“I don’t know—doesn’t it sound awkward, sort of forced?”
“Maybe to you it does. You’re used to your own name. I tell you it’s perfect.” Marsha crammed the last scraps on her plate into her mouth and drank tea. “Some day when that name’s up in lights over the Music Box, I’ll come backstage and remind you of the time we ate in Mi Fong’s, and you told it to me, and I insisted that it was exactly right. And you’ll turn to your maid and say, ‘Give this person a quarter and show her out.’ ”
They both giggled, and began again on that endless topic, the theatre. Marsha said she was going to be a producer some day after she had made a lot of money in another field. She knew she lacked the talent to be a great designer of costumes or sets. “And I’m not interested in being anything but great, dear.” She rejected tolerantly Marjorie’s insistence that she was probably a genius. “Wait till you see some of my work. Dull plodding competence, that’s all.”
“But where are you going to make a pile of money, then, Marsha?”
“That’s my secret.”
“I’ve told you mine.”
“So you have.” Marsha looked at her cannily. “Well, it’ll do no harm to tell you, at that. I’m going to be a buyer—a big-time buyer of women’s clothes for department stores. There’s fortunes in it, fortunes! Mother’s a good friend of Edna Farbstein, the head buyer at Macy’s. Do you know what Edna’s worth? Well, dear, the miserable pauper just has one house in Larchmont, another in Palm Beach, a boat, and two Cadillacs, that’s all, and both her sons go to Princeton. All I need is a start—one connection, I’ll find one somehow—and I’m off to the races. One thing I can do is pick clothes.”
Marjorie could not stop a skeptical smile from flickering across her face. Marsha said sharply, “Look, baby, don’t say it. This stuff I wear, well, I’m no millionaire yet, and anyway, what can you do for a big fat black-haired slob? Exotic is the word. If you look this way you’ve got to lean on it, and pretend that’s exactly what you love to look like.”
“I think you dress very attractively,” Marjorie said. But she remained a shade skeptical, and they drank their tea in silence for a while. Given Marsha’s face and figure, she thought, she would diet away a lot of weight, cut and thin her hair, underplay the makeup, and dress very severely. That way Marsha might achieve a certain theatrical attractiveness, instead of seeming overblown and frowzy. She was afraid to say so, however.
When they came out into the street Marjorie was surprised at the sweet clean smell of the misty air. A Manhattan street seldom smelled this good to her, but after Mi Fong’s it was almost like a meadow.
“Which way do you go, Marsha?”
“Ninety-second Street and Central Park West.” Marsha pulled her patchy squirrel coat close about her, looking for a cab.
“What! Why, I live in the El Dorado!”
“Gad, next-door neighbors, how lovely. One cab for both—”
“Cab? The cross-town bus is a block from here.”
“Oh, the hell with the cross-town bus. This is an occasion.” A cab stopped, they got in, and the fat girl snuggled happily into a corner of the seat. “What’s the matter with me? Why do I love cabs so? I’m always in hock, just from taking cabs. Anyway, tonight I just had to. After all, my first dinner with Marjorie Morningstar—” She offered Marjorie a cardboard box of cigarettes, and lit one with a practiced cupping of her hands. The smoke was peculiarly aromatic.
“Marsha, you have no idea how queer that name sounds to me when you say it. I haven’t told it to a soul before.”
“Not even to Sandy Goldstone?”
Marjorie peered at her through the wreathing smoke. “Sandy Goldstone? What about him?”
“Dear, the price of eminence is that you become a goldfish, better get used to it. Everybody at school knows about you and Lamm’s, junior.”
“Isn’t it ridiculous? Marsha, I’ve just had a few dates with him now and then.”
“Well, I hope that’s how it is. Don’t tie down Marjorie Morningstar at eighteen, kiddo. Not for all the girdles in Lamm’s, don’t you do it.”
“Believe me, nobody’s asked me to.”
Marsha studied her face. “Well, all right, but don’t think it may not happen some day. Lamm’s, junior is not above you. The question is whether you’re not above him.”
Marjorie blushed. “The way you go on—”
“Sugar bun, tell me, are mine really the first mortal ears to hear your stage name? I can’t believe it.”
