Marilyn's Daughter

by John Rechy

  “But Norma Jeane is dead, too,” Miss Kline reminded.

  “Yes,” Enid whispered, so softly. She looked up, startled.

  * * *

  Was that the guilt Enid had battled all those years, her support of Norma Jeane, her insistence on Norma Jeane’s strength? Normalyn wondered as she sat in the playground of the Wing of the Angel Home, here where Norma Jeane and Enid had first played their fatal game. In the years that had followed, the years of Normalyn’s life, Enid had reasserted Norma Jeane’s strength, and her own loyalty to Norma Jeane. There had been the recurring times of anger vented at Marilyn Monroe. But, Normalyn remembered now, those were always times of anguish, confusion, deepest questioning.

  “And then,” Sandra continued slowly as if hesitant to approach more sad memories, “that day, Enid stood up, and—”

  * * *

  —she said, “And now her daughter is—”

  Alive? Dead? Sandra waited tensely to hear.

  But Enid retreated from the words she had almost spoken. She looked about the room as if hostile presences might Overhear.

  There was the quiet sound of a car. Enid heard it immediately. She looked out the window. “It’s here now! Everything is prepared. It’s up to me! . . . Now she’ll be our child.”

  “Who? Whose child?” Mrs. Travers begged.

  In the flooding grief of these moments, Sandra realized, Enid had told them nothing about her own child. A boy? A girl? Where now?

  Enid was no longer addressing them: “She’ll be our child, and she’ll survive. No matter what I have to do!” She raised a clenched fist. “I swear it. She’ll survive!”

  * * *

  “We never saw her again, and that’s all she said,” Sandra told Normalyn.

  The sun was withdrawing some of its warmth. A breeze rustled the leaves of trees. They stirred like restless spirits.

  “Whose daughter are you, Normalyn?”

  Startled, Normalyn looked at Sandra. She had just asked the very question whose answer she was seeking here.

  “I thought you would tell me.” Normalyn could not hide her anger. “You said at auditions that I look like . . . my mother.”

  “You do, whichever one she is.”

  Wearily, Normalyn closed her eyes. There had been many answers here, but not the answer. . . . “Are Miss Kline and Mrs. Travers still here?” There was something more she had to do.

  “Only Miss Kline,” Sandra said. “Mrs. Travers died a year ago.”

  Now Sandra ran the home. It was right. She would be kind. Normalyn felt glad.

  “They lived up there.” Sandra indicated the left wing of the second floor in the main building. “Now only Miss Kline does. Sometimes I coax her to come down to see the children. She’s so old now, almost losing her sight—and sometimes she forgets. When she does manage to come down, she tries to look carefully at each child; sometimes she touches a face—the way she did Norma Jeane’s, when she made herself up in her office.”

  “Will you give her this?”

  Sandra gasped. “The necklace! Miss Kline wanted it back so badly.”

  It was Enid’s, not Norma Jeane’s, but Miss Kline would not know that. “Please tell her Marilyn really wanted her to have it,” Normalyn said easily.

  “Please, you give it to her, you tell her that. Please, Normalyn.” Sandra was moving back toward the building, coaxing Normalyn to follow. “Please!”

  As they walked up the steps, Normalyn imagined two pretty girls with their few belongings, pretending the gray limousine had come for them.

  Sandra knocked softly and opened a door into a dim room. Against the light of the window, a tall, slender woman sat quietly in a chair next to a small table on which was—

  A bouquet of flowers! Normalyn saw. But the dim light refused to identify more than their sketchy outline.

  “Miss Kline, there’s somebody here who wants to see you,” Sandra said.

  “Who, Sandra?” Miss Kline asked eagerly, readied expectations alerted. She leaned forward as if her eyes might still be able to detect a clear presence. Then she canceled her expectations with a sigh. “Is it one of the children?”

  “A very special one.”

  Miss Kline raised her head. Then again resisting extravagant hope, she leaned against her chair. But she placed a finger on her brow, to smooth the crease there—although age had added wrinkles that had softened it permanently.

