by John Rechy
Enid said joyfully, “Marilyn’s child was born—a girl! Marilyn is home now—very delicate, of course, but safe, and well. And the baby is in my care. She’s fine—tiny, tiny, but fine, and beautiful." Enid inhaled in shared triumph: “And strong, with all of Norma Jeane’s strength!”
* * *
Marilyn Monroe had a daughter. Normalyn accepted, and Enid had called her beautiful.
“Then immediately afterwards there descended over all of us a terrifying silence,” Dr. Crouch whispered. Mrs. Crouch shivered as if the chilled quiet had invaded her.
Normalyn felt immersed in that distant silence.
Dr. Crouch spoke hushed words: “That tense quietude exploded when—”
* * *
—Enid telephoned Dr. Crouch. She was “stranded somewhere, not sure exactly where, on a highway, oh, in the area of—”
Signals of danger!
Dr. Crouch instructed her to inquire as to her precise location. To save time reaching her, he would drive out now and call her along the way, at the number to which she would return with the information. When he contacted her immediately after, public telephone to public telephone, she told him:
“We’ve all been deceived! The only reason the impossible plan worked is that from the beginning it’s been overseen and encouraged—and made possible!—by a huge conglomerate of powerful interests with one purpose: to destroy the Kennedys. There was a vast conspiracy over our tiny plot that seemed so huge! We were only a part of their plan, and we did exactly what we were manipulated to do!”
The machinery of vast invisible power at work—that was what Dr. Crouch had detected in the dark of night.
“We thought we were stopping it all,” Enid said now in soft amazement, “but we were giving them the means to destroy—with our own ‘hidden’ conspiracies.” She had learned all that from the braggadocio Stan Smith—“he’s in the secret employ of everyone!”—when—
—on this day of deadly revelations, he had called her answering service earlier and left a message: “Important. Personal. Urgent you call me.” Enid responded only because of the untypical gravity. On the telephone, Stanley told her he had to see her because he had just “learned the damnedest thing” that concerned her and Monroe.
Enid waited tensely in her own apartment.
Stanley turned up with a bottle of Dom Perignon, to show he had “no hard feelings despite all that went wrong.” He wanted to “balance everything now.”
She could hardly restrain shouting out her detestation of him as he opened the wine, frowning because it had not popped. He poured the chilled champagne into two glasses he had brought with him, a touch of “elegance” he had learned from his friend, Johnny Stompanatto. He said casually, “The letter that got all of you started up in all this?—the anonymous letter about the ‘immorality’ of the Kennedys?” He sipped the champagne. “—that letter? When J. Edgar received it and it was linked to a Bel Air billionaire—” He waited for her to savor the wine.
She did, longing to fling it at him.
“—all Edgar knew was that he had a powerful unloaded weapon. You—Alberta, the Crouches, all of you—loaded it for him.”
Enid could not yet grasp his full meaning, but the fragments were terrifying. She did not dare risk giving him information with a question. His raking looks on her, even now, revealed he was desiring her. She had to find out everything. She held her champagne glass in both hands, close to her face so that the amber of her eyes challenged the amber of the wine; she smiled the “slashed smile” he admired on her.
He slid his. fingers along her arm. She wanted to wrench away with loathing, for what he’d done to her before, how easily he thought all could be “forgotten.” Instead, she poured more champagne into his glass, brought it to his lips, and then she sipped from the exact place, resisting, every moment, the longing to spit the wine at him.
“Of course. It all began when . . .” She pretended only to be pondering. She made her voice furry with sensuality, knowing that often Stan reacted more to the tone of a voice than the words he heard, even responded to, like now.
“Before any of you were involved,” he said. “Hoover knew the letter wasn’t enough. He gave it to Mildred, knowing how she hates the Kennedys, sure she’d know what to do with it—and she did.” He looked at Enid in deep earnest, making sure that from her vantage his shoulders were at their widest. “Didn’t you ever wonder how it all proceeded so damn smoothly, nothing going wrong—something that impossible—everything falling into place? I did, from the time Crouch asked me to get him the woman. He didn’t tell me who she’d be replacing. You know, he heard of me through you; you must’ve expressed lots of admiration,” he congratulated Enid.
