by John Rechy
Normalyn looked away from him.
“We’ll never know that, David, because I made you tell us what I’ve long suspected. Now we know.” Mildred said to Normalyn, “I told you, my dear, that he keeps temptation locked, but it is so easily unlocked when one knows the key. And that doesn’t require much to find. After all, he has it displayed in the center of his wall.”
In the calculated silence, Normalyn looked at David, so still now against the colored coils and slashes contained within the silver frame.
Mildred Meadows said to Normalyn, “You should be grateful to me, my dear. First, I armed you with messages that you cleverly perceived when I sent them to you through that foolish child at those wretched things called auditions conducted by that skinny girl. Now I have exposed David for you.”
Normalyn said, “If you had had your way, Mildred, I wouldn’t have been born.”
“If you are Monroe’s daughter!” Mildred rasped.
Her own words spoken earlier startled her only now. Normalyn stared at the despised woman. She wanted to hurt her, yes, and deeply. But how? “Such enormous evil from such tiny motives,” she said.
Mildred seemed only amused. “Evil? A quaint word, a bit archaic.” She touched her lips with her tongue. “But still tasty.” She sat back, extending moments. “Whatever you call it, evil or duplicity, it all lay dormant”—she measured her whispered words—“until you came searching and roused it all. Then those ugly decaying flowers came from her. To David first—why? How appropriate that our witness—our ‘accusing judge,’ as David prefers—should be a Spanish exile who betrayed her own aristocratic class! Teresa de Pilar!” She flung the revealed name at Normalyn with a look that ricocheted defiantly onto David Lange.
Of course. The woman who flowed like a soft shadow through the narratives she had heard, who had overseen the birth and the time after—and who married the doctor in attendance, now dead; the woman who claimed the remains of Miss Bertha, who was Alberta Holland. The person who had kept judgment alive had a name now: Teresa de Pilar. . . . Normalyn waited for David’s confirmation.
He remained silent.
“Has David, my dear, offered you the specialness of stardom?” Mildred’s sudden startling words attacked. “He could, you know. The daughter of Monroe and one of the Kennedys—whichever one it might have been. Imagine! Oh, my dear, is that what you really want? Have you been using your considerable cunning on David? Or has he on you?” Mildred moved to rip all allegiances.
“I want my own life,” Normalyn said. “He knows that.” Did he!
“But does he have other plans, for you, my dear? Watch him carefully!” Mildred hissed.
“I determined long ago what she truly wants, Mildred,” David told the old woman, looking at Normalyn to emphasize that understanding. “Your cunning was not clever, not worthy of you. You’re flailing like a wounded bird.”
Mildred shrugged her shoulders, as if to test for any possible bruise. None.
Normalyn wanted desperately to wound her. Her aim had to be deadly, for Enid, Marilyn, herself. She had to locate the exact weapon: “Why are you really here, Mildred? What brought you out of your shadows?”
Mildred answered quickly: “What I announced at the beginning. Curiosity, my dear.”
“Fear,” David corrected. “And now that you’ve said everything you were required to, Mildred, I can tell you that it was a needless fear. For years you’ve been terrified that scandal will ensnare you the way you ensnared with it. But your world is gone. There wouldn’t even be a tiny scandal, not a word in any newspaper if it were known that you put your grandchild in a home simply because she was—”
“Ugly.” Mildred spat the word. “And she killed—”
“Sandra didn’t kill Tarah. She only survived the accident that did. You claimed the child died, too, so you could hide her in a home.”
Sandra. The ominous limousine. Normalyn thought of the kind woman in the Wing of the Angel Home—and her sense of Mildred’s evil deepened.
“You don’t realize that you’re not important to anyone anymore, Mildred,” David said. “All you have left to do now is to die—quietly.”
Normalyn saw that the woman’s cold smile was unscathed.
“Not at all,” Mildred said. “I can still live on the triumph of my conquest of your precious integrity.” She prepared to rise. “Forgive me, David, if I don’t linger for your full confession. Conscience gives me a slight headache. . . . You will, of course, let me know what our ‘witness’ reveals?”
