Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The Ex-Athlete, exhaling smoke, told of his love of baseball ever since he was a boy; how baseball had been his salvation, a kind of religion to him, his team a close-knit family and the fans, too. The fans! The fans were fickle but wonderful. And how baseball had returned his own family to him, the respect of his father and his older brothers. Because he had not had this respect before he’d excelled in baseball. He hadn’t been truly a man, in their eyes or in his own. They were commercial fishermen in San Francisco and he’d been no good at fishing and he’d hated the boat, the ocean, the dying struggling fish; luckily for him he’d been good at sports and baseball was his ticket up and out. He was one of the winners of the great American lottery, and he knew it, and he was grateful; he never took it for granted. And now—well, he was retired. He was outside the sport but still it was his life, always it would be his life, his identity. He had plenty to do, public appearances and endorsing products and radio and TV and advisory boards, but hell, he was lonely, had to admit he was lonely, lots of friends—and terrific friends they were, in New York especially—but he was lonely in his heart, had to admit it. Almost forty years old and he needed to settle down. This time permanently.

  The Blond Actress brushed tears from her eyes. It was the effect of these heartfelt words and of the pungent cigar smoke wafting in her direction. Lightly she touched the Ex-Athlete’s wrist. His wrist and the back of his hand were covered in coarse dark hairs that, contrasting with his dazzling-white shirt cuffs and the gold links, made her shiver. Saying, as if this was an adequate response to all he’d confided in her and not knowing what else to say, Oh but!—you’re in the papers so much! You don’t seem retired.

  The Ex-Athlete laughed. He was flattered but amused.

  Hey, I’m not in the papers as much as you, Marilyn.

  That wincing smile again, the Blond Actress ducking her head and unconsciously plucking at the tight neck of her dress.

  Oh, who?—me? That’s just studio publicity. Oh, I hate it! And signing these phony pictures of me—“Love, Marilyn.” All the letters “Marilyn” gets. A thousand a week—or maybe more? Anyway, it’s just for a while till I get some money saved and can do some serious roles like, oh—on the stage? In a real theater? I could work with a real drama coach. I could belong to a repertory theater. I could do Our Town again and I could do Irina in The Three Sisters—or Masha? When I was Rose in Niagara, y’know what I was thinking? Please don’t laugh at me, I was thinking I could do Lady Macbeth someday—

  The Blond Actress broke off, seeing the Ex-Athlete wasn’t laughing at her but wasn’t taking much of this in. His gaze was soft-shimmering and intimate, as if they were lying side by side on pillows. He was sucking on his Cuban cigar.

  Contritely the Blond Actress concluded Anyway, it won’t last forever, what I’m doing. But you, a champion athlete everybody loves—you will last forever.

  The Ex-Athlete pondered this. He seemed deeply moved yet uncertain how to respond. He shrugged his muscled shoulders. OK he said. Yeah, I guess.

  It was an improvised scene in acting class. You understood instinctively that it needed something more, a dramatic turn, a kind of closure. The Blond Actress said, with a passionate intake of breath, Oh, but mostly I w-want—to settle down, like you. Like any girl. And have a family. Oh, I love children so! I’m crazy about babies.

  It was then, out of nowhere as out of a trapdoor opening in a silent film, the individual identified as M. Classen, forty-three, rancher, of Eagle Bluffs, Utah, approached the couple’s table. All observers stared. The Sharpshooter at the rear of the restaurant stared, senses acute as a whetted straight razor. What was this? Who was this? Looming over the Ex-Athlete and the Blond Actress, who in their total surprise simply blinked up at him, M. Classen had opened his wallet to show them a color snapshot of his eleven-year-old son Ike, a smiling freckled boy with chestnut hair who’d been a “natural-born ballplayer” until eighteen months ago he’d begun to lose weight, and bruised easily, and was always tired, and they took him to a doctor in Salt Lake City and he was diagnosed with leukemia—“That’s blood cancer. From the U.S. Government nuclear testing! We know it! Everybody knows it! The way our sheep and cattle are poisoned too. At the edge of my property there’s a testing range—OFF LIMITS BY ORDER OF U.S. GOVERNMENT. I own six thousand acres, I have my rights. The U.S. Government won’t pay for Ike’s blood transfusions; the bastards refuse even to acknowledge they got any responsibility. I’m no Commie! I’m one hundred percent American! I served in the U.S. Army in the last war! Please if you two could put in a word for me with the U.S. Government—” As suddenly as M. Classen appeared, he was hurried away. No sooner had the improbable scene come into lurid focus in the luminous aura surrounding the couple’s table than it had ended. Shortly afterward the flush-faced maître d’ returned to apologize profusely.

