Later, at the buffet lunch in the mobbed social hall of the temple, a knot of boys came tumbling past Marjorie through the crowd, yelling and pushing each other, clutching sandwiches and soda bottles. In the middle of them was Seth, flushed and glittering-eyed, his arms full of presents wrapped in tinsel and colored paper. She darted through the boys, threw her arms around her startled brother and kissed his cheek. “You were wonderful, Seth! Wonderful! I was so proud of you!”
Recognition and warmth dawned through the boy’s glaze of triumphant excitement. “Did I do all right, Margie? Really?”
“Marvelous, I tell you, perfect.”
“I love you,” said Seth, in a most incongruous quiet tone, and kissed her on the mouth, leaving a taste of wine. The boys jeered at the lipstick smear on Seth and shoved and bore him away, and Marjorie stood transfixed, alone in the merry crowd, in a turmoil of surprised emotion. Seth had expressed no open affection for her since the day he had learned to talk.
She made her way through the throng to the buffet, but nothing tempted her on the long table crowded with platters of sliced turkey, tongue, and beef, chopped chicken liver, chicken salad, tuna salad, half a dozen kinds of fish, and fruit salad, all manner of vegetables, bread, rolls, and pastries. She was too wrought up to eat. Unnoticed by the busily eating guests, she wandered to the bar and stood sipping a scotch and soda, watching a thousand dollars’ worth of food and drink vanish like sand heaps in the tide.
This lunch stemmed from an old-country synagogue custom called a kiddush, or wine-blessing. The parents of a bar-mitzva boy were obliged by long tradition to serve wine to all worshippers. In the United States this custom had evolved—as they say elephants have evolved from one-celled creatures—into a noonday feast hardly less imposing than the main banquet after sundown. Wine-blessing played little or no part in it, though it was still called a kiddush.
The caterers had given the old folkway modern form and variety. There was a five-hundred-dollar kiddush, a thousand-dollar one, and so forth. Mrs. Morgenstern had been miserably tempted by Lowenstein’s famous twelve-hundred-dollar extravaganza, which included whole boiled salmons in jelly, a cascade of raspberry soda on a terraced frame of snow, and a Star of David in solid ice bordered by blue neon. But the father, panic-stricken by the mounting expense, had frozen at the thousand-dollar kiddush. The Morgensterns did not have enough friends and relatives at the temple to eat up all the food, but that was no problem. On many another Sabbath there might be only four or five rows of worshippers, lonesome in a barren stretch of purple cushions and brown wood; but when a bar-mitzva was scheduled the house of God was seldom less than full. Marjorie had noticed the same phenomenon in the old synagogues of the Bronx.
A gay commotion started up on the far side of the hall—handclapping, singing, stamping. She finished her drink, worked across the room, and found all the aunts, uncles, and cousins of the family clustered in a corner, chorusing a wild Yiddish tune full of childhood echoes, and beating out the rhythm with feet and hands. In a small clear space ringed by laughing faces and pounding palms, Uncle Samson-Aaron was cavorting with Uncle Shmulka. Shmulka was bald, slightly under five feet in height, and emaciated by a lifetime of sweating in the furnace room of a steam laundry, therefore quite a frail partner for Samson-Aaron. The two uncles stomped here and there, cutting pigeon wings and various other capers, with Shmulka sometimes swinging precariously in the crook of the Uncle’s massive elbow, his feet clear off the floor. Samson-Aaron held a bottle of rye whiskey in one hand and a brown turkey leg in the other. As he came bounding and roaring past Marjorie, his face blazed up with delight. “Modgerie! Hollo, Modgerie! Shmulka, go vay, who needs you?” Shmulka went rolling to the sidelines, grinning with relief, and Samson-Aaron seized her hand with two fat fingers of the hand that held the bottle. “So? Vun dance in honor of Seth, no, Modgerie?” The family laughed and cheered; he was irresistible; without coyness Marjorie let him pull her into the ring. Samson-Aaron did not fling her about as he had Shmulka. All at once he was precise and courtly, and Marjorie remembered that he was supposed to have been a slim dandy in the old days, in the old country. She could almost see the thin gay youth inside the fleshy envelope of the old man with teeth missing in front and shaking red jowls. Marjorie had learned the steps of the dance at family celebrations in her childhood; she followed the Uncle easily. Samson-Aaron’s eyes shone. “Next time at your vedding, ha, Modgerie?” He exaggerated the elegant gestures of an old-world beau, crooking his arms and swinging his huge rear and huger paunch in an amazingly funny burlesque. Marjorie burst out laughing as she danced. The Uncle laughed too, and before she knew what had happened she was holding the turkey leg; he had placed it neatly in her hand as they cut a figure. The family cheered again. Marjorie, warming to the joke, brandished the leg and did a spirited little jig; and it was several seconds before she realized that she was waving the turkey leg perhaps ten inches from Mrs. Mary Goldstone’s nose. Sandy’s mother stood at the rim of the circle, staring at her through silver-rimmed glasses, somewhat as though she were a dancing horse.
