by John Rechy
“Do you have a life of your own?” he felt close enough to ask her. During his contacts with her, only two including this day’s, she existed as an extension of the movie star’s life, yet emphatically so as herself, as if in protecting Marilyn she was protecting at least a part of her own life, so close, in a mysterious way.
Enid was answering his unasked question as if it were something she herself often deliberated, or redefined: “She’s what I would have been, could be, am—What I must not become, what she cannot become—What we both are—”
It was an exceptional “answer” because up to then, or so he remembered, she had spoken with exactitude, knowing precisely what she meant to convey. Yet now it was as if she herself was trying to understand it, perhaps had always been trying to understand it.
She was looking down into her lap; her voice was hardly audible. “We see in each other what will always be there, what has to be there.” She looked up at him, smiling wryly. “But perhaps what binds us is that we met under the shadow of an angel’s wing, an angel that had abandoned hope of flying again.”
He did not question her. She had been speaking privately. Yet he knew that even in the vague words she had attempted to share something intimate with him, and he welcomed it.
She asked him about his battles, the scandals, and he told her—about the litigation, the struggles now to maintain the school. He told her about Robert. And, laughingly, about his “brief life in Hollywood,” when “the benevolent Dr. and Mrs. Crouch, the genial Hollywood executioners,” had been assigned to remake his life for “patriotic acceptability.”
Enid reacted in mock terror to his mention of the obsessively cheerful man and woman of enormous power who made anything, everything possible that was deemed desirable for “the studios.” Wrong political allegiances, sexual indiscretions, illegitimacy, insanity, addiction—redemption for any or all of these was certified with purified documents. . . . With sudden playfulness, Enid said to Mark, “Oh, would you like to hear the ‘bio’ of Enid Morgan, ex-starlet, just as I told it to ‘the genial executioners’?”
“Yes!”
Enid leaned forward with her champagne glass. “My name is Enid Morgan, dear Dr. and Mrs. Crouch. I chose my mother’s last name—like you, Mark,” she added, then resumed her imaginary interview. “—because, Dr. and Mrs. Crouch, my father was a son-of-a-bitch who left my mother and me. And my mother, God bless her, was crazier than my grandmother, who tried to strangle me when I was a child—”
But that was Marilyn’s life! Mark remembered, confused.
Enid had closed her eyes; her words softened: “I remember her being carried away screaming. . . .” She continued her interview, but her voice was not as firm as when she had begun: “I was in so many foster homes, Dr. and Mrs., that I can’t remember them all—except one.” She moved on quickly. “And then I was bought—yes, bought, for money—by vulgar rich Texas bastards who couldn’t wait to adopt me. But I fixed them, dear Dr. and Mrs. I blackmailed them into sending me away to school. And then—” She looked into her hands, dormant on her lap. They sprang to life; she opened them in a releasing gesture: “—at age eighteen I was born! I no longer cared who my real father was, or even my mother. I chose to be me!”
She was looking at him; now he understood her earlier compliment to his “courage.”
“Oh, and just a few more things, Dr. and Mrs. Crouch.” She tried to force the levity she had abandoned. “For a time I lived with a petty crook who wasn’t worthy of me and whom I am going to destroy, very cunningly, because I know what will hurt him the most. You must know that, Dr. and Mrs., so you will figure out how to turn that into a springtime romance!” She laughed, trying to temper seriousness. “And one thing more! Up to now I have remained a starlet, just a starlet because”—there was no mocking in her voice as she said—“because beyond everything, I refuse to change the life that made me what I am. All the pain is my pain and gives me strength.” She smiled warmly at Mark. “That’s a line from your novel, Mark; I’ve made it my own.”
