Page 9 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

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?

There is a scene. There’s always a scene with his wife.

She’s on her knees, clutching his legs. Her mascara-streaked face is crumpled in misery. “I’m so lonely when you’re gone.”

“I’m coming back,” he keeps saying. “I promise. And when I get back, we’ll have a baby.”

Have a baby? His seventeen-year-old wife shudders at the thought.

I can see it only as myself, another Norma Jeane in an orphanage.

Something will happen to me. Jim will wander off.

And there would be this little girl in a blue dress and white blouse living in her “aunt’s” home, washing dishes, being the last in the bath water on Saturday night.

Norma Jeane lies awake at night, crying and feeling lonelier than ever.