Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury

LIGHT Mort Castle

Because you know the story, you might

see in the photograph an element of drama,

perhaps even pathos.

That is only your thought, your

projection onto this banal image.

A washed-out snapshot.

Hard to judge the light. You cannot tell if it is a sunny day.

She seems a sunny child.

She is three years old.

She wears a striped bathing suit.

Her eyes do not squint.

It is you she sees.

Her mouth is as wide as the blade of a toy shovel. Unattractive really.

She holds out her arms.

Does she want you to pick her up, embrace her, take her away?

Is she asking, Will you love me?

—Will you love me?

—Will you love me?

Because you know the story…

Marilyn Monroe lies naked and dying.

Respiration: Shallow and irregular.

Blue-fade-to-black above the half-moons of her fingernails.

Eyelids seem to thicken as you watch.

Pasty white drool at the left corner of her mouth.

But if you look very hard, there is an almost imperceptible shimmering. Faint, like a trick of weary eyes.

Not rising from her but settling about her.

Light.

Norma Jeane walks into the theater.

Gladys is taking her to the movies.

Gladys is crazy.

But there are times when the mouse-hole voices whisper softly, softly without threat, almost lulling.

Times when staircase men (they can appear just like that!) do not seek to punish her for badthinkings.

Times like now. Hey, Sport, maybe Gladys seems a bit dingy but in a cute kind of way. No danger to herself or others.

Gracie Allen, not Lizzie Borden.

Today, Gladys and Norma Jeane go to the New Electric Theater. One o’clock show. The New Electric was new back when Tillie’s Romance got punctured. It’s a ten-cent, third-run, stale-popcorn movie house.

Fair number of people at the show.

No late checks here. A dime can buy shelter for a good part of the day. Gladys and Norma Jeane sit as far as possible from everyone else.

You have to be careful. Not just careful, but extra careful when you are crazy.

Gladys offers popcorn to Norma Jeane.

No butter. Too easy for them to put secret chemicals in melted butter.

Norma Jeane does not want popcorn.

Gladys leans toward her. Her eyes glitter. —You should take the popcorn. I want you to be happy.

Norma Jeane smells the lie and craziness on her mother’s breath. She takes popcorn. She wishes she were away from here. Wishes she were safe.

She will wish this many more times in her life.

On the screen… Cartoon. Dancing hippos, elephants, bears. Dots inside circles for belly buttons. Screechy chorus and xylophone.

Norma Jeane cranes her neck way back. Presses the crown of her head into the seat.

Above, projector beams. Columns and cones and fingers of light, yellow-white-clear, crisscrossing, splitting and uniting.

Pathways in the darkness.

Light.

It is beautiful.

On-screen: man with stiff arm out. Looks silly. Silly name: Doo-chee. DOO-Chee.

Makes Norma Jeane think of poop.

Norma Jeane laughs.

Gladys sinks fingernails into Norma Jeane’s neck. —You must not laugh so loud. They will hear you. Learn to laugh a secret laugh. Inside.

On the screen: a beautiful woman. She is a radiance. She is a luminosity.

Oh! Norma Jeane can hardly breathe, she is so beautiful.

The radiance of the beautiful woman fills her eyes.

She wants to laugh and to cry.

—Laugh on the inside. Cry on the inside.

Gladys tells her: —That is Jean Harlow.

Gladys tells her: —She is the most beautiful woman in the world.

Norma Jeane thinks: Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful…

Gladys whispers: —Her name is Jean Harlow. Your name is Norma Jeane.

Gladys whispers: —Jean Harlow, Norma Jeane. Your momma knows what she’s doing. Your momma has a plan.

Norma Jeane hears crazy. Looks at Jean Harlow, the most beautiful woman in the world. Looks only at Jean Harlow.

—Look at her.

Gladys says it crazy.

Gladys takes her ear and twists it.

Norma Jeane says a secret Ow! inside herself.

—Look at her! A command and threat.

Norma Jeane cranks back her neck.

—You can be her. You will be her.

Pain.

Stares upward.

Above, edge-melding beams of light. Of light.

The light goes to the screen.

The light becomes Jean Harlow.

Norma Jeane did not know her father. Gladys did not know him, either. Not for certain.

Growing up, Norma Jeane fantasized: Clark Gable was her father. Later, Howard Hughes. Later, Ernest Hemingway. Papa.

(When she became Marilyn Monroe, a world-renowned psychiatrist told her many of her problems stemmed from a lifelong search for a father.

(—Well, she said, I was wondering. Guess that takes care of that.)

Norma Jeane had a dog. Tippy. Tippy barked. A neighbor did not like the noise. He was a round-faced man with a tattoo. He chopped Tippy in half with a hoe.

