by John Rechy
Normalyn waited for him to connect what he was telling her with “the next step.” He would, she knew; she listened carefully.
“Even her funeral acknowledged the extravagance of her life.” He shook his head as if assaulted by that clear memory. He spoke, quietly again, into the moteless light: “The day of her burial—”
* * *
—the gates of Westwood Memorial Park were locked, guards hired to keep out the curious. Just a few friends would come. Of her husbands, only the athlete turned up, with his son. The time of Marilyn Monroe’s burial had been kept secret.
Television crews on steady vigil erected an elevated structure outside the walls for their cameras. Invading fans converted it into bleachers. They sat on the boards, eagerly waiting.
A large woman wrestled with a man for a choice post atop the scaffold. With her was her eight-year-old daughter, platinum-bleached hair sprayed to stay intact in a burnished halo. Her lips were drawn into a pout, the lids of her small eyes heavy with black liner, a beauty spot on one thin cheek. She wore a white dress, all flimsy pleats. When the cortege appeared below, the large woman held the sad doll-child up like a trophy and shouted:
“Here she is! The new Marilyn! Marilyn appeared to her in a vision just last night and told her to be here!” Cameras swirled. The woman ordered the sad child, “Pout, dammit, pout like I taught you, sexy, sexy—like Marilyn showed you in the vision. Go on, goddammit! Whoosh!” the fat woman commanded.
Assuming a grotesque leer, the little girl flung her white skirt up, the way Monroe did in the famous movie scene.
The crowed hooted approval.
At the star’s crypt, a nondenominational minister read an adaptation from the Book of Psalms: “How fearfully and wonderfully she was made by her creator.” “Over the Rainbow,” a favorite of Monroe’s, in Judy Garland’s undying voice, was piped in. The brief ceremony was over. Hearing the ominous buzzing of looming fans, the few invited people hurried away.
Fans jumped over the wall, battling television reporters and cameramen into the cemetery. They pushed, trampled, fell on graves, rose, rushed the crypt. There they tore at floral arrangements, as if it were her body they had come to claim with angry adulation, Fighting over plucked flowers.
The little girl with platinum hair made her way over the wall. On the grounds she huddled near the sheltering statue of an angel. Her scream rose in a wail as fans ran past her with their torn mementoes, along graves, to the gates.
Locked!
They were trapped in the cemetery!
In a mass they shoved at the gates, still fighting for the remains of flowers. The gates would not give! They propped each other over walls. Some who managed to climb out, pushed others back. They fell cursing, then roaring with laughter. Security men opened the gates and the fans pushed out with their mangled flowers.
* * *
By moving in such detail through the violated mourning at the movie star’s grave, David Lange had illuminated the extravagance of the movie star’s life spilling over—resisting—the intended quiet of the burial. At times, he had seemed to be confirming her death, to himself. Vaguely frightened, Normalyn waited for the connection he was elaborately constructing toward “the next step” to be taken—and she might not take it, might not take it at all. She looked out the window. Distant houses were like tombstones in a cemetery. She remembered Enid’s lament that she could not be at the star’s funeral because there was “danger” in her presence. . . . David Lange’s harsh words, spoken softly, startled Normalyn out of her revery:
“Monroe feared madness. She feared passing it on, the way she thought it had been passed on to her by her mother. Would her daughter share that darkness? Or would she find the strength to survive what had conquered her mother?”
A challenge! His eyes were so powerfully on her that Normalyn had to break their contact. She glanced at the commanding photographs on the wall. . . . Norma Jeane seemed to be inquiring about her life. The photograph of the fleeing woman looked different today—as if the woman depicted had not attempted to conceal herself. Now the startled face seemed deliberately exposed, daring. That impression changed back quickly: The woman was avoiding the hounding photographers.
David seemed to be waiting for an answer to his disturbing question! Normalyn did only this: She locked her arms across her chest.
