The Blonde (26 page)
New York, November 1960
A long day passed in which Marilyn did not bother getting dressed in anything more than her old bathrobe, and the whole world seemed to forget her. Then the telephone did ring, and she was so relieved by this proof that somebody out there knew she existed that she picked up straight away.
“It’s me,” Alexei said. When she heard his voice so brusque like that, she knew she hadn’t ever really believed he’d stay away. But her mind was too sluggish with sorrow to register a threat. “Are you ready? To put this foolishness behind you, and get back to work?”
“No. I’m sorry,” she replied, with as much emotion as she might have given an encyclopedia salesman, and put the receiver back in its cradle.
Another day passed in much the same way, except she thought a great deal about what she might say to Alexei when he called back—messages for her father, questions about where he was located. If her father was as Alexei had described him, if he was worth meeting, he must have some power, and surely he would eventually come looking for her. But none of that really mattered. Even if Jack didn’t care anymore, still her heart wouldn’t let her spy on him, although that seemed too tender to share with the member of a shadow organization, whose real name she might not even know. But when he did call back, she felt no desire to explain herself, and hung up the moment she heard his voice.
Then it occurred to her that, while Jack’s victory meant he would no longer see her, it had at least put the rest of the country in a jubilant mood, with an infinite appetite for news about the magnificent Kennedys, and how
they’d pulled this miracle off, and what it portended for all America’s futures. Nobody cared particularly about an aging movie star, and she might as well get the divorce announcement over with now, while the world’s attention was elsewhere.
So she called her friend Earl at the
Post
and gave him the scoop, and then sent a telegram to Arthur that read:
Happy Armistice Day. Best of luck with your German. She certainly knows how to take a picture. Love, Marilyn
Afterward, she closed the blinds and poured herself the last of the scotch and got back into bed. She did little, and ate nothing, over the weekend, and might have gone on that way had her maid Lena not arrived with groceries on Monday morning. By then Marilyn had remembered how it was—falling in love will slim a girl down, but nothing finishes the job like getting dumped. Lena stood in the doorway, matronly forearms crossed over her cotton housedress, and sniffed the room—which did, by then, have the ripe odor of depression—and declared that she was going to make egg salad sandwiches.
“You know you got company downstairs, don’t you?” she called as she retreated to the kitchen.
“What kind of company?” Marilyn pulled the sheet from her face and shivered, even though the radiator had been going for days.
“Bunch of reporters and photographers. They want a statement, about your divorce.”
Marilyn drew her hands down her face, pulling the skin. Of course. Now she saw how badly she’d misstepped, how uncharacteristically witless she’d been. Love and shrewdness rarely go together; at any other time she would have known better than to make the statement before she was ready to put on a happy face, for the press never passed up an opportunity to see her sad. And then she realized something else.
“Lena?” She threw back the sheet, and tied the robe over her nakedness.
“Never mind about the sandwiches. I’m going out to lunch. Can you help me with my hair? After that, you can take the afternoon off.”
An hour later she emerged perfectly made up, her skin powdered, her lips frosted red, her hair blown out and covered with a kerchief, wearing a black seal coat and no stockings, so that she could really feel the cold, channel that discomfort as distress. When she saw the photographers, she let her mouth open and she clutched her coat self-protectively with one hand, and with the other she feigned covering her face. But she didn’t try too hard. The face was what she had come down to show them, and the whole newspaper-reading world, which, if she were lucky, tomorrow would include Jack. Once she knew they had their shot, she pushed through the clutch of reporters, flexing her brow and telling them, in a barely audible voice: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” That low mumble forced the hubbub down, and then she added, “I am sorry—but I have nothing to say about my personal life.”
There were so many of them, and they were so frenzied in their attempts to record anything else she might say, to capture any shed tears, that she had to force her way through, and on the other side she was grateful to see a taxicab idling.
