Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  She’d been a virgin, sure enough. Bucky was proud of that too.

  How well they fitted together! “It’s like we invented it, Baby.”

  Strange to think that, at sixteen, Norma Jeane had succeeded where Gladys had failed. To find a good, loving husband, to be married, a Mrs. That was what had made Gladys sick, Norma Jeane knew—not having a husband, and not being loved in the only way that mattered.

  The more she thought about it, the more Norma Jeane concluded that Gladys possibly hadn’t been married at all, ever. “Baker” and “Mortensen” might be pure inventions, to spare shame.

  Even Grandma Della had been fooled. Possibly.

  Strange, too, to remember that morning Gladys drove them to Wilshire Boulevard to witness the funeral of the great Hollywood producer. Waiting then, heartbeat by heartbeat, for Daddy to claim her. Yet it would be years.

  “Daddy? Do you love me?”

  “Baby, I’m crazy about you. Just look.”

  Norma Jeane had sent an invitation to Gladys inviting her to the wedding. Scared and excited and anxious and yearning to see the woman who was Mother. Yet terrified that Mother would appear.

  Who on earth is that, that madwoman, oh, look! They would stare and stare.

  Of course, Gladys hadn’t come to Norma Jeane’s wedding. Nor sent any greeting, or good wish.

  “Why should I care? I don’t.”

  As she’d told Elsie Pirig, it was more than enough to have a mother-in-law. No need of a mother. Mrs. Glazer. Bess Glazer. Urging Norma Jeane even before the wedding please to call her “Mother,” except the word stuck in Norma Jeane’s throat.

  Sometimes she was able to call the older woman “Mother Glazer” in a soft sliding voice you almost couldn’t hear. What a kind woman she was, a true Christian woman. Yet you couldn’t blame her for sharply scrutinizing her new daughter-in-law. Please don’t hate me for marrying your son. Please help me to be his wife.

  She would succeed where Gladys had failed. This she vowed.

  Loving it when Bucky made lusty vigorous love to her, calling her his sweetie, his honey, his baby, Baby-Doll, groaning and shivering and whinnying like a horse—“You’re my little horsey, Baby! Giddy-ap!”—the bed-springs squeaking like mice being killed. And Bucky in her arms afterward, his chest heaving, body slick with oily oozy sweat she loved to smell, Bucky Glazer like an avalanche fallen upon her, pinning her to the bed. A man loves me. I am a man’s wife. Never to be alone again.

  Already she’d forgotten her prewedding fears. How silly she’d been, a child.

  Now she was envied by unmarried women, unengaged girls. You could see it in their eyes. What a thrill! Magic rings on the third finger of her left hand. Glazer “heirlooms” they were called. The wedding band was a slightly dull gold worn smooth by time. From a dead woman’s finger. The engagement ring had a tiny diamond. But these were magic rings that drew Norma Jeane’s eye in mirrors and in reflecting surfaces, seeing them as others saw them. Rings! A married woman. A girl who is loved.

  She was sweet, pretty Janet Gaynor in State Fair, Small Town Girl, Sunny Side Up. She was a young June Haver, a young Greer Garson. A sister to Deanna Durbin and to Shirley Temple. Almost overnight she’d lost interest in the sexy glamorous stars, Crawford, Dietrich, the memory of Harlow with her platinum-blond hair, so blatantly bleached, phony. For what is glamour but phony. Hollywood phony. And Mae West—a joke! A female impersonator.

  Of course, these women were doing what they could to sell themselves. They were what men wanted. Most men. Not very different from prostitutes. But their price was higher, they had “careers.”

  Never will I need to sell myself! Not so long as I am loved.

  Riding the Mission Hills trolley, Norma Jeane often saw with a thrill of pleasure how strangers’ eyes, both women’s and men’s, dropped to her hand, her rings. Their eyes immediately identifying her as a married woman, and so young! Never would she remove her heirloom rings.

  It would be death, she knew, to remove her heirloom rings.

  “Like I’ve entered heaven. And I’m not even dead.”

  Except there began a nightmare of Norma Jeane’s, new to her since her wedding: a faceless person (man? woman?) crouched over her as she lay in bed paralyzed and unable to escape and this person wanted the rings off her finger and Norma Jeane refused to give them up and the person seized her hand and began sawing at her finger with a knife so real Norma Jeane couldn’t believe she wasn’t bleeding, waking groaning and thrashing, and if Bucky happened to be asleep beside her, nights he wasn’t working the graveyard shift, he’d wake groggily to comfort her, to hug and rock her in his strong arms. “Now, Baby-Doll. Only a bad dream. Big Daddy’s got you safe and sound, OK?”

