by John Rechy
“I’ll be there, David,” she said in a firm voice that asserted that she was not coming as a petitioner for truth.
The “someone else” would be the person David had offered to put her in contact with. This new urgency had to mean that David—and that other person—had withdrawn any preconditions. She agreed to the soonest hour. She did not need even to consider the staggering implications of what was about to happen, what would be revealed.
Normalyn found a positive augury in this: This morning there had been no tension between her and Troja at breakfast. Already made up for a new interview, Troja had said, “I slept real good for the first time since—” She stopped, a dangerous moment. Normalyn’s eyes encouraged her to speak the avoided words. “—since Kirk died,” Troja had finished.
2
A dark limousine with smoked windows was parked in the no-parking zone before David Lange’s office. Beside it, a uniformed chauffeur waited. Normalyn recognized him—and the limousine that floated like a shadow of doom through the recollections of so many.
Normalyn ran up the steps and into David’s office.
“My dear!" the frosty voice of Mildred Meadows admonished. “You mustn’t rush, you’ll wreck your lovely dress.”
David had tricked her into believing there would be someone else here, the person who—! No, he hadn’t designated whom. She had assumed. She would not be ambushed by the unexpected. “Why, it’s the dear baroness.” With a jabbing tone, Normalyn masked whatever surprise she might have registered.
Behind his desk, David Lange only smiled his greeting at Normalyn. She nodded. In this unexpected meeting, who would be adversaries, who allies?
Dressed in dark gray elegance, Mildred Meadows sat to one side of David. Her back was to the light, which had been muted further, the blinds slanted. Away from her mansion, she seemed plucked out of her time, hiding from the sun in shadows created for her.
Normalyn sat facing the diagonals of light.
David explained quickly: “I encouraged Mildred to come here to clarify some matters. An interim step has become necessary.”
Or another tactic of deceit because she had not responded? Normalyn wondered, but she did not really suspect that.
Mildred waved away David’s introduction. She said to Normalyn, “David insists I must tell you certain things I considered irrelevant during our charming chat. He is sure that the person he so loftily calls our ‘judge,’ our ‘accuser’—whom I prefer to call a ‘witness’—will demand to know them, in this rather quaint way of confronting us for our supposed ‘culpability’ in the events occurring during the last days of Monroe’s life. I am here to supply omitted truths.” She looked at David. “But there may be surprises.”
“I warn you.” David’s alert was quick, serious. “I’ll recognize lies.”
“Oh? Somewhat like those trained hounds devoted only to one pursuit?” Mildred spoke as if she were paying a compliment.
“The truth? From Mildred Meadows?” Normalyn added her own warning.
Mildred did not wince. “For lies to be clever, truth has to be known. I am an expert on truth.” She made a sound like laughter. “David, when one is with you, words like ‘truth’ and ‘culpability’ simply dash out of one’s mouth.” With a thrust of her hand—one finger displayed a perfect pearl—she mocked the banished words. She dismissed the power of the summons: “My motives are uncomplicated. In exchange for participation, our witness will tell us what we are all dying to know”—she affected a shiver of suspense—“what really happened in those last days.”
She pondered in mock earnestness: “But surely our witness won’t summon us all together like suspects in a mystery story! You’re the only one who knows where that font of truth resides, David. I suppose it’s somewhere ghastly like . . .” She pretended to give it great thought. “. . . like Phoenix, Arizona,” she masticated the name, forcing a tremble at the prospect. She eyed David craftily. “I seem to remember that postmark on the package that brought me those ugly artificial flowers. . . . Oh, and why, David, have you been appointed by the witness to be the collector of truths?”
“It’s your time to answer, Mildred, not to question. But I do seem to remember that the package I received was not from that city.” David thwarted her conclusion.
Mildred seemed to know—or was pretending to know—the identity of the witness; yet she had battled—if lightly—for access to that person, but David had not granted it, Normalyn recognized.
