Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  She loved them, her husband’s friends. Rarely did she speak to them unless they spoke to her first and drew her out. She spoke softly, hesitantly, uncertain how to pronounce sometimes the simplest words! Shy and tongue-tied as with stage fright.

  Maybe she was a little scared, and tense. And Baby in her womb gripping her tight. You won’t hurt me this time will you. Not do what you did last time?

  She was outside on the lawn. Barefoot, in not very clean sailcloth slacks and one of her husband’s shirts tied up snug beneath her breasts, to bare her midriff; her floppy-brimmed straw hat tied also, beneath her chin. She had that eerie ticklish sensation that meant (maybe) someone was watching her. An aerial shot, from the second floor of the Captain’s House. From the Playwright’s study where he’d placed a desk near a window. He loves me. He does! He would die for me. He’s said so. She liked it that her husband was watching her but she didn’t like it he might be writing about her for she reasoned For a writer, first you see, and the next thing you write. Like a recluse spider, stinging ’cause it’s his nature. She was cutting flowers to put in vases. She walked diffidently in her bare feet because there were unpredictable things in the tall grass: parts of children’s toys, broken bits of plastic and metal. The owners of the Captain’s House were good, gracious people, an older couple who lived in Boston and rented out their house, but the previous tenants had been careless, even slovenly, maybe there was malice to it, tossing bones off the screened-in porch onto the lawn below, for barefoot Norma to tread upon and wince.

  But she loved this place! The weathered old house like a storybook house high above her, for the lawn steeply slanted. The property that ran to the cliff, and below to the rocky beach. She loved the peace here. You could hear the surf, and you could hear the traffic on the highway out front, but these sounds were muffled, in a way protective. There was no raw silence. There was no glaring-white silence. As in the hospital when she’d awakened in that Kingdom of the Dead thousands of miles away. And a Brit doctor in a white coat, a stranger to her, gazing at her as if she were meat on a slab. He would ask in the calmest voice if she was aware of what had happened to her; if she recalled the number of barbiturates she’d ingested; if she had intended to do grave injury to herself. He would call her Miss Monroe. He would remark that he had “enjoyed certain of her movies.”

  Mutely she’d shaken her head. No no no.

  How could she have meant to die! Without having her baby, and her life fulfilled.

  Carlo had made her promise, last time they’d spoken on the phone, she’d call him, as he would call her. If either of them was thinking of taking what Carlo called “the big baby-step into the Unknown.”

  Carlo! The only man to make her laugh. Since Cass and Eddy G had departed from her life.

  (No, Carlo wasn’t Norma’s lover. Though Hollywood columnists had linked them and run photos of them together twined arm in arm and smiling. Monroe and Brando: Hollywood’s Classiest Couple? or “Just Good Friends”? They hadn’t made love in Norma’s bed that night but the omission was only just technical, like forgetting to seal an envelope you’ve mailed.)

  Norma had a hoe from the garage and a badly rusted, cobwebby clipping shears she’d found in the cellar hanging from a hook. Their guests weren’t due until early evening. It wasn’t yet noon and she had a luxury of time. She’d made a vow when they’d first moved into the Captain’s House that she would keep the beds neatly weeded but, damn!—weeds grow fast. In her head, rhythmically as she worked, a poem grew sudden and weedlike.

  WEEDS OF AMERICA

  Weeds of America we dont die

  Burdock crabgrass thistle milkweed

  If yanked out by the roots we DONT

  If poisoned we DONT

  If accursed we DONT

  Weeds of America know what?

  WE ARE AMERICA!

  She laughed. Baby would like this poem. The simple silly beat. She’d compose a tune for it on the piano.

  Amid the overgrown flower beds were several pale blue hydrangea plants, newly in bloom. Norma Jeane’s favorite flower! Vividly she remembered, in the Glazers’ back yard, hydrangea in bloom. Pale blue like these, also pink and white. And Mrs. Glazer saying, with that curious solemn emphasis with which we commonly speak as if the very banality of our words were a testament to our authenticity, and a plea that these words endure beyond our frail, failing lives, “Hydrangea is the nicest flower, Norma Jeane.”