“Oh, yes,” she told him. No, she had not wondered how it was all moving without obstacles. She had been too eager to succeed to miss graver dangers. Marilyn had not wondered, nor Alberta, nor—
“All these powerful interests,” Stanley went on with dramatic authority. “Edgar was just a part of it. . . . You’re not drinking your champagne, Enid.” He frowned harshly. He became suspicious when anyone was thoughtful.
“Oh, that’s just because I love to hear you talk about important things that only you know,” she purred at him.
“And I know plenty. Everything.” He squared broad shoulders broadened even more by the suit made for him by Johnny’s ex-tailor. “The C.I.A., Secret Service, factions in the F.B.I.—the whole fuckin’ right wing, the huge industries, all those damn moralists out there, maybe even”—he said the next reverentially—“some Mafia, organized crime. That’s who got behind your plan to make it work. They just waited for you to bring it all together.” He paused to lower one dark eyebrow for impact. “You gave them all they needed to make the accusations in the letter true: Alberta’s secret plot, the paid abortion of a real kid, Marilyn hiding the pregnancy, you going out pretending to be her to cover it all up, and now Marilyn having the kid.” He ran his fingers along her shoulder. “Now it’s about to end. Just odds and ends and then the scandal will bust open.”
In a flash Enid saw it all—the flood of reporters, the blinding cameras—. . . COVER-UP INVOLVES PAID ABORTION . . . MARILYN’S CHILD KEPT HIDDEN . . . JOHN AND ROBERT KENNEDY— . . . No! There would be no easy surrender.
Stanley assumed his gravest pose, square chin propped on firm fist. He leaned forward. “Now that it’s about to explode, why the hell shouldn’t you know first? After all you did for that bitch Monroe, who hates you—”
“You’re wrong! She loves me as much as I love her—and we’re bound together in a way that you—” Enid stopped. She could not afford with her rage to curb the bragging information she must have from him: why—exactly—he was here.
“Whatever.” He shrugged his broad shoulders; he was already moving on to assert how he knew all these matters— because he was “deeply trusted” as a man who was “loyal, completely loyal.”
Oh, yes, Enid knew, he was loyal to those who paid him for his petty crookery. His “loyalty” had been bought by so many that they and he forgot under whose silencing pay he was functioning at which moment. Now, in these moments during which she had to choke her rage, she was grateful he was such a puffed-up braggart that he did not realize that he would be swept with them on the tide of destruction they had been tricked into creating.
“You always pride yourself on how smart you are.” Stanley could not keep judgment out of his voice. “So I figured if I told you now, you might find a way to separate yourself from it all. I’m here to help you, Enid.” He leaned back to accept a surge of gratitude.
She raised her champagne glass to him, as if in a toast, but she held the glass by the stem because otherwise her hand would have crushed it.
“You’re quite a woman, Enid.” He ran his finger slowly across her chest. “No one else like you. You’ll think of something, I bet.”
“Of course I’ll think of something,” she said.
“By the way, where’s Maril
yn’s kid?” He puffed up the expensive handkerchief in his jacket pocket.
He—they, the others he was working for this moment—knew everything except that! That was his purpose for being here. At least a main part of it. He was too stupid to dissimulate too much at the same time. He needed to find out that one essential detail—overlooked, while everything else was ready to churn destruction! Alberta had warned against “the one overlooked detail that so often annihilates the perfect plot”! Enid longed to laugh in Stan’s face.
He waited for her answer, trying not to look anxious.
Enid bowed her head. She put down the glass of champagne. “You didn’t know that, Stanley?” She looked up quickly. “You know everything except that?”
“Why, I—” Stanley was powerfully disoriented.
“You didn’t know that Marilyn’s child died?”