Mark reached out and touched her then, because it was suddenly as if she were about to become the earlier woman of mystery, as if she carried her own shadows within which to hide, disappear. And he did not want her to hide, or to vanish from his life. In only moments he had come to feel magically close to her, as if they shared a unique exile—a beguiled view of the world, not cynical as it was perceived. And of course she had known him longer than these interludes—she knew him from his novel, within which she had found intimate connections to herself. And he knew her—now—from the playful sorrowing biography of her life. He sat next to her and held her hand. She answered its signals. Her lips parted. He kissed her, a series of kisses each more eager. Their bodies pressed closely. Desire did not lessen, no, but their bodies eased away slowly, parted by the memory of someone else. They withdrew.
Standing, Enid said quickly, “You have someone you love, very much, and I have someone I hate—passionately! We must be true to both.”
Enid opened the door so quickly that in Mark’s mind it was as if she had walked out before he heard her say, “You see, I really don’t exist.”
* * *
“So possible, to love and destroy,” Troja reinterpreted Enid’s words just recounted.
That brief, that intense, those moments full of beautiful possibilities had continued to exist forever because they had never been tested. Yes, Mark Poe was the man Enid had spoken about, Normalyn welcomed, the man Enid kept within an enclosed memory of her own. . . . There were other discoveries Normalyn had made during Mark Poe’s account, but she would rummage through them later—tomorrow, when she would be able to cope with their implications. Not now. But she could not banish all her questions. What enormous revenge had Enid been planning, with such determined cunning, on the man Normalyn was certain was Stan? . . . Normalyn was reconciling—sadly—the beautiful vibrant youngwoman Enid had been with the alcoholic woman uttering pained memories in her dimming room in Gibson, Texas.
As Mark had spoken about the close interlude between him and Enid, his hand had rested firmly on Robert’s.
Mark continued: “Without warning—”
Twenty
—Mildred Meadows stepped out of her gray limousine in front of Marilyn Monroe’s house. Tiny, erect, she marched into her staked battlefield. She rang the doorbell, she beat on it with miniscule fists. When there was still no response, she moved to one side of the house. Almost tripping, managing to regain control, she located herself dramatically on the lawn and shouted into the house:
“Monroe! If you don’t open the door, I’ll destroy you!”
Mark Poe had heard the limousine. Enid and Marilyn emerged from the star’s “quarters.” Laughing with genuine pleasure, Marilyn shouted back at Mildred loud enough to be heard out of a window, “Fuck you, you malicious bitch. You can’t hurt me, you’ve tried often enough! Now get the hell away from here or I’ll call the cops to arrest you for trespassing!” Mark and Enid roared with her at the inspired prospect.
“And I will destroy the two brothers!”
Marilyn’s laughter stopped.
“What brothers?” Enid asked quickly.
“Shut her up!” Marilyn’s agitation sprang.
Mark opened the door. “What the hell do you want, you tiny shit?”
Mildred winced, recognizing the man she thought she had banished. Through the open door, she thrust into the house a rampage of frightening words: There were two letters in her possession, and soon to be released, exposing the immorality of the two most powerful men in the country—the Kennedys—and naming—
In cool command at the door, Enid challenged Meadows: “That doesn’t concern us.”
“Ask Monroe if it concerns her,” Mildred demanded. “I dare you! Ask her how they treated her, dismissed her, shared her like a plaything!”
A premature sadness crept into Enid’s whispered words to Marilyn: “Is that why you’ve been so sad?”
“
Yes!” Marilyn said.
Enid turned her face, a recoil from shock.
“But he r-r-really loves me,” Marilyn stuttered.
Meadows grasped for these moments of vulnerability: “Are you pregnant?” She would verify by command.
“Yes!” Marilyn defied proudly.
“By him!”
“Don’t answer her!” Enid demanded.
“I believe she’s already told us!” Mildred said. She delivered her exultant ultimatum: “Only I can help you, Monroe, with the power of my column. I can choose what will become the truth about you in this.” She spoke her words precisely to underscore their irrefutable logic. “And the only way that even I can save you is that there be no continued pregnancy.”