  But it wasn’t always OK, not immediately. Sometimes Norma Jeane was too frightened to sleep for the remainder of the night.

  Bucky tried to be sympathetic, and he was flattered how his young wife desperately needed him, but he was uneasy too. He’d been a kid for so long himself. He was only twenty-one! And Norma Jeane was unpredictable, he was beginning to discover. When they’d dated she’d been sunny, sunny, sunny, and now, these rocky nights, he was seeing another side of her. Like her “cramps” as she shamefacedly called her menstrual period, an alarming revelation to Bucky, from whom such female secrets had been mostly kept, for his own good; here was Norma Jeane not only bleeding (like a stuck pig, Bucky couldn’t help but think) from her vagina, which was exactly the place for lovemaking, and she was virtually knocked out and useless for two or even three days, lying with a heating pad on her belly, often a cold compress on her forehead (she had “migraine” too), but to make matters worse she’d refuse medication, even aspirin, which Bucky’s mother recommended, so he’d get annoyed with her—“Christian Science crap nobody takes seriously.” But he didn’t want to argue with her, that only made things worse. So he tried to be sympathetic, he sure tried, he was a married man and (as his older, married brother said dryly) he’d better get used to it, including the smell. But the nightmares! Bucky was exhausted and needed his sleep—he could sleep for ten hours straight if undisturbed—and here was Norma Jeane waking him, scaring the hell out of him, in an actual panic, her little nightie soaked in sweat. He wasn’t used to sleeping with anyone. Not all night. And night after night. Someone as unpredictable as Norma Jeane. It was like there were two of her, like twins, and the night twin took over sometimes, no matter how loving the day twin was and how crazy he was about her. He’d hold her and feel her wild heartbeat. Like a frightened bird in his embrace, a hummingbird. Yet, God, that girl could hug hard. A panicked girl is strong as a guy, almost. Before he was fully awake Bucky would be thinking somehow he was back in high school, on the mat, wrestling with an opponent determined to crack his ribs.

  “Daddy, you won’t ever leave me, will you?” Norma Jeane begged, and Bucky said sleepily, “Uh-uh,” and Norma Jeane said, “Promise you won’t, Daddy?” and Bucky said, “Sure, Baby, OK,” and still Norma Jeane persisted, and Bucky said, “Baby, why’d I leave you? Didn’t I just marry you?” There was something wrong in this answer but neither could quite gauge what it was. Norma Jeane curled closer into Bucky, pressing her hot teary face against his neck, smelling of damp hair and talcum and armpits, and what he guessed was animal panic, whispering, “But do you promise, Daddy?” and Bucky muttered yes, he promised, could they please go back to sleep now? and Norma Jeane suddenly giggled—“Cross your heart and hope to die?”—making a cross with her forefinger over Bucky’s big thumpy heart, tickling the wiry chest hairs over his heart, and suddenly Bucky was aroused, Big Thing was aroused, and Bucky grabbed at Norma Jeane’s fingers and pretended to be eating them, and Norma Jeane kicked and squealed with laughter, feverish, squirming, “No! Daddy, no!” Bucky pinned her to the mattress, climbed onto her slender body, nuzzling and nipping at her breasts, her breasts he was crazy about, tonguing her, growling, “Daddy, yes. Daddy’s gonna do what Daddy wants to do with his Baby-Doll ’cause Baby-
Doll belongs to him. And this belongs to Daddy, and this—and this.”

  And I was safe then when he was inside me.

  Wanting it never never to end.

  3

  She meant to be perfect. He deserved nothing less.

  Packing Bucky’s lunches. Big double sandwiches, Bucky’s favorites. Baloney, cheese, and mustard on thick white bread. Deviled ham. Leftover meat slices with ketchup. A Valencia orange, the sweetest kind. Sweet dessert like cherry cobbler or applesauce gingerbread. With rationing getting worse, Norma Jeane saved her meat portions from supper for Bucky’s lunches. He never seemed to take note, but Norma Jeane knew he appreciated it. Bucky was a big husky boy, still growing, with an appetite, Norma Jeane teased him, like a horse—“a really hungry horse.” There was something about the ritual of rising early to pack Bucky’s lunches for him that filled her with emotion, brought tears to her eyes. She slipped into his lunch box love notes adorned with garlands of red-inked hearts.

  When you read this, Bucky darling, I will be thinking of YOU & how I ADORE YOU.

