Misfit

by Adam Braver

  July 27, 1962

  Cal Neva Lodge, Crystal Bay, NV

  Straddling the line that separates California from Nevada can bring different reactions. For some visitors to the Cal Neva Lodge it’s amusement. A game of hopping back and forth, calling out silver, gold, silver, gold. For others there is a sense of symbolism, a slight elitism to being over the California line—that side where Sinatra keeps his cabin, along with five others, to form his own private compound. Sinatra calls Tahoe the “jewel of the Sierras,” and it sounds so corny when he says it, but each time she visits and is reacquainted with the lake from her regular cabin, number three, she can’t think of any word other than jewel, because that is what it’s like (as corny as it sounds)—a big blue sapphire set in the most perfect ring of Sierra Mountains.

  12:36 PM

  Near the end of the afternoon flight up to Reno from Los Angeles, Pat Lawford leans forward in her lounge chair to talk with Marilyn. Her mollifying smile is reminiscent of a ward nurse’s, not the typical staid expression one expects from President Kennedy’s sister. They’re in Frank Sinatra’s plane, a business jet he’s christened El Dago and furnished like a living room, complete with the couch Marilyn is sitting on, a piano, and one of Frank’s own paintings of a big-eyed kid framed in gold and hanging on the paneled wall nearest the cockpit, a long vertical piece. It’s an easy flight up north, no more than an hour and a half, to be capped by an hour drive to Sinatra’s casino, the Cal Neva Lodge in Crystal Bay, built smack-dab on the state line that divides California and Nevada.

  Pat whispers just loudly enough to be heard over the plane’s chopping engine but quietly enough not to disturb her sleeping husband, Peter Lawford, slumped in the chair next to her. She asks if Marilyn’s all right, noting that she looks a little pale. “Or maybe,” Pat says, clarifying her thought, “you look a little in between.”

  Marilyn says she was napping earlier. She shrugs. “Sometimes, you know, the dreams take a little while to dissolve. That’s probably all. Waking up. It can leave you a little in between.”

  Pat says, “I wanted to catch you early. Before it becomes public.”

  “Public?”

  “Listen to me, Marilyn.” Pat’s voice drops further. “It’s something I overheard right before we boarded. Something that concerns me.”

  Whether it’s the rumble of the plane or the travel fatigue, Marilyn is having trouble catching everything Pat says. She edges toward Pat. Just when she’s close enough to hear, the pilot announces they’re preparing to land.

  Peter wakes, shaking his head and rubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes. He groggily instructs both women to sit back. They sit back. Pat catches Marilyn’s eye, glances at Peter, and then shakes her head. “It will have to wait until we’re down and alone,” Pat says. “Until then. When we can talk.” And for that Marilyn’s relieved. Why would she want more concerns? Isn’t being free from them the main reason she’s going away for the weekend?

  She looks over Pat’s shoulder at the cityscape of Reno abutting the treelined Sierra Nevadas. After the whole drama of working there on The Misfits, she’d like to reach down, pinch Virginia Street, and flick the whole city away.

  Trying to push her voice across the aisle, Marilyn says to Pat, “You know, I really don’t care for these landings. How it all closes in just so. Like going down a rabbit hole.”

  The plane quickly dips.

  The landing gear creaks, and a slight stink of jet fuel washes through the cabin. When the plane turns and dips, it’s all sky out the window.

  “Pat,” Marilyn says, loud enough to be heard. “Pat?”

  “Yes, Marilyn.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  “Forget?”

  “That there’s something you need to tell me. Your concern. I won’t forget that. You’ll tell me inside, Pat? When we reach the lodge?”

  “When we reach the lodge.”

  “I won’t forget. I promise you I won’t forget.” Although as she says this it occurs to her that she hopes she does.

  The plane drops farther, and then goes into a brief holding pattern.

