Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  As always, Mr. Z and Marilyn Monroe exchanged comedy banter to which others listened enviously.

  “D’you still have The Aviary, Mr. Z? Those poor dead birds!”

  “I’m a collector of antiquities, dear. I think you have me confused with another mentor.”

  “You were a taxidermist, Mr. Z. Many of us were in awe of your hands.”

  “I have the most selective private collection in the country of Roman busts and heads. Shall I show you?”

  A limousine brought her to such dinners in the wealthy residential hills above Los Angeles and to daytime appointments. Interviews, photo sessions, preproduction meetings at The Studio. She saw with a stab of shock that her driver was the Frog Chauffeur. So I had not imagined him after all. None of that, I’d imagined. The Frog Chauffeur seemed not to have aged either. His stiff, perfect posture, his soft puckered spotted darkish skin and shiny protuberant eyes. Yet veiled eyes. A visored cap, a dark green uniform with brass buttons like Johnny of Philip Morris but unlike that rascal Johnny, whose falsetto call was a summons to the blood of how many billions of nicotine-addicted Americans for much of the twentieth century, the Frog Chauffeur was silent. The Blond Actress smiled at him without subterfuge. “Why, h’lo there! Remember me?” She was trembling, yet determined to be sunny and forthright for we all wish to be spoken well of, by such individuals as the Frog Chauffeur, after our deaths. “Once, you drove me to the Los Angeles Home for Orphans. What a time we had! And other places.” In the rear of the limousine the Blond Actress, behind dark-tinted windows driven about the City of Sand while my heart was in New York with my lover soon to be my husband who would write the true story of my life, in which I am an American girl-of-the-people, a heroine. At the same time, exhausted and mildly drunk (“Marilyn Monroe” drank only champagne, and of champagne only Dom Perignon), she smiled to think There was once a handsome young prince under a cruel spell in the guise of a frog. Only if a fair young princess kissed him could the spell be broken and the handsome young prince and the fair young princess would wed and live happily ever after.

  In the midst of such a wonder tale she fell asleep. At their destination the Frog Chauffeur would rap on the glass divider to waken her, reluctant even now to utter any word.

  “Miss Monroe? We are here.”

  Usually it was The Studio to which she’d been brought. The immense empire behind walls; through a sentry-guarded gate. Where hardly a decade ago “Marilyn Monroe” had been born. Where the destiny “Marilyn Monroe” had been forged. Where, decades earlier, the fated lovers who were the parents of “Marilyn Monroe” had presumably met. She was Gladys Mortensen, a film cutter but an extremely attractive young woman. He was—(in all sincerity the Blond Actress told interviewers who persisted in asking after her mysterious father that the man was still living, yes; he was in contact with her, yes; he was known to her, yes; yet not wishing to be known to the world “and I respect his wishes”).

  Her old dressing room, formerly that of Marlene Dietrich, was in readiness for her. Floral displays awaited. Stacks of mail, telegrams, touchingly wrapped little gifts. She opened the door and shut it in a swirl of nausea.

  Doc Bob was gone from The Studio, vanished as if he’d never been. There was a rumor he was serving time for manslaughter in San Quentin. (“A girl died on him, and he refused to dump her body as ordered.”) A new doctor, Doc Fell, had taken over his office. Doc Fell was tall and craggy-browed with Cary Grant good looks and a forceful bedside manner. He would impress his patients with his knowledge of Freud; he spoke familiarly of libido, repressed infantile aggression, and the discontents of civilization—“To which we all contribute, and from which we all suffer.” Doc Fell would be in attendance on the Bus Stop set and would later fly to Arizona on location. Often in the moon-bright insomniac night Cherie would summon Doc Fell in pajamas and Cary Grant dressing gown to her motel room desperate to sleep. Only just this once. Once more. I won’t make a habit of it, I promise! Doc Fell was a priest who in an emergency had the authority to inject liquid Nembutal directly into a vein; it would happen that Doc Fell’s mere touch, his thumb searching for a vein in the tender inside of Cherie’s forearm, was already a relief. Oh, God! Thank you.

