Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper

by Hilary Liftin

  “It sounds like you’ve had a very hard life,” I said. “But Rob has been involved with the Studio for a very long time. My husband is a good man.” I believed this. No matter how Rob had failed me—his intentions were good. I didn’t have time for this anti–One Cell crap. I had bigger problems. “Rob wants to help people, the way One Cell helped him. I know, I’m 100 percent certain, that if he saw anyone being mistreated, he’d put a stop to it.”

  “Your husband— But before I tell you more I should warn you. If Geoff finds out we’ve spoken, you’ll put yourself—and your children—in real danger.”

  This guy said “danger” and “your children” in the same sentence. I’d heard enough. Buddy White, whatever his beef, wanted a high-profile supporter. It wasn’t going to be me.

  I turned to Aurora. “You’re being used. It’s too bad. I really needed a friend right now.” I walked out of the restaurant, holding back angry tears.

  I was so freaked out and devastated by the discovery of my professionally scripted marriage that Buddy White’s story barely penetrated the fog. Ironically, what shifted my attention to it was the one person who wanted the opposite: Geoff Anciak.

  The morning after my lunch with Aurora (and her unwelcome friend), I woke up at six, unusually early for me. I walked into the breakfast room to find Geoff himself sitting at the table, already halfway through an espresso.

  I greeted him warmly, as if his intrusion was perfectly normal.

  “Promised your man I’d check on you.” He smiled, but there was nothing friendly about it. I smelled peppermint, and it made me faintly queasy. Geoff waited, as if I was the one who’d invited him. His narrow snake eyes were fixed on me.

  Still ignorant of the reason for his visit, I offered him some breakfast—there was a plate of fresh almond croissants and jelly rolls that probably contained more simple carbs than I’d eaten in the past four years. But Geoff was all business. He took a large yellow envelope out of his briefcase. From it he withdrew a photo and laid it on the table in front of me.

  “You’ve been busy, haven’t you, Elizabeth?”

  “What’s this?” I looked down at the picture. It showed me, Aurora, and Buddy at the Polo Lounge. Yesterday.

  “You tell me,” Geoff said. “Buddy White is no friend to the Studio.”

  I had no idea what I was up against. “Where did you get this picture?”

  “Your friend sold it to us.”

  Why would Aurora do that? She knew I had cut her off for leaking stories and that I’d do it again. She wanted my friendship back. I didn’t buy it for a minute.

  Geoff went on. “Better she came to us than the press. This man is toxic. He’s been trying to extort the Studio for years, but we won’t let him bully us.”

  “I don’t know him. My friend tried to introduce us, but I left.”

  “Good,” Geoff said. “Don’t talk to him again. Remember, we’re on your side. We’re here to help you, to protect you.”

  Did Rapunzel need protection?

  On top of all I was processing, this man had walked into my kitchen, with his Altoids and his photos of my personal lunch. Accusing my old friend, violating my privacy, and trying to control me. His warning, his protection, sounded much more like a threat.

  My husband was utterly entwined with this organization, which taught us to put our emotions to the side. It was One Cell that pushed Rob relentlessly toward his goals, regardless of the path. I now saw the connection between Rob’s philosophy and his deception of me. A man who believed emotions were a chemical reaction could mix the language of love in a laboratory and feed it to me like a pill. It made perfect sense.

  What, exactly, was Geoff trying to protect me from? My emotions? The truth?

  “Thank you, but I can take care of myself.” In a bright, perky voice I added, “And please don’t worry about who I talk to. I’m a grown-up! I can decide for myself who to trust! Can I get you another cup of coffee?”

  Geoff smiled, his pale lips stretched in a soulless grimace. “No, thank you, Elizabeth. I’ve said my piece.”

  That night, I walked into my bedroom to find a single red rose, its stem snapped in two, lying on my bed. Just like the rose I had broken as a test on that first date with Rob so long ago. Nobody could tell me where it had come from, not even the security guards, but I got the message. Like it or not, I was being “protected.”

