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Remembering Marilyn Monroe

Jenene Ravesloot

#1

    Late December. I move along the quay, my overcoat open at the neck, my face turned upwards like a sun worshiper, or a patient let out for a stroll, only there’s not much sun and I’m not a patient, at least not yet. Then, I climb the stairs to Buckingham Fountain.

    The plaza is almost empty. I walk through it as I mind my own business, mind the business of my mind, that is, because something bothers me. I just can’t figure out what. So, I decide to take in the Magnificent Mile; join the holiday crowd.

    Sure, there are people here on Mag Mile, but I notice how quiet things are. Not the usual mayhem. No. Things seem almost funereal. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s not me. That’s when I see them: cathedral-size store windows and displays of sewing machines that march across and up wood shelves—sewing machines from the 19^th century: Simplexes, Windsor-B’s, and Singers. I can’t help myself. I find myself inside a place that sells the darkest clothes I’ve ever seen.

    I swear I’m actually inside my own head. There are some steel pulleys and moveable factory gears done up as decorations attached to all the walls and some klieg lights that remind me of spooked cave bats about to take off—just like me.

    I exit the store; catch the 146; gawk at the tall statue of Marilyn Monroe; gawk at the Christmas lights along the Mile; gawk like a tourist on a double-decker bus.

*

    South Loop at midnight: I’m on my way out of the vestibule. The odor of Pine-Sol lingers, along with the scent of Chanel perfume that a lady wears. Her coat spins through the revolving door. She lets me do all the work, swerves to the left as she exits, and heads down the street in a lazy lope. My nose leads. I follow. Maybe she’s going my way, I’m thinking, before she turns a corner and disappears.

    Alone. I walk down Michigan Avenue, walk through Millennium Park, walk beneath the belly of Cloud Gate, look at the city as it glistens in the Cloud that seems like a monstrous tiara before I look back one more time at the two LED screens that face the Crown Fountain that bleeds red and green.

#2

    One-thirty in the morning. I amble across the bridge to take a closer look at the sculpture of Marilyn. Her blanched skin glows in this light and I’m looking at some guy on a ladder. He’s wrapping a long black faux fur coat around Marilyn’s shoulders with a stick and hook. The coat is hiked up in the back, which only accentuates her dress, before the rest of the coat cascades over her hips and falls down her legs to the ground where it forms a dark pool on the Plaza.

    I have to laugh. Just the dude and me sharing a laugh as yours truly turns away from poor Marilyn, turns toward the Magnificent Mile while traffic lights blink on and off, off and on. Snowflakes begin to swirl, then fall straight down like shaken snow in a Hallmark snow globe. Perfect!

?*

    Another year. I’m in my favorite café with the Times. The usual stuff: politics; sob stories; the obits. What’s changed? Nothing! Something! One lousy number—odd to even.

    Outside, paper sacks and a few leftover leaves circle each other. If I weren’t so tired, I’d take a walk in Grant Park, maybe take a run along the lake, maybe watch the skaters in Millennium Park while the digital tower gargoyles in the Crown change their colors as they grimace, wink, and smile. Maybe I’d even walk up the Mile, stand beneath Marilyn’s long white legs one more time as tourists lift their iPhones in a kind of toast to the two of us before we both have to leave this town.

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