Marjorie Morningstar (80 page)

This was the substance of her comfort during this black, black year. It was comfort
that came and went in her own mind with the shifts of her moods; comfort that was
silent, never written out, never shared, never examined whole or with anybody’s help;
comfort spun in her brain and left in her brain; comfort that was, on the whole, pretty
cold. It alternated with moods of despair and terrible pain; pain so deep that the
pain in a dentist’s chair, when she had to go, was a distraction and a relief. She
often cursed the day she had met Noel, and her own fatuous hero worship which had
enabled him to swallow three years of her life, three of her best years, the years
when most girls met and married their husbands. How many chances for a happy match
had gone by, while she had doted and doted and doted on Noel? Now there was no help
for it; it was to be Noel, or a broken life.

She woke thinking of him, fell asleep thinking of him, and thought of him all day
and all night long when she wasn’t working, or reading, or uneasily sleeping (when
like as not she dreamed of him). In self-protection she carried a book with her everywhere.
She read at breakfast and at lunch, in the subway going to and from work, even in
her father’s car when she drove to the office with him. In any slack moments at the
office she would flip open her novel. She exhausted the rental libraries, and resorted
to the public libraries. She developed eyestrain, and got reading glasses, and went
on reading and reading.

There was hardly a week during that black winter when she didn’t have a cold, or a
cough, or a fever. She had paralyzing headaches much of the time, and recurring mysterious
rashes, sometimes on her face, so that she could not go to work. She had no appetite,
month after month. She forced herself to eat, to shut off the anxious nagging of her
mother and the pained glances of her father. The food tasted like straw. She faded
so visibly that her parents at last drove her to see a doctor. After a long physical
examination he questioned her about her emotional life, looking ironical and wise,
and gave her a variety of pills, capsules, and liquid medicines. These did relieve
some of the worst symptoms, but all winter long she went on feeling weak, irritable,
and played out.

And all winter long her bank balance mounted. The mark she was aiming at was seven
hundred dollars. For that amount, she had learned, she could go to Europe, stay three
weeks, and return, travelling third class.

But she was not saving quite fast enough; this worry gnawed at her more and more.
At best she could bank ten or twelve dollars a week. She had repaid her father the
money spent at the Rip Van Winkle Theatre, though he had tried not to accept it. This
had given her satisfaction, but it had also set back her departure for Paris by a
couple of months. The last letter from Noel had come in November. As his silence stretched
through January, she became exceedingly uneasy. They had been separated almost a year.
Often she thought of borrowing from her parents. She had almost five hundred dollars,
and another two hundred or so would send her on her way. But she couldn’t do it. Noel
was her problem. It was up to her, she felt, to meet the situation with her own efforts.

One evening, buying a ticket for a French movie at a downtown theatre, she recognized
the cashier as one of the “kids,” a clever, pretty redhead, and a good actress, though
now looking somewhat worn. Marjorie chatted with her for a while. The girl was still
butting her head against the Broadway wall, and meantime had been married and divorced
twice, each time to a handsome unemployed actor. She was now living with a third beloved
of the same variety. Movie cashier jobs were easy to get, she told Marjorie, if a
girl was good-looking; there was a rapid turnover in cashiers, owing to the widespread
practice of squirrelling a fake ticket roll in the booth and embezzling about one
third of the admissions. It occurred to Marjorie that she could almost double her
rate of saving by working evenings as a movie cashier, an honest one. With the redhead’s
help, she actually did get a job two days later.

Her parents protested, of course; she was too run-down for night work, they said.
Mrs. Morgenstern remarked in despair that Marjorie seemed doomed to swing from one
extreme of foolishness to another. The father raised her salary, hoping in this way
to make the night work unnecessary. She accepted the raise, because she had been drudging
faithfully in the office and thought she deserved it; but she kept on with the movie
job.

It wasn’t hard work, but it wasn’t healthful. The heating unit in her cashier’s booth
was faulty; usually she was either freezing or on the verge of being cooked alive.
Within three weeks, a severe grippe put her out of action. She dragged herself from
bed ten days later, still coughing and weak, but panicky at the thought of all the
time that was passing without any money accumulating. Her father tried to send her
home from the office, but she would not go. She did a day’s typing, coughing now and
then in a jarring hollow way, ignoring his worried glances. At night, after dinner,
both her parents objected violently when she said she was going back to the movie
house; but she went, though her knees were weak under her.

