Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  It was like “lightning struck” Grandma, Norma Jeane would say.

  But the lightning had missed Norma Jeane; and for this, Gladys resolved to be grateful.

  Supposing it to be a sign: as it was a sign that both she and Norma Jeane had been born Geminis, in the month of June, while Della with whom it was impossible to get along had been born under the sign of Taurus, at the farthest distance from the Gemini. Opposites attract, opposites repel.

  Her other daughters had been born under very different signs. It was a relief to Gladys that, a thousand miles away in Kentucky, they’d passed beyond the sphere of their sick mother’s influence; they belonged now wholly to their father. They would be spared!

  Of course, Gladys brought Norma Jeane home with her. She wasn’t about to give up her own flesh and blood to foster care or to the L.A. County Orphanage—as Della was always darkly hinting would be the little girl’s fate except for her. Almost, Gladys would have liked to believe in the Christian heaven, and Della looking down at her and Norma Jeane in the bungalow on Highland Avenue, disgruntled that her prediction hadn’t come true. You see? I’m not a bad mother. I’ve been weak. I’ve been sick. Men have misused me. But now I’m well. I’m strong!

  Still, the first week with Norma Jeane was a nightmare. Such cramped quarters, at the rear of the musty-smelling bungalow! Trying to sleep in the same sagging bed. Trying to sleep at all. It infuriated Gladys that her own daughter should seem to be frightened of her. Should flinch from her and cringe like a kicked dog. It isn’t my fault your precious grandma died. I didn’t kill her! She couldn’t bear the child’s weeping and her runny nose and the way, like a movie waif, she clutched at her doll, now worn and soiled. “That thing! You’ve still got that thing! I forbid you to talk to it! That’s the first step to—” Gladys paused, trembling, not wanting to give a name to her fear. (Why, Gladys wondered, did she hate the doll so much? It had been her birthday present to Norma Jeane, after all. Was she jealous of the attention Norma Jeane paid it? The golden-haired doll with the blank blue eyes and frozen smile was Norma Jeane—was that it? Gladys had given her daughter the doll almost as a joke; a man friend of hers had given it to her saying he’d picked it up somewhere, though probably, knowing what she knew of that hophead, he’d lifted it out of a car or off a porch, strolled off with some little girl’s beloved doll and broke her heart, vicious as Peter Lorre in M!) But she couldn’t take the damned thing away from Norma Jeane. At least not yet.

  5

  They were living together bravely, mother and daughter. At the time of the Santa Ana winds, the smothering smoke-tinctured air, and the fires of Hell of the autumn of 1934.

  They were living together in three rented rooms of a bungalow-boardinghouse at 828 Highland Avenue, Hollywood—“A five-minute walk to the Hollywood Bowl,” as Gladys frequently described it. Though in fact they never walked to the Hollywood Bowl.

  The mother was thirty-four years old and the daughter was eight.

  There was a subtle distortion here, as in a fun-house mirror that’s almost normal so you trust it, and you shouldn’t. That Gladys was thirty-four years old!—and her life hadn’t yet begun. She’d had three babies and they’d been taken from her and in a sense erased, and now this eight-year-old with the mournful eyes, the young-old soul, a reproach to her she couldn’t bear yet must bear, for We are all we have of each other as Gladys told the child repeatedly as long as I am strong enough to hold it together.

  The fire season was not unexpected. Fit punishments are never unexpected.

  Yet long before the Los Angeles fires of 1934 there was menace in the air of southern California. You didn’t require winds blowing off the Mojave Desert to know that chaos would soon be raging out of control. You could see it in the baffled, corroded faces of vagrants (as they were called) on the streets. You could see it in certain demonic cloud formations at sunset above the Pacific. You could sense it in the cryptic veiled hints, suppressed smiles, and muffled laughter of certain persons at The Studio you’d once trusted. Better not to listen to radio news. Better not to even glance at the news sections of any paper, even the Los Angeles Times, which was frequently left lying about the bungalow (deliberately? to provoke the more sensitive tenants, like Gladys?) for you would not want to know the alarming statistics pertaining to American unemployment, evicted and homeless families across the country, or the suicides of bankrupts and of World War I veterans who were disabled and without jobs and “hope.” You would not want to read about news in Europe. In Germany.