“I hope you don’t have anywhere to be for the next two hours,” she said as the driver pulled away from the curb. “I just want you to drive.”
But when she returned, in the middle afternoon, the crowd of reporters had only grown. There were maybe thirty of them clustered just beyond the awning. When they saw her approaching they began shouting questions, and she put her hands over her ears and ran past them into the building. The doorman held the door for her, and she made it halfway across the lobby before she saw the red lacquer vase full of what appeared to be two dozen black roses on the marble front desk. “Those are peculiar,” she said, pausing by the elevators, to the doorman stationed behind the desk.
“They are for you, Mrs. Miller.” He stood and lifted them in her direction. “A man dropped them off an hour ago. I am afraid I didn’t get his name …
there was a commotion outside at the same time—one of the photographers was pushed, and his camera fell and broke, and it seemed likely to come to blows, so I went out to defuse the situation. In the confusion, I didn’t see the gentleman leave. But they came with a card.”
The envelope was ominous black, and her fingers trembled as she ripped it open. The sense of dread had already spread through her belly by the time she saw the simple ivory card stock with the thick black border of a mourning card. In elegant cursive—she did not recognize it as the handwriting of anyone she knew—was scrawled the message:
I am deeply sorry for your loss
. Her eyes were shiny with terror, her feet lacked sensation, as she turned from the desk and walked resolutely back to the front door, allowing the man in the dark green livery to hold it open.
“Miss Monroe! Miss Monroe!” they all shouted.
“Who brought the flowers?” she demanded. When nobody answered she shouted, “Who’s dead? Who died?”
“Miss Monroe, will you give a statement about Mr. Gable?”
“What?” She had to grab one of the reporters by his jacket for balance, and she saw in his face that she had gone pale. “Not Clark.”
The reporter related the news quietly. “He died this morning, in the hospital, of a heart attack.”
“But they said it was just a little one,” she protested, as though this were some trick that she could fix simply by pointing out its unfairness. She had heard about the heart attack from the studio, and had sent Clark flowers and a card telling him that he had better get well soon, because she expected him to take her dancing when she was back in California, but those had been the heady days before the election, when she had floated on thoughts of Jack, and the message that it was minor, and that he would make a full recovery, had been her excuse not to think much of it. But she could no longer pretend that those excuses justified her not calling immediately. “They said he’d be all right.”
“I’m sorry,” said the reporter whose lapel she was clinging to.
She leaned more heavily on him, and put her mouth close to his tape recorder so that it would have a chance of picking up her statement. “He was an excellent guy to work with and one of the few really decent human beings I have known. He was my friend.” She would have said more, but she was afraid she might begin to sob, and she had to cover the gaping of her mouth with her hand.
The incessant clicking had ceased, although she couldn’t be certain whether it was out of respect for her or Clark. Then a disembodied voice, somewhere deep in the crowd, cried out: “What do you say to those who believe his heart was strained by the prolonged shooting schedule of
The Misfits
, and that he might still be alive had he not been forced to endure long hours in the desert heat, waiting for that film’s leading lady….”
“Oh, god,” she muttered and, fearing she might be sick on the sidewalk, rushed back into the lobby, grabbing the vase as she went, and jamming her finger against the button for the thirteenth floor until the elevator began, mercifully, to rise.
“Ah. There you are, my dear.”
The vase slipped through her already unreliable fingers and smashed on the floor, shiny red shards scattering across the parquet, the necks of the black roses snapped pathetically, their water splashing her naked calves. She thought of demanding how he got in, but that would have been wasted breath—he had watched for Lena to leave, instigated a ruckus, slipped up the stairs, picked the lock.
“Oh, no—your flowers,” Alexei said. There was nothing ironic in his tone, or anything to suggest that his concern was not real, but in the past he would have come to her aid immediately. Instead he remained in her wingback chair, his legs crossed, his hands calmly folded in his lap. “Now look what you’ve done,” he went on, and though he spoke in the same level manner, she sensed the subterranean implications.
