by Rick Lenz
All those still photos of Marilyn? That wasn’t Marilyn.
I walk directly back to the cage. The young man with the oblong head is on duty at Morgan’s Gifts.
I smile and give him a friendly hello. I say, “I asked you the other day if you knew who paid for the redemption of my ring. I was wondering if you’d remembered, or if I could talk to the lady who was sleeping over there in the wing chair that day.”
The young man stares at me, then at the ring on the hand I’m holding out. “We’re not supposed to give out information like that.”
“Could you tell me if it was paid for by mail?”
“Dunno.”
“If I could just see the envelope, that might help.”
“Probably be in the garbage out back.”
“Would you mind if I looked through it?”
The young man’s face puckers as if he can smell the garbage from where he’s standing. “I don’t think Mrs. Hightower would like that.”
We hear footsteps and look toward the back of the store.
“Hello there.” The plump little woman who was drowsing in the wing chair that Thursday, October 10, smiles at me. “I’m Mrs. Hightower. May I help you?”
“I hope so. I picked up this ring the other day and forgot to find out who paid for it.”
She looks puzzled. “Pardon?”
“I’d like to know who pawned and then paid for this ring.”
She doesn’t even draw breath. “You did.”
One night, I walk by another pawnshop, on Ventura Boulevard in the Valley, and see an early, signed photo of Marilyn in the window. She’s everywhere, still a brand. This is such a young picture, unlike most of her stills, much more Norma Jean than Marilyn. Her hair is wavier and slightly longer than she usually wore it. It’s signed Best Wishes—Marilyn. I buy it for more money than Sophie and I can afford. It’s not in great shape and the signature isn’t authenticated, but to me it shows Marilyn as she is—at her best.
I hang it on the south wall of our living room in North Hollywood. Sophie claims to like it. I’m not so sure. I think she’s just being nice.
Probably, before long, the classier angels of my nature will cause me to take the picture down and put it in the attic.
Then, someday, it will end up in the window of some other pawnshop. And someone else can go curl up in dreamtime and travel their own journey.
One night I come into the kitchen and find Sophie starting to cook dinner. I’ve smelled onions. “Always start with an onion,” she tells me her Aunt Libby used to say. I’m in a mindlessly good mood already. I pick her up and sort of dance her around the floor of our small kitchen, which makes her giggle, and since I love the way she laughs, I keep doing it, and before long we’ve crumpled to the floor with her on top of me, still giggling.
“I’ve got to take you someplace wonderful, like maybe Italy.”
She looks at me skeptically.
“Nope,” I say smugly. “We can afford it. I got a job today—that batch of commercials I auditioned for. I just found out they want me.”
The truth is I’m not really thrilled with the job, but it’s quite a bit of money, and Sophie has always wanted to go to Italy, and now we can do that. And if I don’t exactly love this job, who cares? It’ll make it possible for me to do something I want to do—take Sophie somewhere she really wants to go. And the job is a pleasant enough way to make a buck; I have no reason or right to complain, despite the fact that it’s a personal-hygiene commercial, and not something I really want to be associated with.
Anyway, all I can think now, with Sophie on top of me, is here we are in our house—right now, our hearts beating together—and the idea of living this life in this moment, as completely as we can, for as long as we can, makes me happier than anything I can imagine.
“And when we get home, let’s have a baby.”
She lifts her head and stares at me. “That’s a big commitment.”
“I want that.”
She smiles gorgeously, sits up, and takes off her sweater.
“The onions are going to burn.”
She reaches up and turns off the gas.
Once in a while, I decide to tell Sophie what I’ve brought away from the experiences I’ve tried to describe to her, but I usually stop myself.
I do have a few tired bits of wisdom. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be, that kind of thing. But after you’ve been curled up—as we all have been, for God knows how long—in warped space-time/dreamtime—even the truisms are no more than clichés. Even John Donne’s lovely poem about all of us being connected can’t exactly be considered an eye-opener; not by this time, for God’s sake. And it’s not a news flash that we’re always moving in a circle because we’re connected. We had the tools to work that one out about the time Eve offered Adam a bite of apple.
One thing I will probably spend my lifetime trying to figure out is how did I know the second I laid eyes on the portico at 1833 Shoemaker Drive, just before my original meeting with Maggie Partridge, that it had once fallen in an earthquake? And more to the point, how did I know with such absolute certainty that it would either subsequently or previously—it doesn’t matter in the least—collapse “again”? On me?
But whether I convince myself I’ve figured that out or I don’t doesn’t really matter. It’s like trying to understand why energy is. The only really important thing I need to digest is that I don’t have to go in search of the immensity.
One night I say to Sophie, “We are culturally indoctrinated, re-encoded, to have selective perceptual filters that sift out and discard the lion’s share of reality. Most of us fear death, but I’ll tell you something: I don’t anymore.”
“I know,” says Sophie. “You’ve said that.”
And that’s the end of that conversation.
