The Actress: A Novel

by Amy Sohn

  She told him to get his things and go. He headed up the stairs to the bedroom. As he was climbing, he heard her talking and he stopped. “All these years I thought I was the better actor between us,” she said. “But I was wrong. You are.”

  She looks like a crazy woman, Bridget thought as Maddy stood over her desk at Apollo Pictures. Her hair was a mess and her face was blotchy. It was impossible to believe this was Faye Fontinell.

  “You knew he could never love me,” Maddy was saying. “And you didn’t care. You chose me. Like I was some kind of toy. To do with as you pleased.”

  Bridget was unsure how precarious the situation was. Steven had said only that they’d had a fight and he had left the house.

  She had worried that this day would come. Over the years she had imagined what might happen if his boat trips caught up with him. But as the years passed and he was safe, she came to believe that he was changing. Really changing. That was before Christian Bernard, and even then it seemed that Steven had dodged a bullet once again.

  She had to be calm and figure out what Maddy wanted. Many women thought their marriages were on the brink, but that didn’t mean they were. “I didn’t choose you,” Bridget said. “You fell in love. The two of you did that on your own.”

  “You made me think you believed in me, but all you wanted was a wife. And you’re a woman. You did this to another woman!”

  “I did believe in you. I wouldn’t have had you read for Walter if I didn’t.”

  “Walter was going to cast whoever you told him to. He was under your thumb. You were casting me for a life.”

  “Maddy, that’s not true. Dozens of actresses read for it.”

  “Lael didn’t even get to read. You left her alone in a room with Steven. That was her audition. And Taylor Yaccarino—same thing.”

  “Walter did it differently with every girl. You know he has an atypical process.”

  “I worked so hard on those scenes. Did you ever even think I was good? When you saw my screener? Or did I just fit the specifications? Did I match some character breakdown in your mind? The Perfect Wife?”

  Of course it had been more complicated than that. When it came to Steven, nothing had been explicit. As long as Bridget had known him, as close as they were. To some extent he had always been unknowable, which was what made their relationship work so well. She saw the brand and only occasionally the man. In that way, she was like his audience. It helped her imagine the character they wanted on the screen.

  She had wondered, suspected, from the very beginning. But she had looked the other way and seen what she needed to see. In the mid-’80s, after she signed him, when he was still at the repertory company, he would bring around “friends.” There were glances, touches, but how could she know? Actors and their games. Young men working for no money to live out their dreams, rooming in close quarters. Later she had wondered about Terry McCarthy, but Terry got married and had children and she put that theory to rest.

  There had been one boy, the night she met Steven at the sports bar after Bus Stop. He’d stayed later than the rest, and she thought she picked up on something, glances, mostly from him to Steven. Alex, his name was. After Steven started making a little money and bought the boat, the three of them had gone out on it a couple of times. The men gave her the main cabin. They slept in bunk beds in the other cabin. She didn’t question it, not then. Though the Alex fellow seemed effeminate, she guessed it was unrequited.

  She had been rising as an agent, she knew it would be complicated for Steven if . . . And then he married Julia, and after they divorced, he wouldn’t talk about it. From then on it was always beautiful women, maybe too beautiful, but Steven was good-looking and people sought out their own kind. She thought the brief affairs were good for him publicity-wise, but the rumors continued, as though the serial monogamy was proof of something. And then the Internet came along and there was no way to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate news, and the bloggers, and the young generation with their constant theorizing, it was a mess. With the search fields and other people’s searches visible when you typed in your own questions, it fed on itself, became self-perpetuating. People were fascinated by the idea of someone pulling the wool over their eyes. As though every entertainer didn’t do the same thing.

  The chatter only got louder after Julia’s comeback, when the media became curious about the marriage once again, with the blog items and innuendo. Bridget didn’t like the new “standards.” The actors with wives and big broods succeeded while the single men, who drank more than was “appropriate,” and grew paunches, and stayed out an hour or two too late, weren’t taken seriously. They were seen as alcoholics, fuckups.

  So she’d thought it would be good to quiet the noise. Which was becoming a distraction. They needed a project, and then the Juhasz script landed on her desk and it seemed . . . synergistic.

  Bridget came around the desk and tried to take Maddy’s hands in hers, but the girl jerked them away. “I always thought you had talent,” Bridget said. “I never would have wanted Steven to marry a bad actress. Now, tell me what’s going on between the two of you.”

  “It’s over. I know about Ryan.”

  “You should forgive him,” Bridget said quietly.

  It was the boat that had done him in. She had hoped that it would stop when he got married, that he wouldn’t need it the way he had in the past. But he kept sailing away, and he was sailing when the baby was born, a colossal mistake. A mistake she would have told him not to make if he had consulted her. Leaving the radio off with a wife so far along? No man did that.

  “I won’t forgive him,” Maddy said. “He’s gone. This is the end.”

  “You’re crazy to end it. You have everything you could want.”

  “I don’t care about any of that,” Maddy said. She went around Bridget’s desk and sat in her big swivel chair. “I just wanted to be loved.”