She said to Normalyn: “When I thought it had been discovered that that . . . girl . . . was in that home, I offered to take her for a drive. That was the afternoon I saw Enid and Norma Jeane. The two pretty girls pretended my limousine had come for them. I wished it had. Or for you, my dear. You’re just as pretty, you know—quite, quite pretty. Perhaps you may even become beautiful. I suppose Enid tried to keep you from knowing it. You hide yourself when it’s even suggested. Yes, Enid would keep it from you. She came to blame beauty for their unhappiness. But beauty, my dear, is special—like nothing else.” She smoothed her finger over the pearl on her ring. “The chafing of an oyster produced this. Is this worth that constant pain?” She held out her hand. Even in the dull light of the room, the pearl was superb, as if it existed only in admiration. “Yes! Worth it all!” Her eyes swept over the photographs on the wall.
Normalyn found the words she had been waiting for: “Mildred, of all the people who detest you—”
Mildred’s contemptuous smile remained stamped.
“—of all the people who have ever hated you—”
The smile held, intact.
“—Tarah—”
The lips trembled.
“—hated you the most,” Normalyn finished.
Mildred’s face crumbled in fuiy. “How dare you!” She stood up. Her hands quavered. Something like pain replaced the icy smile. Her body shook. She leaned for support against the chair.
Normalyn and David stared at her.
Frowning, Mildred seemed to see herself suddenly in a posture foreign to her. She looked down at her clenched fists as if she did not recognize them as her own. Finger by finger she released their tight clasp. She touched the straining veins on her neck, her temples, soothing them. Delicately, she smoothed her brow with the pearled finger. She leaned away from the chair. Again, she stood erect, composed. “And so you forced me to react to your lie,” she said to Normalyn.
“To the truth,” David said. “You still confuse one with the other.”
Wrenching every particle of strength from the anarchy of power that defined her life, Mildred Meadows moved to the small cabinet beside David’s desk. She stood there. “I’m trying to think of a superb exit line,” she said. “Let’s see. It’s a bit difficult, because what could match the drama we’ve roamed through? But let me think. . . .” From the cabinet, she brought out a glass. She poured liquor into it. Drops spattered the immaculate surface of wood as she placed the glass, before David, destroying the symmetry of his desk. “Have you ever wondered whether the same forces that you aided with your letter struck again—twice!—once in Dallas, once in Los Angeles?”
Mildred pushed the glass toward him. “Drink it, David! Your precious conscience will need it again!”
Forty-Nine
David Lange pulled the blinds open, expelling the lingering shadow of Mildred Meadows. Behind his desk, he faced Normalyn.
Her strength had survived. With new fascination Normalyn studied the photographs surrounding the silver-bordered anarchy on his wall. She inhaled. “What did she do to you, David, to bring about all the revenge?”
“Monroe?” He pronounced the name as if it itself were a question.
Normalyn felt again the great power of Marilyn Monroe, a power the movie star herself had not fully recognized.
David Lange rose and stood by the window, as if locating an exact point in the distance. He spoke very quietly—words might shatter fragile memories:
“The night I met Robert Kennedy, I saw her in person for the first time, that night—”
* * *
—in Santa Monica, at the villa of Peter Lawford, the actor who had married the sister of the President of the United States.
David Lange was introduced to the President’s younger brother, a lean, intense man. David was already becoming convinced that Robert would become the great leader the country waited for, greater than his brother. As Attorney General, he had already initiated the most dedicated assault on organized crime and political corruption in the country’s history.
“David Lange?” Robert Kennedy repeated when they were introduced. “You worked to elect my brother. I know he thanked you, but let me thank you again.” He shook David’s hand, holding it for a moment to extend his appreciation. “And,” he smiled, “you’re the writer who deserves the Pulitzer Prize!”
David was younger than the Attorney General. His prestige as an honored journalist allowed him to travel among the great. He knew that politicians are primed about the activities of guests so that they seem to be responding personally to everyone. But there was an unabashed earnestness about Robert Kennedy as he went on to discuss one of the main points in David Lange’s recent book—that the Bill of Rights mandates a social responsibility of the government.
