Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Marilyn sure likes piano music! We watched her listening to some old guy playing piano upstairs at Bullock’s, maybe she was faking but I don’t think so. There were tears in her eyes. You could see she wasn’t wearing a bra, her nipples all but poked through this flimsy white fabric.

  In Norma Jeane’s new, mostly unfurnished apartment on Fountain Avenue she’d placed beside her bed a Pantheon of Great Men whose likenesses she’d clipped from books or magazines. Prominent among these was an artist’s interpretation of Beethoven: with powerful forehead, fierce expression, and unruly hair. Beethoven, the musical genius. For whom “Für Elise” was but a bagatelle, a trifle.

  Also in the Pantheon were Socrates, Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Vaslav Nijinski, Clark Gable, Albert Schweitzer, and the American playwright who’d recently been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for drama.

  After “Für Elise,” the pianist played several Chopin preludes, then Hoagy Carmichael’s dreamy “Stardust.” This, too, could not be mere chance, for the only beautiful song in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was Mr. Carmichael’s “When Love Goes Wrong, Nothing Goes Right,” which Lorelei Lee sings. Norma Jeane listened reverently. She would miss several appointments that afternoon, including a crucial meeting with her costume designer, and she’d promised the Ex-Athlete, who was in New York, she’d be at home at 4 P.M. to take his call. She was trying to remember if she’d seen Clive Pearce in any films recently. For all the man’s talent, he’d dropped off the edge; his contract at The Studio must have been terminated long ago. He was reduced to such engagements! Playing piano in a store. She would help him, if she could. A walk-on in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, or maybe he could play piano? “It’s the least I could do. I owe that man so much.”

  It was the pianist’s break. Norma Jeane, clapping enthusiastically, came forward to introduce herself. “Mr. Pearce? Do you remember me? Norma Jeane.”

  Clive Pearce, rising from the piano bench, stared at her for a long astonished moment.

  “Marilyn Monroe? Are you—?”

  “I—I am, now. But I was—Norma Jeane. Do you remember? Highland Avenue? Gladys Mortensen? We lived in the same building?”

  One of Mr. Pearce’s eyelids drooped. There was a network of fine, nearly invisible veins in his sagging cheeks. But he was smiling broadly, blinking as if a blinding light were shining into his face. “Marilyn Monroe. I’m honored.”

  In his formal attire, white tie and tails and shiny black shoes, Clive Pearce looked like a mannequin come only partway to life. Norma Jeane had reached out warmly to shake hands, as she’d grown confident of doing, for now she was one whose hands people loved to shake and to caress lingeringly, and Mr. Pearce seized both her hands in his, gazing at her in wonderment.

  “You are Clive Pearce, aren’t you?”

  “Why, yes. I am. How do you know me?”

  “I’m actually Norma Jeane Baker. I should say, Norma Jeane Mortensen. You knew my mother Gladys, Gladys Mortensen?—you were a friend of hers, on Highland Avenue? Around 1935, this was.”

  Clive Pearce laughed. His breath smelled of copper pennies held too long in a moist hand. “That long ago! Why, you weren’t born yet, Miss Monroe.”

  “I certainly was, Mr. Pearce. I was nine years old. You were my piano teacher.” Norma Jeane was trying not to plead. Half consciously she was aware of a small gathering of strangers watching at a discreet distance. “Please, don’t you remember me? I was just a little g-girl. You taught me to play ‘Für Elise.’”

  “A little girl, playing ‘Für Elise’? My dear, I doubt it.”

  Mr. Pearce looked like one who suspects his leg is being pulled.

  “My mother was—is—Gladys Mortensen? Don’t you remember her?”

  “Gladys—?”

  “You were lovers, I thought. I mean, you loved my m-mother—she was so beautiful, and—”

  The silver-haired old gentleman smiled at Norma Jeane and all but winked. Your mother? A woman? No. “My dear, you may be confusing me with someone else. One Brit is like another in Tinsel Town.”

  “We lived in the same apartment building, Mr. Pearce. Eight twenty-eight Highland Avenue, Hollywood. A five-minute walk to the Hollywood Bowl.”

  “The Hollywood Bowl! Yes, I think I remember the building, a dreadful run-down place teeming with cockroaches. I was only there a short time, thank God.”

  “My mother wasn’t well, she had to be taken away and hospitalized? You were my Uncle Clive. You and Auntie Jessie drove me to the or-or-or-phanage?”

