During the next couple of weeks, whenever the telephone rang, crimson rays seemed to shoot out of it, and Marjorie would fling herself at it. But it was never the marvelous twenty-year-old man. Then one rainy evening almost a month later, when she had given up hope, he really did call. He was clumsy and abrupt. Did she remember him? Was she well? Would she come with him to a formal dance at the City College gymnasium? Marjorie answered yes, yes, yes, in painful gasps—and it was over. She stood with the receiver in her hands, numb with joy.
She had to tell her mother, of course. It took Mrs. Morgenstern only a few minutes to extract from the shaky girl everything she knew about George Drobes. The mother was less impressed than Marjorie had been to learn that he was twenty years old, a college man, and a bacteriologist; nor was she quite so thrilled at the girl’s being invited to a college formal dance before reaching sixteen. “If this fellow is as marvelous as you say, why should he want to bother with a baby like you?”
“Mom, you’ll never look at the good side of anything. Isn’t it just possible that he could like me?”
The mother at last gave a grudging consent to the date, and even became a little infected with the girl’s exhilaration when they shopped for an evening dress in downtown department stores. Marjorie thought about nothing but the dance for two weeks. There were tremendous debates over hair-dos and makeup and color of shoes and exposure of bosom. The day of the dance was cyclonic in the Morgenstern household, with Marjorie fretting and foaming at the center. Then all at once, an hour before George was supposed to arrive, quiet ensued. The eternity passed, the time came, the doorbell rang; and she tripped to answer it, a shiny-eyed child of fifteen and a half, with a bosom precociously full and panting under the flouncy blue tulle of her dress.
She almost fainted when she saw George. He was in an army officer’s uniform, all glittering brass buttons and brown male power and glory. He himself had been too nervous on the telephone to mention that it was a Reserve Officers Training Corps dance.
The military apparition overpowered her family. Mrs. Morgenstern was more polite than she had ever been to one of Marjorie’s escorts. The father stared at George with something like awe, and said nothing. Marjorie’s younger brother, Seth, a lively urchin of eleven whose face shone from a harsh last-minute scrubbing, kept saluting and prancing in circles, humming The Stars and Stripes Forever. As for Marjorie, the only thought that pierced her fog of delight was that the living room was a wretched cramped hole and the furniture terribly dowdy; she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t noticed it long ago.
There was no end to the wonders of George Drobes. It turned out that he had his father’s car for the occasion, an old Chevrolet painted a bright false green, which he drove with practiced ease. Moreover he had a name for the car, Penelope. She thought this was an incredibly clever and whimsical touch. Her father drove a new blue Buick, but nobody had ever had the imagination to give it a name. It was just a machine, nothing like this glamorous lovable Penelope. Sitting beside George in the front seat of Penelope, Marjorie felt twenty-five years old.
The dance was a delirium. The very air in the college gymnasium seemed to be blue and gauzy like her dress, and when she danced she seemed to be standing still, wrapped in George’s strong arms, while the great bare walls and the handsome officers and the beautiful girls and the punching bags and monkey bars and wrestling mats and rowing machines wheeled round and round her gently in time to the music.
On the way home, George stopped the car in Bronx Park, in a leafy dark nook filled with smells of springtime; and Marjorie found that there was more to kissing than the pecking wet foolishness of party games, that this touch of mouth to mouth could be sweet. It didn’t seem wrong to kiss George. He was gentle and kind. Between kisses he poured out his heart to her. He had tried for weeks to forget her, he said, convinced that she was too young for him. But it had been impossible. He had invited her to the dance to prove to himself that she couldn’t fit into his life. Instead he was falling more and more in love with her. Who could deny that she had been the loveliest girl at the dance, the most poised, the most intelligent? What did age matter, when a girl had everything?
“Oh, you’ve just gone crazy, George.”
“Yes. I’ll never get over it either. I’ll wait five years, Marjorie, ten, whatever you say. You’re my girl. There’ll never be anyone else.”
Hearing such words, Marjorie surrendered herself to the pleasant process of kissing George without further fear. She had never experienced such bliss. How could she deny the evidence of her senses? For her, too, there would never be anyone else.
In the months that followed, George consolidated his position. He lived only a few subway stops from Marjorie. Walks in the park, movie dates, and casual meetings at ice cream parlors or at the neighborhood library were simple to arrange. George soon came to enjoy a great added advantage: Mrs. Morgenstern openly opposed him, saying that Marjorie would do much better one of these days. This would probably have been enough in itself to make the girl adore him. But George did have persisting attractions in his own right. He was—at least by Marjorie’s sixteen-year-old standards—adult, witty, gracious, and suave. He had Penelope. And he thrilled Marjorie as she had never been thrilled before. In time their relationship included some rather warm necking sessions. But he was considerate. The advance of intimacy was very slow, and each step seemed natural when it happened. The necking was often preceded by George’s reading aloud of some poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, which he did quite well in a husky voice.
Then Marjorie moved to Central Park West.
She smiled brightly at Sandy when George rang the doorbell, and hobbled to answer it before her mother could stop her.
