by John Rechy
That aroused him even more.
When he was naked—he was a little beefier than she had imagined, but she did not mind—his hands sculpted her breasts. Tiny glittering beads scattered. Laughing, she bent to put more sequins on her fingers, to paste them on her breasts for him to admire again.
He placed one hand on her smooth shoulder.
Her narrowed, dark-lashed blue eyes looked up at him. Now into her revery came this: She is looking up at the man who will rule from the country’s greatest home, the man who can confirm the power of Marilyn Monroe, because he has everything, everything . . . father! . . . mother! . . . father— . . . She felt like a child, not young, just a child, a needful child, desperate to be acknowledged. And for that she must please, be approved, be wanted!
He raised her up.
Now she is lying on satin sheets with him! She resumed her revery—and realized that for the first time in her fantasies she had been thinking she, her, not I, me.
He entered her.
She tossed her head back, her body jerked with his, her mind screamed: Norma Jeane!
The few sequins that had remained on her body clung to the hairs on his chest, a light film of sweat.
As he lay on the rumpled bed—his mind on to the political matters of tomorrow—she put on the torn dress meant to be worn only once, by her. Almost all of its sequins were gone. It occurred to her—an unwelcome thought—that she looked as if she had been raped. She covered herself with the flowing blue cape. She painted her lips, slashed moist red across them. In the mirror she saw an only vaguely familiar outline.
Before she raised the cowl to conceal herself again, she stood before him, so he would ask her to come back.
He smiled a vague smile. “You gave me a pretty present for my nomination.” He meant that lightly, only lightly. He could be a cool man; he was not a cruel one.
“Th-th-thank you, Mr. President,” Marilyn Monroe heard Norma Jeane whisper.
* * *
Be brave, dear heart, listen to what you must hear!
Normalyn tried to contain rampant feelings, rampant memories of Enid.
Oh, dearheart—. . .
Not even Miss Bertha could soothe her.
Inhaling sadly, the Contender for Marilyn Monroe scattered a few gold sequins over the quilted pad on which she had lain i with the sturdy youngman before the panel of Dead Movie : Stars. The youngman who had played the Senator in their elaborate audition rejoined the lanky one. The dark-haired youngwoman and the woman with the perfect gray wig still waited in the shadows.
In the basement, there was silenced awe.
“And how the hell do you know what went on in that bedroom, darling!” Lady Star yanked attention back to the reality of the darkened basement. The contender was emerging as a powerful figure. Lady Star must move swiftly, take a risk. At her words, the panel pulled back, only slightly, from the contender; so did some among the audience.
“There are secret tapes,” the contender said firmly.
“They made tapes of my tragic romance, too—and sold them for thousands of dollars when scandal burst,” a Lana Turner petitioner remembered bitterly.
Lady Star hushed her and concentrated again on the contender: “Who heard those tapes? Who told you about them?”
“Who told me?” the contender swung about to face the audience. “Who told me?” Spinning about, she walked right up to Lady Star. Hands boldly planted on the silver table, she addressed Lady Star, “Who did tell me . . . darling?”
Normalyn understood: Lady Star had to supply the name, a name; otherwise, her knowledgeability would be compromised at a crucial moment when empathy was swirling about the contender. Even Billy Jack nudged Lady Star to answer. And so Lady Star did. “Mildred Meadows, of course.”
“But of course,” said the contender. “Who else?”
Normalyn glanced quickly back. At the mention of Mildred’s name, the older woman had raised her head in resolved anger. Then she spread away, carefully, any wrinkle that might have creased her dress.
The contender had tricked Lady Star into pronouncing an unassailable name, whether or not that was her true source. This contender had moved far beyond the prescribed function allowed her, Normalyn understood, and that function was to force her into this arena of warring secrets and memories. She was sure of it, but for moments only.