“It’s the truth. Please don’t tell it to anyone either, will you? I mean—it’s no state secret, I don’t want to seem absurd, but—”
“Darling, I’m a tomb, a silent tomb. Well, history has really been made tonight, hasn’t it? Do have a cigarette, they’re just Turkish, it’s like smoking warm air—”
Marjorie took the cigarette and puffed at it awkwardly. It burned her tongue, and she didn’t enjoy it, but she smoked it down.
The cab stopped at a brownstone house midway between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. Marjorie had walked past it dozens of times, never imagining that anybody who lived in such a house could have any connection with her life. The block was lined with them. Most of them were cheap boardinghouses. The shabby people who came in and out of them looked like small-towners down on their luck and stranded in New York. In the windows the usual sights were fat dusty cats, unhealthy geraniums, and wrinkled old ladies peeking through grimy curtains. “Come on up,” Marsha said, “meet my folks. My mother would love to meet you, I know—”
Marjorie glanced at her wristwatch. “Another time. It’s after nine, my mom will be wondering what’s happened to me.”
The girls clasped hands. Marsha said, “We’re having lunch at the drugstore tomorrow. I just decided that. Or are we? Is your free hour twelve to one?”
“It is. I’d love to.”
Marjorie walked home in something of a daze, not unlike the feeling after first meeting a handsome boy. It took her a long time to fall asleep that night. She tossed and turned, repeating in her mind the things Marsha had said. As she sank into sleep she seemed still to be hearing that energetic, swooping voice talking about the theatre.
Chapter 7. AN EVENING AT THE ZELENKOS’
What they continued to talk most about, in the days that followed, was the theatre. But the real bond between them was mutual admiration.
Marsha did almost all the talking. She talked and talked and talked, yet it seemed to Marjorie that she could never hear enough of this girl’s worldly wisdom, vulgar sharp wit, and intimate gossip about well-known people. Best of all Marjorie liked the long stretches of conversation about herself: her talent, her charm, her promise, with interminable technical discussion of her acting after every rehearsal. The hours flew when they were together; it was very like a romance.
Marjorie was thrust even more into Marsha’s company by events at home. Preparations were under way for her brother Seth’s bar-mitzva, scheduled for the Saturday before The Mikado performance. In Marjorie’s view there was no comparing the importance of the two events. Her debut in the college show loomed as large in her mind as an opening night on Broadway; the bar-mitzva was a mere birthday party for a thirteen-year-old boy, with some religious frills. But obviously in the Morgenstern household nobody else thought as she did. Her parents seemed unaware that she was rehearsing at all. It astonished Marjorie to see how her mother’s interest in her comings and goings dropped off. Even when she returned from dates with Sandy there were no eager question periods. Usually she found her parents at the dining-room table poring over guest lists or arguing about caterers’ estimates. They would greet Marjorie abstractedly and go on with their talk:
“But Rose, Kupman will do it for seventeen hundred. Lowenstein wants two thousand.”
“Yes, and maybe that’s why every woman in my Federation chapter uses Lowenstein. First class is first class. How many bar-mitzvas are we going to have in this family?”
The girl had alw
ays imagined that she hated her mother’s inquisitiveness; but she found she actually missed the cross-examinations. They had made the smallest details of her life seem urgent; they had put her in the position of having important secrets. Now suddenly she had no secrets, because her mother had no curiosity. An unfamiliar sensation came over her at times—jealousy of Seth, and of boys in general. Bar-mitzvas were not for girls. Her own birthday, which fell three weeks before Seth’s, was going unmentioned. All her life Marjorie had been the darling, the problem, the center of the household; her brother, a healthy even-tempered boy spending all his time at school or in the street, had never before challenged her for the spotlight. So Marsha came along at a fortunate time to flatter Marjorie, make much of her, and restore her good humor.
