Beautiful Mess

by Herrick, John

  A hiatus of that nature also allows much time for searching one’s soul, for exploring new endeavors. And it was during this season of relaxation that I tried my hand at something new: pouring my soul into the written word. Perhaps it would help me make sense of this turmoil inside me. As it turns out, the endeavor accomplished exactly that, but I fear what I have written.

  Del, you have been a true friend to me, one of the few people I trust in this confusing world, especially after some of those I trusted locked me up in that mental institution. I almost didn’t escape. What would stop them from betraying me again? If they read what I have written, they might send me back to that damned place.

  Yet I have a lingering fear that something imminent is about to occur, so I shall put this script into your hands. Should I no longer be able to make my own decisions, you shall have authority to do with this script as you see fit, and to reveal it in its proper time.

  People will, no doubt, wonder about the authenticity of this script. Many will refuse to believe I had the intelligence to write such a thing. Therefore, I have placed my thumbprint on each and every page. When they read my words and see the precaution I’ve taken to prove its authenticity, everyone will know I wasn’t the silly, dumb blond I played in pictures.

  This world hurts, darling. You’ve been my compass through life’s dark, confusing maze. This letter explains much, but words could never express how much you mean to me.

  With love,

  Marilyn Monroe

  Del took another gulp and laid down his glass. Taking a seat upon a box, he began to page through the screenplay. Given the pace of his career at the time she’d given it to him, he hadn’t had a chance to read her words. But as he read them tonight, the mental fog cleared and he remembered the day she placed this piece of work into his hands.

  * * *

  “You wrote a screenplay?”

  Wide-eyed, Del ran his fingers across the crisp, white paper, a stack of sheets bound together by brass fasteners along its left margin. He was in his early twenties.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” Marilyn Monroe replied with a staccato laugh. “I’m a woman of many wonderful traits.” Though thirty-six years old, she took childlike pleasure in his reaction. Innocent. She had exquisite diction, a byproduct of training with Natasha Lytess, her first acting coach.

  “When did you write this?”

  “During my hiatus, the one I took after we wrapped up production on The Prince and the Showgirl. Arthur and I split our time between New York and Connecticut, and he helped me as I wrote,” she replied, her countenance now matter-of-fact, her voice sultry yet airy. “I believe it was an outlet for him, too. He was so frustrated by that time, wondering about his own future. He believed in me, and I think it helped him believe in himself. So as I wrote the scenes, he gave me advice on how to make the characters richer, more alive.”

  They sat together in the living room of her home in Brentwood. “Johnny Angel” played on her phonograph. They were alone in the house.

  “This must have taken a long time to write.”

  “I had eighteen months before I returned to Hollywood to shoot Some Like It Hot,” she replied. Her gaze fell to the floor, and her voice grew softer. “I’d been through so much by that point. Trying to make my second marriage work. The pain of losing a child…”

  As her words drifted, young Del noticed she had waded into the territory of the forlorn. For the past year, she had seemed more prone toward that tendency, and pain filled Del’s heart whenever he watched it emerge. He tried to return her attention to the script, which seemed to make her happy. It was an obvious source of pride for her.

  “You never mentioned you’re a writer. Why doesn’t anybody know?”

  Her countenance brightened again, and Del felt relieved. She shot him a cunning glare.

  “There’s more to me than the reporters know about,” she replied with a wink, wagging a red-polished fingernail at him, ever the mentor. “Here’s an important tip for you: Never tell them everything. Always keep a little secret or two for yourself, something to hold in your heart. Something you can control in this crazy world.”

  Del fanned the pages, opening the document at random points to scan snippets of dialogue. What a sense of accomplishment she must have felt! He admired its professional layout, which looked identical to the scripts he’d used on the sets. Del wondered if Marilyn had typed this on the manual typewriter he’d seen Arthur Miller use in their home.

  “Is this any good?” Del asked. “I mean, have you shown it to anyone?”

  “Only to Arthur, back when we were married.” She giggled in her typical Marilyn manner. “Can you imagine? The great Arthur Miller coaches Marilyn Monroe in literature,” she punctuated with a male reporter’s voice, underscoring it with faux solemnity. “You do know he rewrote the script for Let’s Make Love, don’t you? He said the original was a catastrophe and he wanted to protect me. Wasn’t that sweet? Many people don’t know that. He wrote the script for The Misfits, too. The man certainly knows what he’s doing, if you ask me. Look at Death of a Salesman. Pure genius! Regardless of how our marriage worked out, the man was a brilliant writer.”

  Young Del ran his hand across Marilyn’s screenplay again, eager to read it from beginning to end. Maybe they could perform in it together!

  Yet he couldn’t ignore a chill that raced up his spine. Why here? Why now?

  “Why are you giving this to me?” he asked.

  Marilyn regarded him a moment. Her somberness returned. Biting the inside of her cheek, she looked toward her left, which struck Del as nothing more than an attempt to procrastinate before giving him an answer. When she met his stare again, Del saw the vulnerability of a young girl. Was it a plea?

  “We’re friends, aren’t we?” she whispered.

