by John Rechy
The same person? Two? Was one of them herself? Someone he would make available? Normalyn did not want her questioning to be perceived in her reactions—and he was studying them, she was sure—so she stared down at the carpet, noticing an intricate configuration of patterns not apparent before, colors buried in smooth darkness. When she looked up from the darkened colors, she heard him say in a whisper poised over the silence:
“We need proof.”
Proof! He was trying to trap her into telling him about Enid’s letter. She touched the clasp on her purse. “I don’t have any proof.” Rejecting him, she no longer avoided his eyes. “I don’t know what proof you’re looking for, nor of what.”
“I didn’t say ‘proof,’ Miss Morgan. I said ‘truth.’”
Had he? He had posed his whispered question so that if she did not respond—with reference to Enid’s letter—he might withdraw its implications, as he was now doing. She was sure of it. Or had she heard the wrong word, barely spoken?
“You’re trying to trap me, David.” The words of challenge pushed away her confusions. He knew nothing, spoke only in generalities. Who wouldn’t know that what a person wanted most was her life?
“There was a letter—” David Lange said, and stopped.
He did know! Normalyn heard her own breathing. She held her purse—Enid’s letter—closer.
“A letter containing lies—”
Then she could receive from him the proof of the necessary lie she had not found at the Temple of Divine Love! A brighter reflection of light seemed to Normalyn to have seeped into the room, nudging vague shadows, contrasts. She could trust him.
“—or did the letter contain truth?” David Lange converted his statement into a question. “Do you know who wrote that letter, Miss Morgan?”
Oh, but there were two parts to the letter—two letters. The second—Enid’s—added force to the first. Normalyn cautioned herself: Don’t trust him, not yet, don’t react, look away from his pained eyes. “Do you know, David?” She threw the question back at him.
“Will you speak to someone who has essential information about it?” he asked very quickly.
“Who?” She didn’t care whom he would name. She would not go.
“Mildred Meadows,” David Lange said.
Enraged X’s—Normalyn remembered Enid’s markings next to that name on the newsclipping in her purse.
“An exiled queen eager to reclaim her throne.” David Lange’s voice was toneless. “A recluse—but she’ll see you.”
Normalyn had to know just this much more, and only to hear what he would say: “Who would you tell her I am, to make sure she’d see me?”
David Lange stood up. He turned to the photographs on the wall.
At that moment they seemed to Normalyn to radiate out of the tangled disorder of the painting at their center.
David Lange faced Normalyn. He smiled. “I’ll tell her that I believe we have found . . . our Normalyn.”
Eleven
“There were three people who mattered in Hollywood: myself, Zanuck, and—some said—J. Edgar Hoover. Parsons and Hopper were downs. I ruled until—” Mildred Meadows aimed an unspoken accusation at Normalyn, who stood where a butler had only moments earlier abandoned her before the woman.
Tiny, frail, Mildred Meadows was certainly a well-preserved eighty years old, dressed in a purple gown outlined with gold lace. Darkened-silver hair in meticulous waves framed a delicately featured handsome face, made up impeccably.
She sat in a velvet chair with ornate armrests; its carved gold legs clutched thick carpeting that rendered footsteps soundless in the enormous house of chandeliers, lush furniture, white statues, paintings of pastoral landscapes, walls decorated with a filigree of gold bunching at tall arched doorways and windows that parted past thick folds of drapes into a white-stoned veranda clawed by violent vines spilling like blood onto a lawn of green perfection stretching to the edge of trimmed shrubbery, which surrendered to looming trees sealing this enormous mansion in the rich seclusion of the Bel Air hills.
Having introduced herself at the top of the hierarchy of power, Mildred Meadows commanded Normalyn, “Sit there, my dear, I’ve been expecting you. David called.”
Normalyn did not sit in the chair the old woman directed her to. She sat in a taller one next to it.
“Hmmm. Zanuck’s chair,” Mildred Meadows deliberated.
