Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Were there male models in that figure-drawing class? he joked, in his sidelong way that meant it wasn’t a joke; don’t be suckered into giving a quick unheeding answer. Her reply was pure Lorelei Lee, which almost he could appreciate; anyway he laughed his barking belly laugh—“Gosh, Daddy! I haven’t noticed.”

  It was the female models that fascinated and frightened.

  Often she stared and forgot to draw. Her charcoal stick faltered and ceased its feathery motions. It happened more than once that the brittle little stick broke in two in her fingers! The models were sometimes young but more often not. One woman must have been in her late forties. Not one was beautiful. Not one was what you’d call pretty. They wore no makeup; their hair was unstyled and often uncombed. They were dull-eyed and indifferent to the dozen students in the class, these “students” of ages ranging from late adolescence to late middle age, arranged about the model in a circle and staring with the earnest intensity of the untalented. “As if we aren’t even here. And if we are, we don’t matter.” One of the female models was potbellied and slack-breasted, with sinewy unshaved legs. One had a face all sharp angles and creases like a Hallowe’en pumpkin, a sickly carroty sheen to her skin and coarse hairs sprouting beneath her arms and at her crotch. There were models with ugly feet, not-clean toenails. There was a model (who reminded Norma Jeane of a scrappy girl named Linda at the Home) with a lurid sickle scar on her left thigh, maybe eight inches long. It fascinated her that such unattractive females would not only dare to remove their clothing in front of strangers but evince not the slightest discomfort at being stared at. She admired them. She did! But they rarely lingered to talk with anyone other than the instructor. They avoided eye contact at all times. Without glancing at a watch they knew exactly when it was time for a break and a smoke, and at once they slipped on their ratty robes and kicked on their ratty sandals and walked quick and defiant out of the room. If any of the models knew, as the other students did, that the shyly earnest young blond woman their instructor had introduced to them pointedly as “Norma Jeane” was in fact “Marilyn Monroe,” coolly they gave no sign. They weren’t impressed! (Oh, but they did glance at her, sometimes. She caught them. Darting fishhooks of eyes that didn’t snag in her, at least. Such icy eyes, Norma Jeane didn’t dare smile.)

  After class one evening Norma Jeane dared to approach the scarred young woman (whose name wasn’t Linda) and asked would she like to stop for coffee? “Thanks but I got to get home,” the model muttered, without meeting Norma Jeane’s eye. She was edging toward the door, a lighted cigarette already in hand. Well, would she like a ride home? “Thanks, but I got somebody picking me up.” Norma Jeane smiled the dazzling Marilyn smile that rarely failed to get attention but totally failed here. She thought In fact this is Linda. She knows damned well who I am. Who I am now, and who I was then. Trying not to sound exasperated or desperate, Norma Jeane said, “I just wanted to say, I really admire you. Being a m-model as you are.” The model exhaled smoke. You couldn’t see the least sign of irony in her plain shut-up face, yet you knew it was pure irony she exhaled. “Yeah? That’s nice.” “Because you’re so brave.” “Brave, why?” Norma Jeane hesitated, still smiling. The Marilyn reflex was so instinctive, a sweet-sensuous stretching of the lips, in fact it was nothing more (Norma Jeane had just read) than the human infant’s earliest genetically programmed social reflex, a sweet hopeful smile, a smile to make you love me. “Because you’re not pretty. At all. You’re ugly. Yet you remove your clothes before strangers.” The model laughed. Maybe Norma Jeane hadn’t said these words out loud? Maybe this wasn’t Linda really, but a sister actress down on her luck, possibly with a drug habit, and a lover who beats her? Norma Jeane said, “Because—oh, I don’t know—I couldn’t do it, I guess. If I was you.”

  The model laughed, on her way out. “If you needed the money, Norma Jeane, sure you would. Bet your sweet ass.”

  “This is the happiest day of my life.”

