Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  I said, My Pronto! That’s the word for you, eh?

  A single dim light was burning in the bathhouse. It was a dank smelly place. Through a louver-shuttered little window I could see, at a sharp angle upward, the desert moon. Or was it a blurry light in a palm tree behind the pool? The desert night! Almost I thought I was in Nevada again, I was Roslyn Tabor in love with Clark Gable soon to die and I was sick with guilt still married to a man I didn’t love. I was not drunk but could not have said where I was exactly. Where I would be sleeping that night, and with who. Or would I be alone? And how I would get back home again. Back to Los Angeles the City of Sand, back to Brentwood to 12305 Fifth Helena Drive. For always you have this terrible fear, how to get back home? even if you know where home is. The Prince was wiping briskly between his legs with a towel saying he hoped he could see me soon again, he was leaving Palm Springs pronto in the morning to return to Washington but he’d be in contact, I said Would you like my unlisted telephone number Mr. President? and he laughed and said There are no unlisted telephone numbers MARILYN and I said soft and breathy as a high school girl I would fly east if he wished it, your wish is my command Mr. President, I said, joking, kissing his flamey face, he liked that I could see; he said there’d be a first-class ticket provided and we could meet in Manhattan at a certain hotel, also he’d be in California for fund-raisers etcetera, his sister and brother-in-law had a beach house in Malibu. I said, Oh yes I would l-like that. I mean, I would love that.

  What did my Prince tell me, my secret I will never reveal.

  Framing my face in his hands, oh I hoped I was beautiful for him and not sweaty, my makeup smeared, hair sticking to my forehead which is the way it felt, but he was speaking sincerely, from the heart I could tell as he spoke in his public addresses, and we all loved him; he said, There’s something in you none of them has, MARILYN. No woman I know. You’re alive to be touched. To be breathed on like a flame. Alive to be hurt, even! It’s like you open yourself to hurt, no woman I know is like you, MARILYN. No screen image or photograph has shown your soul MARILYN as I have seen it this night.

  A final kiss and my Prince was gone.

  The Prince would leave the bathhouse fully dressed and the blond Beggar Maid he’d been with would remain behind for ten minutes at his suggestion, but his bodyguards didn’t wait around for her, only the President’s Pimp waited for her, at a discreet distance on the other side of the pool; and when at last she emerged, dazed-looking, stumbling, carrying her high-heeled shoes, the terry-cloth robe haphazardly tied about her, the President’s Pimp approached her in his suave manner saying with a smile, Miss Monroe! The President wanted you to have this small token of his esteem. It was a silver-foil rose (the Pimp had found discarded on a table, a decorative touch on a bottle of wine he’d appropriated and stuck through the lapel of his jacket) and it would be observed how the world celebrity MARILYN MONROE blinking dazedly at the President’s Pimp took the fake rose from his fingers and smiled. “Oh! It’s beautiful.”

  She sniffed its tinny fragrance and was happy.

  THE BEGGAR MAID IN LOVE

  Yet if the Prince didn’t call, as he’d promised?

  If she waited, and waited, and waited, and he didn’t call? And others in her snarled and blurred life called in the intervening weeks, and never him? And at last when almost she’d given up hope a call from a mysterious individual (a name that meant nothing to her in her agitation) in (she was given to assume) the very White House. (One of the President’s assistants?) And soon afterward the President’s brother-in-law who lived in Malibu called to invite her for the weekend.

  Just a small intimate gathering, Marilyn.

  Very elite. Just private people.

  Casually she asked, “And he—he’ll be there?”

  Sexy-suave brother-in-law to the President said, casually too, “Hmm. Says he’ll try his damnedest.”

  Marilyn laughed excitedly. “Oh. I know what that means.”

  I know he has many women. He’s a man of the world.

  I am a woman of the world. I’m not a child!

  A weekend came, spun past, and was gone. She could recall but fragments as in a film collage. Is this happening to me? Is this me? Or was it?

  Unlike movies, there were no retakes. You had but one chance.

  Those giddy times, telephone ringing, her private private line, and the mysterious (in Washington) asking would she be home to take a call at 10:25 P.M. that night? And laughing, having to sit, she felt so weak, “Will I be h-home? Hmm!” It was The Girl, naive and funny. Warm sweet witty Girl Upstairs who wrote all her own lines. “How’ll I know for sure till ten-twenty-five P.M. gets here?”