Norma Jeane is staying with Aunt Grace. (Gladys is… sick. Your mother is in the hospital because she is sick… Cuu-koo! Cuu-koo!)

Aunt Grace has a boarder. A man.

He gives Norma Jeane a Sen-Sen. She does not like Sen-Sen but she takes it.

The man says he likes her.

She likes it when people like her. She wants everyone to like her.

—Come here. You are beautiful.

She likes being called beautiful.

The man touches her.

—Beautiful little girl.

Norma Jeane does not like his touching.

The man frightens her.

—Beautiful, the man tells her.

—I will tell, Norma Jeane says.

—Who will you tell? the man says.

—A policeman.

—Aunt Grace.

—Jesus in the sky.

The man laughs.

—Then give me some more Sen-Sen, she says.

—And a nickel.

Norma Jeane Baker: To the Los Angeles Orphans Home Society she was Orphan 3463.

—Be good, Aunt Grace told her, and abandoned her.

Norma Jeane could not stop crying. Not inside crying. She told them and she told them… She was not an orphan. She had a mother!

(Her mother was in the crazy house. Her mother was smelling bad smells and listening to the radio without a radio and making plans. And if she did not stop crying, they would think she was crazy like her mother and guess what happens then…)

—Stop crying.

—Now!

She began to change.

She smiled.

She became a good girl.

They would like that. They would like her.

She was acting.

Years later, when she was Marilyn Monroe, she would meet Katharine Hepburn. It was a brief, public meeting. The press was there. She was a starlet becoming a star. She was expected to say something sexy.

She said, —Sex is part of nature. I go along with nature.

Katharine Hepburn said, —Acting is a nice childish profession—pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

She decided she did not like Katharine Hepburn.

Katharine Hepburn understood her.

Norma Jeane hated Vine Street Elementary School. Had to march there with all the children from the Home on El Centro. It was Orphans on Parade. Everyone looked at you.

Reading was hard then. She mixed up words. She stuttered.

(Muh-muh my nn-name is Nuh-nn-NormaJeane!)

Norma Jeane was in the low reading group. Bluebirds were best. Yellowbirds were next. Then you had Blackbirds. Blackbirds were stupid. Norma Jeane was the only girl Blackbird. The rest were boys. Boys did not mind being Blackbirds. They would not have minded being Buzzards or Turkeys.

(Later, Marilyn Monroe would love reading. She would read Sartre and Joyce and Shaw and Fitzgerald. She would read Hemingway and want very much to meet him. She would read American poets. Carl Sandburg—she did meet him—and Edgar Lee Masters were her favorites.)

Norma Jeane skipped school one day. She went to the movies. She went even though she knew she would get in trouble.

She saw a Bosko cartoon and a Fox Movietone newsreel and a movie called Sea of Dreams and a Laurel and Hardy movie. Laurel was the skinny one. Hardy was the fat one. They had a piano to push up a long flight of stairs. The heavy piano made a painful noise on each step. Then the piano fell down all the stairs. They had to shove it all the way back up. Then they learned there was a road they could have used so… they carried it back down the stairs!

Laurel and Hardy were funny and sad. They reminded you of everybody.

Then the movies were finished.

Norma Jeane did not want to leave.

She knew she was in serious trouble.

So she stayed.

The movies started again.

That was how it worked.

She got tired.

She leaned way back in her seat and looked up.

Pathways of light.

Then Stan Laurel is in the seat alongside her. He takes off his derby and balances it on his knee.

She is not surprised. She is glad.

—I had a dream that I was awake and I woke up to find myself asleep, Stan Laurel says.

She knows what he means.

—I’m in trouble, Norma Jeane tells him.

—Neither do I, too, Stan Laurel says.

—That’s silly, Norma Jeane says. —That’s funny.

—Why yes, Stan Laurel says. —You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be led.

He smiles and slowly fades away, becoming glimmering dust motes that rise and swirl into the light streams above.

It is almost sunset when Norma Jeane returns to the Los Angeles Orphans Home.

—We were all quite concerned, Miss Daltrey, the assistant director, said, recalling the incident some years later.

—Once we knew she was all right, I was going to punish her…

—Then she started, well, whimpering, whimpering in a high-pitched voice. She scrunched up her little face, and her mouth stretched and turned down—really, it was like the mask of tragedy, a crescent, and she was scratching the top of her head and blinking both eyes in slow motion…

—This is another fine mm-meh—mess I’ve gotten myself into, is what she said.

