When Mam Became A Love Goddess
A Flash Fiction by D.X. Lewis
The day Dad died, Mam announced she was Marilyn Monroe. Not a reincarnation or impersonation. Whatever we’d been told or believed, Marilyn hadn’t done herself in, or been murdered like poor Princess Di.
"Fake news!" she said, proud of a phrase picked up from a loud American on the telly. She was only pretending to be dead when she was stretchered from her L.A. bungalow in 1962 to live secretly with President Kennedy and brother Robert. "I am Marilyn, and still alive!"
Jack and Bobby were as famous as soccer stars today, Mam said. And very good-looking. She wasn’t ashamed of being their sex slave. I shot her a look. My mother was 79. I’d never imagined her even thinking such a phrase.
"No, not sex slave," she blushed, "love goddess."
On precise chronology after Jack and then Bobby were assassinated, on how she came to meet Derek the plumber at a Newcastle disco in 1983, or on how old Marilyn was by then, Mam was vague-stroke-evasive. "It was a long time ago, sweetie, just trust me."
She never revealed to Dad her true identity, she said, even after he put her up the duff and gave her a ring. "Every marriage needs a secret."
Which was a shame, I thought, because Dad adored Some Like It Hot.
* * *
With Dad dead, Mam was free to star.
To transform her broad beam into Marilyn’s hour-glass figure, she cut out crisps, digestive biscuits and chocolate fudge brownie ice-cream.
To turn her manky grey locks into a thick head of glossy platinum, she splurged her pension money at Toni and Guy’s until the poor chaps gave up the struggle and sold her a wig.
To render her wrinkled lips full and seductive, she smashed her holiday piggybank for "work" at Angela’s Beauty Parlour.
To dress the part, she foraged for the kind of garment that billowed above Marilyn’s legs in The Seven-Year Itch. After snagging a promising item
at Oxfam for a crumpled fiver, she recruited me to test its "blowability". As she teetered on high heels from Age Concern, I lay on my bathroom floor with a hairdryer to recreate the up-draught of a New York subway.
Now Mam paraded and pouted around in scarlet lippy, her thick Geordie accent replaced by breathy whispers from Hollywood. Every time I dragged the kids to hers for Sunday tea, she’d launch into I Wanna Be Loved By You over the pork pie and sausagerolls, and Happy Birthday Mr President to serenade the trifle and fairy cakes.
Wayne and Cheryl boasted at school that Grandma was a famous film star. Parents and teachers rang me in protest. I told them to mind their own beeswax. Mam was Marilyn Monroe, Dad was James Dean, and Liz Taylor was my aunt, for that matter. They’d better believe it.
Just as they’d better believe me when I tell them who I really am. When I’ve figured that out.
Author: A recovering journalist, D.X. Lewis now devotes himself to other kinds of fiction — from novels and playlets to ever shorter stories. His flashes and micros have been published widely online and in anthologies. His 2024 novella-in-flash, A Life in Pieces, is available on Amazon. Pushcart-nominated, he lives in France.