by Amy Sohn
“The scale doesn’t matter. You’re making your own stuff again, like you were when I met you. And it’s going well. If the next one does even a little bit of business, then they’ll give you the money to do a third and a fourth, and you can keep working like that until you’re old.”
“Or until they don’t want to finance me anymore.”
“That won’t happen. People will keep paying for you to make stuff. If you asked me for help again, I would give it to you.”
He put his arm around her for a second. “Thank you,” he said.
“It’s a good investment,” she said. “Even if I didn’t like you, I’d back you. I put in twenty-five grand and got a hundred and fifty thousand back. You’re way better than the stock market.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
She panted a little as she climbed, and he asked if she wanted to stop, but she said she was fine. “So . . . are you excited to be a mom?” he asked. “I mean, is it real to you?”
“Now that the baby’s kicking, it is. But honestly, I’m just trying to write as much as I can, because once the baby’s born, I won’t be able to. It’s like this ticking clock inside of me. A good one. It’s motivating me.”
“Can I ask you something?” he said, picking up a stick and holding it out like a cane. “You got pregnant right after you started shooting Walter’s movie. And you were so passionate about that role. I know you weren’t expecting to get sick, but was the baby planned?”
“Of course it was planned,” she said. “Steven has wanted to be a father for a very long time. He’s going to be such a good dad. He’s not working the first six months. Anyway, yeah, so I thought I would be able to work through the pregnancy, but it didn’t happen. There’s no perfect time to have a baby.”
She glanced at him before striding ahead, and Dan saw that her face had closed. It was the Maddy Freed mask. He’d seen it on the red carpet for I Used to Know Her when she gave interviews and he’d seen it again when he watched those clips of her extolling her marriage on daytime, prime time, and late-night. She was a master of her craft, she knew how to appear revealing without being revealing at all. It was a skill she hadn’t had until Los Angeles.
What the real circumstances of the baby’s conception were, Dan would never know. What she truly felt about building a family with Steven Weller, who had made her so desolate two years ago, that would remain her secret, too. Whatever she felt, she was not going to share. Ahead of him, she moved up the path confidently, and from the back, she didn’t seem pregnant at all.
On March 15, the same premiere date as The Hall Fixation, Maddy and Steven attended the premiere of The Hall Surprise. They had both done a huge round of publicity leading up to it, magazine covers, dozens of junkets. In her interviews, Maddy had gushed about her turn as Faye Fontinell, a feat that took an extraordinary amount of acting. Faye had been the beginning of a string of bad luck: the unplanned pregnancy, the hyperemesis, the withdrawal from The Moon and the Stars.
On the press line for the premiere, Steven posed for pictures with his hand on her belly. She wore a red strapless maternity dress with a sweetheart neckline and empire waist and four-inch heels. Reporters asked again and again about the baby’s gender and due date, and she had to decline, politely, to answer. You couldn’t even say you didn’t know the gender, Flora had trained her, because that was too personal and the tabloids would dissect the reasons. Instead, you could say you weren’t saying.
On the carpet Maddy was aware of Bridget’s presence on the side but avoided her glance. They had not seen each other since Wilmington. On the few occasions when she came by the house to get Steven, Maddy had told him Bridget was not welcome inside.
Inside the theater, she and Steven posed by the posters. There was a little lull while he did some photos on his own, and she stepped off the carpet to watch. By the time Bridget was near, there was no escape. Maddy’s hands began to shake. She felt ridiculous for being afraid. Why should she be scared of Bridget now?
“You look gorgeous tonight,” Bridget said. “You’re radiant.”
“Thank you,” Maddy said. They stood side by side, watching Steven.
“I know you had mixed feelings about doing Faye,” Bridget said, “but I think you should be proud. And I wish you all the best in all of your endeavors.”
Before Maddy could respond, Bridget had turned to the door. The CEO and chairman of Apollo, Neil Finneran, a short, bespectacled man with a buzz cut, was coming in with his younger wife.