“I see,” Mildred Meadows understood. “You want to hold the master key, David. Always to be in control.” She said to Normalyn, “Have you found him to be so, my dear—always in control?” Then she rejected it all flippantly: “C.B. filmed in Arizona once, in their desert, one of those Biblical things he became fond of.”
Mildred was in icy control. She was interjecting levity into the situation that had forced her here, attributing all to “curiosity.” Normalyn knew there had to be more, an enormous coercion—by David or the other person?—to bring her out of the sheltered world of her mansion. And yet, Normalyn evaluated, Mildred cared only about her column—ended—and her daughter—dead.
“To sweeten our memories, dear David, perhaps a bit of sherry?” The iciness in Mildred’s voice did not thaw for the request.
“You’ll have to settle for bourbon.”
“One makes sacrifices.”
David went to the small cabinet near his desk. He unlocked its lower section. He brought out a glass and a bottle and poured the liquor for Mildred.
“David believes in locking away temptation,” she told Normalyn, and then brought the liquor to her lips. “David, how could you have lived on this so long?”
Normalyn saw David’s eyes pull away from the deadly bottle. “It no longer tempts me.”
“Of course not.” Mildred toasted Normalyn with her glass.
Normalyn toasted her back with an empty hand, thumb up, for Mildred to interpret.
“What exactly am I supposed to tell her, David?” Mildred affected bewilderment.
“How you were duped,” David aimed lethal words.
Mildred shrugged them away. “I’m here in a spirit of cooperation, I insist. David says I was duped.” The voice did not trip. “I assume he means by Alberta Holland.” Indignation hardly brushed the cool voice.
“And—” David extended.
“And”—Mildred glided over the words—“by the patriots I trusted.”
“Tell how all that was possible, with your vast experience in the art of duplicity,” David ordered calmly.
Normalyn understood: Whatever other reasons there were for Mildred’s presence, David was extorting her humiliation.
But Mildred was rejecting that intention with the ease of her delivery: “Alberta Holland managed to convey some clever truths, knowing I would assume that they were clumsy lies—and I did.” Her words only slowed. “Beyond that, Alberta and I only thought we were confronting each other, through Marilyn Monroe’s pregnancy. In fact we were all—shall we say?—‘manipulated’ by what that pontificating old babbler, Dr. Crouch, called, with his typically dour solemnity, ‘an invisible conglomerate of power.’ Somewhat less melodramatically, I prefer to call it the ‘overplan.’” Mildred smiled a twisted smile at Normalyn. “You seem tense, my dear.”
“But I am not,” Normalyn asserted.
“Good. Let me put you at further ease by expelling certain inevitable suspicions so they will not clutter my narrative with extraneous considerations! The Kennedys were not involved in the overplot. Nor in Holland’s plan. Certainly not in mine! They were not involved at all! They merely made everything possible with their clumsy womanizing. It would have been Greek tragedy except that it was all careless, shoddy, vulgar—unpleasant. With the uncanniness of the moth she really was, it was inevitable that Monroe would wander into their tawdry flaming light.”
“Your mind is wandering, Mildred.” There was an edge to David’s voice. “Has it begun to do that? Shall I reorient you
from time to time as to your train of thought?”
“My mind does not wander,” Mildred asserted. “I remember everything,” she seemed to warn.
She faced Normalyn. “You know of the letter accusing the Kennedys of rampant immorality. And you know of a second letter addressed to me, linking Monroe to both brothers.” Mildred sipped slowly from the bourbon.
“Tell it all!” David prodded.
“Whyever not?” Mildred spoke lethal words with delicate contempt. “In my column, as agreed, I reported the ‘sad miscarriage’ of Marilyn Monroe, because I believed that it was she at the D’Arcy House. I learned differently at dinner, in my home, when”—she seemed to retreat from the name—“when J. Edgar—”
* * *
—Hoover said, “I am able to tell you only now, Mildred, that the letter accusing the Kennedys of immorality is a fraud.”
