He reacted in such surprise that she almost fled back to her bedroom to restore the familiar face of Marilyn Monroe. But he was already explaining his amazement: “You’re so lovely that way . . . really beautiful.”
She kissed him in gratitude.
Alone now and feeling “really beautiful,” she checked the chilled champagne, the food in the oven. She heard a car; it would be an ordinary car, with disguised license plates. She went to the window because she loved to watch Robert walk, his long determined strides. He would pause only a second. An anticipatory smile would just barely begin to push away the intense concentration of the long day.
Today he looked serious, stern.
He was. Before leaving Washington, he had learned from J. Edgar Hoover of the existence of a scurrilous letter anonymously accusing the Kennedys of “sexual immorality.” Hinting that there might be another, “more specific” letter, Hoover had casually informed the Attorney General that, unlike others, this letter was being taken quite seriously at the F.B.I.— “for purposes of surveillance only, of course”—because there was “strong evidence” to confirm that the writer was “a man of power, with possible political connections.” Hoover had pretended to hide his pleasure at this development. “I just figured that you and your folks should know that this is being said, Mr. Attorney General,” he’d said in his cultivated tone of casualness and formality, a tone meant to camouflage his motives.
“Lies,” Robert Kennedy had said to the stodgy old man. “Of course, Mr. Attorney General, what else?” He remembered Hoover’s tiny eyes burrowing in on him.
At the door, Marilyn kissed Robert Kennedy on the lips, to ease away the knotted frown. It only deepened. He stared startled at her. She looked— Tired? Older than he had seen her?
The food was dry, left too long in the oven. She confessed she had not cooked it. On the table, one candle kept flickering until it went out; he did not relight it. Both poked in silence at their plates.
Even in this rationed light, she looked . . . different. Almost . . . ordinary. Robert cleared his throat and spoke words he had rehearsed after leaving Hoover: “Marilyn, I’m in California with my wife and my children this time.” He had prepared more words, rejected now. He jumped ahead to the last ones: “I have to stop seeing you.”
“You’re not going to marry me!”
He reached out to touch her, as if to affirm her sudden odd reality to him. “You thought I would give up my political life, my family in order to—”
“—yes, to marry me, to take me to the White House, introduce me to your mother, have children and—” She had hoped, goddammit. She had hoped powerfully!
“I never gave you reason to believe that,” he said soberly, sadly.
It was true, she knew it, he never had—but she had hoped!
He withdrew his hand from hers.
She grasped it back forcefully. “Touch me!” she demanded. She felt his tension, released his hand, which he eased away.
“But . . . you . . . love . . . me,” she said, very slowly because she knew that otherwise she would stutter.
I desired a movie star, my brother’s woman; she’s someone else now, and not even my brother’s any more, and she’s asking me to marry her. . . . Without intention to do so, he imagined her at a state function, sewn into a tight dress, as he had first seen her, been aroused by her. He heard her breathy voice greeting dignitaries— They would leer at her, the women would turn away. . . . Now he felt deeply, deeply sorry for that vision of her.
“No,” he answered her question finally, surprised he had spoken the single word so easily, because he did not want to hurt her, only to be honest.
She stood up. The champagne spilled.
To his astonishment, he saw that anger had returned the banished face, a flash of her vibrant beauty—and he desired her.
She hurled words at him: “What if I told you I’m pregnant!”
He thought of the vile look on Hoover’s face. “You’ve seen other men.” He tried to soften the words—impossible.
“Yes! Your damn brother!” she hurled at him.
He bolted up.
She pulled back her words. “I’m not pregnant,” she lied. “I made that up.”
He looked puzzled at the unfamiliar face. “I am truly sorry— truly—” And he was, trying to find words that would pain her least, but there was nothing.
Nothing.
Alone, she looked at the dried food, the spilled champagne. She stared at the vacant seat where he had been. She said aloud, “I thought you would marry me.”
