The Secret Letters of Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy (23 page)

So I sent you the music box that played “Falling in Love Again” instead. Jack always said I should do a remake of
Blue Angel
—
and I thought he might hear the music and think of me. I held the music box before I sent it to you. Rubbed my hands all over it. Half imagining that I was rubbing Jack’s body. Half hoping that he would feel my hands, smell my scent, when he touched it. I used to picture it in your house, in the living room in Georgetown, the tune playing, reminding Jack of me.

So I wrote to you. Jackie, and you wrote back. At the beginning, getting your letters was almost like getting a piece of Jack. But I didn’t keep writing to you because of Jack. Maybe at first, but then I grew to love your letters, Jackie, looked forward to them, used to he awake at night anticipating what you would write to me and what I would write back.
When I was on the set, or out on a date, I would think, I must tell Jackie that.

The good part of me did all that. The bad part kept writing to you about other men, hoping you would tell Jack, get him hot and jealous. That part of me thought of you as my secret weapon in my battle to get to Jack. To get Jack. What to do with him if I ever got him, I didn’t quite know. I just always felt as if there was a hand pushing me, more and more, faster and faster, toward him.

So the bad part of me kept writing to you, Jackie, sending messages to Jack through you, staying close to the scene of the crime like a murderer stays close to his victim. The bad part of me wanted to come to the White House when you sent me formal invitations to events there. The good part knew I shouldn’t. The good part knew that it would have been wrong to look into your eyes while all the time, deep inside, I was lusting after Jack and still seeing him secretly. The good side won and I never came to the White House.

Not when you were there, Jackie. But once, late one night
—
you were in Paris
—
Jack smuggled me in.
*
I wore a black wig and when I saw myself in the mirror
,
I
looked like you. That felt strange, and wrong.

I never wanted you to know the truth. Never. But when I was sick in the hospital and under the influence of drugs, the painkillers they gave me, plus the ones I brought with me and they didn’t know about, I wrote to you about Mr. G. The next day, I wished I hadn’t, and tried to get you not to read the letter, but it was too late. In a way, I suppose I secretly really did want you to know about Mr. G and was confessing
—
and you are the one who is Catholic
—
to you. Dr.
Greenson says that in my unconscious, by telling you all about Mr. G in my letters, I was having a ménage à trois with you and Jack, and that it was you
—
not Jack
—
whom I really desired!
But I don’t want to think about that. Sometimes I think that analysis can damage your soul—and your heart as well. The heart shouldn’t be torn apart in analysis. The heart should just be allowed to beat with love.

I never wished you harm, Jackie. I just wanted to be you. I wanted to be in Jack’s bed instead of you. But I never really worked out how I would get there. I just let life and him—his arrangements for me—sweep me along. Sometimes, though, Jack and I were so happy together that I used to wish for a magic wand and that you would be happy with someone else, so that I could be happy with him and he could be happy with me. He comes from another world from me, but there are things—were things—between us that only God or fate or mystery can explain.

Now, though, it is over. I have finally found the true love of my life, the only love, the last love. I don’t want to tell you about him in this letter. There is too much to tell.

Just write and say that you forgive me. More than anything, I want to stay your friend. I know I sound a little confused—the nembutal, which I take because I’m having real trouble sleeping, is kicking in—but I am very clear about wanting to be your friend forever.

Please don’t give up on me. Write and tell me I still mean something to you.

Love,

Marilyn

P.S. I think my telephone is being tapped.

__________________________

*
“Jack had Marilyn Monroe up at the White House absolutely,” Senator George Smathers said (see Heymann). “I know because I saw Marilyn at the White House. She was there.”

According to Patty Renoir, Marilyn was in a pensive mood when she asked her to mail this letter to Jackie. “She was quiet at first, but I saw something in her eyes that I knew meant she was all drugged up. Suddenly, she grabbed my hand and said, ‘Hug me, Patty, hug me.’ I did, then she pulled away and said, ‘Patty, I’ve taken a gamble, a really big one. Just couldn’t help myself. A fucking big one.’ Then she starts laughing, a high, tinkling laugh, like the sound of glass breaking. ‘Put all my cards on the table, every single fucking one of them. So wish me luck, Patty.’ I said I did, although I didn’t know what the hell she meant.”

J
ACQUELINE
K
ENNEDY

THE WHITE HOUSE

Marilyn Monroe

12305 Fifth Helena Drive

Brentwood, California

July 12, 1962

Dear Marilyn,

DON’T BE ALARMED THIS IS A FRIENDLY LETTER
!

I am grateful for your honesty in telling me the truth about you and Jack at last. In a strange way, it has come as an intense relief to me. Now, at last, I am no longer tortured by suspicions. For (as far as I am concerned) knowing is preferable to not knowing. Now that I hold all the cards, I can react accordingly.

On reflection, dear Marilyn, I bear you no animosity, for no woman alive is more aware than I regarding the potent nature of Jack’s special magic and the spell his presence weaves. Only a corpse could resist the full force of Jack’s charm, his seductive cleverness, his charisma.