  A bemused murmur at the other end. (Or did she imagine?)

  And so she would wait, and wait. But it was not waiting that exhausted and humiliated but waiting that thrilled. Waiting that gives you a reason to be happy, joyous, smiling, singing and dancing all day. And promptly at 10:25 P.M. the telephone rang and she lifted the receiver to say in a breathy baby voice, H’lo?

  His deep voice, unmistakable. Her Prince.

  H’lo? Marilyn? I’ve been thinking about you.

  I’ve been thinking about you, Mr. P.-for-Pronto!

  Making him laugh. God it’s good to hear a man laugh. The power of a woman isn’t sex but the power to make a man laugh.

  If I could be out there with you darling d’you know what I’d be doing?

  Ohhh. No. What?

  There were occasions when the President’s brother-in-law telephoned to suggest he drop by to see her for a drink or take her out for a drink, or for dinner; they had “confidential matters” to talk over, he said; and quickly she said no she didn’t think so. Recalling the man’s eyes on her in Palm Springs, that look of frank assessment. Not a good idea, she said, right now. The President’s brother-in-law said in the affable way of a man to whom sexual conquests or refusals bore approximately the same emotional weight, Another time then, darling. Nothing crucial about tonight.

  She’d heard, they pass women among them.

  More accurately, the women were passed down. Models, “starlets.” From the Prince/President down to his several brothers, his brothers-in-law, and his buddies.

  Yet thinking Not me! He wouldn’t, me.

  Last time he’d called, a brief breathless conversation, he’d sounded sleepy and sexy and he’d repeated those magical words she’d come to wonder if she had imagined or heard long ago in a movie otherwise forgotten. Something in you none of them has. No woman. Alive to be touched. Like a flame. No woman I know is like you, Marilyn.

  She believed this might be so. Oh, but she believed he might believe it was so! It’s like saying he loves me. Except in not those words.

  The Beggar Maid waited. She was faithful in waiting.

  Word came that Cass Chaplin was hospitalized. In a detox clinic in Los Angeles. She had a panicked hour when she came close to telephoning, to inquire. Thinking then No. I can’t. Can’t get involved with them. Not now. She wondered if Cass and Eddy G were still so intimate.

  God, she missed them. Her Gemini lovers. Through two boring marriages to good decent heterosexual men.

  The beautiful boys Cass and Eddy G! She’d been their Norma, their girl. She’d done what they told her to do. Possibly they’d hypnotized her. If she’d remained with them, and had their baby? She might still have had a career as “Marilyn Monroe.” But it was a long time ago. Baby would be eight years old now. Our child. But accursed. She could not clearly recall why Baby had died, why Baby had had to die, why Marilyn had killed him. A few months ago she’d seen a photo of Cass Chaplin in the tabloid Tatler and was shocked at how her former lover had aged, shadowy pouches beneath his eyes and creases beside his mouth. His beauty in ruins. The camera’s flash had caught him in a moment of rage, a fist raised, mouth twisted in an obscenity.

  But now I have a worthy lover. A man who appreciates my worth. A true soul mate.

  Oh, even if it was Irish blarney, and s
he didn’t doubt it was, ninety percent of it, still it was the Prince’s blarney and not a Hollywood junkie’s.

  So strange! In reply to her letter to Gladys she’d written with such affection, there came a typewritten note, the words crowded into the center of a much-folded sheet of paper.

  Aren’t you ashamed Norma Jeane, I read about Clark Gable they are saying you killed him contributed to his “fatal heart attack” Even the nurses here are disgusted. That is how I learned of it.

  Yet one day, if I’m invited to the White House. Mother might come with me. It might make all the difference to her as to any American mother.

  She was seeing a psychiatrist. She was seeing an analyst. She was seeing a “psychic health adviser” in West Hollywood. Twice a week she visited a physical therapist. She’d begun again to take yoga classes. Sometimes, those endless nights when she knew she could not allow herself to swallow enough chloral hydrate to put her to sleep for more than a few hours, she called a masseur who lived in Venice Beach. In her imagination he was one of those surfers who’d saved Norma Jeane from drowning a long time ago. A giant, a bodybuilder. But gentle. Like Whitey, Nico adored her without desiring her; her body was to him but a material like clay to be kneaded, serviced, for a fee.