But the world, at that moment, was too meager and nasty a place for her to heed threats that did not possess the simple decency of making themselves obvious. She pushed the door closed behind her, and let a silent sob heave through her chest. “He’s gone,” she said. “Clark Gable’s gone.”
“Yes.”
“They think it’s
my
fault.”
“But N.J.,” Alexei said, leaning forward now and summoning the old, soothing way, “it
is
your fault.”
“Why? Because I was late to set? Because I was off chasing Kennedy for you, and missed shooting days? Believe me, he was happy to be out of the house a little and stretch his legs before …” And then she realized that there was going to be another baby born without a father, and she couldn’t hold back her tears. They came fast and salty, streaming unprettily over her ruddy cheeks.
Alexei smiled, but there was malice in his eyes, and a kind of satisfaction when he said, “You really liked one another, didn’t you?”
“Oh, god,” she muttered, comprehending what that smile signified.
“He had a minor heart attack a week ago, and was taken into the hospital for monitoring. But you would be amazed how dangerous American hospitals can be. Practically anyone can get in, and they are so full of medicines that, in the wrong dosage, are quite fatal.”
“Oh, god.” It was lucky there was nothing in her stomach, because she wouldn’t have had a chance of keeping it down. “Oh, god, oh, god.”
“It is time to get back to work, N.J.”
“I can’t.” She was begging now, between the sobs. “I can’t.”
“I told you not to fall in love with Hal.”
“Even if I wanted to, I can’t spy on Jack anymore. There’s no way back in.”
Alexei scratched the skin behind his ear with a crooked index finger and regarded her, the way a teacher might regard a favorite pupil who has turned rebellious. “You will spy on him. You will find a way back in.”
For a while she thought he might be preparing to say something kind, but eventually he just stood and walked into her kitchen. He returned with the broom and dustpan and carefully began to push the broken pieces of the vase into a small pile. While he cleaned up the flowers she remained planted, shoulder blades against the wall, afraid that otherwise she might collapse. Once the mess was put away he came toward her. She winced, her muscles frozen and her eyes clouded with fear, sure that a blow was finally coming.
But instead he scooped her into his arms and carried her to the bedroom, where he laid her down. He lifted her head to arrange the pillows, and then brushed the hair off her forehead. “N.J., my dear, you have no idea what you are capable of. Rest a while. You’ll get Jack back—for you it will be easy. Things are so much easier for you than you believe.”
She closed her eyes. Her mouth was dry, her throat constricted, and it required everything she had to say, “Why did you have to kill him?”
“Ah, my dear. To warn you. To teach you that your actions have consequences.”
A small sob escaped her lips. “It was me you should have killed. Oh, god, just kill me. Please. There’s nothing left for me now, anyway.”
“Don’t talk that way.” Finally she did hear the anger in his voice. She blinked at him as he picked up her hand with both of his. “You are too important for us to—harm you in any way. But you must see that we are serious. You see that now, yes? And you cannot go on behaving like a child any longer. This is the real world, and you must sometimes do things you do not like. It is for the greater good.”
She listened to the heels of his shoes as he left the room. Her eyelids sank shut—she was tired and stunned enough that she thought perhaps she would be able to sleep a little before the nightmares began. Then she heard him coming back, and though she told herself to rise, to summon some dignity, to at the very least sit up, none of her limbs obeyed.
When he returned he was wearing a long fur coat with a high collar,
which somehow accentuated the dramatic curve of his nose, the cruelty of his lips, and she saw for the first time that he was a foreigner, that he came from a land of hail and wood smoke. They were not friends, even if he was carrying a fresh bottle of scotch. She could smell the liquor when he poured it into a low, round glass, within her reach on the nightstand. “If I leave this for you,” he asked with exquisite patience, “can I trust that you will not drink the bottle too quickly, that you will not harm yourself?”