  “But you are!” Bridget said, spinning to face her. “How can you think you’re not loved?”

  “He betrayed me, and you knew, and you let him!”

  “Marriage is about respect and mutual companionship. You think after five, ten, forty years together that any marriage holds because of the sex?”

  “How would you know a thing about marriage?”

  “The way you just spoke to me right now, you think you’re the first? I know the things they’ve said about me, that I’m frigid, I’m a dragon lady, I chew men up and spit them out. I’m oversexed or undersexed, I’m over the hill, I’m mannish and no one can love me. I never wanted to be talked about this way. I never wanted to be alone. I wanted to be loved, just like you did.

  “I used to think I could find a man who would be attracted to my drive, my ambition, a man evolved enough not to be threatened. I wanted to talk about my day with someone who wanted me to do well. I wanted everything you had. Have. The mutual respect, the shared interests, the family life, the loyalty, the company. The breakfast-table chatter. My home is so silent. Think of what you’ll be giving up.”

  “I don’t care. I can’t go on living a lie.” Maddy headed for the door.

  I can’t go on living a lie.

  It was clear she was angry. She might try to renegotiate the postnup, get better terms, claim she had been defrauded. Bridget didn’t know what he had admitted, and hoped he had been cautious. One thing she had taught him over the years was not to be an idiot during a crisis.

  It would be difficult enough dealing with the bad PR from a divorce. But a homosexuality-related crisis was another level of headache. She’d thought the studio was going to fire him when the dockworker came forward, and even though Edward had prevailed in the end, it had been harrowing.

  If Maddy outed Steven, it would be the end of Steven Weller as Tommy Hall. Apollo would have to let his talent option lapse. The Hall Endeavor was starting production in March in Turkey. If Maddy made
a statement, they would have to rethink everything, and they could. The movie had several explosive sex scenes between Tommy Hall and a fellow spy to be played by Taylor Yaccarino. No one would believe a gay man as a hard-drinking womanizer.

  There was a turpitude clause, but there was also employment discrimination law, and if he got lawyers on it and they tried to prove he’d been terminated because of his status, it could get costly. Gays were a protected class. Public sentiment would be on his side and not the studio’s; he could work the media. This was different from the Christian Bernard story. He could turn it into an issue of human rights. In the end she could get rid of him, but at what cost to Apollo? The pay-or-play was the least of it.

  “You’d better not say anything to the press,” Bridget said, following Maddy to the door.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” Maddy said.

  “I’ve known him a lot longer than you have,” Bridget said quietly. “If you talk, he’ll deny it. Demand proof. He’ll bring up things from your past. He told me you were on antidepressants. He’ll call you mentally unfit. It’ll be embarrassing. He’ll wage a PR war, and you know how good we are at that. It’ll affect your custody and visitation. You’d better watch your step.”

  “You’re afraid of me,” Maddy said, a wide, wondrous smile coming over her face.

  “I’m only thinking of you. And Jake. You want a relationship with your son, don’t you?”

  Maddy almost laughed. “You’ve never thought about anyone but yourself. Even Steven was just a meal ticket to you. To this. And you finally got it. The office, the nameplate. You’ve made it.”

  “Of course I care about you, and of course I care about Steven. That’s why I don’t want you to ruin his career. And you must feel some love for him. The American public isn’t ready for a gay leading man. Another ten years, maybe. A gay Steven Weller won’t work. A couple of indie wink-winks, and in ten years it’s summer stock in Coral Gables. You can’t want that. The personal life of a Hollywood star has nothing to do with his talent. But it has everything to do with his earning potential. It will harm him if you do this, as it harmed the Communists during the 1950s. You’ll see. The names that were named, they couldn’t work again. People killed themselves. Marriages were destroyed.”

  “My marriage is already destroyed.”

  “If you love Jake, you’ll keep this between you.”

  “Stop managing me. You’ve managed enough already.”

  The door closed behind Maddy with a thud. Bridget went to the desk. The swivel chair was still warm from Maddy’s body. Bridget picked up the phone and dialed. “She’s come unhinged,” she said.

  “I told you she was hurt.”

  “I thought she might say something. Issue a statement. But it’s all right. I think we’ll be okay. I put the fear of God into her.”

  He had checked in to a boutique hotel on a side street in Beverly Hills, the kind of place doyennes went to recover from face-lifts. It had a private garage and tight security.

  Steven sat on the edge of the bed, his arms resting on his knees. After all these years, Bridget still didn’t understand Maddy. Maddy wasn’t vindictive. She would not punish him. And if she really wanted out of the marriage, surely she understood that it was in her financial best interest to have an ex-husband who kept working.

  “You sound more worried about this than I am,” he said.

  “I’m concerned about the films! The next one’s worth potentially five hundred million dollars. We have to be smart about this. You need to make sure she stays quiet. Take control of your wife. You did a beautiful job with that in Venice.”