  Unexpectedly, the Blond Actress hid her face, crying. Tears sparkling like jewels ran down her cheeks. The Ex-Athlete stared at her, stricken and confused. We could see how he wanted to seize the Blond Actress’s hands in his and comfort her, but shyness restrained him. (And the stares of myriad strangers! Most of us had ceased troubling to watch through mirrors and were now watching quite openly the drama at the celebrity couple’s table.) The Ex-Athlete’s horsey-handsome face darkened with blood. He was helpless and angry. As the bumbling maître d’ continued to apologize, the Ex-Athlete cut him off with a muttered obscenity.

  No! Oh, p-please! It’s nobody’s fault. The Blond Actress pleaded with the Ex-Athlete, still crying, a tissue held to her eyes, and excused herself to use the ladies’ room. What a scene: as she made her urgent yet sleepwalking way through the restaurant, escorted by the shaken maître d’, the floating platinum-blond hair, the soft-sculpted female shape inside the clinging jersey dress with a multitude of shivery pleats, every eye in the restaurant fixed upon her rear, the remarkable movements of her lower body, as in a long tracking scene in which the camera follows, at a discreet distance, the yearning eye of an invisible and anonymous voyeur. It seemed to all who stared, including even the experienced Sharpshooter, to whom movie stars and champion athletes were of no more intrinsic significance than bull’s-eyes at target ranges, that the mysterious aura hovering about the couple’s table now followed the Blond Actress until, nearly running into the ladies’ room, she disappeared from our scrutiny.

  There, the Blond Actress dabbed at her tearful eyes with a tissue and repaired the damage done to her mascara. Her face burned as if she’d been slapped. Such an awkward scene! When you aren’t prepared to cry, crying hurts. And this collar cutting into her throat like a man’s squeezing fingers like Cass’s fingers if ever he could get hold of her. She was sniffing, and she was excited, and she became aware of the powder room attendant observing her, roused from the trance of such attendants by the Blond Actress’s emotional state. The attendant was a few years older than the Blond Actress, with an olive-dark skin. With a slight speech impediment she asked, “Miss? You are all right?” The Blond Actress assured her yes, yes! In her agitated state the Blond Actress didn’t care to be closely observed. She fumbled for her white beaded purse. She needed another tissue, which the attendant discreetly handed her. “Thank you!” The powder room interior was a fair flattering pink threaded with gold. Lighting was recessed and gentle. Through the mirror the Blond Actress saw the attendant’s eyes upon her, that low-browed face, black hair skinned back and fastened at the nape of her neck, skimpy eyebrows and a receding chin and a small pursed smile. You’re beautiful and I’m homely and I hate you. But no, the young woman seemed genuinely concerned. “Miss? Please, is there anything I can do?” The Blond Actress was staring at the attendant in the mirror. Was this young woman someone she should know? The Blond Actress had had too much to drink, champagne went immediately to her head and made her want to cry, or laugh; champagne had too many associations yet she couldn’t resist drinking it, or red wine either, and the proximity of the Ex-Athlete all evening was even more disorienting, f
or here was a man whose celebrity eclipsed hers and could shelter her from hers. Here was a man who was a gentleman, and did anything else truly matter?

  It was then that the Blond Actress realized she knew the olive-skinned attendant. Jewell! One of Norma Jeane’s sister orphans at the Home, fifteen years ago. Jewell with her funny way of talking the crueler boys mocked. And Fleece, whom Jewell adored, sometimes mocked. Jewell was staring at the Blond Actress through the mirror You belong here with me, this is your rightful place. The Blond Actress was about to exclaim, with a smile, Oh, is it—Jewell? Don’t we know each other?

  Except a voice cautioned No. Better not.

  Another woman entered the powder room, glamorously dressed. Quickly the Blond Actress went into one of the toilet stalls. To cover the tinkling sound of her pee, which since the Operation (as she thought of it) was hot, stinging, painful, she flushed the toilet once, and another time. So embarrassing! She wondered if Jewell recognized her; if in recognizing “Marilyn Monroe,” Jewell recognized her. For the one was inside the other, playing the role invented for her.

