by M. E. Roufa
Norma pulled the door. It opened smoothly. On instinct, as the door shut behind her and the buzzer ceased, Norma tried it again. It opened instantly. It had never been locked. It took an immense strength of will for her to turn around and face the room behind her, and not flee the scene immediately. Fortunately, the main doors opened into a foyer with a second set of doors, so whoever it was who had witnessed her initial confusion was a solo gatekeeper, and she wouldn’t be subject to the mass humiliation she was afraid of. Unless the front door was projected on a video intercom onto a screen in a main room somewhere. Norma pulled the next door open (no problems this time) and went into the room.
The meeting site seemed as if it had once been a beauty salon, but now was clearly used for small groups of all descriptions. A circle of folding chairs took up the center of the room, with more against the far wall, which was mirrored from floor to ceiling. Other walls were arrayed with yoga and gymnastic mats, a ballet barre, film projection equipment, and most incongruously, a trio of hair-drying chairs. A few women, all around her age (though who could tell?) were gathered already in a small clump, next to a small table where small bottles of mineral water and some cookies had been laid out. All of them held bottles of mineral water and it looked as if the cookies had already been pillaged. But they were all remarkably thin, remarkably gorgeous, with glowing clear skin that no chocolate chip could ever threaten. Norma knew the type. Hell, she was the type. She knew that all of them would regret every bite of those cookies, and would look in the mirror and think they could literally see each mouthful reflected in cellulite on their bodies (and exactly where)… and she knew that all of them were looking at the others and thinking what she was thinking: “How come you can eat twelve of those and stay so thin, while I eat just one and I look like a cow?” And she glanced from the women to the table, and she saw that they had those oval fudgie things with the chopped pecans on top, and she loved those, and she knew that more than anything else in this world, she needed a cookie.
Crossing the room, Norma was shocked by the various women’s reactions to herself: besides a brief glance across the room as she walked through the door, there was no reaction at all. She was used to all sorts of sizing-ups as she walked across rooms—appreciative stares, jealous sidelong glances, long gazes and dismissive ones, even the defiantly contemptuous looks of the people nature had been less kind to. But on days when she made an effort to look her best, she was never ignored. Even on those occasions when she barely paid attention to how she looked, she knew that others always did. She never thought of herself as vain about her beauty—if anything, she always assumed she felt somewhat burdened by it. That if she woke up one day and looked only as pretty as the beautiful girls she worked with at Lord’s, or just “conventionally pretty,” whatever that meant, or even ordinary looking, not pretty at all, it would almost be a relief. At least that was what she always told herself, her way of compensating for allowing herself to indulge in vanity about her looks. She had often secretly wondered what it would be like to be average-looking, to blend in, to be the human equivalent of a pocket tee. Well, now, just by virtue of walking into a room with this unique handful of women, for the first time in her life she knew exactly what it felt like.
She didn’t like it one bit.
Especially when looking at two of them looked just like looking in the mirror, and looking at another one of them looked like what she used to look like looking in the mirror, back when she was fresh out of college and she really liked what she saw. And three others were like looking at the loveliest version of herself she ever saw, the version that everyone in the whole world recognized and dreamed about and wanted to take home to bed and never to Mother. Her pale reflection in the dressing room mirror, only more so; better makeup, better bone structure, better posture. It took her breath away.
