Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Norma Jeane stared at Shinn. Had Cass lied to her? Or had she misunderstood? She said, faltering, “It comes to the same thing, then. His father disinherited and disowned him. He’s alone.”

  Shinn snorted in derision. “No more alone than the rest of us.”

  “He’s been c-cursed by his father and it’s a double curse because his father is Charlie Chaplin. Why can’t you be sympathetic, Mr. Shinn?”

  “I am! I’m brimming with sympathy. Who gives more to charity? The crippled-kids fund, the Red Cross? The Hollywood Ten defense? But I’m not sympathetic with Cass Chaplin.” Shinn tried to speak humorously, but his enlarged nose with its deep hairy nostrils quivered with rage. “I’ve told you, darlin’, I don’t want you to be seen in public with him.”

  “And in private?”

  “In private, take precautions. Two of him is already more than enough.”

  Norma Jeane had to think for a moment before she understood.

  “Mr. Shinn, that’s cruel. Cruel and crude.”

  “That’s I. E., eh? Cruel and crude.”

  Norma Jeane’s eyes filled with tears. She was close to slapping Shinn. Yet she wanted to clutch at his hands and beg his forgiveness, for what would she do without him? No, she wanted to laugh in his face. His creased putty face. His hurt, furious eyes.

  I love him, not you. I could never love you. Force me to choose between the two of you and you’ll regret it.

  Norma Jeane was trembling, as indignant as I. E. Shinn and beginning to be as forceful in her speech. Shinn relented. “Hey, look, darlin’. I mean only to be helpful. Practical. You know me: I. E. I’m thinking only of you, dear. Of your career and well-being.”

  “You’re thinking of ‘Marilyn.’ Her career.”

  “Well, yes. ‘Marilyn’ is mine, my invention. Her career and well-being I care about, yes.”

  Norma Jeane murmured something Shinn couldn’t hear. He asked her to repeat it and she said, sniffing, “‘M-marilyn’ is only a career. She hasn’t any ‘well-being.’”

  Shinn laughed, a startled explosive laugh. He’d risen from his swivel chair behind his desk and was pacing on the carpet, flexing his stubby fingers. Behind him a plate-glass window opened out onto hazy sunshine and a confusion of traffic on Sunset Boulevard. Norma Jeane, who’d been sitting in one of Shinn’s notoriously low chairs, rose to her feet as well, though shakily. She’d come to Shinn’s office direct from a dance class, and her calves and thighs ached as if they’d been pummeled with hammers. She whispered, “He knows I’m not ‘Marilyn.’ He calls me Norma. He’s the only one who understands me.”

  “I understand you.”

  Norma Jeane stared at the carpet, biting a thumbnail.

  “I invented you, I understand you. I’m the one who has your best interests at heart, believe me.”

  “You d-didn’t invent me. I did it myself.”

  Shinn laughed. “Don’t get metaphysical, eh? You’re sounding like your ex-friend Otto Öse. And he’s in trouble, y’know ... on the new list drawn up by the Subversive Activities Control Board. So stay away from him.”

  Norma Jeane said, “I have n-nothing to do with Otto Öse. Not any longer. What is it, this Subversive Control Board?”

  Shinn pressed a warning forefinger against his lips. It was a gesture he and others in Hollywood made frequently, both in private and in public. The gesture was meant to be broadly comical with a wriggling of eyebrows like Groucho, but of course it wasn’t a joke; you saw the frightened eyes. “Never mind, sweetheart. The subject isn’t Öse, and the subject isn’t Chaplin junior. The subject is ‘Marilyn.’ You.”

  Norma Jeane was feeling ill. “But is Otto b-blacklisted too? Why?”

  Shinn shrugged his misshapen shoulders as if to say Who knows? Who cares?

  Norma Jeane cried softly, “Oh, why are people doing this! Informing on each other! Even Sterling Hayden. I heard—naming names to the Committee. And I admired him. All those poor people blacklisted and out of work and the Hollywood Ten in prison! Like this is Nazi Germany, not America. Charlie Chaplin was so brave not to cooperate and to leave the country! I admire him. I think Cass admires him too—but he won’t admit it. And Otto Öse isn’t a Communist, truly! I could be a witness for Otto, I could swear on a Bible. He always said that Communists are deluded. He isn’t a Marxist. I could be a Marxist. If I understand what Marx says. It’s like Christianity, isn’t it? Oh, he was right, Karl Marx—‘Religion is the opiate of the people.’ Like drinking and the movies. And the Communists are for the people, aren’t they? What’s wrong with that?”

