Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper (25 page)

Rob scooped up Cap. “Come on, Cap, Mama wants you to see a doctor.”

“Noooo,” Cap wailed. He was thinking shots.

“Noooo,” Leo wailed. “I want to come with you. See the ambulance!”

Cap wailed through the car ride, and through our arrival at the emergency room. I was vaguely aware that we drove to a side door, and Lewis went in first—apparently, even in an emergency, there were still measures to be taken—and we were immediately led to a back room.

We sat there for a half hour, Cap finally sleeping on my shoulder, and Rob growing increasingly impatient. At last, a nurse stuck her head in and said, “It’s going to be a while. There was a multi-motorcycle accident on the PCH. We’re really busy.”

I could tell Rob wanted to leave. He thought Cap was fine, and he wanted to honor his commitment. “You go ahead,” I said. “I can take care of this.”

“Are you sure?” he said. After some back-and-forth, I convinced him to leave. Four long hours later, the doctor came in, diagnosed Cap with “nursemaid’s elbow” (putting the blame squarely on the “nursemaid,” who in this case was Rob), and gently slipped the ligament back into place. Rob had never said out loud that he thought I was overreacting, but I felt slightly vindicated.

Rob was already asleep when we got home. He woke when I came in, and after he checked on Cap, I told him that the doctor had said that he shouldn’t spin the boys around that way again, especially Cap, whose elbow was now vulnerable to reinjury.

“You told the doctor how it happened? That I was the one spinning him?”

I nodded.

Rob looked irritated. “You just gotta be more careful with that stuff, Elizabeth.”

I
had to be more careful.

Having Rob spend more time at home was all I wanted, but his presence felt like a disruption. We hadn’t established a rhythm as parents, and now he felt like an extra in my life with the boys.

We finished all our summer travels and the boys started daycare again. One night that fall, Rob looked across at me in bed. I was reading a pile of crappy screenplays, discarding most of them after ten pages. He said, “Maybe you should look at some of my scripts? I’ve got hundreds piled up. You never know.”

One wall of Rob’s office was a built-in bookshelf stacked with scripts sorted by categories: action, drama, rom-com, director, other. Over the next few weeks I went through the dramas systematically, pulling out stacks of fifty at a time, sorting out any that were already in production or looked dreadful. I read the first act of each, reading further only if I was interested.

It was just after Thanksgiving—right before Rob was due to leave for a five-month shoot in Turkey—when I decided to take a break from the dramas (How many corrupt-major-institution-overturned-by-wily-male-hero scripts can one woman endure?) and started to flip through the most intriguing category—“other.” Other. It was what I wanted. Something that defied category. Something I’d never seen before. Something weird, challenging, crazy.

As they say, be careful what you wish for.

I
t didn’t have a sky blue cover, but it was in script form. There were six or seven binder clips of pages, and they were all held together by a rubber band. The cover page read “First Dates.” It sounded like a romantic comedy—not what I was looking for, but the opening lines caught my eye.

EXT. OUTSIDE HER HOME—DAY

He rings her doorbell, transportation at the ready.

RM

It’s me.

W

What are you doing here?

RM

Can I steal you away?

W

Where are we going?

RM

Let me surprise you. Come downstairs. Your chariot awaits.

W

But I have plans! I’m supposed to get a manicure!

RM

Cancel. I’ll wait.

Okay, this was weird. It sounded strangely similar to my first date with Rob. Maybe, I thought cynically, every first date where a man surprised a woman with a trip to a mysterious island started exactly the same way. Or maybe this script had given Rob the idea for our first date. But wasn’t that
exactly
what he’d said to me? I remembered him calling the limo a
chariot
. (Who could forget that?) Had he hired someone to turn our romance into a script?

I flipped the page. Above the lines of dialogue there was a handwritten sticky note:
As requested, the following are potential scenarios to initiate an overnight visit. I hope they’re effective!—Emil

At sunset, he takes her hands in his.

RM

I’m having an amazing time.
I can take you home whenever you want. But I want to ask you if you’re willing to stay here with me tonight.

OPTION 1

W

I would love that/Maybe.

He kisses her.

OPTION 2

W

I’m not that kind of girl/Too presumptuous.

RM

Don’t worry, you’ll have your own room. We’re not there yet. I’m very attracted to you, but I respect you too much to proceed with anything but caution.

W is impressed. She can’t believe he’s such a gentleman.

RM

You want to know what I’m really thinking?

He kisses her.

Now I was spooked. This was not a regular script. These were the
exact
lines Rob had delivered to me on our first date, and maybe to every other woman he’d dated. RM, the male lead character, was clearly Rob Mars. And W stood for “woman.” Unless it stood for my former costar Wendy Jones. Or “wacko.” What had I stumbled upon? Who was this Emil? Why was he scripting Rob’s life? My God, was speaking his own thoughts really so hard for Rob? Was it possible that my love affair with Rob Mars was all an act?