  Cass said to her over the phone, after he’d learned of the abortion, Don’t be blaming her! It’s all you.

  When the Blond Actress returned to the sinks to wash her hands, the other woman had stepped into one of the stalls, thank God. Since there was no towel dispenser, the Blond Actress had to wait for the attendant to give her a hand towel; she thanked the young woman and dropped a fifty-cent coin into a bowl of coins and bills on a shelf. When she turned to leave, still the attendant said sharply, “Excuse me, miss?” The Blond Actress smiled at her, perplexed. Had she forgotten something? But she was clutching her beaded little purse. “Yes? What?” The attendant smiled strangely. She was holding out something to the Blond Actress in one of the hand towels. The Blond Actress squinted into it and saw a red mangled glob of flesh, about the size of a pear. It glistened with fresh blood. It appeared to be motionless. It had no lower body, only a miniature human torso; no face, but rudimentary eyes, a nose, and a tiny anguished crack of a mouth.

  “Miss Monroe? You forgot this.”

  The Ex-Athlete had taken out his shiny new leather wallet and slapped it down on the table. Veins at his temples were pounding ominously. A beautiful woman crying, if her tears weren’t in reproach of him, just melted his heart.

  “FÜR ELISE”

  Always you must play yourself. But it will be an infinite variety.

  —Stanislavski,

  An Actor Prepares

  It could not have been chance. For in that place in which she would dwell intermittently for the remainder of her blond life, there is no chance. There I discovered all is necessity, like the barbs of quills that anchor flesh even as they lacerate it.

  “Für Elise”—that beautiful haunting melody.

  “Für Elise”—that she’d once played, or tried to play. On Gladys’s gleaming white piano that had once belonged to Fredric March. In the days of Highland Avenue, Hollywood. Gladys had sacrificed to make sure Norma Jeane had piano lessons and voice lessons, knowing someday Norma Jeane would be a performer. Always, she’d had faith in me. And I knew so little. There was her piano teacher Mr. Pearce whom she’d adored and feared lifting and firmly guiding her fingers along the keyboard.

  “Norma Jeane. Don’t be silly. Try.”

  She was alone when she heard the music. Dreamily ascending an escalator in Bullock’s, Beverly Hills. It must have been a Monday: no rehearsals at The Studio. She wasn’t in disguise as Lorelei Lee (“The Role for Which Marilyn Monroe Was Born!”) but as a Beverly Hills woman shopper. No one recognized her, she was certain. She’d come to Bullock’s to buy presents for her makeup man, Whitey, who was such a character and made her laugh; and for Yvet, Mr. Z’s assistant, who’d been so kind to her and so patient with her and would keep her secret for her; and a pretty nightgown for Gladys that she’d have delivered to the Lakewood Home with a card Love, Your Daughter Norma Jeane. She was wearing sunglasses so darkly tinted she had difficulty seeing price tags, and a sand-colored linen jacket that fitted her loosely, and linen slacks. Sailcloth cork-soled shoes to comfort her hurt, aching feet. Over her floating filmy-blond hair still slightly matted from sleep she’d tied an aqua scarf, very likely a gift to her or an appropriation by her. For in this phase of her life people were always pressing things upon her, items of clothing, even jewelry and heirlooms, if out of politeness or her habitual need to say something to forestall intimate questions she expressed the mildest admiration of these things.

  Marilyn, try it on! Why, it’s lovely on you! Please keep it, I insist.

  On the escalator to the second floor of Bullock’s, she began to hear the piano music without knowing what it was. For her own head was filled like a manic jukebox with quick-tempo musical-comedy sound, stridently syncopated dance music. Boisterous, vulgar. But this was classical music wafting downward from a higher floor. Not a tape or a recording, she was sure, but live music: a live pianist? He was playing Beethoven’s “Für Elise”! Piercing her heart like a sliver of the purest glass.

  “Für Elise,” which Clive Pearce had played for Norma Jeane slowly, gently, sadly on the magical white piano before taking her away to the orphanage.

  Her Uncle Clive. “One last time, my dear. Will you forgive me?”

  She would! She did.

  A hundred, a thousand times she forgave them all.