  Shinn listened in astonishment to this outburst. He said loudly, “Norma Jeane, enough! More than enough.”

  “But, Mr. Shinn, it’s so unfair!”

  “D’you want to get us both listed? What if this office is wired? What if”—he gestured toward his outer office, where his secretary-receptionist had a desk—“there’re hired spies listening? God damn, you’re not that dumb a blonde, so cease.”

  “But it’s unfair—”

  “So? Life is unfair. You’ve been reading Chekhov, eh? O’Neill? You know about Dachau, Auschwitz, eh? Homo sapiens the species that devours its own kind? Grow up.”

  “Mr. Shinn, I don’t know how. I don’t see g-grown-ups I admire or even understand.” Norma Jeane spoke earnestly, as if this were the true subject of their discussion. She seemed to be pleading with him, wanting to clutch at his hands. “Sometimes I can’t sleep at night I’m so confused. And Cass, he—”

  Shinn said, “‘Marilyn’ doesn’t have to understand or think. Jesus, no. She has only to be. She’s a knockout and she’s got talent and nobody wants tortured metaphysical crap out of that luscious mouth. Trust me on this, sweetheart.”

  Norma Jeane gave a little cry, backing off. As if he’d hit her.

  She would remember later, maybe he had hit her.

  “M-maybe ‘Marilyn’ will die another time,” she said. “Maybe nothing will come of the debut. The critics might hate me or not even notice me and it will be like Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay! again and I’ll be dropped by M-G-M like I was dropped by The Studio and maybe that would be the b-b-best thing for me and for Cass.”

  Norma Jeane fled. Shinn followed close behind her, puffing and panting. Through the outer office, where his secretary-receptionist stared at them, and into the corridor. He shouted after her, twitching his nostrils like an infuriated dog—“You think so, eh? Wait and see!”

  Who’s the blonde? That evening in January 1950. Avoiding her desperate eyes in the mirror as another time she dialed the number of the bungalow on Montezuma Drive and another time the phone rang at the other end with that hollow melancholy sound of a phone ringing in an empty house. Cass was angry with her, she knew. Not jealous (for why should he be jealous of her, he who was the son of the greatest film star of all time?) but angry. Disgusted. He knew Shinn disapproved of him and didn’t want him invited to the dinner at Enrico’s. It was nearly nine o’clock now, and the powder room was beginning to be crowded. Uplifted voices, perfume. Women were looking at her. Cutting their eyes at her. One of them smiled and put out her hand; her beringed fingers hooked around Norma Jeane’s. “You’re ‘Angela,’ dear? A wonderful debut.”

  The woman was a M-G-M executive’s wife, a former minor actress of the thirties.

  Norma Jeane could hardly speak. “Oh! Th-thank you.”

  “What a strange, disturbing film. It isn’t what you expect, is it? I mean—the way it turns out. I’m not sure I understand it completely, do you? So many men killed! But John Huston is a genius!”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You must feel so privileged, working with him?”

  Norma Jeane was still clutching at the woman’s hand. She nodded eagerly, her eyes filling with tears of gratitude.

  Other women kept their distance. Eyeing Norma Jeane’s hair, bust, hips.

  That poor child. They’d dressed her up like a big doll looking so glamorous and sexy and here she was trembling and
hiding in the powder room sweating so you could smell her. I swear, she wouldn’t let go of my hand! She’d have trotted after me like a puppy if I’d let her.

  The screening was over at last. The Asphalt Jungle was a success. Or anyway that was what people were saying, repeating, amid handshakes, hugs and kisses, and tall glasses of champagne. And where was I. E. Shinn in his tux to intercede for his dazed client?

  “Hel-lo, ‘Angela’”

  “H’lo”

  “That was a dandy performance”

  “Thank you”

  “I mean it I’m serious that was a jim-dandy performance”

  “Thank you”

  “A humdinger of a performance”

  “Thank you”

  “You’re a dandy-looking girl”

  “Thank you”

  “Somebody said this is your debut”

  “Oh, yes”

  “And your name is”

  “‘M-marilyn Monroe’”

  “Well, congratulations ‘Marilyn Monroe’”

  “Thank you”

  “I’m going to give you my card ‘Marilyn Monroe’”

  “Thank you”

  “I got a feeling we’ll be meeting again ‘Marilyn Monroe’”

  “Thank you”