  Now Mr. Pearce did become alarmed. His expression was fastidious and grim. “Auntie Jessie? Is some woman claiming she was my wife?”

  “Oh, no. That was just what I called you. I mean—you wanted me to call you, you and her, but I c-couldn’t. Don’t you really remember?” Norma Jeane was frankly pleading now. Standing close to the elderly man, who was inches shorter than she recalled, so that the circle of onlookers couldn’t hear quite them so well. “You taught me piano on an ivory-colored spinet Steinway, my mother had gotten it from Fredric March—”

  At this, Clive Pearce snapped his fingers.

  “The spinet! Of course. My dear, I have that piano in my possession.”

  “You have my m-mother’s piano?”

  “It’s my piano, my dear.”

  “But—how did you get it?”

  “How did I get it? Why, let me think.” Clive Pearce frowned and tugged at his lips. His vision narrowed with the effort of remembering. “I believe our landlord took possession of some of your mother’s belongings, in default of the money she owed him. Yes, I think that was it. The piano had been slightly damaged in the fire—I seem to recall a fire—and I offered to buy it. I had it repaired and I’ve had it ever since. A lovely little piano I couldn’t bear to part with, ever.”

  “Not even for a—high price?”

  Pursing his lips, Clive Pearce considered this. Smiling then in the way Norma Jeane remembered, the way that had made her shiver, puckish sly not-to-be-trusted Uncle Clive.

  “My dear beautiful Marilyn, perhaps I could make a special concession for you.”

  In this magical way Clive Pearce was hired as an extra in Gentleman Prefer Blondes, playing piano in the background of a scene set in the luxurious lounge of a transatlantic steamer, and the Steinway spinet once belonging to Fredric March was purchased by Norma Jeane for sixteen hundred dollars, borrowed from the Ex-Athlete.

  THE SCREAM. THE SONG.

  You are going to imagine that in the same space you occupy with your own, real body there exists another body—the imaginary body of your character, which you have created in your mind.

  —Michael Chekhov,

  To the Actor

  Not the sleek black Studio car fit for royalty but an ugly humpbacked Nash of that melancholy hue of dishwater when the soap bubbles have burst and the chauffeur in uniform and visored cap was a swarthy-skinned creature part frog and part human, with enormous glassy-shiny eyes from which she shrank. “Oh, don’t look at me! This isn’t me.” She’d swallowed sand, her mouth was dry. Or had they stuffed cotton batting into her mouth to stifle her screams? Trying to explain this to the lipstick-smiling woman with black-net-gloved hands pushing her into the rear of the Nash that she’d changed her mind but the woman refused to listen. And the woman’s hands so strong, deft, and practiced. “No. Please. I w-want to go back. This is a—” A girl’s terrified breathy voice. Miss Golden Dreams? The Frog Chauffeur drove his humped vehicle with commendable swiftness and skill through the glaring streets of the City of Sand. It was not night, yet so blinding was the sun you could see no more clearly than if it were night. “Oh, hey!—I changed my mind, see? My m-mind is my own, to change. It is!” There were grains of sand not only in her mouth but in her eyes. The woman with the gloved hands made a face that might be described as a smile-frown. There was a jolting stop. Norma Jeane was made to realize that they had traveled through Time. Any role for the actor is a journey in Time. It is your former self from which you depart
forever. A sudden curb! A flight of concrete steps! A corridor and a pungent medical-chemical smell like the smell of Bucky Glazer’s big-boy hands. Yet the surprise of (as in a movie in which a door is unexpectedly opened, with a surge of movie music) an elegantly furnished interior room. A waiting room. The walls were polished wood paneling, the wall hangings were Norman Rockwell reproductions from The Saturday Evening Post. There were “modern” chairs with tubular legs. A broad shiny desk and—a human skull? The skull was yellowed, finely cracked as if glazed, unnervingly hollow at the crown (the result of an autopsy? did they saw a circle of bone out of your skull?) and filled with pens, pencils, and the doctor’s expensive pipes. This was Doctor’s official day off. Doctor would be playing golf later this morning at the Wilshire Country Club with his friend Bing Crosby. Now there were bright lights, she was confusing as bright lies. At dawn she’d crawled from her sweaty bed to swallow down one, or two, or three codeine tablets. “Please won’t you listen, please I’ve changed my mind.” Yet it was not her mind to change. She told herself to cheer herself. This light is sterilizing. The danger of germs and infection will be minimal. (Such curious-comical thoughts often passed fleetingly through her mind on the set. The exaggeration of lights, the intensity of the camera’s glassy staring eye, the knowledge that, as filming begins, as your film self emerges, effortless as the wink of an eye; for this duration of time you and your Magic Friend are one, in utter safety and bliss.) Still she was trying to explain she’d made a mistake, she didn’t want the Operation; yes, but she was in “good hands”; Mr. Z had promised. A million-dollar investment cannot be risked. It was certain, she was at no risk. If she was “Marilyn Monroe,” she would never be at risk if The Studio could prevent it. To assure her, Yvet was humming These are good hands for curing your blues, these are good hands for shining your shoes. Good hands from mornin’ till night. Seeing they would not listen to her pleas, she next said, in her little-girl sexy comicbreathy Lorelei Lee voice:

