Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The genius of the actor! To summon energy out of what unspeakable depth of the soul. We can’t comprehend you. No wonder that we fear you. On a farther shore we stand, stretching our hands to you in awe.

  “We’ll try again, won’t we, Daddy? And again, and again?” She began to speak rapidly, who had not spoken for days. She was fierce and pitiless. Her sick eyes glistened. He, her husband, wanted to shield his eyes from her. “We won’t ever give up, Daddy? Will we? Ever? Promise?”

  The Afterlife

  1959–1962

  Death came unexpectedly, for I wanted it.

  —Vaslav Nijinski,

  Diary

  IN SYMPATHY

  My Beautiful Lost Daughter —

  Having heard of your tragic loss I wish to offer you my heartfelt condolences.

  The death of an unborn soul may lodge more painfully within us than any other for the innocence is unsullied.

  Dear Norma, I heard of your most recent sorrow in a time of sorrow of my own for my beloved wife of many years has passed away. I am awaiting a period of calm before considering what direction my life must now move in. I am not a young (nor a very well) man. I am probably going to sell my house & property (far too lavish for a solitary widower nearing 70, with ascetic tastes). I live near Griffith Park with a southward view of Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery where beloved Agnes is buried & where a plot awaits me one day. It is too sad and lonely

  Dear Daughter, the thought has come to me: It may be that your life has so changed, you would wish to live with me. My house is spacious I assure you, realtors call it a mansion.

  I heard of your sorrow in a vulgar way I’m afraid. In a “gossip column” in the Hollywood Tatler. (At the barber’s) Of course, it has been in the press by now. And also of your current “marital strain.”

  Your talent for the screen would seem so much greater, dear Daughter, than your talent for life. Your unhappy mother I came to believe carried poison in her loins like the brown recluse spider

  But I did not send this card of sympathy to you, to chide. Forgive me, my dear! And bless you.

  I do not see your films but see your beautiful face often & wonder you appear so untouched but the soul does not show in the face always, I suppose. Perhaps at age 33 in a woman

  I hope to contact you soon, dear Norma. Forgive an aging man his recalsitrance to reawaken old hurts.

  Your repentent and loving Father

  SUGAR KANE 1959

  I wanna be loved by you nobody else but you I wanna be loved by you nobody else but you I wanna be loved by you nobody else but you I wanna be loved by you alone she was trapped in this! she was trapped in I wanna be loved by you nobody else but you I wanna be loved by you alone she was drowning! smothering! I wanna be kissed by you nobody else but you I wanna be kissed by you alone she was Sugar Kane Kovalchick of Sweet Sue’s Society Syncopaters she was dazzling-blond Sugar Kane girl ukulelist she was the female body she was the female buttocks, breasts she was Sugar Kane dazzling-blond girl ukulelist fleeing male saxophonists her ukulele was pursued by male saxophones she would not be able to resist! again & again & always & they loved her for it I wanna be loved by you alone it was happening again, it was happening always & forever it was happening another time I wanna be loved by you nobody else but you she was cooing & smiling into the audience strumming the ukulele they’d taught her to play & her fingers moved with surprising dexterity for one so doped & drugged & terrified even as her gorgeous kissable mouth stammered I wanna! I wanna! I wanna be loved! just another variant of the sad, sick cow but they adored her & a man was falling in love with her on screen I wanna be kissed by you alone but was this funny? was this funny? was this funny? why was this funny? why was Sugar Kane funny? why were men dressed as women funny? why were men made up as women funny? why were men staggering in high heels funny? why was Sugar Kane funny, was Sugar Kane the supreme female impersonator? was this funny? why was this funny? why is female funny? why were people going to laugh at Sugar Kane & fall in love with Sugar Kane? why, another time? why would Sugar Kane Kovalchick girl ukulelist be such a box office success in America? why dazzling-blond girl ukulelist alcoholic Sugar Kane Kovalchick a success? why Some Like It Hot a masterpiece? why Monroe’s masterpiece? why Monroe’s most commercial movie? why did they love her? why when her life was in shreds like clawed silk? why when her life was in pieces like smashed glass? why when her insides had bled out? why when her insides had been scooped out? why when she carried poison in her womb? why when her head was ringing with pain? her mouth stinging with red ants? why when everybody on the set of the film hated her? resented her? feared her? why when she was drowning before their eyes? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do! why was Sugar Kane Kovalchick of Sweet Sue’s Society Syncopaters so seductive? I wanna be kissed by nobody else but you I wanna! I wanna! I wanna be loved by you alone but why? why was Marilyn so funny? why did the world adore Marilyn? who despised herself? was that why? why did the world love Marilyn? why when Marilyn had killed her baby? why when Marilyn had killed her babies? why did the world want to fuck Marilyn? why did the world want to fuck fuck fuck Marilyn? why did the world want to jam itself to the bloody hilt like a great tumescent sword in Marilyn? was it a riddle? was it a warning? was it just another joke? I wanna be loved by you” boop boopie do nobody else but you nobody else but you nobody else