The question left to echo powerfully, David Lange evoked more memories of the star’s ending. He said in his softening voice, “When her famous daughter died—”
* * *
—reporters and television crews, learning she had not yet been told of the death, rushed to North Light Sanitarium to interview Marilyn Monroe’s mother. Alerted, guards were situated to keep them out. Cameras watched the white and green grounds. They saw her! Accompanied by an attendant holding her arm, Marilyn’s mother looked shrunken, tiny, this woman Monroe had loved and hated, who loved and hated her back.
A reporter next to David Lange shouted from the distance, “Marilyn Monroe is dead!”
Marilyn’s mother did not interrupt her walk.
“Norma Jeane is dead!” David Lange called to her.
On the grounds of North Light Haven, the old woman jerked her hand away from the attendant’s arm. Seized by terrible power, she stood erectly. Her rigid hands shot upward. She shouted into the white day, “Norma Jeane!”
Then she walked on.
* * *
In locating Marilyn Monroe’s mother in the sanitarium, David Lange had evoked the lineage of “darkness” that haunted Marilyn Monroe. And Enid, Normalyn thought. He had asserted the authenticity of his knowledge, his presence there. And he had provided her with intimate information—that wafting suspicion recurred, just briefly. But how did that prop his connection to “the next step,” which she wanted him only to define now because she knew she would not take it? Sensing that, would he leave her merely to infer it? Vaguely, she thought she already did.
“The next step?” He seemed this time to ponder it. “Perhaps we must wait until there’s trust, real trust—”
He was withdrawing from her! She felt deeply abandoned. What would he require for that trust? Her showing him Enid’s letter?
Don’t ask him, dearheart! Don’t say anything! He’ll continue.
When Normalyn said nothing, hiding her sense of abandonment, he extended his words: “—and perhaps we are beginning to trust each other now.”
“Yes,” she tested. After all, she had turned to him first; he had responded to her, her needs. His disturbing questions were presented only for consideration, to underline certainties, clarify her doubts as she—they—moved . . . step by step. He knew her confusions intimately, her desire to live her life, and he had guided her with protective concern in her journey. And who else was there who cared this much? Certainly not Stan! She realized only now how wounded she had been by his rejection. He had carved a deeper isolation, banished her further from knowledge of her origin. “How can I find out who I am, David?”
No! Miss Bertha warned—too late.
Now David Lange spoke words so softly that Normalyn would not have been able to hear them if he had not also pronounced them precisely, slowly, one by one. “Find them, Enid and Monroe, who they really were—in order to learn how they shaped you. For you to know who you are, Normalyn, you will have to discover that, and—fully, fully—the artificial creation known as Marilyn Monroe.” He addressed the photographs that depicted the evolution of a pretty youngwoman into the greatest movie star. “She defined herself by the daring with which she lived. Discover that.”
He had included Enid and then focused on the movie star, as if, at least for now, he was sure she was more central. At first it seemed to Normalyn that his words were touched with admiration. Then they seemed to her to be spoken in awe. But when he uttered them again, slightly altered, a whisper—and by then he had turned back to face her, as if to connect her to the photographs while he stood behind his desk, one hand resting on each side of its sur
face, controlling symmetry—when he whispered his words again, they were spoken only, or so it seemed to Normalyn, as a reminder that she had no life because she was afraid to live. In that room of intact twilight, it seemed to her that his words were an exhortation, a judgment, a challenge—the next step:
“Dare, Normalyn. Dare to live. Dare to live fiercely. Like her.”
Twenty-Three
Dare, Normalyn, dare to live, dare to live fiercely like them!
Normalyn was still hearing those words—exactly? altered?— when she left David Lange’s office, its dusky memories. This time the reality of what had occurred there did not evaporate entirely. Its judgment remained: She had no life because she was afraid to live. For the first time, she had left David Lange’s office with no clear designation of what “the next step” would be. She knew only that it would be hers to take . . . into the lives of the two women, David Lange had asserted, then veered away, centering on the movie star. Because he believed she was— . . .?