  “What I wish I could do, Nico, know what?—wish I could leave my body with you. And I could go—oh, I don’t know where!—somewhere free.”

  Sniffed its tinny fragrance and was happy. Returned from Palm Springs to Brentwood in the hidden-away hacienda on Fifth Helena Drive (a strange name! she’d asked the real estate agent what it meant but the woman didn’t know), she’d put the silver-foil rose in a crystal vase and set the vase on the white Steinway spinet where it glowed even in shadow. The rose. His rose! Because it was silver foil and not a living rose, it could never rot and die; she would keep it forever as a memento of this great man’s love for her. Of course he would never leave his wife. His Catholic family, his upbringing. I would not expect that. He is a figure of History. The acknowledged leader of the Free World. Waging a war in Vietnam. (So close to Korea! Where MARILYN MONROE had entertained the troops so famously.) Close to invading Communist Cuba. Oh, the President was a dangerous man to make an enemy of. She was proud of him, thrilled for him. His image was in newspapers and on TV continuously. The male world of history and politics, the world of ceaseless strife. And joy in that strife. What is politics but war by another means. The aim is to defeat your adversary. Survival of the fittest. Natural selection. Love is a man’s weakness. Blond Marilyn wanted to assure her Pronto that hey, she understood.

  It was the silver-foil rose that drew her to the piano. Seated at the keyboard in the silent house shuttered against the pitiless sun. Depressing chords uncertainly, shyly. In that way of one who fears trying to play piano after a long hiatus because she knows her modest skills have badly atrophied. She’d never really played “Für Elise” and never would. Even more she feared the tissue memory in her fingertips would trigger in her brain memories of lost time, too painful now to recall. Mother? What did you want from me I could never give you? How did I fail? I tried so hard. She wondered if, if she’d played piano better for Mr. Pearce and sung better for poor Jess Flynn, her childhood would have turned out differently? Maybe her miserable lack of talent had contributed to Gladys Mortensen’s madness. Maybe something in Gladys had simply snapped.

  Still, Gladys had seemed to absolve her of blame. Nobody’s fault being born, is it?

  Still, she was feeling optimistic. In this house, her first house, she would begin to play piano again. She would take piano lessons again, soon. When her life was better in order.

  Waiting for the Prince to summon her. Well, why not?

  Almost without knowing what she did that spring, in the way of a whim, she accepted a new film. The Studio had been pressing her. Her agent had been pressing her. At the time of her divorce she’d been discussing with Max Pearlman the possibility of her performing in a play at the New York Ensemble, it would not be The Girl with the Flaxen Hair after all but it might be Ibsen’s A Doll’s House or Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, but to Pearlman’s disappointment she could not seem to commit herself to any date. She was enthusiastic as a young girl when they spoke, yet weeks passed and he would not hear from her or Holyrod; if he telephoned they rarely returned his calls; the project had languished. Because I am too frightened. Can’t face a living audience. In a dream she’d been so paralyzed with terror acting in a play she’d lost control of her bladder and wakened urinating in her bed.

  “Oh my God. Oh, not this.”

  Recalling the urine stink of Gladys’s mattress at Lakewood.

  And so in the confusion of her thoughts she would recall, as if it had actually happened, wetting herself in New York, in a rehearsal hall. “Oh gosh I s-stood up, and the back of my dress was wet and sticking to my legs. Ohhhh.”

  This story of The Girl’s, she would not tell in the White House.

  A rendezvous. So romantic! Not in California but in New York when the President was visiting. In utmost secrecy of course she understood.

