Marilyn's Daughter

  “Some people should never age, should remain young,” Troja reminded quietly.

  “But as a mother—?” Normalyn was able now to ask the words she had just withheld.

  Robert said, “Oh, a woman that magnificent would have loved her child, especially a daughter—given her everything she had not had, made her beautiful like her, without the pain.”

  “Perhaps she might have kept her from becoming beautiful,” Mark Poe said, as if speaking a thought aloud. “Did Enid speak to you about me?” he asked Normalyn.

  “She loved you,” Normalyn said.

  “She told you that?” Mark’s voice seemed young, eager.

  “Yes,” Normalyn asserted.

  Mark’s sigh added death to his memories of Enid. He smiled a bemused smile. He said only, “Enid.”

  Still bright, the desert had begun to gather shadows.

  Robert said slowly, “If Enid . . . and you . . . if you both had chosen to— . . . Would you have—?”

  Mark held both of Robert’s hands in both of his.

  Robert sighed, smiling, accepting the reassurance he had sought in the sheltered memories.

  Mark said firmly to Normalyn, “And now you know what you came to discover—all that I know of it.”

  “Yes,” Normalyn said. But there remained questions—no answers, but clearer questions.

  Now the intimacy that had occurred among strangers was threatened by sudden awkwardness. Robert attempted to contain the anarchy of memories within this ordered present: He told them more about the school, the students, the creative pleasure and peace it all brought them.

  Troja filled the next long silence: “We have a mutual friend, Mr. Kunitz . . . Robert. Kirk Thomas—he’s my husband.”

  It was clear that Robert could not recall the name.

  Troja had converted Kirk into her husband! . . . Normalyn longed to prod Robert into remembering him. “He was in many wonderful movies,” Normalyn encouraged, remembering the exultant gladiator in the film clip Kirk had shown them.

  “But he chose to leave films—like you, Robert; he, too, chose. He was also a famous bodybuilder, Mr. America,” Troja added.

  “Oh, but of course,” Robert pretended to remember. “Who could ever forget Kirk Thomas? One of the very best!”

  Normalyn wanted to hug him.

  Again silence.

  “There’s a blessed peace at night in this old house so full of ghosts,” Robert said. “I love to watch it change with the light of day.”

  “Please let us show it to you.” Mark Poe stood up.

  “May Michael Farrell join us?” Robert consulted the two women. “He’s been so eager to be with you, and I think his earlier boldness has made him morbidly shy.”

  That pleased Normalyn, Michael’s morbid shyness.

  “Yes,” Troja interpreted Normalyn’s silence, correctly.

  Robert went to find Michael—and did immediately because he was already advancing to join them.

  2

  The edge of the sky would reveal stars before long. In the clean air was the scent of mixed flowers.

  The five walked toward the house, then into it along an arched corridor. They entered a grand Spanish dining room—“now a study room and library,” Robert informed. There were books on shelves, on tables. About seven students sat reading, on the carpeted floor or on comfortable elegant chairs. “It’s good for them to feel in touch with what was grand in the past—and some things were,” Robert said.

  Normalyn noticed among the students a very pretty girl smiling at Michael. Boldly, she led the way out of the room. They walked along mosaicked halls, into rooms that opened onto verandas laced with the flowers of slender vines.

  “I’d like to show her—them—my classroom,” Michael said. “Both of you,” he said to Normalyn and Troja. “I mean, all of us.”

  Of course! He was attracted to Troja, Normalyn thought. Who wouldn’t be? She felt plainer than before.

  “You mean you’d like to show Normalyn your classroom.” Troja understood Michael’s invitation.

  “Yes!”

  Normalyn tried to drift away, unnoticed. Troja went after her, linking her arm through hers, returning her. Then in her grandest manner, Troja announced, “I’d like to look at the Renaissance pastorals we just passed.”

  Robert grasped her intention immediately, directing her and Mark back to the paintings. Mark smiled, understanding.

  Normalyn stood abandoned. Michael took her hand and led her into a spacious room with oak beams, a Spanish chandelier, carved wooden chairs with bright upholstery. Pretending to want to look more closely at a small elevated area, like a stage, Normalyn eased away from Michael’s hand still holding hers.