  At first on the set of Bus Stop there was an atmosphere of magic and goodwill. She was Norma Jeane who was “Marilyn” who was “Cherie” to her fingertips. She was an actress who’d been trained at the New York Ensemble as a Method actress; she was the embodiment of Stanislavski’s stagecraft and wisdom. Always you must play yourself. A self smelted in the furnace of memory. She knew Cherie down to the smallest mend and tatter of Cherie’s pathetic-glamorous chanteuse costumes. She knew Cherie as intimately as she’d known Norma Jeane Baker of the Preene Agency, Miss Aluminum Products 1945, Miss Southern California Dairy Products 1945, Miss Hospitality at ten dollars a day, eagerly smiling, smiling to be loved. Oh, look at me! Hire me. She was the happiest she’d been in any screen role. For never until now had she actually chosen a role. Like a brothel girl who had to accept any client forced upon her or be beaten up, she’d had to accept from The Studio any role forced upon her. Until now. I’ll make you love Cherie. I’ll break your hard hearts with Cherie. She was able to believe in herself and to concentrate as she’d never before concentrated. Pearlman’s admonitions rang in her ears like the pronouncements of Jehovah. Deeper! Go deeper. To the very root of motivation. Into memory buried like treasure. The Playwright’s kindly forceful paternal voice rang in her ears. Don’t doubt your talent, darling. Your incandescent gift. Don’t doubt my love for you. Oh, she didn’t doubt!

  The director was a distinguished man hired by The Studio because she had requested him. He was not a Studio hack. He was a theater artist highly regarded by the Playwright, quirky and independent-minded. He listened carefully to his leading lady’s suggestions and was clearly impressed with her intelligence, psychological insight, and acting experience as she discussed at length her film character Cherie; how Cherie had to be costumed and lighted and made up, her hair, the very tincture of her skin. (“I want a pellagra look, sort of moony-green. Just the suggestion, I mean. It must be subtle as a poem.”) Of course, the director owed his job to this leading lady and that might have tempered his attitude; he did not glance aside with a smile or pointedly humor her as other directors had done. Yet in his very attentiveness there was something disturbing. He seemed to her too scrupulously polite; too much in awe of her; even wary of her. The way he stared when she came on the set as Cherie in her showgirl costume, tops of her breasts exposed and legs in black fishnet stockings, like a man in a dream. She hoped to God the man wasn’t in love with her.

  Here was some good luck! Better than maybe she deserved. The Time cover story was sheer Marilyn, and not her.

  Jesus I had no idea Monroe was so . . . charismatic. That woman was fascinating as a dancing flame. On the set and off. Sometimes I’d be staring at her and wouldn’t know where the hell I was. I’d been directing a long time and immune to female beauty I’d have thought and certainly to sexual attraction but Monroe was beyond female beauty and way beyond sex. Some days, she just burned with talent. In her there was a fever raging to get out. You could see it was genius and maybe genius turns to sickness if it can’t get out, which I guess eventually happened with her, the way she went to pieces those last years. But I had Monroe in her prime. There was nobody like her. Everything she did as her character was inspired. She was so insecure she’d ask to reshoot, and reshoot, and reshoot and she’d make it perfect. When she got a scene perfect, she’d know. She’d smile at me, and I’d know. Still, some days she was so scared she’d be hours late on the set. Or couldn’t make it at all. She had every kind of sickness: flu, strep throat, migraine, laryngitis, bronchitis. We went way over budget. In my opinion, it was worth every penny. When Monroe was in her element she was like a diver plunging into deep water; if she stopped to breathe, she’d drown. I guess I was in love with her. I was frankly crazy for her. It stunned me I’d been thin
king this crude dumb broad all wiggly tits and ass and this angel Marilyn Monroe glides in and takes my hands and tells me it’s not much of a script, it’s slick and shallow and corny, but she’s gonna rescue it and she’s gonna break my heart, and God, she did.

  They didn’t even nominate her for an Oscar that year. Everybody knew she deserved it for Bus Stop. Fuckers!