  “Of course we are.”

  “I need you to keep this safe for me.”

  She returned it to its large envelope, along with a letter, which Del hadn’t read.

  “I don’t understand. Why can’t you keep it here at home? Why won’t you show it to anybody?”

  She enveloped herself in her arms, as though to comfort herself with her own embrace. Her next words sounded measured.

  “Do you ever get goose bumps, Del?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “I’ve gotten goose bumps a lot as of late. It scares me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I fear something is about to happen.”

  Del’s pulse surged. “Don’t you feel safe? What’s going to happen?”

  Her pupils shrank in what appeared to Del a blend of confusion and fear.

  “It’s just a feeling I get,” she said. “Bobby and Jack—a lot of people follow them around. People who watch me. They whisper into little microphones and show up at nearby tables in restaurants when they think I don’t notice them.”

  “Bobby and Jack Kennedy?” he exclaimed. “The Attorney General and the President?”

  “It’s not just them,” she replied. “Joe McCarthy tried to target me as an enemy of the state, remember? And others even say I’m a danger to myself.”

  Del noticed she still hadn’t answered his question: What’s going to happen?

  “Should something happen to me, you’ll know what to do with this evidence.”

  “Evidence?”

  “They’ll use it against me. To try to say I’m crazy. And I’m not crazy, Del.” She paused, a woman in mourning. She had lost much in the last ten years. For that matter, Del wondered if she’d ever known genuine joy. “When the time is right, I’ll retrieve it from you. But for now, I can’t keep it in this house. No one can see this. I’m frightened, Del.”

  “That’s silly. What do you have to be afraid of?”

  “I don’t want them to send me back to that horrid place.”

  “What place?”

  “That institution. The mental one.” She closed her eyes. Wincing, she added, “I hated that place.”

 
When she opened her eyes, Del found them covered with a film of tears. At that point, he realized the memories she hid in the corners of her soul must haunt her. Every day.

  Her jaw firmed. She blinked back her tears. Fury filled her eyes.

  “They’ll never lock me up like a criminal again. People have tried to lock me up all my life.”

  “Marilyn—”

  “They have, Del. They locked me in an orphanage when I was a girl. They locked me in that horrible institution when I was an adult. I begged them not to, but that’s what happens when they believe you’re weak. When they think they can have their way with you. I’ll never let them do that to me again.”

  “But if you’re scared of that, why did you take the risk by writing this?”

  “I needed to get the torment out of me somehow. The anger. The pain. The pressure. The confusion—I grew up so fast. I married so young. And when I was a little girl—” Her eyes sealed shut again. She took a labored breath, regained her composure, and changed course, perhaps to escape a memory that held particular pain. “I was desperate, Del. So I poured it all into these pages. Perhaps they can lock up my body, but they can’t lock up my soul.” Tapping the envelope, she added, “This darkness is part of me. I can’t help it. This is who I am.”

  Del watched as her eyes turned sullen, pleading, once again.

  She placed her hand upon his. “But if they read this script—if they see what has gone through my mind—’She’s a threat to herself,’ they’ll say. ‘She has a violent temperament. She’s sexually disturbed.’ And you know what will happen next? My independence will disappear. They’ll send me back to that horrible place. And this time, I may not escape. I almost didn’t make it out the first time.” She focused on him, the plea in her eyes growing. “Please, Del. Please take care of this. Will you promise me?”

  CHAPTER 19

  AS HE RELIVED that memory, Del shook his head. Marilyn had a reputation for being difficult on the set, for forgetting her lines, for showing up late. She was world-renowned by that time. An enigma to some; a hassle to others.

  But no one had immortalized her yet.

  And so, when she had handed Del her screenplay, it was nothing more than a side project from a friend, handed to him for safekeeping. He’d had no way of knowing he held a piece of history at the time.

  That wouldn’t be the case today.

  Del had never told a soul of its existence. He had tucked it away and, ashamed as he felt to admit, forgotten about it. In the weeks and months following Marilyn’s death, he’d wanted to open the script and read its pages but wondered if he could bring himself to do so. As much as he missed her, reading her words would have invoked a measure of grief.

  He reminisced how the public had adored her. Del also recalled how many of her peers had scoffed at her and discounted her talent.

  Yet it appeared Marilyn might, after all these years, have the last laugh.

  Del finished his drink.

  He considered stuffing the package into a small vault embedded in the wall of his study, secured with two layers of combination locks and hidden behind a painting, then decided against it. Too predictable in the event of a burglary.

  He would put this package in his safe deposit box tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 20

  AS DEL LAY in bed that night, sleep evaded him. He’d begin to doze, catch himself, then shudder awake again. He couldn’t help it; energy buzzed through him.

  His mind returned to the treasure he’d extracted from his personal collection that evening and deliberated on what to do with it.

  An original screenplay written by Marilyn Monroe!

  He could picture the reaction among industry executives. After all her films and as much as people thought they knew about her, not even a rumor had arisen that she was a writer, too. They would eat this news for lunch and spit out the seeds.

