by John Rechy
“Well, even without what happened afterwards,” Jim resigned himself, “that was one of your best stories, Miss Bertha. It was like you were really there, seeing it happen, like in a movie when people start remembering and then there they are. I gotta admit at first I couldn’t see the dark woman with Marilyn—until Normalyn filled parts in, and then you just went right on like you’d put her there all along, Miss Bertha,” Jim congratulated. One part had chilled Jim, when Miss Bertha was talking about “the blackness” and Normalyn kept staring at the picture in the other room as if the darkness in it were pulling her in.
But now, except for this damn silence, Normalyn seemed all right, even though Miss Bertha kept studying her like an owl. Jim glanced at his watch. He was seriously hungry. He’d take Normalyn to a good coffee shop. Then she’d feel less bad about missing the bus. He’d offer to rent a room for the night, and— What if she didn’t believe him? What if she said no! Only now did he allow himself to consider that, because it had all seemed so impossible at the beginning.
Suddenly Normalyn laughed, scaring the cats lounging about Miss Bertha. The spell had broken. She was laughing at herself. “So that’s how you pretend, Miss Bertha.”
“That’s how, dearheart,” Miss Bertha laughed with her. “Lord, what a soul does to feel important.”
Normalyn’s laughter stopped. She had not wanted to offend this sweet woman, just banish any lingering seriousness. Jim’s look was reproving her. Normalyn would have apologized quickly except that Miss Bertha seemed just as eager as she to laugh the seriousness away. Why? Was she afraid? Of what? Those new questions occurred abruptly, just when she was sure she was free of the story’s spell.
Jim was not free of it either. The abrupt ending kept tugging at him, so mysterious, with hints of great danger. “But, Miss Bertha,” he decided to try again, “why was there so much danger?’
“Why?” Miss Bertha repeated vaguely. “Why?” She seemed to transform the question into one of her own. She shook her head as if to toss pursuing memories. She removed her glasses. Her eyes had a new brightness. She raised her chin defiantly. Then her words came in an outburst of rage, in a voice so firm and strong that it was as if the placid woman had been transformed into a powerful one charged by indignation: “It was the goddamned evil times!” She seemed to address distant figures: “I have opposed injustice in all its forms! So did my husband! I am no stranger to fascism, whether it calls itself patriotism, socialism, communism, or democracy! I have supported the just causes you decry! I said I would name fellow travelers, and so I will: Jefferson! Lincoln! Roosevelt!”
Relieved to recognize the story—startled by the transformation at first—Jim explained quickly to Normalyn, “That’s what she told that damn Un-American Committee in Hollywood long ago. Go on, Miss Bertha!” The next was Jim’s favorite part.
“And having named names, gentlemen of this committee,” Miss Bertha continued in her renewed voice, “I will add a message of counsel to you fascists, you true un-Americans: Fuck you!”
Jim burst into delighted laughter, applauding.
Miss Bertha seemed suddenly startled by her recitation. She looked about her, as if to reorient herself. She looked at Jim and Normalyn as if not sure whether she had spoken or thought her passionate declamation. “Did I—?”
“Just thought it.” A subdued Jim answered her concerned look.
Miss Bertha replaced her glasses. Her body softened, finding cozy edges of comfort in the large chair. She checked to see whether the architecture of her hair was surviving.
The words the old woman had spoken with such power were the words attributed to Alberta Holland in the clipping in Normalyn’s purse—and Miss Bertha had referred to them earlier in her story. Normalyn leaned toward the woman, demanding her attention. “Enid Morgan died a few days ago,” she said. Even now the words were drained of reality.
“Who was Enid?” Miss Bertha asked absently.
Jim was baffled: “Miss Bertha, Enid was the woman in your story.”
Normalyn refused a sense of betrayal at the woman’s words. She finished aloud, to herself now, “Enid was my mother.”
“Was she, dearheart?” Miss Bertha sighed sadly. She bowed her head. “And that’s why you’re here from Texas.”
“Your mother was that beautiful woman you put into Miss Bertha’s story?” Jim understood. “Normalyn, did she really know Marilyn?”