  9

  Nothing is more dramatic than a ghost.

  The Playwright had always wondered what T. S. Eliot meant. He’d always rather resented the remark, for his plays had no ghosts.

  He was watching Norma on the back lawn cutting flowers with a shears. His beautiful pregnant wife. A dozen times a day he lost himself in contemplation of her. There was the Norma who spoke to him and there was the Norma at a short distance from him. The one an object of emotion, the other an object of aesthetic admiration. Which of course is a type of emotion, no less intense. My beautiful pregnant wife.

  She was wearing her wide-brimmed straw hat to protect her sensitive skin from the sun, and slacks, and a shirt of his, but she was barefoot which he didn’t like, and she wasn’t wearing gardening gloves which he didn’t like. Her soft hands were growing calluses! The Playwright wasn’t watching Norma deliberately. He’d been gazing out the window at the ocean, and the sky pebbled with clouds of varying degrees of translucence and opacity, and he’d been feeling pleasantly excited about his work, stray scenes and drafts of a new play, or maybe these would feed into the screenplay (never had he attempted a screenplay before) which might one day be a “vehicle” for his wife. And she’d appeared below, in the lawn. With a hoe, a clipping shears. She worked clumsily but methodically. She was thoroughly absorbed in what she did, as she was thoroughly absorbed in her pregnancy; the certainty of her happiness suffused her body like a powerful interior light.

  He dreaded something happening to her, and to the baby. He could not bear to think of such a possibility.

  How healthy she seemed, like a Renoir woman in the prime of her physical female beauty. But in fact she wasn’t strong: she came down easily with infections, respiratory ailments, blinding migraine headaches, and stomach upsets. Nerves! “Except not here, Daddy. I have a good feeling about here.”

  “Yes, darling. So do I.”

  He watched her, leaning on his elbows. On a stage, each of her clumsy-graceful gestures would signal meaning; offstage, such gestures pass into forgetfulness and oblivion, for there is no audience.

  How long could Norma endure the category of non-actor? She’d repudiated Hollywood films but there remained the stage, for which she had a natural talent; perhaps a genius. (“Don’t make me go back, Daddy,” she’d begged, pressing into his arms, naked in his arms in bed, “I never want to be her again.”) The Playwright had long been fascinated by the strange mercurial personality of the Actor. What is “acting,” and why do we respond to “great acting” as we do? We know that an actor is “acting” and yet—we wish to forget that an actor is “acting,” and in the presence of talented actors we quickly do forget. This is a mystery, a riddle. How can we forget the actor “acts”? Is the actor “acting” on our behalf? Is the subtext of the actor’s “acting” always and forever our own buried (and denied) “acting”? One of Norma’s numerous books she’d brought with her from California was The Actor’s Handbook and the Actor’s Life (of which the Playwright had never heard before), and every page of this curious compendium of seemingly anonymous epigraphs and aphorisms had been annotated by her. Clearly, this book was Norma’s Bible! The pages were dog-eared, water-splattered, falling out. The publication date was 1948, an unknown press in Los Angeles. Someone who called himself “Cass” had given it to her—To Beautiful Gemini-Norma with Starry Undying Love. On the title page Norma had copied an aphorism, now in faded ink.

  The actor is happiest only in his sacred space: the stage.

  Was this true? Was it true for Norma? It wa
s a bitter revelation to any lover, if true. A bitter disclosure for any husband.

  “But the truth of an actor is the truth of only a fleeting moment. The truth of an actor is ‘dialogue.’”

  This, the Playwright felt more certainly, was true.

  Norma had finished cutting flowers and was headed back to the house. He wondered if she would glance up and acknowledge him and there was a fraction of a second when he might have drawn back out of sight but, yes, she glanced up and waved to him; and he waved back, smiling.

  “My darling.”

  Strange how it had passed through his mind, that remark of T. S. Eliot. Nothing is more dramatic than a ghost.

  “No ghosts in our lives.”

  The Playwright had been wondering, since England, what Norma’s future would be. She’d repudiated acting and yet: how long could she remain, not-acting? A housewife and soon a mother, with no career? She was too talented to be content with private life, he knew. He was certain. Yet, he conceded, she couldn’t return to “Marilyn Monroe”; one day, “Marilyn” would kill her.