  This next war, we’ll be fighting right here. No escape this time.

  Gladys shut her eyes, in pain. Swift as the first stroke of a migraine. This conviction had been uttered in a voice not her own, a male radio voice of authority.

  For such reasons Gladys brought Norma Jeane to the bungalow on Highland Avenue to live with her. Though she still worked long hours at The Studio and was in perpetual terror that she would be laid off (throughout Hollywood, studio employees were being laid off or permanently dismissed), and there were days when she could barely force herself to crawl out of bed, so heavy the weight of the world was upon her soul. She was determined to be a “good mother” to the child in the short time remaining. For if there wasn’t a war launched from Europe or from the Pacific, there might well be a war launched from the sky: H. G. Wells had prophesied such a horror in The War of the Worlds, which for some reason Gladys had nearly committed to heart, like parts of The Time Machine. (It was her vague belief that Norma Jeane’s father had given her an omnibus containing these and other novellas by Wells along with some volumes of poetry, but in fact these were given her “for her edification” by a Studio employee who’d been a friend of Norma Jeane’s father, himself a Studio employee for a brief period of time in the mid-1920s.) A Martian invasion: why not? When she was in one of her excitable moods, Gladys believed in astrological signs and in the powerful influence of the stars and other planets on humankind. It made sense that there were other beings in the universe and that these, in the image of their Maker, harbored a cruel predatory interest in humankind. Such an invasion would fit in with the Book of Revelation, in Gladys’s opinion the only book of the Bible that convinced, in southern California. Instead of wrathful angels with flaming swords, why not ugly fungoid Martians wielding beams of invisible heat that “flashed into flame” when striking their human targets?

  But did Gladys really believe in Martians? In a possible invasion from the sky?

  “This is the twentieth century. Times have changed since the reign of Yah-weh, and so have cataclysms.”

  No one knew whether Gladys was being playful and provocative or deadly serious. Making such pronouncements in her sexy Harlow voice, the back of her hand on her lean hip. Her glittering stare was level and unflinching. Her lips looked swollen, moistly red. Norma Jeane saw uneasily that other adults, especially men, were fascinated by her mother, the way you’d be fascinated by someone leaning too far out of a high window or bringing her hair too close to a candle flame. Even with the streak of gray-white hair lifting from her forehead (which, out of “contempt,” Gladys refused to dye), and the bruised, crepy shadows beneath her eyes, and the fevered restlessness of her body. In the bungalow foyer, on the front walk, and in the street, wherever Gladys found someone to listen, Gladys did scenes. If you knew movies, you knew that Gladys was doing scenes. For even to do a scene that made no clear sense was to capture attention, and this helped to calm the mind. It was exciting, too, that much of the attention Gladys drew was erotic.

  Erotic: meaning you’re “desired.”

  For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness.

  So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.

  Norma Jeane, a shy child, often an invisible child, liked it that other adults, especially men, stared with such interest at this woman who was her mother. If Gladys’s nervous laughter and incessantly gesturing hands hadn’t driven them away after this initial interest she might have found anoth
er man to love her. She might have found a man to marry her. We might have been saved! Norma Jeane didn’t like it that, after one of these exhilarating public scenes, when Gladys was back home she might swallow down a handful of pills and fall onto the brass bed to lie shuddering and insensible, not even sleeping, eyes clouded over as if with mucus, for hours. If Norma Jeane tried to loosen her clothing, Gladys might curse and slap at her. If Norma Jeane tried to tug off her tight-fitting pumps, Gladys might kick her. “No! Don’t touch! I could give you leprosy! Leave me alone.”

  If she’d tried harder with those men. Maybe. It might’ve worked!

  6

  Wherever you are, I’m there. Even before you get to the place where you are going I’m already there, waiting.

  I am in your thoughts, Norma Jeane. Always.

  Such good memories! She knew herself privileged.

  She was the only child at Highland Elementary to have “pocket change”—in a little strawberry-red satin change purse—to buy her own lunch at a corner grocery. Fruit pies, orange soda pop. Sometimes a packet of peanut-butter crackers. So delicious! Her mouth watered to recall such treats, years later. Some days after school, even in winter when dusk came early, Norma Jeane was allowed to walk by herself two and a half miles to Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, where, for only ten cents, she could see a double feature.

