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.”
Marjorie looked in his face for a moment. “I don’t know whether you enjoy tormenting me, or what. You have a cute way of putting these things, so that I’d look like an idiot if I took you seriously. If I were to turn on you right now and say, ‘All right, take me, I’m yours,’ you’d probably scoot out of here like a jack rabbit.”
He looked offended, then he burst out laughing. “Well, what I’d do more likely is faint from astonishment.”
“That’s it. You just enjoy mooning over me for some obscure reason, and you know it’s safe, so you indulge yourself. You’ve been doing this to me since you were eighteen, Marchbanks, and you’re still doing it. Look, I’m beaten, I’m crushed, I’m full of repentance. All right? Obviously, I should have fallen in love with you. You’re a mental giant, and you’re too attractive for words. I fell in love with someone else. Shoot me.”
He said, “It doesn’t matter how many months I don’t see you. I guess I’ve known a few hundred girls by now. You’re not smarter than all of them. You’re not even prettier than all of them. The only thing is, you’re Marjorie. That seems to go on being true, somehow.”
She glanced around the empty salon, took his hand and stood, then put her arms around him and kissed him. “I’ve left a room full of relatives and mamas and papas,” she murmured. “Let’s go back to them, shall we?”
“Noel hasn’t been well, by the way, Margie. You’re likely to find him changed.”
She had started to walk toward the door. She stopped and turned, a cold thrill running through her. “Changed? Noel? How?”
“He—well, changed. He picked up some kind of fever tooting around North Africa—”
“How do you know?”
“He wrote me.”
“What’s his address in Paris?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t write from Paris.”
“Is that the truth?”
“Of course it is.”
“I really want his address, Wally.”
“Good God, I’d tell you his address if I knew it, Marjorie,” Wally said.
They walked back to her stateroom without more words.
Chapter 41. THE MAN ON THE BOAT DECK
The Queen Mary edged away from the pier, to the thunder of boat whistles and the crash of a brass band. The last figures Marjori
e could discern in the blurring mob on the pier were Seth and Wally Wronken, shoulder to shoulder, waving their hats in the air. It all seemed to go very fast. Soon the great ship was out in the river, and she couldn’t see the pier at all through the black smoke of the tugs butting the ship and squawking.
She was on her way to Noel.
The vessel began to vibrate with its own power. Marjorie strolled forward on the boat deck. Neither the raw wet wind tugging at her clothes, nor the alarming blasts of the whistle from the huge red and black funnel overhead, nor the delicious small unsteadiness of the white-scrubbed wood deck beneath her feet could give her the feeling of being on a ship, of actually being on a ship. They steamed past the Empire State Building and it seemed to Marjorie that she was in the building watching the ship go by, instead of the other way around. Never in her life had she felt so totally dislocated, so outside reality. She had expected to experience some strong emotion, passing the Statue of Liberty outward bound, but it slipped down the side, a big green statue just like the postcard pictures of it; and while everyone at the rail gawked, pointed, and chattered, Marjorie forgot it was there, as she watched a gull cruising along in the air at the exact pace of the ship, not ten feet from her face, screaming sadly.
In the widening Lower Bay the land view became flat and dull. The view out to sea was tumbling gray clouds and heaving gray water. The ship began to roll more, in a slow majestic way. The wind freshened and became much colder; the passengers drifted rapidly from the rails. Marjorie found herself standing not six feet from a medium-sized slender man with a rather young face, and grayish hair trimmed close. He was leaning on the rail, hatless, smoking a long cigar. His coat hung over his arm, neatly folded. As the rail emptied between them, he glanced at her with a slight pleasant smile. She answered with a half-smile and looked out to sea again.