Norma Jeane and Eddy G. Robinson Jr.'s romance and his alleged paternity

Norma Jeane and Eddy G. Robinson Jr.'s romance and his alleged paternity are inseparable from her relationship with Cass Chaplin. Their intimacy forms a three-person bond that, for a brief period, seems capable of becoming a family when Norma Jeane becomes pregnant. Eddy responds with tenderness and a measure of pride, but the novel also unsettles his presumed place as the father; the pregnancy exposes both the depth of their attachment and the uncertainty at its center.

A Three-Person Intimacy

Norma Jeane Baker is involved with Eddy G. Robinson Jr. and Cass Chaplin together, not in an uncomplicated pairing with Eddy alone. When she meets them to reveal her pregnancy, she appears so tense that both men notice something is wrong. She intends to tell each, in turn, that he is about to become a father, but instead breaks down crying, takes their inert hands, and kisses them one by one. Their alarm and exchanged glances register how much the news changes the atmosphere among them: this is no longer only a lovers’ arrangement, but a possible shared future.

The pregnancy brings Eddy a complicated reaction. He is described as profoundly surprised, while Cass later claims he had already inferred it from Norma Jeane’s absence of menstruation. Yet the narration also says that Eddy was the one certain to be the father. He cannot deny a small swell of pride at the thought of a child belonging to him and one of Hollywood’s most beautiful women. The assurance is not the last word, however. In a later exchange about Cass’s frightening visions of monsters, Eddy admits that he never understood whether they were Cass’s or his. The novel thus places pride and uncertainty side by side rather than making Eddy’s paternity a stable fact.

Pregnancy and the Prospect of a Family

Eddy and Cass know that Norma Jeane has long wanted a child. For her, motherhood carries an almost redemptive promise: she hopes it can make her feel normal despite being abandoned by a mother who was seriously ill. When she weeps and kisses their hands, both men understand that abortion is not a practical escape from the situation. Norma Jeane wants the baby and has spoken with horror about abortion; her Christian Science beliefs reinforce their sense that the subject is not one she would accept. The pregnancy therefore disrupts the men’s imagined plans, but the narration presents that disruption as potentially temporary rather than as a reason to abandon her.

For a time, the three share the expectation of Baby’s arrival. During a late-summer night drive in the Cadillac, Norma Jeane sits between her lovers and presses both their hands against her stomach, imagining that they will soon feel the baby’s heartbeat. Cass repeats that this is real life, not a movie. Eddy, who has joined Alcoholics Anonymous, treats the pregnancy as a reason that Cass might also stop drinking; Cass considers it, even as the possibility of continuing to use drugs complicates the prospect of change. Their hope is concrete but fragile. A doctor estimates that Norma Jeane is five weeks pregnant, expects the birth around mid-April, and tells her that she is in good health, while noting her unusually heavy and painful periods. For the moment, those recurring pains will cease.

Norma Jeane’s happiness is bound up with the belief that the men will stay. She has repeatedly feared that they might leave her, but they do not; the novel contrasts her with other women they had impregnated, or believed they had impregnated, and emphasizes that none had refused abortion with such force. Eddy and Cass begin to recognize that they do not fully know Norma Jeane. Her determination to continue the pregnancy makes her distinct from their previous experiences and forces the lovers to confront a future they had not planned.

Care, Fear, and Uncertain Paternity

The relationship is not shown as effortless security. The men are young, unemployed, and frightened by the responsibilities the pregnancy implies; they are actors, but cannot convincingly perform an emotion they do not know how to manage. Eddy’s surprise does not erase his investment. The narration gives him pride in the prospect of fatherhood, while the later uncertainty he expresses about the parentage of the monsters prevents that pride from settling the question conclusively.

A later crisis shows Norma Jeane caring for both men at once. In the car after Cass has become feverish and tremulous, she keeps one hand pressed to Baby as if to soothe him and uses the other to try to unbutton Cass’s shirt so he can breathe more easily. She urges Eddy to take Cass to a doctor, suspecting delirium tremens. The scene reverses the earlier arrangement in which the two men’s attention centered on her: she is now trying to protect the pregnancy while tending to Cass, and Eddy is the person she asks to act. Their intimacy persists through fear and illness, but it also exposes how precarious their shared life is.

Separation and the Relationship’s Aftermath

Norma Jeane later recalls that she loved both men, yet left to live alone in a moment of anger. She believes there is no future with them and feels compelled to escape. In leaving, she has time to take only essentials, including her special books; she abandons the rest, among it the small cloth tiger. Yvet helps find her a new apartment on Fountain Avenue, acting on Mr. Z’s behalf. That practical move marks a separation from the domestic life she had briefly imagined with Eddy and Cass, though it does not cancel her love for them.

The romance is therefore defined less by a clean resolution than by the contrast between an intensely shared hope and the instability surrounding it. Eddy’s possible fatherhood offers Norma Jeane a chance to imagine belonging and ordinary family life, while his later admission leaves the biological question open. Their tenderness is real within the novel, as are their fear, dependence, and inability to sustain a future together. Norma Jeane’s departure closes the period of shared domestic possibility without making the attachment emotionally simple or definitively resolved.