  9

  Later, there would be speculation that Lexy, Rob’s ex-wife, was the one who warned me about the Studio, or “saved” me from it, or “deprogrammed” me, but none of it is true. I’m the one who reached out to Lexy, and I did it because I had to talk to somebody, and there was literally no one else.

  I knew and respected her work—of course I didn’t relish the memory of her onscreen/off-screen love affair with my husband, but her performance in Believers was unforgettable, one of the reasons I wanted to become an actress. Post-Rob, however, her career had completely fizzled. Note to self. Now all I knew was that she led a quiet life in a northwestern town with a funny name, and I kept thinking about the mystifying note she’d sent me when Rob and I got engaged.

  After Geoff’s unexpected visit, I found Lexy’s number in the synched address book Rob and I shared. I meant to leave just a simple message—“I know it’s a little strange to hear from me, but I’d love to chat sometime”—but before I hung up, a flood of other words escaped my mouth. I said I needed help. I had to know why she had left Rob, and One Cell, and whether there was any truth to Buddy White’s claim that my children and I were in danger.

  No sooner had I put my phone down than Jordan came in. She was now officially working for us, taking my to-do list off Jake’s plate, which was a relief. That guy was such a buzz kill. So Jordan walked in, and at the same moment my phone rang. I saw that it was Lexy, returning my call. Usually, when I got an incoming call, Jordan paused to ask if I wanted to take it, but this time she steamrolled forward, so I let the call go to voice mail. I needed privacy for my conversation with Lexy.

  Jordan reviewed the day’s items. What did I want for lunch? A kale smoothie. Did I agree to be listed in Glam’s Most Beautiful Women issue? They had offered me number twenty, but Lotus had negotiated me up to number five and thought I should move forward with the feature. Okay. Did I want to hire a school consultant for the boys? Yes. I was due for a roots touch-up—how was this afternoon after my training session? Fine.

  When Jordan finally left, I listened to Lexy’s message. Her voice was low and sexy, familiar from her movies but out of place on my voice mail. She said, “I’ve been waiting for your call. I need to talk to you. It’s important.” As soon as her message ended, I tapped “Return call.” Instead of ringing as it had ten minutes earlier, the call now went to a recording. The number was no longer in service. It had to be a glitch. I tried twice more, then tried inputting the number by hand, then tried one last time from the landline. How could her number be out of service? She had just called me!

  Two days later I was scrolling through the press alerts when something stopped me in my tracks. Lexy Hartfield (who popped up on my alerts because she was always described as “ex-wife of Rob Mars”) was in Mustique.

  Mustique. The private island where Rob’s friends the Spencers had a villa.

  The sequence of events was disconcerting. The moment I’d reached out to her, Lexy’s phone had gone out of order. Now I learned that she was far, far away with Rob’s closest friends. Was it coincidence, or was there a calculated effort to stop my probing?

  I didn’t know where else to turn. I had no one to confide in about Rob and the scripts I’d found or the Studio and the mysterious conflict between Geoff and Buddy. For the moment, I decided, there was nothing to be done. Rob and I were married, and we had children. What existed between us wasn’t, had never been, and could never be love. Not my definition of love. The tabloids, ironically, had called it f
rom the beginning: It was a sham. But, for the children’s sakes, I wasn’t going to bolt.

  And, because I did nothing, for months nothing changed. Rob traveled and visited, we went to events, we made love, we doted on our sons, and I tried to convince myself that acting like a loving wife was not terribly different from being a loving wife.

  We might have gone on like that, but I’d made a critical mistake: assuming my husband had only one secret.

  In February, Leo and Jordan were in the kitchen, making guacamole. When Cap and I came into the room, Leo was perched on a bar chair in front of the counter, staring at his finger, which was bleeding.

  “Leo, what happened? Are you okay?” I said.

  Jordan, realizing what had happened, gasped. “Oh, no! I didn’t see!”

