Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  To the legendary Whitey, Monroe would give a number of gifts, the most prized of which was a heart-shaped gold tie clasp inscribed

  TO WHITEY WITH LOVE

  WHILE I’M STILL WARM!

  MARILYN

  Like flies crawling over something sweet & sticky, the way women’s eyes crawled over C. An actor so handsome, made up as female in Some Like It Hot, still C looked handsome & not lurid & ludicrous as as you’d expect. C, the sullen one. C, Sugar Kane’s nemesis. C had had too many women. He’d gorged himself, & he’d vomited. Monroe was no more tempting to C than a puddle of fresh vomit. When C kissed Monroe, his mouth tasted of bitter almonds & she’d pushed from him panicked & fled the set accusing he’d put poison on his lips!—so it would be rumored. C would tell the rueful tale of, at their early meetings, preproduction, joking & teasing with Monroe about their upcoming love scenes, which were numerous; in one lengthy scene aboard a yacht, C would lie flat on his back pretending impotence while Sugar Kane lay upon him kissing & nuzzling in her effort to “cure” him, a scene to be eased past the censor only under the pretense it was comic & farcical; & at those early meetings C had liked Monroe well enough, never would C have anticipated what misery lay in store. One of their scenes, & this not complicated, would require sixty-five takes. Day following day, C & others would wait for hours for Monroe to show up, & sometimes fail to show up altogether. Filming to begin at 10 A.M. might begin at last at 4 P.M. or at 6 P.M. C was a man of pride, & ambitious for his career, & could not give up this gem of a role (in a film that would be his best, & make him the most money) & so his rage at Monroe. Yes, he could acknowledge Monroe was distraught & a little crazy (she’d had a miscarriage, her marriage was falling apart) but what was that to him, a man fighting for his life? With a woman in that state it’s you or her he might’ve confided in the husband if they’d been friends; but they weren’t. C was particularly cruel mimicking Monroe’s addled words & confused stammering, how one day when he’d been made to wait for her for five hours—five hours!—& Monroe had at last appeared, fragile & breathless & without apology, she’d turned upon him & W with a bitter smile & said, “Now what you know is how it’s a woman! Laughed at.”

  Forever it would be asked of W what was it like, working with Monroe in this late stage of her brief career, and W would say simply, “In life, the woman was hell and in hell; on film, divine. There was no connection. No more mystery to it than that.”

  Yet that day Sugar Kane arrived triumphant on the set, no more than four hours late; & they’d been shooting around her, & making some progress; & there came Sugar Kane sweet & breathless & this time apologetic & rueful; begging them to forgive her, especially C, whose hands she clutched with hands so icy cold, C had to suppress a shudder; & unaccountably, Sugar Kane would perform through four or five pages of script without a single blunder; that very love scene, protracted & embarrassingly intimate, aboard the yacht. So many kisses! Sugar Kane in her most suggestive see-through costume, the back cut so low & loose practically the tops of her buttocks were visible, a cooing simpering sexy-funny blond doll, lying atop C & wriggling, & C was astonished, this difficult scene between two actors who hated each other’s guts would play so convincingly & smoothly; he could not believe that at the conclusion Monroe would not say, “No. I want to try again.” Instead, Monroe smiled. Smiled! The scene would remain intact, as is, perfectly performed in a single take. A single take! After the nightmare of repetition of previous days & weeks! C would wonder if this miracle was a signal that Monroe had recovered overnight from an actual illness; or, more likely, she’d played the scene brilliantly in a single take simply to demonstrate that, yes, she could do it. When she wished.

  Yet even C & others who hated Monroe had to concede she was terrific that day. We applauded, so grateful she’d returned, if only for a brief while. We adored her, or yearned to. Our Marilyn!

  Always you were watching me. Coward! After she’d been discharged from the Brunswick hospital. He’d brought her back to the Captain’s House, which was not their home. Never again would she enter Baby’s Room. Baby’s precious things were given to the girl Janice, for her baby. Never again would she pass by the shut door to the cellar but she would insist to the Playwright she was fine, she was happy, she was recovering and not “morbid minded” & he’d believed her as surely she believed her own adamant words & one night in muggy August he woke from sleep to the noise of plumbing in the old house & his young wife gone from their bed yet not in the bathroom adjoining their bedroom; he found her in another upstairs bathroom running scalding water into a tub, naked & trembling crouched beside it, her muscular haunches, her glistening eyes, & he had to grab her in his arms to prevent her climbing into this water, this water so hot steam had coalesced in globules on the bathroom’s mirrors & fixtures, & she struggled with him saying the Brunswick doctor had told her to “douche” to purify herself & that was what she meant to do & he saw in her eyes the glisten of madness & did not recognize her & again they struggled, how strong this woman was, even in her weakened state, his Magda! Of course she was not his Magda, she was no one he knew. Later she would say to him bitterly, “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Me gone” & he, her husband, would protest, & she would shrug & laugh, “Ohhhh, Daddy”—this term of endearment now mockery in her mouth since the miscarriage—“why not tell the truth, for once?”