Sometimes, I open up the subject of immensity, or start to talk about the idea of looking for the light in what is vague and indistinct, but she gives me her patient look, and we end up talking about something else.
It doesn’t hurt my feelings. She knows more than I do.
I remind her that she once told me she thought if I were to dig deep into myself, I wouldn’t find much good there.
“That’s not what I said. I remember the conversation clearly. I said if you tap into yourself, you don’t get what you want, you get what you are.”
“But you apparently didn’t like what I was.”
“Not true. It’s just that at that moment, we had different ideas about who you are. I think—when you tap deep into yourself—you’re my wonderful Jack. At that time, back … then … you seemed to think you were … someone else.”
She’s right, I did.
Still, through every moment of my journey, the duration of which I can even now only guess at, I had the sense of a still-small voice within me telling me that my innate judgment—even though it rarely seemed that way at the time—was better than I’d been brought up to think it was.
Maybe I always knew more than I thought I did.
One night, I’m looking at the picture of Marilyn on our living room wall and am touched for an exquisitely sweet moment by an inkling of déjà vu, tracing out into the darkness over the Santa Monica Mountains, through the shadows of my memories, across the barrier of my intelligence and into the glittering spectacle like a Fata Morgana of the Los Angeles basin. Out of a corner of my mind and through the gloom over the Santa Monicas, I feel a sense of loss and warmth and loss again.
And then I feel her next to me and hear her voice as clearly as when she was still alive to me.
“Your sweetest moments are still ahead of you.”
EPILOGUE
Sophie drives her 2008 Toyota Scion over Coldwater Canyon, west on Lexington, south on Whittier, and farther into the unhilly part of Beverly Hills. When she arrives at the high-rise Beverly Vues Apartments, she parks beneath the building, walks up to the elevator on the main floor and into the characterless foyer with the gold-flo
cked wallpaper. She greets the doorman, who smiles and nods, then she hits the button for the next elevator. When it arrives, she gets in and pushes the button for the fourteenth floor.
When the doors open, she walks several steps to the left down the plushly-carpeted hallway, lets herself into apartment B, takes off her linen jacket, hangs it up in the front hall closet, and goes out onto the balcony that faces west.
A very old man is standing up, hanging onto the railing, looking out toward the Pacific, over what used to be the huge acreage of Twentieth Century Fox.
Without turning around, the old boy says in a surprisingly vibrant voice, “Hiya, darlin.’ I’m glad you finally made it.”
Sophie smiles lovingly at him. “Hello, Mr. Blake. How are we today?”
THE END
Acknowledgments
I am ever grateful for Michael Norell’s devoted friendship and invariably perceptive advice.
My thanks also to Bret Easton Ellis, who helped me see the excess of most of my adjectives and almost all of my “wisdom.”
To those friends who were kind enough to read various drafts and graciously encourage me to bring this mad story into harmony with itself. They are Betsy Hailey, Don Eitner, John Gallagher, Kevin Cook, Gerry Blanchard, Susan Gleason, Carol Summers, Sara Parriott, and Beverly Vines-haines.
To Pamela Guerrieri, Kevin Cook, Meghan Pinson, and Rhonda Erb for their astute, meticulous editing.
To George Foster, who understands a book in depth before he designs its cover.
To Meghan again, as well as to Sunny Chermé Cooper, for their generous hearts and their evenhanded supervision of a crazy person as they expertly oversaw the big things and the little that go into the preparation and publication of a book.
To my children, Abigail, Charles, and Scott, who always support me in everything I do.
And to Linda, for her patience, her intelligent support, her small-hours comforting. For her love.
About the Author
Rick Lenz is a jack of all trades: actor, artist, and author. He has acted alongside many of the biggest names on stage and screen, and his prismatic roleplaying parlayed over to the pen with a successful string of plays from Off-Broadway to PBS. In 2012, Lenz broke the fourth wall and published an award-winning memoir, North of Hollywood, about show business, addiction and recovery, and his checkerboard life in New York and LA. When Lenz is not riding away on his next kaleidoscopic quest, he can be found painting, playing the piano, or reading at home with his beloved wife, Linda.
To see what he’s up to now, visit www.ricklenz.com.
Meet the Author
Rick Lenz in conversation with Outrider Literary
North Hollywood, summer of 2015
Q: How did you come up with the idea for this book?
A: About twenty years ago, I did a play on a set much like the living room at 1833 Shoemaker Drive; it had a dark, spooky feel to it. Three women ran the theatre. They were also actresses. They were the original prototypes for Maggie, Margaret, and Lily. Back then, when I wasn’t acting, I wrote plays. I soon realized this story needed to open up, to have a broader geography than a play would allow. I knew a lot about Hollywood from being in the movie business as far back as the ’60s. The story had to take place in the ’50s.
Q: How much of your own life story was placed into the novel?
A: Like most actors, I’ve been between jobs more often than I’ve worked. I’ve always been fascinated at the range of life most actors live “between engagements.” Jack had to be an actor.