  Still, he was writing a screenplay. For her.

  And they needed money. Or would, soon.

  He went downstairs, to help her in the kitchen. There was Norma breathless with her bouquet, a light film of perspiration on her face. She’d picked pale blue hydrangea and a few stems of red climber roses, their leaves stippled with a black fungus. “Look, Daddy! Look what I have.”

  Friends of his were coming from Manhattan to visit. Drinks on the screened-in porch, dinner afterward at the Whaler’s Inn. The Playwright’s shy, gracious wife would have placed vases of flowers through the house, including the guest bedroom.

  “Flowers make people feel welcome. Like they’re wanted.”

  He was filling vases with water and Norma was beginning to arrange the flowers, except something was wrong, the hydrangeas kept falling out of the vases. “Darling, you’ve cut the stems a little too short. See?” It wasn’t a reprimand, certainly not a criticism, but Norma was deflated at once. Her happy mood was crushed.

  “Oh, what did I. . . . What?”

  “Look. We can repair the damage, like this.”

  Damn! He shouldn’t have used the word “damage.” This crushed her further, she shrank back like a struck child.

  The Playwright arranged the hydrangea blossoms in shallow bowls, flower heads floating. (The blossoms were past their peak. They wouldn’t survive for more than a day. But Norma hadn’t seemed to notice.) The awkwardly cut red climber roses, their stippled leaves trimmed, were then woven through the hydrangeas.

  “Darling, this is just as beautiful, I think. It has a kind of Japanese effect.”

  From a few yards away Norma had been watching him, her husband’s deft hands, in silence. She was stroking her belly, her lower lip caught in her teeth. She was panting and hadn’t seemed to hear the Playwright’s words. Finally she said, doubtfully, “It’s all right to do it, like that? Flowers like that? So short? Nobody will l-laugh at that?”

  The Playwright turned to look at her. “Laugh? Why would anybody laugh?”

  His expression was incredulous. Laugh at me?

  10

  He would seek her out in the kitchen alcove where she was hiding.

  If not the kitchen, the garage.

  If not the garage, the top of the cellar steps.

  (What a dank, smelly place to hide! Though Norma wouldn’t admit to hiding.)

  “Darling, aren’t you going to come sit with us? On the porch? Why are you here?”

  “Oh, I’m coming, Daddy! I was just . . .”

  Greeting their guests and hurrying away almost immediately to leave him with his friends, shy as a feral cat. Was this a form of stage fright?

  He wouldn’t chide Norma, don’t give them fuel to talk about us!

  Meaning To talk about you.

  No, he was warm, sympathetic, husbandly, smiling. Making of the famous shyness of Marilyn Monroe a gentle domestic joke. He found her in the kitchen alcove absorbed in the task of flattening grocery bags. Their visitors were exploring the house, stepping out onto the screened-in porch. The Playwright kissed his wife’s forehead, to calm her. A faint chemical odor lifted from her hair when she perspired though she hadn’t bleached her hair in months.

  Careful to speak gently. Not critically. He saw their dialogue before him as if he’d written it himself.

  “Darling, it isn’t necessary to make so much of this visit. You seem so anxious. You know Rudy and Jean, you’ve said you like them—”

  “They don’t like me, Daddy. They’ve come to see you.”

  “Norma, don’t be ridiculous. They’ve come to see us both.”

  (No: he must keep all incredulity from his voice. He must speak to this childlike woman as long ago he’d spoken to his very young, very vulnerable children who adored yet feared their daddy.)

  “Oh, I don’t blame them! I don’t blame them. See, you’re their friend.”

  “Of course I’ve known them longer than you’ve known them, half my life in fact. But—”

  She laughed, shaking her head and holding up her hands, palms outward. It was a gesture of both appeal and surrender. “Oh, but—why would these people, these smart friends of yours, he’s a writer and she’s an editor, why would they want to see me?”

  “Darling, just come, will you? They’re waiting.”