Thirty-Eight
That is what they must claim now, Enid told Dr. Crouch as she stood in the booth off the Santa Ana Freeway. Alberta Holland, to whom she had spoken first, agreed that that was the only possibility of jarring the machinery of destruction—Marilyn’s child must be presumed to have died, already buried quietly. Someone must immediately inform Marilyn of the new subterfuge—and of the actual well-being of the child. Enid could not, nor could Alberta—because of close association, and because Marilyn’s telephones were wired and the house under constant scrutiny. It must be someone who would not be suspected.
“It might work, it might not,” Enid said, feeling the weariness of months of exploited intrigue. “All relies now on what happens in the next few hours.”
Then she delivered to Dr. Crouch Alberta’s firm message to him: “She told me to be sure to remind you”—Enid slowed her words for emphasis—“that she counts on your loyalty in order to ensure hers to you.”
“Of course!” Dr. Crouch responded without pause.
After they hung up, having discussed one or two more details, Dr. Crouch waited by the telephone booth in Hollywood. In his time, he and Mrs. Crouch had devised what he had considered “enormous, ingenious plots” to destroy or save, as needed by the studios. But this! With its arteries of power, the omnipotent conglomerate cleared away all obstacles in their attempted deception, guiding them step by step to construct their own trap!
Dr. Crouch realized all this at the corner of Highland and Franklin avenues on a day bursting with sunlight. There were sweeps of flowers everywhere, all colors, all hues. Frowning down at a speck of dust marring his immaculate suit, Dr. Crouch knew they had all been pawns who had thought they were rulers—but he admired the superb cunning. A fly buzzed irritatingly around him. And yet, he realized with equal awe, even that seemingly flawless plan, which had ingeniously subsumed theirs, had missed attending to the most important component: the whereabouts of the child! Dr. Crouch swatted at the nettlesome fly. In disgust, he saw that he had squashed it, an ugly, tiny smear of dirtied blood on his palm.
* * *
Normalyn looked about this placid house containing disorder. She had seen still more of Enid, discovered more to admire—her courage, yes, and her quick cunning; less welcome, she was coming to know Stan Smith, adding her own detestation of him to Enid’s. Later, she would identify Enid’s act of vengeance on him, which she knew was central to the mystery she was exploring. . . . She tried now to adjust Mildred’s sudden ambiguity within the vaster plan—a part of it from the beginning? Her accounts belied that assumption. There remained the matter of the terminated column. . . . For now, Normalyn retained this: A daughter had been born to Marilyn Monroe, a daughter in the care of Enid during crucial hours.
“Enid had emphasized there must be no further contact among us,” Dr. Crouch had continued, assuming a precise tone; “so it astonished me when Marilyn telephoned us late at night.”
“She should not have.” Mrs. Crouch added her own exact admonition.
“Certainly not!” Dr. Crouch reasserted.
They were being too emphatic. Normalyn was alert; she would scrutinize their words carefully, carefully.
“On the telephone, Marilyn’s voice,” Dr. Crouch remembered, “was slurred—”
* * *
—pulled by physical jolts to her body, the pills she had taken to still pain. “My daughter—” she said.
“You know she’s dead.” Dr. Crouch was speaking the instructed words, asserting the lie to the hidden presences listening on the line. Naturally the star must have been informed of the subterfuge; why else would she be calling other than to assert it?
“Then it was all for nothing?” Marilyn asked Dr. Crouch.
“Yes.” He had to speak definite words, and few.
Her voice was fragile, like a wounded girl’s. “And Robert?”
He stopped her from further reference to the man she still loved. In the haze of pain and pills—and longing for the child she knew had to be kept safely from her now—she might slip, veer away from the necessary dissimulation. So Dr. Crouch said firmly—very firmly, to end the dangerous possibility of a misstep in crucial moments, “It was foolish of you to attempt all this—you, alone!” For added emphasis of the new subterfuge they must establish, he handed the telephone to Mrs. Crouch. “Yes,” she added, “and you are going to bring destruction to everyone if you persist.” They were—of course— speaking only to the invisible presences overhearing, adding— naturally—further authenticity to the child’s death.