And so Normalyn had called David Lange, to “suggest” that she “might be willing” to be “put in touch” with Mildred Meadows. David called her back at the public telephone booth at the gas station. “She expects you at—” . . . Normalyn had decided to take just one more step—and just to find out what they would claim to know about the letter. Telling Troja and Kirk only that she might be late—“another call-back?” Troja probed—Normalyn had taken a cab, gasping as the meter soared.
Now in the Bel Air mansion, Mildred Meadows raised a crystal goblet to her thin lips. “Sherry soothes calm nerves,” she said. “What may I offer you, my dear?”
“Iced tea.” Normalyn made her answer a challenge.
“Iced tea. . . Mildred’s brittle lips almost relaxed into a smile, only the memory of a smile. “Did David coach you to ask—?” The lips abandoned the faint smile, and withdrew the question.
Coach her? No. Normalyn was not even sure what David Lange had actually told this woman about her.
Mildred Meadows tinkled a bell, tiny like her. The butler entered the room soundlessly. “Baroness?” he asked.
“Iced tea for the young lady, and a bit more sherry for me.” He left, bowing.
The woman said to Normalyn, “One of my husbands, I forget which, was a baron.”
The butler returned with iced tea on a silver tray for Normalyn, and an amber bottle of cut crystal; he poured sherry into Mildred Meadows’s goblet. The slightest flutter of her hand—she wore only one ring, a pearl—instructed him to leave the decanter beside her. She aimed words at Normalyn: “You responded to David’s article about Monroe. Why?”
“The reason he gave you.”
“Why are you here?”
“The reason he told you.”
“Charming!” Mildred complimented the banter.
In response, Normalyn clinked her iced tea at the old woman before she sipped from it.
“But then David’s reasons are sometimes too lofty to grasp immediately, aren’t they? All we can know for certain is that he pursues pure truths—no matter how vulgar the route, like that newspaper he writes for. His nettlesome conscience makes him grandly vindictive.” She pretended a slight shudder; she touched her hair as if even that much reaction might unsettle the waves. “He waits for years for his revenge.”
A warning? Were they antagonists or co-conspirators?
“You came for information,” Mildred asserted.
“Perhaps.”
“Well, you’ll get information.” The tiny woman hissed. “Do you know who tried to poison her husband but he got her first? Do you know who kidnapped a starlet and kept her on drugs until she had the role they both wanted? What actor married in a white gown, what actress married him in a tuxedo? What aristocrat turned out to be the daughter of the chauffeur she had an affair with?” At each question she leaned more closely toward Normalyn, as if advancing on her.
Miss Bertha would despise this woman! Normalyn evoked an ally. She had no idea who the various objects of Meadows’ flaunted malice were. To emphasize the irrelevance to her of vicious gossip, she offered one single name, that of the movie star constantly resurrected in the news: “They were all Verna La Maye!”
“Oh, you are a clever thing, my dear,” Mildred Meadows approved, with what might have been subdued laughter if she had allowed her features to relax slightly more. “But do you know”—her voice lowered to a whisper; she held the goblet motionless before her—“what star’s secret pregnancy sent shock waves to the White House?” She took the tiniest sip of sherry, dramatic punctuation.
Normalyn backed
away from this pursuit. Don’t, dearheart! she imagined Miss Bertha advising.
“Do you know’, baroness?”
“Let’s say that I do,” Mildred Meadows declared, “since circumstances seem to require ambiguities and riddles.” She savored the situation and the sherry. “Of course, during our chat, you do get to ask questions, but only intelligent ones. That’s how I’ll know whether you deserve intelligent answers. Otherwise I’ll terminate our visit, my dear, I promise.”
Like David, Meadows wanted something from her; she was asserting the opposite too emphatically.
“And if you don’t provide intelligent answers, then I’ll stop asking, I promise . . . my dear.” Normalyn astonished herself.
“Checkmate!” the older woman adjusted her lacy cuffs. “For now,” she added. “I never liked chess—a feeble, slow substitute for life.” She said suddenly, “I detest those filthy birds!”
Normalyn heard the chirping of birds outside.