Confidently, the Contender for Marilyn Monroe said to Lady Star, to the eager panel, to the quiet congregation, “And when he did become President, just as I predicted, I continued to see him. In New York—”
Thirty-One
—President John F. Kennedy stayed at the Carlyle Hotel. There was a private entrance available for his glamorous conquests. Marilyn Monroe was one of several. Marilyn loved the intrigue of visiting him at the hotel, ushered in by a trusted aide. She often wore a black wig in disguise. Each time now at the peak moment, her fantasy would explode into this:
She is with the President of—!
This evening, she had applied her makeup and was putting on favorite earrings, pendants of clustered diamonds, tiny stars. In the few moments allowed after their liaisons, she made herself beautiful—so that he would want her to come back. No definite day was ever set for the encounter; she was invited, later, perhaps on impulse, sudden desire. She never knew whether this would be a last time. Now she touched one earring, to make it glimmer for him.
“Pretty,” he said absently, because he had been thinking that in the morning he would have to confront the bastards of the steel industry who were forcing up prices. He would not let the sons of bitches screw the country. And more immediately, what the hell was he going to do about Lyndon, to keep him thinking he was busy?
“—the White House.”
He heard only her last reference, although he was aware that she had been talking, and he had been smiling the way he did to convey attention when there was none. The tone in her voice made him inquire, “What?”
Standing, she let the strap of her dress fall from her shoulder so that one nipple was almost exposed. Now she touched the other earring, but the light had shifted and it did not shimmer. She tried to sound casual: “I just said that I have always dreamed of going—wanted to go—to the White House.” In her fantasies, often, when they were making love, she imagined they were there and she was “protected” by the majesty of the greatest home.
He laughed softly. “Well, Miss Monroe, there are tours—”
“I meant with you!” her words erupted in anger.
When he saw her hurt look, he apologized. “I’m sorry, Marilyn. Truly.” He had not meant to wound her, no.
When she left him this time, he kissed her on the cheek.
He was not taking her seriously! She decided she would show him she was a woman of substance. And she was, much more than she was ever given credit for. She was quite intelligent—proud of her superior grades in English. What she lacked was an education, just that. She started reading many books, great books. She never finished any because she was so eager, perhaps, to be in touch with everything.
Back in Los Angeles, the day before she was to see the President again, she telephoned U.S.C.
“Who?” demanded the central operator.
“Marilyn Monroe,” she repeated, “and I want to speak to an expert on political affairs.”
“Well,” said the operator, “I am the expert on crackpots.”
So Marilyn called U.C.L.A. This time, having quickly learned, she asked to leave an “important message for the Chairman of the Political Sciences Department”—Professor Lucas Dambert. She left her number and identified herself only as “Monroe.” When Professor Dambert called back, somewhat baffled, she disguised her voice: “Marilyn Monroe residence.” The telephone was silent. “Please don’t hang up!” she urged. She convinced him she was Marilyn Monroe and asked him to have dinner with her at the Westside Cafe, a small intimate restaurant near Santa Monica.
Professor Dambert called his wife to tell her he had a long facu
lty meeting he could not miss—a favorite colleague was being denied tenure. Only when he saw her did he fully discard the possibility that one of his students might be playing a practical joke on him.
He found her immediately knowledgeable, caring about liberal causes; she expressed her detestation of the House Committee on Un-American Activities for what it had done to good people like Lillian Heilman, Arthur Miller, Alberta Holland. She told him she was eager to hear his views on the “political exigencies of a truly new frontier.” He was even more impressed. She took notes as he expressed his views, and he was flattered. She asked only smart questions, had an agile mind, was charming—and looked gorgeous, oh, gorgeous!
When their long dinner was over—in a second! he thought— she thanked him with a kiss on the cheek. He managed to move his face just in time so that her luscious lips almost brushed his. She said, “Now I can discuss”—she riffled through her notes—“the nuisances of liberal reaction.”
His mouth flew open in horror for her. “Not nuisances!”
She laughed, a bright student who’d trapped her teacher. “I know it’s nuances, Dr. Dambert. I was just teasing you. But you didn’t trust me, Dr. Dambert.” She tasted his important intellectual title on her glorious lips.
