Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper

by Hilary Liftin

  “This light’s for you, Elizabeth,” he said. “So you can see your way in at night.” But I knew it was for him, his wish to be my beacon, his fear of letting me go. He loved me more than he could ever admit, to me or to himself.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go in and face his disappointment. “Actually, take us to the Four Seasons, please,” I told the driver, and all at once the air rushed back into my lungs.

  11

  Cap and I took a suite at the Four Seasons. As I put him to bed, I asked him one question, in the same light tone I used to ask him if he’d enjoyed his swim lesson, or if he’d rather read Corduroy or Bread and Jam for Frances.

  “When did Uncle Geoff give you mints? Did he take pictures of you and Leo?”

  “Actually, can I have one now?”

  “Tomorrow, sweetie. Do you remember when Uncle Geoff gave you mints?”

  “They were yummy.”

  “Was Daddy there?”

  “No, Teacher Jana and Jordan and Uncle Geoff and me and Leo. We had a picture party. With cookies. Shhh. It’s a surprise. Don’t tell.” What was happening in that daycare? How far had these lessons gone?

  “Okay, Cap. Night-night now.” I tucked him in and kissed his forehead. And turned on the bathroom light. And located his missing toy turtle. And gave him one more kiss.

  After Cap fell asleep, I stood in the sitting room of the suite, staring out at Lake Michigan, mulling all that had happened. I was dying for a cigarette, but this goddamned presidential suite didn’t even have a balcony.

  My mind scrolled. Geoff’s visit after I met Buddy White. The pictures of Allison after I visited Lexy. Maybe my father was right to think that the Allison exposé was a message to me. The rose, a warning. Allison, a threat. Was Geoff trying to stop me from asking too many questions? And, if so, why? What didn’t he want me to know about the Studio? I’d seen and experienced the Practice for myself. I knew it was real and worthwhile. So why all the cloak-and-dagger creepiness? And the biggest questions of all: What photos was Cap talking about? What did Geoff, Jana, and the Studio have planned for my sons?

  In two days, Cap and I were due to meet Rob and Leo in New York. I still had no plans to confront him about the scripts I’d found. What could I possibly say? “Your love for me was an act and the show is over?” There was no point to that conversation. What I wanted from Rob was much simpler. I wanted whatever was going on with the boys—the photographs, the training in Whole Body Principles, the indoctrination—to stop. I needed Rob to agree that the boys would not be raised to follow any philosophy that they didn’t choose.

  Cap and I went to New York. (Yes, that was when that famous “Lizzie in a Tizzy?” photograph was taken. The paps caught me turning my ankle as I got out of our car, hence the grimace, but this time, by pure chance, they were right.)

  Mercifully, Cap didn’t throw up during takeoff, and, as an unforeseen gift, he slept through most of the flight. But I was awake, on edge. Looking back on it now, there had always been parts of the Studio that didn’t sit well with me. I mean, channeling emotions as an acting exercise was one thing, but stifling them all the time was kind of ridiculous. I’d always taken it as a theory more than an actual way of living. The One Cell leaders had a flat, robotic effect. It was wildly inappropriate for a child. Also—though this was beside the point—it bothered me that Geoff’s girlfriend, Patricia, had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. It was creepy. I thought about what Patricia had once said to me: that love meant enduring dark moments and sacrifice. What dark moment had come to her? And where had it led her? Because one thing was perfectly clear: No institution was strong enough to interfere with what I knew was right for my children.

  Compliance was part of the One Cell way. You were supposed to have faith in the process, which had a proven success rate. If you didn’t follow the Studio’s lead, it meant that you were your own biggest obstacle. They taught individuality and self-reliance, but demanded total obedience. I knew extricating our children from the Studio wouldn’t be well received, to say the least. I had my fingers crossed that Rob was on my side.