  This curse of a compulsion! It was the Beggar Maid’s punishment.

  On the set came spontaneous applause. It was Monroe’s first full day, she’d been sick & absent & rumors circulated & there was her tall pale bespectacled husband in attendance like a mourner & yet she’d sung “I Wanna Be Loved by You” to win their hearts, they loved their Marilyn didn’t they! Yearning to love their Marilyn! W led the applause, which was his prerogative as director, & others joined in eagerly praising the blond actress & she was staring at the floor & biting her lower lip till almost it bled her sedated heart yet beating hard in an effort to know if these people were consciously lying or were themselves innocently deceived & waiting for them to cease she said calmly

  “No. I want to try again.”

  And again the absurd little ukulele like a toy instrument, an emblem of her toy-life & blond toy-soul & again the suggestive-seductive big-doll body movements like Mae West & Little Bo Peep in lurid commingling. The camera was a voyeur adoring Sugar Kane’s fattish body & the joke of it must be (between camera & audience) that Sugar Kane is too dumb to comprehend the joke’s on her, Sugar Kane must play it straight to the very death I wanna be loved by you nobody else but you I wanna be loved by you alone seeing the protruding unblinking all-knowing eyes of the Frog Chauffeur in the rearview mirror of the studio limo, he who was the Beggar Maid’s kinsman & knew her I wanna be loved by you nobody else but you I wanna be loved by you by you I wanna be loved by you I wanna be boop boopie do! boop boopie do! I wanna be

  “No. I want to try again.”

  And gradually Sugar Kane’s performance sharpened, from within she had a sense of its refinement by degrees though Sugar Kane was but a sex cartoon in another sex farce imagined by men for men for the laughing enjoyment of men Sugar Kane who is “Jell-O on springs” this role an insult & deeply wounding to Monroe & yet: Sugar Kane was written for her & who was Sugar Kane except the blond actress?

  “No. I want to try again.”

  I wanna be loved by you by you by you Not sharply! she hadn’t spoken sharply she was certain. Her hairdresser & Whitey her makeup man were witnesses. She listened to herself hearing her throaty-whispery-Marilyn voice at a distance like a telephone voice & she was certain she hadn’t spoken sharply to W, she would keep sharp in reserve. Still there was the threat of sharp. Since she’d returned to The Studio, the rumor was. The promise of sharp. As the glinting edge of a pristine razor blade is a threat & a promise of sharp. Saying to W the distinguished director whom The Studio had hired to please her, “Look, mister. You have Marilyn Monroe in this ridiculous film so use her, don’t fuck her up. And don’t tr
y to fuck with her, either.”

  It was like she’d died and come back to us this different person. They say she’d lost a baby boy. And she’d tried to kill herself. Drowning in the Atlantic Ocean! Monroe always had guts.

  After their unwanted & distracting applause, next take was a disaster & she forgot her lines & even her fingers betrayed her plucking wrong notes on the ukulele & she burst into sobs strangely without tears & pounded at her thighs in her silky-tight Sugar Kane costume (so tight she couldn’t sit down on the set & could only “rest” in a hollowed-out apparatus devised for such circumstances) & began to scream like a creature being killed & in a fury tore at her newly bleached fine-blown hair brittle as spun glass & would have raked her nails across her sweet-baby cosmetic mask of a face except W himself rushed to prevent her. “No! Marilyn, for God’s sake.” Seeing in Monroe’s crazed eyes his own looming fate. Doc Fell, resident physician, never far from the sound stage & from Monroe, was summoned & quickly appeared & with a nurse-assistant led his hysterically weeping patient away. In the privacy of the star’s dressing room once the dressing room of Marlene Dietrich who knew what magic potion was injected straight into the heart?