  She embarrassed him on their honeymoon by exclaiming these heartfelt words to waiters, hotel doormen, sales clerks, and even the Mexican chambermaids, who smiled at the beautiful blond gringa without comprehension. “This is the happiest day of my life.” There was no doubting she meant it. For one of the truths revealed in scripture is, Each day is the blessed day, each day is the happiest of our lives. She stroked his face, which seemed to her a beautiful face even when unshaven. She stared in rapture. Like a child wife she tickled the coarse graying hairs on his chest and forearms and playfully squeezed the soft flesh knobs at his waist of which, in his male-athlete vanity, he was embarrassed. She kissed his hands, which embarrassed him too. And sometimes she buried her face in his groin, which wildly excited him. For nice girls didn’t kiss men in that part of their bodies, and she knew it. But did he know that she knew? Maybe she was just so naive! On the beach beside the greeny-aqua ocean she ran with him in the early morning, surprising the Ex-Athlete that a woman could run so well and for so many strenuous minutes—“Darling, I’m a dancer, haven’t you noticed?” But she always tired before he did and stopped to watch him run on.

  But she didn’t perform oral sex with her husband. Anymore than he did, with a woman now his legal wife. It would be a Hollywood tale told for generations how, in a corridor outside the very courtroom in San Francisco City Hall in which only a few minutes before she’d been married in a brief civil ceremony, she’d slyly telephoned her friend Leviticus with the unprintable news bulletin, “Marilyn Monroe has sucked her last cock.”

  By which the astonished columnist understood that the Blond Actress and the Ex-Athlete had quietly married after months of fevered media speculation.

  Another scoop for Leviticus!

  Singing for her husband “I Wanna Be Loved by You.”

  Repeating it was the happiest day of her life and the man was so moved he could only murmur, almost inaudibly, “Me too.”

  She was subpoenaed to appear before the Subversive Activities Control Board in Sacramento. The Ex-Athlete instructed her, Just tell the truth. She said, I don’t owe those men the truth. He said, If you know Communists, name them. She said, I will not. He said, astonished, You don’t have anything to hide, do you? She said, It’s my private business what I want to hide and what I want to reveal. She saw that he would have liked to strike her but he did not, for he loved her; he was not a man to strike anyone weaker than himself, especially a woman, and a woman he loved. There was an ugly tale of the Ex-Athlete beating his first wife but that had been a long time ago, the Ex-Athlete had been young then, and hotheaded, and his wife “provoking.” Calmly he said now, I don’t understand this, and I don’t like it. She said, I don’t like it either. She may have called him Daddy. She may have kissed him. He may have suffered her kiss in dignified silence. But in the end by way of Studio lawyers’ negotiations the nature of the meeting with the “control board” was changed from a public interrogation on the floor of the California legislature to a private hearing and the hearing would be an elegant luncheon in a private dining room at the capitol building. There was no interrogation. There was no confrontation. No press or media people were present. At the conclusion of the three-hour luncheon, the Blond Actress signed autographs for the board members and Studio photographs of Marilyn Monroe, as many as requested.

  A pure soul. In mime class we were told that the body has its natural language, a subtle, musical speech. The body predates speech. And often lives beyond speech. We were told to mime our deepest selves.

  The young blond woman shrank at first from our eyes. She crouched and hugged her knees. She wore cotton pedal pushers and a man’s shirt, and her bleached-bone hair was tied back carelessly in a scarf. Her face was bare of makeup (but we knew that face). She crouched in a corner, her eyes fixed upon an invisible horizon. She began to shuffle forward, awkwardly. She lifted herself slowly like a ray of light. She stretched her arms and stood on her toes until her body was shaking. She then moved slowly about the room, staring at an invisible horiz
on. She began to dance, soundlessly. As if in a trance she moved her body in slow pained gyrations. She removed her shirt, not knowing what she did. She crossed her arms over her bare pendulous breasts. Under an enchantment she lay down on the floor, curled up like a child, and immediately slept, or seemed to sleep. A long magical minute passed. It was impossible to judge if this was still mime or an authentic abrupt sleep. Yet of course it could be both. After another minute, the mime instructor knelt worriedly beside her and spoke the name she’d given us: “Norma Jeane?”

  The young blond woman “Norma Jeane” was deeply asleep. It required some effort to wake her. Sure we knew she was who she was. Her studio/Hollywood name. But the woman’s deepest self shone through. A pure soul. It was beautiful, and it had no name.