  Again she shook her head, laughing. She was watching him sidelong. How like a frightened cat, frightened for no reason, about to bolt, and dangerous. But the Playwright refused to confirm her absurd suspicions and pleaded with her quietly, gently, drawing a thumb across her forehead, stooping to lock his gaze with hers in that way that sometimes worked upon her like a kind of hypnosis. “Darling, just come out with me, eh? You’re looking very very beautiful.”

  She was a beautiful woman frightened of her own beauty. She seemed to resent it, that her beauty might be confused with “her.” Yet, he’d never known any woman so anxious, when meeting strangers, about her appearance.

  Norma had been listening and considering. At last she shivered, and laughed, and rubbed her sticky forehead against his chin, and took from the refrigerator a large heavy platter of raw vegetables geometrically arranged by color and a sour cream dip she’d prepared. It was a spectacular platter and he told her so. He carried drinks on a tray. Suddenly, it was all right again! It was going to be fine. As on the set of Bus Stop he’d seen her panic and freeze and back off, and yet after a while she’d return, and there was Cherie more intense, more alive, more flamelike and convincing than ever. Their friends Rudy and Jean, admiring the view of the ocean, turned now to see the handsome couple approach. The Playwright and the Blond Actress. The woman who wished to be known as “Norma” was radiantly beautiful (no avoiding this cliché, as both Rudy and Jean would report) with the fresh, creamy-translucent complexion of early pregnancy; her hair was a darker blond, shimmering and wavy; she was wearing a floral print sundress with splashy orange poppies that flared at the hips and was cut low to reveal the tops of her swelling breasts; she wore spike-heeled open-toed white pumps and she smiled at them as if dazed by flashbulbs, and in that instant she stumbled on the single but fairly steep step down onto the porch and the platter slipped from her hands and crashed to the floor, vegetables, dip, and broken crockery flying.

  11

  You made of the smallest issues a test of my loyalty. Our love.

  Smallest issues! You mean my life.

  And your life too became an issue. Blackmail.

  You never defended me, mister. Never against any of those bastards.

  It wasn’t clear who needed defending. Always you?

  They despised me! Your so-called friends.

  No. It was you who despised yourself.

  12

  Yet she adored his elderly parents.

  And to his surprise, his elderly parents adored her.

  At their first meeting, in Manhattan, the Playwright’s mother, Miriam, took him a
side to squeeze his wrist and murmur in his ear, in triumph, “That girl is just like me at her age. So hopeful.”

  That girl! Marilyn Monroe!

  It would turn out, to the Playwright’s surprise and belated chagrin, that neither of his parents had ever felt “warm” toward his first wife, Esther. More than two decades of poor Esther, who’d given them grandchildren they adored. Esther, who was Jewish and of a background very like their own. While Norma—“Marilyn Monroe”—was the quintessential blond shiksa.

  But the year of their meeting was 1956, not 1926. Much had changed in Jewish culture, and in the world, in the intervening years.

  The Playwright had noticed, as Max Pearlman had pointed out, how women often took warmly to Norma, quite in reverse of expectations. You would anticipate jealousy, envy, dislike; instead, women felt a curious kinship with Norma, or “Marilyn”; could it be, women looked at her and somehow saw themselves? An idealized form of themselves? A man might smile at such a misapprehension. A delusion, or a confusion. But what can a man know? If anyone resisted Norma, it was likely to be a certain kind of man; one sexually attracted to her, yet wise enough to know she would rebuff him. What strategies of irony bred out of threatened male pride, the Playwright well knew.

  Wasn’t it true, if the Blond Actress hadn’t been so clearly attracted to him, the Playwright might have spoken dismissively of her?

  Not bad for a film actress. But too weak for the stage.

  So it happened that the Playwright’s mother adored the Playwright’s second wife. For there was shyly smiling Norma, a girl seemingly young enough, and younger-enough looking, to stir in the seventy-five-year-old woman nostalgic memories of her own bygone youth. The Playwright heard his mother confide in Norma that, at Norma’s age, she’d had hair just like Norma’s—“That shade exactly, and wavy.” He heard her confide in Norma that her first pregnancy, too, had made her feel “like a queen. Oh, for once!”