  The Turtle Bay town house was hands down the boys’ favorite of our homes—and not just because Cap loved the name Turtle Bay. The neighbors were not the type to meddle, so the boys were able to play freely in the communal gardens behind the house. I liked to see Leo run as fast as he could down the long path. Of course the boys had plenty of space in L.A. and Aspen, but there was something about having other people around, even if all of them were Manhattan bluebloods, music executives, or hedge fund managers. I wanted them to experience being in “public.” Our elite private garden was the best we could do.

  The minute I laid eyes on Rob, he took me in his arms and held me for a long time. Then he stepped back to look at me, his dark eyes locking onto mine.

  “It didn’t matter how often we talked on the phone,” he said. “It only made me miss you more. I could barely sleep without you. This last week was the worst. See this picture?” He took out his phone and showed me a picture of me holding newborn Cap and Leo in the hospital. “I went to sleep holding my phone. That’s how crazy I was going without you.” His words or a script? It was impossible to say. I could barely summon the appropriate response.

  The boys had a bath. Afterward, I listened to Leo’s squeals of delight echoing through the house as Rob chased him back and forth down the halls of the top floor. That part I knew was real.

  Our chef, Elsie, who’d joined us in New York for the week, cooked us dinner, a big Italian meal with herbs from the garden. The kitchen, on the garden level, opened to the family room with a long farmhouse table, and through the French doors to the backyard we had a view of the replica Medici fountain.

  Rob smiled at me, squeezing my hands. “I started going out for runs in the middle of the night. Poor Lewis had to follow me even though I’m sure it was safe. As I ran I chanted to myself: ‘I want to do this movie; it won’t last forever; Elizabeth will still be there when I go home.’”

  If this was a script, it wasn’t great; my husband’s Cyrano, the mysterious sticky noter Emil, had fallen flat. But Rob’s delivery was flawless.

  Over dinner, Rob wanted to talk about what we would do when he was done shooting Istanbul. We would have all spring and part of the summer free. I was in no state to plan that far ahead, but after he suggested the south of France, I leaned in.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Maybe we could go to Fernhills.” I watched his reaction carefully. What Buddy White had started to tell me about Fernhills was at the back of my mind.

  Rob tensed up. “Fernhills? Why would you want to go there?”

  “It’s the place where the Studio began. It will be inspirational. We could do a silent retreat together.”

  “Sure,” Rob said noncommittally. “Sounds great.”

  I pushed again. “How about you take me to see Studio Manhattan tomorrow?” I said. “After all your hard work—I’d love to see how it’s progressing.” I was still a little bitter that I’d never been able to help with the building when I’d been looking for something to occupy my time.

  “Oh. Yeah, well, you wouldn’t believe the delays. Construction is interminable.” He frowned. “But I definitely want you to see it at some point.” His eyebrows slanted up and in. All of a sudden, even next to the warm fire, a chill went through me. I recognized that expression. It was one of his acting faces. I’d seen it in all of his movies, but never before in real life. It was the expression he used when he wanted his character to seem sincere. Or was it an expression of genuine sincerity? Which came first? Was there a difference? Did it matter? Truth, artifice, acting, action; these notions were so muddled it was pointless to draw distinctions. Whatever residual attachment I had to Rob fell away. His truth was an act; he was faithful to that act; and we lived in the drama of his creation.

  I put down my wineglass, sat up straigh
t, and went for it. “Rob, did you know that in daycare the boys are learning the Whole Body Principles? Leo cut his finger and didn’t even react.”

  Rob laughed. “That’s awesome. He’s a natural. I knew he would be.”

  “But, Rob, Cap and Leo are not even five years old. Children need to experience their emotions. They need to cry and shout and dance.”

  “And growing up is learning to handle those extremes. Why shouldn’t they have the tools? They’re not being forced to use them. But I do hear Leo’s an exceptional student.” I hated his blatant preference for Leo, but I had bigger problems.

  “So you knew about this,” I said. It was already clear that he had.

  “Elizabeth, you’re overreacting. Just look at the reality. The boys are doing great. They’re blossoming. Why are you so upset?”

