by John Rechy
She led the bellman carrying her bags to a side entrance she had spotted earlier. She pictured Troja and Kirk waiting for her, waiting, waiting longer. Then Troja—no, Kirk—would say, “We frightened her, we didn’t treat her as good as we should have.” And Troja would say, “But we didn’t mean to scare her. Yes, you’re right, Kirk. We should have treated her much better. We’ve lost a true friend. She would have stood by us.”
“Please take my luggage back to the front entrance,” Normalyn redirected the impatient porter.
Outside, she waved at Kirk and Troja. As they drove away from the hotel, she said aloud, “I’m glad I left Gibson, Texas!”
Kirk reminisced: “I was in Dallas once. A woman married to an oilman invited me. Used to call myself ‘Chance’ then.” He smiled at a wayward fond memory. “Hadn’t been in the hotel more than five minutes when two men busted in, kept calling me ‘boy,’ said if I wasn’t out of Texas on the next plane, they’d kill me.” He told the extraordinary story in an ordinary tone. “I knew they meant it. Shit, if they could kill John Kennedy and cover that up, they could sure as hell kill me, easy.”
“I know they killed him in Texas!” Normalyn snapped.
They reached the angled house with the single palmtree.
“I have to unpack and bathe!” Normalyn stalked in ahead of Kirk, who carried her bags. In the rumpled room, she removed boxes from a table she hadn’t known was there. She located it next to the bed. Then she took out Enid’s chipped angel. She placed it there. She touched the hurt wing. She faced Troja, who stood at the door. “These boxes have to go out!”
“Well, damn if you hain’t taken ovuh th’ manse. Freein’ the darkies, Lord bless!” Then Troja’s precise words shot out: “What you so mad about your first day as a guest in this house?”
“A paying guest!” Normalyn did not know why Kirk’s story continued to disturb her.
“You’re getting a bargain,” Troja told her.
“Doing you a big favor.” Normalyn counted money out of her purse and gave it to Troja. “Two days’ rent. If I leave earlier, you can keep the rest.”
“Not enough!”
Normalyn added five dollars. “And I might as well tell you,” she raised her voice for Kirk to hear, “that I cashed enough money only for today. I left the rest in the safe deposit box at the hotel—locked.” She congratulated herself for her cunning way of dealing with cunning people; but her triumph was instantly dampened by Troja’s reaction.
The black woman roared with laughter. Then in her shantiest tone she said, “You a mighty smart young miss for a fact!”
Normalyn was not entirely sure she would stay through the day. Why had she even come back?
Kirk had already snorted two pinches of the white powder—“for energy,” he told Troja—and gone to work out with weights in a small back porch. The clanging of the weights angered Normalyn even more as she pushed the boxes in the room against the walls. Then she discovered: a lamp, a prettily framed mirror, and a large walk-in closet. In a conciliatory mood, Troja donated a rainbow-spectrumed scarf to the lamp; and even Kirk, through working out, was moving the boxes out.
“Look!” Troja had uncovered a trophy among the clutter. On it, the carved male figure of a muscular man was oxidizing. His, from a distant contest, Kirk held it as if it were something very delicate. Then he dumped it back into an old box. Normalyn had seen the designation: “3rd Place. Mr. America. 1963.”
Troja followed him into the other room. He snorted the white powder twice into each nostril. He turned on the television, loud. The station’s ridiculous “rhymin’ weatherman Clive Barnes,” was predicting “cheerful skies for worried eyes.” “Fucking asshole!” Kirk clicked him off. The focused anger ended the abrupt mood.
At dinner—frozen food trays, Normalyn saw despondently— Troja and Kirk discussed new jobs: Kirk “bartending”—but not in “those fucking cuffs, goddamned bow tie choking me” —and Troja “entertaining”—but not, she emphasized, to be ridiculed. Neither mentioned Duke, but Troja fingered the paper he had left. Normalyn welcomed that Kirk offered to go rent an “old movie” to watch on their VCR. “A love story or a horror story,” Troja recommended.