  Oh say!—know what, you all?—I kinda expect you all to start singing, and dancing?

  Doctor did not smile at this remark, but Doctor did smile. He had a mushroom face, a fattish nose with hairs. He called her “My dear” perhaps to assure her he didn’t know her name and would never utter her name. So there was that relief, Doctor didn’t recognize his famous patient. None of them knew her. She was shivering naked, under a flimsy smock. Bucky had never allowed her to see any corpse, yet somehow she’d seen and she knew. The grayish skin, the eyes sunken in their sockets. You poke in the spongy skin with a forefinger and it doesn’t spring back. She was cringing and biting her lip to keep from laughing hysterically, and they lifted her onto the table where tissue paper rustled and crinkled beneath her and she was leaking pee, so frightened, and they wiped it away wordless and positioned her feet in the stirrups. Her bare feet! The soles of the feet are so vulnerable! “Please don’t look at me? Don’t take any pictures?” Aunt Elsie had advised Just stay out of their way, it’s that simple. That was how Norma Jeane made love, mostly: she lay very still, smiling happily in anticipation, sweet and unassertive and hopeful, and opened herself to her lover, made a gift of herself to her lover; isn’t that what men want, truly? The surprise was, Ex-Athlete was a tender though vigorous lover, an older-man lover, like V, panting and sweating and grateful, and never would the Ex-Athlete who was a gentleman laugh at her, tease her as the Gemini had, unforgivably.

  “Headline for the Tatler: LURID EXPOSÉ: SEX SYMBOL MARILYN QUERIES ‘IS FUCK A VERB???’” Laugh, laugh.

  Well, she’d laughed too. And Doctor was tickling her with his rubber fingers. Poky fingers, prodding inside her. Like Uncle Pearce up and down her sides, into the crack of her little ass like a naughty mouse. But out again so fast you didn’t know little Mousie was there. The codeine had numbed her, she was in that state where you feel pain at a distance. Like hearing screams in the room next door. Doctor saying, Don’t struggle, please. There will be a minimum of pain. This injection will put you into a light twilight sleep. We don’t wish to restrain you. “Wait. No. There’s some mistake. I—” She shoved the hands away. These were rubber hands. She couldn’t see any faces. Overhead the light was blinding. It was possible she’d traveled far into the future and the sun had expanded to fill the entire sky. “No! This isn’t me!” She’d managed to slip from the table, thank God. They shouted after her but she was gone. Running barefoot, panting. Oh, she could escape! It wasn’t too late. She ran along the corridor. She could smell smoke. Still, it wasn’t too late. Up a flight of stairs, the door was unlocked so she pushed it open. There, the familiar faces of Mary Pickford, Lew Ayres, Charlie Chaplin. Oh, the Little Tramp! Charlie was her true daddy. Those eyes! In the next room there was a muffled sound. Yes, Gladys’s bedroom. A forbidden place sometimes but now Gladys was gone. She ran inside, and there was the bureau. And there, the drawer she must open. She tugged, tugged, tugged at that drawer. Was it stuck? Was she strong enough to open it? At last she got it open, and the baby was flailing its tiny hands and feet, gasping for air. Sputtering and drawing breath to cry. Just as the cold steel speculum entered her body between her legs. Just as they scooped her out as you’d scoop out a fish’s guts. Her insides were running down the sides of the scoop. She tossed her head from side to side screaming until the tendons in her throat seized.

