The Empty Glass by J.I. Baker Read Free Book Online Page B

dropped it to the floor. “You happy?”
    He nodded.
    “Now, go back to bed.”
    “Tuck me in again?”
    “Sure.”
    I walked him down the hall and tucked in his toes and then pulled the bedspread up to just under his chin and kissed his forehead. “Now, you go back to sleep. How many fingers?” I asked at the door.
    “Three.”
    I left the door open three fingers so that he could see into the hall and was heading back to the front room when I heard his voice: “Dad?”
    “Yeah, sport?”
    “Where’s Mom?”
    “Home.”
    “Why aren’t
you
home?”
    Hey, try answering that one, smart guy. “I wish I knew,” I said. “Now, go to bed.”
    Back in the living room, I picked up my glass, saw the light in the last of the bourbon, and drained it.
    I drifted into sleep, awakening either two minutes or two hours later to the sound of honking outside.
    It was 2:15.
    The car kept honking, someone laying on the horn.
    Someone was yelling, “Shattap!”
    I walked across the room and looked out.
    It was the Ford Fairlane.

MONDAY, AUGUST 6

14.
    MARILYN MONROE FOUND DEAD!
    Sleeping pill overdose! Empty bottle near bed!
     
    I bought the
Times
from the newsstand on the sidewalk and carried it back to 7-A and sat on the couch while Max slept. I read everything anyone knew about the death that was bigger than the Soviet explosion of a nuclear bomb in Uppsala, bigger than Nixon at the helm of the GOP, bigger than the fact that little William Webb, Jr., the state’s only Thalidomide baby, would undergo a bone graft from his legs to his arms on August 23.
    Russia’s newspaper
Izvestia
claimed that Hollywood and “Western values” had killed Monroe.
    Coroner Curphey offered his “presumptive opinion” that death was due to “an overdose of a drug. Further toxicological and microscopic studies should be available within forty-eight hours, though it will be about a week before an investigation establishes whether or not Miss Monroe’s death was an accident.”
    But the big news came from Marshall Cantwell’s article in the
Times
:
     
    Mrs. Monroe’s body was discovered after her housekeeper and companion, Mrs. Eunice Murray, awoke about 3 a.m. and saw a light still burning in the actress’s room.
    But the bedroom door was locked. She was unable to arouse [
sic
] Miss Monroe by shouts and rapping on the door, and immediately telephoned Miss Monroe’s psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson.
    Dr. Greenson took a poker from the fireplace, smashed in a window, and climbed into the Monroe bedroom. He took the telephone from her hand and told Mrs. Murray, “She appears to be dead.”
    He called Dr. Hyman Engelberg, who had prescribed the sleeping pills, and pronounced her dead on his arrival at the house a short time later.
    Dr. Engelberg called police at 4:20 a.m. and two officers arrived in five minutes.
    •   •   •
    D o I need to tell you what’s wrong with this picture, Doctor? Mrs. Murray, Dr. Greenson, and Dr. Engelberg had all told Jack Clemmons that Murray woke just after midnight. But here the time had been conveniently moved forward three hours.
    In the same article, Pat Newcomb was said to be “nearly hysterical with grief” and was quoted: “When your best friend kills herself, how do you feel? What do you do?” She added: “This must have been an accident.”
    Her best friend killed herself. But it was an accident.
    •   •   •
    I dropped Max off at summer school in El Segundo, then headed to the Esso station. I fiddled with the radio knob until I landed on
Annie Laurie Presents
. I heard swelling strings and an announcer saying, “Live from Hollywood, it’s
Annie Laurie Presents
—and
this
is Annie Laurie!”
    Then Jo’s voice, like mink incarnate: “Hello, dear ones! ‘I was never used to being happy, so that wasn’t something I ever took for granted.’ Now, who said those words? The answer: the late Marilyn Monroe, who died yesterday at thirty-six. Rest in peace, dear one. And in the