  His voice was smooth and gentle, as always, but I saw his neck tighten with a spasm of intolerance. I took a deep breath. “Rob, I’ve thought about it a lot, and I don’t want Cap and Leo raised within the Studio. I know how much it means to you, but the boys are too young for the Practice. I want them to have a normal childhood, with playdates and Sesame Street and Christmases where they get some but not all of what they want. They should be free to discover the Studio, or any other school of thought, by themselves, as adults, just like you and I did. Not because we force it down their throats. And you should have talked to me before agreeing to it.”

  The smile faded from Rob’s face. He stared at me as if I’d just spoken in a foreign language. “I didn’t agree to it, Elizabeth. It was my idea.”

  And now it dawned on me that ever since the day he orchestrated our public coming-out on the streets of Cannes, I had never seen Rob surprised by any aspect of our lives. Not the edits to my movie. Not the boys’ training. Even our dialogue had been anticipated and rehearsed. Rob, his agents, and One Cell were directing our lives.

  As my father used to say, I had no one but myself to blame. In this relationship I had entered Rob’s life. I lived in his houses. I joined his Studio. I pushed my family and loved ones away and accepted his into our lives. Without realizing it, I had been enacting the true role for which Rob had auditioned me on the first day we met. For almost five years, I had been playing the role of his wife. There was no breaking from the script. You don’t say no to Rob Mars. I don’t think Rob set out to control me. He’d been catered to for so long, he didn’t know anything else.

  Passion and romance and love and sex, all those elements were supposed to combine to create intimacy. But there was another possibility, a relationship where all the trappings existed, but there was nothing underneath. Rob didn’t care to know me, the real me—the me who hadn’t been formed exactly for him, the me with opinions and desires of my own, and he had no idea he was missing anything. What could I say to him? I stripped every emotion out of my face and gave him a Stepford smile. Thank you, One Cell.

  12

  Later that night we exchanged Valentine’s gifts—a week late.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day,” I said.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day, my love. I’ll never forget our first Valentine’s Day.”

  As we spoke, the script version of our dialogue typed itself out on the screen in my mind, our words in a generic twelve-point Courier font.

  For years, Rob had been playing his part nearly flawlessly. He thought he was the only one who could put on a show? Ha. I’d learned from the best of them. And luckily I already knew my lines.

  “Were my eyes sparkling just like they are tonight?”

  Rob looked a bit confused. “They were. They were sparkling just like they are tonight.” He smiled that megawatt smile, but before he could plow on I stole his next line.

  “I never thought I would find someone like you. Someone who fit me perfectly.” I could almost see little wisps of smoke coming out of his ears as the circuit boards in his mind overloaded. I’d crashed his operating system, and now his face was a gray screen with a little sad computer icon right in the middle of it.

  “Elizabeth, you take the words right out of my mouth.” He kissed me. Nice work, Mars. When all else fails, improvise.

  We stared at each other with perfectly matched glimmers of love in our eyes. For a moment, I felt sorry for him. To be Rob Mars, the ultimate leading man—it was no cakewalk. What had it been like for him to go on a real, live, unscripted date? To paraphrase Rita Hayworth, they go to bed with Captain Joe and wake up with Rob Mars. How hard was it for him to live up to his own image? So hard, apparently, that it took One Cell, ACE, and an uncredited writer to cobble together the man of my dreams.

  The Valentine’s present I had for Rob was lame. It was a ticket on the first consumer trip to outer space, with famed airline executive and adventurer Donny Bright. How can an intergalactic flight be considered lame? First of all, nobody knew for sure when the first flight would go up, so for some unstated number of years, all the ticket meant was that Rob would be invited to “astronaut training” and other pseudo-events, any of which a person like Rob could already go to without a ticket, and none of which Rob would bother to attend. Also, it was a little too obvious. What do you get the man who has everything? A trip to outer space. Here’s a theoretical trip to the moon that I bought you with your money. Happy Valentine’s Day, honey.