Inside the theater they took their reserved seats in the middle. As the lights dimmed inside the theater and the Apollo logo came on the screen, Maddy felt a rush of anxiety. The bikini scene was humiliating and the dialogue weak. Even at eight months pregnant, she felt no pride in seeing herself on the enormous screen in peak form. She didn’t like remembering that time in her marriage, when she had been so anxious that she’d taken a part she hated, rolled over when her suggested rewrites were voted down, held her tongue when the bikini got skimpier with each costume test. She had to try to forget about Faye Fontinell and focus on Lane Cromwell. Someday Lane would erase Faye.
In bed that night, Steven kissed her. It got heated—she was horny, so close to her due date, and so big that he took her from behind, on her side. She realized it was the first time they had had intercourse in over a month.
After he came, he said, “It’s going to be soon, now, huh? We’ll be a family.”
“We’re already a family.”
“You know what I mean.”
As she lay there with her hands on her enormous belly, she said, “I have something to tell you.”
“Yes, my love?” he asked, moving his hand around so he could feel the kicks, which were coming all the time now. A reminder that this baby would soon be out.
“I’m writing a screenplay.”
“Really? I’m so proud of you. I want to hear all about it.”
She told him the broad strokes of Lane’s life, and when she’d finished, he said, “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“I wanted to have something that was only mine. And I didn’t know if it would be any good. I’m going to try to set it up, and I want to act in it.”
He started to say “That’s amazing,” but his cell phone rang, and he got up and stepped out of the bedroom into the hallway.
The week after The Hall Surprise opened domestically, Neil Finneran took Bridget to lunch at Craft. The film was on track to pass all the benchmarks set by The Hall Fixation. At the table, when Neil smiled and said he had something to discuss, she got a feeling that something important was about to happen.
“Bridget,” he said. “You know I’ll be seventy in December, right?”
She had ordered a white wine and sipped it coolly, wanting to chug. “You don’t look a day over fifty, Neil.”
He smiled with his lips closed. “I’ve had a good run, and I’m proud that the Hall franchise has turned Apollo Pictures around,” he said. “I have you to thank for it. It was a little rocky there at first, but now it’s hard to remember when this wasn’t the most successful franchise in our history. I was waiting and waiting to retire at the right moment, and I feel like this is it. I was talking to Bob about how I’m ready to go, and your name was out of his mouth before I said it. You have your finger on the pulse of popular entertainment. With Steven Weller or without, you are going to be making successful movies for a very long time. I want you to take over for me.”
It was hard for her to breathe, but she was determined to stay in control. He would be watching her carefully for signs that she was overemotional.
“It’s not a hundred percent yet, but I wanted to speak to you before Bob did. Now, should we order some Prosecco?”
She would have to dismantle Ostrow Productions, of course. The hardest part would be saying goodbye to clients. But like a man who kne
w which friend he would want his wife to marry if he dropped dead, Bridget had ideas about good matches for them. If her clients had any sense, they would take her recommendations. If they didn’t, they would look back and appreciate her all the more.
She could imagine the reaction as soon as her appointment was announced. People would say Neil had done this to ensure Steven’s loyalty to the studio. They would say she had never been a real producer, merely a highly paid suck-up, and would fail as CEO and chairwoman because of that. Or that she had gotten the job because she was sleeping with Neil. Whenever a woman advanced, there was blowback. But she was prepared. She had been maligned enough that she wasn’t threatened by the prospect of cruel lies. Every time a woman took a powerful position, she was said to be fucking someone. It meant nothing. At her age, it was flattering.
She was ecstatic about the possibilities. Her slate would be twenty pictures a year. The palette, the scale! She would have to build on the success of the Tommy Hall movies, find other franchises, make the right hires, bring in more money than Neil Finneran had, merely not to look like a screwup. But she wasn’t scared. She was ready.
