Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Norma Jeane had made inquiries into the private life of I. E. Shinn and knew he’d been married twice, the first time for sixteen years. He’d divorced his wife and shortly afterward married a young contract player at RKO, from whom he was divorced in 1944. He was fifty-one years old. He had two grown children from his first marriage. Norma Jeane had been relieved to hear that Shinn was known as a good decent father who’d had an amicable parting with their mother.

  I could only marry a man who loves children. Who wants children.

  Shinn was staring at Norma Jeane oddly. Had she spoken aloud? Made faces? Shinn said, “You’re not religious, dear, are you? I’m certainly not. I may be a Jew, but—”

  “Oh. You’re a Jew?”

  “Of course.” Shinn laughed at the expression on the girl’s face. Here was Angela, in the flesh! “What d’you think I am, Irish? A Hindu? A Mormon elder?”

  Norma Jeane laughed, embarrassed. “Oh gosh, well, I—I knew you were J-jewish, but somehow I—” She paused, shaking her head. It was an amazing movie performance: the dumb blonde. And so adorable. “Until you said it? ‘Jew.’”

  Shinn laughed. “That’s what ‘Isaac’ is, sweetheart. Right out of the Hebrew Bible.”

  Shinn had been holding Norma Jeane’s hands. Impulsively, Norma Jeane lifted his hands to her mouth and covered them with kisses. In an ecstasy of self-abnegation she whispered, “I’m a Jew too. In my heart. My mother so admired the Jewish people. A superior race! And I think I am part Jewish too. I never told you, I guess?—Mary Baker Eddy was my great-grandmother. You’ve heard of Mrs. Eddy? She’s famous! Her mother was a Jew. Jewess? They didn’t practice the religion because they had a vision of Christ the Healer. But I am a descendant, Mr. Shinn. The same blood beats in my veins.”

  These words of the young Princess were so remarkable, Rumpelstiltskin could think of no reply.

  THE TRANSACTION

  It wasn’t me. Those many times. It was my destiny. Like a comet veering toward Earth, and the gravitational pull. You can’t resist. You try, but you can’t.

  W summoned Norma Jeane to him at last. Now that she was “Marilyn.” It had been years.

  She knew why: The Studio was contemplating hiring her for a movie called Don’t Bother to Knock. She’d auditioned, and she’d been told she was “terrific.” Now she was waiting. I. E. Shinn was waiting. The summons came from W, the male lead.

  Why had she been thinking obsessively of Debra Mae these past forty-eight hours? It made no sense. There is no “death” yet the dead stay dead. It was only harmful to think of them. They would not wish our pity Norma Jeane thought.

  She’d wondered if Debra Mae had ever been summoned by W. Or by N, or D, or B. Z, she knew, had indeed summoned the dead girl. But Z had also summoned her, and she wasn’t dead.

  “Marilyn. Hel-lo.”

  He was staring frankly at her. Smiling his lopsided smile. Always it’s a surprise to see in life the movie close-up. This was W of the cruel sexual wolf smile. You imagined sharp canine teeth. You imagined a hot panting breath that might scald. In fact, he was a handsome man with a lean face like a hatchet and squinting taunting eyes. Hates women. But you can make him love YOU. And she was looking so pretty and so soft: a bonbon. A cream puff. Something to lick vigorously with the tongue, not chew and gnaw. Maybe he’d have mercy? Or did she want mercy? Maybe not. W wasted no time circling her shivery-bare forearm with his fingers. Her skin was creamy-pale and his was much darker. Nicotine-stained fingers, and strong. The shock of it went through her. A stab in the pit of the belly. A moistening there. Men were the adversary, but you must make your adversary want you. And here was a man not-gentle as V, her secret lover, was gentle. Here was a man not a twin of Norma Jeane’s as Cass Chaplin had been a twin.

  “Long time no see, eh? Except in the funny papers.”

  In his films W was often a killer. You cheered him as a killer. For he was one who enjoyed killing. An overgrown, lanky boy with mischievous eyes and that sexy lopsided smile. That goofy high-pitched giggle. W’s film debut was pushing a crippled woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs. His giggle as the chair careens down the stairs, careens and crashes, and the woman screams, the camera looking on in a pretense of horror. Hell, you know you always wanted to push a crippled old dame down the stairs; how many times did you want to push your old bitch of a mother down the stairs and break her neck?

