The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe Read Online Free PDF Page B

complaints, about her house and her husband and the new picture she was making, that went from being a litany to being an avalanche. Mrs Gurdin was the sort of mother who allowed her children’s strong feelings to trump her own, at least for as long as she was in their presence. And that’s how she saw it: not as being with her kids, but as being in the presence of her children. Her relationship with Natasha involved a heady mixture of pride and humiliation. ‘That is the most enthralling part of her story,’ the Labrador said before she went to a new owner. ‘Does she want to be honoured by her children’s success, and also martyred by it, allowing it to reveal the chances she never had?’
Natalie went on. The decorators were phonies. The rosetinted marble didn’t match in colour all the way through the ground floor. Her private bathroom was too heavy and cracks were now appearing on the ceiling downstairs. At least half of the chandeliers were fakes. The pipework was amateur and by the time the hot water reached the faucets it was stone cold and, can you believe it , dirty. Dirty bathwater and frogs in the pool! It was like living in a swamp somewhere in Bolivia. The head of Fox was threatening to ditch her husband RJ’s contract. ‘Isn’t that just the limit? This busboy from St Louis, Missouri, this Greek guy who is into buying ships. Actors aren’t ships! You can’t just scuttle them when they get a bit rusty.’
‘RJ’s not rusty,’ said Muddah. ‘He’s thirty.’
‘In this town that’s rusty,’ said Natalie. ‘That’s salvage. An actor over thirty is bad news. Some Clyde in a nylon suit from the front office is testing him for the push, I can tell you, I know these guys.’ Muddah wrung her hands and dived into the doom. We should never have left Harbin. My poor mother and father. Before you know it we’ll all be starving. The Bolsheviks hanged poor Mikhail from a tree. At this point she produced a handkerchief from the sleeve of her gown. Things were supposed to be better and now Robert will be on the scrapheap and life is over. Over, I tell you.
Mrs Gurdin had a tendency to approach all problems with those tears of ecstasy and tender emotions typical of Dostoevsky’s women of faith. No occasion was too small for this awesome trick of unburdening: Mrs Gurdin required almost daily exhortations to the higher authorities that they suspend her portion of misery here on earth, and make sure the milkman comes on time.
‘Oh, turn it off, Muddah!’ said Natalie. ‘I’m having the time of my life because for the first time . . . for the first time it is my life.’
‘Are you rehearsing?’
‘What?’
‘Are you running your lines?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mama. I’m not a kid any more.’
‘You’re running lines, Natasha. This Gypsy role you’ll never get. I read the script. They want someone to play a whore. You’re too innocent. They remember the baby girl in the Christmas picture.’
‘Stop it, Mama.’
‘And this Kazan picture, too. You’re reciting from it, aren’t you, Natasha? These things you are saying to me. You are playing the Deanie girl with me. All these pictures you want to do are mother-hating pictures. Everybody wants to blame the mother.’
Natalie suddenly flushed. ‘Don’t lay it on me if you can’t find the right way to be a mother. Don’t blame me if you don’t have the lines, Muddah. I’ve been Maureen O’Hara’s daughter and Bette Davis’s daughter. I’ve been goddamn Claire Trevor’s daughter. Gene Tierney’s. I know all about mothers! * Mothers always looking for forgiveness, mothers always looking for redemption, mothers making out like it wasn’t about them all along. Mothers crying themselves to sleep at night. You’re right, mother! More than anything I know, oh yes, I know how to play at being a daughter.’
‘I’m not asking you to play, Natasha.’
I looked up at Mrs Gurdin with eyes that I hoped betrayed the deepest