  Something was happening, she’d told her lover, but she dared not tell him how longer and longer each morning it was required to summon her Magic Friend out of the mirror.

  Where once as a girl she’d only needed to glance into the glassy depths and there came her pretty smiling Friend-in-the-Mirror eager to be kissed and embraced.

  Where once as a photographer’s model she’d only needed to pose as required. In the postures suggested. Drifting into a trance as her Magic Friend emerged.

  Where once as a film actress she’d only just needed to show up on the set, go to her dressing room and be prepared, and before the cameras an inexplicable magic occurred, a rush of blood to the heart more powerful than sex. Speaking her lines, which she’d memorized without trying, often without knowing she’d memorized, excited and scared coming alive in her borrowed body, she was Angela, she was Nell, she was Rose, she was Lorelei Lee, she was The Girl Upstairs. Even on the subway grating, the Ex-Athlete a witness to her degradation, she’d been thoroughly The Girl Upstairs luxuriating in her being. Look at me! I am who I am.

  Yet so strangely now, in what she believed to be the role of her career, the beginning of her new career as a serious screen actress, she was overcome with doubt. She was anxious, she was sick with dread. Dragging herself from bed only when her door was sharply rapped, only when she was already late for the morning’s shooting. Staring at herself in the mirror: Norma Jeane and not “Marilyn.” Sallow skin and bloodshot eyes and the beginning of something fatally puffy around her mouth. Why are you here? Who are you? She could hear low, muffled laughter. Jeering male laughter. You sad, sick cow.

  Longer and longer time was required to summon “Marilyn” out of the mirror.

  She confessed to Whitey, her makeup man, who knew her more intimately than any lover or husband could know her, “I’ve lost my courage. The courage of being young.”

  Whitey’s response was invariably reproachful.

  “Miss Monroe! You are a young, young woman.”

  “These eyes? No, I’m not.”

  Whitey peered into the mirror eyes with a faint shudder.

  “When I get finished with those eyes, Miss Monroe, then we’ll see.”

  Sometimes Whitey worked his magic and this was so. Sometimes not.

  At first on the set of Bus Stop it required a little more than the amount of time you’d reasonably expect for the Blond Actress to be prepared for the cameras. This young woman was so naturally beautiful, such soft luminous skin, such quick eyes, she might almost face the cameras with a light dusting of powder, lipstick, and rouge. Then by quick degrees it began to require pointedly more time. Was Whitey losing his touch? The actress’s skin wasn’t right, her makeup would have to be removed gently with cold cream and reapplied. Sometimes the hair wasn’t right. (But what could possibly be wrong with hair?) Dampened and reset and again dried with a hand blower. As Norma Jeane sat motionless before the mirror, eyes lowered in prayer.

  Please come. Please!

  Don’t abandon me. Please!

  The very one she’d scorned. This “Marilyn” she despised.

  The Playwright flew to Arizona to be with her. Though his life was in tatters. Though (he was in dread of telling her) he’d been issued a subpoena to appear again in Washington in the Caucus Room of the Old House Office Building, to explain his involvement in possible “subversive” and “clandestine” political activities as a young man.

  He was shocked to find the Blond Actress so distraught, so . . . unlike herself. There was nothing of the girl with the flaxen hair and golden laughter in her now.

  Oh, help me. Can you help me?

  Darling what is it? I love you.

  I don’t know. I want Cherie to live so badly. I don’t want Cherie to die.

  His heart was stricken with love of her. Why, she was just a child! As dependent upon him as one of his own children, years ago. Yet more dependent, because the children had had Esther, and Esther had been closer to them always.

  In her bed in the motel, shades drawn against the desert glare, they lay for hours. Whispering together, kissing and making love, and giving solace, she as much to him, for his soul was ravaged without her, he too was fearful of the world. In a dreamy twilit sleep they could lie for hours. They imagined (but perhaps this wasn’t imagination) they entered each other’s dreams, as if entering each other’s souls. Just hold me. Love me. Don’t let me go. The surreal desert landscape, red rock mountains and ridges like craters of the moon. The night sky, vast and intimidating and yet exhilarating as the Blond Actress had described it.