Feeling awkward in this foreign house she found herself living in—how, exactly, had it happened?—Normalyn went to “arrange” her room further. She was still there when Kirk returned with a movie cassette and a tabloid newspaper he claimed Troja liked and she claimed he did. “That fuckin’ reporter’s at it again about Marilyn Monroe having a daughter,” he told Troja: Normalyn listened attentively.
“That’s what made that jerk Holden insist on that crazy billing,” Troja accused. “That reporter can’t stop writing about that.”
Normalyn stood at the open door.
Troja sat on the bed with Kirk, scrutinizing the newspaper. His arm was about her, loosely. Her body seemed to melt at the touch, as if it were she who was embracing him.
Normalyn forced herself not to move, to stay away from the newspaper they were reading.
Kirk saw Normalyn. “I heard him on a talk show once,” he told her. “He kept saying he’s going to find out the truth about Marilyn, but he wouldn’t say what truth he’s looking for.”
“Just lies,” Troja dismissed. “Like people always claiming famous dead people are still alive.
“Yeah, they keep saying that about James Dean,” Kirk agreed. “Know huccome?” Troja pressed closer to him. “Cause only real people die. Stars aren’t real, they’re created," she said proudly. . . . “That’s a mean picture of her.” Troja looked away from the newspaper photograph toward the one she kept framed of the movie star. “So beautiful,” she said. “She fought for her beauty—wasn’t born with it like that.”
Pretending to be looking for “something” in the room, Normalyn positioned herself so she could look at the newspaper. She saw the headline:
NEW CLAIM MARILYN HAD SECRET DAUGHTER.
She took the newspaper—“Let me see that.” Did she only imagine Kirk’s eyes clamped on her as he relinquished the tabloid?
She saw immediately what Troja had called “cruel.” On the front page under the screaming headline was a large photograph of Marilyn Monroe taken after one of her “crises”— unidentified. The camera had cornered her against the angle of two white walls. Although grainy, the picture revealed a despondent woman, trapped.
“May I?” Normalyn did not look at them, but she was sure both Kirk and Troja were staring at her now. The story under the headline claimed only that a woman in a sanitarium —“according to attendants”—asserted that the star had given birth to a child, a secret kept hidden by “powerful figures.” That cursory account seemed intended to prop the last paragraph: “Recent disclosures involving the star’s alleged involvement with the Kennedy brothers are stirring new interest in circles of power.” In an adjoining boxed story next to it, about the Dead Movie Stars and their “sudden celebrity,” someone “who goes by the assumed name of Lady Star” was quoted as announcing that the cult group was exploring “a dramatic recent development” that might shed “new light on the secret lives of one of the two greatest female stars in history.” Lady Star had tantalized by saying that “the development” concerned either Verna La Maye or Marilyn Monroe.
The writer of both stories was David Lange. There is nothing mysterious about her death, only her life. Normalyn remembered the words attributed to this man in Enid’s newsclipping. Enid had drawn a dark black question mark over his name. Years later he was still exploring the movie star’s life!
Normalyn indicated her indifference to the article by pushing the paper away—“just trash.” She sat on the floor to watch the movie Kirk had inserted into the VCR. “Has he been writing these lies for long?” Normalyn yawned to underscore her lack of interest.
“Yeah—a long time—but he’s been at it really strong recently for”—Kirk paused, figuring it out—“for about two weeks, yeah, more or less.”
“Oh,” Normaly
n said.
Kirk pushed the “start” button for the movie. “It’s The Maltese Falcon,” he told Normalyn. “A favorite of mine.”
“Mine, too.” Troja prepared to share it with him. “I love it when the fake bird they’ve all been looking for just gets plopped right down before them.”
Normalyn tried to watch the movie, but her attention refused it. The power of Enid’s letter! She marveled at it. Right now it had even made her feel that the article was somehow addressed to her! She had to find one central, clear lie in Enid’s claimed life, a lie powerful enough to render the letter itself a lie—and to free her from its terrible power. Without knowing it, Troja had told her earlier where she must go to find that lie.
Six
The old man stooped over the organ as if he were very, very tired, but his fingers glided over the keys as if they possessed a separate energy, life, creating notes that were resonant with passionate reverence. The strains of Handel’s mighty Messiah, the “Hallelujah Chorus,” reverberated throughout the cavernous Temple of Divine Love in Echo Park.