  But Leo looked up at me and smiled. “It hurts, but I’m strong.” Then, as if he were singing a song from Mary Poppins, he added, “Emotions are a chemical reaction.”

  Those were big words coming out of his four-year-old mouth. “What does that mean?” I asked him.

  “This is what it means,” Leo said. “I’m strong. I’m going to help people be strong like me. Teacher Jana!”

  He stood up, turned to the window, and closed his eyes. Then he slowly twisted his legs into a knot, the first pose of the Practice.

  I looked at Jordan, who had gone back to mincing garlic. Intently. “Jordan, do you know what he’s talking about?”

  Jordan shrugged without looking up. “Sounds like a game to me.” It was a lie. She knew that pose as well as I did.

  “Come here, Leo, I want to talk to you,” I said.

  Leo had untied himself and gone back to the guacamole.

  “Actually, I’m busy right now. I’m mashing.”

  I took a deep breath. “Let’s put a Band-Aid on that finger,” I said, and led him down the hall to my bathroom. When I glanced back toward the kitchen, I saw Jordan watching us, a thoughtful look on her face.

  Leo insisted on opening several Band-Aids in a row, getting them stuck to themselves, then to his fingers, as he tried to throw them in the trash.

  “What do you and Cap do with Teacher Jana?”

  “First we do songs. After songs we do thinking. After thinking we learn how to be strong. I’m better than Cap. He cries during poses, and that’s because he needs to learn how. I’m going to be just like Daddy,” Leo said matter-of-factly.

  I closed my eyes. For the first four, nearly five, years of their lives, I’d had complete understanding of my sons’ brains. Every animal Cap identified—I knew where he’d learned it. Every food Leo liked—I knew when he’d first tasted it. Every word they used came from me or a book we’d read together. Even as they started to have their own thoughts and ideas—“I’m a doggie, and you’re the mommy doggie, and we’re going to fall in the mud”—I could source the books and experiences they were mixing and matching. But now it was clear that the daycare at the Studio had introduced Cap and Leo to the Whole Body Principles. I thought about when Cap had had nursemaid’s elbow. There had been no sign of One Cell’s influence then. It must have started—or escalated—in the fall. Children weren’t supposed to start practicing at the Studio until age six!

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. What did I think the boys did at daycare every morning? Plenty of children grow up exposed to their parents’ values, beliefs, rituals, and religions. It wasn’t out of line that the Studio’s daycare included a bit of their teachings.

  But the first cracks in my commitment to the Studio had started to appear. I was thrown by Geoff’s aggressive reaction to my meeting with Buddy White. And then there was that broken red rose, which seemed to be an admonition to play by his rules. Now my sons were being secretly introduced to the Practice. My children were involved and Geoff didn’t want me to question One Cell? That, to me, was exactly why I should.

  My whole life I had followed rules. I was about to find out what breaking them meant.

  10

  Tracking down Lexy wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. When I googled “Where does Lexy Hartfield live?” the top result was www

  .starstalker.net, a horrifying website where one can search or browse the home addresses of anyone who has ever appeared in the pages of Glam. All of our current and previous addresses were there, including those of our parents. And there was Lexy, inconveniently located in Bend, Oregon.

  With her phone out of service, I could have reached her through ACE, but the risk of a press leak was too high. Instead, I took a day trip in our plane. A mistake, though I didn’t know it at the time.

  The house was a neat Craftsman bungalow surrounded by pine trees. Lexy herself answered the door. There’s a funny moment when you see someone whose face is bigger-than-life familiar from the big screen. I’ve experienced it hundreds of times by now, but it still passes in a wave, like déjà vu or nostalgia. I know you and I don’t know you. You look exactly like yourself, and you look different. That strange recognition prompts many fans to comment on it: You look smaller/taller/fatter/thinner/prettier in person. But Lexy was different. Even without makeup, she looked as if she’d stepped right off the screen. Her features sculpted and perfect, her skin perfectly even in tone (even here in the country, where there couldn’t be laser treatments to be had for miles). She did not look happy to see me.

