Chapter Text
Love is boring and passé, all that old baggage,
the bloody bric-a-brac, the bad, the gothic,
retrograde, obscurantist hum and drum of it
needs to be swept away. So, night after night,
we sit in the dark of the Roxy beside grandmothers
with their shanks tied up in the tourniquets
of rolled stockings and open ourselves, like earth
to rain, to the blue fire of the movie screen
where love surrenders suddenly to gangsters
and their cuties. There in the narrow,
mote-filled finger of light, is a blonde,
so blonde, so blinding, she is a blizzard, a huge
spook, and lights up like the sun the audience
in its galoshes. She bulges like a deuce coupe.
When we see her we say good-bye to Kansas.
She is everything spare, cool, and clean,
like a gas station on a dark night and the cold
dependable light of rage coming in on schedule like a bus.
Blonde Bombshell by Lynn Emmanuel (2015)
Karen’s just about to put on Marilyn properly when she passes by Ivy—almost unthinking of the action, except that the other woman clasps onto her wrist and pulls her close before she can protest.
“Look,” Ivy says, then swallows. Her face is drawn. “I didn’t want to do this in your dressing room. It would poison the atmosphere forever. I know how important that is for the process.”
Karen goes to pull away, but the grip on her wrist tightens. She asks, “Listen, can this wait until later? I’m on in twenty, and…”
“No,” Ivy insists. “No, it can’t.” She looks down, flutters her lashes. Now that Karen’s so close, she can see the redness rimming Ivy’s eyes. “I’m not brave. And I know it’s awful of me, but I wanted to—”
Karen sighs, interrupting her. “Just tell me whatever you need to say,” she says. Normally she’s more patient than this, but she’s a star now. She can do anything she wants, up to and including keeping Ivy on a shorter leash than was ever permitted before.
Ivy’s hand slides up from hers to embrace her shoulder, gripping it firmly before letting go. The pressure impresses itself into Karen’s senses; even when it leavens, she feels the memory of it there.
Ivy takes a moment, seemingly to collect herself. Her jaw sets with resolve. “I found this in my hotel room,” she says. Then, before Karen can scarcely think of what the words mean, Ivy’s drawing something out of her purse—a little black velvet box—and snapping it open. The sound echoes off the walls.
“What?” Karen breathes, even though the meaning comes to her at once. For a moment of disbelief she seeks desperately for an explanation that doesn’t include another betrayal. Somehow, Dev left the ring in Ivy’s room. Maybe he got mixed up—went to the wrong place, left it by the door by mistake? (Maybe he didn’t see the silhouette of Ivy’s bare body tangled in her bedsheets, illuminated by the silver moon.) But no, he has a head for details. For information. And he has to know who Ivy is, because Karen has only talked about her about half a thousand times, pushing print-outs of headshots into his face.
So Dev slept with her. Of course he slept with her. How could he not, when Ivy is so unbelievably gorgeous and charming and cunning when she needs to be? She’s Ivy Lynn, and Karen’s merely herself. She feels briefly stupid for even thinking otherwise. Then, heat in her stomach. The fury arrives again.
Karen pulls away to cover her face with an arm. She can’t bear the idea of Ivy seeing how her features pull with grief. Her heartbeat struggles madly against the back of her neck. But Ivy won’t let her go; already she’s redirecting Karen’s throbbing head into the surface of her collarbone. A cold, bright sensation of touch. Karen can’t even bring herself to care. She only sits there and sobs, guttural and undignified, into the embrace.
Ivy strokes Karen’s hair over and over. “I know,” she says tonelessly. “I know.”
(As if that isn’t the worst part about it. As if she isn’t a nuclear bombshell on its whistling path down to Earth from the heavens, ready to obliterate Karen for good.)
“He tried his best to keep it from you. It didn’t mean anything to him,” Ivy continues.
And she suddenly lowers onto one knee. Through the anaerobic blur, Karen can see the slick sheen of her own tears across the other woman’s bosom. With one trembling hand, Ivy holds Karen’s again. The other lifts up the box. The ring glints into multi-colored rays from the buzzing fluorescents above them. Ivy says, “Imagine I’m Dev.” Forehead wrinkled as her brows draw together. “I’m traditional. Devoted. Responsible, like Joe DiMaggio.”
At this, Karen feels the urge to slap Ivy in the face. What the hell does she mean, like Joe DiMaggio? (The ever-present comparison: Norma Jeane versus Marilyn. Transformation, destruction. Isn’t there another story they can tell?) She almost protests aloud, but something about Ivy’s tone convinces her not to. Maybe it’s just so ridiculously Ivy to circle back to Marilyn again, or that the triple-layered mental image of Ivy-Dev-Joe makes her sentimental rather than impulsive.
She’s still the star, she reminds herself. All the people waiting out there on bated breath have come for her—despite the fact that she can only remember half the words to ‘Mrs. and Mr. Smith’ at the moment.
So Karen nods, even though she’s dazed from the fatigue of the situation to the point that she can hardly do anything at all other than continue to let herself break down. She can’t tell why Ivy’s doing this or what it even means to pretend at this moment. Except the reminder does help a bit. Dev chose her to marry, after all. She’s not the mistress. If that matters.
Karen tries to picture Dev, her actual fiancé, but all that remains is an excess of Ivy Lynn. Her hair, her eyes, the trickle of her own tears racing down her cheeks. The gravity of her countenance, like a person—a man—in real, true love. She’s putting everything into the performance, Karen realizes. The idea is more touching than it ought to be.
“Let me make an honest woman out of you,” Ivy says. Something in the taut line of her mouth reveals the obvious truth: no man will ever say that to her in return. Not Dev, not Derek… (Ivy seems so exposed that Karen has the sudden, strange sense that they’re both naked.) Even if it isn’t actually worth much, the promise of the words washes over her like limelight. It’s a rare man who can get in bed with Ivy and still dismiss it. He didn’t want to hurt Karen, did he? No matter who he hooks up with on the side, Dev will always come home.
(And, well, Karen’s weaker than she thought she was. Willing to settle down. Settle in. Settle for the tags of love: the gray smear of shadow casting its emptiness out with the sudden sound of the impact. A curtain-fall. Snow, pale cinder snow, floating down across the dead city of rubble in a woman’s wake.)
“I will,” Karen tells Ivy, then cradles her soft cheek so their eyes are forced to make direct contact. She can’t forgive Ivy, not yet, but she’s nearing something like forgiveness. Another flicker of hurt runs across Ivy’s beautiful face, and it’s all Karen could ask for. She lets herself imagine their words are true.
Ivy’s hand slides out of its intertwined position with Karen’s. She pulls the ring from its box. With deliberate movements, she presses the cold metal to the proper finger, the proper hand. It slides on smoothly—and then Ivy’s lowering her lips to its stone. When she moves up again, the surface of the diamond is covered in a thin layer of lip gloss. Unevenly applied. Karen doesn’t try to wipe it off.
Ivy shakes her blonde head and raises from her position. Her knee looks reddened from pressing into the cold linoleum for so long. A blush of rose color all over, with little pinpricks of scarlet: the sign of an immature bruise.
Karen is burning, burning, almost dead from it.
A meaningful pause. Ivy tells her with firmness, “Go get ready for Marilyn. You deserve it.”
Then she sweeps away down the hall, leaving Karen to herself alone.