Mark had not thought it possible to underestimate Mildred’s evil—until now. Her demand was clear, deadly. Yet even at this moment her voice was capable of seeming to thaw in order to add a grotesque postscript to her cruel logic: “My dear, why should you even consider destroying your beauty for a child?” She consulted a tiny watch embedded in a pendant. “I must have your agreement by—” She set the time of her summons. “And then you will learn my full terms.”
She walked back to the waiting limousine. Enid followed. Mark heard an exchange of words between her and Mildred. Then Enid turned toward the house and clicked her lighter, once.
Inside the house, Mark focused attention on the real danger: “She means it all, no matter how insane. She’ll use those letters.”
Marilyn Monroe laughed angrily, pushing away the horror.
Enid stopped her laughter: “You let the Kennedys treat you like a needful orphan!”
“And what about you, with that pimp you love?” Marilyn challenged.
“Loved,” Enid corrected. “I’m making him pay and pay!” Then she pleaded, “Don’t you see you were hurting her?”
“You’re the one who hurts her. You won’t leave her alone!” Marilyn accused.
“She loves you; she loves us,” Enid said softly.
“I hate her!”
Enid slapped Marilyn. “Don’t ever say that!”
Marilyn raised her hand to strike back. Instead, she said, “It’s just a game, it’s just a game, remember? Enid, remember?”
With urgent tenderness, Enid held Marilyn, calming her, assuring her she would have the child she longed for.
The next day, early, Marilyn and Enid went out together, a rare occurrence. They hurried into Enid’s car. Mark assumed they had gone to verify Mildred’s vile terms of blackmail. He was awed by the old woman’s cold monstrosity. As always, magnified tiny reasons were motivating her enormous demands. She would offer Marilyn Monroe the terrible protection in order, finally, to control the star who had for years affronted her, control the ultimate symbol of beauty. Yes, Mildred Meadows cherished beauty to the point of illness.
Marilyn returned to the house alone, and stayed in her room. There were not even the sounds of urgent dialing. The house was stilled with a quiet tension, Marilyn at its center, like a captive of it. Days passed.
* * *
Again there had recurred the commanding unnamed presence, that figure who roamed so powerfully through the private “game.” Mark had deliberately left that interlude unexplored, Normalyn knew; and she knew that the love between the two women was as strong as the rage, whatever its origin. That mixture created the closeness, which had survived death. . . . With a new glow, desert light illumined the garden in Palm Springs. Normalyn allowed her eyes to wander in search of Michael Farrell, no longer at the table near the pool, no longer outside.
“I suppose it was inevitable,” Robert lamented, “that the two most powerful men in the country and the orphan who became the greatest movie star would link in an American Gothic tragedy.”
“And the orphan would lose,” Troja understood.
“I was sitting in the room I worked in,” Mark said, “when I heard aggressive footsteps. I looked up, and I saw—”
* * *
Alberta Holland!
Her hair was so red it flared like flames even in shaded light. The moment he opened the door, Mark recognized her, a woman he respected—as had his mother—for her confrontation of the political inquisitors. Nodding in brief greeting to Mark, the sturdy form moved into the house and up the two steps that led to the back rooms, where, it seemed, Marilyn now lived.
So powerful was Holland’s presence that only now did Mark realize another woman had arrived with her and was still standing politely at the door to be allowed in. “Please—” Mark invited.
“Thank you.” The woman entered and smiled graciously at Mark.
Delicate, exquisite as a pretty bird, she must be Teresa de Pilar, Mark knew. How difficult to think of this small creature at the center of the vortex that had finally sucked Alberta Holland into prison because during the notorious hearings into “left-wing” political associations, the formidable red-haired woman had continued to “grant asylum” in her home to the Spanish exile who had confounded her aristocratic family by supporting the Popular Front against Franco.
“May I?”
When Mark nodded, the small woman followed Alberta’s path.