Marjorie tried to smile at her with aristocratic good humor, but it was a rather hard effect to bring off with a turkey leg in her hand and the immense old man bobbing and bellowing around her.
Mrs. Goldstone returned a smile that was pleasant enough in the circumstances, slipped backward into the crowd, and disappeared.
The banquet that night did not start off badly at all. Mr. Connelly, the Irish bank manager, picked up the skullcap that lay by his place card, and put it uncertainly on top of his pink bald head. “This way?” he said to Mr. Goldstone. “First time I’ve ever worn one.”
“More like this,” said Mr. Goldstone, snugging his cap flat at the back of his head. “Me, I wore one every day of my life till I came to America, couple of years after that.” Sandy awkwardly put a cap on, imitating his father. Marjorie thought it looked almost as odd on him as on the Irishman.
“Well, it’s all very interesting, very interesting.” Mr. Connelly looked around the ballroom. “The whole thing has certainly been done beautifully.”
“Oh, leave it to Lowenstein,” said Mrs. Goldstone. “It’s always perfect.” Diamonds sparkled at her throat and wrists. Despite her graying hair, she looked hardly forty in a black Paris dress that Marjorie guessed cost more than her own mother’s entire wardrobe. Only the glasses on the silver chain gave her a touch of gravity. She had greeted Marjorie cordially, not mentioning the dance with the turkey leg.
Marjorie was feeling optimistic, now that the banquet was upon her, and she had had a couple of glasses of champagne. She was even hoping that it might turn out to be fun. She had pictured the Goldstones as an island of pained superiority at one of the old-time family gatherings in the Bronx. But the flower-decked ballroom, the spacious dance floor, the waiters in blue mess jackets, the murmuring orchestra behind potted palms, the fine linen and silver on the tables, the camellias by each lady’s plate, left nothing even for the Goldstones to desire. Her mother had arranged the seating perhaps cold-bloodedly, but with wisdom. Marjorie’s table was on the favored side of the dance floor, where one saw nothing but stiff shirt fronts, black ties, pearl studs, and evening dresses. Here were her father’s business associates, her mother’s friends from fashionable charity organizations, and a number of acquaintances gathered over a lifetime who had done well. On the other side of the dance floor were acquaintances who had not done so well; also her father’s employees, and Bronx neighbors who were entitled to invitations for old times’ sake, and the aunts, uncles, and cousins. Some of the guests on that side wore evening dress too, but most of them were in street clothes. On the dais at the long rear wall of the ballroom, on either side of three vacant seats in the center, were several rabbis with their wives, and Assemblyman Feuer, Mr. Morgenstern’s highest connection in the world, a red-faced little man with pince-nez glasses on a black ribbon. There was also Seth’s one living grandparent, Mr. Morgenstern’s mother, a tiny old
lady who lived in New Jersey with Aunt Shosha, and who now looked bewildered and lost in a big gilt armchair.
Mr. Goldstone pointed to empty chairs between himself and Sandy. “Who’s missing in our party, Marjorie?”
“The Robisons, and my cousin Geoffrey Quill,” said Marjorie. “They’re all from out of town.”
“Well, what do you say, should we start on the grapefruit?” Mr. Goldstone’s voice was harsh and his manner direct. He had a thin-lipped wide smile and bright satiric brown eyes, which seemed to take on crinkles of kindliness when he looked at Marjorie. She instinctively liked him and suspected—at least hoped—that he had taken to her. Yet she could well understand the fear with which Sandy usually spoke of his father. Mr. Goldstone had a long face like Sandy’s: browner, leaner, and very seamed. When he wasn’t talking or smiling he looked rather like an oak carving of an Indian.