There was another figure she increasingly felt she must locate—the elusive presence that recurred in the “game” and in the confrontations between the two women. Another woman. Whoever was sending the artificial flowers reminding of the last days of turmoil? An earlier child of one or another of the two women?
Or was that figure “the orphan” the Dead Movie Stars had claimed on television was among those they learned their “secrets” from? The two women had met in an orphanage, and near the shadow of a frightened angel. David had seemed at one point to be about to guide her to that strange group of young people dredging up scandals. If they had no information of their own, might they know who did? A girl among them had been able to locate Miss Bertha, perhaps Mildred. And Mark Poe.
2
The Mustang and the palmtree welcomed her when she returned home.
Sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, Troja was drinking unusually early. She was dressed in her “date” clothes—she had already gone out this morning on another of her “freelance dates,” defying Duke; the wig had not been removed from its block. Kirk lay in his bed, awake, his fingers drumming on nothing. It was as if the jolts of energy the cocaine produced were only enough to keep his body, just his body, charged against surrender. His eyes were closed.
Touching her lips with a silencing finger, Troja pointed to a hypodermic needle on the counter. “Started shootin’ up again,” she whispered. “Still hidin’ it.” She seemed to find some consolation in that.
Kirk sat up. He cracked his knuckles over and over.
Troja went to him. “Been waitin’ for you to wake up.” She pretended the restless body had been asleep. “You don’t rest much, so I didn’t wanna wake you. But you promised!” Her voice edged into urgency.
“Promised?” Kirk’s breathing was rapid, gasps.
Troja’s voice was in tightest control. “Yeah, hon, that we’d drive out to the ocean? Promised when I left real early.” She said to herself, clenching her fists, “It kept me going through that fuckin’ horror.” She touched one eye, lightly bruised. “You promised!” Control snapped into accusation. She closed her eyes; she said sweetly, “Sea air and sand, hon, make you new.” Her eyes pleaded with Normalyn to add her encouragement.
“Go on, hon, you, too. Go on!” Her hands clasped again.
“It will Kirk!” Normalyn encouraged. She felt a sudden lift! She would welcome the clear ocean air! A purified distance from all her questions and doubts! She would insist on buying food to eat at the beach, really delicious, special food for this cleansing occasion. She would surprise them with a bottle of . . . champagne!
“You can make it, babe! You can!” Troja said triumphantly when she saw Kirk gathering his jangled body to rise from his corner. “You can, baby!”
“I can,” Kirk asserted.
They had to move quickly within this assertive current. Other times, at the last moment, Kirk had retreated.
Troja had enlisted Normalyn’s help and Normalyn would offer it. She wouldn’t even take the time to change her clothes—Kirk had already found a pair of favorite trunks! Normalyn rushed to her room, to get a sweater for the usual cool evening. When she returned, Troja said, “No, hon, me and Kirk gonna go.”
But Troja had said—!
Normalyn knew, horrified, that she had misunderstood. She felt ridiculous. “I know that,” she told Troja, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t put my sweater on if I’m cold!”
“Suit yourself,” Troja said. She linked her arm through Kirk’s.
Normalyn put on her sweater. She felt even more ridiculous, because the day was hot. She would not cry. She heard the goddamned Mustang start easily . . . purring. She followed the sound of the motor until it faded into the vast, lonely city. She sat on the floor. She refused to remove the sweater. She reached for her purse, put on her glasses, removed them when everything blurred, threatening nausea. She pushed her hair over her face and held it down with her hands, concealing herself.
From here, her bedroom looked unlived in, as if her presence left no impression anywhere. She had to start living. Dare! That’s what David had understood, that’s what he had meant. Much more caring than a father—whom she didn’t want—did not want!—never, never wanted!—David Lange was trying to guide her. The memory of his soft voice soothed her with its concern.