  Sandra urged Normalyn forward.

  “Is it—?” Miss Kline said.

  “Yes!” Sandra said exuberantly.

  Normalyn approached the tall woman. She stood close to her—and to the bouquet of flowers: perfect replications of unblemished jacarandas!

  Miss Kline’s trembling fingers barely touched Normalyn’s face. “Why, it is Norma Jeane! I’d recognize your face always! . . . I told you she’d come back, Sandra!” She almost got up, but her body refused.

  Normalyn noticed that the tired eyes were clouded over with an encroaching film of delicate gray. She said softly, “I came to give you something.”

  Miss Kline sighed. “The necklace.”

  Normalyn placed it in her hand.

  Miss Kline’s fingers embraced it. “Didn’t I tell you and Mrs. Travers that she would come back, Sandra? And she has— even if I had to wait all these years. I told them, Norma Jeane—Marilyn Monroe— . . . I told them you would come back.” Miss Kline touched her eyes, cherishing the tears of joy. “Now goodbye, Norma Jeane!” she called out.

  Sandra motioned to Normalyn, and they walked out quietly.

  2

  Outside again, Sandra held Normalyn’s arm. “It may not mean anything, but that last time Enid was here, she left with a man who came to pick her up. We looked out the window, and we saw him guiding her into the car. Such a courteous man—so distinguished! He carried an elegant cane and he had—”

  “—the slightest limp,” Normalyn finished.

  “Yes!” Then impulsively, Sandra hugged Normalyn before she ran back into the home.

  Normalyn remained in the playground. The restless breeze gathered more leaves, released them. They whirled about the pensive angel.

  Mayor Wendell Hughes had come for Enid, here, years ago.

  Forty-Six

  In the orange dusk of Los Angeles, Normalyn walked away from the Wing of the Angel Home. Wendell Hughes had come from Texas to protect Enid as far back as then. How much had he known—ever—about the events of the exile he sheltered? Normalyn was grateful that the young, vulnerable woman she was discovering had found him as a protector as she began her slide into her hellish madness. . . . Had Stan finally realized that Enid’s life had been tied to his only by a flimsy glass necklace—returned when he ordered her to lose her child? She would have to be that child, because, if not— the gradual insinuation had now become equal possibility—she was Marilyn’s daughter.

  Very soon she would return to David Lange. She would have to assert her commitment for the proffered answer, even if it meant revealing Enid’s letter.

  2

  “I can’t find me!” Troja said when Normalyn returned home after a particularly moody day of reading and walking. Troja’s “audition” had been dismal. She had run out again.

  Normalyn saw the devastated woman, pursued by memories. “Troja, if only—” She would have ignored the ringing of the telephone if Troja hadn’t jerked back, instantly electrified, hands pushed against her ears.

  “Answer the screaming!” she yelled.

  It was Michael Farrell.

  “It can’t be,” Normalyn said. “I gave you the wrong number.”

  “I know,” he said. “The nine was a seven, the way you told me first. I figured it out.”

  She could not withhold her pleasure at hearing from him.

  “I’m in Hollywood”—he tried to sound casual—“and I was wondering maybe I could come by for you and we’d have dinner.” When she said nothing during his pause, he added, “There’s something I have to tell you.”

&
nbsp; About Enid, from Mark Poe! Normalyn agreed to meet him, in two hours. Yes, for dinner. At Musso and Frank’s, yes. Yes, she remembered that it was “the famous restaurant and the oldest in Hollywood.” Yes, where writers used to go.

  When she put down the telephone, Normalyn turned to see Troja tying an incongruously pink scarf about her arm. The hated needle and a packet of white powder waited beside her. Cautiously, Normalyn took the syringe, still wrapped, and the packet, unopened. Troja did not protest.

  “You wanted me to stop you,” Normalyn said softly, certain of her words—Troja hadn’t even filled the needle yet, had tied her arm first. “Because you’re not sure you want to do it.” She took a deep breath: “I hope, with all my heart, that you decide you don’t ever want to do it, that you want to live.” Her voice about to falter, she added, “Please.”