  Steven couldn’t remember a single red-carpet appearance without feeling Bridget’s breath behind him. For almost twenty-five years, she had been there. He could feel her hand resting gently on his lower back. For the shots, you always did low back, never high, so the suit didn’t wrinkle, so you didn’t look fat. Close but not too close, so people wouldn’t get the wrong idea. She had been the one to teach him where to put his hand. All the things he’d never thought about before, like how to hold your chin and your feet, and not to talk while posing because you looked stupid and they couldn’t use it. You had to help other people do their jobs while you were doing yours.

  Bridget was his partner, his wife, his counsel, his friend, his employee, all rolled into one. Her sunglasses mimicked his over the years, from the wraparounds to the mirrored aviators to the tortoiseshells. She had been his date when he had no other. His defendant and protector, back when the flacks weren’t all-powerful. She was there, hovering behind him, and even when she posed for a few obligatories, she was always looking over his shoulder, watching to see who was coming close.

  Through it, he had believed that she cared. To employ her, he’d had to believe that she wanted the best for him, not only the most money. He wasn’t so deluded as to think she was a charity worker, he knew his films had paid for her house in Brentwood, Zack’s college education and trust, her staff, her office, her cars. But even so, he had believed that her faith in him was a kind of love.

  Now it seemed like he had tricked himself, as he had tried to trick himself into being the husband Maddy wanted. After all their time together, Bridget had to know who he was. She must have understood the toll it took on him to have to lie, have to run. He was like a bank robber: He could never sit down and rest for a moment, because if he rested, that would be the moment he got caught. She had to have seen it, the exhaustion, the excuses, those hours when she was trying to close a deal and couldn’t reach him because he was on Jo.

  And yet not once in those years had she asked what it felt like.

  Another manager might have encouraged him, maybe not back in the 1990s, but later, when things began to change. Someone else might have dreamed different things for him, not bigger things but different. As important as it was to work, it was important to live. Jake had taught him that. The moment Jake first smiled at him from the crib, Steven realized that life was about so much more, more than he had thought. Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to.

  “I know you want to be smart about this,” he said. “You’ve always been the perfect manager, Bridget.” He went to the window.

  “I’ve tried to be.”

  “You know why?” he asked, placing his palm against a pane that would not open. “Because you always put Steven Weller first.”

  Steven had stepped out of his car and was coming up the pathway to the house. Normally, Maddy liked Lucia to do the hand-off, but she was sick today in bed and Maddy had been one-on-one with Jake throughout the morning. She would have to hurry if she didn’t want to be late; she was headed to Santa Monica to have lunch with the director Deborah Berenson, of Rondelay fame, to see if she was right for Pinhole.

  Maddy had been apprehensive when she first heard the name, remembering that Bridget had said she had a mixed track record. But she’d loved Rondelay, and looking back, she thought maybe Bridget had said it to prevent Maddy from wanting to be involved with the project. Maddy was excited to hear Deb’s ideas about the script.

  When Steven came face-to-face with Maddy, Jake on her hip, he looked uncomfortable. “Lucia’s sick today,” she said. “Don’t look so disappointed to see me.”

  “I’m not disappointed,” he said. “I just thought you didn’t—I thought you didn’t like to see me. Hi, Jakey!” Jake reached out, and Steven took him in his arms.

  Maddy had been living in the house with Jake for a month, but this was the first time she and Steven had been alone, without Lucia there. She couldn’t run from him forever. Dina had been telling Maddy to stop blaming herself, had told her she’d done nothing wrong. She’d reminded Maddy that the marriage had not been all bad. They had supported each other, given career advice, laughed, made Jake.

  But Jake was the reason she was so angry. Because of Jake, she could never cut her ties from Steven. Not completely. There were
no goodbyes when you shared a child.

  She had filed and served the petition for divorce earlier that week, using an attorney who had helped half a dozen high-profile Hollywood wives. Steven was using the guy who had negotiated his postnup. Her lawyer had said it would be a matter of days, not weeks, because so much had been hammered out in the postnup.

  The tabloids were going crazy for the details of the separation. There were varying reports: She had postpartum depression; Steven was on cocaine; she’d kicked him out because he missed the birth; he was sleeping with Ryan, with Billy Peck, Corinna Mestre, even Kira. Maddy had slept with Billy or Ryan or Munro Heming. Or she was having a torrid affair with Zack, which Zack said he found flattering. Journalists staked out the house and Steven’s hotel.

  She had packed Jake’s bag with a rubber giraffe toy and two wooden trucks he liked, and his lovey, a lamb blanket. It was in the kitchen, and as she turned to get it, she said, “Please, come in.”

  In the kitchen Jake, now eight months, saw his block set and squirmed in his father’s arms to be let down. Jake had Steven’s eyes. The eyes that drew you in, made you fall in love in a second. Maddy would watch him squint at something complicated or punch his toys or frown, and it was as though Steven still lived with her.

  There were times when she wished Jake had been a girl; if the baby had been a girl, she could have imagined it was hers and not his. There were times when the resemblance was so difficult, she had to turn her head away.

  Jake smashed the castle he had built, and the blocks scattered all over the floor. They laughed at the same time at his destructiveness. He was going to be all right. The divorce had happened so early that it would be all he knew: his parents separate, not together.