* * *
Dearheart, dearheart! Please don’t shut your ears to me, please listen. The Kennedys were really good men and they tried to be even better—aimed at greatness. They were committed, and they roused fervent hope that justice might prevail among the dispossessed who had stopped hoping—and almost have again today, with truly amoral men again in high office. Why, when the Kennedys were murdered, black people and white, men, women, the young, old—all wept. Only tyrants applauded. That means something, dearheart. Oh, they made mistakes. And they had that deadly flaw inherited from their father, that damned old tyrant—the use of the women they needed only sexually. It was a grave flaw, a cruel flaw, a tragic flaw. Perhaps it kept them from being great men. Had they lived—not been slaughtered in their prime— they might have overcome it, become great men. But what they came to stand for—the country’s potential for all that is good and which they believed in fervently—was greater than they were, and the symbol is what has to remain pure. Perhaps, someday, their children will—! Dearheart—?
Normalyn was not sure she wanted to hear what she thought Miss Bertha might exhort her to. She felt trapped in a vortex of confused emotions.
Suddenly, at its center was . . . Ted!—and his subsequent conversion into the new, committed Ted. Yet she still bore wounds from what he had been part of, even though he had stopped the full assault. Without him there— That came to her for the first time. Without him there, the full violence would have happened with the other two men. . . . Had Ted’s voice filtered into Miss Bertha’s?
Normalyn heard a soft, protesting sigh. She did not have to turn to realize that it had been uttered by the older woman when, from the shadows, the youngwoman with the silvery gray wig walked—tiny, reedy, arrogant—to the edge of the clearing, ready to enter the performance. Beyond, the dark-haired youngwoman toyed nervously with the shiny cigarette lighter.
The contender raised her head hopefully. “I waited for Robert Kennedy to come back. I was sure—”
* * *
—he would come back, apologize, just come back, just call! Marilyn did not leave the house for days. Fearing wiretaps, she had learned to call Robert from public telephones, at his private number in Washington. Late one evening when the cruel telephone did not ring even once—she repeatedly lifted it and demanded, “Hello!” into its startled buzzing—she asked her male secretary to drive her to a telephone booth in the lot of a closed grocery store. The clang of each coin made her clasp the receiver more tightly.
She learned that Robert Kennedy had changed his private telephone number.
J. Edgar Hoover told Mildred about the accusatory letter concerning the Kennedys. Soon after, Mildred received another one, more implicating, involving Monroe in the scandal.
In her gray limousine, the great Mildred Meadows herself drove to Marilyn Monroe’s house to give the star a chance to be saved, an opportunity to be extended one last time, in final deference to the symbol of beauty—and at a time when the star’s personal life had put her career in disarray.
When there was no response to her ringing nor to her polite, though necessarily insistent knocking, Mildred positioned herself on the lawn—in dramatic, emphatic light—and delivered her message. In civilized but assertive tones, as required by the importance of the matter, she called into the house:
“Monroe! I intend to destroy you in my column!—”
* * *
?
??—and I will destroy the Kennedy brothers!” finished the youngwoman wearing the perfect gray wig.
Normalyn listened attentively to the ensuing narration of Mildred’s raid on Marilyn Monroe’s house—of her cunning extortion of the fact that Marilyn was pregnant, her discovery that Enid did not suspect by whom, and her powerful ultimatum. . . . This version certainly came, at least in major part, from Mildred, but it confirmed Mark Poe’s, with only minor variations that placed Mildred constantly in lavishly favorable light.
“And then Enid became my ally!” the youngwoman in the gray sculpted wig announced triumphantly to the panel of Dead Movie Stars.
“That’s not—” Normalyn stopped her protest when she saw Lady Star lean eagerly toward her.
Don’t protest aloud, dearheart, Miss Bertha warned her, just in time. Not yet. You know what Mark Poe told you. He was there, and he can be believed. Remember that, dearheart, remember!
Lady Star leaned even closer, prodding, prodding.