In the stilled great dining room, the candles did not breathe. “A fraud?” Mildred inspected the word. She pushed away her stroganoff, in a sauce so light it was ecru.
Edgar poured more paprika over his goulash on the grandly set table. “Yeah. It was written by a crackpot—he lives out on Alvarado Street, writes unsigned letters to everyone. Smart, though, writes with authority. He gave us the idea from what was just another crank letter.” He looked at Mildred with the mischievous grin his mother had adored.
“Another . . . crank . . . letter.” Mildred pulled her eyes away from his plate; he had made the goulash look like drying blood. “You led me to believe it was written by a respected ex-ambassador living in Bel Air, that he would identify himself, and that the contents of the letter were true.” Certainly those words were not being spoken by Mildred Meadows. Still, she had heard her voice form them.
Edgar’s jowls framed the delight of a nasty child who has tricked a crafty adult. “Yes, we did. We knew you’d do what was necessary with such a letter. It wasn’t the fact of the Kennedys’ womanizing that would bring them down—we knew the President was involved with many women—it was the evidence of much more than that. You turned a crank letter into a powerful weapon, Mildred. With your inspired threats at the Monroe woman, you pushed them to act, and they did. They and you together gave us a woman paid to abort, pretending to be Monroe, a petty crook enlisting her, a famous movie star dangerously hiding her pregnancy, another woman going out disguised as her—all presided over by a notorious left-winger!”
Mildred’s memory was suddenly as fresh as on that day. At the D’Arcy House she had seen a real abortion, but not Monroe’s. They had cunningly exploded each planted expectation—and connected her to the disorienting memory of Tarah—
Edgar bubbled with delight. “You see, Mildred, we knew your abilities and capabilities.”
This marionette! This caricature of Mussolini! This mincing bulldog she tolerated only because he gave her information—he was telling her— Mildred had never spoken more precisely: “Why not enlist me openly? My patriotism is unassailable.”
“You’re best when you think you’re in command, Mildred. Look what you came up with! It was inspired when you made the Monroe woman believe she was named.”
But she had been. Mildred studied Edgar. Then he knew only about the first letter—not the second, addressed to her, the one linking Monroe, the one she had acted on!
Edgar tucked his napkin in anticipation of the green-jellied pie now being served for him. ‘You’ve said yourself that you create truth in your column, Mildred. You created Monroe’s ‘miscarriage.’ It sure convinced the Kennedys. And it emboldened the commie woman and the others to proceed with the ‘secret’ pregnancy. Naturally, we’ve helped Holland’s plan whenever there was difficulty, at every stage—we have a liaison among them, a petty crook. Of course, Alberta’s faction knows nothing about our making their plan possible.”
All, all known! Allowed! If she were not involved, she would be utterly thrilled by the duplicity, Mildred thought. Even now, she could not restrain her fascination. “The birth will continue without interference?”
“We count on it. We will do everything to assure it! We’ll secure the best circumstances to—”
“You keep saying ‘we.’” That was annoying her.
Edgar’s chest puffed up like a strutting pigeon’s. “The Kennedys have made many powerful people angry with their ‘progressive’ ways—me, certain members of my F.B.I., the C.I.A., the Secret Service, chairmen of huge industries— Let’s just say patriots of the Republic conceived the overplot to undo them with scandal. Naturally, the patriots appointed me—”
“—their puppet!”
Edgar used his harshest voice: “Do you know how many presidents have tried to get rid of me? Do you know how many succeeded?”
“Damn you and your presidents! I am Mildred Meadows!”
“We chose you to be a part of it!” Now Edgar employed the tone he used to award medals to proud, deserving men. “You should feel privileged.”
“Privileged!”
“At the exact time, you will be allowed—”
“Allowed!”
“—to reveal the whole scandal.” Edgar expanded with pride, emotion. His belt bit into his stomach. He tried to release it a notch without calling attention. “You will connect all the intrigue to the Kennedys. I’d like to see Mr. President and Mr. Attorney General when they find out. They don’t suspect a damn thing! Both had already decided to stop seeing the woman because she was becoming troublesome.”