  It was just that he loved her so much. He couldn’t bear to see her cheapen herself. Demean and degrade herself. Her name and his. Those photographs and movie stills. Those jackals. And paying her so little, under that contract. Everybody knows Hollywood is an open brothel. Allow them to display her like a common whore. A street hooker. They were married now; she was his wife. What of his family and relatives in San Francisco? What of his embarrassment? His fans? Marrying her for love and in all the papers the shameful fact he’d been excommunicated from the Church. His previous divorce. The Church forbids divorce. For her! For love of her. And displaying herself like meat. Sewn into her dresses. Hips swiveling as she walks. Don’t say it’s a joke. If it’s a joke it’s a filthy joke. Breasts spilling out of her clothes. That Photoplay award dinner. At the Oscar award ceremony. Said she wasn’t going, yet she did. Is that what you are? Meat? Everybody knows what Hollywood is. Her name in the papers. And his. Newlyweds quarreling? In public? Filthy lies. Fucking liar. Never would he raise his hand against any woman. How dare she provoke him.

  She was naked, drowsy. Midafternoon and she couldn’t seem to fully awaken. The day before at mime class (unless it had been several days ago) she’d fallen into a deep sleep and hadn’t been able to shake off the effects of that sleep. If she had Doc Bob’s wake-up pills—but she didn’t. Her angry husband had snatched them out of her hand and flushed them down the toilet.

  Is that what you are? Meat?

  Daddy, no! I don’t want to be.

  Tell them you won’t. This new movie. No deal.

  Daddy, I have to work. It’s my life.

  Tell them you want good roles. Serious roles. Tell them you’re quitting. Your husband says you’re quitting.

  Yes. Yes, I will tell them.

  She began to cry. But nothing happened. She was frightened, for she had no tears. She wasn’t yet thirty years old and her tears were drying up! I killed my baby. A tear or two eked out. My baby? Why? Yet she could not cry. Someone had rubbed sand into her eyes and coated the interior of her mouth with sand. Where her heart had been, an hourglass of sand, sifting downward.

  In fact she was ill. It was an emergency appendectomy.

  In her panic she’d thought it was labor; she was having a baby after all. An angry demon baby gnarled and twisted with a head so large it would split her groin in two. And her husband wasn’t the father and would strangle her with his strong beautiful hands. Guilty and scared, stricken with pain, and her skin burning, and he’d wakened in alarm to discover her in the bathroom, her bare buttocks on the edge of the white porcelain tub rocking from side to side in agony, naked and sweating and giving off the rank animal smell of physical terror. The Ex-Athlete knew the symptoms. In fact he was relieved to identify the symptoms. He’d had a nearly ruptured appendix himself as a young man. He called an ambulance and she was taken to the emergency room of the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital and a Hollywood tale would emerge from the chaos and confusion of these hours to be avidly recounted through generations of how the resident surgeon, who’d only learned the identity of his famous patient when he stepped into the operating room, discovered, taped to her midriff, this shakily scrawled note.

  Most important to READ BEFORE operation

  Dear Doctor,

  Cut as little as possible I know it seems vain but that doesn’t really enter into it—the fact that I’m a woman is important and means much to me. You have children and must know what it means—please Doctor—I know somehow you will! thank you—for Gods sake Dear Doctor. No ovaries removed—please again do whatever you can do prevent large scars. Thanking you with all my heart.

  Marilyn Monroe

  Since the night of the premiere of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which was also the night she’d decided to marry the Ex-Athlete, she had not heard from the man who’d called himself her father.

  Your tearful Father.

  She’d told no one. She was waiting.

  She visited Gladys at the Lakewood Home. She went alone. She had a gleaming plum-colored Studebaker convertible with whitewall tires. She was under suspension from The Studio for refusing a new film so there was no Studio car available to her in any case. The Ex-Athlete offered to accompany her but she refused.

  “My mother would only upset you. She’s an ill woman.”

  Never had the Ex-Athlete seen Gladys Mortensen, nor would he.

  Except she’d shown him a snapshot dated December 1926. Gladys with her infant daughter Norma Jeane in her arms. The Ex-Athlete stared at an ethereal-looking gaunt-faced young woman with Garbo eyes and fine plucked brows holding in the crook of her arm, as one might hold a novelty of some sort, a plump moist-mouthed baby with a question mark of a dark-blond curl at the very top of her head. Shyly the Blond Actress regarded her husband, whom in many ways she did not know. For to love a man is not to know him but rather to not-know him. And to be loved by a man is to have succeeded in creating the object of his love, which must not then be jeopardized.

