Misfit (25 page)

 

Mary is back in the room, watching the dresser pull down the hem for the last time, smoothing the last wrinkle. She stands back with her arms crossed. The embalmer knows that something is wrong. He's seen this expression on her before—cheeks sucked in, eyes half narrowed somewhere between horror and exhaustion. It's tied to her need for perfection. He looks at the body, trying to decipher what's being seen through Mary's eyes. The neck appears normal again. The body's positioned in the appropriate fashion. The dress fits nicely; the lines are even and properly adjusted. But Mary is breathing louder through her nose. Her face gone flush. Finally she says, “This isn't right.” Her voice is calm and modulated, but the embalmer can tell the force behind it. “No, not right.”

He thinks to ask her what is not right, but he's not sure he wants to initiate a dialogue. Perhaps it will just be something that she needed to say, and that will end it. Mary is under a lot of pressure with this
one. Between the media, the studio, the family, and DiMaggio, it's all pushing in on her. Maybe she just needs to let some of it off.

“Is it something with the dress?” the dresser asks. His expression is one of embarrassment and offense. “Because if it's the dress, I can . . .”

“It's not the dress.”

The embalmer wishes she would just say what it
is
, not what it
isn't
. But he holds back from telling that to Mary, not wanting to get involved with the fuss.

“She looks like a man,” Mary speaks just above a whisper. “See her chest. Flat as a boy's.” Now she's looking right at the embalmer. “Flat as a twelve-year-old boy.”

“It's from the procedure,” he begins to explain. “The embalming process causes the . . . The tissues start to . . . I used some breast enhancers to—the family brought them in . . . It compensated some, but I suppose . . . Well, then, I suppose you don't think so.” And it's not that he can't explain it, he just can't grasp the words, especially under Mary's focused stare.

“I can't send her out like this,” Mary says. “Not in front of Mr. DiMaggio. Or her family.”

What he feels like saying is: What does it really matter? He knows that when a woman lies down her breasts flatten a little, that's no secret, and laid out and dressed, she looks perfectly appropriate given the circumstance and the position. To puff her up, to enhance her to unnatural proportions while supine, would make
her appear almost superhuman, even more unrealistic than she looked on the movie screen. They keep forgetting she's just a body now. Maybe it's that Mary and Abbott are driven by the need to justify everything to Mr. DiMaggio, but if the embalmer saw DiMaggio, and was the type who could speak frankly with him, he'd tell him that very thing: she's a body now. And tell him he should feel no shame for knowing that.

“I just need a minute to think,” Mary says, pacing. “Ideas? Allan?” Then she looks to the studio people. “Anybody?” But they're too stunned to answer. Instead they make as though they're thinking, and their expressions, the embalmer sees, look like the smell of sweat. They're not like Mary or Abbott. They don't have to buy into this myth; they are part of it.

She is walking in circles. Drumming her fingers along her thighs. Then over to the body, where she turns to the dresser and tells him to help her open the dress. He looks at her, stunned in place, and she says that in case he didn't hear her she needs help getting the dress opened, that she needs access to the body, and she doesn't want to tear the dress of Italian origin, but she'd be willing to if necessary, because this is that important.

With the dress loosened at the top, Mary reaches under and pulls out the falsies, one at a time. “Put these somewhere safe, in case the family wants them back,” she instructs no one in particular, handing them to Abbott. Then she goes over to the supply cabinet and
pulls down all the available cotton, telling the embalmer he'll need to order more, as she's about to use up his whole inventory.