  “We’re all here on scholarships,” Michael informed her. “Mark—Mr. Poe—is a great teacher. So is Robert, of course,” he added somewhat dutifully.

  To have teachers like that! Normalyn marveled—and remembered Miss Stowe in the Gibson Public Library.

  Then they were surrounded by silence.

  “What do you do in Los Angeles?” Michael broke the silence firmly.

  She wanted to sound sophisticated, like Troja. “Oh,” she answered, “I go to parties, to nightclubs. I go ice-skating—” Where had she heard that? She remembered—there had been a segment about ice-skating on “Life As It Is,” but it hadn’t been about Los Angeles. She hoped he hadn’t heard her.

  “Ice-skating?”

  “Yes!” She snapped at him for her slip.

  “It sounds great,” he said with genuine enthusiasm. “I mean, all those great swirls and circles on the ice. It’s very visual! I’d like to go with you!”

  She looked at him, just slightly baffled. He had said that honestly. “And what do you do?” she was able to ask him.

  “Study, mostly. I love directing!” he said enthusiastically. “I swim a lot, too,” he laughed. “And I read a lot.”

  “So do I!” she told him, wondering whether she had sounded too enthusiastic. “I used to,” she said, more to herself. “What were you reading earlier?”

  “Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares. It’s better for directors than for actors, actually.”

  “I’m reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” she told him.

  Michael snapped his fingers with delight. “Damn, isn’t that something! Mr. Poe told us just last week that everyone should read that. He tells us to read fiction—novels. You know why? Mark believes that ‘realistic’ art is a lie because it pretends to be telling the truth. But fiction announces that it’s telling lies. So it’s more honest!”

  Normalyn felt excited, to be talking this way, so intelligently. And what he said—what Mark Poe said—made perfect sense.

  “But I wasn’t really reading earlier,” he confessed. “I was just looking at you.”

  He moved closer to her.

  She did not move back.

  “Goddamn, would I love to kiss you!” he said.

  She looked at him, so handsome, so intelligent. She waited.

  His lips touched hers.

  His kiss felt warm. She kissed him back—because he read and because—Suddenly she pulled away from the lovely sensation.

  “I’m sorry.” He retreated in embarrassment. “The reason I’m so aggressive is because otherwise I’d be shy.”

  “It’s not you,” she said, trying not to sound nervous. “It’s just that desert wind always . . . scares me.”

  He listened. “The wind’s not blowing now. Maybe you heard the air conditioner.”

  But Normalyn knew what she had heard—an echo aroused even by this wonderful kiss she had welcomed, an echo stirring memories of violence. Pretending to run her hand along the surface of a table, she moved to the door. “I am sorry,” she said, meaning it.

  “I come into Los Angeles sometimes. I’ll call you!”

  “I don’t have a telephone yet.”

  “Is that true?” he asked her.

  She wanted to extend the lie, so that she c
ould tell him she’d call him when she did have a telephone. But the dark, serious eyes on her really wanted to know the truth. “No,” she said, “it isn’t true.”

  “I like you very much. Do you like me?” he asked bluntly.

  “Yes. But I’m scared.” With regret, she heard her own footsteps moving away from him.

  3

  Troja looked at her suspiciously when Normalyn returned alone.

  “I’d like to show you my study,” Mark said swiftly to Normalyn. “That’s where I was when Robert convinced me to call you back.” He seemed to want to emphasize the location of his decision.

  Inside, Normalyn saw it immediately: a gathering of lavender blossoms in a decorated vase on Mark’s desk. She moved close to them. They were untainted with decay, perfect in their artifice.

  “They arrived in the mail, without any indication from whom,” Mark told her. “Only a few days ago.”

  The artificial jacarandas—a signal to her? A least in part, had they goaded Mark to speak to her this afternoon? Normalyn grasped for a connection, any connection, to render these moments less disturbing. “Enid had some like those. She had them from a long time ago.”