  I feel as if I could be healed, with you. With you here. If we were married. Oh, when can we be married! I’m so afraid something will happen to prevent us.

  His arm around her waist, he talked to her of the night sky. He said what came into his head. He spoke of a parallel universe in which they were already married and had twelve children. He made her laugh. He kissed her eyelids. He kissed her breasts. He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed the fingers. He told her what he knew of the constellation Gemini—for she’d told him she was a Gemini—the Twins: not warring twins but loving twins, loyal and devoted to each other. Even after death.

  It was noted how, within a day of the Playwright’s arrival, the Blond Actress began to revive. The Playwright, already a hero to some, became yet more a hero. It was as if the Blond Actress had had a blood transfusion. Yet the Playwright wasn’t drained of strength but appeared invigorated, rejuvenated, as well. A miracle!

  They were so in love, those two. Just to see them together . . . the way she held on to his arm, looked up at him. The way he looked at her.

  What was the Playwright’s secret? He reasoned with the Blond Actress as no other man had. Yes, he’d held her and comforted her; yes, he’d babied her as other men had done; but he’d also talked frankly with her. She liked that! Telling her sternly that she had to be realistic. She had to be professional. She was one of the most highly paid women performers in the world and she’d contracted to do a job. What had emotions to do with it? What had self-doubt to do with it? “You’re a responsible adult, Norma, and must behave responsibly.”

  Silently she kissed him on the lips.

  Oh, yes. He was right.

  Almost, she wished he would seize her arm and shake her, hard. As the Ex-Athlete had done, to awaken her.

  The Playwright warmed to his subject. He’d begun his playwriting career composing monologues, and the monologue was most natural to him as a form of speech. Hadn’t he warned her against too much theory? “I’ve always believed you were a natural actress, darling. Intellectualizing can only cripple you. In New York you obsessively prepared for acting classes, you exhausted yourself after a few weeks. That’s a sign of an amateur. A zealot. Maybe it’s a sign of talent, but I don’t think so. In my opinion it’s much better for an actor to retain an edge of something raw and unexplored in a character. That was John Barrymore’s secret. You’re a friend of Brando’s? That’s one of Brando’s techniques, too. Even to not completely know your lines, to be forced to invent, in the idiom of your character. A brilliant stage actor never gives the same performance twice. He doesn’t recite lines, he speaks them as if he’s hearing them for the first time. This is advice Pearlman should have given you, but you know Max: that pretentious Stanislavski ‘method.’ Frankly, it verges on bullshit. What if a hummingbird becomes conscious of its beating wings, its flight pattern, could it fly? If we become conscious of every word we utter, could we speak? Forget Pearlman. Forget Stanislavski. Forget bullshit theory. The danger for the actor is to overrehearse and burn out. There’ve been productions of
my plays where the director pushed the actors too hard; they peaked before opening night, lost their momentum, and went flat. This has happened with Pearlman. People boast of him there’s ‘blood on the floor of his rehearsal rooms’—more bullshit. You were claiming, darling, that you knew Cherie from the inside? Like a sister? Maybe that wasn’t altogether a good thing. Maybe it wasn’t even true. You should have acknowledged that Cherie is mysterious to you. As you’d told me Magda was so much more than I’d known. Why not let Cherie breathe a little? Trust to Cherie to surprise you, tomorrow on the set.”

  Another time, silently, trembling in gratitude, the Blond Actress stood on tiptoe to kiss the Playwright on his lips.

  Oh, yes. Thank God. He was right.

  There came pellagra-pale platinum-blond Cherie onto the set next morning in her tacky black-lace blouse, tight black satin skirt with a wide, tight black belt, and black-mesh stockings and spike-heeled black sandals. Sooty eyes, a luscious red baby-mouth, tremulous and contrite. Here was Marilyn on time! No, here was Cherie. We stared at this gorgeous woman gnawing at her bitten thumbnail like a girl in acting class, or like an actual simple-hearted girl, knowing damned well she’s been bad and she’s waiting to be scolded.