  I live now for my work. I live for my work. I live only for my work. One day I will do work deserving of my talent & desire. One day. This I pledge. This I vow. I want you to love me for my work. But if you don’t love me I can’t continue my work. So please love me!—so I can continue my work. I am trapped here! I am trapped in this blond mannequin with the face. I can only breathe through that face! Those nostrils! That mouth! Help me to be perfect. If God was in us, we would be perfect. God is not in us, we know this for we are not perfect. I don’t want money & fame I want only to be perfect. The blond mannequin Monroe is me & is not me. She is not me. She is what I was born. Yes I want you to love her. So you will love me. Oh I want to love you! Where are you? I look, I look & there is no one there.

  She’d driven in a borrowed car east on the Ventura Freeway to Griffith Park & to Forest Lawn Cemetery (where I. E. Shinn was buried & to her shame she’d forgotten where!) & gone for hours & no one knew & a blinding migraine coming on & still she drove & drove through miles of residential neighborhoods thinking So many people! so many! why did God make so many! not knowing exactly what she sought, whom she sought, yet confident she would recognize her father if she saw him. See?—that man is your father, Norma Jeane. More vivid to her mind, which was slipping and skidding like ice cubes tossed across a polished floor, than any person of her present-day life, this father. She could not allow herself to think he might be tormenting her. That his letters were not loving but cruel. Toying with her heart.

  My Beautiful Lost Daughter.

  Your repentent and loving Father.

  Toying with Norma Jeane as she’d observed in horror from a window of the Captain’s House the skinny but so-pregnant calico cat toying with a baby rabbit down on the lawn, allowing the dazed & bleeding & whimpering creature to drag itself a few inches in the grass & then pouncing upon it in glee & tearing & biting with carnivore teeth & again allowing the dazed & bleeding & whimpering creature to drag itself a few inches & then pouncing upon it until at last all that remained of the baby rabbit was the lower torso & legs still twitching in terror. (Her husband had not allowed her to intervene. It was only just nature. A cat’s nature. It would only upset her. It was too late, the rabbit was dying.) No. She could not bear to think so. She would not think so. “My father is an aging, ailing man. He doesn’t mean to be cruel. He’s ashamed to have abandoned me as a child. Leaving me with Gladys. He wants to make restitution. I could live with him and be his companion. A distinguished older man. White-haired. Well-to-do, I guess; but I could support us both. MARILYN MONROE AND HER FATHERHe would accompany me to openings. But why doesn’t he declare himself? Why is he waiting?”

  She was thirty-three years old! It crossed her mind that her father was ashamed of Marilyn Monroe & reluctant to publicly acknowledge their relationship. He called her only Norma. He spoke of not seeing Monroe’s films. It crossed her mind too that her father might be waiting for Gladys to die.

  “I can’t choose between them! I love them both.”

  Since returning to Los Angeles to begin work on Some Like It Hot, she’d seen Gladys only once. Though Gladys had presumably known about her pregnancy, she had not told Gladys of the miscarriage and Gladys had not inquired. Most of their visit was walking on the hospital grounds, to the fence and back.

  “My loyalty is to Mother. But my heart is his.”

  In such a state, she became lost in the hills above the city. She was lost in Forest Lawn Cemetery & she was lost in Griffith Park & finally she was lost in the suburb of Glendale & even if she’d returned to Hollywood & Beverly Hills she could not recall exactly where she was living. Courtesy of Mr. Z & The Studio. It was a small but tastefully furnished house not far from The Studio but she could not remember where. At a Glendale drugstore (where they recognized her, God damn she could see, staring & whispering & grinning & she was exhausted in rumpled clothing & no makeup & bloodshot eyes behind dark glasses) she telephoned Mr. Z’s office pleading like Sugar Kane & a driver was sent to bring her back to the house which at first she didn’t recognize, on Whittier Drive, flaming bougainvillea & palm trees & she’d had to be assisted to the door which was opened abruptly & there stood a tall furrow-faced anxious man of middle age with thick-lensed glasses & she seemed in her confusion & blinding migraine unable to recognize him.

  “Darling, for God’s sake. I’m your husband.”