But Normalyn was silent. She was recalling Mark Poe’s description of what had occurred after the rage of confrontation between the two women—the reference to that third person who dominated them, Enid’s accusing anger, and then the moments of caring, intense closeness when Enid soothed Marilyn with enormous love, determined the star’s longing for this child, her passionate promise to assure that she would be able to have it. . . . Even then Enid could fluctuate between rage and protective love, Normalyn thought as she continued to discover—as if someone she had known as a ghost was now assuming flesh, the intense youngwoman of mystery, of “many lives”—to discover and admire her.
Of course, then, what the youngwoman in the gray wig had claimed, what Mildred herself had claimed about Enid’s becoming her ally, was false. . . . Was information being reiterated, for her? That sudden thought, an extension of her recurring suspicion that she was being carefully guided toward a certain knowledge, pulled Normalyn back into the present, a disturbed present extending now to this: Kirk is dead, really dead, and Troja is alone!
Surrendering to Normalyn’s pensive silence, Lady Star waved her hand at the auditioners. “Proceed.”
In the clearing of ashen-yellow light, the dark-haired youngwoman wearing a veiled dark hat faced the woman in the silver wig. Standing to one side of them the Contender for Marilyn Monroe confided:
“Soon after—”
* * *
—the telephone at the stone gate that bordered Mildred Meadows’s mansion was lifted. The butler told Mildred that “a Miss Enid Morgan, baroness,” desired “urgently” to see her.
“Let her in at once!”
Mildred rushed to a window. She saw Enid walk away from her car—to accept the declaration of war? She saw Enid pause for a moment. She lifted the veil of her hat. She retouched her lips most carefully, perfecting their outline with a moistened finger. Mildred almost gasped. Her daughter, Tarah, had always prepared exactly that way before she faced Mildred for approval. Yes. And Tarah had been as naturally beautiful as this youngwoman. For a second, Mildred allowed herself to imagine that her daughter had returned. . . .
Minutes later, in the grand receiving room, Mildred sat on her throne and faced Enid Morgan.
“You’re right, Mildred.”
“But of course I am.” The easy announcement of abdication did not disappoint Mildred. Drama has many levels, and anticlimax is not a desirable one. This was the only conclusion—a key line kept in abeyance—to the years of conflict between Mildred and Monroe. . . . Mildred offered Enid some of her best sherry. Enid asked for “iced tea” instead. Although Mildred was mildly charmed by the oddness of the request, she was at the same time a touch disappointed. She would have preferred that she answer, “Yes, just three sips, please”—the way Tarah always framed her exact request.
Moistened by the tea, Enid’s lips gleamed. “There will be no child.” She smiled over the crystal glass, which captured pins of light. “Just the way you want, Mildred.”
Mildred did not feel compromised to clarify: “Oh, my dear, it isn’t that I don’t want her to have a child. It is simply that circumstances prohibit it. The brothers will be destroyed. It’s a matter of whether she wants to accompany them into disaster.”
“It’s all very clear. Shall I state it back to you?”
Now Mildred was charmed. This beautiful youngwoman had certainly been educated in some fine conservative school, like the one she had insisted Tarah attend.
Enid said, “You are allowing Marilyn Monroe to separate herself from destructive scandal. By using the full authority and power of your column you will dispel any rumors linking her to it. Your voice would never be questioned in those matters.”
“Exactly!” Mildred leaned toward Enid: “And for the necessary time required, I will even withhold the letter exposing the Kennedys. Of course, afterwards—” She clasped her tiny hands in a gesture of triumph and destruction. “My dear, I simply want to guide Monroe away from those harmful leftists she has been attracted to.”
“Yes—and into your gracious fold at last.” Enid toasted with a tinkle of her iced tea. She continued her understanding of Mildred’s generous motives: “A child born or announced would force the terrible association, whether true or not—beyond even your power to control.”
“Beyond my desire to control.” Mildred allowed no compromise to her power.
“Of course.” Enid smiled, a bright, favorite prodigy.
