Marilyn Returns

“Walk of Fame”I am a sophomore at St. Mary’s University. in Twickenham, England. But this week I’ve completely tuned out of textbooks, syllabi, and lectures and tuned into the world of make-believe in the City of Angels. Hollywood has beckoned to me since I was a child. After all, my mum was a Marilyn Monroe fanatic. She used to serve my baby food in a bowl with artsy fartsy Andy Warhol images of Marilyn surrounding the perimeter of the dish. Now I am visiting Marilyn’s playground for the first time. My initial stop after landing at the Los Angeles International Airport was in the heart of Hollywood - the Chinese theatre. An open-air double-decker bus delivered me to the stop smack dab in front of the throngs of tourists wielding cameras and practically stumbling over one another. It didn’t seem possible I was finally going to experience the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. I tried counting out loud in my head to prevent myself from hyperventilating. I’d purchased a pamphlet with a map of all the movie star’s hand and footprints identified. Marilyn’s cement square was right next to Jayne Mansfield’s commemorative block. They had been immortalized together with the title of the film they co-starred in, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” embedded between the two squares. I placed my hands carefully over one of the weathered imprints in the cement. My hands did not fit well. They were much larger than Marilyn’s and completely obscured them. They even covered her autograph which had been written by the legend herself, above her handprints. A passerby wearing dirty Nike tennis shoes paused. He said something to me in another language, or so it seemed. I ignored him and continued trying to make my hands fit into the tiny impressions. All those hours I had spent by the River Thames daydreaming about my trip to Hollywood had been much richer and more satisfying than the reality of visiting the Walk of Fame. I yearned for the smell of green grass in Twickenham, the indulgent whiffs of the flower-dusted wind, the sweetness of an unplanned song from a goldfinch or even the startling interruption of an uninvited grasshopper sitting on my skirt. Hollywood was nothing like Twickenham. It may sound a bit funny but I actually longed to be back in Twickenham. The tourists continued to push each other around like wrestlers in the ring vying for a world championship title. I looked up at the man with the dirty tennis shoes. He was wearing a shabby faded pirate costume. A poor imitation of Johnny Depp, he smiled at me revealing his two missing teeth and extended his hand to shake mine. How in the world did I ever think I would like Hollywood, I wondered? My roomie Stacy had tried to discourage me from going to what she called a den of inequity. But I hadn’t listened. I was determined to visit the legendary city known for its celluloid illusions. Stacy was concerned for my safety. She said I was way too innocent and trusting for my age. She insisted I hook up with her cousin’s friend Frank. I had no clue why she thought he could protect me from the evils of Hollywood. “He’s supposed to be this real cute guy, an actor,” she had told me. “He even has an agent. He promised to meet you at Marilyn’s gravesite. You two have your mutual admiration for her in common. “You want your picture taken with me wench?” asked the pirate. “No thank you,” I replied tersely. He tugged at my arm and I pulled away. I ws repulsed by his smell. I didn’t like anything about him and I definitely didn’t like him touching me. I brushed him off saying, “Get your b****y hands off me.” Then as I stood up, everything began to spin. My view of the other tourists was c**k-eyed and made me feel as tipsy as a bloke who drank one too many pints. As I reached out to steady myself against the pirate, day turned to dark. When the lights came back on, I was staring into the face of a bulldog who was l*****g my face. He was nothing like my dog Murray, a well-behaved King Charles Spaniel my mum had given to me when he was a pup. As I tried to lift my head and move around, I saw an electric fan working overtime. A rubbish can filled with banana peels and empty tuna fish tins left out in the summer heat for a week smelled like fresh gardenias compared to the air I was desperately trying not to inhale. I vaguely remembered something about the pirate telling the crowd we were acting out a scene from a film and to mind their own business. I suspected the jet lag mixed with the summer heat had gotten the best of me. “There you are me red-headed, big-handed Marilyn Monroe wanna-be,” said a voice from behind me. I sat up and turned toward the voice only to find myself face-to-face with the pirate again. His breath smelled like a combination of Cheetos and Dr. Pepper. And I didn’t even have to look down to realize he had taken off his Nikes. The stench coming from his feet turned my stomach as I raced to the loo and upchucked my lunch. I wished I were home at my mum’s flat where fresh linens, measured and folded with precision, always hung reliably over the towel rack. The scent of lavender from the English floral liquid soap dispenser had always welcomed me. White sheer embroidered curtains usually drifted back and forth in the open window of my mum’s loo back home in England. Not in this loo! Judy Garland’s proclamation of, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home,” in The Wizard of Oz film played over and over in my head. I tried to find a place to dry my hands where I wouldn’t need to be injected afterwards with a shot of penicillin. When I returned to the living room, the bulldog was sprawled out over half the couch and was tangling with a steak bone. It was no doubt a losing battle for the bone. I went for my purse to retrieve a tiny keychain connected to a small can of mace. When I pointed the can at the pirate with the courageous intention to spray the eye irritant into his face, he offered me up a bowl full of Cheetos. With the sincerity of an altar boy on Sunday morning he asked, “Want some of me grub?” Feeling less threatened but still holding my mace I politely said, “No thank you. Cheetos aren’t on my diet this week. Why did you bring me here?” “It’s me castle. I rescued