  Thirty-seven takes of “I Wanna Be Loved by You” before Monroe was satisfied she couldn’t do any better. A number of the takes seemed to W and others nearly identical yet to Monroe there were small distinctions & these small distinctions were crucial to her as if her life depended upon it & to oppose her was to threaten her very life & the woman would respond in panic & rage. Everyone was exhausted. She was herself exhausted but satisfied, & was seen to smile. Cautiously W praised her. His Sugar Kane! Cautiously taking her hands & thanking her as often he’d done during The Seven-Year Itch filming & she’d responded with smiles & giggles of gratitude but now Monroe stiffened & drew back as a cat might, not liking at that moment to be touched, or to be touched by him. Her breath was quickened & fiery. W would claim it was combustible! W was a distinguished Hollywood director who’d directed this difficult actress in the earlier comedy which had been a commercial & critical success in 1955 & The Girl Upstairs a comic triumph but still Monroe didn’t trust him. It was only three years later but Monroe was so greatly changed W would not have known her. She wasn’t The Girl now. She wasn’t looking to him for approval & praise now. She wasn’t married to the Ex-Athlete now, & hiding her bruises & once on location in New York she’d broken down in W’s arms, sobbed as if her heart was broken, & W had held her like a father holding a child & he’d never forgotten the tenderness & vulnerability of that moment but Monroe had clearly forgotten. The truth was, Monroe didn’t trust anybody now.

  “How can I? There’s only one ‘Monroe.’ People are waiting to see her humiliated.”

  In her dressing room at The Studio sometimes she slept. The door locked, & DO NOT DISTURB posted, & one of them who adored her, often Whitey, keeping guard. Slept in only underpants & her breasts bared & body covered in sweat & smelling from the panic attacks & vomiting to exhaustion & the liquid Nembutal pulsing through her heart was so powerful she was drawn gently downward into a warm sheltering muck of dreamless sleep & the terrible racing of panic subsided & soothed & if my heart stops one day this is a risk I must accept & her frayed soul mended in sleep of how many hours, sometimes as many as fourteen, sometimes only two or three, except then waking in confusion & fear not knowing where she was, not after all in the dressing room at The Studio but in Baby’s Room at the summer house she had never once entered after the miscarriage, or an unknown room in a private home or even a hotel room & she was Norma Jeane waking to a scene of devastation wrought by a strang
er, a madwoman who had dumped makeup jars & tubes onto the floor, powder & talcum, yanked clothes off hangers in a heap in the closet, & sometimes her favorite books, pages torn from them & scattered, & the mirror cracked where a fist had been pounded against it (yes, Norma Jeane’s fist would be bruised) & once there was crimson lipstick smeared across the mirror like a savage shout & she rose shakily to her feet knowing she was responsible for cleaning this devastation, she would not wish others to see it, what shame, the shame of being Norma Jeane the daughter of a mother sent away to Norwalk & everybody knowing, the other children knowing, alarm & pity in their eyes.

  In the shuttered bedroom at the rear of the house on Whittier Drive a man was saying tenderly Norma you know I care for you so much & she was saying Yes I know & her mind drifting onto Sugar Kane & the next morning’s shoot which was a love scene between Sugar Kane & a man who adored her (in the movie) played by C who (in life) had come to despise Marilyn Monroe. Her childish selfish behavior, repeated failure to arrive at the sound stage on time & once there her inability to remember lines out of spite or stupidity or were the drugs destroying her brain forcing C & the others into retake after retake & C knew his performance in the film was deteriorating daily, & the director W would favor Monroe in the final cut because Monroe was the major attraction, the sick bitch. And so C despised her & at their climactic kissing scene how he’d wish to spit into Sugar Kane’s phony ingenue face for by this time the mere touch of Monroe’s legendary skin revulsed him & C would be Monroe’s enemy for life & after her death what tales C would tell of her! And so before the cameras next morning these two must kiss in a simulation of passion & even affection & the audience must believe & this prospect she was contemplating even as a man was speaking with her, pleading, What can I do to help you, darling? To help us. She recalled with a stab of guilt that this man who wished to comfort her, this quiet decent balding man, was her husband. What can I do to help us, darling? Only tell me. She tried to speak but there was cotton batting in her mouth. He was saying, stroking her arm It seems every day since Maine we’re growing more distant & she murmured a vague reply & he said in anguish I’m so worried about you, darling. Your health. These drugs. Are you trying to destroy yourself, Norma? What are you doing to your life? & last she pushed him away saying coldly But what business of yours is my life? Who are you?