  Impossible to know the simplest truths. Except that death is no solution to the riddle of life.

  (These words he’d written, & would write; words as solace, & as penitence; in time, words of exorcism; & never again would she ask of him with begging eyes Daddy you won’t write about me will you? Never again.)

  Premiere Night! In Sugar Kane’s sugary cadences the Zen wisdom came to her, uttered through a mouthful of Dom Perignon. “Ohhhh my God! Oh, I get it! Those cats! They were the ones.” Not until opening night of Some Like It Hot. Not until a hiatus of how many insomniac-drugged nights & days, weeks & months of consciousness frayed & soiled as a towel in a broken towel dispenser, & one ER admission (in Coronado Beach, where her heartbeat quickened into tachycardia & C of all people loathing the mere touch of MM’s skin was the one to lift her from the sun-burning sand where she’d fallen). In the long elegant black-gleaming Cadillac limousine with legendary Hollywood film pioneer & philanthropist Mr. Z seated to her right & the gaunt furrow-browed man who was her husband seated to her left. “Those cats. I f-fed. Oh!” She spoke aloud & no one heard. She had entered a phase of life where often she spoke aloud & no one heard. Makeup & costuming at The Studio had required six hours, forty minutes. She’d been delivered sometime after 11 A.M. semiconscious. Doc Fell had medicated her in the privacy of her dressing room; her whimpers & muffled cries of pain they’d worked into a routine that sounded, to others’ ears, like gaiety, hilarity. She shut her eyes & the long piercing needle was sunk into an artery in her inner arm; sometimes in her inner thigh; sometimes in an artery just below her ear & hidden by her fluffy platinum hair; sometimes, riskier, in an artery above her heart. “Miss Monroe, only just hold still. There.” What kindly falcon’s eyes, a beak of a nose. Her Doc Fell. In another movie, Doc Fell would be Marilyn’s suitor & eventually her husband; in this movie, Doc Fell was a rival to the actual husband who, grimly disapproving of his wife’s medications, knew nothing, or very little, of the rival. Doc Fell was one of those like Whitey zealously involved in the public presentation of MARILYN MONROE & presumably drew a sizable paycheck from The Studio. She feared him as she would never fear Whitey, for Doc Fell held the power of life & death over his subjects.

  “One day soon I will break off with him. With all of them. I vow.”

  This was the actress’s truest wish & intention. In Norma Jeane’s schoolgirl journal she inscribed it.

  This opulent Hollywood premiere! How like the glorious golden age of Hollywood! The Studio was lavishly honoring Some Like It Hot, which had turned out, to the astonishment of all industry insiders, to be a success. Advance word in
the trade was another blockbuster MARILYN MONROE smash hit for The Studio. Preview audiences loved it. Reviewers loved it. Exhibitors throughout the U.S. were competing to book it. Yet the blond actress’s memory of the film was discontinuous as a dream many times interrupted. No single line of Sugar Kane’s remained in her memory except, ironically, the very one she’d fumbled through sixty-five legendary takes: “It’s me, Sugar.” Which somehow she’d misspoken as “It’s, Sugar, me.” “Sugar it’s me.” “S-Sugar, it’s me?” “Sugar! It’s me” “It’s Sugar, me.” “It’s m-me? Sugar?” Yet all was forgiven now. They wanted to love their Marilyn & Marilyn was again lovable. Three years away from Hollywood & MARILYN IS BACK! The Magi had been trumpeting & blazoning & heralding her return for months. TRAGEDY & TRIUMPH was the revelation. MISCARRIAGE IN MAINE. (From the purview of southern California, miscarriage-in-Maine certainly made sense.) TRIUMPH IN HOLLYWOOD. (Hollywood was the place for triumph!) Asked how did she feel, Marilyn replied in her sugary-sweet-sexy-whispery voice, “Oh, I just feel so privileged? To be alive?”