George stood in the doorway in the usual gray suit with the usual red tie, holding in his hand the battered brown hat, the only one he owned, with the threads coming loose on the band. It still gave Marjorie a thrill to open the door to George, though he no longer quite stunned her with his godlike masculinity. His smile was the same—wide, sweet, a little more melancholy than it had been before he had given up bacteria for auto supplies. She felt a bit ashamed because Sandy Goldstone was in the dining room wearing riding clothes. “Hi, George. Come in.”
His eye fell on the taped ankle. “My God, pooch—”
“It’s nothing, nothing at all. Sprained it a bit. Come on, you’re just in time for coffee and cake.” She took his hand and pressed it warmly, trying to tell him with this gesture that the handsome young stranger he was about to meet didn’t mean a thing to her; and she led him into the dining room.
Mrs. Morgenstern smiled at George with her mouth muscles. Mrs. Morgenstern looked unhappy. Sandy Goldstone rose with an amiable grin. Marjorie introduced the two young men to each other. Sandy poked out a friendly hand. George took it as though it were a telegram containing bad news, and shook it briefly. Marjorie pulled a chair to the table beside her own. “Poor Sandy had the job of bringing me home after I was dumb enough to fall off a horse. Sit down, George.” George was still standing, fumbling his brown hat.
“I just had lunch. I’ll wait in the living room—”
“Don’t be funny.” She pulled him into the chair. “Some coffee and cake won’t kill you.”
“Cake’s all gone,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.
“Good heavens, he can have mine,” said Marjorie. “Pour him some coffee, Mom.”
“How are your folks, George?” said Mr. Morgenstern.
“Pop’s ulcer is acting up again,” George said.
“I thought that new medicine was so good.”
“Well, it was for a while. I don’t know. He went to a wedding and ate herring.”
“Herring? Foolish.” Mr. Morgenstern had no ulcers, but feared he was getting them. He often talked with George about his father’s ulcer while Marjorie dressed for a date. It cheered him to hear of Mr. Drobes’ symptoms, because they were more acute than his own. He had really decided he liked George one evening when
George told him of his father being carried off to a hospital in agony. “I hope he isn’t in the hospital again?”
“No, but he will be if he doesn’t lay off herring, that’s for sure.”
“I like kippers myself,” said Sandy.
“You’re just lucky,” said Mr. Morgenstern, “that you’re too young to worry about ulcers.”
“Please!” broke out the mother. “Who brought up ulcers? Do we have to sit around the lunch table talking about ulcers?” She held out a cup of coffee to George. In reaching for it he flipped his hat off his lap, instinctively grabbed for it, hit the coffee with his elbow, and sent it splashing across the table.
“Oh my God, Mrs. Morgenstern, I’m sorry—Oh, Lord, that’s terrible—I beg your pardon—”
“Nothing at all. Coffee stains come out, usually,” said the mother, sopping up the brown pool with a napkin. “But that’s the last of it, and it’ll take a while to heat some more.”
“I assure you I don’t want any. I was just taking it to be polite—”
“I really have to be going,” said Sandy.
“Don’t let me drive you away,” said George. “Stick around.”
“Who drives anybody out of this house?” said the mother. “Please, Sandy, come into the parlor and visit for a minute.”
Sandy dropped into the most comfortable armchair in the living room, the one usually occupied by Mr. Morgenstern. George sat on a low bench in front of the artificial fireplace, his legs projecting bonily. He still held his hat, turning it between his legs round and round. Marjorie waited till the others were seated, then perched herself on a peach-colored hassock close to George.
“Marjorie, that’s hard on your ankle. Come sit by me,” said the mother.
“Oh, Mom, relax. It doesn’t bother me at all. I’m perfectly comfortable.”
Mr. Morgenstern took a cigar and extended the humidor toward the two young men. They both declined. A silence followed, during which the only activity in the room was Mr. Morgenstern lighting his cigar, and George turning his hat.
“Don’t you smoke, Sandy?” said the mother.
“Oh, sure, tons of cigarettes, ma’am. Just don’t feel like it at the moment, thanks.”
Mr. Morgenstern said, “You’re young enough to break the habit. Take my advice and quit.”
“That’s what my dad says,” grinned Sandy. “He smokes twenty cigars a day.”
“Mr. Goldstone owns Lamm’s department store,” said Mrs. Morgenstern to George.
“Oh,” said George, reversing the direction of his hat.
“One of these days I’ll have to start on cigarettes,” said Marjorie. “I love the smell of them.”
“Over my dead body,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.
“They’re not so bad,” said Sandy.
“It’s not refined for girls to smoke cigarettes,” said the mother. “Married women, maybe. Not girls. Get married first, then you can smoke your head off.”
“That’s right,” said George. “I think a cigarette makes a girl look hard.”
Mrs. Morgenstern said, “What are you talking about? Nothing could make Marjorie look hard.”
“Well, I don’t think so either. But if anything could, cigarettes could.”
“Nothing could,” said the mother.
“George,” said Marjorie, “for heaven’s sake put down that hat.”