  The Fair Princess and the Dark Prince! Like Gladys, they were always waiting to console.

  “These ‘movie days.’ Don’t tell anyone.” Gladys warned Norma Jeane not to confide in anyone; you couldn’t trust anyone, even friends. They might misunderstand and judge Gladys harshly. But Gladys often had to work late. There were tasks in “developing” that only Gladys Mortensen could do, her supervisor depended upon her; without Gladys, such box-office hits as Dixie Lee’s Happy Days and Mary Pickford’s Kiki might have been disasters. Anyway, Gladys insisted it was safe at Grauman’s Egyptian. “Just sit near the back, on the aisle. Look straight forward at the screen. Complain to the usher if anyone bothers you. And don’t talk to strangers.”

  Returning home at dusk after the double feature, disoriented as if still in the rapturous movie dream, Norma Jeane followed her mother’s directive to walk “quickly, as if you know where you’re going, near the curb and under the streetlights. Don’t make eye contact with anyone and don’t accept rides from strangers, ever.”

  And not a thing ever happened to me. That I recall.

  Because she was always with me. And he was, too.

  The Dark Prince. If the man was anywhere, he was in the movie dream. Your heart quickened approaching the cathedral-like Egyptian Theatre. Your first glimpse of him would be in the posters outside, handsome glossy photos behind glass like works of art to be stared at. Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Charles Boyer, Paul Muni, Fredric March, Lew Ayres, Clark Gable. Inside he would be gigantic on the screen, yet intimate, so close you could reach out your hand and touch him—almost! Speaking to others, embracing and kissing beautiful women, still he was defining himself to you. And these women, too—they were close enough to be touched, they were visions of yourself as in a fairy-tale mirror, Magic Friends in other bodies, with faces that were somehow, mysteriously, your own. Or would one day be your own. Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Jean Harlow, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Constance Bennett, Joan Blondell, Claudette Colbert, Gloria Swanson. Like dreams dreamt in confusing succession their stories melded together. There were bright brassy musicals, there were somber dramas, there were “screwball” comedies, there were sagas of adventure, war, ancient times—dream visions in which the same powerful faces appeared and reappeared. In different guises and costumes, inhabiting different fates. There he was! The Dark Prince.

  And his Princess.

  Wherever you are, I’m there. But this was not always true at school.

  The bungalow-boardinghouse at 828 Highland Avenue was all adults except for curly-haired little Norma Jeane, who was a favorite among the tenants. (“Hardly an atmosphere for children, with such characters traipsing in and out,” a woman tenant remarked to Gladys. “What d’you mean, ‘characters’?” Gladys asked, annoyed. “We all work for The Studio.” “That’s what I mean,” the woman said, laughing suggestively. “‘We all work for The Studio.’”) But school was children.

  I was afraid of them! The strong-willed ones, you had to win over fast. You didn’t get a second chance. Without brothers or sisters you were alone. I was strange to them. I wanted them to like me too much, I guess. They called me Pop Eyes and Big Head, I never knew why.

  Gladys told her friends she was “obsessed” with her daughter’s “poor public education,” but she visited Highland Elementary only once in the eleven months Norma Jeane was a student there and then only because she’d been summoned.

  The Dark Prince had no presence there at all.

  Even in daydreams, even with her eyes shut hard, Norma Jeane could not imagine him. He would be waiting for her in the movie dream; this was her secret happiness.

  7

  “I have plans for you, Norma Jeane. For us.”

  A white Steinway spinet piano that was so beautiful Norma Jeane stared at it in astonishment, touched its polished surface with wondering fingers: oh, was this for her? “You’ll take piano lessons. As I’d wanted to.” The sitting room in Gladys’s three-room flat was small and already crowded with furniture but space was made for this piano, “formerly owned by Fredric March,” as Gladys frequently boasted.

