“Shouldn’t we wait till then?” Marjorie’s teeth were shaken by the motion of the car.
“What?”
Marjorie repeated it, louder.
George, clutching the wheel, which was beginning to shimmy, shouted, “What kind of silly remark is that? Good Lord, Marjorie, I’m drudging away in the Bronx, trying to save up enough to finish my M.A. and Ph.D., and you’re flitting around downtown meeting new guys every day, going to Columbia dances and what all—how do you suppose that makes me feel? I’m worried. I can’t tell what you—”
He broke off, his whole body stiffening, his arms rigid on the wheel. Penelope suddenly was collapsing in a frightful way, shaking and bumping and crashing, with a smell of red-hot iron filling the car and trickles of smoke coming up through the floorboard. George swerved off the parkway; the stricken car went bouncing over soft earth. He shut off the ignition, reached roughly across Marjorie to shove open the door, and pushed her out. “Get clear.” Marjorie stumbled away through the grass, soaking her stockings, then turned and watched George cautiously open the hood and shine a flashlight at the engine. He ducked under the chassis and flashed the light here and there. Penelope stood hub-deep in weeds, leaning to one side. On the road cars flowed by with a rich hiss of tires, nobody stopping to look at the wreck or offer help. George stood and waved. “Okay, come back. Stripped a gear, I guess. There’s no fire.”
Walking back to the car, Marjorie became aware of something bulky in her hand. She held it up, and was astonished to see that she was still clutching the jewel box. “Now what?” she said to George.
“Phone for a tow car. Nothing else to do.” He shrugged his bowed shoulders, patted the hood of the car, and peered through the swarm of cars. “There’s a police phone, I think, on that lamp post down there. Come with me, or stay here? I’ll just be a couple of minutes.”
“I—I guess I’d better stay off the ankle, George.”
“All right.” He opened the car door. “Might as well get in the back where it’s comfortable. The front is finished, for a while.”
“George,” she said as he turned to go.
“Yes?”
“You’d—maybe you’d better hold on to these. I lose things, all the time.”
The moonlight made a white blank of his glasses as he took the box. “Right,” he said, with no expression in his voice. He carefully stowed the box in his pocket, snuffled, and walked off down the road, swinging the flashlight.
She came home after one. The apartment was dark and quiet. On her bed was a note in her mother’s spiky handwriting: Sandy Goldstone called. Wanted to know how your ankle was. Called three times.
PART TWO
Marsha
Chapter 4. SANDY AND MARJORIE
Billy Ehrmann was the booby of his fraternity, and being seen with him had done Marjorie little good at Columbia; but once Sandy Goldstone started dating her, the Morgenstern telephone began to ring busily after school hours.
Lively and pretty though she was, she needed Sandy’s sponsorship because she was a Hunter girl. That was almost as disqualifying, in the estimation of Sandy’s West Side set, as living north of Ninety-sixth Street; which was only a shade less disqualifying than living in the Bronx. Snobbishness, of course, is a relative thing. The older and wealthier Jewish families, who lived on the upper East Side, would have been distressed had the West Side boys dated their daughters. And these families doubtless caused the well-to-do Christian families to wonder what was becoming of Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue. The terracing of caste extended upward into an azure realm of blood, breeding, and property as remote from little Marjorie Morgenstern as the planet Saturn. From her viewpoint, however, her small move upward was skyrocketing. Sandy Goldstone had begun to take her out. It followed that Bill Dryfus could, and Dan Kadane, and Neil Wein, and Norman Fisher, and Allen Orbach. She soon had to buy a little leather-bound notebook to keep track of her dates. The rush of success made her rather dizzy.
