Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Birdlike Gladys was perched on the edge of her bed, bare feet dangling. She ate grapes noisily, spitting the seeds into her hand. From time to time without a word Norma Jeane reached out, a tissue in the palm of her hand, and took the seeds from her mother. Except for an occasional facial twitch and a peculiar shifting of the eyes, Gladys hardly seemed like a mental patient. Her manner was upbeat and resolutely good-natured. As Norma Jeane’s manner, strengthened by Doc Bob’s Benzedrine, was upbeat and resolutely good-natured. Gladys spoke of “news in the world”—“more trouble in Korea.” Was Gladys reading newspapers? That was more than Norma Jeane had done lately. This woman is no more mad than I am. But she is hiding. She has allowed the world to defeat her.

  That wasn’t going to happen to Norma Jeane.

  Gladys changed into slacks and a shirt and Norma Jeane took her outside for a walk. It was a mildly cool, hazy day. The Ex-Athlete spoke of such days as “nowhere and no-time” days. Nothing was scheduled to happen on such a day. No baseball game, no focus of attention. Much of life, if you’re retired or on suspension or unemployed or mentally ill, is nowhere and no-time.

  “I may be quitting the movies. ‘At the height of my fame.’ My husband wants me to. He wants a wife, and he wants a mother. I mean—a mother to his children. That’s what I want too.”

  Gladys might have been listening but she made no reply. She pulled away from Norma Jeane, like an impatient child preferring to walk alone. “This is my short cut. Through here.” She led Norma Jeane, in her gray-mauve gabardine suit and her new ladylike shoes, through a brick-strewn passageway, too narrow to be an alley, between hospital buildings. Ventilators roared overhead. A virulent odor of hot grease struck with the force of an open-handed blow. Mother and daughter emerged in a grassy area downhill from a broad graveled path. Norma Jeane laughed self-consciously, wondering if anyone was watching. She feared that some members of the staff, including even the doctors, were taking pictures of her at times, without her knowing; to placate them, she’d posed in the director’s office with him and a few others, smiling her Marilyn smile. Is this enough? Please. Yet when no one was visible with a camera, when no one appeared to be watching, when the vast empty sky opened overhead without even the concentration of the sun, weren’t such moments being lost? The precious heartbeats of a life being lost? Wasn’t most of life nowhere and no-time and irrevocably lost without a camera to record and preserve it?

  “The Studio only offers me sex films. To be blunt! That’s what they are. The very title—The Seven-Year Itch. My husband says it’s disgusting and demeaning. ‘Marilyn Monroe’ is this foam-rubber sex doll I’m supposed to be, they want to use her until she wears out; then they’ll toss her in the trash. But he sees through them. Lots of people have tried to exploit him. He’s made some mistakes, he says. I can learn from his mistakes, he says. To him, Hollywood people are jackals. And this includes my agent, and people who claim to be on my side against The Studio. ‘They all want to exploit you,’ he says. ‘I just want to love you.’”

  These words vibrated oddly in the air, like dented wind chimes. Norma Jeane heard herself continue, as if Gladys had objected.

  “I’ve been studying mime. I want to begin again, from zero. Maybe I’ll move to New York to study acting. Serious acting. Not in movies but onstage. My husband wouldn’t object to that, maybe. I want to live in another world. Not Hollywood. I want to live in—oh, Chekhov! O’Neill. Anna Christie. I could play Nora in A Doll’s House. Wouldn’t ‘Marilyn’ be perfect for Nora! The only true acting is living. Alive. In the movies, they splice you together, hundreds of disjointed scenes. It’s a jigsaw puzzle but you’re not the one to put the pieces together.”

  Gladys said abruptly, “That bench? I used to sit there. But somebody was killed there.”

  “Killed?”

  “They hurt you if you don’t obey. If you don’t swallow their poison. If you keep it in the side of your mouth and refuse to swallow. That’s forbidden.”

  Gladys’s voice had been shrill and excitable. Oh no Norma Jeane thought. Please no.