She said timidly, “I think we’re supposed to wait for the grand entrance. Mother and Dad with Seth, you know. But please go ahead if you—”
“Of course we’ll wait,” said Mr. Goldstone.
“Is that the novelist you told me about, Geoffrey Quill?” said Sandy, peering at Geoffrey’s place card.
“Yes, he’s my cousin—our cousin.”
“You have a cousin writes books?” said Mr. Goldstone.
“He wrote The Gilded Ghetto,” said Marjorie. “It got wonderful reviews.”
“I had a son writes books, I’d shoot him,” said Mr. Goldstone. “Put him out of his misery.”
The ballroom lights went out and a pink spotlight cut through the darkness and struck the doorway. The musicians began to play Pomp and Circumstance. The doors swung open; the headwaiter appeared, a tall gray man in tails, wheeling in a table on which a hissing copper cauldron was shooting up orange-blue flames. Behind him marched the parents, each with an arm linked through an elbow of the stiff unhappy boy. All the guests stood and applauded.
“What’s burning in that copper pot, I wonder?” said Sandy.
“Money,” said Mr. Goldstone.
“It’s the brandy sauce for the grapefruit,” said Mrs. Goldstone. “Haven’t you been to a Lowenstein dinner before?”
“Brandy before dinner?” said Mr. Goldstone. “Say, it’s an idea. Maybe some ice cream too?”
“It’s just for the effect, and stop being so clever, Leon.”
While the boy and his parents went to the dais, followed by the spotlight, the waiter in the center of the floor stirred the cauldron, making the flames leap and whirl. “Caterers, restaurants, great angle they got,” said Mr. Goldstone. “Anything they can set fire to they charge ten times as much. Set fire to a twenty-cent flapjack, crêpes suzette for two dollars. Maybe we could use it in our store, Mary. Sell a flaming pair of shoes, fifty dollars instead of five dollars. A flaming corset—”
“All right, Leon. It’s very pretty and you know it. Quiet—”
“Maybe we set fire to Sandy, make him worth something,” said Mr. Goldstone.
The lights came on, the flames went out, the music stopped. The oldest rabbi, a little gray-bearded man in a long black coat, blessed the bread. Waiters brought bowls of sauce from the cauldron and doled it out at the tables, grapefruit by grapefruit. “This is fine,” said Mr. Goldstone. “Get drunk on a grapefruit. Maybe I ask for a second portion, you got to carry me home.”
Mrs. Goldstone turned to Marjorie. “He doesn’t mean anything, it’s just his way. He goes on much worse at home.”
Marjorie had been gnawing her lip to keep from laughing. She allowed herself one chuckle. “I think he’s terribly funny.” Mr. Goldstone shot her a keen look, his face puckered like a comic mask.
“Don’t encourage him,” said Mrs. Goldstone.
The tall headwaiter touched Marjorie’s elbow. “Pardon me, miss. Your mother sent over this telegram. Asks you to make the apologies.” The wire was from the Robisons. Their girl had developed mumps that morning, and so they were not coming.
“Robisons from Philadelphia?” said Mr. Goldstone. “Real estate man? One daughter? I know him. Fine man. Very well-to-do. Sorry to miss them.”
Mrs. Goldstone glanced at Marjorie with new respect, and again the girl was reluctantly impressed by her mother’s shrewdness. The Robisons had done their work without even putting in an appearance.
“Hello, Marjorie.”
Geoffrey Quill, rather more pudgy than in the picture on his book jacket, and thinner of hair, but wearing the same tweed suit and holding the same pipe, stood beside her. His smile was the old crooked mixture of bashfulness and furtive superiority. “Sorry I’m late. I can never remember how snarled up New York traffic is.”
“You’re just in time.”
She introduced him and he sat. He picked up the menu, a booklet with Seth’s picture on the cover, and glanced at the food list engraved in fine italics. “Pamplemousse royal,” he read in a wondering tone. “Foie de volaille Lowenstein, consommé Madrilène, langue de boeuf en sauce piquante—Ye gods, Marjorie, isn’t this banquet kosher? I’ll get right up and leave.”