It seemed to go to her mother’s head too. Mrs. Morgenstern took her on a round of Manhattan shops and bought her a closetful of expensive new clothes. When the father objected to the bills, which were far beyond their means, Mrs. Morgenstern simply said, “A girl of seventeen can’t go around in rags.” Marjorie had been arguing for two years that girls of fifteen and sixteen couldn’t go around in rags (the rags in question being a quite presentable middle-priced wardrobe) but her mother had been deaf to the doctrine until now. Marjorie saw in her conversion a crafty plan to trap Sandy Goldstone, so her gratitude for the clothes was a bit tainted by cynicism. But she did the mother an injustice. Mrs. Morgenstern probably hoped to see her some day catch the department store heir, or a prize like him. Mainly, however, she was carried away by her daughter’s flowering beauty—the girl seemed to grow prettier every week in the sunshine of success—and by the mood of springtime, and by the parade of handsome well-dressed boys gathering in Marjorie’s wake. Satiric though the mother’s attitude was toward Marjorie, her daughter really rather dazzled her. At seventeen Rose Kupperberg had been a Yiddish-speaking immigrant girl toiling in a dirty Brooklyn sweatshop, dressed in real rags. As she watched her daughter burst into bloom on Central Park West, her own lonely miserable adolescence came back to her, and by contrast it seemed to her that Marjorie was living the life of a fairy-tale princess. She envied her, and admired her, and was a bit afraid of her, and drew deep vicarious delight from her growing vogue. The decline of George Drobes that went with it completed the mother’s satisfaction.
For after the Villa Marlene disaster George was clearly on the wane. He maintained an aggrieved silence for a couple of weeks, then telephoned Marjorie. She was as sweet to him as ever, and they continued to see each other. But Marjorie’s conscience troubled her less and less about dating new boys. George was losing his two great advantages with Marjorie, advantages which often are enough to bring about marriage if nothing interferes. When she was fifteen he had bent down to her from the celestial altitude of twenty; that altitude, however, had dwindled, as Marjorie rapidly matured and George slowed near his final level. And he had been the first man to thrill her with kisses, so the ancient universal spell of sex had in Marjorie’s eyes come to halo George Drobes personally. George’s one remaining chance lay in nailing the girl down while she was still under that fragile delusion; and a dim sense of this must have been behind his desperate Villa Marlene gamble. Penelope’s breakdown lost George much more than a means of transportation. It deprived him of a dark front seat. Since Marjorie was no girl to neck in hallways or on park benches, George was stymied.
The single shred of hope for him was that Marjorie as yet hadn’t necked with anyone else. But this was not from want of opportunity or candidates. Evening after evening she was finding herself in dark front seats more luxurious than Penelope’s, with the old problem on her hands. It was delightful to be taken to the best dancing places, to be able to chatter knowingly about the Biltmore and the Roosevelt and the St. Regis, about Guy Lombardo and Hal Kemp and Glen Gray; but in the end it all came to the same thing. Central Park West and the Bronx were no different in this respect. Marjorie found the sameness of boys at the end of an evening rather comical—the heavy breathing, the popping eyes, the grasping damp hands, the hoarse unconvincing romantic mumbling—but after innocently laughing at them a couple of times, she realized what a mistake that was. It was too effectively discouraging. They drove her home in a fury and never spoke to her again. The idea was to fend off the advances, not the boys. Moral indignation was hopeless; it was like getting angry at the weather. Every boy tried.
Moreover, Marjorie couldn’t help feeling that they had some small right on their side. They were entertaining her lavishly. Were they to have no reward? In theory, she knew, her company for the evening was supposed to be the reward. Theory often required some squaring with facts. Under continual pressure, she soon worked out two rules:
No necking at all;
No kiss on the first two dates; ther
eafter, one kiss for good night and maybe one more to cut off prolonged begging.
This policy seemed to work inasmuch as the boys grumbled and complained and whined, but usually called her up again after a few days. However, she acquired a reputation for being “frigid.” Sooner or later every boy brought out the word to salve his self-esteem at being fobbed off with one kiss. The diagnosis didn’t trouble her. In the Hunter lunchroom she had listened to an enormous amount of conversation about necking. She knew that girls who necked freely were thrown over by boys just as often as those who didn’t. Marjorie had about reached the conclusion that boys were on the whole more fascinated by sex withheld than by sex granted; and since this is nearly the sum of wisdom on the subject of young love, she managed for the time being to keep out of trouble.