  And,

  When you read this, Big Daddy, think of Baby-Doll & the Red-hot LOVING she’s going to give you when you get HOME!

  These notes, Bucky couldn’t resist showing the other guys on his shift at Lockheed. There was a handsome swaggering fellow, a would-be actor a few years older than Buddy, he hoped to impress—Bob Mitchum. But Bucky wasn’t so sure about Norma Jeane’s peculiar little poems:

  When our hearts melt in love

  even the angels above

  are envious of us.

  Was it poetry if it didn’t rhyme? If it didn’t rhyme right? These love poems Bucky folded up carefully and kept to himself. (In fact, he lost the poems and often hurt Norma Jeane’s feelings by forgetting to comment on them.) There was that strange, dreamy, schoolgirl side to Norma Jeane that Bucky distrusted. Why wasn’t it enough for her to be pretty and straightforward like other good-looking girls; why did she try to be “deep” too? It was related in some way, Bucky believed, to her nightmares and “female problems.” He loved her for being special but half resented it too. As if Norma Jeane was only pretending to be the girl he knew. That way she had of speaking out unexpectedly and that squeaky, unsettling little laugh of hers and what you could only call morbid curiosity—asking about his work as Mr. Eeley’s assistant at the funeral home, for instance.

  The Glazers really liked Norma Jeane, though, and that meant a lot to Bucky. He’d married the girl to please his mom, sort of. Well, no: he was crazy about her too. He was! The way other guys turned to stare at her in the street, he’d have been crazy not to fall for her. And what a good wife she was, that first year and more. The honeymoon just went on and on. Norma Jeane hand-printed menus for the upcoming week on index cards, for Bucky’s approval. She took down Mrs. Glazer’s recommended recipes and eagerly clipped new ones out of Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, and the other women’s magazines Mrs. Glazer passed along to her. Even when she had a headache after a day of housework and laundry, Norma Jeane gazed adoringly upon her handsome young husband as he hungrily ate the meal she’d prepared for him. You don’t really need God so much if you have a husband. They were like prayers: meat loaf with large chunks of raw red onion, chopped green peppers, and bread crumbs and a thick ketchup topping that baked to a crust in the oven. Beef stew (except the beef was likely to be fatty and gristly these days) with potatoes and other vegetables (except she had to be careful with vegetables, Bucky didn’t like them) and dark gravy (“enrichened” with flour) on Mother Glazer’s corn-bread biscuits. Deep-fried breaded chicken with mashed potatoes. Fried frankfurters on buns, dripping with mustard. Of course Bucky loved hamburgers and cheeseburgers when Norma Jeane could get the meat, served with large portions of french fries and lots and lots of ketchup. (Mother Glazer had warned Norma Jeane, if she didn’t put enough ketchup on Bucky’s food there was the danger he’d get impatient, take up the bottle, give it a wallop, and out would rush half the contents!)

  There were casseroles that weren’t Bucky’s favorites, but if he was hungry—and Bucky was always hungry—he’d eat them with almost as much appetite as his favorite foods: tuna, cheese and macaroni, creamed salmon with canned corn on toast, chicken parts in cream sauce with potatoes, onions, and carrots. Corn pudding, tapioca pudding, chocolate pudding. Fruit Jell-O with marshmallows. Cakes, cookies, pies. Ice cream. If only there wasn’t the war, and rationing! Meat, butter, and sugar were becoming so scarce. Bucky knew it wasn’t Norma Jeane’s fault but in a childlike way he seemed to blame her: men blamed women for meals that weren’t fully satisfying as they blamed women for sex that wasn’t fully satisfying; that’s the way the world is and Norma Jeane Glazer, a bride of less than a year, knew this fact by instinct. But when Bucky liked a meal, he exuded enthusiasm and it was thrilling to her to watch him eat, as a long time ago (it seemed: in fact, not many months ago) she’d been thrilled watching her high school teacher Mr. Haring read her poems, aloud or even silently. There sat Bucky at the kitchen table, head slightly lowered toward his plate as he chewed, a faint glisten on his broad strong-boned face. If he’d come from work he would have washed his face, forearms, and hands and combed his hair damply back from his forehead. He would have changed out of his sweaty clothes, wearing a fresh T-shirt and chino trousers, or sometimes just boxer shorts. How exotic Bucky Glazer seemed to Norma Jeane, in his very maleness. His head that seemed, in certain facets of light, like a modeled clay head, his sturdy square chin, his grinding jaws, his boyish mouth and fair, frank hazel eyes—more beautiful, Norma Jeane swooningly thought, than any man’s eyes she’d ever seen up close, outside the movies. Though one day Bucky Glazer would say of her, his first wife, Poor Norma Jeane tried but she couldn’t cook worth a damn, those casseroles of hers clogged with cheese and carrots and she’d drench everything with ketchup and mustard. He would say frankly We didn’t love each other; we were too damned young to be married. Especially her.