2
A few weeks after the premiere of The Hall Surprise, Maddy finished writing her screenplay. She emailed it to Zack, who loved it but had some notes on the character of Max Sandoval, so she spent the next few weeks revising. She had decided to title it Pinhole.
One night in May, she was sleeping next to Steven when she was awakened by Steven’s voice. He was on his phone, and though it was only ten P.M., according to the clock, she had already been asleep a few hours. He went downstairs, and when he came back, she said, “Is everything all right?”
“It was Ryan,” he said. “He’s going through a really hard time.”
“I thought you guys didn’t speak.”
“He got back in touch.” He said Ryan had done a crime picture set in 1930s Atlantic City and was upset by his poor reviews. He had gotten involved in a restaurant deal and lost a chunk of money. And his parents had just split up after forty-two years of marriage.
Maddy didn’t care what was going on in Ryan Costello’s life and wished her husband would never speak to him again. “Anyway,” Steven said, “I’ve never heard him this down before. I’m going to take him out on Jo for a couple of days next week.”
As soon as he said the name of the boat she felt a wave of nausea and her first thought was that maybe it was labor. “But I’m due in a month.”
“That’s a long time away. You’ll be fine.” He fell asleep soon after, but she stared at the ceiling a long time.
Over the next couple of nights, Maddy began to have strange dreams. Sometimes they were just old nightmares, like the car-driving dream. But others were sexual. Dan was in many of them, and old boyfriends from theater camp. Her very first make-out on top of a bunk bed. A tattooed jerk from her hallway, freshman year of Dartmouth, who had taken her virginity.
Sometimes after these dreams, when she awakened, she would notice that her panties were wet. Soaked through. She figured the erotic dreams were about the past versus the present. Stress over the change about to come. She and Steven hadn’t agreed on a boy’s name or a girl’s name, and she was anxious about it.
One morning when she woke up and came downstairs for breakfast, woozy from fitful sleep, Steven said this was the day he was taking Ryan on Jo. She hadn’t quite forgotten, but as the days had passed and he hadn’t mentioned it, she had convinced herself that he might not go.
“Look how big I am,” she said. “Do you have to leave?”
“You’re going to be fine. It’s just three days. To Catalina.”
“Do it after the baby.”
“He’s going to Vancouver for a movie, and this is the only window we both have.”
“What if something happens? At least take your phone.”
“Nothing is going to happen.”
“Fine, but will you take your phone anyway?” She gripped both of his shoulders. “Just this one time. Please.”
He kissed her gently on the mouth. “Anything for the mother of my child.”
He took off in the Mustang. The house was empty and bleak. In the morning, she ran a few errands, arriving home at one for lunch. Around three, she got drowsy. She got in bed to take a nap and dreamed that she was on Jo with Steven and the young Alex from the glossy photo. Steven was the Steven of now, but Alex was in his twenties. The men were kissing and she was yelling at them to stop, but they couldn’t hear her and went down to the cabin.
She was awakened by a sharp pain in her uterus. Not the mellow kind, like the Braxton-Hicks contractions she had felt before, but a deep, awful one, far worse than her most painful period. The sheets were sticky. She ripped off the comforter and saw a pool of yellowish liquid.
She dialed Steven on his cell, and it rang until it went to voice mail. She left a frenzied message saying she was in labor. She dialed Dr. Baker and said she thought her water had broken. Dr. Baker said to come to the hospital. Maddy called Zack and then Kira, not sure why, but wanting a woman there. Kira was strong and could help her. The Moon and the Stars didn’t matter now. Maddy left another message for Steven and then dialed Alan, who arrived in twelve minutes in the Highlander. She threw together a bag with toiletries, a few changes of clothes, and slippers before waddling out to the car.