The one exception in all this, oddly enough, was Sandy Goldstone. Though he took her out more often than the others, he did not even try to kiss her good night. Marjorie was grateful at first for his unusual restraint. Then she began to wonder whether it wasn’t a gambit of dark villainy. Then, when he persisted in this genial undemanding conduct, she grew a bit annoyed. The way things were, chivalry seemed to require a man to make some attempt at necking, however brief and formal. However, he was a superb dancer, and obviously he liked her company. His wry sense of humor, mostly directed at himself, amused her very much. She gave over puzzling about his diffidence, leaving the answer to time, and simply enjoyed herself with him.
May drifted into June and examination week came. Marjorie had to break off the lovely whirl to plunge into cramming. Her method was standardized and cold-blooded. The night before each examination she read the textbook through with rapt attention as though it were a detective story; when there were two exams in a day she read both books in one night. Her mind, rather like a boardwalk photographer’s camera, took a picture of the subject which stayed pretty clear for twenty-four hours, though it grew blurry in a week and faded to nothing in a month. She drank gallons of coffee, ate tins of aspirin, slept two or three hours a night, and staggered to and from school with red eyes, pale cheeks, and spinning brain. It was a horrible ordeal. But Marjorie had concluded long ago that she got the best marks at the least cost of time and energy this way. She was not much interested in her studies, but self-respect required her to be in the top half of the class. She emerged from the grim week with a high B average as usual; and as usual with a fierce head cold, which developed this time into a grippe. She was in bed for ten days, aching and feverish.
Aches and fever were the least of the troubles caused by this grippe. All the boys telephoned regularly to ask how she was getting on—except Sandy. Rosalind Green, visiting Marjorie on her sickbed, helpfully notified her that Vera Cashman had returned from Cornell, and that Sandy was squiring the blonde around again with great zest. She also volunteered what Sandy had confided to Phil Boehm, and Phil Boehm to her; namely, that Vera Cashman was a remarkably accomplished necker. This was not exactly news to Marjorie. She had observed the blonde’s little tricks: taking a cigarette from Sandy’s mouth and puffing it, absently running a finger along the back of his hand, dancing too close, and losing her fingers in his hair while they danced. But with a temperature of over 103, she could do little about the information except work up garish nightmares of Sandy kissing, necking, and eventually marrying the blonde.
Helpless in bed, Marjorie consoled herself with long-drawn telephone flirting with the other boys, and with the reflection that she didn’t care about Sandy Goldstone anyway, because her future lay in the theatre. The riot of social success had obscured for a while the vision of Marjorie Morningstar. Now in the dragging bedridden hours it brightened. She sent her brother out for volumes of plays, and for the summer catalogues of colleges and drama schools. She read through all of Eugene O’Neill and Noel Coward, and much of Shaw. Her theatrical ambition flared, fed by the heat of fever, and fanned by the delirium of grippe, which dissipated obstacles and multiplied rainbows. The first thing she did when the doctor released her from bed, wan and five pounds lighter, was to enroll in an acting course at New York University and an elementary playwriting course at Columbia; the latter because Shaw somewhere said that the best way to learn about the theatre was to try to write for it. This turn of events greatly annoyed Mrs. Morgenstern, to whom Marjorie’s acting plans were the merest vapor. She disliked wasting the forty dollars that the enrollments cost, though she offered to put the money gladly on Marjorie’s back in a new dress or suit. After an argument she paid the fees, muttering that Marjorie could probably be cured of any career by actually trying to work at it.
But Marjorie attended both courses faithfully and did well in them, despite an extravagant round of dates, dances, picnics, and parties that went on all summer. She dashed off one short playlet, based on the story of Jael and Sisera transposed to Nazi Germany, which earned an enthusiastic scrawl in red ink from the instructor. Her pleasure in this endorsement—which she happily brandished under her mother’s nose—was somewhat lessened by the fact that the seven other student playwrights in the course seemed to be half-witted eccentrics; especially one bright-eyed old maid, who brought two cats meowing in a suitcase to every class session. Her dramatic instructor, an old actor with a shock of perfectly groomed white hair, a hearing aid, and a British accent, said she showed much promise, and gave her the best ingenue parts to act out in class, staring hungrily at her legs while she emoted.