In her mind, Norma always saw the post-op platinum-dyed plucked-and-teased Marilyn Monroe as a larger than life nightmare, the female fat Elvis, too iconic to even walk straight. She visualized every bad impersonator on television, and every over-the-top sexpot performance, and always that glassy-eyed Warhol image, repeated ad infinitum. It was a horrible vision, clownish and plastic and unreal. “Marilyn” had become such a mass-produced industry that it had become impossible to remember that there really was a Marilyn, and she really was breathtaking. The artifice she had used to transform herself from Norma Jeane Baker wasn’t something she did in order to make herself into a whole new person… it was a step by step process she employed to turn the beautiful woman she already was into the most desirable woman on earth. Now, faced with the flesh-and-blood reality of what Marilyn really looked like, Norma finally understood what drove these other women to want to go through the transformations when they could choose to live in obscurity. There was more to it than just that costumes and playing dress-up. Before, she rejected coming because she thought it was stupid. Now she was beginning to wish she hadn’t come for a more ominous reason. She could never want to become conspicuous, to be clearly marked as a clone like that. But oh, those women were so lovely, and when she looked at them long enough, she could see her own features reflected in their faces like a gorgeous promise…
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” said a Spanish-accented voice behind her. “We’re all so alike, and then the Marilyns are such an inspiration.” Norma turned, and was shocked to find herself facing not the expected doppelganger, but instead a shorter, tanner version of herself, dressed in a spot-on perfect replica of the white halter dress from The Seven Year Itch. Besides the slight height difference, which in a room of such complete uniformity was immediately jarring, there was something even more disturbingly different about this particular twin. Beneath the white crepe pleats and the high heels, under the platinum blonde waves and the iconic birthmark, the woman who stood before Norma was, well, undeniably male.
Meeting her eye with a friendly look that seemed to contain as much of a challenge as a welcome, the stranger smiled. “I’m Vee.”
“I’m Norma.”
“Babe, we’re all Norma here. Except for those of us who are Marilyns. I’m Marilyn, in case you haven’t noticed.” And without pausing the flow of her conversation for even a second, she simpered and twirled, her full skirt billowing around her as it was clearly designed to do. “So obviously we can’t go by first names here. Much too confusing.” She pointed to her name tag, where a large capital V was printed in a flourish of black ink, bursting with curlicues. “First letter of your last name, if you please, unless you have a nickname. Unless your nickname is ‘Sugar.’ Or ‘Lorelei.’ Some girls think they’re so original.” She rolled her eyes.
Norma couldn’t resist smiling. For the first time, she stopped regretting she’d come. Still, she helped herself to another couple of cookies, for emotional support. She caught V’s eyebrows silently tracking their motion from plate to hand in a smooth sardonic upward sweep, but she didn’t care. The staccato clicking of high heels on hardwood interrupted their silent showdown, as yet another painfully beautiful twin (triplet?) joined them.
“V,” she sighed, “You know better than to terrorize the newbies.” Dressed in a simple pair of jeans and a simpler black sweater set, and an incredible pair of leopard spectator pumps, the new girl was every inch a Marilyn. “I’m M,” she introduced herself. Of course she was. “Don’t worry about V. She’s harmless. Just don’t lend her any of your shoes.” She pushed her hands apart in a stretching motion, grimacing.
“You’re just intimidated by my true inner Marilyn,” V sniffed, and walked away, casually picking up a water bottle from the table with two fingers as she passed like she was making off with a Lieber minaudière. True Marilyn or not, she had style.
“I’m Norma—I mean G,” Norma said, filling out her own name tag. “If that’s okay.”
“That’s great,” M said. “We don’t have a G yet. By the way, I love your dress.”
“I love your shoes.”
And just like that, despit
e all her efforts, she fit right in.
30
So, Hon, what brings you here?” They were all seated in a loose circle. The speaker, L., was one of the older women, somewhere between a “Norma” and a “Marilyn”—bleached blonde hair and it looked like she might have had some work done, but she didn’t dress particularly provocatively and her hair was pulled back into an almost matronly updo at the back. From the intonation, Norma thought she recognized the voice she had heard through the intercom over an hour before.
