The Actress: A Novel (30 page)

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.

I
n 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.

T
he 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 knew 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.

O
ver 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 some
thing. 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 going 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.

“Kira, go with the baby,” she said. “Don’t take your eyes off him. I don’t want him to get switched.”

“Your baby is not going to get switched.”

“Just go. Make sure he’s okay.”

Maddy could hear Dr. Baker talking to the surgical assistant as she stitched her up. Something about plans for Memorial Day weekend. She couldn’t move her arms. She had given birth, and the baby was on another floor, probably, where was he? She felt a flood of grief for her mother, who had gone so early, was not here now, when she needed a mother. She missed her father, too, but it was her mother she yearned for, wanted in this room with her.

She remembered her wearing glasses in the morning, she wore glasses when she first woke up and a dark purple robe with two white stripes, and she was squatting beside her in Maddy’s bedroom in Potter so their faces were level, and she said, “Is that so?” It was all Maddy remembered, “Is that so?” and the warmth in her mother’s eyes.

All these years when people asked about her, she said she didn’t remember much, she diminished it, but this was the hole in her life, always had been. To have to learn about tampons from her father. Later, when she lost her virginity to that asshole at Dartmouth, she’d stood in the shower and
cried, feeling the burning, regretting that she had done it. She had wanted a mother then, wanted her mother to explain why it had been so awful.

And she wanted her now to tell her it would all be all right, she would get better. Just like her baby needed his mommy, she wanted hers. There was no one here to hold her. She was an orphan and she was alone and her husband had let her give birth without him.

A
recovery room. The compression boots made loud, mechanical noises as they rhythmically squeezed her calves. A nurse sat by her, watching TV. They were waiting for a complete blood count, she said; Maddy couldn’t be moved until they got it. Kira came in. She said the baby was in the NICU but looked fine. “You should go back and touch him,” Maddy said. “Don’t leave him all alone in there.”

“I feel like I should stay with you,” Kira said.

Zack came in, and Maddy shooed Kira away to the NICU. “Congratulations,” Zack said.

“Have you seen him? He’s so beautiful.”

“I came straight to you. They’re trying to get Steven on the radio. No one’s picking up.”

“What about the Coast Guard?”

“My mother tried, but they won’t send out boats because they say it’s not an emergency.”

“Your mother couldn’t convince them?”

“She’s working on it.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s born.”

Zack looked out the hospital window, feeling numb. His mother had been his first call. Five minutes passed and ten, and he called back and she said the guys at the yacht club were trying to get Steven on the radio. As soon as she told Zack, he knew. The radio was off.

“How can they not reach him?” Maddy asked. “He told me he always has it on.”

“I just don’t know,” Zack said, and felt worse than he had after telling her Kira was going to do Walter’s movie.

Maddy was pale and sad, so frail in her gown and the weird boots that
kept pumping. She looked off to the side, and then seemed to muster all her strength and said, “I had to have a C-section.”

“Look on the bright side. You get to keep your vagina nice and tight.” The nurse visibly pretended not to hear this.

“Please don’t make me laugh. My stitches will come out.” Then she started to cry.

As he put his hand on hers, he felt disgusted with Steven. Steven was a selfish prick and had been as long as Zack had known him. Zack had tried to warn Maddy in Friedenau, but it hadn’t worked, and looking at her now, he felt it was his own fault. She had been invited to that dinner party in Mile’s End only because he’d called Bridget. Maddy never would have met Steven if it weren’t for him.

This was why, when they’d walked in the cemetery, he had tried to convince her to stay away. But at that time they hadn’t been friends. He hadn’t wanted to come across as a meddler. And he had worried she would relay their conversation to his mother, who had already signed her. He had tried to warn Maddy without warning her.

So many signs over the years. From before he was old enough to know what they meant, until later, when he was.

The funny expression on his mother’s face when she would read the gossip items hinting at affairs with men. “I can promise you, Steven is not your father,” Bridget had said.

The bad first marriage and the way Steven never talked about his wife, the parade of pretty young things afterward. The women always just right. Hyper-feminine. With their fake boobs and their blowouts and their Kewpie eyes.

Zack had never known for sure, but he had ideas. One night, it must have been senior year of high school, Steven had come over late. Steven and Bridget talked for a long time; he was upset about something. After he had left, Zack went down to the kitchen to get food. His mother was alone at the table and looked sad. “Is he okay?” Zack had asked.

“He’s going through a hard time right now. Personal stuff.”

And then Zack had blurted it out: “How come he’s not married?”

“I’m not married.”

“I mean, how come he never stays with one girl?”

“Steven isn’t like other men,” she had said, and her eyes lingered on his just a beat too long.