  They were in a ground-floor flat in an apartment building off La Brea, near Slauson. Not a part of L.A. that Norma Jeane knew. In her hurt and shame she would not recall it clearly afterward. How many flats, bungalows, hotel suites, “cabanas,” and weekend estates in Malibu she would not recall clearly afterward in these early years of what she presumed would be her career, or in any case her life. Men ruled Hollywood, and men must be placated. This was not a profound truth. This was a banal and thus a reliable truth. Like no evil, no sin, and no death. No pain. The flat, its windows shadowed by spiky palm trees, was sparsely furnished, like a dream in which the edges aren’t filled in. A borrowed flat. A shared flat. No carpets on the scarred wooden floors. A few scattered chairs, a lone telephone on a windowsill littered with insect corpses. A lone page from Variety with a headline vaguely glimpsed containing the words “Red Skelton,” unless it was “Dead Skeleton.” In a shadowy rear room, a bed. A new-looking satiny mattress and a loose sheet drawn over it in what appeared to be haste but might as easily have been dreaminess, contemplation. What solace we take in the mind’s frantic scurrying to assign meaning and motive. The world is, she was coming to see, a gigantic metaphysical poem whose invisible interior shape is identical with its visible shape and of the exact same size. Norma Jeane in her spike-heeled shoes and flowery summer dress like a cover of Family Circle was thinking possibly the sheet was clean but probably (you had to be realistic at the age of twenty-six if you’d been married at the age of sixteen) not. In the tiny smelly bathroom there would be towels, possibly clean but probably not. In the wicker wastebasket, coiled together and stiffened like slug fossils, you knew what you’d see, so why look?

  She laughed now, turning with charming awkwardness—“Oh! What—?” so W could steady her, comfort her as in a gesture of masculine protectiveness. “Nothing, baby. Just—y’know—bugs.” In the corner of her eye a scurrying of roaches shiny as pieces of black plastic. Only roaches (and she had plenty of her own, at home), yet her heart quickened in alarm.

  W snapped his fingers in her face. “Daydreamin’, honey?”

  Norma Jeane laughed, startled. Her first reflex was always to laugh and to smile. At least it was her new sexy-husky laugh, not the ridiculous squeak. “Oh—no no no no”—blundering on, improvising as in acting class—“just I was thinking, there aren’t rattlesnakes here. That’s something to be always grateful for, there aren’t rattlesnakes actually in a room with you? Or waking up in bed?” This was more a breathless inquiry than a statement. In W’s presence as in the presence of any man of power you didn’t make statements except in the form of inquiries. This was only good manners, female tact. Her reward was, W laughed. A hearty belly laugh. “You’re a scream, Marilyn. Or—what, Norma? Which?” There was an excited sexual tension between them. His taunting eyes on her breasts, her belly, her legs, slender bare ankles in the sling-back high heels. His taunting eyes on her mouth. W liked her sense of humor, she could see. Often men were surprised by Norma Jeane’s odd sense of humor, not expecting it from “Marilyn,” who was a sweet dumb blonde with the intelligence of a mildly precocious eleven-year-old. For this was a sense of humor like their own. Mordant and dissonant, like biting into a cream puff and discovering ground glass.

  W was telling a rattlesnake story, with gusto. In rattlesnake season, everyone had a rattlesnake story. Men competed with one another. Women usually just listened. But women were essential as listeners. Norma Jeane was no longer thinking of Debra Mae, she was plagued now by thinking of a rattlesnake nudging its beautiful cudgel-shaped head, flicking tongue, and venomous jaws
up into what’s called the vagina, her vagina, which was only just an empty cut, a nothingness, and the womb an empty balloon requiring blowing up to fulfill its destiny. She made an effort to listen to W, who would be her leading man if she was hired. If she was hired. Trying to shape her beautiful-doll face into an expression that would make this asshole think she was listening to him and not again drifting off.

  I want to play Nell. I am Nell. You can’t keep me from her. I will steal the movie out from beneath your eyes.

  W was asking in a drawl did she remember how they’d met at Schwab’s? Norma Jeane said sweetly of course she remembered. How could she not?—“But was this g-girlfriend of mine Debra Mae with me that morning? Or some other morning?” The words slipped out. Norma Jeane couldn’t reclaim them. W shrugged. “Who? Naw.” He was standing so close now she could smell him. A frank perspiration odor. And tobacco. “So, you think we could work together? Eh?” and Norma Jeane said, “Oh yes, I th-think we could. I do.” “Saw you in The Asphalt Jungle and what’s the other one? Eve. Yeah, I was impressed.” Norma Jeane was smiling so hard, her jaw began to shake. There was the long look between them. No movie music, only traffic outside and the scurrying of roaches like miniature muffled laughter. Unless she was imagining this?—but she knew. You always know. That look so eloquently saying I want to fuck you. You’re not a cock tease, are you? W would be the only box-office name in the film. At least, the only proven box-office name. W had the right to choose his co-stars. Norma Jeane would hear from the producer D, if W liked her OK. He’d pass her on to D in that case. Or maybe not? Of course there was the director N, but he was in the hire of D, so possibly N wouldn’t be a factor. There was the studio executive B. What you heard of B made you wish not to hear more. No evil, no sin, and no death. No ugliness except as our ignorant eyes betray us.