“I didn’t know I still had it,” said George, looking at the hat. It went on turning in his hands. Marjorie snatched it and put it on a table beside her.
“Does your father ride horseback too?” Mrs. Morgenstern said to Sandy.
“Well, Dad’s more of a golf player, but when we started going to Arizona he took up riding. Nothing much to do there but ride. He got pretty good at it. He usually does, whatever he goes in for.”
“Your father keeps himself in shape. Smart man,” said Mr. Morgenstern, rolling his cigar in his fingers.
“Beats me at everything, pretty near. Won’t play tennis with me because I can hold my own at that. Dad doesn’t like to lose.”
“He sounds like a very fine person,” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “A big businessman, but he finds time to play games with his son.”
Sandy looked a little less self-assured, almost sheepish. He pulled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lit it with a flick of a yellow metal lighter. “Well, Dad says he’s going to make a man of me if it kills him. He thinks I’m pretty hopeless.”
Mrs. Morgenstern laughed. “I’ll bet he doesn’t. He’s just toughening you up to step into his shoes.”
“Well, I know. But I’d rather be a doctor, you see.”
George, who was sitting in a mournful slump, looked up with interest. “Are you premed?”
“Sort of. Not officially yet, so as to avoid family arguments, but I’m taking all the courses.”
Mrs. Morgenstern said, “Well, to be a doctor is a fine thing. But to give up a million-dollar business to study for seven years and then sit around in a dinky office for ten more before you make a decent living—” She shrugged, and smiled. “You’ll think better of it when the time comes.”
Sandy twisted his mouth. “You’re on Dad’s side. That’s exactly what he says.”
“I’m on your side,” said George. “I’m a bacteriologist, myself. I’d rather take blood counts in a charity ward than run R. H. Macy’s.”
“That may be,” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “Wait till somebody asks you to run Macy’s.”
“I would have liked to be a doctor,” said Mr. Morgenstern.
“Every man you talk to wanted to be a doctor or a writer,” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “It’s like a disease. And still half of the doctors are starving, and all of the writers. And why? Because most people are healthy, and hardly anybody reads books. It’s that simple. Business is what keeps the world going. And still nobody has a good word for business.”
Marjorie said to Sandy with a laugh, “This is an old family fight. Dad wants my brother Seth to be a doctor. Mom wants him to carry on the business.”
“And what does Seth want to do?” said Sandy.
“He has a fine ambition,” said the mother. “He wants to be the first man to fly to the moon.”
Sandy burst out laughing. “I’m all for him.” He rose, and offered his hand to George. “Got to go. Nice meeting you. Are you on a hospital staff?”
With a ghost of a grin, George said, “Regard me as a horrible example. I’ve succumbed. I’m in my father’s business. But only temporarily, I hope.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Sandy.
“Take my word for it,” George said. “The pressures close in on you as you get older.”
“I guess they do,” Sandy said, more distantly.
“After all, George,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, “an auto supply store in the Bronx isn’t Lamm’s.”
Marjorie said with a cutting edge in her voice, “The principle is exactly the same, Mom.”
“Oh, the principle,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.
Marjorie limped with Sandy to the door, preventing her mother with a fierce look from accompanying them.
“Thanks for lunch—that is, thank your mom for me,” said Sandy.
“Thank you for bringing me home,” said Marjorie, opening the door and ringing for the elevator. “I hope Vera won’t be too angry with you.”
Sandy grinned. “She’s boiling, I’m sure.” He leaned against the door-post, fished a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. He looked out of place in an apartment hallway, almost like a cowhand, with his easy powerful gestures, his sunburn, the faint horsy smell from his red shirt, and the slow clear male grin. He had even picked up a trace of a drawl in Arizona, or maybe it was his own way of talking. If so it was very odd in a Manhattan Jewish boy. This was Sandy at his most attractive. He had seemed to dim out in the living room for a while, especially when he spoke of his father.
She rang the bell again. “These elevators.”
“I’m in no hurry. You and I can ha
ve a nice little chat.”
“About what? Vera Cashman?”
He looked at her from under raised eyebrows. He reached out a long arm and mussed her hair.
“Stop that,” she said, tossing her head.
“I like your friend George. Kind of old for you, though.”
“That’s how much you know.”
“Let me tell you something about riding a horse,” Sandy said. “You must never forget one thing. You’re a person, and he’s a horse. That means you’re better than he is, even though he seems to be four times as smart as you and eight times as big. Now when it’s a question of—”
The elevator came jangling up the shaft. “Oh, dear,” said Marjorie. “And it was just getting interesting.”
Sandy mussed her hair again. “You remind me of my kid sister.” He grinned and waved to her from inside the elevator. “Have fun. Stay off that ankle. ’Bye.”
Marjorie returned to the living room. “When did he start to vomit?” Mr. Morgenstern was saying to George. “After he went to bed?” The mother had left the room.
“No, right after he got home,” said George.
“Was the pain high up, or down low?”
“For heaven’s sake,” said Marjorie. “That ulcer again?”
“Well.” The father stood and walked out, saying, “Give my best to him, George. Tell him to stay away from herring.”