by Heather Bell Adams

Marilyn pads around the house waiting for the pills to kick in. The newsreel from the President’s birthday gala—herself onstage at Madison Square Garden, the lights winking off the rhinestones at her breasts—plays in the back of her mind as she collapses on the couch.

Her mother’s old mirror is propped against the wall. Marilyn has dragged this mirror around to foster homes, the orphanage, the places she’s lived with her three husbands. The oval glass surrounded by a mother-of-pearl frame has been with her longer than any person. From eight years old to thirty-six, but she’s too tired to figure out the math. Her thighs tremble as she squats in front of it and waits for a Hollywood-worthy spark of magic. Maybe the mirror will, for once, reflect back who she is, rather than what she looks like. Instead, it reveals the squalor Marilyn has convinced herself she deserves—a carton of cigarettes, piles of unread mail and typed scripts, the coffee table strewn with highball glasses. And in the center of the mirror, distorted as though in a carnival fun house, Marilyn’s face—puffy and distended, streaked with mascara. So far from beautiful, such a contradiction of the headlines that once sang her praises. Though this is her real, unvarnished face, no magazine would put it on their cover.

In the half-dark bedroom, the brown bottles with their tidy white caps offer a silent void. Lightheaded, a persistent hum in her ears, she takes off her dress and collapses on the bed, the unwashed sheets cool against her skin. One more pill, maybe two, and she’ll find sleep, the antidote to re-living everything she wants to forget.

Once upon a time her mother took her to Hermosa Beach. The sun was a spotlight that afternoon, glaring and intrusive, no escape, no place to hide. She’d been so young, still Norma Jeane, her real name, her real self.

Tired of remembering, she places a pill on her tongue, then another, until the familiar bitterness coats her mouth. Her bedroom begins to spin. Marilyn, eyes falling shut, tips forward onto the mattress. Although no one has ever taken her to ride a carousel, she imagines it would be something like this. The spiraling shapes, the colors bleeding together, someone she loves waving for her to come closer.

Photo by Yunus Emre on Unsplash