  This was her truest belief. In Norma Jeane’s schoolgirl journal she inscribed it.

  Along the brightly lit Boulevard. A procession of gleaming black studio limousines. A motorcade of Hollywood royalty. LAPD officers on horseback. Police barricades, flashbulbs, & the myriad winking flashes of binoculars & even telescopes trained upon her from the crowd. And the Sharpshooter among them invisible in black shirt & jacket & trousers crouched patiently behind a window of a rented room in a stucco-facade building in the hire of the Agency observing her (& her Commie husband) through the scope of his high-powered rifle of which, in her festive mood, she was determined not to think.

  For why?

  “Some things reside only in your imagination. It’s called ‘paranoia.’ Oh, you just know.”

  This wisdom, she’d inscribed in Norma Jeane’s schoolgirl journal.

  Thousands of people lining the Boulevard on this balmy southern California evening, pressing up against LAPD barricades to stare in wonderment at the motorcade! seething & murmuring & cheering in ecstatic waves! They were awaiting famous faces, & the face (& body) of MARILYN MONROE most eagerly. “Mari-lyn! Mari-lyn! Mari-LYN!” came the chant. If only the limo were open, & the blond actress could stand & be seen more clearly by her thousands, hundreds of thousands of fans! But the gaunt furrow-browed man who remained her husband would not have allowed such a folly, & perhaps even Mr. Z & the other Studio bosses would have forbidden it, fearing danger to their fragile property. Monroe wasn’t going to last much longer. That was obvious. Grable lasted twenty years and Monroe won’t last ten. Fuck!

  In wonderment she was staring back at the fans. So many! You would not think that God had made so many of these.

  Suddenly seeing a scattering of feral-cat faces & grinning carnivore teeth. The snubbed noses of cats & erect, pointed ears. Those cats! At the Captain’s House. The horror of it struck her: “They were the ones, they wanted Baby dead. The very cats I f-fed.” She turned to the gaunt furrow-browed man beside her uncomfortable in his tuxedo & would have told him of her discovery but could not think how to express it. He remained the master of words. She, an intruder in his imagination. He resents me. Resents loving me. Poor sap. She laughed. Sugar Kane was a girl ukulelist & girl singer & her simplicity was a delight on screen even as in “real life” such simplicity would be a sign of mental deficiency; how much easier, & how much more they will love you, if you can be Sugar Kane without irony for once. “I can do it. Just watch. Sugar Kane without irony. Marilyn without tears.” The furrow-browed man in the boiled-looking tux leaned toward her indicating he hadn’t heard what she’d said amid the screams & cheers & noise of the police bullhorns & quickly she murmured what sounded to his ear like Wasn’t-talking-to-you. No longer did she call this man to whom she’d been married for more years than she could recall “Daddy” & yet she seemed incapable of devising another name to call him. There were spells when she did not remember his name, not even his last name; she would try to think of a “Jewish” name & would be confused. Less frequently now did he call her “dearest,” “dear one,” “darling,” & the very name “Norma” on his lips sounded alien. She would overhear him on the telephone speaking worriedly of “Marilyn” & understood that, to him, she had become Marilyn; there was no Norma remaining; possibly she’d been Marilyn to him all along.

  “Mari-lyn!” “Mari-lyn!” “Mari-LYN!” Her kinsmen!

  Oh, God, she’d been stitched so tight in her Sugar Kane gown she could hardly breathe, tight as sausage skin, her breasts jutting out as if about to burst with milk; & her cushiony buttocks poised on the very edge of the limo seat where she’d been positioned (since she couldn’t sit back like the men, the entire dress would explode at the seams). That day she’d been unable to eat & had had no nourishment except black coffee & medication & several quick swallows of champagne from a bottle she’d smuggled into the limo—“Just like Sugar Kane, eh? A girl’s weakness.”

  She was feeling good now. Bubbly & floating. She was feeling strong now. She wasn’t going to die for a long long time. She’d promised Carlo & Carlo had promised her. If ever you’re thinking seriously of it. Call me at once. She’d memorized Brando’s private number. She would not be capable of recalling any telephone numbers including her own yet she would recall to the end of her life Brando’s private number. “Only Carlo understands. We share the same soul.” She hadn’t liked it, though, that Carlo had been an emissary for the Gemini. She didn’t like it, Carlo was of their dissolute Hollywood fringe circle. Cass Chaplin! Eddy G, Jr.! She believed it was ominous, she never heard of them. No one spoke to her of them. How many people know? Of the Gemini. Of Baby.