As they spoke, David was more inspired by the man’s enthusiasm—yes, enthusiasm!—for justice. That enthusiasm created an energy in the very air. Robert Kennedy spoke as if he truly believed justice was possible in our time. Occasionally, though, he would smile a bemused smile; this would occur at odd moments. David became certain that smile was an acknowledgement of the realistic idealist’s sense of irony that justice should have to be fought for, not demanded. Yes, Robert Kennedy would lead the country beyond the new frontier his brother was staking—into a visionary era. Even now, there were certain—
Marilyn Monroe walked in.
Everyone turned. Her presence had issued a silent command. She let slide from her bare shoulders an emerald cape, which a butler was not able to catch before it fell in folds at her feet. She wore a cream-tinted dress, so sheer it seemed smeared on her body. Sequins of gold ice splashed it. Her lips were a shade of red that defined red. Long, darkened eyelashes enclosed the blue of her eyes, the eyes of an innocent but sensual child. Against a backdrop of candles being lit that very moment in preparation for dinner, her outline seemed to have been drawn by an adoring artist in one masterful flow of curves. She was the most beautiful woman in the world, David Lange knew.
Lawford had arranged for Robert Kennedy to be flanked at dinner by Marilyn Monroe and Kim Novak, herself a thrilling woman, “discovered” after Harry Cohn, having allowed Marilyn’s contract to lapse, demanded that Columbia Studios’ talent department create “another Monroe.” Despite that, Kim Novak had a more subtle beauty of her own.
David Lange sat two seats away from Marilyn Monroe.
While Kim Novak talked passionately about her new ranch in Carmel, “its hypnotizing horizon, mesmerizing mists at dusk,” Marilyn asked the Attorney General sophisticated questions about civil rights. David had not anticipated such a refined intellect. Surprised by the range of her knowledgeability, Robert Kennedy answered seriously. At the same time, he was clearly charmed. David wondered when Robert would discover what he himself just had, that Marilyn Monroe was reading from hidden notes. Robert Kennedy only smiled when he saw that. Marilyn Monroe was unfazed by the discovery. “I wrote them myself,” she convinced everyone. “I like to organize my thoughts.” She faced the Attorney General of the United States. “Don’t you, Mr. Kennedy, when you go into court?”
“Of course, Miss Monroe,” he agreed soberly.
After dinner, guests mingled, about twenty-five or so. Robert and Marilyn drifted apart from the others.
At the time there were rumors that Marilyn drank too much—and she had clearly enjoyed the splendid champagne served tonight; that she was frequently “out of control”; that pills she took for sleeping deepened darkening moods; that she was at times abusive, then regretful. Her late-night calls to the few people she considered friends were frantic, demanding. David Lange knew—Mildred Meadows had shown him a copy—that a scurrilous letter in the hands of J. Edgar Hoover accused the Kennedy brothers of “sexual immorality” with many women. David disbelieved all that, completely. He had denounced it to Mildred as “lies that are spoken about all great men.”
That night, Marilyn Monroe was like a flirtatious girl, David saw, and, yes, that only added a certain youthful insouciance to her startling presence. She was clearly intrigued by the bright, coltish Attorney General. Why not? And why should he be expected to resist the charm of so beautiful a woman? After all, it was all public, all uncomplicated, all natural.
David’s eyes remained on them as they stood at one end of the dazzling room, by an enormous free-form sculpture of cut crystal—its reflections speckled Marilyn Monroe’s dress with split gems of light. Robert’s carefree laughter matched Monroe’s. Then her head brushed his shoulder, as if she might rest it there. Yanked out of a spell, Robert pulled back. His laughter stopped.
At the same time all conversation around them halted. The girlish laughter was isolated in the silenced room. David heard fragments of words: Robert’s—“are watching!’’; Monroe’s—“know you desire—” Robert Kennedy stared in horror at the guests looking at them. He said something to the movie star. Her laughter was throttled. She turned her head as if his words had struck her. Robert walked out of the room. The beautiful woman stood abandoned within her glitter and beauty, entrapped by stares.