  Shielding her eyes and whimpering, Gladys hurried past the bench. This was the very bench daughter and mother had sat on a number of times, overlooking a shallow brook. Now Gladys was speaking of an earthquake. The San Andreas Fault. In fact there had been earth tremors recently in the Los Angeles area, but no earthquake. People came into her room at night, Gladys said, and were making a film of her. And doing things to her with surgical instruments. Other patients were encouraged to steal from her. At the time of an earthquake such things happened because there was nobody to govern. But she was lucky: nobody had killed her. Nobody had smothered her with a pillow. “They respect patients with family, like me. I’m a VIP here. The nurses are always cooing, ‘Oh, when is Marilyn coming to see you, Gladys?’ I say, ‘How should I know? I’m just her mother.’ They were asking so much about the baseball player, was Marilyn going to marry him; finally I said, ‘Go and ask her yourself, it means so much to you. Maybe she’ll make you all bridesmaids.’” Norma Jeane laughed weakly. Her mother was speaking in a low, fast, accelerating voice that signaled trouble. It was the voice of Highland Avenue lifting above the cascading roar of scalding water.

  As soon as they’d emerged from the smelly passageway, as if out of the range of authority.

  “Mother, let’s sit down. There’s a nice bench here.”

  “Nice bench!” Gladys snorted. “Sometimes, Norma Jeane, you sound like such a fool. Like the rest of them.”

  “It’s only a way of t-talking, Mother.”

  “Then learn a smarter way. You’re no fool.”

  In the cool hazy air that smelled faintly of sulfur they hiked to the farthest corner of the Lakewood grounds, where a twelve-foot cyclone fence loomed above them, screened by a privet hedge. Gladys shoved her fingers through the fence and shook it violently. You could see that this was the object of her swift hike. The panicked thought came to Norma Jeane that she and Gladys were both patients at Lakewood. She’d been tricked into coming here and now it was too late.

  At the same time she knew better. Under California law, her husband would have had to commit her. The Ex-Athlete adored her, he’d never do such a thing.

  Maybe he’d kill her! With his strong beautiful hands. But he’d never do such a cruel treacherous thing.

  “Now I have a husband who loves me, Mother. It has made all the difference in the world. Oh, I hope someday you can meet him! He’s a wonderful, warm man who respects women. . . .”

  Gladys was breathing quickly, invigorated from the brisk walk. In the past several years she’d become an inch or two shorter than Norma Jeane yet it seemed to Norma Jeane that to meet her mother’s steely bemused gaze she had to look up. The strain to her neck was considerable.

  Gladys said, “You didn’t have a baby, did you? I dreamt it died.” “It died, Mother.” “Was it a little girl? Did they tell you?” “I had a miscarriage, Mother. In just the sixth week. I was terribly sick.” Gladys nodded gravely. She didn’t seem at all surprised by this revelation, though clearly she didn’t believe it. She said, “It was a necessary decision.” Norma Jeane said sharply, “It was a miscarriage, Mother.” Gladys said, “Della was my mother and Della was a grandmother and that was her reward at last. She’d had a hard life, I brought her terrible pain. But at last, she was happy.” A sly witchy light came into Gladys’s eyes. “But if you do that for me, Norma Jeane, I can’t promise.” Norma Jeane said, confused, “Promise what? I don’t understand.” “I can’t be one of them. A grandmother. Like her. It’s my punishment.” “Oh, Mother, what are you saying? Punishment for what?” “For giving my beautiful daughters away. For letting them die.”

  Norma Jeane backed away from her mother, pushing at the air with the palms of her hands as if pushing at a wall. This was impossible! You couldn’t talk with a mental patient. A paranoid schizophrenic. Like one of those unnerving improvisations in which the instructor has told one actor certain facts with
held from the other and it’s up to the other actor to plunge blindly into the scene.

  She would determine a new scene.

  Just by moving from one space to another onstage you can establish a new scene. By the force of your will.

  She took Gladys’s thin, wiry, resistant arm and hauled her back to the graveled path. Enough! Norma Jeane was in charge. She was the one who paid the Lakewood Home’s exorbitant fees, and she was designated as Gladys Mortensen’s guardian and next of kin. Daughters! There was only one daughter, and she was Norma Jeane.