I read on. More scenarios played out on the pages, some that hadn’t ever come to fruition: The writer was not unreasonably confident that Rob Mars would score on the first date, so I learned that the morning after theoretically amazing sex, he was to say: “Whoa. I didn’t expect this to happen tonight. But, boy, am I glad it did. You look radiant. No, don’t change anything. I want to remember you exactly like this.”

I also learned that if for any reason Rob wanted to land a difficult fish (that would be me), he was to say, “I know a place where we can truly be alone. Well, except for one person. The pilot of my plane—and he’ll be otherwise occupied. When you’re up there, the city is transformed. All of us, our houses and cars, shrinking down into nothing, and what’s left, what’s really visible, is the natural beauty and man’s impact, great and destructive. It, well, it puts life in perspective.”

That I’d heard. That was the Rob I’d fallen in love with.

And after sex on the plane, which the writer didn’t even bother to pose as a hypothetical, Rob was to deliver the clincher, sweet and vulnerable.

“You know, I’ve looked down at the world from this plane hundreds of times, and every time it clears my head. But you’ve gone and made it foggy again.”

Yes, I remembered. There had been tears in his eyes. He had laughed at himself as he wiped them away. Rob deserved an Oscar for that one.

My cell phone chimed. It was lunchtime. In the butler’s pantry, Rob was making a smoothie. I had no idea how to look at him. What to say? I was in shock. I sat down in the breakfast room, and our regular chef, Elsie, put fig and goat cheese salads on the table for me and Rob. He came in with two mango-colored smoothies and handed one to me. “It has chia seeds,” he said. “For omega-3.”

“Thank you,” I said, and faked a smile. I ate as quickly as I could. I had to get out of there.

“Everything okay, Elizabeth?” Rob said. “You seem distracted.”

“No . . . I mean, yes, everything’s okay. I’m in the middle of a script . . .”

“A good one?” Rob asked.

Good? No, that wasn’t the word . . .
How could he do this to me? “They’re all the same, aren’t they? A bunch of words that some writer spewed on a page. It’s all bullshit.” I’d gone too far, but my mind was reeling with confusion and rage.

“Well, well, well.” Rob chuckled. “Someone’s turning into quite the film snob.”

I read the rest of the document with increasing dismay. Here was how Rob was to make conversation over dinner, and here was the joke he was supposed to interject if conversation ran dry. Here was an observation he could have about the texture of the walls at the restaurant we’d gone to
once. Nuggets of charm he could offer upon meeting W’s parents. Even suggestions for events still in the future, like a night spent reminiscing about our first Valentine’s Day together (“Your eyes were sparkling just like they are tonight.” Really? Had I fallen for crap like that? Gag.)

The very last lines were the hardest to read. Again, there was a sticky note from MAK, the apparent screenwriter:
Notes for if she has cold feet at wedding—Best wishes! Emil

RM

We’ll fix it, love. I know we can. If today isn’t perfect, we’ll get married again. I’ll marry you a hundred times.

Those were the words Rob had said to me on the day before our wedding, on that isolated stand on Achill Island, when I’d been so upset that my parents and Aurora weren’t at the wedding. They were the words that reassured me that I was safe and loved. The words that convinced me I was doing the right thing. The words that made every other worry and doubt fade. That was one of the most important moments in our relationship—the cornerstone—and it had been a lie.

Whenever I had doubted that I really knew my husband, I had come back to his words, the corny but heartfelt declarations of love that fell so effortlessly from his lips. They reminded me that he loved me deeply, and gave me confidence that we could weather anything. But none of it was real. I was horrified, absolutely horrified. But overshadowing the deceit and betrayal, darker and more devastating than the heartbreak, was how immeasurably sorry I felt for Rob. Was this how he always operated? On every date? In his last marriage? Was this what Lexy had been trying to
warn me about in her cryptic note? What was it all for? Maybe he did love me, in his own way, but whoever he truly was had been completely overshadowed by the heroes he played onscreen and the PR image he’d fabricated off-screen. If I gave him the benefit of the doubt, I would say that he didn’t know who he was anymore and was too scared to find out.

I had married a blank slate, a hollow man. Our love was an invention scripted by a stranger, the elusive Emil. And yet Rob was exactly who he seemed to be: the best actor in the world. In a way I understood him better than I ever had. But I didn’t love him. Not anymore. Not after this.

Worst of all, in this phony romance, I had played my part, and it was a doozy. I was the clichéd princess, swept off my feet, willing and eager to accept this faux Prince Charming at face value. I could have seen. I should have known. Rob may have commissioned this false romance, but I was complicit.

There were two days remaining before Rob left for Turkey. I’d had six months with the husband I longed to know better. Now I couldn’t bear to look at him. I climbed into bed and pretended to have a migraine until he was gone.