“Bast—!” She did not finish the enraged word, hurled at the man stalking away from her. She took a step toward him, to follow. The dress frosted over with beads parted, revealing a bare strip of her legs. A bodyguard blocked her path. She looked like a scolded child. She backed away from the forbidding man. Then she ran out of the house, through a side exit.
To separate himself from the breathless conjecture that would certainly follow among the guests—he did not want even to wonder what had occurred—David went out onto the balcony. Illumined by dark light, the night was silver. A layer of clouds concealed the moon. The ocean was calm but the sound of distant waves was growing. David looked down, away. He saw Marilyn Monroe running toward the beach!
He felt a moment of terror. He had heard that she had attempted suicide several times. He jumped the short distance from the balcony, not taking the time to go down the stairs. He hurried, following her along the beach, stumbling on the sand.
He stopped.
Ahead, Marilyn Monroe was looking at the ocean. She stood very still and stared into darkness. She seemed like an apparition, a silver presence created by the night’s reflections. In that dim light she shone as if rejecting the darkness about her. The moon—he had been wrong, there was a moon that night—floated in and out of clouds as if fascinated by her.
David Lange watched, watched her.
She removed her shoes. She tore at the slit at the bottom of her dress so she could walk without difficulty on the moist sand. He saw a spray of glittering dust sprinkle the sand.
David Lange gazed at the silver outline against tossing clouds of night, restless dark water.
Marilyn Monroe turned!
She was laughing! Joyfully! She beckoned: “Come on!” she called in that eager voice that could convey the greatest excitement, the greatest need.
David Lange hesitated. She had clearly mistaken him for the angered man who had walked away from her, although he himself was shorter, somewhat heavier. She kept motioning him closer as he approached—slowly, to make sure, cautiously, that she was calling to him.
“Come on, hurry, come on!” she said. She laughed happily. “We’ll take a walk along the beach.”
He looked at her. So close. So close to him. When they had been introduced earlier, she had nodded politely, said a few words. Now—
“Take off your shoes, like me!" she said
in delight.
Embarrassed, he did, not knowing what to do with them, holding them.
She linked her arm through his. She shivered. He began to take off his coat, to give it to her.
“No,” she said, “don’t do that, because then I won’t have an excuse to do this.” She leaned against him, nestling her head on his shoulders.
His hand rose and almost touched her. He had not yet said a word. They walked through tatters of ocean mist, through pockets of dark light. Crests of water rolled almost to their feet.
Again, he began to remove his coat, to offer it to her.
Again, she refused.
He could feel her body—shivering coldly, trembling warmly—as it pressed against his.
For erratic moments the water became turbulent. Now a wave rose, tumbled, frothing white at its crest. They felt a spray of water. Marilyn welcomed it, her hands up, out, exultant. The wet dress turned translucent.
Marilyn trembled, again, pressed closer to David Lange. “Save me!” she whispered.
* * *
David Lange transferred his gaze from the past and into this office, to Normalyn. He had brought the memory intact into this room. “She ran back to the house,” he said. “I followed her, and there—”
* * *
—where the Mediterranean villa rose in tiers of lights, Marilyn Monroe waited, barefoot, her dress torn, her luminous flesh almost revealed in wet patches.
“You promise?” she said.
“What?” he asked, wanting to hear it again, to hear her voice, to hear words spoken to him by her.
“Have you forgotten what I asked you? Will you promise to save me?”
“I haven’t forgotten,” David Lange said.
“Will you come tomorrow to my house?” she asked him.
Only later would he know the magic moments were real. He memorized and quickly wrote—and then looked at it and looked at it and looked at it—the address she gave him, the time agreed.
* * *
“Eight o’clock.” In his office, David Lange remembered the hour that had continued to make his memory real that night after she returned to the villa and he left. “And I was there, at her house. She came to the door, eagerly. When she saw me—”