“Yes,” Miss Bertha answered. “Enid Morgan knew Marilyn very well.” Her voice was weary. She closed her eyes.
The startling lithograph in the other room seemed alive to Normalyn now. “Are you Alberta Holland?” she asked quietly.
“Alberta Holland is dead; everyone knows that. She fled to Switzerland, and died there, with a trusted friend. Why, her obituary is included in that book about her—it’s somewhere here. It’s where I read her words to that committee,” Miss Bertha sighed.
“But you told me you said it.” Jim was surprised; she had never denied that.
Miss Bertha’s words drifted on: “Her obituary noted that she had courage at one time, stood up to the inquisitors, exhorted others never to flee. But when she made a tragic mistake, she ran away, and finally she did not speak out.” She said to Normalyn, “So, dearheart, even if Alberta Holland were alive—and she isn’t, everyone knows that—she would still be frightened to speak out.” She adjusted the heavy lashes over one lid. Her voice was spirited again. “Now, when I pretend to counsel Marilyn, I tell her not to go to the Ambassador Hotel. That’s where she got her first modeling assignment, where she started her journey”—the voice broke—“that ended in a lonesome locked room with a dead telephone connection.” Behind her glasses, Miss Bertha’s eyes blinked, closed for a moment. She faced Normalyn. “Are you, my dear, one of those candidates for those Dead Movie Stars—”
“No.”
“—or are you really Norma . . . lyn?”
Normalyn nodded.
Miss Bertha raised her hand in an uncompleted gesture, perhaps a motioning to one of the cats, perhaps a blessing. Her hand rose toward her hair, stopped, abandoned the effort.
Then Jim realized how old Miss Bertha really was, how tired, nodding in her chair, eyes closed for lengthening seconds, trying not to fall asleep, her head leaning to one side. One day he would come over, ring the bell, and she would not answer. He gathered the two prowling cats and placed them on her lap.
He signaled Normalyn to leave, to leave softly.
Normalyn stood up, walking quietly away.
Miss Bertha nodded awake once more. She seemed to see Jim and Normalyn clearly again for moments. “Just remember, sailor, I’ll always have a frosty beer for ya.” Then out of a limbo of near-sleep, she sighed, “Come back when you’re ready, dearheart . . . Normalyn.”
A sweet woman, just a sweet old woman she was leaving behind now to move into her real journey of discovery, Normalyn thought with sadness and anticipation.
“Bye, Miss Bertha,” Jim whispered.
Miss Bertha said to herself in sleepy wonder, “Why, it’s night already.” Then she no longer resisted weariness. Tiny sounds of sleep emanated from her lips as her dyed curls released their firm hold, relinquishing the elaborate creation of her hair.
2
“She lied!” The moment Normalyn stepped out of Miss Bertha’s unique reality—unreality!—she was enraged by what had occurred there—or what had not. She could not define either. What had she expected?
She and Jim stood on the sidewalk. A faded moon in a filmy sky gave Miss Bertha’s garden a dark harmony.
“Lied about what?”
That further aggravated Normalyn. “About everything!” She tried to push away the lingering image of the placid sleeping form they had just left, so full of weariness. “And you tricked me into going there!”
So much for staying over. Jim led her away from the house a short distance. He faced her squarely: “I didn’t get far in school because we was poor and I had to join the goddamn navy,
but I told you before I ain’t stupid. Miss Bertha told you right off she just imagines things. So don’t talk like that about my friend. I love that crazy old woman—and don’t you call her that,” he warned quickly.
“And I told you—” She couldn’t think of what to accuse him of. Her confusions were ganging up.
Mist hovered over buildings in the city as they walked into the electric streets, people everywhere, sailors, in and out of arcades with videos promising flesh and ecstasy.
“And don’t think I don’t know Alan Ladd wasn’t short,” Jim extended his loyalty. “She just told me that because she knew it would make me feel good, but I want you to know something: I never been self-conscious about being short.”
“But Alan Ladd was short, everyone knows that.” Normalyn knew.