  Actually, Marilyn Monroe is nothing like her pictures. She’s younger-looking, pretty, and sweet-faced. Not a beauty. We saw her at Bullock’s the other day, shopping. She looked like everyone else. Almost.

  Like one under enchantment she followed the strains of “Für Elise” to the topmost fifth floor. She was so filled with emotion she couldn’t have said why she was here, in this store; in fact, she hated shopping; being in public made her anxious; even if she was in disguise there was the possibility of shrewd, knowing eyes piercing that disguise for this was a time of informants, witnesses. (Even V, who’d been so popular a wartime star and who was one-hundred-percent patriotic, had recently been interrogated by a California state committee investigating Communists and subversives in the entertainment industry. Oh, if V gave them her name! Had she ever said anything to him in defense of communism? But V wouldn’t betray her, would he? After what they’d meant to each other?) Yet the piano music drew her, she couldn’t resist. Her eyes were welling with tears. She was so happy! In her life and in her career things were going well and she would think of the future and not the past and they’d given her the large dressing room at The Studio that had once belonged to Marlene Dietrich and of this alone she couldn’t allow herself to think for such thoughts made her excitable and anxious. For she’d become insomniac again. Unless she worked, worked, worked, exercised and danced, and read and wrote in her journal until she was exhausted.

  But they forbid her to try on clothes at Bullock’s. All the good shops. Because she has stained things. She doesn’t wear underwear. She isn’t clean. She’s a Benzedrine junkie, she sweats.

  Bullock’s fifth floor was its prestige floor. Expensive designer clothes, Fur Salon. Plush dusty-rose carpeting. Even the lighting was ethereal. On this floor, Norma Jeane had modeled clothes for Mr. Shinn and he’d bought her a white cocktail dress for the opening of The Asphalt Jungle. How easy her life had been, as Angela! There was no pressure upon “Marilyn Monroe” then; “Marilyn Monroe” had scarcely existed three years ago. I. E. Shinn alone had had faith in her. “My Is-aac. My Jew.” Yet she’d betrayed him. She’d caused him to die of a broken heart. There were people in Hollywood, Mr. Shinn’s close relatives, who despised her as a conniving whore and yet—what had she done? How was she to blame? “I didn’t marry him and accept his money. I can only marry for love.”

  She’d loved Cass Chaplin and Eddy G, yet in a fevered hour she’d moved out of the apartment she shared with them. The Gemini. There was no future with the Gemini; she’d had to escape. She’d had time to take only essential clothes, her special books. S
he’d left everything else behind, including even the little striped tiger toy. Yvet had overseen that move, too. And leasing for Norma Jeane another apartment, on Fountain Avenue. (Yvet was acting under Z’s direction, of course. For now Z, head of production at The Studio, was a zealous co-conspirator in her life, cordial and sympathetic with her, his million-dollar investment.) And now, too, the Ex-Athlete was claiming he loved her, he’d never loved any woman as he loved her, he wanted to marry her. On their second date already, before even they’d become lovers. Was it possible? A man so famous, so kind and generous and a gentleman, wanted to marry her? She’d wanted to confess to him what a bad wife she’d been to poor Bucky Glazer. Yet in her weakness and in her fear that he’d cease to love her she’d heard her girl’s voice saying she loved him too and yes she would marry him someday.

  Was she going to disappoint this good man, too? Break his heart?

  I guess I am a tramp. . . . I don’t want to be!

  Slowly and cautiously Norma Jeane had been approaching the pianist from the rear. She didn’t want to distract him. He was seated at an elegant Steinway grand near the down escalator, an older gentleman in white tie and tails, fingers moving unerringly along the gleaming keyboard. There was no sheet music before him; he played by memory. “It’s him! Mr. Pearce!” Of course, Clive Pearce had aged considerably. It had been eighteen years. He was thinner and his hair had turned completely silver; the flesh about his intelligent eyes was crepy and discolored, his once-handsome face a ruin of creases and sagging jowls. Yet how beautifully he was playing piano for mostly indifferent, affluent women shoppers, the haunting sweetness of “Für Elise” ignored amid the chatter of sales clerks and customers. Norma Jeane wanted to shout at these others, How can you be so rude? Here is an artist. Listen. But no one on the floor was listening to Clive Pearce at the piano except his former student Norma Jeane, now grown up. She was biting her lip, wiping at her eyes behind the dark-tinted lenses.