Mildred Meadows said, “They dirty my garden; they fall dead on my lawn with their withered legs straight up, feathers matted. Repulsive. Ugly. I detest ugliness, my dear. I have never allowed it to touch me.” Her coiffed hands pushed as if ugliness might lurk unseen. “My only daughter, my beloved Tarah—she chose her own name—my Tarah was beautiful.” Mildred kissed the last word. “Alas, beauty does not guarantee more beauty. She had a child who was . . . ugly.” She distanced that word from its contamination. “Both died in an automobile crash,” she said. To stop emotion from seeping into her voice, she placed a finger to her lips and outlined the careful arc of her lipstick.
Birds chirped.
The slight form rose from her throne and walked to the tall windows. She made a hissing sound to scatter the birds. In the light of the window, she was so small it seemed that if she took one more step she would disintegrate into the moteless air. With a sudden yank, she parted the drapes farther, releasing a stream of bright light on which she floated back toward Normalyn. Her eyes captured the youngwoman in their fixed gaze.
Normalyn’s hands rose instinctively, to conceal herself from the stare of this woman who cherished beauty. Instead, she pushed her hair back defiantly. She removed the glasses she had worn. She looked up directly at the woman.
“Yes!” Mildred Meadows approved.
She returned to her throne. “You must know certain things about me,” she announced peremptorily.
Why? Normalyn wondered and almost asked, to jab at the woman’s self-importance; but she knew she must allow a gradual flow into the territory she was here to explore.
Mildred Meadows had already proceeded to define the time of her reign: “My newspaper column was feared, read by millions—everyone! But it was also, at special times, an intimate letter from me—personal messages conveyed, warnings issued, secret information given—recognized only by those it was intended for. Like this: ‘Friends and family are hoping Ingrid will return to the United States to avoid the hot Roman summer.’ She ignored the warning, and I announced the news of the illegitimate pregnancy!” Mildred thrilled to the memory of exorbitant power. “I could destroy with a single exclamation mark. A classic: ‘Leftish bachelor Mark Poe claims he doesn’t want children but insiders insist that that is—emphatically!—not so.’ The exclamation mark was the dagger.” Mildred was charged with remembered excitement: “It frightened his lover away and into marrying a true patriot, the Rehnquist heiress. . . . Quotation marks were inspired,” she exulted, and recited: “‘An amusing story circulating Hollywood is that Errol Flynn claims he has become increasingly fond of ‘statutory.’ Of course, he means ‘statuary.’ As a well-known collector, he should know better.’ Yes, and when Ava—”
Lies, Miss Bertha whispered indignantly to Normalyn.
“The stories were untrue,” Normalyn interrupted Mildred Meadows’ ugly recitation of names she remembered hearing only distantly. She had to assert her hostility to this woman.
“Untrue!” Mildred waved her hand slightly, as if a fly had dared to annoy her. “What mattered then was the destruction of all that threatened the studios, and therefore the country! That’s why the loyal in Hollywood turned to me. The others went to”—her mouth masticated the name—“to that creature—that Alberta Holland! That horrid left-winger who dared to challenge the august committee of patriots investigating subversion and immorality in high places! She actually told them to—” The thin lips sealed in outrage.
Say it, dearheart, Miss Bertha encouraged.
“—to fuck off.” Normalyn had to close her eyes and inhale before she could pronounce the words. She had to affront this destructive creature she was sure Enid had loathed.
“How do you know that?” Mildred pounced.
“I read it in her autobiography,” Normalyn said. In her mind earlier, she had begun placing Miss Bertha in her soft comfortable chair to confront this woman on her rigid throne. Powerful antagonists! No—the image evaporated into the benign memory of Miss Bertha, gentle, playful, pretending she had given salvational advice; slumbering into dreams. Or had Miss Bertha deliberately “rehearsed” with her to prepare her for a situation like this one? That would have to mean that the old woman knew this would occur, and that would have to mean she was— . . . Normalyn decided to leave Miss Bertha where she had placed her, near her.
Mildred Meadows flinched at Normalyn’s answer. “Autobiography! Ha! I’ve written mine three times.” She breathed composure from her sherry. “Holland got what she deserved— prison for contempt,” she triumphed.