  Seconds he’d have, of everything. Of his favorite foods he’d have thirds.

  “Honey, this is de-li-cious. You’ve done it again.”

  Lifting her then in his bulgy-muscled arms like Popeye’s before she had time even to set the dishes in the sink to soak and she squealed in panicked anticipation, as if for a split second she’d forgotten who this two-hundred-pound lusty boy was, crowing, “Gotcha, Baby!” He’d carry her into the bedroom, his footsteps so heavy the floorboards trembled—surely neighbors on all sides would feel it, certainly Harriet and her apartment mates next door would know what the newlyweds were up to—her arms tight around his neck like a drowning girl’s so Bucky’s breath came quick and audible as a stallion’s; and he laughed, she had a stranglehold on him practically, a choke hold like a wrestler, and she kicked and thrashed as with a shout of triumph he pinned her shoulders to the bed, tugging open her housedress or peeling up her sweater, nuzzling her bare, beautiful breasts, soft bouncy breasts with pinkish-brown nipples like jelly beans, and her rounded little tummy covered in a fine pale fuzz and always so warm, and the burnished chestnut hairs, so curly, damp, and ticklish at the base of her belly, a surprising bush for a girl of her age. “Oh, Baby-Doll. Ohhhh.” Much of the time Bucky was so excited he came on Norma Jeane’s thighs, it was a way, too, of birth control if he didn’t trust himself to roll on a condom in time, for even in his passion Bucky Glazer was shrewdly alert to not wanting to start a baby. But like a stallion he’d become hard again within minutes, blood rushing into Big Thing as if a hot-water faucet had been turned on. He’d taught his teenage bride how to make love and she’d been a docile and then an eager pupil, and sometimes, Bucky had to admit, her passion scared him a little, just a little wanting so much from me, from it: love. They kissed, cuddled, tickled, poked their tongues into each other’s ears. Clutched and grabbed at each other. If Norma Jeane tried to escape by scrambling off the bed, Bucky lunged at her and tackled her with a whoop—“Gotcha again, Baby!” He wrestled h
er back onto the bed into the churned-up bedclothes, shouting, laughing, panting, and moaning, and Norma Jeane, too, moaned and wept, yes, and the hell with nosy neighbors next door or upstairs or someone passing on the walk outside the screened window, beyond the carelessly drawn blind. They were married, weren’t they? In a church of God? They loved each other, didn’t they? Had every right to make love when and however often they wanted, didn’t they? Damn right!

  She was a sweet kid but so emotional. Wanting love all the time. She was immature and unreliable and I guess so was I; we were too young. If she’d been a better cook and not so emotional, it might’ve worked out.

  4

  To My Husband

  My love for you is deep—

  deeper than the sea.

  Without you, my darling,

  I would cease to be.

  Already in the winter of ’42–’43, the war going badly in Europe and the Pacific, Bucky Glazer was restless, talking of enlisting in the navy, or the marines, or the merchant marine. “God made the U.S. number one for a reason. We got to uphold that responsibility.”

  Norma Jeane stared at him with a bright, blank smile.

  Soon draft boards would be calling up “childless” married men. It only made sense to enlist before he got drafted, didn’t it? He was working forty hours a week at Lockheed plus one or two mornings at McDougal’s Funeral Home assisting Mr. Eeley. (“But it’s weird: people aren’t dying so much right now. So many men are gone and old folks want to hang on to see how the war turns out. And without much gas, you can’t drive fast enough to crash.”) His embalming experience would be useful in the armed services. Also his high school football, wrestling, track: Bucky Glazer had been a star athlete, he could help train weaker recruits. Also he had an aptitude for math, at least Mission Hills High School math, and radio repair, and maps. Every evening he listened to the war news and thoughtfully read the L.A. Times. He took Norma Jeane to the movies every week, mostly to see The March of Time. On the walls of their apartment he’d taped war maps of Europe and the Pacific and inserted colored pins in areas where men he knew were stationed—relatives, friends. He never talked about anyone reported dead or missing or taken prisoner, but Norma Jeane knew he was thinking plenty.