Perhaps I always knew about you and Jack, but I was never sure. Maybe I didn’t want to confront the truth, until you made that flimsy excuse about Gramble Bear. On a subconscious level (as your Dr. Greenson would say) I suppose I was hurt by you and angry with you and deeply threatened by the thought that you and Jack could be lovers. Consequently, and to my everlasting shame (for I blame Jack for seducing you, not vice versa), I set you up to sing “Happy Birthday” in such an overt manner. In retrospect, I think I did so not merely in order to damage Jack’s feelings for you but also to punish you for having
lied to me. That: emotion was unworthy of me, and I am sorry. You always were, and remain, very dear to me, Marilyn.

As soon as I received your last letter, I wanted to telephone you, but as you told me of your fears that the phone was tapped, I restrained myself. “Restrained” reminds me of Jack, of how it all went wrong between us, and why—despite your misgivings—I truly can cope (employing a certain amount of equanimity) with all that you have told me.

I shall explain the “restrained” reference later. First of all, I want to tell you that you have lost nothing through your letter. Least of all, our friendship. Quite the reverse, because now I, too, can tell you the truth.

When you first wrote to us, after my wedding to Jack, I was surprised. I suppose I had my suspicions, but I tried to block them out (one of my more useful talents is my capacity for blocking out unpleasantness). But; had I known conclusively that you and Jack were lovers, I would probably have been almost fascinated. Nearly glad. To understand my meaning, you would have to comprehend my entire state of mind upon marrying Jack.

When I met him, I was fully aware of his playboy past—and present. I knew that he was an inveterate womanizer, just like every other Kennedy male. I was aware that if I married him, he would probably cheat on me. Although I have to confess that a part of me was vain enough to think I might be able to prevent him from doing so. On another level, I wanted to prove that I could handle my cheating husband far better than my mother had handled my cheating father.

I wanted to prove that I was superior to her. To prove that she had been wrong in not accepting my father’s infidelity. I thought that if she had just turned the other cheek, or pretended not to notice, they might have lived a long and fruitful life together. All in all, that was my challenge—to prove her wrong, to rewrite history, and I used Jack to do it.

From the moment we married, I goaded him into cheating on me.
I told him the story of how my father cheated on my mother during their honeymoon. Then, when we were on our honeymoon, I joked to Jack that I was waiting for him to cheat on me, just like my father did on my mother. I kept on teasing him that way. Till he did. He cheated on me during our honeymoon. I felt such a sense of triumph and control. First, because I had engineered the whole thing. Second, that I was ready for him. I had been prepared for his infidelity. Then I ignored it, even joked about it. In short, by cheating on me, Jack played right into my hands.

I think he was slightly unnerved by the nonchalant way in which I virtually ignored his infidelity. In the end, I think my attitude probably caused him to feel unloved. More than likely, he would probably have relished me making jealous scenes. Maybe even a catfight (I have always believed that men love pitting women against one another. Divide and conquer …).

For a long time, I got a thrill every time I thought Jack was cheating on me. I didn’t blame myself, nor did I blame him. In some ways, I virtually guaranteed that he would cheat on me. Ever since my childhood, I have had a propensity for mocking other people. Either behind their backs or—whenever possible—in front of them. When it came to Jack, I indulged that propensity. He hated it when I did things like mimic his Boston accent, the way he says “foah moah yeahs.” Once, when he was being photographed by an important publication, I sneaked up behind him and threw a wreath over his head, so he looked like a prize pony. He was livid.

I suppose I was making a mistake when I treated him that way, but I just couldn’t help it. It’s my nature. Jack would never admit it to me, but I think he must loathe it when I diminish him (especially in front of other people). Because no matter how spoiled and feted and powerful Jack is, inside he remains that small, frail, lonely little boy whose mother kept sailing away to Europe and leaving him and whose father constantly pushed him to emulate his dead brother. I think I reminded
him of all of that when I made fun of him. In retrospect, I think that drove him to other women—women like you, who would never dream of trying to diminish him.

Part of Jack’s and my problem, however, is not exclusively my fault. During a rare attempt to play the wise mama, my mother once said, “Bad sex ruins a marriage. Good sex doesn’t make one.” Which, I suppose, is what you once wrote me regarding your marriage to Joe—that if sex were all, you would have been blissfully happy.

It all started to go wrong on our wedding night at the Waldorf when Jack indicated that I should perform a certain sex act on him. I attempted to, but was less than enthusiastic in my execution. The very thought of that act demeans me in all sorts of ways. Apart from the fact that (and it is far too late in our relationship for me to be coy with you), quite simply, I cannot conceive of the manner in which one is supposed to do it.

That first year, Jack and I did have intercourse, which I began to almost enjoy. But even that went awry. We were in Manhattan, staying at the Westbury. My father went to live there after he divorced my mother, and I used to visit him there. I was happy with Jack, that night at the Westbury, remembering. We went to bed and, for the first time in our marriage, I readied fulfillment. Whereupon Jack slapped my face and said, “You bitch!”