  What if Mr. Shinn knew of this summons of W? (Was it possible I. E. Shinn did know?) Norma Jeane was so ashamed of herself, she’d had to decline his marriage proposal after having seemed to accept it. She was crazy! Since that terrible day Isaac Shinn was brusque and businesslike and communicated with Norma Jeane mainly through an assistant and on the phone. Never did he take her to dinner at Chasen’s or the Brown Derby now. Never did he, with some sweet lame excuse, “drop by” her place on Ventura. Oh, God, he’d wept as she’d never seen a grown man weep. His heart broken. You can only break a man’s heart once. She had not meant to deceive him, she’d been confused with his talk of being a Jew. The sick sensation washed over her, seeing I. E. Shinn reduced to tears. This is what love does to you. Even to a man. Even to a Jew.

  Still, he’d sent her the script of Don’t Bother to Knock. He still wanted “Marilyn Monroe” as his client. He told her the best thing about the script was the title. The script was contrived and melodramatic and there were excruciatingly awful “comic” interludes but if she landed the role of Nell it would be “Marilyn’s” first starring role. She’d be playing opposite Richard Widmark. Widmark! A serious dramatic role, not the usual dumb-blonde crap. “You’d play a psychotic baby-sitter,” Shinn said. “A what? Who—?” Norma Jeane asked. “A schizzy baby-sitter who almost shoves a little girl out a window,” Shinn said, laughing. “She ties the brat up and gags her. It’s risky stuff. There’s no actual love interest with Widmark, his character’s a dud, but you get to kiss, once. There’s some sexy stuff and Widmark will be good. This Nell-the-baby-sitter tries to seduce him, confusing him with a fiancé who’s dead, a pilot shot down in the Pacific, in the war. A tearjerker. It’s phony as hell but maybe nobody will notice. In the end, Nell threatens to slash her throat with a razor blade. She’s taken away by the cops to a loony bin. Widmark’s with another woman. But you’d have more scenes than anyone else in the movie and an opportunity for once to act.”

  Shinn was trying to be enthusiastic but his telephone voice didn’t sound authentic. It was a reasonable voice, a sane voice. A croaky-froggy middle-aged voice. A voice buttoned to the neck in a cardigan sweater. A bifocal voice. What had happened to fierce Rumpelstiltskin? Had Norma Jeane imagined his magic? And what of the Fair Princess, his creation, if Rumpelstiltskin was losing his power?

  He knew me: the Beggar Maid. They all knew me.

  Saying pleasantly, “You’re free to leave at any time.”

  “Sweetheart. We got the part.”

  Three days later, here was I. E. Shinn on the phone, gloating.

  Norma Jeane gripped the receiver tight. She hadn’t been feeling well. She’d been reading books Cass had left for her, The Actor’s Handbook and the Actor’s Life, filled with his annotations, The Diary of Nijinski. When she tried to speak to Shinn, her voice failed.

  Shinn said, annoyed, “You awake, kid? The baby-sitter. I’m telling you you got the female lead. Widmark asked for you. We got the part!”

  One of the books slipped to the floor. Her neatly sharpened pencil rolled across the carpet.

  Norma Jeane tried to clear her throat. Whatever it was.

  Hoarsely she whispered, “That’s g-good news.”

  “Good news? It’s terrific news.” Shinn said accusingly, “Is somebody there with you? You don’t sound very happy, Norma Jeane.”

  Nobody was in the rented flat with her. V hadn’t called in several days.

  “I am. I am happy.” Norma Jeane began to cough.

  Shinn talked excitedly through her coughing. You’d think he had forgotten his heartbreak. His mortification. You wouldn’t think this was a man now fifty-two years old and soon to die. Norma Jeane succeeded in clearing her throat and spitting a clot of greenish phlegm into a tissue. A similar clotty moisture stung her eyes. For days it had packed her sinuses, worked its way into the crevices of her brain, hardened between her teeth. Shinn was complaining. “You don’t sound happy, Norma Jeane. I’d like to know why the hell not. I bust my ass over at The Studio talking you up with D and you’re ‘Uh-huh, I’m hap-py’”—mimicking what Norma Jeane presumed he believed to be her voice, a nasal, whiny baby voice. He paused, breathing hard.