  “Well! Mother and me. A long time ago.”

  The Ex-Athlete winced, but why? He studied the sepia snapshot for some minutes. Whatever words he might have wished to utter of pity, sympathy, confused love, or even hurt, he had not the ability to form.

  At Lakewood, the Blond Actress became Norma Jeane Baker, whose arrival was greeted with the usual subdued and respectful excitement. She was wearing shoes with only a medium heel and a tasteful mauve-gray gabardine suit with a boxy, not form-fitting, jacket. She was not “Marilyn Monroe”—you could see at a glance. Yet something of the blond aura of Marilyn accompanied her, like a lingering perfume. She was bringing a gift for the staff: a ten-pound Valentine’s Day box of assorted Swiss chocolates. “Oh, Miss Baker! Thank you.” “Miss Baker, you shouldn’t!” Smiling eyes dropping to her ring finger. For she’d married the world-famous Ex-Athlete since last visiting Lakewood. “Isn’t it a lovely day? Will you be taking your mother out this afternoon?” “Come with me, Miss Baker. Your mother is awake and eager to see you.” In fact, Gladys Mortensen did not appear eager to see Norma Jeane and very likely didn’t know that Norma Jeane was expected. If she’d been told, she’d forgotten. Norma Jeane brought gifts for Gladys too, but fruit rather than candy, a basket of tangerines and shiny purple grapes, and a copy of National Geographic because this was a quality magazine with beautiful photographs that Gladys might enjoy, and there was the latest issue of Screenland with the Blond Actress on the cover in an elegant restrained pose above the caption MARILYN MONROE’S HONEYMOON MARRIAGE. Gladys glanced at these items, crinkling her nose. Was it candy she’d been expecting?

  Norma Jeane embraced her mother gently, not warmly as she’d have wished, for she knew that Gladys would stiffen in such an embrace. Lightly she kissed the older woman’s cheek. This was one of Gladys’s good days, you could see. Norma Jeane had been told when she’d called that Gladys had had a “bad spell” recently and had “come out of it almost one hundred percent.” Her hair had been shampooed that morning and she was wearing the pretty pink quilted robe Norma Jeane had bought for her in Bullock’s; it was slightly stained, but Norma Jeane wasn’t going to notice. The matching pink slippers had been placed neatly side by side beneath Gladys’s bed. On a wall beside Gladys�
�s bureau was something new: a picture of Jesus Christ with his flaming heart exposed, a nimbus of light around his movie-handsome head. A Catholic image? One of the other patients must have given it to her. Norma Jeane sighed, as if staring into an abyss at the bottom of which stood a tiny figure, allegedly her mother.

  She was surprised and pleased to see, propped up against a mirror, the framed wedding photo of herself and the Ex-Athlete she’d sent to Gladys. The bride in oyster-white, smiling happily. The groom tall, handsome, with eyebrows so sharply defined they looked like an actor’s. Norma Jeane thought She didn’t throw it away! She must love me.

  Gladys chuckled, chewing on a grape. “That man is your husband? Does he know about you?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good, then.” Gladys nodded gravely.

  Norma Jeane saw with relief that her mother was still in that suspended time. If anything, she looked younger. There was a girlish mischievous air about her. When Norma Jeane embraced her she’d felt the frail bird bones. And how delicate the bones of Gladys’s face. The mysterious Garbo eyes. That ethereal expression a camera had captured long ago. It had pleased Norma Jeane that, gazing at Gladys as she’d been in 1926, younger than Norma Jeane was now, the Ex-Athlete had been drawn into Gladys’s spell. Briefly.

  All that remained of Gladys’s fastidiously plucked and penciled eyebrows were a few stray gray hairs.

  The staff reported to Norma Jeane that in good weather Gladys exercised by walking “nonstop” on the hospital grounds. She was one of the most active of the older patients. Her physical health was generally good. As they talked, Norma Jeane marveled at her mother’s cheerfulness. Maybe it was quick and shallow and unreflective but at least she wasn’t brooding as sometimes she did. Norma Jeane couldn’t help but compare her mother to her new mother-in-law: a short, sturdily built Italian woman with a prominent nose and a shadowy mustache, a great collapsed bosom, a rotund little belly. “Momma” she wanted to be called. Momma!