Q: Do you have an obsession with Marilyn Monroe?
A: I needed a movie that was shooting during the time in question. I stumbled on Bus Stop and Marilyn. It soon felt like serendipity. I read and saw everything I could find about her—books, her movies, anything. I once played opposite Susan Strasberg, as Jack does in the book. We talked about Marilyn at length. She was already planning to write Marilyn and Me and was eager to talk about her. I didn’t have an obsession with Marilyn when I started The Alexandrite. I do now. It was oddly like researching an acting role. I had to get inside her psyche if I wanted to be accurate recreating her on the page. She was one of the most difficult, exhilarating characters I’ve ever worked on.
Q: Do you have a belief in or have any recollection of past life experiences?
A: No, but I do think we are irrevocably linked to each other, that as Jack says on page one, “Life runs in a circle…” and “If it went out in a straight line, it would take us away from each other.” And “That wouldn’t work because we are all connected, made of the same stuff.”
Q: I would love to know more about the author’s own acting career and relationship with Hollywood.
A: I spent my first ten years as an actor almost exclusively on stage. When I did “Cactus Flower” on Broadway, I began to get Hollywood offers. From the start, I loved the feel of old Hollywood. I was not in love with the movie industry. Most of the artists who work in it are great, often brilliantly talented, but the movie industry itself—I think—can quite fairly be called deranged.
Q: Is the character of Jack autobiographical in any way? Are any of his experiences inspired by those of the author’s?
A: Except for Hollywood, the ups and downs of being an actor, his eternal quest to find meaning in life, and his abiding love for his wife, both Jack and Richard are fictional…Well, okay, Jack is a tiny bit non-fictional
Q: What or who inspired the character of Lily? Is the story’s emphasis on mental illness drawn from something the author has experienced?
A: I had a friend who was autistic, but not so that it prevented her from living a mostly normal life. She was exceedingly gifted musically. I think she was a savant. She is the basis for Lily. Also, during my research, I discovered that both Marilyn and Joshua Logan had what would later be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. In chapter sixteen, Marilyn says, “Anyway, Josh said if he hadn’t been the way he was—like me, he meant, I could tell—he would have missed ‘the sharpest, the rarest, the sweetest moments of his existence.’”
Those are in fact Logan’s words about himself. The complete statement was: “Without my illness, active or dormant, I’m sure I would have lived only half of the life I’ve lived and that would be as unexciting as a safe and sane Fourth of July. I would have missed the sharpest, the rarest and, yes, the sweetest moments of my existence.’’ Every time I considered revealing each of their on-and-off bipolar struggles, it held back the narrative. Maybe most important: neither of them had what could be called an episode during the shooting of Bus Stop.
I came away from my research with not only a new picture of Marilyn, but also a huge respect for Logan’s talent and character.
Q: If time travel were possible, is that where you would go? LA in the 1950s?
A: Despite the depression, I think I’d choose New York in the ’20s and ’30s. American theatre was in the process of being born. It was a very exciting time and place to be an actor or a writer or an artist of almost any kind.
Q: I’d be curious to know where the initial germ of the story started. Was it the alexandrite? Or knowing it was Marilyn’s birthstone? Or was it a fascination with the 1950s?
A: Again, I stumbled on alexandrite—more serendipity, I felt. It was a perfect talisman/symbol. I feel about both Marilyn and alexandrite as if they’ve been anonymous gifts.
Q: Did you actually know Marilyn Monroe? Who do you relate to more, Jack or Richard?
A: Richard was an invention. Jack will sleep next to my wife every night as long as God allows. I didn’t know Marilyn, but after my research, I feel as if I do. I do have a friend who studied with her at the Actors Studio in New York.
More from Rick Lenz
North of Hollywood:
AN ACTOR’S STUMBLING BABY STEPS
TOWARD KINDNESS AND PEACE
Everything makes sense a bit at a time. But when
you try to think of it all at once, it comes out wrong.
- Terry Pratchett
CHAPTER ONE
I was raised in Jackson, Michigan—population 50,000—a city that lies at the third corner of a triangle with Lansing and Ann Arbor, about forty miles from each. Those towns are home to Michigan State University and the University of Michigan. Jackson is home to the longest-walled prison in the world and the Cascades, the world’s second-largest manmade waterfall. It also lays convincing claim to being the birthplace of the Republican Party—it was host to the first official party convention on July 6, 1854. A large pile of rocks on Washington Street marks the spawning ground of the GOP. There is also a plaque, in case the rocks don’t ipso facto identify themselves as birth-of-the-Republican-Party boulders.
When it was time for me to spread my wings, I headed to New York because that’s where my theatre professors at U of M told me real actors go. They didn’t mention anything about real bill collectors, and very little time passed before it dawned on me that “real acting” and show business have a commonality factor that ranges from less-than-you’d-hope-for to zilch. Before I learned that, I once asked an old character actor, didn’t he just love being an actor and not having to worry about little hollow people’s little petty rules?
He told me I had a paper ass.