ya, fair maiden,” said the pirate who was using a “B” movie kind of accent. “Don’t ‘ya remember? You passed out an I carried you by meself to me hideout here. I’m a pirate. Can’t ya tell?” “Great. So, where is your mighty sword?” I asked him. I didn’t really expect him to answer me. Suddenly my head was throbbing and I sat down and dug in my purse again. I needed some aspirin and I needed it now. To curtail the excruciating agony of the moment, I tried to focus on Twickenham and Horace Walpole’s Gothic Revival Villa, a real castle unlike this make-believe pirate hideaway. The castle is located next to St. Mary’s University on Strawberry Hill. There I could watch the clouds dance overhead and dream of riding them to Hollywood where I could see the land on which Marilyn traveled back in the day. My mum used to say that if only I could touch Marilyn’s handprints and stand in Marilyn’s footprints I would be able to channel the movie star. Everything about her spelled glamour. I dreamed about being exactly like her, only me. Trouble was there was nothing glamorous about me. I was really just an ordinary young woman filled with a bunch of silly notions put in my head by my overly imaginative mum. Now both my mum and Marilyn were dead and I felt very alone in the world. Still, I could dream just like the rest of the girls did in my dorm, couldn’t I? “That’s it,” I cried, “I’m having a terrible nightmare. None of this is real. I’m in Twickenham, not Hollywood.” “No, fair maiden, you’re in Hollywood,” said the pirate. I inhaled until I could no longer bear it. Surely, the physical effort would give birth to a definitive clue about where I was and how to get out of the situation. Sherlock Holmes would have agreed, no doubt. I closed my eyes, made a wish and exhaled and when I opened my eyes, I found myself still sitting on the sticky faded faux leather couch. The electric fan whirled nearby, at a medium speed. I reached over to turn up the speed setting, and then I dug my hand into the half-eaten bowl of Cheetos. I was really hungry. When I pulled out my hand, I was holding an oversized brass key, like the kind you would see in an old Alfred Hitchcock thriller. On the key were the initials, “HW.” Boy, when my head hit the cement it must have jarred something loose because what happened next completely blew my mind. When I turned to talk to the pirate, he was no longer a pirate. He was Horace Walpole. As he smiled, he revealed a full set of teeth and invited me to join him for a spot of tea. Never mind that he had died over 200 years ago. He was actually really good looking for a dead bloke. “You look exactly like the painting of you hanging at Strawberry Hill,” I exclaimed. “You know the life-sized one in the entry.” His eyes were sad and lonely in the painting, but in person they were just the opposite. “Did you enjoy your visit to my castle?” asked the Earl, “And what kind of tea do you like ‘mam?” “I drink Yorkshire tea,” I told him.“Yorkshire Gold. But what difference does it make what kind of tea I like. What are you doing here and how did you return from the dead?” “It was easy,” he explained. “I used the time traveling sea shell bench.” Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was on one of those reality T.V. shows. They were punking me. This Horace Walpole look-alike was an actor. I laughed out loud. “Why does time travel make you laugh?” asked the actor who was obviously pretending to be the Earl. Then I pulled at his wig but it didn’t budge. “Pardon me madam,” responded the Earl. “Please don’t tug at my hair. That is, unless it is some new custom I am not aware of that has become popular in the 21st century.” Then he pulled at my hair. I laughed even harder than before. But he did not laugh with me. I liked his eyes. They were kind and loving. Now they looked confused like the first time I watched a car chase through Hollywood on the tele. I couldn’t figure out how the suspect thought he could escape with a helicopter tracking his every move? “Perhaps pulling someone’s hair is a new custom instead of shaking or kissing someone’s hand?” he inquired. “No sir,” I answered. “I just thought you were an actor wearing a wig and I was testing out my theory. Are you an actor?” “No, I am not actor,” he replied with a polite tone. “I am Horace Walpole, the 4th Earl of Orford. I have returned from the dead to share my secret with you.” I figured I would play along with the guy who was no doubt off his rocker. “So what is your secret?” I asked him. “I know how to travel through time and space,” he whispered. “You must have some crazy frequent flyer miles,” I joked. He did not laugh. He just got that confused look on his face again. “My favorite place to sit when I was alive was the same spot you like to visit today; the sea shell bench on my estate. I used to sit there for hours and listen to the birds sing and the leaves rustle. It was as peaceful as an 18th century cemetery on a summer day before the caretaker would cut the grass.” I had no idea how he knew my favorite sitting place in Twickenham, but I continued to listen with the utmost interest. “Whenever you want to travel to a time and place other than the one you are in, say the magic words, ‘tote thee’ and off you will fly. When you want to return home to the present time and place, you should say the words, ‘rescind thou.’ The brass key with my initials has the same time-traveling powers as the bench. Guard my secret and the key well.” As soon as he said the words, he disappeared into thin air. The bulldog began barking and I passed out again. When I awoke, the key I had found in the bowl of Cheetos was in my hands. I stared at the initials on it, “HW,” and wondered if the visit from him was real or if I had dreamed it. The only way to know would be to test out the magic phrases. Until then, I planned to visit Westwood Memorial Park in the present day, where Marilyn was buried. The visit was on my bucket list of “must see” locations. To assist my memory for a future visit to the sea shell bench, I entered the magic phrases into the notes on my iPhone, hit save and hit the road. I wasn’t going to wait around for the pirate to return. He might want to act out a scene and I just wasn’t up for that. Chapter 2 Hollywood, California