Dr. Crouch took the telephone again: “And there is no way you can stop it now.” But clearly he knew there was new hope.
Marilyn’s long sigh vanished into a voice full of resolve: “I know a way,” she said.
* * *
“What was she going to attempt, the poor soul?” Dr. Crouch wondered now.
“We’ve pondered that so many nights—what she thought she could possibly do by then.” Mrs. Crouch sustained a sigh. “We never found out because—” She put her hands to her lips. “Dr. Crouch, please, you say it.”
“Because, instead, soon after”—Dr. Crouch’s somber words slowed, his eyes closed—“in the early darkness of morning”—he opened his eyes in surprise—“Marilyn Monroe killed herself.”
Normalyn felt deepened sorrow for the movie star—so beautiful, so famous, so alone at the last.
“Those were the last words she spoke to us.” Dr. Crouch’s voice had lost its force.
Normalyn did not believe their account of the telephone call—not their part of it. Telling it together, they had been much too selective in their rationed words, like someone not lying, exactly, because of fear of detection. Dr. Crouch had blurred details about how he was sure the movie star had been informed her child was alive, to be presumed dead. They had given much too much explication and necessity to cruel words. They had seemed grudgingly compelled to tell what they would have preferred to leave unspoken, battling with themselves as they told of events rushing toward doom.
“We did everything possible to salvage it all, everything for her good, child. Remember that! Remember!” Dr. Crouch exhorted Normalyn.
“Only for her, always, always, through all those arduous months of our sacrifice and fear, child,” Mrs. Crouch affirmed.
Normalyn’s suspicion firmed: Someone or something was coaxing them to tell her their ugly truths! She glanced at the photograph beside her, at the gorgeous blonde woman, the magnificent dark one. She would connect herself to their defiance!
And remember the artificial bouquets, dearheart, pretend you’re sure they received one! Assuming strength, Miss Bertha’s voice added resolution.
“I don’t believe all you’ve told me about the telephone call,” Normalyn challenged. “You weren’t trying to help her.” She became surer. “It’s clear that you were only trying to separate yourselves in any way from it all because you knew you were being overheard. That didn’t work or you wouldn’t be trying to explain it to me so carefully, distorting—”
“Young lady!” Dr. Crouch stood up.
“We will not be judged!�
� Mrs. Crouch stood with him.
Dr. Crouch shook his head as if to reorient himself to the demands of these moments. “Ask whatever you like.” He stood staunchly. He held his wife’s arm firmly, to demand her compliance.
“Nothing at all to hide! Ask!” Mrs. Crouch understood; then, as if her own harsh tone had baffled her, she added with a briefly resurrected smile, “Please, child.”
They were allowing questions! Normalyn tested: “How the hell were you sure someone had reached the movie star to tell her of the new plan to pretend her daughter was dead?”
“Because Stanley Smith went!” Dr. Crouch answered.
“No, oh, no.” Normalyn wanted to reject the hated presence.
“He was the only one trusted in both camps,” Dr. Crouch defended. “When Marilyn called, we were sure Stanley had reached her.”
“Were you really sure?” Normalyn demanded.
“Yes!” Dr. Crouch insisted, wiping his brow with an immaculately white handkerchief.
“Why are you sweating!” Normalyn asked harshly.
Mrs. Crouch protested with, horror, “Dr. Crouch never perspires, young lady!”
Dr. Crouch mopped more perspiration.
“Were you really sure Stan reached her?” Normalyn pursued.
“So sure,” Mrs. Crouch offered indignantly, “that we called her to verify—” She stopped her clumsy words.
“Mrs. Crouch!” Dr. Crouch admonished.
“You called her,” Normalyn understood. “She didn’t call you—that was a goddamned lie. When you found out there was danger, you called her to pretend you had just discovered what you were part of. You told her her child was dead— trying every stupid way you could to turn attention away from you—and she believed you.” She remembered the pitiful words of hope in the letter in her purse: “—if she is alive!” . . . “And you told her she’d bring down those she wanted to protect. You called her!”