She shivered and sweated through three wretched hours in the stifling booth, fearing
that she was coming down with pneumonia. When the marquee went dark at last, she couldn’t
face a subway trip; she squandered most of what she had earned that night on taxicab
fare. She came home chilled through, went straight to the kitchen, took down the brandy
bottle, and drank off a stiff shot; then she threw herself on her bed with her clothes
on, drawing a quilt over her shuddering frame.

“How about some hot tea?” Her father stood in the doorway in pajamas and an old gray
bathrobe, his gray hair rumpled, with some strands standing up almost straight. He
carried a glass of milk in one hand, a cup of tea in the other.

“Thanks, Papa. I’d love it.” She sat up. The brandy had arrested her shivering.

Mr. Morgenstern sat on the edge of her bed and sipped his milk, regarding her in a
disturbing way. Since she had begun the movie job she had often caught him, in the
office and at home, directing this same odd look at her: inquisitive, concerned, and
apparently angry. He said after a while, “Marjorie, it’s enough already, isn’t it?
How sick do you want to make yourself? What’s it all about?”

Marjorie said nothing.

“Look here,” the father said, “thank God, we’re not poor. Business hasn’t been so
bad lately. What is it you want? A fur coat? Clothes? A trip? I’m still your father.”

Still she said nothing.

“Mama says you want to go to Paris. After him. To bring him back.”

Marjorie laughed shortly, despite herself; and the laugh was a confession.

The father shook his head, drank off his milk, and sat staring at her. “Remember that
time at South Wind? It seems so long ago. The time we talked, out on the lake, in
the rowboat—remember what you said? How did you put it? You were just going to enjoy
his company and have a glorious time—this was the United States, you didn’t have to
worry about marriage.”

“I—Papa, I wasn’t so very old, you know.”

“It doesn’t work out that way, does it, Marjorie? Not even in America.”

“No, Papa. Not even in America. Not for me, anyway.”

The father ran his fingers through his hair, rumpling it more. There was a long silence.
He said, “Tell me, does he mean as much to you as that? Even after a year? There are
so many men in the world. Does it have to be him?”

Something pathetic in his tone, and in his look, brought a catch and a dryness to
her throat. “Papa,” she said, “I’m a girl, you know. I can’t help it.”

He came and stood beside her. His hand embraced her head, and pressed it gently to
his side. “Listen, he has fine qualities,” Mr. Morgenstern said. “A lot of fine qualities.
If that’s it, that’s it. He’ll be our son…. You’ll go next week. All right?”

“No, Papa, no. That isn’t what I want—”

“Why not? Do you want to go, or don’t you?”

“I—I almost have enough money now for a third-class ticket. Thanks, anyway.”

“Third class? Your first trip to Europe? You’ll go first class.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Mama says we should send you, and right away. Enough of this foolishness—working
nights, getting sick, fading to nothing… She’s right. She’s usually right, isn’t she?”

“Papa, listen—”

“You’ll go first class, I say. I’m still your father.” His voice was taking on the
harsh business tone. “It’s settled. You leave next week. And since you’re such an
independent girl now, Marjorie, you can owe me the money. Go to bed, now, will you,
for God’s sake? You look terrible.”

He kissed her hair brusquely, and hurried from the room.

Marjorie’s parents, brother, cousins, aunts, and uncles, with a few people from her
father’s office, came eddying down a passageway of the
Queen Mary
all around her, and poured into her cabin, exclaiming at the luxury of the furnishings.
Flowers and fruit baskets were banked around the spacious room; champagne was cooling
in silver buckets on the deck; and there were trays of sandwiches set here and there
on the bureaus and tables. Marjorie, in a near-trance of excitement, directed the
steward where to put her bags, while her mother, glancing rapidly at the cards on
the flowers, said, “Where did the champagne come from? Who ordered it? Did you, Arnold?
You, Seth? What is it, a surprise party?” One after another the relatives denied having
provided the wine; then a muffled voice from a corner of the crowded cabin said, “Compliments
of an old friend, Mrs. Morgenstern.”