“Damn,” Jim said. And added, “You see!”
She felt close to him. He had disbelieved, the way she did about even possibly being “pretty,” ever. “Besides,” she said softly, “you’re not really short.” To resist the closeness she felt at his elated response, she walked ahead. Where? This was her first night away from Gibson! The nights on the bus had been shared with strangers. She was certain now that her suitcases would have gone on to Los Angeles. When she felt eyes on her, she waited for Jim to catch up with her.
Realizing that, he held her hand.
His touch felt warm, good.
The prepared bravado of his earlier imaginings evaporated; he said, “Normalyn, would you please consider staying over in Long Beach tonight?” He easily abandoned his story about the last bus out of Long Beach.
“With you,” she said. She pressed his hand back. The pleasure she had tested grew. Fear stabbed. She slipped her hand away.
He looked at his own hand, abandoned.
I’m sorry, she wanted to say, but those were words of selfaccusation from her past. Yes, if she was to allow life, she had to banish the fear that merely holding his hand had aroused. This youngman knew her within her brief present only, not in the long past that belonged entirely to Enid. He had been so kind with Miss Bertha. And she was attracted to him. Yes, she tested to herself. “Yes,” she said. Just to hear the word aloud.
“Damn!” he congratulated this development. “Damn!”
“But without doing anything and in separate beds,” she clarified. Like with Ted, that night of fear.
“What?” He looked baffled at this strange girl, really strange, and so goddamned innocent. She truly trusted him!—and that made him feel good, although maybe she trusted him only because she was so damn lost, in Long Beach and thinking it was Los Angeles!
“I mean it,” she told him. “Only if you swear.”
He couldn’t believe it, but he was swearing—and he meant it! If she stayed over, that meant he could see her tomorrow, whatever didn’t happen tonight; and then— “I swear,” he said. “But you gotta promise to let me know if you change your mind.” He had to be true to himself.
She drew back, ready to pull inside herself again.
“I promised,” he reminded.
“Okay.” Despondent with confusion, she looked up at the sky—murky.
Jim guided her along the street. “We’ll get a room in that real good motel across the street, over there.”
She looked at the oasis of palmtrees he had indicated, puddles of hidden pastel lights among units constructed like large colored plastic blocks about a pool.
“Is it all right?” Suddenly the motel looked awful.
“Yes,” she said. From here, the small lobby shone with chrome.
“We’ll register now and—”
“I’m hungry,” she said, honestly.
“Okay, we’ll get hamburgers first,” he adjusted. “Come on!” Everything was so right he was becoming apprehensive.
She did not move. “You go ahead. I’ll wait here.”
He looked at her. She was so forlorn under the pale yellow street light. “I promised, Normalyn, and I mean it,” he repeated. She was searching the street anxiously. He understood: “You intend to run away from me.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to.” He tried not to sound bitter. “I was going to lie earlier to you, tell you the buses stopped running at night and you’d have to stay over. But I didn’t. So you don’t have to lie to me.”
Normalyn ran away in the direction of the beach—away from the memory of hands tearing at her dress as she spat out dirty sand.
Part Three
Los Angeles
One
A flood of morning light splashed Los Angeles. Early wind had banished the night’s fog and swept away the smoggy haze.
In that light, even old buildings looked fresh. New buildings of chrome geometry—banks, corporations, hotels—floated on waves of reflected light. Everywhere, palmtrees pushed high into the sky.
Normalyn sat by the window of the bus and was dazzled. Now she was in Los Angeles, and Gibson was a million miles away!
Last night she had run to the beach, so terrified of pursuing memories that the darkness did not frighten her. She despised Ted Gonzales! She sat on the sand. Distant city lights shone mutedly on the water. Yes, on a shoreline like this Enid had led her to the blonde woman, who had lain in the dark, like Marilyn Monroe in the picture in Miss Bertha’s dining room. The memory flowed away. She sat on the sand and cried.