Without a word, I got up and started dressing. I was about to leave when Jack (who finds it congenitally impossible to apologize), for the first time in his life, did. I demanded to know why he had spoken to me in such an insulting manner. I had never seen Jack search for words before, but now he was genuinely unable to articulate. He seemed at a loss regarding his own motives. Finally, he said, “I just hate it when you are unrestrained.” I never permitted myself to reach fulfillment with him again.

Funnily enough, when you sent the music box as our wedding present, I was far more disturbed by the song which it played than by the
fact that you sent it. “Falling in Love Again,” of course, is Marlene Dietrich’s theme song. I know that she had made herself available sexually to Joe K and I believed Jack wanted her as well (Kennedy men all pass their women from one to the other as if the women were like a plate of angel cakes). Strangely enough (until Judy), I was always more threatened by the women whom Jack desired than by the women he was having. I know that once he has a woman, she immediately begins to bore him. You, of course, were clearly the exception. But you know that. …

So you and I began our correspondence. Then we met (in 1954, with Joe DiMaggio) and I felt relief because you seemed so in love with Joe. I don’t know, even today, whether or not you were acting. Because you really are a very good actress, Marilyn. But when I saw Joe’s jealous rage and the way in which you pandered to him, I knew that the ice was very thin between you and it was only a matter of time before it cracked irrevocably and you would be free again. I was afraid that when you were free, you might crave Jack.

I understand why you always craved him, Marilyn, because even I do, now and again. As I wrote that, I remembered something Simone Signoret said about you in a newspaper last year, that she understood your being in love with Yves because she was. By the way, were you really in love with Yves, or was he just a smokescreen to hide your deep emotions for Jack?

Until last November, when you made that slip about Gramble Bear, I was never really completely sure whether or not you and Jack were lovers. But by mentioning Gramble Bear, you virtually announced to me that you were. You see, only Jack, Caroline, John, and I knew that he told her bedtime stories about a bear called Gramble. I certainly hadn’t mentioned Gramble to you, so I suspected Jack had. I just couldn’t work out where or when, or why. You concocted that story about asking Jack about bedtime stories when you met him at that fund-raiser in L.A. However, I didn’t for one moment believe it. I
think far too highly of your intelligence, your passion for politics and civil rights, to believe that you would waste a rare meeting with the President of the United States by prattling about bedtime stories. Not unless you were meeting him privately as well and often. Lately, I have wondered whether you made your Freudian slip because you subconsciously wanted me to know about you and Jack. Did you?

Once I knew the truth about you and Jack, I was devastated. In a way, it was worse, it being you rather than any other of the others. Not just because we were friends, but because I knew that you were not one of Jack’s usual floozies. Uncannily enough, you sometimes reminded me of him. The way you thought, your perceptions, your sense of humor, your quickness, and your lust for life.

My suspicions caused me to inveigle you into singing the birthday song in a suggestive way which I knew would alienate Jack forever. You see, I instinctively understood that Jack would end his relationship with you, wouldn’t risk it anymore, because in full view of the entire world, you proclaimed your affair with him so blatantly. He knew then that through you he could lose the world. No woman, not even you, could compensate him for that. For he is Jack Kennedy, bred to be President, not the Duke of Windsor, merely born to be King.

Despite that, there were times when I worried that your relationship with Jack would cause our marriage to end. You may ask me why I would have cared. First, because of Jack’s place in history—and, of course, my own. For although there is a lot of animosity and bitterness between us, both of us still relish the opportunities the Presidency offers us.

There is also my pride. I have no intention of failing at my marriage like my mother did. Or like Lee, living out her life among tawdry Europeans, traveling from fashionable resort to fashionable resort, following the social season like dirty water swilling around in an enclosed basin.

Then, of course, there are the children. The ones we lost and the
ones we have. Caroline is a sensitive, loving little girl, sometimes wounded by all the public attention, other times unaffected and happy. I would hate her to be the victim of divorce, as I was. Or to grow up infused with an abiding father hunger, as I was (and still am). As for John—he is only a baby, but already his tiny face lights up at the sound of his father’s voice. I would not wish to be responsible for depriving him of that joy.

All of which is another way of saying, Marilyn, that I am delighted that you have fallen in love with Mr. X and out of love, at last, with Jack. If you hadn’t—I would have survived (I am inordinately stoic), but I am glad things are ending this way. Write and tell me about your mysterious Mr. X. I can’t wait!

Now that we have both come clean, as they say in the movies, on another front, there is something else. Tell me, if you will, what, if anything, Jack ever said to you about me. Did you ever tell him we are secret pen pals? Did you show him my letters? If that is the case, what did he say? I am also curious where, when, and how you and Jack ever managed to conduct your trysts.

There is also something else which I should like to know. I am not altogether sure how to phrase this request. … Just to say that it would amuse me greatly to learn exactly what Jack was like with you. In a sexual sense. Tell me everything. If I blush, then so be it.

Love,

J

__________________________

“Jackie was not threatened,” Clare Booth Luce said. “Not even by Marilyn Monroe. But if somehow word had gotten out, it would have upset her terribly. She could not bear the thought of being publicly humiliated” (see Bradford).