The embalmer watches Mary reach her hands under the dress, and the sight sends a quick shock along his thigh that he feels a little embarrassed about; and he watches the bosom slowly rise with each of Mary's handfuls of cotton, as she says more than once, “Now
that
looks like Marilyn Monroe.” And he thinks he might have been wrong. It does not look so freakish; in fact it makes her look strangely more lifelike, and he thinks of DiMaggio, and he thinks of DiMaggio looking at the body, and how DiMaggio must have seen her every way from Sunday, at her best and her worst, but more than likely the majority of time at her average, and how when DiMaggio looks down at her for the last time, he will see her as she was created by the studios, further enhanced by the hands of an anxious mortuary owner; and when DiMaggio looks down at her, hating the business of Hollywood, hating every thought and belief that they put into her head, believing that their success was her poison, all the while keeping his mouth shut but in his mind accusing them of murder, when he looks down at her, at this final creation, the embalmer can't help but suspect that this version of her actually is the one Mr. DiMaggio wants to remember, and that has got to be a killer because it means he, Joe DiMaggio, is a part of it too.

Misfit
is a work of fiction, primarily meant to examine a struggle for identity in a very public world, and the rewards and pitfalls of conforming to meet others' expectations. Therefore, despite many of the principal characters having the names of actual people, their thoughts, actions, and motivations are of the author's imagination.
Misfit
should not be read as a biography, or as a record of actual events. Still, there were numerous sources that helped give context to the world of the novel, and helped to frame many of the events that take place in the book:

 

The archives of the
New York Times
,
Los Angeles Times
,
Los Angeles Mirror-News
,
San Francisco Chronicle
,
San Francisco Examiner, Life
,
Confidential
, and
Time
, and
other magazines of the era. Also helpful were “Naked Suicide” by Robert I. Simon, MD (
Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
) and “The Father of Scandal” by Victor Davis (
British Journalism Review
);
The Misfits
by Serge Toubiana,
My Story
by Marilyn Monroe and Ben Hecht,
The Story of the Misfits
by James Goode,
After the Fall
by Arthur Miller,
The Misfits
by Arthur Miller,
Timebends: A Life
by Arthur Miller,
A Method to Their Madness: The History of the Actors Studio
by Foster Hirsch,
A Player's Place: The Story of the Actors Studio
by David Garfield, and
The Road to Reno
by Inge Morath; many DVD documentaries were helpful for capturing the essence of the time; people I spoke with included Ginny Blasgen, Carolyn Foland, Amy Henderson, Cynthia Langhof, the staff of the Los Angeles County Records Center, the staff of the Van Nuys Airport Guide, and the staff of the San Francisco Public Library; innumerable websites that were critical for locating various pieces of minutiae; the FBI files on Monroe, Arthur Miller, and Sam Giancana—hundreds of pages that not only provided specific details but also spoke loudly to the perceptions of the era; and also necessary to mention is the staff at the Cal Neva Lodge who gave me detailed tours and answered more questions than anybody should have to, helping this “story” come to life for me.

 

Lastly, the following thanks are in order for the ways in which they contributed to this book actually seeing the light of day: Robert Boyers, Edward J. Delaney, Michael
Gizzi, Phillip Lopate, Bill Ratner, and Steve Yarbrough; Nat Sobel and Judith Weber, and everybody in their office who read too many versions of this; the unbelievable group at Tin House who know that getting it right is the first priority (Lee Montgomery, Win McCormack, Tony Perez, Nanci McCloskey, Rob Spillman, and the indispensably indispensable Meg Storey); and finally to my friends and family, who contribute in ways they don't even know.

Copyright © 2012 Adam Braver

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House Books, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.

 

Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon, and New
York, New York
Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West, 1700
Fourth St., Berkeley, CA 94710,
www.pgw.com

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Braver, Adam, 1963-Misfit : a novel / Adam Braver.—1st U.S. ed. p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-935-63941-1

1. Monroe, Marilyn, 1926-1962—Fiction. 2. Motion picture actors and actresses—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3602.R39M57 2012
813'.6--dc23

 

Chapters from this book originally appeared in the following publications: “On the Day of Her Wedding” in the
Normal School
; “Dressing Marilyn Monroe” in the
Pinch
; and “Norwalk State Hospital” in
New South.

 

First U.S. edition 2012