Page 9 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

THERE IS A WEDDING NIGHT—“Don’t worry, you’ll learn,” is Grace’s advice—but no honeymoon.

Dougherty goes straight back to work at Lockheed. On his lunch break, he clicks open his carefully packed black metal Victory Thermos lunch pail.

Norma Jeane delights in choosing home furnishings, but she’s no cook. Along with dry and tasteless sandwiches, she sends handwritten notes at the bottom of the container.

Dearest Daddy—when you read this, I’ll be asleep and dreaming of you. Love and kisses, Your Baby.

She cooks green peas and orange carrots together “because the colors look nice” and puts salt in his coffee because she read about it in a magazine. He doesn’t mind.

Nor does he mind the piles of encyclopedias Norma Jeane buys from the door-to-door salesmen, or the dolls and stuffed animals she lines up on the chest of drawers “so they can seewhat’s going on.” She even tries to bring a cow into their tiny house in Van Nuys. It had been lowing in the rain and its plaintive voice had upset her, so she’d enticed it inside to keep it warm.

His friends at work pass around her photograph and ask him what it’s like to be married to a sixteen-year-old girl.

“She’s insatiable,” he boasts. When they go out for weekend drives, she makes him pull the car to the side of the road, to make the sex evenmoreexciting than it already is. “You should hear me. ‘Honey,’ I say, ‘honey, you do know we’ve got a home and a beautiful bed we could go to.’ But she won’t stop.” He chuckles. “She leans on my chest and looks up at me with those big baby blue eyes, ‘Pull over, pull over, baby, pull over right here.’” He laughs. They all laugh. “You should see what she looks like without any clothes on.”

“Lucky Jim” his friends call him. None of them would mind that view.

But none of them have any idea that Dougherty is only telling stories. Norma Jeane makes men think of sex but is herself not at all interested.

Yet Norma Jeane spends hours in the bathroom making herself look nice when Dougherty invites the guys from work over for a beer. His friends can’t keep their eyes off her. She starts out all quiet at the beginning of the night. Perched on a chair, just listening, but toward the end of the evening, a whole new person erupts. The result is hypnotic.

“Dance with me, Norma Jeane,” pleads one friend. “Dance with me, you beauty queen.”

She’s like an enchantress, all hips and swings, with her wide, pretty smile and her auburn hair. She insists on rollingup the carpet to dance and show them how it’s done. She sits on their laps. Her husband looks on. But all he wants is for her to stop.

After his friends leave, they have a fight. Norma Jeane runs off into the darkness in her nightgown.

“Come back!” shouts Dougherty. “Come back!”

He looks out into the empty street. It’s past midnight. He turns out the lights and pulls up a chair, staring out of the dark window. An hour passes. Maybe more. His nose is pressed against the window. His cheek is pushed up against the cold glass. Then suddenly, he sees her coming back, a white flash, sprinting toward the house as if being chased by the devil.

Norma Jeane hammers on the door. Dougherty opens it. She tumbles in.

“He’s after me. A man is chasing me. He was in the street, then in a tree, behind a car. He’s everywhere.” Her eyes are wide with panic. “He’s there, he’s in the street, go and look in the street.”

Dougherty is skeptical, but goes up and down the street, looking left and right, then comes back to the house.

“It’s fine, honey, there’s no one there.”

“He’s there, I tell you!”

Norma Jeane won’t let it go.

“You’re CRAZY,” he finally yells, grabbing her by the shoulders. “You’re one crazy bitch!”

The word hangs in the air, sucking up the silence.Crazy.

“And you’re a brute!” she whispers.

“And you’re alittlegirl.”

CHAPTER 5

JIM DOUGHERTY JOINS the Merchant Marine.

He’s first sent to Catalina Island, twenty-two miles off the coast of Southern California, to teach ocean safety. The couple lives in a boarding house above the Marlin Club and Norma Jeane gets a job working at Lloyd’s Candy Store.

To qualify for sea duty—he’ll see the world, earn some money, and get away from his wife of thirteen months—he trains at base camp. She misses him terribly. She has no relatives or friends to visit. When he telephones her, she answers with a yelp. When is he coming home?

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