  “Alberta Holland sent some to Marilyn; they arrived the day I was leaving. I took them to her in her room. She told me she loved them because—I remember her words because they moved me so much. . . . She said she loved them because—”

  * * *

  “—what dies so early in real life, can go on living like this.” Marilyn touched the flowers, and she leaned over, to smell them, as if the perfect artifice would have been able to capture even the essence of their perfume.

  * * *

  “I think that she—and others—came to see those flowers as a symbol of herself,” Mark Poe said to Normalyn.

  Normalyn wondered now whether as she searched out the lives of the two women, someone else was searching with her.

  When Robert invited them to dinner and Mark echoed the invitation, Troja declined immediately: “It would be lovely, but my husband is very demanding of my presence.”

  They would now go back, Normalyn thought, and then Troja would change again, giving up pieces of her life to Kirk.

  Mark and Robert accompanied the two women to the car. “Good night, Normalyn and Troja; please do come back.” Robert tried to hide a note of sadness.

  As Normalyn was about to enter the car, Mark Poe drew her gently aside. He walked her several steps away from the others. Near the shade of two imposing elm trees, he told her, “I did leave soon after, but I remained long enough to believe that there was a plot to allow Marilyn to have the child she wanted. Alberta Holland was involved. I believe Mildred Meadows was elaborately deceived. None of this could have occurred without Enid’s participation. I believe, Normalyn, that Marilyn’s child was born. Now I’ve told you everything, including what I believe.”

  He led her silently back to the car, to Robert, Troja. There, he kissed her, tenderly, on the cheek.

  Normalyn hugged and kissed him back, and thought, If only he had been my father!

  Twenty-One

  “God-fuckin’-damn!”

  Normalyn saw what had caused Troja to curse and brake. After miles of private silence, they had exited the freeway onto Sunset Boulevard, into the bruised part of Western.

  Ahead, on the street itself, about sixty women were scattering from policemen mounted on fierce horses and motorcycles. All the women were heavily made up, dressed in tight skirts, tight pants; many were Mexicans, many black, some white. Corralled by the leering policemen and herded into one column, they were forced to move ahead of three squad cars driving slowly behind them with red lights whirling. In their sexual attire the women maintained tawdry dignity as the cops laughed, poked each other suggestively. At the sight of the ugly parade, spectators, mostly men, goaded the ugly roundup.

  Normalyn stared in horror at the procession of trapped women.

  “Fuckin’ goddamn pigs!” Troja spat. “Marchin’ them to be booked. I could’ve been there!”

  Then she had returned to those desperate streets to avoid Duke’s control. Normalyn wanted to hold her friend, but she seemed too vulnerable even to be touched.

  Normalyn felt relief when they drove up to the familiar house, the palmtree, the inclined porch. Out of the car, they were aware of a stillness within the house.

  Kirk lay on the floor in his briefs. The enormous muscles looked odd in awkward repose. Blood, umber, had dried on his face.

  “Hon! Sweetheart! Hon!” Troja knelt over him, cuddling the enormous man.

  Normalyn prayed, Let him be alive.

  Kirk opened his eyes. Normalyn helped Troja gather him onto his bed. Kirk moaned. Troja covered him, wiped his face with her dress. Normalyn moistened a towel. She searched for any first-aid supplies, but all she could find were pills. Normalyn gave the towel to Troja.

  “Shouldn’t’ve left him alone, shouldn’t’ve left him,” she moaned, mopping his face, chest.

  “Two guys . . . surprised fuck outta me . . . not hurt bad,” Kirk assured himself.

  “Oh, I know,” said Troja, “cause, baby, you are the very strongest.”

  Normalyn’s eyes scanned the house. Everything was in familiar disarray—except her room, which was intact. Whoever had come in had taken nothing. Placed in the middle of the living room was the blonde wig on the mannequin’s head. Pinned to it was a note. Near it was a cellophane packet of white powder.

  “Was it Duke?” Troja asked, hardly audibly.

  “No,” Kirk said.

  But they had come at Duke’s instructions, and Kirk and Troja knew it. Normalyn picked up the note—and pushed away the packet of cocaine. She read:

  To the black Monroe and her boy—an extra thank you for no hard feelings!