Monroe. Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe, “troublesome.” Mildred saw the great star’s shimmering beauty as if Monroe had stepped before her at that very moment. Troublesome? That creation of beauty?
Edgar exhaled in his mightiest tone, “It will be you, Mildred Meadows, who announces the collapse of the dynasty of the Kennedys.”
“I will not.” Mildred did not even exclaim.
Edgar glowered, a look he reserved for times of deepest gravity. The look imitated that of a burly boy—so well remembered, proud, erect, muscular, commanding—who had taunted him when he was a child; a boy who haunted his fantasies and nightmares. “It will proceed without you, then. Nothing can stop what you set into motion. Nothing! Consider—”
“I will have no part of it.” Mildred stood up calmly. “I will end my column,” she decided.
Edgar gasped. “Mildred, you have integrity!”
“Nonsense!” Mildred’s tiny fist hit the enormous table with such force it trembled. “I simply refuse to extend a deception that included me—a deception clearly inspired by the very techniques that I invented!”
* * *
In David Lange’s office, Mildred Meadows leaned into her chair, converting it into a throne of exile.
In that light, she looked to Normalyn like a hawk, alert, preparing its slow circling.
Now Mildred leaned toward David. “I have satisfied your reasons for my coming here, stated and unstated—and whoever else’s. There is yet another: My own.” She fired words: “Who wrote that second letter linking Monroe?” She said to Normalyn, “The writer had to be someone who knew of the first letter, who knew it excited me with possibilities but did not inspire me like the addition of Monroe’s name to the accusations of scandal!”
Normalyn asserted, “She had only contempt for you. And so did Enid. You wanted to control them—and you couldn’t.”
“Whatever!” Mildred dismissed that for now; the circling hawk was too intent on narrowing its own search: “The writer of the second letter had to be someone who—so suddenly—felt betrayed by the ‘heroic’ brothers, someone who finally came to believe—and care about—the accusations of immorality.” The hawk swooped. “A prized journalist who really believed, an idealist who really hoped, a moralist who really trusted.” She emphasized words as if they were curses. She said conspiratorially to Normalyn; “David worked for me briefly when he was quite young. He simply needed any job; his idealism was not yet honed. I tried to enlist him again by showing him the first letter, knowing he would be a powerful ally
because no one is more vengeful than a betrayed idealist. And the subject here is vengeance! But David disbelieved the letter, staunchly denied its accusations. He idolized the brothers. He was writing a book about them—”
“The First of the New Heroes.” David pronounced the title quietly.
Mildred told Normalyn; “And then suddenly David was convinced that the accusations against the Kennedys were true. He came to me and offered to contribute, to my revelations and at the proper time, all his ‘journalistic authenticity’—you’ll recognize his words, my dear, by their tone.” The hawk landed by its prey: “What convinced you to join me?” Mildred asked David. “Was it when I showed you the letter naming Monroe?”
“I never saw that letter. You told me of it,” David said.
“Oh, but I did show it to you. And the snapshots of them contained in the letter—pictures so lurid, disgusting—”
David touched the sphere of crystal on his desk. In this light it was unmarred even by a single reflection.
Mildred nailed her eyes on him, studying his movement of purification. The hawk bared its talons. “It was the snapshots that convinced you—taken in secret by the writer of the letter, the way such things are done, stealthily, in hiding, to capture every single vile—”
“I saw no such photographs!”
“But you did! And with them, tapes that recorded every moan, every salacious—”
David yanked his hand away from the unblemished sphere as if it had scorched him. “There were no photographs, there were no tapes!”
“How do you know? How!” The hawk clawed: “Because you wrote that letter, David! In your arcane language, it is you who is guiltiest, because without that letter I would not have proceeded as I did, and it was only you who knew that. Oh, yes, you’re right; there were no photographs, no tapes.”
David answered Normalyn’s stare: “I would have told you about that letter.”