It was here years ago that Aimée Semple McPherson, the queen of religious drama, decked herself in saintly robes of white and gold and ruled over thousands of the devout, cajoling and pleading with them, a star of evangelists, soon to fall in scandal from the constellation of great preachers. She had been kidnapped! She was held in a secret place! She escaped! Those were the conjectures that befell her saintliness when she disappeared at the peak of her following; and that is what she claimed when she reappeared, triumphant, this lusty voice of God. But another truth emerged: She had kept a weeks-long tryst with one of the strong workmen at her Temple of Divine Love. She crashed from her private heaven, and was replaced by a new hierarchy, whose reigning stars were Katharine Kuhlman, subdued, ghostly, veiled in soft gauzes, draped in hair that cascaded to white shoulders, and Sister Woman, equally subdued, even more powerful—some said deadly— insinuating her strong fragile presence on television screens, uttering whispered blessings and curses in equal tones from this same pulpit.
The Temple of Divine Love remains inviolate, its great dome illumined by lightning streaks of gold, its divine pulpit held aloft by a nest of worshipful flowers, its white rotunda a configuration of azure pools. Across the street is a green park with a lake, where giant waterlilies float on their own enormous leaves, as if shaped by the musical radiance emanating from the Temple of Divine Love, where now the old man bent over its great organ, golden pipes creating an altar before him. And the bellowing notes of the wondrous Messiah soared high to the gold-veined ceiling, floated there, trembled violently and then flowed gloriously released under arcs and corridors that branched into rooms in the intricate network of the Temple of Divine Love, which was decorated everywhere with pictures of Christ in flowing ceremonial robes, resurrected, resplendent with faith.
Normalyn and Troja were awed. They practiced reverential looks; both had worn subdued dresses—Troja had added an elegant hat. They walked toward the stooped man. Old, old, his form, with a silver head of hair, was frail over the organ. As the two neared him, his body seemed to be wearying even more; but as it wearied, the music became ever more vibrant, as if he were pouring into it the very last of his sacrificial waning life.
Normalyn made a soft sound, and Troja echoed with a subdued cough, to make him aware of their presences.
The old man turned. His eyes were watery gray but shiny. His long frail fingers pulled away from the keys of the organ, abandoning the pulsing echoes. The bent body adjusted itself stiffly.
“What the fuck you bitches want?” he thrust at them in an ugly gravelly voice.
“What a dirty old man you are!” Troja rose to the assault.
“What do you mean, a-walking in like that and scaring the shit out of me?” the old man said.
“Don’t you talk to us like that, you feeble bastard,” Troja shot back.
“Just don’t you call me names, bitch!” he snarled.
“Motherfucker!” Troja chose an exact word.
2
Earlier this morning, at breakfast, Normalyn had announced, “Today I have to go to the Temple of Divine Love.” She had firmed her decision by speaking it aloud.
“Hon,” Troja asked cautiously, “you’re not one of those, uh, born-agains?”
“No, I just have to—” She had not prepared an excuse. “I just have to look up some records, locate some relatives,” Normalyn made up.
“Hmmm. How you gonna get there?” Troja inquired.
“Walk,” Normalyn said.
Kirk almost laughed. “It’s miles away. We’ll drive you.”
“Yes!” Troja agreed to the outing.
At the last, Kirk had decided he had to work out and: “There’s an old movie I want to see this morning. Do you good to get away,” he said to Troja.
Troja had looked despondently at Normalyn—feeling stuck with her, Normalyn was sure. She’d have to assert that Troja wait outside for her.
3
Now in the Temple of Divine Love, the old man said, “Will you two ladies kindly tell me what you want?”
“That’s much better . . . sir,” Troja said through tightened lips.
“Considering it’s the Lord’s house,” Normalyn contributed sarcasm.
“Lord’s house, shit. McPherson’s house,” the old man barked. “Crazy to the end; took an overdose and died. Flew in to preach once, hooked on a wire contraption thinking she looked like an angel, but I say she looked like a damn loon. Fooled everyone till they caught her with her pants down.”