It seemed to Marjorie that she had never heard so much Hebrew in her life. The house rang with the ancient tongue. Seth was studying for his part in the ceremony as he did everything else nowadays—efficiently, thoroughly, and with ease. He had to learn a number of prayers, and a long reading from a prophetic book in a bizarre chant, and he was constantly practicing aloud. Sometimes a tutor came and chanted with him, sometimes in the evening Mr. Morgenstern chimed in, and all three discordantly bayed the melody. Marjorie heard the chant so often that she came to know it by heart. She was vexed to catch herself chanting as she walked along the street. With an effort of the will she would change over to Gilbert and Sullivan. Marjorie had had desultory Hebrew lessons as a girl, but at twelve, to her great rejoicing, she had been permitted to discontinue them. She had always been bored by the thick black letters that had to be read backward. Her Bible lessons had made her yawn until the tears ran. All of it had seemed an echo of the Stone Age, no more a part of the world of movies, boys, ice cream, and lipstick than the dinosaur skeletons in the museum. Seth, however, had taken to Hebrew from the first and had done well with it, though otherwise he had been a plain street boy, grimy and wild, concerned mainly with ball games, candy, baseball scores, black eyes, and bloody noses.
But lately Seth had been changing. He had gone away to summer camp short and chubby, and had returned a brown elongated stranger, tall as his sister, annoyingly self-possessed. He danced with a smoothness that amazed her, and he actually had dates with prim painted little girls of eleven and twelve. He accepted the vortex of bar-mitzva preparations around him quite calmly, with no trace of stage fright at the prospect of his performance. She told Marsha about these changes, and talked so much of her brother that Marsha asked to meet him. Marjorie had her friend up to tea on Sunday afternoon. Seth talked to Marsha coolly, unperturbed by her ironic teasing; and when he went back to his chant she said that he was an absolute charmer, and that having no brother or sister was the tragedy of her life.
It happened that Mrs. Morgenstern came home before Marsha left, and so met the fat girl for the first time. She evinced a flicker of her old interest in Marjorie’s doings, cross-examining Marsha about her background. When Marsha was gone the mother announced that she didn’t like her much.
“Why not?” said Marjorie, bristling.
“What kind of people live in those brownstone houses? You’ve met her parents?”
“No, I haven’t, and I think that’s the most snobbish remark I’ve ever heard, Mom.”
“All right. I’m a snob. I’m this, I’m that. She doesn’t look quite clean, that’s all.”
“Okay, I’ll never bring her up here again!” exclaimed Marjorie, enraged at her mother’s unerring hit on Marsha’s one unfortunate weakness.
“You’ll get tired of her soon enough, the sooner the better.”
“That’s how much you know. We’ll be friends for life.”
Helen Johannsen encountered her in a corridor next morning and invited her to lunch. Marjorie hesitated; she had begun meeting Marsha every day in the drugstore for the noon hour. But she was flattered, and she knew the fat girl would understand, so she accepted. Helen took her to a genteel tearoom favored by the faculty. For a while the lunch was very pleasant. They chatted about The Mikado, the school newspaper, the sororities, and the yearbook. Helen disclosed no inside information, and seemed unaware of her own great spider web of power, talking of these things as though they were light fun.
Then she said, rather abruptly, “I see you’ve made friends with Marsha Zelenko.”
“Yes.”
“She’s very clever.”
“We have loads of fun.”
“You met her at the rehearsals, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“I want to tell you a couple of things. I know Marsha well. She’s all right in some ways. Don’t take her too seriously, and don’t lend her money.” Helen kept her eyes on Marjorie’s stiffening face.
Marjorie said dryly, “Marsha is my friend.”
“I know.” Helen gathered up her purse and gloves. “I’ll say no more.—How’s Sandy, by the way?”
“Just fine.”
“He graduates this June, doesn’t he? What’s he going to do?”
“Go into his father’s business, I guess.”
“Oh? He’s given up Peru?”
Marjorie said blankly, “Peru?”
“Didn’t he tell you? He had it all worked out. He was going to get an agency to sell electrical appliances in Peru. He said there was a fortune in it.”
“He’s given up Peru,” said Marjorie. “Right now he wants to be either a doctor or a forest ranger. He’s not sure which.”
They both chuckled. “He’s nice, though,” Helen said.