  She was happy. She’d never been happier. Not since the Dark Prince hauled her up onstage to share the blinding lights with him, lifting her high for all to admire and to applaud and kissing her forehead in blessing I anoint you my Fair Princess my bride. In her ear he whispered the secret admonition, It’s all right to be happy now. You have earned happiness. For a while. In celebration of such happiness cameras flashed in the crowded foyer. There stood, smiling for photographers, blond-knockout Angela and her somewhat abashed-looking chain-smoking “Uncle Leon.” There stood Angela and the male lead of the film, Sterling Hayden, with whom she hadn’t had a single scene. And there stood Angela and the great director, who’d made her happiness possible. Oh, how can I thank you I can never thank you enough. Norma Jeane laughed giddily, seeing out of the corner of her eye Otto Öse hawk-faced and glowering behind an uplifted camera at the edge of the crowd; Otto Öse in his baggy black clothes like a scarecrow resentful of his servile role, he who should have been an artist, a maker of original arresting art, a maker of Jewish art, a maker of art radical and revolutionary since the unspeakable revelations of the gas ovens, the final solution, the atomic bombs. Norma Jeane wanted to scream at him You see? I don’t need you! Your sleazy girlie pix. Your nude calendars. I’m an actress, I don’t need you or anyone. I hope they arrest you and take you away! But when she looked more closely she saw that it wasn’t Otto Öse after all.

  What a smile on Shinn’s face! He looked like a crocodile, a no-leg crocodile, careening around on its tail. The sweaty-sexy glisten of his oversize face. She giggled, imagining what it would be like making love with such a creature. Having to shut her eyes and shut down her brain. Oh no, I can only marry for love.

  She’d never been happier than now. Shinn seized her by the hand, hauling her across the foyer. He’d invented her; she was his. Not true, but she would acquiesce. She would not rebel, not yet. Never happier than this magic night. For she was Cinderella, and the glass shoe fit. And she was better-looking and sexier and more exciting than the female lead, Jean Hagen, whom fewer photographers sought; it was embarrassing how they favored the unknown young knockout blonde who couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag, some were saying, sneering behind their hands, but Jesus lookit the tits, lookit the ass, move over Lana Turner.

  Happy, high on champagne as she hadn’t been since her wedding night. Though he had not answered the phone. Though he knew how to punish her. Hurt and angry with her. He’d hidden himself away, deeply asleep in the luxurious borrowed bed in which only the previous night they’d made tender protracted love lying side by side and their eager bodies fitted together and their eager mouths pressed together and their eyeballs rolling back in their skulls at precisely the same moment—Oh! oh oh! Darling I love you— and she’d required no magic potion to sleep that night as she hadn’t for a succession of nights since finishing her work on the movie and she was confident she would not ever require a sedative to help her sleep again for what a relief it was, what joy; these people liked her after all! these Hollywood people liked her! asking Who’s the blonde? Why isn’t she listed with the cast? and Mr. Z of The Studio would be astonished and chagrined, the cruel bastard how he’d exploited her as a young contract player and dumped her, and now the M-G-M executives would value her and in any case the producers of The Asphalt Jungle would list “Marilyn Monroe” with the cast subsequent to the screening; weeks and months of publicity would follow when the radiant-sexy blond beauty “Marilyn Monroe” would appear in dozens of newspapers and magazines and be awarded such timely honors as Miss Model Blonde 1951, Screen World “New Face” 1951, PhotoLife Most Promising Starlet 1951, Miss Cheesecake 1952, and Miss A-Bomb 1952, an award presented in Palm Springs by Frank Sinatra. And the radiant-sexy blond beauty would be everywhere on newsstands, on the covers not of Sir! and Swank, which she’d outgrown as she’d outgrown the subclass of photographers who worked for such magazines, but on the respectable glossy covers of Look, Collier’s, and Life (“New Faces of 1952”). By which time “Marilyn Monroe” would be a contract player again at The Studio, her salary raised by the chastened Mr. Z to five hundred dollars a week.

  “Five hundred! At Radio Plane they weren’t even paying me fifty a week.”

  Never happier.

  Except that evening in January 1950 when it began, when “Marilyn” was born. When she’d been sick with love for Cass Chaplin and he hadn’t come to the screening or to Enrico’s afterward and she was alone celebrating her happiness with a crowd of elegantly dressed strangers and with glasses of champagne, “Marilyn Monroe” resplendent in her wedding-white silk-and-chiffon cocktail dress from Bullock’s so dramatically low-cut her breasts nearly sprang out of the straining fabric. That evening Shinn the wily agent introduced his incandescent client to B, J, P, and R, studio executives and producers whose names she didn’t catch, and each of these smiling men clasped her hand, or hands, and congratulated her on her “debut.”