“One can never count on natural miscarriage!” Mildred asserted harshly. She was thinking of her own daughter, of when Tarah had informed her of her pregnancy, years, years ago, sitting in that same chair Enid now was occupying and announcing her determination to have her illegitimate child, ruin her beauty, her life. Mildred could almost see her there now, just as beautiful as this youngwoman, her hair as dark, her skin as fair, her eyes— . . .
“May I have just a few sips of sherry?” Enid set aside her iced tea.
Mildred closed her eyes, to join two images separated by years, by death. “Just three sips?” she spoke aloud to herself.
“Yes, thank you. Please.”
The summoned butler served the sherry into a goblet just slightly smaller than Mildred’s. With only the tip of her lips, Enid tasted the sweetness.
Mildred watched every tiny motion, to link with every stirred memory. “You have never had a child, my dear?”
“Yes! I have!” Enid said quickly. “With—” She recovered. “—with a vengeance,” she finished softly.
But clearly—and unlike her own daughter—this youngwoman had not allowed herself to be ruled by it; her life continued, superbly, glamorously.
“And you, Mildred, have you had the joy of a child?”
“A beloved, beautiful daughter—Tarah. She was killed in an accident, protecting her always disruptive child, who nevertheless died, too.” She moved on quickly, quickly. “Since Monroe is to rely on me”—she tasted delicious words—“I must know everything, of course. All the details.”
“Who could expect less of Mildred Meadows?” Enid’s eyes fixed on her.
“My dear!” Mildred was flooded with delight.
“It will happen at the D’Arcy House,” Enid went on to inform. “You will announce it as a miscarriage—occurring elsewhere, of course.”
“Of course, as agreed.” Mildred naturally knew of the D’Arcy House; designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for his notorious “friend” Dominique D’Arcy. Originally it was thought to be in the United States, but a careful mapping of the territory revealed that it was in Mexico. Still ostensibly a magnificent private home, it was now a secret hospital—its location making certain matters legal. There, prominent doctors and surgeons attended, in absolute quiet, to the needs of the famous, who were accepted through a network of important contacts that assured anonymity. What Mildred did not tell Enid was that she knew the D’Arcy House with much more intimacy. It was where Tarah had given birth, painful birth. Mildred had sat in the same room with her while the despised
Dr. Janus—
Enough! Mildred ordered her thoughts to stop.
“Marilyn will be in disguise, of course,” Enid continued casually.
Too casually. Mildred leaned back and to one side on her throne. “Oh?” She drenched the word in suspicion.
“A disguise you know extremely well,” Enid assured. “You have a photograph of her in it.”
“How do you know that?” Mildred allowed a note of warning in her voice, in case there was something to warn about.
“I read your column, religiously, Mildred. So does Marilyn.”
“But of course you do!”
Enid crossed her heart. “And we read between the lines.” She recited words from one of Mildred’s recent columns: “Who was the blonde movie star in dark wig seen fleeing from—?” Enid laughed. “Marilyn remembered she was almost cornered against your parked limousine by your photographer.”
Mildred’s laughter almost bubbled. She recalled the photograph she had not used—kept. And she remembered the column. It was true that in it she planted secret messages, warnings, veiled instructions—to elicit prompt, telling, reactions from persons not named. She had had to wait, yes, but those coded messages, resisted until now, had prepared for the star’s capitulation in this utterly charming way. “Of course she must be in disguise. It is essential,” Mildred agreed and made the slightest toast, a mere tilt of her goblet, to the careful preparations.
Enid looked at Mildred over the refracted light of her goblet. “May I compliment you, Mildred?”
“Of course, my dear.”
“I marvel at your stylish civility. I hope someday to match it. Less civilized people might accuse us of speaking too coolly about the death of an unborn child.” Her laughter rippled. “May I have a bit more sherry?”
The pleasure of having the youngwoman appreciate the lack of vulgar emotionalism in practical matters was overwhelmed by that new request, which evoked another cherished memory, of lovely afternoons like this when she would pull all the drapes open in this room and she and Tarah would sit admiring the perfect garden. . . .