“Kosher as you want it, surely,” Marjorie said, looking across to the other side of the ballroom, where Samson-Aaron was roistering from table to table, waving a bottle and pouring drinks. Accompanying him was Aunt Dvosha, the vegetarian fanatic, who wore a very strange shiny green evening dress decorated with dyed yellow feathers.
“You don’t have to worry, Mr. Quill,” said Mrs. Goldstone politely. “Rabbi Jung himself eats at Lowenstein dinners.”
“I assure you, Mrs. Goldstone, these things worry me very little. I had a ham sandwich on the train.—I trust that doesn’t offend anybody.”
“Not us surely,” said the bank manager with a chortle. “We’re Irish, you know.”
“Of course we respect other folks’ customs,” said Mrs. Connelly. “We’re very strict about meat on Friday ourselves. I think it’s nice to keep up these customs.”
Marjorie saw Samson-Aaron tug at Aunt Dvosha’s elbow, point with the bottle across the ballroom at Geoffrey, and lumber through the tables toward the dance floor, dragging the old spinster with him.
Mr. Goldstone squinted at Geoffrey. “Me, I have a strict kosher home. On the outside I eat anything. But home is home.”
“Isn’t that slightly inconsistent?” said Geoffrey, clicking his pipe in his teeth. His back was to his oncoming father.
“Sure. It means I’m only half no good,” said Mr. Goldstone.
Geoffrey smiled and murmured, “Of course, these folkways remain valid for anybody who gets solace from them…”
Samson-Aaron and Aunt Dvosha were crossing the dance floor. Marjorie looked toward her mother on the dais. Mrs. Morgenstern made a gesture which she at once understood. “Geoffrey!” she exclaimed, jumping up and taking his hand. “There’s your dad. Let’s go over and say hello to him—”
Geoffrey rose slowly, confused. “Well, there’s no hurry, but if—”
“Stay vare you are!” roared Samson-Aaron from the middle of the floor. “Ve come over to you! Ve come to the fency side!”
As the Uncle drew near, his boisterous laugh faded. He took his son’s outstretched hand hesitantly, as though conscious that his own was grimy or wet. “So, Geoffrey, you came, just to please an old father. You’re a good boy.”
“How are you, Papa?” said Geoffrey in a tone of embarrassed kindliness.
“Thank God, as you see me. Health is everything, the rest is mud.”
Aunt Dvosha seized Geoffrey’s hand. “Geoffrey, your book! I read it. I was so proud. Marvelous! Geoffrey, with your great gift you can bring important messages to the world.” She had a high chirping voice and very bright eyes.
“Thank you, Auntie—”
“I would like to talk to you for just five minutes on a very important subject.” She moved toward the empty chair beside him.
“Sure, Aunt, but not during dinner,” laughed Geoffrey, warding her off with his hand. “Later, maybe.”
“Of course,
I wouldn’t impose on you,” said Aunt Dvosha, hurt. “I’ve never imposed on anybody and I never will.”
The Connellys and the Goldstones were frankly staring at the visitors.
“Geoffrey, you’re getting a little fat,” said his father.
“I’ve got somebody to take after, Papa.”
Samson-Aaron threw back his head and laughed. He looked at the bottle in his hand and said with sudden resolve, “Vell, ve all drink to the bar-mitzva boy, yes? Then ve go back to our side.” He began pouring whiskey in small glasses that stood at each place. Fat and clumsy as he was, he poured with speedy deftness, spilling not a drop on the stiff white cloth.
Mr. Goldstone said, “Whom do we have the pleasure of drinking with?”
Marjorie introduced the Aunt and Uncle. Samson-Aaron said, “Pleased to meet you, pleased to meet you,” and held his glass high. “Vell, the old Yiddish toast, yes? God should bless the boy and the parents—and he should grow up to the Law, to marriage, and to good deeds.”
“Best toast I ever heard,” said the Irish bank manager, drinking off his glass with relish.
“It takes God to fill such an order nowadays.” Mr. Goldstone looked quizzically at the Uncle. “You’re Mr. Quill’s father, Mr. Feder?”
Samson-Aaron grinned his forlorn gap-toothed grin at Geoffrey, who said quickly, “I thought Quill seemed a more acceptable name for a book jacket, you see, not that—”