—She was just like him, you know, the skinny one, and Norma Jeane stuttered, I mean, she really stuttered, and you certainly did not want to laugh at that, but it was just so funny. I let her off with two extra days drying dishes. There was a shine to our Norma Jeane. I remember thinking she was a natural talent and that she would become a comedienne like Carole Lombard or Jean Harlow.

Funds were a problem. No Christmas tree in the Orphans Home. Norma Jeane decided a tree would be delivered by Santa Claus. She made up a song and sang it. (She did not stammer when she sang.)

The other children made fun of Norma Jeane. Even the real little kids knew Santa Claus was not real. It was the Depression.

Norma Jeane made up a new song.

Marilyn Monroe is dying.

Her diaphragm has quit working and her breathing is now all from the stomach. Her skin has a bluish cast, and if you were to take her wrist, you would find her pulse only with difficulty.

In this dark room, with no one to see, points of light, little stars, are gathering.

A glowing dome of light covers her.

Jean Harlow died. Age: 26.

Norma Jeane left the orphanage. Something had happened, she was not sure what, but now Aunt Grace wanted her… Aunt Grace would take her in.

Norma Jeane stood in front of the Los Angeles Orphans Home Society. She wished she had a derby to tip in farewell.

A thought came to her, and she claimed to remember it years later.

—Jean Harlow was dead. It was not right that the world did not have a Jean Harlow. That meant I would have to make things right and become Jean Harlow—or maybe I already was… It was a very strange feeling. I still feel that strange feeling sometimes.

Then she got into Aunt Grace’s Buick and went home.

Norma Jeane waited in the long line at Grauman’s Chinese. The film, Saratoga, had been released the previous day.

It starred Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.

It was Jean Harlow’s final film.

Norma Jeane watched the movie.

And without watching—not exactly—she seemed constantly aware of shifting waves of light above.

Norma Jeane married the boy next door. Nice guy: Jim Dougherty. She was sixteen. He was twenty-three. She married him to stay out of the orphanage. (Aunt Grace could not keep her any longer.) Jim married Norma Jeane because he was a nice guy.

That’s part of it; there were other reasons.

Jim was away for a long time with the Merchant Marine.

Norma Jeane had a factory job, but she was pretty and had a va-va-voom figure. She soon got other jobs: modeling in shorts and skimpy tops and bathing suits. She did one picture looking back over her shoulder like Betty Grable. Her smile was not as perfect as Betty Grable’s, but her tush was better than Betty Grable’s.

Lots of guys saw pictures like that of Norma Jeane in Wink and Laff and Picture Parade and Caper and Gala.

Nice guy Jim did not like all the guys looking at photographs of Norma Jeane’s tush.

So they got divorced.

Norma Jeane posed nude.

Calendar Girl.

Marilyn in the flesh on swirls of red velvet.

Photographer Tom Kelley had no problem with lighting.

She glowed. She was the light.

Tom Kelley called the picture Golden Dreams.

He understood.

And so:

Got a nose job.

Gave some blow jobs.

Changed her name.

Marilyn Monroe.

Muh-Muh-Marilyn Monroe.

—No, goddamnit! Marilyn goddamnit Monroe goddamnit.

Unbilled extra.

—How about a tumble?

Extra. Two days.

Took voice lessons.

Took acting lessons.

Marilyn Monroe.

Walk-on.

Chorus girl in Love Happy with Harpo and Groucho Marx.

Banged Groucho.

Banged Harpo.

John Carroll (B-movie star) and his wife, Lucille (Director, Talent Department, MGM). Three-way.

Banged Joe Schenck (Chairman, 20th Century-Fox).

Banged Harry Cohn (President, Columbia Pictures).

Banged Johnny Hyde. She called him “the kindest man in the world.”

Johnny Hyde said —Marry me. I’ve got a bad heart. I’ll croak soon, leave you fixed like the Queen of the Nile and not a poor shiksa nafke.

She said —No.

He died.

Second billing in Ladies of the Chorus.

Tah-dah!

She got to act. She got to sing.

She sang “Every Baby Needs a Daddy.”

You know, all in all, it did not take that long.

Not really.

Marilyn Monroe was becoming a star.

Hollywood Success Story.

Monkey Business.

20th Century-Fox.

Cary Grant. Ginger Rogers. A chimpanzee named Esther.

Second billing: Marilyn Monroe.

Cast as a secretary named Lois LaVerne.

—You’ll have to be funny.

—Funny? I can do funny.

—But…

She did not want to cause a p-p-problem, no, she didn’t, but just one change, really, if they could, it m-muh-… mattered…

All right. Okay.

Second billing: Marilyn Monroe.

Cast as a secretary named Lois Laurel.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Starring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe.