  But why think of such morbid-minded things? Her own husband, an intellectual & a Jew, had counseled her not to be ghoulish. Not ghoulish but girlish! This was a time of celebration. This was Sugar Kane’s night of triumph. Sugar Kane’s night of revenge. The fans weren’t assembled here along Hollywood Boulevard & side streets to catch a fleeting glimpse of Marilyn’s male co-stars C & L, admirably as they’d performed in the movie, no they were not; they were were gathered here tonight to see MARILYN. As the limousines drew nearer Grauman’s, the site of the premiere, there was a quickening beat to the air, the noise became deafening, the gigantic heartbeat of the crowd accelerated. She’d begun to recognize, here and there, individuals in the crowd. Troll people, those creatures of the under-earth. Hunchbacked gnomes & beggar maids & homeless females with mad eyes & straw hair. Those among us mysteriously wounded by life. Disfigured faces & shrunken limbs & glaring-glistening eyes & holes for mouths. She saw a hulking fattish albino male with a knitted cap pulled down tight on his oblong head; she saw a shorter male with youthful bearded face & glittering eyeglasses holding aloft with trembling hands a video recorder. At the curb stood a stunted woman in dressy attire, tufts of dyed carroty-red hair lifting from her scalp & protuberant watery eyes, taking pictures with a box camera. Close by, a face molded carelessly out of clay or putty, lopsided, with shallow indentations for eyes and a small fishhook mouth. So many! And there, suddenly, a woman in her mid-thirties who looked familiar, lanky, attractive, in men’s clothing, with shining agate eyes & frizzed brown hair beneath a cowboy hat, waving energetically at her. Was it—? Fleece? After all these years, Fleece? Alive? Norma Jeane awoke from her trance at once. “Fleece? Oh, Fleece! Wait—” Norma Jeane clawed at the limo door, which was locked; tried to roll down the window, as Mr. Z protested. In her excitement she scrambled onto Z’s bony knees—“Fleece! Fleece! Meet me at the theater—” but already the limo had moved past.

  So like royalty she was borne along the Boulevard, to the premiere. Where a cataclysm of lights awaited. Where a crimson carpet lay upon the pavement. Applause washed around her like a maddened surf as she emerged from the limo waving, smiling her dimpled smile as the chant increased in volume—“Mari-lyn! Mari-lyn!” The crowd adored her! Their Fair Princess who would one day die for them.r />
  “Oh, hey! Oh, I love you! Love love love you all!”

  Inside the theater, there was more applause. Marilyn waved and blew kisses and walked without leaning on an escort’s arm in her spike-heeled shoes, in her stitched-in skin-tight Sugar Kane gown. Mr. Z in tux & luminous lizard-skin observed the ecstatic blond actress with surprised approval; the tall gaunt furrow-browed man who remained her husband observed her with alarm. Where was the tense, distracted, deeply unhappy woman about whom everyone had been so worried? About whom so many rumors in Hollywood had circulated? No sign of her here! For here was “Sugar Kane,” Marilyn’s very essence. W & C & others of the battle-weary production crew watched the actress with astonishment as she shook hands, was embraced & kissed, smiled sweetly & joyously, engaged in reasonably coherent speech, for here was a Marilyn Monroe they would swear they’d never once seen during the making of the movie. Jesus, was that one sweet! and gorgeous! and I got stuck, poor sap, kissing the other.

  Like a blur the film passed before her eyes. Though greeted with enthusiasm & continuous laughter. From the madcap Keystone Kops opening to the final classic line of Joe E. Brown—“Nobody’s perfect.” The audience loved Some Like It Hot & most of all the audience loved MARILYN MONROE returned to them in her prime (yes, it did seem so! despite the rumors) & were eager to forgive their wayward star as MARILYN MONROE was eager to be forgiven.

  At the film’s end, more applause. The massive interior of Grauman’s was filled with waterfalls of applause. Cherie, that earnest chantoose, had never received acclaim like this. W the distinguished director (looking now not exhausted but positively beaming) & his three distinguished actors were being honored by the crowd, yet of these MARILYN MONROE was clearly the center of attention. The fact was, you never looked at anybody else if you could look at Monroe. Gaily she rose to her feet & sweetly accepted the applause like waves washing over her. “Oh, this is so w-wonderful. Oh, gosh, thank you!”