  Troja did not answer.

  Now Normalyn was not sure she would meet Michael. Troja might have been signaling her need of her. Yet she knew that she had to break a dependency that would make Troja weaker, invite rather than stop the slide down. And she had to keep their friendship from choking on resentment. Still, Normalyn hesitated to prepare to go out.

  Troja understood. “Please go, hon; please have your date.”

  Her date! Normalyn felt excitement. “But you—”

  “I promise I’ll be okay. You’re right. I didn’t intend to do it—just imagining I did. Helps sometimes.”

  Normalyn hid the needle and the packet among her clothes.

  3

  In the wonderful old restaurant in the heart of Hollywood, Normalyn saw Michael Farrell immediately. He stood out from the others his age because he was so easily good-looking, unaware of it. Formally, they said hello and inquired how the other was. Then Normalyn asked about Mark Poe, wanting to urge the promised information. “Fine, just fine,” Michael Farrell said.

  When they were seated in one of the gracious wooden booths in the grand dining room with faded murals, there was a buzzing interest directed toward the entrance. A young familiar-looking actress had entered, pretending not to notice the attention—which suddenly turned covert—that she was drawing. Expertly trained to scan the room, her eyes paused on Normalyn and then swept away in pointed dismissal.

  “You made her jealous,” Michael said gladly. “Because even with all these other good-looking girls, you stand out.”

  Normalyn asked quickly; “What did you have to tell me?” She tried to avoid sounding too anxious.

  “That I lied to you. I’d never read Emily Brontë—I just knew about her—”

  That’s what he had to tell her? Again, she had linked everything to the past.

  He extended his confession. “And I’ve only read a short selection from Joyce. But I have read Dickens . . . one book. And Twain—Huckleberry Finn. . . . I love that goddamn book!”

  Huckleberry Finn! Normalyn felt as if he had mentioned a close mutual friend. She considered whether now was the right time to tell him that she had lied, too, that she hadn’t read the writers he had mentioned that earlier day. Now she had: The Great Gatsby—and Daisy infuriated her for hoping her daughter would be “a beautiful little fool”—and The Sound and the Fury, marveling at it, marveling.

  “After we talked, though,” Michael went on in a rush, “I did read Wuthering Heights, and I want to thank you for that. Goddamn!—the structure! Time’s all broken up in flashbacks, but it all takes one shape, like one present and past.” His enthusiasm seemed too much for only words. His eyes moved over the room, as if studying everything, and then they returned intensely to her, along with a wide smile. “It’s already influenced me. See, I want to make documentaries—explore reality but use all the techniques of movie fiction. Goddamn!” The word encapsulated his awe. Again, embarrassment ganged up.

  Silence.

  Well, this time she would break it, Normalyn resolved. She was shy but she could be bold, like him.

  “What I like most about Dickens are his characters,” she said. “The way you get to know them so well it’s almost like you can see them, right there before you, clearer than in a movie.” She was surprised—and pleased—by the number of words she was able to speak so easily. “And in Wuthering Heights—” Catherine and Heathcliff, she remembered, and remembered when she had imagined herself walking along the moors, along the river with—

  “Please go on,” Michael coaxed her.

  But she could not. Apprehension overwhelmed her suddenly, and she could think of nothing more to say. Nothing. Still, he waited for her. She was glad when they ordered, glad that the waiter had brought bread, glad when the food came—so she wouldn’t have to talk, especially since Michael seemed to sense that something had gone wrong, was wanting to share, or accept, her sudden mood.

  His enthusiasm resurged. Michael told Normalyn about the sketches he’d made during their field trip for Mark Poe’s class. “Mostly of the Watts Towers. I went back. You want to see them, Normalyn? They’re back at the motel. I’m staying there with the two friends you met. But I have a room of my own,” he added hastily, because Normalyn knew that one of his friends was a woman and he didn’t want her to think she was with him.

  Normalyn turned away.

  She thought he was asking her to go there to— Not that he couldn’t want to be with her. But that hadn’t been his intention, and she had turned afraid again, the way she had in Palm Springs.