  2:00 PM

  He watches from the hill, hands on his hips, as though waiting in the on-deck circle. He’s always been vigilant. Patient. As she scoots out of the station wagon after the Lawfords, gathering up her purse and valise, she glances behind her, across Highway 28, and sees Joe there, on a crest among the pines, halfway up, on the Nevada side. Her outfit matches the clarity of the Tahoe light—a green silk Pucci blouse, with long sleeves and a boat neck, and matching forest green slacks and shoes. Tired eyes are hidden behind the dark lenses of her cat-eye glasses.

  The hillside is dried and brown, rocks and gravel and shrubbery exposed under the late summer sun. It’s impossible to know how long he’s been waiting, and exactly what he intends to do. Maybe he’s just there to let her know he’s watching. Or maybe to act as some totemic protector. Standing beside the car, she looks again. It’s been almost eight years since the divorce. Even during her marriage to Arthur, Joe acted as though their being apart was nothing but a trial separation. He was confident she’d come around again. Give up all the New York monkey business and come back to who he knew she really was. With vigilance, he’s hated anybody who puts crazy ideas in her head. He’s blamed Hollywood, he’s blamed the system, he’s blamed the doctors and so-called therapists. He’s severed all his connections to the entertainment world, and he’s been trying to get her to do the same, clinging to the belief that once she’s freed from the industry they can reunite. It’s a ridiculous task. Sisyphean. Because no matter what, the woman he believes he knows was created from an Adam’s rib in a studio office in Culver City.

  Frank Sinatra waits in the private driveway to the right of the casino, proud owner of the Cal Neva Lodge, there to greet his guests and apologize for needing to run off so quickly. He kisses Pat on the cheek and drapes an arm around Peter’s shoulder. Tonight after his show, he says, they’ll all catch up. Shoot the breeze. He laughs, telling Pat that he’ll be giving her a bit of advice for her brother. Frank then sends the Lawfords off with a bellhop, leaving him alone with Marilyn. He says he’ll come by her cottage later; he wants to know how she’s doing, talk more about this bullshit lawsuit from the studio. Her mind goes numb when people talk about the suit, as if it’s being waged against someone else. Frank says something about it again, wants to make sure her lawyers are hitting back. Marilyn’s too distracted by Joe watching, imagining him shaking his head, disgusted by the company she’s keeping and knowing she’ll never shed this character as long as she keeps herself as a part of the cast.

  After Frank leaves, she turns her back to the hill, following the concierge toward her tan lake-view cottage, number three. He talks nervously, explaining that Mr. Sinatra needs to run the band through a rehearsal for the evening show in the Celebrity Room, and that she should have time to just relax for the next hour or so. But she’s not listening. It’s hard to hear anything with that stare burning into her back.

  3:15 PM

  She’s kept the curtains half open, leaving a partial view of the lake. The cabin’s almost dark. And smells of it, all closed up and stale with the scent of the shut-in. When she followed the concierge into the cabin, she looked once over her shoulder toward the hill. She couldn’t see Joe. Couldn’t even see the hill. But she can still feel him watching. His disappointment and hurt stream down the slope.

  The bedsprings are tight. They barely give. She’s on her back, her shirt bunched up at the bottom of her ribs, sinking into the red comforter. In the high altitude, her heart pounds hard, like it’s trying to nail her into the round mattress. She closes her eyes, imagining Marilyn fading.

  She sits up when she hears a knock on the door. “You can just leave it,” she calls out. “Whatever it is.” Her voice doesn’t seem to carry. Her mouth is dry. So she tries again. “On the doorstep.”

  The knocking won’t stop. She stands, tugs down her blouse, and then
moves in small steps, arms straight at her sides.

  Frank waits in the doorway, a bottle of Dom Pérignon tucked into his side, two glasses in his hand. “Room service,” he says, deadpan, but unable to hold back a smile. There’s a red napkin knotted around the neck of the bottle. His stance and expression come right from his stage show.

  She’s squinting, trying to bring him into focus. The vista behind him barely has shape. Like looking through someone else’s prescription lenses.