  Had she sought a last laugh against her detractors and tasked Del as the guy who would arrange her chess pawns on the board?

  After dwelling in obscurity, would Del Corwyn emerge as a kingmaker?

  Still, his moral compass tugged at him. Del considered his motives and couldn’t deny he stood to gain much from this scenario. To most people, Marilyn Monroe was an icon, but not to him. Suppose he shopped her screenplay among producers. Would that honor her memory? Or would it betray their friendship?

  This discovery, if revealed to the public, could also mark his final comeback, and that struck Del as self-serving. If he used her iconic status for his own gain, would he be any better than those who had used her in the past? He didn’t want to do that. No, some things in life are sacred.

  Then again, she had placed the script in his care so he could make the best decision on her behalf, not necessarily because she wanted it hidden. Wasn’t that the wish expressed in her letter? For Del to do with the screenplay as he saw fit? To reveal it in its proper time?

  After all, she had longed for her peers to take her seriously as an artist, beyond the sex appeal and publicity that hounded her. She was a shrewd businesswoman and had even obtained a production deal as part of her contract. Marilyn Monroe Productions had produced The Prince and the Showgirl. And how could Del forget the acting coaches Marilyn toted with her to every film set? Del remembered how controlling others had considered Natasha Lytess and Paula Strasberg.

  No, Del concluded, Marilyn wouldn’t want her hard work hidden. Knowing her, if she had invested the time writing for the public, she would have intended to share it.

  To this day, fascination and speculation continued to swirl around the actress. And now she had given her friends and fans the opportunity to see another side of her.

  Unable to resist the temptation, Del had decided to read the first pages of her screenplay before going to bed. Within a few minutes, he couldn’t stop. He’d torn through the pages. True to her word, what she had written would lure the public into the most intimate regions—and the darkest psychological corners—of her mind and heart.

  And they would discover that the Marilyn Monroe they thought they knew was, in fact, a mere fraction of who she was.

  Indeed, even Del had found some of the content disturbing. He could understand why she feared showing it to anyone while she was alive. Del often wondered if the time she had spent in the psychological ward, locked away against her will, had damaged her rather than healed her. He had doubted her suspicions that she might have wound up imprisoned there again—this time permanently—if they had read her words and discovered this side of her personality. After reading her words, however, Del couldn’t say those suspicions weren’t warranted.

  When it came to this endeavor, the woman was ahead of her time. Even today, it would prove controversial, testing the borders of what mainstream society was willing to accept on film. Yet, wasn’t that what she’d sought during her career, to forge a path for herself that no one else could duplicate?

  Perhaps now she would receive the recognition she deserved, even if it arrived posthumously.

  Del’s eyelids felt raw along their edges. He needed sleep.

  He turned on the lamp beside his bed. Reaching for his phone, he hit speed dial and awaited his agent’s voicemail greeting.

  “Arnie, this is Del. We need to meet tomorrow, probably in the afternoon. I have a couple of errands to run beforehand. This is urgent. Trust me, you’ll want to make room for this.”

  CHAPTER 21

  NORA COULDN’T SHAKE the heaviness.

  News of her Oscar nomination had brought a wave of elation. So why did she feel so despondent this morning?

  She’d gotten minimal sleep last night, and unfortunately, that wasn’t an isolated case. She had fought insomnia for weeks. Though she’d tried sleeping pills on the worst nights, she hesitated at the idea of pumping barbiturates into her body. She wasn’t a fan of laboratory chemicals and had heard horror stories of addiction.

  She’d avoided a pill last night. And so, on top of her glum emotional state, she felt exhausted.<
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  Random chatter surrounded her as other customers waited in line to place their orders. One customer carried away a cheddar-jalapeno bagel, crisp from the toaster oven, the tang of its charred edges enticing her. India.Arie’s “A Beautiful Day” played overhead. Nora wished her heart could take hold of the song.

  Same coffee shop. Having maintained her anonymity for a longer stretch of time, she wanted to believe she’d grown more agile at it. As long as she kept herself hidden, no one recognized her here. Given time, she knew that would change, which would force her to move on, to find another shop where she could bide her time and try to make sense of her life.

  In the meantime, however, she enjoyed this semblance of freedom.

  She’d entered the coffee shop dressed in a baseball cap, sunglasses and a track suit, as though she had come from a gym. She hoped, by dressing like she didn’t care about her appearance, it would decrease the likelihood that anyone would recognize her or even give her a second glance.

  Nora placed her order, then wandered away from the counter. The shop possessed the air of a gourmet gift shop, somewhere between urban and rural, and smelled like cinnamon sticks. The tables and chairs were the color of walnuts, and interspersed among them sat quaint shelves of products for sale—bags of coffee beans, boxes of loose-leaf tea, mugs and thermoses imprinted with a corporate logo and a clever quip. The cacophony of voices, a coffee grinder, and drink equipment ushered liveliness into an otherwise laid-back environment.

  She wandered to one corner and browsed a community bulletin board while she awaited her drink. She scanned the advertised events and services: a dentist and chiropractor, an upcoming trivia night to benefit a local animal shelter, piano lessons.