  The distinguished Mr. March, who’d made his name in silent films, was under contract to The Studio. He’d “befriended” Gladys in the studio cafeteria one day; he’d sold her the piano at a “considerably reduced price” as a favor to her, knowing she hadn’t much money; or, in another version of Gladys’s account of how she’d come to acquire such a special piano, Mr. March had simply given it to her “as a token of his esteem.” (Gladys took Norma Jeane to see Fredric March in I Love You Truly, with Carole Lombard, at Grauman’s Egyptian; in all, mother and daughter saw this film three times. “Your father would be jealous if he knew,” Gladys remarked mysteriously.) Since Gladys couldn’t afford a professional piano teacher for Norma Jeane just yet, she arranged for her to take casual lessons from another tenant in the bungalow, an Englishman named Pearce who was a stand-in for several leading men, including Charles Boyer and Clark Gable. He was of medium height, handsome, with a thin mustache. Yet he exuded no warmth—no “presence.” Norma Jeane tried to please him by practicing her lessons dutifully; she loved playing the “magic piano” when she was alone, but Mr. Pearce’s sighs and grimaces made her self-conscious. She quickly acquired the bad habit of compulsively repeating notes. “My dear, you must not stammer the keys,” Mr. Pearce said in his clipped, ironic accent. “It’s unfortunate enough you stammer the English language.” Gladys, who’d managed to “pick up” a bit of piano, tried to teach Norma Jeane what she knew, but their sessions at the spinet were even more of a strain than those with Mr. Pearce. Gladys cried, exasperated, “Don’t you hear when you strike a wrong note? A sharp, a flat? Are you tone-deaf? Or just deaf?”

  Still, Norma Jeane’s piano lessons continued sporadically. And she had occasional voice lessons with a woman friend of Gladys’s, also a tenant in the bungalow, who worked in the music department at The Studio. Miss Flynn told Gladys, “Your little girl has a sweet, sincere personality. She tries very hard. Harder than some of the young singers we have under contract! But right now”—Jess Flynn spoke softly, so that Norma Jeane might not hear—“she really has no voice at all.”

  Gladys said, “She will.”

  It was what we did together instead of church. Our worship.

  On Sundays when Gladys had money to buy gas or a man friend to supply it, she drove with Norma Jeane to see the homes of the “stars.” In Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Los Feliz, and the Hollywood Hills. Through the spring and summer of 1934 and into the drought-stricken autumn. Gladys’s voice was a mezzo-sopran
o’s, swelling with pride. The palatial home of Douglas Fairbanks. The palatial home of Mary Pickford. The palatial home of Pola Negri. The palatial homes of Tom Mix and Theda Bara—“Bara married a multimillionaire businessman and retired. Smart.” Norma Jeane stared. What enormous houses! They were truly like palaces or castles in the illustrated fairy-tale books she’d seen. Never so happy, mother and daughter, as at these magical times cruising the glittering streets. Norma Jeane was in no danger of stammering and annoying her mother because Gladys did all the talking. “The home of Barbara La Marr, ‘The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful.’ (Just a joke, sweetie. You can’t be too beautiful, like you can’t be too rich.) The home of W. C. Fields. There, the former home of Greta Garbo—beautiful, but smaller than you’d expect. And there, through that gate, the Spanish-style mansion of the incomparable Gloria Swanson. And there, the home of Norma Talmadge, ‘our’ Norma.” Gladys parked the car so she and the child could stare at the elegant stone mansion in which Norma Talmadge had lived with her film-producer husband in Los Feliz. Eight magnificent Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lions in granite guarded the entrance! Norma Jeane stared and stared. And the grass so green and lush. If it was true that Los Angeles was a city of sand, you couldn’t have guessed this in Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Los Feliz, or the Hollywood Hills. Rain hadn’t fallen in weeks and everywhere else grass was burnt out, dying or dead, but in these storybook places the lawns were uniformly green. Crimson and purple bougainvilleas were in continuous bloom. There were exquisitely shaped trees Norma Jeane saw nowhere else—Italian cypress, Gladys called them. Not stunted, shabby palm trees of the kind that grew everywhere, but court palm trees taller than the peaks of the tallest houses. “The former home of Buster Keaton. Over there, Helen Chandler. Behind those gates, Mabel Normand. And Harold Lloyd. John Barrymore. Joan Crawford. And Jean Harlow—‘our’ Jean.” Norma Jeane liked it that Jean Harlow, like Norma Talmadge, lived in a palace surrounded by green.