“I’ll trust you forever!” he told her.
At home, she embellished her notes with original thoughts of her own. She would make John Kennedy ashamed of having hesitated even to consider bringing her as his guest to the White House—with others, of course, at a small dinner. She and Jackie would chat, equals. He would introduce her to his grand old mother. He would show her the room where Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address. Others would join them, pronouncing only bright conversation—in reaction to her remarks. He would show her where Mrs. Roosevelt sat quietly reading to a dozing Franklin Delano Roosevelt; and where Thomas Jefferson—
“—if it doesn’t take into account the nuances of liberal reaction,” she finished. They were in the quarters set aside for the President in Peter Lawford’s villa by the ocean.
He hadn’t heard her. Why had he committed himself to a breakfast with Lyndon and Connally? he was wondering.
Marilyn was looking at him expectantly, waiting for his reaction to her serious observation.
“Why, yes,” he said. Then he drew her to him on the bed.
For days, she was depressed. There had been so much more she wanted to discuss with him. After all, she had been married to two very famous men, one a sports hero, the other an intellectual. And she was, after all, Marilyn Monroe—wasn’t she?
More and more she became aware of the chasmic distance that separated John F. Kennedy’s life from hers. He had a wondrous family—so close, constantly there for each other. There was his ever-smiling mother, in fashionable clothes just right for her, who knew, always, exactly what to say—Marilyn longed to meet her. And his father! Not only did Joseph Kennedy know his children were his, but they could be with him whenever they wanted. . . . In her family there had been love, but it was so buried in other emotions, might manifest itself so strangely, that at times it had been difficult to locate it. Oh, yes, Della and Gladys—with her marvelous red hair—had been pretty, perhaps even beautiful, but finally their faces had been distorted by their battles with madness. . . . A father? The only knowledge she had of one was that three men had denied she was their daughter. . . . For him, there was Hyannisport, green lawns, houses so far apart you had to drive between them. She had memories of Hawthorne’s desolate vacant lots, small stucco houses almost pasted sweatily together. The foster homes and orphanages she had been in were millions and millions of miles away from the White House.
Those times—when she was so powerfully aware of their two worlds—hurting memories, especially of Della beating with bloodied hands on a wall and of Gladys carried away strapped to a stretcher, pitched her into a quagmire of sorrow, down, down. She forced sleep all day with sleeping pills, another capsule each time she woke. The mood would lift, though never soon enough, but it would lift, with bruised hope. She could even feel a sweet sorrow for Della and Gladys—and then she would love them fiercely—sorrow that they had not escaped the trap of their sad lives, “sweet sorrow” because she knew they wanted her to escape.
Peter Lawford telephoned to invite her to a dinner for the brother of the President, the country’s Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy.
After she accepted the invitation, Marilyn telephoned Professor Dambert again. The professor quickly suggested dinner, but she pleaded for his “impressive office.” He laughed, agreed. When he hung up, he let himself wonder: Was she going to ask him to run away with her? He would! He knew she admired intellectuals, and he admired beautiful, smart women. He knew of her depressions. Well, he would save her from them. They would live in Arizona—yes, outside of Phoenix, in the golden desert! She would come to share his fondness for Dickens, especially the less-known novels. It was natural that she would gravitate toward Dostoyevsky. He had read all about her soon after their first meeting—he had been in a grocery store and seen her electrifying face on the cover of a magazine and bought it immediately and read it. . . . She would prefer Dostoyevsky because the Russian was, after all, more . . . passionate!
Marilyn Monroe took a cab to the beautiful, sprawling campus in Westwood. Impulsively, she asked the cab driver to let her off at the gate near Sunset.
