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that Charles Grainger (long since out of her life) had crept into her bed the night before and had made violent love to her. Not long after, she struggled from her home, walked over to the Bolenders’ to see her granddaughter, and banged on the door. Angered when she saw that no one came to admit her, Della broke the door’s glass with her elbow—“for no reason I know of,” Ida said, adding, “we called the police.”
    On August 4, 1927, Della was carted away to the Norwalk State Hospital, suffering from acute myocarditis, a general term for inflammation of the heart and surrounding tissues. After nineteen days of agonizing distress, she died on August 23, at the age of fifty-one. The death certificate gives the cause as simply myocarditis, adding a “contributory manic depressive psychosis.” This latter term was imprecise especially in those days, and one subjoined only because Gladys stressed to the physicians at Norwalk that her mother’s moods and tempers had alternated unpredictably in recent weeks.
    The fact is that little was done for Della’s grave heart condition. She had seen doctors only three or four times and often forgot the hours and doses of her medication. Thus, when the ward supervisor signed papers a day after her death, Gladys’s report on her mother’s mental state made the addition of “psychosis” understandable but really baseless. But among the documents of Della’s case during confinement, there is no psychological profile, nor is there record of an attending neurologist. Della Monroe (thus her name appeared in hospital records) died of heart disease, which caused impaired mentation due to insufficient oxygenation of the brain. As in the case of her husband Otis Monroe, there is no evidence that she was also a psychiatric case. But for Gladys, the myth of family madness deepened: after Della’s death she was distressed and for several weeks failed to report for work. Shutting herself in her mother’s bungalow, she pored over Della’s few possessions; finally, she emerged and decided to sell the place. Bracing herself for a return to work, Gladys then moved back to Hollywood, obtaining work at two movie studios, weekdays and Saturdays.
    Although there were quite different reasons to pity much in her life, the truth is that (contrary to later publicity reports) Norma Jeane’s years with the Bolenders were essentially secure, she lacked for no material necessities, and there is no evidence that she was abused or mistreated. But she was the only child to remain so long: more than a dozen other children arrived, grew and departed, or returned to their families.
    “Despite all the inventions of later years,” according to Norma Jeane’s first husband, “she never had known grinding poverty, never had gone shoeless, never, to the best of my knowledge, had to skip a meal.” He felt that as her career improved she “desperately wanted some colorful family tale of want and scarcity . . . [while] the truth is that she was raised in a small but comfortable bungalow with every modern convenience, if not splendid luxury.” The Bolenders even owned a scarred old upright piano, used mostly for hymn-singing by Ida’s church cronies. There were also toys and books, and a small room to accommodate a child’s parent for an overnight visit.
    Yet she was clearly scarred by the psychological and emotional stress of her uncertain identity and by not knowing when her mother might suddenly appear and just as suddenly vanish. When she did visitNorma Jeane, Gladys took her for outings or picnics. Mother and daughter rode the Pacific Electric trolley cars to Sunset Beach; alternately, they made several connections and traveled south to tour the glass factories in Torrance; or, year-round, they would simply ride and ride from one shoreline resort to another, stopping at Redondo, Manhattan and Hermosa for lunch or ice cream. Among Norma Jeane’s earliest memories was Venice’s own St. Mark’s