The crowd of aunts and uncles parted like an opera chorus to disclose, sitting in
an armchair, a young man with a large nose, in a handsome gray tweed suit, his clever
eyes twinkling behind big black-rimmed glasses. There was a buzz among the relatives,
inquiries as to whether this was Marjorie’s boy friend, whether they were engaged,
and so forth. Marjorie introduced Wally with some embarrassment to the family; but
Wally, not at all embarrassed, got out of his chair and drew cheers by popping the
corks of the champagne bottles. The steward passed around glasses; the wine flowed
and foamed; Wally drew more cheers by proposing a toast to Marjorie. The guests fell
on the food, and the party became very gay, and there was much kissing and hugging,
especially among the young unmarried cousins. Neville Sapersteen, who was now a white-faced
fat boy eight years old, extremely quiet and shy, drank several glasses of champagne
while gobbling up a plateful of sandwiches, and was horribly sick in the bathroom
about ten minutes after he arrived. Thereafter he lay on a bed moaning, with his mother
stroking his head. This was the only jarring note in a highly jubilant family reunion.
Neville’s father amused everybody by climbing on a trunk, champagne glass in hand,
and roaring several Verdi arias in succession, including a couple for coloratura soprano,
despite his son’s misery and wife’s outraged objections.

Marjorie was surprised and touched to find among the gifts a huge bouquet of roses
from Seth. Reckoning up how many weeks of allowance the bouquet must have cost, she
pulled him aside and kissed him. He blushed as red as his roses, muttering something
incomprehensible.

Wally came to her, bottle in hand, while she was looking at the gifts. “More champagne?”

She held out her glass. “This was nice of you, Wally. I’ll never forget it.”

“Got two minutes for me?”

“Three.”

“Drink up, and come.”

They left the party, which had spilled over into the passageway, and went to a corner
of an immense and peculiarly silent salon containing acres of empty armchairs and
couches. “You’re looking better than ever,” he said, his voice deadened and thin in
the vast room.

“Well, you would think so. But thanks, Wally, anyway.”

“I just wanted to tell you I’ve sold my play, Margie.”

“Gosh! Sold a play! There’s no keeping up with you, is there?” Looking at him, she
thought that this must be the true air of success: no conceit or obvious triumph,
but a forthright glance, a confident smile, a new erectness in the shoulders, a good-humored
distant gentleness. Noel had never had this look about him, not even at the dress
rehearsal of
Princess Jones
; he had always been ironical, tense, and either weary or overexuberant. “Which play
is it, Wally?”

“It’s a new one. I don’t think I told you about it. A farce about radio.”

“Have you quit your gagwriting job?”

“Hell, no. The play won’t go on till the fall. How do I know it’ll be a hit? I like
those weekly pay checks.”

“Who’s the producer?”

He told her the name, one of the better-known ones. She said, “I guess you’ve arrived,
Wally.”

“One production doesn’t make a career.”

“Nothing will stop you. I’m proud I’ve known you. I’ll always admire you from the
sidelines.”

“From the sidelines? What’s happened to Marjorie Morningstar?”

Marjorie said with a smile that was brave enough, “She didn’t quite make the grade.
It’s just as well, I guess. There’s millions like me for one like you, and that’s
as it should be. How does the song go in
The Gondoliers
? ‘When everybody is somebody, then nobody’s anybody.’ ”

“Well, then, how about Marjorie Wronken?” He said it in such an offhand way, without
smiling, that she was baffled.

“Why, sure, dear. You take my breath away. Let’s get the captain to marry us, this
very minute, before you change your mind.”

His eyes didn’t waver behind the glasses. “You think I’m fooling, of course.”

“When did I see you last? Six, eight months ago? I don’t blame you for rubbing it
in, Wally. You always told me you were a genius, and it seems you were right. My apologies
for being so slow to realize it. Okay?”

He said, “I’ve been hunting this deer for years to lay at your feet. Now you won’t
even glance at the carcass. I feel abused.”