  Norma Jeane squinted along the telephone line and saw him, jewel-like glaring eyes, the prominent nose with flaring, hairy nostrils, the hurt mouth like something mashed. A mouth she’d been unable to kiss. He’d moved to kiss her and she’d flinched and turned away with a cry. I’m sorry! I just can’t! I can’t love you! Forgive me.

  “Look, ‘Nell’ will be dynamite. OK, the part doesn’t make much sense and it’s a lousy ending, but it’s your first starring role. It’s a serious film. Now ‘Marilyn’s’ really on her way. You doubt me, eh? Your only friend, Isaac?”

  “Oh, no! No.” Norma Jeane spat again into the tissue and quickly crumpled it in her fist without looking at it. “Mr. Shinn, I would never d-doubt you.”

  NELL 1952

  Transformation—that is what the actor’s nature, consciously or subconsciously, longs for.

  —Michael Chekhov,

  To the Actor

  1

  I knew her. I was her. Not her lover but her father was gone from her. They told her he was lost in the war. They lied: it was only to her he was lost.

  2

  Frank Widdoes.

  Culver City Homicide Detective Frank Widdoes!

  At the first rehearsal of Don’t Bother to Knock she realized who “Jed Towers” was. Not the famous actor (for whom she felt no emotion, not even contempt) but her lost lover Frank Widdoes, whom she hadn’t seen in eleven years. In “Jed Towers” she perceived the detective’s cruel-guilty-yearning eyes. This man was miscast in the film as a gruff-guy-good-at-heart. It was a role for V, not for W, with his lopsided grin and taunting eyes. In fact, W was a thug, a killer. A sexual predator. Yet at his touch Nell melted. You had to employ such a corny term —“melted.” That mad shining certainty in her widened eyes. In the very pertness of her little-woman’s body. (Norma Jeane insisted upon wearing Nell’s bra jacked up tight. Her breasts constrained beneath the prim fabric. Soon it would be Marilyn’s signature to go without underwear but, a
s Nell, underwear was required. “The bra straps should show through the cloth, when I’m seen from the back. She’s trying to hang on to her sanity. She’s trying so hard.”)

  I love you, I will do anything for you. There is no me only YOU.

  She would kiss “Jed Towers.” Passionately, hungrily. She would move into the man’s arms with such intensity, Richard Widmark would be astonished. And a little frightened of her. Is this acting? Is Marilyn Monroe playing Nell or is Marilyn Monroe so hungry and eager for him? But what after all is “acting”? Norma Jeane had never kissed Frank Widdoes. Not as he’d wanted her to kiss him. She knew, and she’d denied him. She’d been frightened of him. An adult man possesses the power to enter your soul. Her boyfriends were boys only. A boy has no power. The power to hurt, maybe, but not the power to enter your soul. “Norma Jeane. Hey. C’mon.” She’d had no choice but to climb into his car, her long curly dark-blond hair swinging about her face. What could Widmark know of Widdoes? Not a thing! Hadn’t a clue. He’d made her kneel before him but she hadn’t loved him. His swagger, his sexual arrogance, his penis of which he was so proud she hadn’t loved; it wasn’t real to her. What was real to her was Frank Widdoes stroking her hair. Murmuring her name. Her name magical-sounding in her own ears, in his voice. In itself “Norma Jeane” was not a magical name but in Frank Widdoes’s deep yearning voice it was magical, and she knew she was beautiful, and she was desired. To be desired is to be beautiful. Because he’d hidden her, called her name, she’d climbed into his car. An unmarked police car. He was an officer of the law. Of the state. In the hire of the state he could kill. She’d seen him pistol-whip a boy, bring him to his knees and to the blood-splattered pavement. He carried a revolver in a holster strapped around his left shoulder and one rainy-smoggy afternoon by the railroad embankment where the body had been found he took her hand, her soft small hand, and closed her fingers around the butt of the revolver, warm from his body. Oh, she’d loved him! Why hadn’t she kissed him? Why hadn’t she let him undress her, kiss her as he wanted to, make love to her with his mouth, his hands, his body? He had “protection” in his wallet, in an aluminum foil wrapper. “Norma Jeane? I promise. I won’t hurt you.”