  And there came V, the popular handsome freckled former All-American football star from Kansas who’d made wartime movies for Paramount including the box-office hit The Young Aces, which had made even Bucky Glazer cry; Norma Jeane recalled clutching at her young husband’s hand during the terrifying scenes of air combat, and there were such tender love scenes between V and gorgeous Maureen O’Hara, which she’d watched avid and wide-eyed imagining herself in O’Hara’s place though angry at herself, too, how silly a fantasy for a happily married young wife, how childish and futile. And now there came to her, pushing through the crowd, six years later, V in person! V in civilian clothes, not his Air Force uniform! V so boyish and freckle-faced you’d have guessed he was twenty-nine, not thirty-nine, only his thinning hair suggesting he wasn’t any longer the impetuous young pilot of The Young Aces who’d flown missions over Germany and who’d been shot down over enemy territory in one of the longest falling-spiraling shots in cinema history, so contrived that the screaming fainting audience falls with him in the burning plane until he manages, wounded, to parachute out as in a nightmare, and Norma Jeane stared seeing the man before her, six feet tall and stocky in the shoulders and torso, just perceptibly heavier about the jaws yet freckled still and the eyes warm and intense as she remembered them. For once you’ve seen a man close up in such intimacy you carry his image inside you like a dream. Once you’ve fantasized a love scene with a man in close-up you cherish the memory of his kisses in your heart.

  “You! Oh, it’s—you?” Norma Jeane spoke so softly she couldn’t be heard above the conversational din and perhaps hadn’t intended to be heard. How badly she wanted to take hold of V’s big capable hands and tell him how she’d adored him, how she’d cried when he was wounded and taken prisoner and cried when he was reun
ited at last with his fiancée and cried going home to Verdugo Gardens and ol’ Hirohito grinning atop the console radio—“My life as it was then, I don’t know who I was” But she didn’t grab his hands and she didn’t speak of Verdugo Gardens. She had only to lift her face and smile at V as he leaned close to her (as if, already, these two were lovers) congratulating her on her film debut. What could Norma Jeane who was “Marilyn Monroe” murmur but Thank you, oh thank you—blushing like a high school girl.

  V drew her into a relatively quiet corner of the restaurant to speak earnestly with her about the film, the subtleties of the screenplay and the characterizations and the remarkable ending; how did she like working with an exacting director like Huston?—“He makes you feel good for once about your craft, doesn’t he? About the life people like us have chosen.”

  Puzzled, Norma Jeane said, “C-chosen? Did we? To be actors, you mean? Oh, I—I never thought of it that way.”

  V laughed, startled. Norma Jeane wondered had she said the wrong thing?

  You never knew when she was serious. These things that sprang from her.

  V the war-ace box-office star of youthful middle age, reputed to be in private life a good decent man shabbily treated by his minor-actress wife who’d won custody of their children and a large divorce settlement after only a few years of marriage, and “Marilyn Monroe,” the gorgeous young starlet. From a short distance, like a brooding proprietary father, I. E. Shinn observed.

  Abruptly there came up to the attractive couple a near-bald middle-aged man with pouched turtle eyes and deep creases beside his mouth. In his unpressed gabardine suit he wasn’t one of the M-G-M party but it was clear that some of the guests knew him, as V did, and looked aside embarrassed and frowning. “Excuse me? Excuse me? Will you sign, please?” V had turned away, but there stood Norma Jeane in her gay giddy mood, open-eyed, welcoming. The turtle-eyed man pushed uncomfortably close. He had a petition for her to sign that he thrust into her face, and Norma Jeane squinted, seeing it had been prepared by the National Committee to Preserve First Amendment Rights of which she’d heard, or believed she’d heard. In the dim light of the restaurant she could make out a large-print headline WE THE UNDERSIGNED PROTEST THE CRUEL AND UN-AMERICAN TREATMENT OF followed by double columns of printed names. The first name of the left-hand column was Charlie Chaplin and the first name of the right-hand column was Paul Robeson. Beneath the columns were many blanks but no more than a half-dozen signatures. The turtle-eyed man identified himself with a name Norma Jeane didn’t recognize, saying he’d been a screenwriter for The Story of G.I. Joe and The Young Aces and many other films until he’d been blacklisted in 1949.