  “And let me really see you now,” he says, pushing his way past her into the cabin. He leaves the bottle and glasses on the rattan desk in front of the window and yanks the curtains open all the way, spotlighting her. He steps in front of her, slight, his shoulders and hips still boyish. His size is in his swagger and confidence. But the showy demeanor disappears. Face to face with her, his presence withdraws, tightens. “Let me really get a good look at you,” he says.

  “No, look at that lake,” she says, peering past him. “Now that’ll cure the meanest of blues.”

  “I can tell you’ve come to the right place, because you look tired. Lousy with what the business has been giving you these days.”

  His impression surprises her. She hasn’t seen herself as lousy. In fact, other than being a little tired, she’s imagined herself looking spry, despite the implications from the studio about her age. Marilyn hugs her arms around her torso. She sways her hips and drops her head back. She wants to say, really? But instead goes into what’s become a routine monologue about the new movie production and the lawsuit from Twentieth Century-Fox, about how they’d got her for nearly nothing on this crummy picture and then went and worked themselves up over anything she did, when everybody knew she was just another commodity. She says, “I tell those sons of bitches at Fox good riddance, and you know what they do, Frank? Hire me back and give me two more pictures. Forever their hostage. I should’ve been done with them, Frank. Finished.”

  “Well, now that you’re here, you won’t need to be falling apart over this nonsense. It doesn’t exist in my house.”

  Does she really look as though she’s about to fall apart? She’s tempted to ask, but isn’t that the way both her mother and grandmother reacted when met with similar inquiries? As though everyone else was the crazy one. “No need to worry,” she reassures, although she hates how easily she slipped back into Marilyn’s world with almost no prompting. Her eyes scrunch, almost impish, looking over to the champagne bottle. “Let’s drink to my health. A toast to a weekend of making right.”

  He twists off the cork. There’s barely a pop. Pouring a glass for each of them, he says, “Now that’s a toast I can drink to.”

  He wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

  She says, “Pour me another.”

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, he leans over to the desk without lifting himself up and grabs the bottle. She’s square in the center atop the comforter, her back straight, legs crossed Indian style. Her arm is stretched out, holding the empty glass.

  He says his people tell him that DiMaggio is staying at the Biltmore across the street, but if she’s concerned about it she needn’t be, because Joe will not be allowed into the Cal Neva. She tells him Joe’s okay, that he can just be a little—but Frank interrupts and says this is about a breach of friendship, ever since Joe started publicly blaming Frank and others for her troubles. He says, “This is not about you, even though it’s all about you.” She doesn’t say she saw Joe on the hill.

  Frank fills both their flutes and, not paying attention, sets the bottle down partially on the base of a lamp, and as it tilts to the side, the red kerchief slips off, landing on the arm of the desk chair, stuck on the rattan weave. He stretches back across to prop the bottle up, but only after he’s watched a little bit of the champagne spill, enough of a stream to trickle off the desktop.

  She says there’s something she needs to ask him, and he tells her anything, and she says, no, she’s really serious. This is serious. “So ask me,” he says. “Ask me something serious.”

  She clears her throat while reaching for words, saying that for this weekend she just needs as much of a break from her showbiz world as possible. And she asks, “Do you think that’s possible? Is it really possible?”

  “That’s why I invited you.”

  “I know, Frank,” she says. “I know. It’s only that . . .” She stops. “Oh, never mind. Forget I even said anything.”

  He just nods, knowing you break the silence only if you think you can make it better.

  Before he leaves, Sinatra has Marilyn promise that she’ll come to the evening show. He doesn’t want her concerns to get in the way of a good time. He tells her just to sit in the back and enjoy. That’s why she’s here, to relax and have a good time. He reiterates that there is zero for her to worry about. This is a community he’s built for his friends. There will be no clown show on his turf. On that she has his word. Now, to get to the Celebrity Room, he reminds her, she can just take the tunnel that runs from his cabin closet. No one will bother her that way. Follow it right to the show room. No detours. Straight through. “And remember,” he says, “you’ve given me your word that you’ll be there.”