  There were the names of a man and a woman, a telephone number—all underlined twice and followed by several commanding exclamations marks—and a P.S.

  Call them!—or send the real blonde, the real woman—with him!

  Normalyn crumpled the note. Troja held her hand out, demanding it. She read it, held it in a fist.

  Straining—“not hurt bad”—Kirk pinched some powder to his nose. “This’ll help.” He tried to smile.

  Troja snorted once in each nostril, then again. Again!

  “Troja, goddammit! Not you, too!” Normalyn shouted at her.

  Troja’s despair burst into rage. “What you say, girl?”

  “Don’t start on me, Troja,” Normalyn said quietly. Only earlier Troja had been so grand, so loving. In Kirk’s world, she became someone else.

  Troja snorted even more of the powder, flaunting the fact to Normalyn. She said tauntingly, “Want a taste, girl?”

  Normalyn told herself not to respond. Troja was hurting deeply. In one moment she would take it all back. Yet she, too, was feeling the anguish of this day. She would not be baited by Troja. She turned away.

  “Girl! When you gonna start livin’ and stop watchin’ and listenin’!” Troja tore into the closeness of the afternoon in Palm Springs. “When you gonna join the parade? When you gonna start hurtin’ like the rest of us?”

  Just earlier, Troja had soothed her, given her courage. “I do hurt, Troja, you know that so well. But does that stop it?” She pointed to the cellophane packet.

  “Yeah, girl—and Kirk knows that!” At this moment she seemed to want to share even his defeat. “Want some?” Troja taunted Normalyn with the powder.

  Normalyn snatched it from her. She managed clumsily to pinch some into her hand, the way she had seen them do. Defiantly she breathed it in, easily.

  “Don’t!” Troja said too late. “Dammit,” she yelled, “don’t you know it’s killing Kirk?” She said quickly, “Didn’t mean that.”

  “But it’s true,” Kirk said. He took the crumpled note from Troja’s fist.

  Troja protested its accusation: “I am a real woman!” She sat on the floor, near the blonde wig, and covered her face.

  The wig on th
e floor seemed alive, commanding.

  In that instant Normalyn felt yanked by the drug into a hurtling current. The intense rush abandoned her on the memory of the darkened shoreline with Enid and— . . . Perspiring, confused, Normalyn pulled herself out of the compressed, speeding moment. Why had it led her there?

  Kirk was saying, “I’m sure they didn’t intend to hurt me bad, and they didn’t. It was just a warning.” He smoothed out the paper with the names left by Duke. “Maybe we should do it,” he said to Troja.

  “Maybe,” Troja said wearily.

  2

  “I am sorry, I am very, very sorry,” Troja apologized to Normalyn in the morning, not even waiting for her to come out of her room for breakfast.

  “Thank you,” Normalyn said sincerely.

  “And don’t you never touch that cocaine shit again!” Troja, admonished.

  Normalyn considered extracting a similar promise back, but after the ugly night, that seemed chancey for now.

  Before Normalyn left her room, she touched Enid’s hurt angel. Enid had kept it in reminder of another—a statue, Normalyn had concluded—the angel Enid had told Mark Poe about at the time she conveyed her playful but sorrowing biography: the angel resigned never to fly again and under whose shadow she had first met the movie star.

  Kirk and Troja were already having breakfast. Kirk had not been badly hurt. He’d even prepared for a workout later by bandaging the wrist he had twisted during last night’s warning. What would they do now? Normalyn wondered sadly.

  She waited until Kirk was working out. She paid Troja for a whole week’s rent in advance, to show her she was not afraid to stay on—but she was!—and to help them at least that much for now—now when she was really needed.

  Then she went out, with her copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, to finish reading it if she ended up at DeLongpre Park. She had finally located the origin of her fascination with the memorial to Rudolph Valentino there. It reminded her of Enid’s “peacock” fireplace, which was “just like his at Falcon’s Lair!”

  Normalyn did go to the park. There, on a bench and among the usual desultory gathering of afternoon idlers, she finished the novel by James Joyce—thrilled, thrilled by it, exhilarated by the ending, knowing that Stephen Dedalus is going to leave the city to explore the world!