It was a cool day sprinkled with spring. She wore a scarf and dark glasses. Students milled about the campus of U.C.L.A., talking spiritedly. She had never been educated formally, and now, seeing these youngmen and women with their earnest books, she longed to be one of them, just as smart. She walked along the Rodin Garden. She paused by one of the statues. She touched its silvery black surface. Rodin had touched the very same place! When a group of students looked at her, she pulled her hand away. She did not think they recognized her as the famous star, the most famous in the world. No, she thought they were reprimanding her for touching their statue.
Hurrying away from them, she bumped into a youngman, athletic, good-looking. He said, “Oh, excuse me, ma’am.” Ma’am! She pulled the scarf so he could tell who she was. But he had already walked on. She replaced the scarf so it shaded more of her face now. She felt isolated, lost.
Her spirits lifted in Dr. Dambert’s office—it was lined with books. She went to his prized collection of Dickens novels! She confided, in a conspiratorial whisper, that she “loved” Dostoyevsky and longed—“some day”—to play Grushenka. “I’ll never imagine anyone other than you in the part,” he promised.
When he invited her to have a drink in the faculty lounge, she accepted because her nerves were still frayed. In the small subdued lounge, the exalted faculty members of U.C.L.A. pretended—with enormous ennui—not to recognize the movie star—or even Dr. Dambert—as the two sat at a small table.
A male student working as bartender was flirting with the girl who took orders from the intimate tables; the girl had a fresh, unadorned prettiness. The young bartender didn’t even glance at me, Marilyn thought. I’m not pretty like the girls he’s used to.
Marilyn touched her hair. Was it damaged from the bleach? She felt exaggerated. She put her sunglasses back on. When the girl asked her what she wanted, she ordered champagne. Professor Dambert told her he didn’t believe they had “chilled it in the bar this early.” She asked for a daiquiri, with lime.
“You look so beautiful.” He had not even had to gather his courage to speak those words, he had just spoken them.
“Do I?” she asked him eagerly. “Do I? Really? Really?” she pleaded.
“Oh, yes,” he said. So beautiful, he thought, that he wished he didn’t have to blink, so he would not miss even one single glimpse of her.
Pretending she was his special bright student, she told Dr. Dambert—that’s what she delighted in calling him, Doctor Dambert—that this time she needed to know “all about civil rights—problems, solutions, everything, Dr. Dambert!”
Or course, he
had not really believed she would suggest their running away. Still, he admitted to feeling very real regret. He adjusted. “Well, I know some of the problems and all of the solutions.” He was delighted to be with her for whatever reason; he felt like the luckiest boy in the world.
Again, she took eager notes, asking him to repeat or clarify a point she thought especially significant. She underlined a favorite observation. Professor Dambert watched every movement she made. Then their meeting was over.
“Just for you, Dr. Dambert.” She kissed him on the mouth.
He waited until he was alone to touch his lips. He left his hand there as long as he could without feeling awkward. For minutes he had been with the most beautiful woman in the world.
As Marilyn Monroe moved through the campus, she did not look at the students. They made her feel old, unintelligent, ugly.
* * *
There was a brush of new activity in the basement where auditions for Dead Movie Stars were proceeding. Now the other youngman stood next to the Contender for Marilyn Monroe.
He resembled Ted, Normalyn thought, or only reminded her of him because he was—
* * *
—lanky, that was the word used most often to describe Robert Kennedy. And angular. He retained a coltish boyishness, emphasized by his unruly hair. He was the “shy” one in the family; John called him “the puritan.” He was not reckless with women, unlike his brothers and father.
Peter Lawford—who loved sexual intrigue—and had, years earlier, pursued Marilyn, who called him a “kinky nuisance”—knew that she was still seeing John, though infrequently, sometimes at this beach villa. But he was not sure whether Robert knew of his brother’s involvement with the movie star. It amused him to seat “the shy Kennedy” between Kim Novak and Marilyn Monroe.
Kim Novak, a survivor, had just bought a house in Carmel—to escape from Hollywood. Now she was telling everyone how beautiful it was to “watch the twisted trees against a graying sky, the mist flowing in so silently.” One day, she promised, she would paint the quiet spectacle.