  She said, “Mother, I love you but you hurt me so! Please don’t hurt me, Mother. I realize you aren’t well but can’t you try? Try to be kind? When I have my babies, I will never hurt them. I will love them to keep them alive. You’re like a spider in her web. One of those little brown recluse spiders. The most dangerous kind! Everybody thinks ‘Marilyn Monroe’ must have money but I don’t have money really, I borrow money all the time, I pay for you to live here, this private hospital, and you poison me. You eat my heart. My husband and I intend to have babies. He wants a big family and so do I. I want six babies!”

  Sly Gladys quipped, “How’d you nurse six? Even Marilyn?”

  Norma Jeane laughed, or tried to. That was funny!

  In her handbag she had the precious letter from her father. “Sit down, Mother. I have a surprise for you. I have something to read to you, and I don’t want to be interrupted.”

  The Ex-Athlete was away on business. The Blond Actress attended a performance of a play, by a contemporary American playwright, at the Pasadena Playhouse.

  She’d been taken by friends. Every night the Ex-Athlete was away, she attended a play performance at a local playhouse. In this phase of her life the Blond Actress had numerous friends in circles that didn’t overlap and these were younger friends, not known to the Ex-Athlete. They were writers, actors, dancers. One of them was the Blond Actress’s mime instructor.

  At the Pasadena Playhouse, members of the audience covertly watched the Blond Actress through the evening. She appeared to be genuinely moved by the play. She was not dressed glamorously and did not call attention to herself. Her friends sat protectively on either side of her.

  It would be reported that, at the end of the play, while the rest of the audience was breaking up, the Blond Actress remained in her seat as if stunned. She said faintly, “That is true tragedy. It tears out your heart.” Later she said, over drinks, “Know what? I’m going to marry the playwright.”

  “She had the wildest sense of humor! She’d look grave and little-girl and say the most outrageous things. An ugly soused pug like W. C. Fields, you expect the guy to be sardonic. The eyebrows and mustache of Groucho Marx, you expect something surreal. But Marilyn, she came out with these things spontaneously. It was like something inside dared her, ‘Shock the bastards. Shake ’em up.’ And she would. And what she said might come back to haunt her, or hurt her, and possibly she knew this beforehand. But what the hell?”

  Back in her room at Lakewood, Gladys crawled weakly onto her bed. She didn’t require Norma Jeane’s assistance. She’d been wordless since Norma Jeane read her the letter in a calm, bell-like, unaccusatory voice, and she was wordless now. Norma Jeane kissed her cheek and said quietly, “Goodbye, Mother. I love you.” Still Gladys made no reply. Nor did she look at Norma Jeane. At the doorway of the room Norma Jeane paused to see that her mother was turned to face the wall. Gazing upward at the lurid bright colors of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

  . . .

  It had something to do with Easter.

  The Blond Actress was brought to the Los Angeles Orphans Home Society in a black limousine with an interior plush and sumptuous as the cushioned interior of a casket. In his uniform and visored cap the Frog Chauffeur was behind the wheel.

  For days the Blond Actress had been excited, thrilled. In a way it was like a stage debut. For a long time now she’d intended to return to the Home to visit with Dr. Mittelstadt, who had so changed the course of her life. “To say ‘thank you.’”

  Maybe (the Blond Actress hoped it would be a natural, unforced gesture) they would pray together in the privacy of Dr. Mittelstadt’s office. Kneeling together on the carpet!

  Often the Ex-Athlete did not approve of the Blond Actress’s public appearances. With husbandly justification, the Ex-Athlete thought that such appearances were “vulgar”—“exploitive”—“unworthy of your dignity as my wife.” In this case, however, the Ex-Athlete approved. For years, before and after his retirement from baseball, he’d often visited such children’s homes, hospitals, and institutions. Some of these kids, especially the sick, wounded ones, could break your heart, he warned. But it was exhilarating too. You felt you were doing some good. Making some impact. Creating positive memories.

  In bygone times Kings and Queens visited such places to anoint the sick, the maimed, the outcast, and the damned but in the United States there were only such individuals as the Ex-Athlete and the Blond Actress and they had to “do their part.”

  Only just don’t let the media swarm all over you, the Ex-Athlete warned.

  Oh, yes, the Blond Actress agreed.