  She picks the red kerchief off the chair and waves it like a surrender flag. “I said promise, didn’t I? Believe me, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Sinatra paces the short length of the cottage. He stops at the window, looking out. The afternoon sun is blinding off the lake. He shakes his head. Picks at something behind his right earlobe. “You know,” he says, before turning around, “I do believe this change of scenery is going to do you good.”

  1956

  The actor Eli Wallach often tells the story of walking down the street in New York with Marilyn and suddenly realizing that nobody recognizes her. How strange that was. Even for New York. But when he mentions it to her, she tells him it isn’t strange at all; she is only noticed when she wants to be, and, as an offer of proof, she stops and says to watch this. She takes a deep breath, rolls her neck, and shakes out her arms and hands. Pushes at her hair. And then starts walking again. The tone of her skin softens. Her hips sashay. The blond in her hair takes on an unreal sheen. Her lips, half-open, deepen into a blood red. And, as if from an animator’s hand, her whole figure seems to mold into an exaggerated shape and glow almost celestially. Within seconds she’s surrounded. People point from across the street. Cameras are fumbled for and aimed. Taxis slow down, their passengers pushed against the windows, cupping their hands against the glass.

  Later she’ll say that sometimes the mood to become Marilyn can just hit. But usually it will last only for a moment.

  Spring 1956: The Actors Studio, New York City

  In a café on Ninth Avenue, just around the corner from the Actors Studio on West Forty-Fourth Street, she sits in the corner, disguised with a black wig and horn-rimmed glasses, looking like something a casting director might have imagined to be her bookish twin sister. On her lap rests a copy of Anna Karenina. On the table, a demitasse of espresso, barely touched. A quiet space. One that allows for thought. A place, she says to herself, where Marilyn Monroe would never dream of being. She’s at the end of part three of the novel, having just reached the point where Alexei Karenin refuses to grant Anna a separation, insisting she stop her affair with Count Vronsky and return to a normal life. She plans to take a break as soon as she finishes the section. But she knows when she picks it up again, she will do as she always does, return to page one and reread the opening sentence: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. If Tolstoy had been allowed only one sentence to write his novel, that would’ve been enough for her. The pause at the semicolon. That’s where she wants to be. In that space between clauses, because she’s lived both versions of those families—happy and unhappy. Over the past months, she’s reread the opening sentence over and over, trying to dig at it the way a soldier digs out his foxhole, readying herself to burrow in for survival.

&nb
sp; The last time she checked in to Westside Hospital to calm her nerves, she decided to make some changes, and one of the changes was in how she’d let herself be treated. She hadn’t wanted to be around people who acted like she was dumb. She told that to a nurse, and the nurse said, “Honey, don’t waste your time fretting. All the smarts in the world couldn’t have thought you up.”

  She slips into Lee Strasberg’s class at the Actors Studio at the last possible minute. Rows of folding chairs fill the core of the former church. They face the stage, ringed by an empty balcony. Taking a place near the back, she tries to keep her stare down, avoiding eye contact, knowing some people will be looking at her. She doesn’t want to intrude. She wears a scarf over her head and hides her body under a baggy black cardigan, its hem hanging well below her waist. Her legs are crossed, almost tangled, while her arms press hard against her chest, hiding any hint of her breasts. It’s as though her body has folded in, trying to disappear within itself. Quickly, she darts a glance, taking inventory of the faces. At least thirty fellow students. All look sophisticated. Focused. Impassioned. Even the young ones have a certain wear on their faces. A sense of bravado and desire etched in, what she thinks of as “character.” They appear comfortable sitting there. As though they know they belong. Surely, many of them have been on stage before. She’s never even seen a play. Already she’s envious. She wants what they have. But here’s the irony that she knows and keeps to herself: despite all their artistic ambitions and pretensions, they’d almost all rather be her.