Everything that happened in the two hours after her arrival felt like a wrong turn. The contractions were coming more strongly now, and Dr. Baker put her on an antibiotic drip to prevent infection. Then there was another drip, an IV, she heard someone say. It seemed like tubes were coming out of her everywhere, and when she moved, the drips had to move with her, and the pain, the pain, she wanted to do it naturally, she did the Lamaze breathing she had learned in class with Steven, but the pain was brutal and unfamiliar. She watched Dr. Baker watch a monitor and shake her head. “Late decel.” And the doctor was gone, returning with a nurse, who was removing one of the drips. Maddy thought that could be good, fewer drips had to be better.
“Maddy, the baby isn’t responding well to the Pitocin, and we don’t have a lot of time because your water broke.”
“Can’t I push? I want to push. I want a normal birth.”
“We have to get the baby out because of the risk of infection. We have to do a C-section. You’ll be fine. We’re going to give you a mini-prep and then we’ll go to the OR.”
“But I don’t want surgery!” she cried, suddenly afraid she might die. This wasn’t the way she had envisioned it.
“We have to take care of the baby. You’re both going to be fine.”
While she was talking, Zack had come in. His first words were “Where’s Steven?”
She shook her head violently. “He’s on the sailboat with Ryan Costello. You have to find him. Call your mother. His phone is on silent or something. Have them radio him from the yacht club. Bridget will know who to talk to. Or have them call the Coast Guard.”
“You don’t want me to stay with you?”
“I want you to bring him here.”
Zack was gone and a new nurse was in the room, a pretty Mexican girl, shaving Maddy’s pubic hair. And then she was on a gurney like in a television hospital show, and they weren’t quite running but moving her quickly, and Kira was beside her in the hallway, saying, “I got here as fast as I could.” Maddy was numb, not weeping, just thinking about the next moment, getting the baby out of her alive, there was no room to cry, this was happening, they were going to cut it out of her.
“Where’s Steven?” Kira asked.
“He’s on the boat, Zack’s trying to find him. Can you come in the operating room?” Maddy looked up pleadingly at the doctor.
“She can come in,” Dr. Baker said.
“What if something goes wrong and I don’t make it?” Maddy cried out to Kira. “I don’t want to die.”
“You’re not goin
g to die. You’re going to be fine.”
And then a nurse was guiding Kira away. They would have to put her in scrubs because it was an operating room and it would be sterile.
An Israeli anesthesiologist injected something into Maddy’s back after telling her she had to stay very still. Then she was flat on her back with her arms extended like she was being crucified. A sheet went up in front of her, held between two poles. Kira was on one side of her and the anesthesiologist was on the other. Over the curtain was the baby’s team; she wasn’t supposed to watch because her guts would come out; they’d watched a video of a C-section in Lamaze . . .
The anesthesiologist was saying something about pressure, and she could hear Dr. Baker talking on the other side, and then there was a loud, startling noise. A baby’s cry, healthy and long. Piercing the din.
“I can’t see!” Maddy cried. “I want to see my baby!”
“It’s a boy,” Kira was saying, and Maddy was crying because this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, Kira wasn’t supposed to be the one to tell her the gender, they had planned that Steven would tell her, but he wasn’t here. “He’s perfect,” Kira said.
“What’s going on? Tell me what’s happening.”
“They’re cleaning him.”
A minute later, a nurse was holding the baby, swaddled, against Maddy’s cheek, since her arms were still strapped down. She wanted to break out of the straps and touch her son. Her son and all she could do was smell him. He was tiny and scrunched, with dark hair. Blinking, dazed. Not crying anymore. He was in as much shock as she was.
She kissed his cheek, rubbed her cheek against his. Ran her lips over his hair. “I want to hold him,” she said, and she began to weep from the frustration of not being able to.
“You’ll see him very soon,” the nurse said. Maddy kissed him again, but the woman was taking him away. Dr. Baker knew she was on Zoloft, it was in her files, and Maddy had worried about the birth before, the possibility of withdrawal symptoms for the baby. Now he had been early on top of that.