“What a foul-mouthed old man,” Troja said loftily.
“You got a mouth on you, too, girl,” the old man said.
“Don’t you call her girl!” Normalyn protested.
“Well, you both are, because if you want something from me, you’d better walk light.” He looked slyly at them, a trace of a grin. “Now, what is it?”
“Some official records.” Suddenly Normalyn was tense. Earlier, Troja had simply walked in with her because: “You actin’ real strange, hon.”
“Should’ve gone to Records, then,” the old man growled, “instead of sneaking into this sanctum—closed to the public except for services.”
“It was open,” Troja prepared to snap back.
“Okay, what?” the old man asked Normalyn.
Normalyn breathed deeply before she spoke: “I’m trying to locate the record of a baptism, a girl’s, baptized here in 1926 by Aimée Semple McPherson.” She had managed all the words.
“Norma Jeane Baker! Became that big movie star!” the old man said knowledgeably. He recited: “Baptized in December, 1926, by McPherson herself. They all come around asking about her." He shook his head at the puzzlement of stardom. “Come to ask about her, see where she was baptized.”
“Not her,” Normalyn said. “Someone else.” There was no doubt in her mind, none. Enid had seized even her origin from Norma Jeane. Everything was a lie!
“Come along, I’ll take you where you should have gone. Hell, I’m tired of the fucking organ.”
They followed him through hallways. Along them, men and women nodded reverentially to him. “Afternoon, Brother.” “Afternoon, Sister.”
He ushered them into a waiting room with pictures of a shiny-faced Jesus. “What name?” he demanded.
“Enid Morgan.” Suddenly Normalyn felt very sad, sad for the woman who had died in her starlet’s room. She spelled her name softly, “E-n-i-d.”
“I know how to spell, dammit! Do I look stupid?” The man wrote down the name, and he disappeared into smaller rooms.
Normalyn waited quietly. She did not look at Troja, did not want to have to interpret her reaction.
The man returned. “No one by that name. Not that year, not before, not after. Somebody gave you wrong information, girl.”
Normalyn was exultant! Released! “Enid lied, my mother lied!” she told Troja, who frowned. One simple step and it was over.
“That Enid Morton
was your mother?” The old man, too, was baffled by Normalyn’s reaction.
Normalyn felt jerked back into doubts. “Not Morton—Morgan.”
“Why didn’t you say that?” . . . When the old man returned this time, he held another piece of paper. “She didn’t lie. Here it is.” He read: “Enid Morgan. Baptized in 1926 by Sister Aimée Semple McPherson in the Temple of Divine Love. Mother’s maiden name: Kathleen Morgan. Father: Edward Stern.”
4
A dark-haired youngwoman, almost smiling, radiating a natural beauty captured by the camera in the photograph left for Normalyn on the dresser in Gibson, Texas—that proud woman had rejected her own father’s name, had chosen her mother’s instead; she had dismissed him and his name. . . . Instead of a lie, Normalyn had found a truth that connected Enid and the movie star from the beginning.
Normalyn stood with Troja outside the Temple of Divine Love. They faced the park where waterlilies crowded the lake. Smallish houses like villas, tangles of bougainvillea crawling over them, occupied the area.
Troja adjusted her hat to shade the glaring sun. “What really happened in there, hon?”
“Nothing!” Normalyn said tensely.
Troja reacted to the anger: “Guess you just plain crazy then.”
The shadow of a pine tree dipped over and clouded Normalyn’s sight. “Don’t you ever say I’m crazy!” she yelled at Troja. She fought the sudden feeling of being swept into darkness.
Troja gauged the intense reaction to the careless words. “Come on, we’ll take a drive,” she assuaged. “Do Kirk good to miss me.”
The darkness receded as the pine tree swayed and the sun fell on Normalyn’s face.
The ocean shimmered in the near distance when Troja swerved off the freeway. On this white day, exposed tanned bodies roamed the patchwork streets of Venice. As they walked along the edge of the beach, Normalyn told Troja about Enid’s suicide, told her about the overwhelming love, then islets of it in what became a sea of anger in the last years.