  Yes, but she had to work. She hadn’t married a wealthy man, she’d married for love. Each of my marriages, for love. But I’m not discouraged. Oh yes I’d try again! She had to work, and she wasn’t in a position, after The Misfits (The Misfire as Z called it) to be demanding about scripts. She told her agent, “Oh but Roslyn T-tabor was my strongest performance, wasn’t she? Everybody said so,” and Rin Tin Tin barked in a way that, if you didn’t know Hollywood, you might’ve thought meant amused, and said, in his reasonable-agent voice, “Yes, Marilyn. Everybody said so,” and she said, “But you don’t think so? Don’t you think so?” and Rin Tin Tin said, in that new way of his she’d begun to hear more frequently since The Misfits, as if humoring her, “What does it matter what I think, dear Marilyn? It’s what millions of Americans think, lining up like sheep to purchase tickets at the box office. Or not lining up,” and she said, hurt, “But The Misfits hasn’t done badly, has it? Know who’s seen it? And l-loved it? The President of the United States! Imagine!” and Rin Tin Tin said, “The President should’ve brought some of his friends,” and she said, “What’s that mean? Oh, what are you s-saying?” and Rin Tin Tin said, relenting, in a more or less normal human voice, “Marilyn dear, it didn’t do badly. No. For a film without Marilyn Monroe it would’ve done pretty well,” and she didn’t ask What’s that mean? because she knew exactly what it meant. She said, biting at her thumbnail, her face heating as if she’d been slapped, “So it doesn’t matter, does it! I can ‘act,’ and people have acknowledged it. But it doesn’t matter. People scorned Marilyn all these years for being a blond sexpot who couldn’t act; now they scorn Marilyn for not making a bundle at the box office, huh? Now Marilyn is box-office poison,” and Rin Tin Tin said quickly, alarmed, “Marilyn, of course not. Don’t say such a thing, anyone might overhear.” (They were talking on the phone. She was in her hideaway hacienda, blinds drawn against the glare.) “Marilyn Monroe is not box-office poison—” and Rin Tin Tin paused so she could hear a vibratory hum, unspoken.

  Not yet.

  On the mantel in her shadowy living room were two slender statuettes. One from the French film industry, the other from the Italian film industry. Awarded to MARILYN MONROE for her outstanding performance in The Prince and the Showgirl. (“Oh, why’d they ‘honor’ me for that? Why not for Bus Stop? Damn!”) But she’d never received any award for her acting in the United States, not even an Academy Award nomination for Bus Stop or The Misfits. What The Studio was sensibly demanding (as Rin Tin Tin explained, unless it was bat-faced Z who explained) was a return to sure-fire MARILYN MONROE sex comedy like Some Like It Hot and The Seven-Year Itch, for why the hell should Americans shell out hard-earned cash to see mopey movies that depress them? Movies like their own fucked-up lives? What’s wrong with a few belly laughs? A stirring of the groin? Eh? Gorgeous blonde, scenes in which her clothes are falling off, air drafts blowing her skirt up to her crotch. In
this terrific new property, Something’s Got to Give, there’ll be skin-tight costumes and an airhead blonde who’ll be photographed swimming in the nude. Fan-tas-tic!

  Hey I love to act. Truly, acting is my life! Never so happy as when I’m acting, not living.

  Oh, what’d I say? Oh well, you know what I mean.

  (Why am I so afraid, then? I will not be afraid.)

  So she accepted the role. Immediate Studio press releases to all the papers! Thrilled, MARILYN MONROE to be back again, working again. Not until then did she read the script, Something’s Got to Give delivered to her door by a sweaty mustached boy on a bicycle and sat by the pool (stippled with palm fronds, beetle shells, what looked like skeins of human sperm) reading it and an hour afterward could not remember a word. A mass of clichés. Idiotic dialogue. She wasn’t even sure which role was hers. The name was changed every few pages. “I g-guess Marilyn’s the cash cow for this? The come-on for investors?” Now she was speaking with Rin Tin Tin in person, he was young-middle-age, paunchy, with a loose-fishy look in the jowls and eyes squinty as her own. Telling her that, look, she had only to show up on the sound stage for this movie, mouth the lines they provided for her and forget about prepping, driving herself into a nervous breakdown and making everybody’s life hell. “Just show up, be sexy and funny like Marilyn used to be, and have a little fun for a change, anything wrong with that?” Heard herself say, incensed, “Oh yes? Well, there’s some shit even Marilyn won’t eat.”

  Heard herself say, next morning dialing the agency’s number, “Well, maybe. I need the money I guess?”