It had been an interesting meeting. After the cookies and chitchat, the group gathered on the folding chairs for a combination of group therapy and cosmetics workshop. They talked about their romantic troubles, and their search for a good cosmetic surgeon who didn’t charge through the new nose. To a woman they had all had the same orthodontic work when in their teens, to a woman they all fought the same mental battle over whether and how much to alter their faces. A young woman named H talked about getting her rhinoplasty as a bat mitzvah present and never looking back, which drew a chorus of approval from the similarly sculpted Marilyns, while causing a set of hands—Norma’s included—to involuntarily drift upwards as if to check that theirs were still intact. Noses that were lovely to begin with, it had to be said. In fact, it had to be said for several minutes. Norma soon realized that that was the main problem with this group—it was nothing like most support groups, with a goal to be met, where the place you started was necessarily seen as less good than the place you ended. Alcoholism is bad. Overeating should be curtailed. Drug use must be overcome. One day at a time, carefully following the same steps, until you can look back and separate from your former self. Marilyns Anonymous, on the other hand, was serving a split personality. Those women who wanted to change themselves into someone they weren’t needed to be encouraged to celebrate their new identities, while at the same time, those women who wanted to hold on to their identities needed to be reassured that they were perfect just the way they were. So which was it?
And so when one woman mentioned a problem with dry skin, another two would immediately rush in with solutions—not always their own, Norma noted with amusement, but some that were nearly a century old. Marilyn used Nivea Skin Moisturizing Lotion. Marilyn removed her makeup with olive oil and lanolin. Marilyn slept in a face mask she made from Vaseline. And when another woman mentioned troubles with men, the help she received was a combination of stories from the women’s own lives, and comparisons to “that time with Joe DiMaggio…”
It was hard to tell how much wisdom there was in the room, and how much of it was actually a joke. On the one hand, V stood out like a sore thumb, with the barest hint of a five o’clock shadow concealed beneath her otherwise exceptionally good makeup, but she was sucking up every word like it was gospel, and was one of the most active contributors. And then there was a particularly well put-together woman called A, who perched on the fringes and rarely spoke, and then only to make snide comments. Norma wasn’t sure whether she came for the makeup advice or the food, or otherwise saw it as just a big social gathering, without any real purpose. She threw out the Marilyn references louder than anyone, but it seemed more with the intention of baiting the more gullible among them. She spoke up fairly early in the meeting, to hand out some business cards for a guy named Harold who got work for celebrity impersonators. The cards were mostly rejected. She described it as easy money, but the general viewpoint was that it was a step above stripping, and that it should be left to out-of-work actors and drag queens, a reference V pointedly ignored. Norma took the card out of politeness, not seeing a way to outright refuse an overture when she was the newcomer in the room, but let it settle to the bottom of her purse without a glance. Being asked to impersonate Marilyn Monroe was precisely her problem. Whoever this Harold was, he would have to miss out on someone who had both the credentials and the wardrobe handy. If he had sent A here on purpose, this just wasn’t his lucky day.
And now it was Norma’s turn to talk. What brought her here? Hoping she wouldn’t start crying again—hoping they would understand without her even mentioning her dressing room breakdown that morning—Norma slowly pulled the birthday dress and wig out of her bag and held them up. “My boss wants me to wear these to work,” she whispered, and felt the tears running down her face all over again.
Their reaction was not exactly what she was hoping for. While a couple of women did gather around her for a hug—soothing her with the uncomfortable comfort given by strangers which never quite consoles but at least never quite disappoints, the way that a parent’s hug always does once adulthood sets in—most of them were far more interested in running their hands over the costume. Like the shiniest new toy on Christmas morning, it was passed from hand to hand, spread out over many laps, held up to the lights more than once to be admired. And a chorus of voices all began asking her—almost demanding of her—whether they could try it on, a set of queries that quickly devolved to an argument over which woman had asked first. And the obvious objection Norma would normally have reached for when turning down someone rifling through her wardrobe, simply wouldn’t apply here. With one minor exception, there wasn’t a single woman in the room that the dress wouldn’t fit.