  A number of Hollywood celebrities had volunteered. The Blond Actress, though officially in disrepute, suspended by The Studio for contractual violation, was one of these. She’d asked to be taken to the Los Angeles Orphans Home Society on El Centro Avenue—“Where I once lived. Where I have so many memories.”

  Mostly these were good memories. Of course.

  The Blond Actress believed in good memories. Sure she’d been an orphan—“Lots of people are!”—and yes, her mother had had to give her up—“It was the Depression. Lots of people were affected!”—yet she’d been well taken care of at the Home. The Blond Actress harbored no bitterness about having been an orphan in the Land of Plenty—“Hey, at least I was alive. Not like in some cruel country like China where girl infants are drowned like kittens.”

  Headlines in all the papers. Special columns by Louella Parsons, Walter Winchell, Sid Skolsky, and Leviticus. A cover story for Hollywood Reporter and for the L.A. Times Sunday Magazine. Smaller features syndicated across the nation and in Time, Newsweek, Life. Troops of photographers, TV crews. Brief coverage on network TV evening news.

  MARILYN MONROE REVISITS ORPHANAGE AFTER YEARS

  MARILYN MONROE “REDISCOVERS” ORPHAN PAST

  MARILYN MONROE BEFRIENDS ORPHANS AT EASTER

  The Blond Actress would tell the Ex-Athlete she “had no idea” how so much publicity was generated. Other Hollywood celebrities visiting other homes, hospitals, and institutions hadn’t generated much publicity at all!

  The Blond Actress was feeling as excited and apprehensive as a girl. How many years had it been? Sixteen years! “But I’ve lived more than one lifetime since then.” As the Frog Chauffeur skillfully drove the gleaming black limousine out of affluent Beverly Hills through Hollywood and southward into the interior of Los Angeles, the Blond Actress began to lose her composure. A mild throbbing pain between her eyes grew stronger. She’d been taking aspirin for (to her secret shame) she’d gone beyond Doc Bob’s prescribed dosage of the “miracle tranquillizer” Demerol and was determined not to take more. As she neared the powerful presence of Dr. Mittelstadt, as nearing a warming, healing sun, she knew that healing can be only from within. There is no pain and in a sense there is no “healing.” Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.

  With the Blond Actress, in a separate vehicle, were several assistants. A delivery van bearing hundreds of gaily wrapped Easter baskets filled with chocolate bunnies and marshmallow chicks and multicolored jelly beans. Virginia baked hams and pineapples flown in fresh from Hawaii. The Blond Actress had volunteered five hundred dollars of her own money (or was it the Ex-Athlete’s?) so that she could hand over a check to Dr. Mittelstadt as a “personal gesture of my gratitude.”

  In fact, hadn’t the director of the Home betrayed Norma Jeane in some way? Ceased to write to her,
after a year or two? The Blond Actress shrugged this off. “She’s a busy professional woman. And so am I.”

  As the Frog Chauffeur turned the limousine into the orphanage grounds, the Blond Actress began to tremble. Oh, but this wasn’t the right place—was it? The grimy red-brick facade had been blasted clean and now looked raw as scraped skin. Where there’d been an open area, now there were ugly Quonset huts. Where there’d been a meager playground, now there was an asphalt parking lot. The Frog Chauffeur drew the limousine soundlessly up to the entrance, where reporters, photographers, and cameramen had gathered in an unruly band. The Blond Actress would speak with the press afterward, these folks were told, but of course they had questions for her now, shouted after her as hurriedly she was escorted inside the building, cameras clicking in her wake like machine guns. Inside, strangers shook her hand. Dr. Mittelstadt was nowhere in sight. What had happened to the foyer? What was this place? A middle-aged man with a fresh-shaven Porky Pig face was leading the Blond Actress into the visitors’ lounge, speaking rapidly and happily.

  “But where is Dr. M-mittelstadt?” the Blond Actress asked. No one seemed to hear. Assistants were bringing in Easter baskets, hams and pineapples in cartons. An amplifying system was being tested. The Blond Actress was having difficulty seeing clearly through her dark-tinted glasses but didn’t want to remove them for fear these avid strangers would see the panic in her eyes. Several times she cried, with her dazzling smile, “Oh, gosh!—it’s such an honor to be here. Easter time is such a special time! I’m truly happy to be here! Thank you all for inviting me.”