How to Marry a Millionaire.

Starring Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall.

She was a big star.

A very big star.

Marilyn Monroe married Joe DiMaggio. “Joltin’ Joe.” “The Yankee Clipper.” Hemingway called him “the Great DiMaggio” and “the Dago.” She called him “my slugger.” Three-time MVP winner. Thirteen-time All-Star.

Helluva ballplayer.

Joe DiMaggio was shy. He didn’t say much. Hated that celebrity spotlight. Hated it a helluva lot more when it wasn’t illuminating Joe DiMaggio.

And Hey! Did not like his wife in it.

He thought she should come with him to San Francisco. Learn to cook linguini with a nice clam sauce. Cannelloni. Braciole like Mama Rosalie. Have a bunch of kids.

She thought she should star in a movie called The Seven Year Itch.

New York. Publicity shot. Police keep the crowd behind barricades. Marilyn Monroe on the subway grating at Lexington and Fifty-first. Wind machine kicks in. Her skirt billows up.

And a whole! lot! more!

Joe DiMaggio has a problem with this aspect of moviemaking.

Restaurateur and longtime friend Toots Shor explains it to him: —Giuseppe, What do you want? She’s just a goddamn dumb whore.

The marriage lasts 276 days.

Marilyn Monroe is dying.

Drugs are taking a long time to kill her.

Or perhaps, even with no audience, Marilyn Monroe is working the drama of it all.

Light gathers, phosphorescent waves all about her.

She wants to be smart.

She wants people to think she is smart.

She wants to think she is smart.

(Let’s hear it for the only girl Blackbird!)

She wants to act.

Chekhov. Dostoyevsky.

A review: In the demanding role of Grushenka, Marilyn Monroe exhibits what noted theater critic and raconteur Groucho Marx has acclaimed nothing less than “a million dollar ass.”

She wants to be praised.

She wants to be loved.

She married Arthur Miller. Playwright. All My Sons. Death of a Salesman. The Crucible. A talent. An intellect. We’ve got a Tony Award for Best Author, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Howzat? You want better? Check with his mother, Augusta… Gussie: —Oy, even when he was just a pisherke, what a kopf he had!

House Un-American Activities Committee comes after Arthur Miller. Pinko stuff in his plays. Hangs out with Commies. He wears glasses. Come on, I gotta spell it out? He’s a Hebe!

Marilyn Monroe saves Arthur Miller’s bacon—you should pardon the expression. Arthur Miller is married to Golden Dreams, for cryin’ out loud. Not the girl next door, but the kinda sweet, kinda daffy, impossibly sexy roundheels you wished lived next door. How much more American can you get?

Miller, aw, he’s okay. Don’t bust his chops. Let him cop a walk.

Marilyn Monroe calls Arthur Miller Pops.

Arthur Miller introduces her to the work of many writers.

She writes poetry. Sad dolls. Weeping willows. Staircase men. Balloons. Jean Harlow.

She is scared to show Arthur her poetry. She doesn’t want to hear that sniffy-nose thing he does.

She discovers Edgar Lee Masters. She loves Spoon River Anthology.

Late in the evening, the hi-fi playing Respighi’s Pines of Rome, she’s had enough to drink (1953 Dom Pérignon), and so she reads a few lines of Edgar Lee Masters to Arthur Miller.

Arthur Miller shakes his head. —Drivel, he says. —The quintessence of pulp-pap passing as profundity. Edgar Guest with a college sophomore’s vocabulary and keen intellectual grasp. It is not impossible that everything that is wrong with America is contained in those resoundingly dreadful lines.

She finds the courage. —I… I luh-like…

—Of course, says Arthur Miller.

Shortly thereafter, she finds the journal he has accidentally left open on her dressing table.

The Millers’ marriage, uh, not in great shape.

He wrote a screenplay called The Misfits.

—Just for you.

Her role: a depressed divorced dancer, desperate for approval, acceptance, love.

She is NEED come a-’walkin’—with a great body!

John Huston directed the film.

Clark Gable costarred.

It was Gable’s last film.

The film wrapped. Two days later, massive heart attack.

Clark Gable died ten days later.

Marilyn Monroe divorced Arthur Miller on January 20, 1961.

Tried to kill herself.

Did not.

Alcohol. Drugs. Psychiatry.

The Trinity for the Salvation of the Twentieth Century Soul.

Bangs President Jack Kennedy.

Who didn’t?

Alcohol. Drugs. Psychiatry.

Tried to kill herself.

Did not.

Moved into modest house she’d bought in Brentwood, L.A.

Nembutal.

Chloral hydrate.

Vodka.