“I can’t,” Norma said, “they’d kill me,” and there was a shift of mood throughout the room. Something in the tone of her voice told them that more begging might succeed, but that her emotions were so fragile that it wouldn’t be worth the price. They had all been in that state at one time or another, and knew just how fragile a state it could lead to—for some of them a stint at AA or various rehabs, when it came right down to it, and they all remembered other attendees who used to show up, only to break down and then vanish… Once again the dress was passed from hand to lingering hand, and once again it was shoved sacrilegiously back down into Norma’s bag. “At least wrap it in tissue paper,” one of the girls whispered, but was hushed at once.
“It’s just… It’s not me,” Norma started again, and again felt the tears welling up. Five monogrammed handkerchiefs and a box of Kleenex were immediately pushed her way. “I’ve gone my whole life rejecting her—no offense–”
“None taken,” M replied.
“—And now they just want to throw me out there like this—they don’t even know, and I put the dress on, and I…”
“And you hated it because you don’t want to lose your identity? That’s really normal.” M put her arm around Norma’s shoulder comfortingly.
“No—that’s the thing. I loved it.” Norma started crying again. “I just felt so sexy and so powerful. For the first time in my life I felt like I knew who I was. And it scared the crap out of me.” She was truly sobbing now, almost gasping. It felt so good to let it out, to the only people who might actually understand. “I don’t know who I am.”
Just then A piped in, her voice cutting through all the sympathetic cooing spreading around Norma. “Oh that’s just a garden-variety existential crisis. Go do some shopping—you’ll snap out of it.”
Surprisingly enough, it was V who came over to Norma and provided what she realized she most needed to hear. “You’re as Marilyn as you want to be on the inside,” she said, waving her hand around her head as if sweeping cobwebs away. “Everything else is just accessories.”
31
The next morning, if that were possible, was even worse.
Abe had spent a bad night. After what felt like several more hours of pointless questioning along the “How did it feel?” line, Ed had finally let Abe take a break for lunch. Across the hallway from the sparely furnished questioning room was an even more sparely furnished cafeteria. If you could call it a cafeteria. It had three molded fiberglass picnic-style tables, and a long aluminum steam table against one wall. Disturbingly, there was yet another large mirror over the steam table. Were they going to monitor his eating preferences, too?
Standing behind the steam table was a largish apple-cheeked woman wearing the odd combination of an oversized apron, a hairnet, and a lab
coat. She beamed at him as she opened the lid of each warming tray and put food onto his plate. The food, like the woman herself, was pure Middle America. Turkey with gravy. Mashed potatoes. Peas. The cutlery was all plastic. Clearly they were taking no chances.
From the way that Ed looked at the food but didn’t take any, Abe had the distinct feeling that there was far better food provided for the staff than there was for the… guests? Research subjects? Prisoners? What was he? How long was he going to be here?
Still, he was too hungry to start worrying about that then. He gulped down nearly a pitcher of water before turning to his food. That’s when he first realized there was something wrong with his turkey. It didn’t look unappetizing, only—well, odd. The colors were off. The aroma was different. Was it something that wasn’t actually turkey that he was supposed to think was turkey, just to see if he could tell the difference between a real poultry and a synthetic one? What did eating real turkey feel like? His head spun. The same was true of everything on his plate. The potatoes were starchier. The peas weren’t the right green, and they were shaped strangely, more bulbous than round. He poked at them. Were they drugged? All he knew was, they weren’t right. Suddenly he wasn’t hungry anymore. He looked up. They were watching him. Every single one of them. Ed, Nita, and the woman in the hairnet, were all watching him.
And watching him.
And watching him.
And then, Ed did something Abe hadn’t seen in over thirty years. He lifted an imaginary fork to his mouth and made chewing motions and nodding. This was ridiculous. They couldn’t force him to eat. Out of all the disturbing things that had happened to him that day, out of all the half-threats and menacing hints and ominous environmental clues that he kept picking up, nothing had been so unsettling as this. Was Ed going to do here-comes-the-airplane next? Abe wondered. He waved at Ed with his fork and gave a half-smile. Ed smiled back and made more chewing faces. Hairnet lady looked at him expectantly. There was no way out of this nightmare but through his stomach.