  “Would you prefer to see a movie?” he invited. “Persona’s playing at the Los Feliz Theater—”

  She put down her silver. Even now, surrounded by people, she had felt fear stirring.

  “I didn’t mean anything right now when I—” he started.

  “I’m afraid of you,” she said aloud. She knew there was no reason to fear him. She carried the reason, within her.

  “I wouldn’t hurt you.”

  She hit the table, judging herself. “I’m just a damn coward.”

  “But you’re here all alone in Los Angeles. Mark told Robert you’re very brave. He’s really glad I’m seeing you.” He reached out to touch her.

  She jerked back in terror.

  He said, “Did someone do something . . . terrible . . . to you?

  “Yes!” Then it was written on her.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She heard her own words: “Three men, by the Rio Grande—. . .” Only when she told him that one of them had finally stopped it before the actual rape, did she realize she had been speaking about Ted Gonzales, who had been on her mind— differently—since she had mentioned Wuthering Heights.

  “I’m sorry.” Michael said the only words he could find.

  She stood up. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “I’m glad you did, I’m glad you told me—” Michael paid as quickly as he was able to summon the waiter, because Normalyn had gathered her purse, preparing to leave. He followed her outside.

  She had intended to walk home—until she saw lurking shadows along Hollywood Boulevard.

  Michael drove her home in the car the three students took turns with. Even by the time they reached her house, he had not been able to find what he could say. Everything he thought of was inadequate.

  As she got out of the car hurriedly, he thanked her “for a fine evening.” Even before she reacted, he wanted to draw back his ineffectual words.

  “It was not fine,” she said. “It could have been. But I ruined it!”

  “I’ll see you again!” he said.

  “Yes!” she agreed. She walked ahead, stopped, turned. “No. It would just be the same,” she said. Her body ached with the tension of . . . just being with someone she liked. She ran toward the house.

  “I will see you!” Michael yelled after her.

  In the dark, Troja sat on the slanted porch. Normalyn sat beside her. Troja put her arm about her. “Can’t go on being afraid of all men, hon,” she said.

  She had heard the exchange with Michael. Normalyn was touched by Troja’s concern. Yet there were so many confusio
ns, so raw right now, that she did not want to explore them.

  After moments, Troja spoke about what she had been pondering in the darkness: “When you try to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, when you force someone to live who doesn’t want to any more, or can’t any more, then you pull them down in another way and get pulled down. No one becomes strong then.”

  “Yes,” Normalyn agreed.

  Troja said, “Sure, I would bring Kirk back if I could, even if it meant going on in that hurting way. But I can’t bring him back. So I can say that, yes, I’m at peace in a way I never was when he lived.” She said abruptly, “I’m glad you hid that needle and the shit, hon.”

  “I’ll throw them away!” Normalyn said.

  “Not just yet. Gotta know it’s still there. For a while, that’s all. Gotta slide away easy from it. Cause, hon, see, I shot up once—maybe twice. Then I didn’t feel pain. I didn’t feel.”

  “But that’s just like dying,” Normalyn said.

  “Yes,” Troja said.

  Normalyn said carefully, slowly, “Maybe you should let yourself find someone else.”

  “Never!” Troja rejected quickly.

  They remained outside a while longer—separated from the rest of the world, Normalyn thought, because only they knew what they were feeling in those moments.

  4

  Ted called to verify their getting together. Again, Normalyn hesitated. When silence extended, she filled it by agreeing that he could come over. She wouldn’t have to go out with him, and Troja would be here. Yes, then, this evening.

  Troja did return before Ted arrived, but so exhausted she mumbled a greeting and went into her room to rest.

  Ted was at the door at the exact time. “Normalyn!”

  “Ted—”

  “Jesus Christ, are you beautiful!” He still wore the boots that made him even taller than he was, the slim Levi’s, but not the cowboy hat. His hair was slightly longer. He looked even handsomer. He was carrying a giant cluster of pretty flowers—pink, blue, yellow, white.