Normalyn pulled the letter out of her purse, as if to demand that it yield more answers. . . . She knew, again, that she should hide it—somewhere—and she would, soon. . . . She looked at the words, which still startled: “Marilyn Monroe is your mother and she—” . . . She read the declaration of love that included both women, and that warmed her. . . . N.J.R.I.R. Her eyes fixed on those initials that joined the two letters otherwise separated in time by eighteen years! N.J.—Norma Jeane. But now she wasn’t even sure of that. She put the letter away.
She continued to sit on the floor. Dare! . . . She didn’t know how to begin!
She touched her face to make sure she had not cried, touched her cheeks, smooth—her nose, tilted. . . . She would let someone else teach her to live!
She went to the shelf where Troja kept her movie-star books. She located the one Troja had used to make her up that one time, the book titled only Marilyn. Leafing through it, she stared at the famous calendar photograph, “Golden Dreams.” The naked body lies on red velvet, exulting in its profligate sensuality.
With one finger, Normalyn outlined her own breasts, their own tilted firmness. She turned the pages of the book.
From photograph to photograph, arranged chronologically, a pretty girl became almost beautiful, beautiful, more beautiful. Soon the earlier woman had disappeared entirely. Another had taken over—unreally beautiful, as if she were only a photograph. In the last photographs, the earlier girl seemed to have returned to haunt the new creation, as if the older woman were about to free a captive soul. The painted narrowed eyes were touched by the wistful sadness within the urgent eagerness of the young woman.
Normalyn turned to the very last photograph. The movie star’s lips were parted sexily. No, it was as if they were about to utter . . . what words? For an eerie moment Normalyn was sure she knew! The impression vanished.
Riffling through the book, she chose one of the earlier photographs, in which the two faces still showed through. She took the book into Troja’s room and placed it on the dressing table before the rectangle of lights where Troja made herself up. She sat down, choosing among Troja’s makeup. She would keep from looking at her full reflection in the mirror, concentrate only on each part of her face. Glancing now and then at the open book, she brushed her hair, which had lightened with the sun, and she tilted the edges, framing her face. She smoothed a soft wave over the right side. She applied light blush to her cheeks, a darker shade to her cheekbones. She tinted her eyelids barely blue, carefully smudged the edges. She smoothed mascara over her long lashes. With a tiny brush, she made them still longer, thicker, darker. She colored her lips, full, red, glossy, still fuller, redder
. She was about to add a beauty spot with a black pencil on the same cheek as it appeared in the photograph; but she drew it on the opposite side.
In Troja’s closet, she found the dress she was looking for, just back from the cleaner’s. It was pale blue with two straps. Defiantly—Troja had life to spare—she slipped into it. She adjusted the dress to her own body, with pins, a belt.
Before the full-length mirror in the bathroom, she closed her eyes, tilted her head, moistened and parted her lips. She opened her eyes and saw the woman she had created.
Someone else! The impression of having erased herself was so powerful that she looked away, but not before she had glimpsed another unexpected resemblance—to Enid! No, only to the blonde woman on the darkened shoreline, the woman she had made herself up to look like—from the book and from fragments of memories. She forced her eyes back to her own reflection.
3
The specter of elegance barely floated over the three stories of the building William Randolph Hearst once gave Marion Davies. What had been a pampered lawn was seized by clawing weeds creeping up a ruined foundation. Chunks of plaster had crumbled, leaving gray scars on the walls of the château’s two wings. Some windows were gouged, glass panes smashed or painted over, a few in bright colors in place of drapes, others replaced with wooden squares. The sounds of busy streets mocked the dying château.
When Normalyn stepped out of the cab she had taken to the approximate location identified in the television segment on the Dead Movie Stars, three other young people were waiting like supplicants before the courtyard—two skinny youngmen and one fat girl. Another youngwoman dashed crying out of the château.
A languid sun, only a hint in the sky, created no shadows.