  The baby screamed. Once.

  “Miss Monroe? Please. It’s time.”

  Well, more than time. They’d been calling her for how long? Knocking cautiously at her dressing-room door. Forty minutes she’d been sitting there in perfect hair, perfect cosmetic mask, in a staring trance in her gorgeous hotpink silk gown, gloves to her elbows, and the tops of her remarkable breasts displayed, and the glittery costume jewelry screwed to her ears and around her lovely neck. And the glossy cunt-mouth perfection. Time to perform “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

  Monroe was flawless. A real professional. Once every word, every syllable, every note, and every beat was memorized, she was clockwork. She wasn’t a “character”—a “role.” She must’ve had the ability to see herself already on film, like an animation. This animation she could control from inside herself. She was controlling how the animation would be perceived by strangers, in a darkened theater.

  That was all Marilyn Monroe was, on film: the animated image strangers would one day see and adore.

  Once I was sent to fetch her, I knocked on the door and bent my ear to the door, and I swear I heard a baby scream inside. Not loud, not like there was any baby in that room, but for sure I heard a baby scream. Just once.

  THE EX-ATHLETE AND THE BLOND ACTRESS: THE PROPOSAL

  1

  There would be those observers, considering the doomed marriage in retrospect, as one might anatomize a corpse, who wondered if it was a proposal at all and not rather a coercive statement of fact.

  The Ex-Athlete saying quietly to the Blond Actress We love each other, it’s time we were married.

  And there was a pause. And in her dread of silence the Blond Actress whispered Oh, yes! Yes, darling! And in confusion adding with a nervous squeaky laugh I g-guess!

  (Did the Ex-Athlete hear these last mumbled words? Evidence suggests no. Did the Ex-Athlete hear any words mumbled or otherwise from the Blond Actress’s lips that challenged his pride? Evidence suggests no.)

  And then they were kissing. And finishing the bottle of champagne. And then they were making love another time, tenderly and with childlike hope. (In the aptly named Imperial Suite of the Beverly Wilshire where The Studio was putting up Marilyn Monroe for the night following a gala party for five hundred guests at the hotel in celebration of the premiere of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Oh, what a night!) And the Blond Actress was crying, suddenly. And the Ex-Athlete was deeply moved and did what lovers do in sappy romances or in forties films: he kissed away his beloved’s tears.

  Saying I just love you so much.

  Saying I just want to protect you from these jackals.

  Saying
with boyish aggression, raising himself above her on his elbows, peering down at her as one might survey a treacherous landscape in the benign delusion that traversing it would not only be possible but an adventure, I just want to take you away from here. I want you to be happy.

  2

  At crucial moments the film careens out of focus. This is the single print in existence; you can imagine its value to collectors. Of course, the sound track is poor. Those among us who can read lips (it’s a handy skill, for a fan) are at an obvious advantage yet not much of an advantage since the Ex-Athlete wasn’t just a reticent man but, when he spoke, moved his lips oddly as if speech were an embarrassment, like his own abrupt and ungovernable emotion; and the Blond Actress when not purposefully enunciating for the camera (with which she could “communicate” as with no living person) had an exasperating tendency to mumble and swallow her words.

  Marilyn we want to shout at her. Look up at us. Smile. A real smile. Be happy. You’re you.

  When the Ex-Athlete spoke of “jackals” and wanting to take the Blond Actress “away from here,” he was alluding to The Studio (he knew how the executives were exploiting her, how little they paid her in exchange for how many millions of dollars she was earning for them) and to all of Hollywood and possibly to the vast world beyond, which, his instinct told him, despite his own celebrity did not wish her well. (Or either of them well. For hadn’t baseball fans booed the Ex-Athlete when, limping with a bone spur, he’d failed to live up to their expectations?) His sweeping masculine disgust perhaps took in, as well, the die-hard ragtag band of a dozen or more fans at that very moment on rain-washed Wilshire Boulevard across from the hotel (for they’d been driven away by doormen from the hotel’s grand front entrance) with oversized plastic-covered autograph books and cheap Kodak cameras, tirelessly waiting for the celebrity couple to emerge; unless it was enough for these worshipers to bask in the knowledge that, though invisible to them and in every way inaccessible to them, the swarthy handsome Ex-Athlete and the beautiful Blond Actress might at that very moment be coupling like Shiva and Shakti, unmaking and making the Universe?