  Rob had a gift for me, too. I’d forgotten about the poster, the artistic image of Cap and Leo hidden back in Bluebeard’s chamber that I’d assumed would be my gift. I didn’t remember it until Rob ran to the hall closet and came back with a bulky form that was most decidedly not a poster. It turned out to be . . . a saddle.

  “Her name is Astra, and she’s a beaut,” he said. “She’s waiting for you in Aspen. Want to go see her? Right after the premiere?”

  A horse. Great. But whatever had happened to that photo of the boys? Rob had never given it to me. It was perplexing.

  I remember what I wore to the premiere: a gauzy but demure black gown that my friend Saskia Goldman had designed for me. We’d spent New Year’s Eve at David and Saskia’s chalet in Gstaad. While her three girls and my boys learned to ski, Saskia and I drank hot toddies in the lodge and she sketched out a line I wanted all for myself.

  Now, along with the new bangs style that would be dubbed “the Lizzie Pepper” and would make every morning a hell of straightening irons and despair, I was wearing her first creation, understated and elegant, which got so much attention that Saskia started talking seriously about launching her line with me as its model.

  I sat in the theater next to Rob, watching him up onscreen. There he was, carrying a briefcase full of stolen cash through the narrow streets of what was supposed to be Berlin but was really Prague, a confident smile on his face. And there he was, shirtless and sweaty, ruthlessly executing the woman who betrayed him (take that, Wendy Jones!). I’d once found it sexy to see him up there, knowing that later that hero would lie next to me in the flesh, a three-dimensional man whose heart would pound next to mine.

  But this time, as I watched The Search for Helen Grant, the movie that would be hailed as “Mars at his sublime, flawless best,” I didn’t feel the inner glow of secret, private connection. There was no intimacy. That larger-than-life man up on the silver screen was all I had.

  There was an incident when we came out of the theater. Somehow a woman in a wheelchair pushed her way under the barricade and rolled to a standstill in front of us. Security was on her right away—it wasn’t the first time this had happened—but Rob put up his hand to stop them. “Give us a minute, okay?” Then he turned to the woman, stooping down so they were face-to-face. “You’re pretty determined,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I need your help,” the woman said. Her face was soft, grandmotherly. In spite of her behavior, when she spoke she didn’t seem crazy.

  “What can I do for you?” Rob asked. “Do you want a signature?”

  “My name
is Sandy,” she said. “My son is missing in Iraq. Can you say a prayer with me?”

  I’d seen this before. When confronted with Son of God fanatics, mostly Rob said, “Glad you liked the movie,” or “Not performing miracles today!” and ducked away. But to my horror he now put his hands on Sandy’s head, closed his eyes, and mouthed a prayer. Then he bent down, and whispered something in her ear. A radiant smile spread across her face, and she looked up at him, her eyes glistening. Wow, this one was straight out of central casting.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. Then, in front of every entertainment news camera in the entire city of New York, she announced, “My son is coming home! It’s a miracle.”

  Yeah, so that happened. My husband: Once he locked into a part, he was in for the duration.

  Late that night, after Rob was asleep, I went out to the backyard to smoke a cigarette. I’d been craving a smoke for a long time, but I refused to buy cigarettes. Earlier that evening I’d noticed a pack in the powder room and pinched one. It was my first cigarette in years, and it tasted like dirt, but it took me back. Back to my single days, when I made my own mistakes, and no one gave a shit. Now everything I did was watched—either by the outside world or our zealous staff—everything was perfect, and I was utterly lost. The life that seemed too good to be true was, in fact, too good to be true.

  I’d thought I was learning the ropes of Rob’s complicated life, compromising to show my gratitude and love, getting used to being a wife and a mother. But all I’d really learned was to bury my head in the sand.

  The red tip of my cigarette glowed in the darkness, moving closer with every inhalation. Rob Mars’s perfect wife blackens her lungs. Take that, world, I thought, I’m not perfect after all. I never wanted to be. The perfect Elizabeth Pepper was Doug Pepper’s creation and Rob’s ideal mate. But I was Lizzie Pepper. Irreverent, sometimes cynical, but always true to my own ideals.