”

“Were you? You might have come by the theatre, or at least dropped me a note to wish
me luck.”

Marjorie saw Milton Schwartz, with a glass in his hand, come to the door of the living
room and peer in. The instant her eyes met his he turned and hurried off.

She said, “Oh yes, wouldn’t I have made a fine figure! Chasing after you, now that
you’re in the limelight—”

“I thought we parted friends last time.”

“We did. I’m praying for your success, Noel. I’ll probably sit up late opening night
to read the notices.”

“You can come to the opening night if you like. With me.”

“That’s very sweet of you, but no, thanks.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I just don’t think it’s the best idea I’ve ever heard.” She tried hard to be
casual, though her throat was suddenly dry.

“I think it’s a pretty damned good idea.”

“Are you pleased with the production?”

“Amazingly so. Ferris isn’t exactly Max Gordon. But he did have a backer all lined
up, and I thought, well, an unknown producer with all this enthusiasm is better than
an old-timer who isn’t interested. He’s mounted the show brilliantly. I think we’ve
got a fine chance.”