Miss Bertha, in prison? That gentle soul would not have survived. Yet there had been those moments of enormous strength, anger. Normalyn tried to fit the kind woman she had met in Long Beach into the turbulent life of Alberta Holland. . . .
I was young then, Miss Bertha reminded.
“And she came out of prison even more radical,” Mildred extended her judgment, “still protecting that exiled Spanish woman who had betrayed her own aristocratic class to join the—the”—she could hardly form the word—“the gypsies! . . . How fitting that Holland should die in exile—but not before she lived to create her greatest catastrophe—when Monroe turned to her.”
Miss Bertha had evoked a similar time, and so had Enid. Normalyn listened attentively.
“Monroe always needed strong women to protect her, but she turned to neurotic ones—Natasha, Paula, Holland!” Mildred denounced them merely in pronouncing their names. She stopped abruptly. “Those were older women.” Her voice lowered. “But there was another woman, her age, someone more important than all the rest, a woman who lived in Monroe’s shadow, or perhaps Monroe lived in hers. Perhaps they shared that, a shadow. Alike opposites,” she whispered.
Alike opposites! That’s how Normalyn suddenly remembered the two women on the shoreline.
“The woman was always there, during all the crises, clicking a silver cigarette lighter, conveying to Monroe a secret message understood only by them, as if—” It seemed still to baffle her, after years and deaths. “—as if Monroe must never forget something, something essential. . . . You name that woman, my dear,” Mildred’s command was abrupt.
Testing her! To make sure she knew, ascertaining she was who she said she was! Yes, yes, Miss Bertha had rehearsed her for this. You must tell her the name, Miss Bertha instructed.
“Her name was Enid, Enid Morgan,” Normalyn said. And so for her, in this moment, Enid was born into a real past, into the life of Marilyn Monroe. Normalyn sighed, greeting this new life of the woman she had known intimately and then not at all. To maintain her own reality of her, Normalyn said, “She was my mother; she died a few weeks ago in Texas. And she was beautiful, too—”
Mildred cautioned, “Tears will disturb your subtle makeup.”
“I’m not crying,” Normalyn denied. She would let the tears dry on her cheeks.
“Oh, yes, Enid was quite beautiful.” Mildred cherished her own memory. “You know she was my ally.”
“That’s a lie,” Normalyn prot
ested. Enid would not join with this evil woman. The violent slashes punctuating her name in the newspaper column affirmed that.
Mildred sipped the soothing sherry, allowing the matter in abeyance. “And so Enid killed herself.”
Normalyn did not react in surprise—David would have told her that. What did surprise her was that there had seemed to be a note of sadness in the woman’s voice! Faked, she dismissed.
Mildred Meadows shook her head slightly, as much as her entrenched composure would permit. “In a locked room and with pills. Like Monroe,” she concluded. “And she left you . . . what, my dear?”
They were approaching the subject of the letter, but she must not donate information.
Pretend you misunderstood, Miss Bertha counseled.
“She left me enough to get by on, for a time,” Normalyn spoke the Mayor’s words to her.
Mildred’s lips tilted. “I see.” She adjusted the lacy collar higher about her neck. She studied the single pearl on her finger. “Monroe! Her innocent smile bled with sensuality.” Then she said with undisguised pride: “It was I, you know, who exposed her lies.” Her words shot forth in triumph: “I revealed the nude pictures! I discovered her mother was in an institution, not dead!” She calmed her words by sniffing at the goblet.
“But she wouldn’t let you destroy her.” Normalyn remembered Miss Bertha’s account of the movie star’s victorious survivals.
“Ah, but then I learned of the existence of the letter!” Mildred sighed deliriously.
Normalyn folded her hands over her purse, the letter.
Don’t be frightened of her, dearheart!
“That’s when I had to enlist David.” Mildred congratulated herself on cunning. “It was a challenge, yes—because he didn’t believe the first letter. It was the second one that convinced him.”
How could they have discovered the existence of the letter Enid had written to her, perhaps only minutes before her death, and left for her in the bedroom in Gibson? . . .
Miss Bertha clarified—
No, even she was silent now, as confused as Normalyn. Mildred’s powerful words had staked a territory that could not be avoided.