She returned to the bus station, only to learn that the last bus out of Long Beach had left. On a bench, she tried to sleep, and told herself—knew, had to know—that tomorrow when Jim told Miss Bertha what had occurred, the old woman would explain— Everything!
In the morning she took the first bus into Los Angeles. Along the coastline white light swam on the water’s surface.
In the bus depot in downtown Los Angeles, Normalyn felt disheveled but exhilarated. Dozens of people waited impatiently for their luggage. Poor people wandered among fresh-faced men and women. She would get her bags later. She wanted to be in the city.
She rushed outside of the beehive terminal. On the sidewalk, she looked down at her shadow. There it was, under the California sun!—her shadow, bold, present, hers. And she had seen it on the beach yesterday, too! She had acquired her own memories: of Miss Bertha, who would fade into a web of riddles and suddenly reappear, so clear; of Jim—she could return, but not yet, not yet retrace her steps— . . . And Ted? The new Ted? She resurrected him from the inundation of last night’s anger.
Inside the terminal, she claimed her suitcases. She took out fresh clothes, cherishing the thought that she must look like a very experienced traveler. She left the bags in the rental boxes lining the walls, with timed keys.
In the slick restroom, an old rumpled woman slept on a pile of dirty rags, ignored by others at the washbasins. Normalyn recoiled. In Gibson, poverty was hidden—in the fields, in shanties.
Normalyn washed diligently. In a cubicle, she changed her clothes. Then before the row of mirrors, she brushed her hair. It had a new shine! With Enid’s makeup box, she made herself up, lightly, without realizing that she was trying to hide what she was doing.
“You act as if you’re not sure how you look,” said a woman next to her, a reedy woman with a severe face that smiled with a frown.
I don’t! Normalyn stared at herself.
“A little more blush. And remember, brush up!” the woman instructed. “Are you here to try to get into films?”
The old woman on rags roused herself from the floor. “Whore!” she yelled.
Normalyn reached up to her face, to wipe away the makeup.
“She was talking about herself,” the reedy woman said to Normalyn. “Just pity her.”
“Why should she?” demanded a heavy woman beside her.
“What!” the severe woman reacted.
“I said, why? Are you deaf or don’t I talk clear?” She said to Normalyn, “Be careful who you listen to—lots of locos, lots of bad turns that look good. I oughta know.” She shook her fleshy body.
“Awful!” s
aid the lean woman.
“Why?” said the chubby one. “Cause you can’t shake yours? Then rattle your damn bones!”
Normalyn fled.
She hired one of the men in uniform to wheel her bags outside. “How much am I supposed to tip you?” she asked. When in earlier years she had taken trips with Enid, Enid had always charmed everyone, done everything right. Normalyn had not paid attention, certain no one would ever notice her.
“What are you trying to pull?” the man said suspiciously.
“I just asked—”
“What if I’da said ten dollars?” The man peered at her.
“I wouldn’t have given you that much.” She put one dollar into his outstretched hand. He abandoned her bags on the sidewalk.
In the warm sun, Normalyn tested her smile. She rehearsed a wide smile.
“Wha’s happ’nin’, baby?” a man winked at her.
She undid the smile and turned away. She motioned for a cab. As she waited, she saw her reflection, a glassy outline in a shiny window. At the same time, she heard—with terrified bewilderment—the words one youngman nearby spoke excitedly to another:
“That’s Normalyn! She’s Marilyn’s daughter!”
“What?”
The two youngmen, one holding a smart tote bag over his shoulder, glanced at her, puzzled. They moved on.
Behind her, in the window of a theater-ticket agency, was a large poster:
Hollywood Four Star
Theater Club
Presents
A NIGHT OF LEGENDS
Starring
N O R M A - L Y N
“Marilyn’s Daughter”
(Saturday P.M. Only)
Like an incandescent shadow over the length of the poster, the extravagantly curved black silhouette of a woman was outlined by a haze of silver. Only the lips—red—had been drawn on the face.
Normalyn turned away, for any protection from this startling moment. The cab driver was honking at her. She fled her own reflection superimposed on the other. The driver gathered her bags into the trunk.
“Where to?”