It was a pleasant and diverting summer, but the shadow of Sandy Goldstone’s neglect of her lay over it. Mrs. Morgenstern must have suggested twenty ways of getting Sandy to see her again, all of which Marjorie vetoed with growing irritation. She saw Sandy often at parties and night clubs, always with the blonde, who managed more than one poisoned simper at her. He even danced with Marjorie a few times. He seemed as fond of her as ever, behind his smoke screen of ambiguous joking. But he never called her.
Mrs. Morgenstern was not one to float becalmed on an unfavoring drift of events. One steamy morning in mid-August she said to Marjorie at breakfast, “This weather is getting impossible. How would you like to go to the Prado for a week or so?”
“Mom, the Prado?”
“If you can spare the time from your dramatic studies, that is—”
“Of course I can, but—why, the Prado’s for millionaires—”
“It’s not that bad. A lot of my friends are there. They say it’s a very nice place. They’re not millionaires.”
“I’d be mad about it, Mom, but—the Prado—”
“Well, we’ll see. I’ll talk to Papa.”
Next morning they were on a grimy Long Island train, with Marjorie’s fancy wardrobe in three trunks in the baggage car. Mr. Morgenstern was remaining in the city; the summer was his busiest season. They had stopped briefly in his office in the garment district to pick up some cash, and Marjorie had all but fainted in the windowless little office smelling so strongly of ink, stale coffee, and the peculiar dust of the feathers and straws lying baled in the shop. Mr. Morgenstern, in a gray tie and coat despite the killing heat, with a face almost as gray as his coat and almost as wet as the dripping water cooler behind his chair, had limply counted out some bills and wished them a pleasant time.
The Prado did not look at all like what it was, a kosher hotel. It had smooth green lawns, a white crushed-stone driveway, broad terraces, red clay tennis courts crisscrossed with new whitewash, and a huge blue swimming pool full of bronzed young people diving, splashing, and laughing. Beyond the hotel and its immense formal gardens lay a white curved beach and the hissing sea. Not long ago it had been a fashionable hotel barred to Jews. But the fashion had changed, the smart set having gone farther out on the Island. A few Christians, mostly politicians and theatre people, still came to the Prado, but it was now a known Jewish resort, and all anybody needed to stay there was enough money to pay the bill. That was sufficient restriction to keep it luxurious and elegant, despite its social decline.
Staring around at the marble pill
ars, Persian carpets, and fine statuary and paintings of the lobby, Marjorie did not see Sandy Goldstone at the hotel desk until he called, “Hi, Marge!” A white canvas bag of golf clubs was slung over his shoulder, and he was brown as a Mexican. The woman with her arm through his, small and plump, in a smart white sports dress, with streaks of gray in her dark hair, picked up silver-rimmed glasses on a delicate chain around her neck, and peered at Mrs. Morgenstern. “Why, hello, Rose. You here?”
“Hello, Mary,” Mrs. Morgenstern said. “Sandy, how are you?”
“Well, what a surprise. Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?” said Mrs. Goldstone. “You knew we were here. I’d have arranged lunch—”
Marjorie glanced at her mother, who suddenly appeared sheepish and confused. “Why, I guess—the thing is, Mary, we just decided to come on the spur of the moment. Mr. Morgenstern wouldn’t let us stay in the city, it’s so awful in there. I don’t think you’ve met Marjorie yet, have you? Marjorie, Mrs. Goldstone.”
The silver-rimmed glasses turned and glittered at the girl. “How do you do?” The hand was cool and dry, the handshake brief.
Sandy invited them to come along for a foursome.
“We don’t play golf,” Marjorie said.
“I’m always willing to learn,” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “It would take us a little while to register and change, but—”
“Mom, I do not want to learn to play golf just now,” said Marjorie, making the words separate and distinct as pistol shots.
“Maybe we can have lunch together,” Mrs. Morgenstern said to Sandy’s mother. “What table are you sitting at?”
Mrs. Goldstone smiled. “I’m afraid we won’t be back for lunch. We’re having a bite at the clubhouse. But I’m sure we’ll see a lot of you. Goodbye.”
While Mrs. Morgenstern registered, and while they rode up in the elevator, Marjorie held the flesh of her lower lip between her teeth. Mrs. Morgenstern wore an innocent happy smile.