  “I’m sorry to drop in like this—”

  “Do they know you’re here?” She looked over my shoulder and winced when she saw the town car waiting for me on the street. “They know.” She sighed. “What can you do?” She led me to a pleasant sitting room with what I would guess was local art on the walls. “Sit,” she said, and disappeared.

  Moments later, she was back with tea. She poured us cups and raised hers to mine. “To life on Mars.”

  I didn’t know where to begin. “I left you a message . . . but then you were in Mustique and I—”

  “Timid, aren’t you? They must be eating you alive. Listen, let me tell you how it is.” Lexy then proceeded to describe my life to me with more detail than I myself knew. The initial appeal of the Studio; the gradual realization of its far-reaching tentacles; the seduction of Rob’s charm; the wane of my career. When she was done, I wanted to cry.

  “I’m sorry if you came here for answers. I don’t have any,” Lexy said.

  “I . . . I had no idea what I was getting into,” I said.

  “Look, all I can say is to be very careful. I can’t tell you the Studio had anything to do with it, but there was a period of my life when my mailbox was tipped over every night for a month. And I have no proof that they planted the stories that I have an uninsurable medical condition. And maybe it was the stress, but I started feeling like there were people following me wherever I went. Not just the regular paparazzi. Men with hidden cameras in their sunglasses.”

  It was hard to imagine the calm woman in front of me being scared or stressed by anything. But as she talked, a shadow came into her eyes.

  “As soon as I mentioned to Rob that I wanted to leave him, my life went to pieces. And ever since, every time I’ve tried to do a movie, or even to go out in public, something happens to warn me. The anxiety attacks return and I have to flee. So I live here in this very nice town. I behave myself. It’s not bad. I cross-country ski every morning.” And sometimes, I thought to myself, you go on luxury vacations.

  I had more questions for her. What should I do now? How was I supposed to stay true to myself? She hadn’t been able to, had she? But that was all Lexy was going to say. She changed the topic, and we shared industry gossip over tea, as if she hadn’t just warned me about what might happen if I so much as hinted to my husband that I was unhappy. I glanced out the window. All I could see were trees. The air, inside and out, felt clean and clear. Bend, Oregon. It wasn’t a bad place to escape to. But after coming all this way, what had I learned? One message, one that made all the differenc
e: I resolved to keep my doubts to myself.

  Before I left, Lexy said, “Wait.” She ran out of the room and returned carrying a very tall and skinny glass vase, delicately twisted at the top of its long milky neck. She thrust it into my arms so forcefully I nearly dropped it. “Take this,” she said. “Make something up. Tell them you heard I had taken up glassblowing, and you had to have one of my works. Or whatever. Just don’t let it be photographed—the guy who made this is my next-door neighbor. He’ll bust my chops. But do it. Don’t forget.”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary. Nobody even knows I’m here!”

  “Just do it. Make sure you tell the driver and the pilot. Trust me.”

  Back in Brentwood, when I came to breakfast the next day, Jordan had a concerned expression on her face. She said, “I don’t know how to say this, but I think you should look at Rounder.com.”

  I turned on my phone. Usually when there was a news item I got ten texts from various reps and acquaintances, but this time my phone was completely silent. As soon as I went to Rounder.com I saw why.

  Allison. There were images of her, holding up pictures of me. “Lizzie’s Abandoned Sister.” “Lizzie’s Secret Sister Tells All.”

  These were the first pictures I’d seen of Allison in twenty-two years, but the images told the story of the gap that can emerge between two lives. The woman in the photographs looked strung-out, wrecked by her life, prematurely aged. But also, under the toll, I saw that in her own way she was prettier than I, her coloring so pale and delicate, her bones finer, her eyes wider and more symmetrical. I couldn’t stop looking at her and examining the dim details of the room she was in. The faint outline of a brown sofa, a shelf with empty china pitchers. Did she have a job? Hobbies? A family to replace us? It was impossible to tell.