Marsha Zelenko came out of the drugstore as the two girls were walking past on the street. She waved airily, they both waved back, and she went another way. At the rehearsal that afternoon Marsha sauntered up to Marjorie. “Well, well, lunching with the big shot, hey, instead of poor no-account me?”
“Marsha, she asked me—”
“Darling, by all means, you must never miss any chance to improve your connections. Did she happen to say something about me, maybe?”
“You? Not a thing.”
Marsha scanned her face. “Well, just in case she did, dear, just remember one thing. I am the only girl in the class of ’34 who has never kowtowed to Helen Johannsen. I am the class cat, full of independence and claws. Doing anything tonight?”
“Just homework, why?”
“How’s to walk around the corner after dinner and meet my folks? I’ve talked so much about you—of course it’s not the El Dorado, but we have a lot of fun.”
“Sure, Marsha.”
When she arrived at Marsha’s house that evening, however, the parents had gone out to a concert. The two girls lolled on the divan in Marsha’s tiny bedroom, waiting for them to return. Marjorie ate grapes; the fat girl smoked heavy Turkish cigarettes. Marsha asked a lot of questions about the lunch with Helen Johannsen; but Marjorie, an old hand under cross-examination, managed to avoid repeating Helen’s criticism.
Marsha said, “Well, now, are you developing a huge crush on Helen, seeing she’s so nice to you?”
“A crush? Hardly. But she is terrifically attractive.”
“You’re more attractive than she is.”
“Marsha, how you talk! She’s a model—”
“So what? Too much jaw and chin, dear. Strictly not for photographs, and only second class for the cloak-and-suit trade. Oh, I sound like a cat all right, don’t I? Look, Helen Johannsen is tops. Clever, pretty, honest, a natural leader, all that. I’ll say it to anybody. I’ll only add to you, because you’re you, that to me she’s as exciting as old dishwater.”
“Marsha, you’re crazy. Men swarm for tall blondes—”
“For dates, sugar bun, for dates. To see how far they can get in one night. Helen won’t play. She’s intelligent, too, which scares them, and not intelligent enough to make noises like a moron, which would induce them to keep trying. No dear, when the boys want to get married they skip the big blondes and come looking for little Marjorie Morningstar.” Marsha rolled over on her back, and he
r skirt slipped up, exposing a patch of downy brown thigh above her stocking. Marjorie would have pulled her own skirt down in such a position, but Marsha merely lit another cigarette and said with a yawn, “I’ll bet you’ve been proposed to already.”
Marjorie turned red. Marsha laughed. “More than once, eh? Four times, more likely.”
“Good heavens, no. Even counting crazy kids just babbling at a dance”—Marjorie was thinking of Billy Ehrmann, and of a moon-struck boy she had known in the Bronx—”there have only been three. Only one that really mattered.”
“Listen to the girl!” Marsha said to the ceiling. She leaned up on an elbow, staring at Marjorie. “You’re eighteen, punk! You’re still in the shell. And three guys, no matter how crazy—I haven’t had one, not one. Most girls haven’t at your age. Please realize that. By the time you’re twenty-one you’ll be beating them off with a club. Who was the one that mattered? Sandy Goldstone?”
“Marsha, I told you Sandy’s never proposed. Don’t you believe me? He’s never come within a mile of it. It was someone else.” She hesitated. She had until now avoided talking about her love life to Marsha, who seemed too sophisticated to be anything but amused by her problems. But she missed having a confidante. Since her success with the Columbia set she had found it awkward to talk to Rosalind Green; during the summer they had drifted apart. “I can tell you about it, but I’m afraid you’ll be bored to death.”
“Nothing relating to you could possibly bore me, Morningstar.”
Marjorie told her about George, and about Sandy; and she described her early experiences too. Once started, she fairly poured it all out. Marsha listened attentively, hugging her knees, occasionally lighting fresh cigarettes, filling the hot little room with drifting layers of gray strong-smelling smoke. Marjorie talked on for about half an hour, with her eyes mostly fixed on an orange and green Mexican blanket hung on the wall; she never saw the blanket afterward, or one like it, without thinking vaguely of George Drobes.
Marsha said, when Marjorie had finished, “Well. Quite a saga, for an eighteen-year-old.”