A time later Alberta Holland emerged alone. “I’m glad to meet you, youngman. Your services have been exemplary, exemplary. They will no longer be needed, thank you.” She pumped his hand and left. Mark was hurt by the brusqueness; he had heard her described as a woman “driven by her sense of justice.”
“Forgive Alberta,” said Teresa de Pilar. She had just emerged with Enid, who remained pensively at the top of the two steps. The Spanish woman had retained her charming smile. “When she sniffs injustice, she’s blind to the amenities of life, but she’s the kindest of human beings. I’ll see that she writes you a note.” She spoke with the slightest cultured accent.
She had a curious, endearing manner. As she spoke, she gestured delicately with her fingers, as if they were constantly fashioning something fragile . . . Still smiling, she looked back and nodded to Enid, in affirmation of allegiance.
Alone with Mark, Enid said, “I know you’ll leave now. Thank you especially for that beautiful night when we were strong exiles.”
Mark Poe would never forget that moment, cherished and sad, sad because it would be the last time he would see her.
“Enid, if ever we—” he started.
She put a finger to his lips, stopping words of regret. “Shhh,” she said to him.
* * *
In the garden, cooling in the late afternoon, Mark paused for long moments in tribute to that memory of Enid.
Yes, he had loved her, too, Normalyn welcomed.
Mark’s hand was still on Robert’s. “I did receive a note from Alberta Holland, by messenger, that same day,” Mark laughed. “It said, ‘Thank you again for your services—A.H.’” But even that soft laughter seemed abandoned within a mood of solemnity that had settled over the alcove in Palm Springs.
“Is Alberta Holland dead?” Normalyn asked casually.
“She died in Switzerland,” Mark said. “The Spanish lady was with her, loyal to the person who had been loyal to her.”
Once again Normalyn had roamed through what she was now sure was the inception of the “great conspiracy” that had finally found expression in Enid’s gasped words at the last of her life, out of withheld memories. With only minor variations, Mildred’s account of her raid on Marilyn’s house had survived Mark’s version. “And then?” Normalyn asked Mark. He had taken her in his narrative to the point of crucial answers, at least essential clues.
“And then—” Mark said. He glanced at Troja, stopped his words.
Normalyn caught that—and so did Troja, who looked away with grand aloofness. Was Mark hesitating because of Troja? There had been times earlier when he had proceeded with caution, and Normalyn had encouraged, at times leaning toward Troja, once gently brushing a leaf from her shoulder to assert their closeness, her trust. Even when he had identified the man Marilyn Monroe had said sh
e had called at the White House and the Justice Department, he had done so cautiously. At times his account had flowed easily out of commanding memories; and then he had paused, contemplative, before proceeding more slowly.
“And then”—he meted out careful words—“I did leave. And later I read in Mildred’s column that Marilyn had miscarried during an attempted reconciliation with one of her ex-husbands,” he hurried those words.
“Then her child did die,” Normalyn said quickly.
“There is no way Meadows would have carried such an item unless she was convinced that her terrible demand had been fulfilled,” Mark asserted. “And perhaps the item was accurate.” He did not face Normalyn. “The man I saw entering her house the day of her sad dinner might have been one of her ex-husbands I mistook for— . . . I’m not sure.” He said that to Troja—and still avoided looking at Normalyn.
Tempering his account. Normalyn thought Robert had assumed that, too. He sighed, played nervously with his empty glass.
Whatever had not been spoken, Normalyn was willing to allow Mark’s conclusion, even though it did not reconcile with Mildred Meadows’s own expressed doubts. Perhaps the old woman had deliberately lied to her for a hidden purpose.
“What would she have been like, if she had lived longer?” Normalyn asked. Those were not the words she had intended to speak; she had substituted others, suddenly.
“Marilyn would have been a grand lady. Can’t you see her? Imagine! Glamorous! Indomitable! Always beautiful!” Robert was sure.
