The Actress: A Novel (33 page)

She had been shocked and offended when Kira brought up a contract, but they did have a contract. It wasn’t written, and there was no salary, but it was a kind of agreement, in that she had let him do what he did.

She had ignored everyone’s warnings because in loving and being loved by Steven, she had been part of something huge and important. The charisma, the charm, the stories. He was like Tennessee Williams, shooting three bull’s-eyes in a row, all with his blind eye.

She wanted to believe he loved her once. Maybe he had, at the very beginning. The first year. But even after that, he kept making love to her. How was it possible? Always on, never off. In Venice, the time she conceived . . . the way he had kissed her and held her . . . It hadn’t felt like he was performing. It felt genuine. He had made love to her and put his mouth all over her, caressed her breasts, buried his nose in her, his tongue, until she came. Even if they hadn’t had sex since the baby. Was it so easy to act, to trick her into believing she was desired? There must have
been pills, though she had never seen any in his cabinet; maybe he hid them, as she had hid hers. Or maybe he used his mind. Did what gay men had been doing for centuries: closed his eyes and thought of England.

She had married someone with two selves. And like a political wife, she had looked the other way. When the gay men whispered at parties. When he went on the boat, on the trips with Terry, and alone. That time after the
Husbandry
reviews, he had asked her to come, and she had been berating herself for years for saying no, but he’d known she was working. Maybe he’d known she would decline, and had only asked so as to mislead her into trusting him.

She got off the freeway at Mulholland and headed west toward the Santa Monica Mountains. A little past Laurel Canyon, she passed an overlook. She parked the car and got out, staring down at the San Fernando Valley and the trees. She remembered the flash of the cameras in her eyes that night in Berlin, the beautiful blinding light that left spots. The feeling of being on the arm of Steven Weller . . . It wasn’t undignified. It was thrilling. As he had risen, she had risen, too. She had seen her marriage transactionally, whether or not she had known it. When Steven took her hand on that press line, she told herself it was an act of generosity, and to some extent it was. But he had been claiming her, announcing that they were together, before she got a chance to decide. And she had let him. She had wanted to be claimed.

She remembered glancing at Bridget and seeing the look she’d shared with Steven. It was some kind of signal. The ever so slight nod of approval. Maddy had read it as a nod about her career, her future stardom. But perhaps it had been something else.

Bridget had managed the marriage. She had been with the two of them all along, she had been at the first party at Mile’s End. She’d seen the movie and made sure Steven did.

Every major actress in Hollywood has read for her, but none was
right.
As though major actresses, far more accomplished and with better résumés, had been unsuitable for Ellie. Or maybe they were right for Ellie but not for Steven. Lael had said she had flown all the way to London and never read her scenes.

They were casting for something more than a movie. The marriage
was a script. A script that Walter, Bridget, and Steven had written together. They delivered it flawlessly, they were all off-book.

When Walter had told her she was cast during the dinner at Locanda Cipriani, he’d said it as though it were a foregone conclusion. Bridget and Steven had chosen her for a far more important role than she had thought. Her marriage had been made. Everyone had known it but the bride.

4

When Steven finally came in after three days and three nights, tan, his hair a tousled mess, Maddy was on the living room couch, her knees folded beneath her. Jake was upstairs napping. Lucia was out running errands.

Steven looked like he had been running a marathon. He sat in the armchair across from her, an Ed Ruscha behind his head. An eerie grid of L.A. lights. It had been in the study in the mansion, and now it was in their living room.

“I talked to Ryan,” she said, “and I know.” He said nothing, merely staring sadly ahead. “You were making love with him when I was having Jake, and you turned the radio off so you could. I needed you, and you sailed away.”

“I was afraid of the future.”

“You’re a phony. You always loved men. You cast me. You and Bridget. You never loved me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Are you just going to keep lying and lying? There’s no point anymore.”

“I did love you. At first . . . at the beginning, it was Bridget’s idea. She was worried about those rumors. Felt I needed to do something. She thought marriage would be a good idea, to the right woman. And then when I got to know you, I believed we could— You were so beautiful and smart. I saw you as an equal. You were my partner. In life and art. I watched you work and I—learned things. You made me a better actor. I fell in love with you after we married. That was the great surprise.”

She stared at the grid on the Ruscha. Did he have these pieces because he liked them or because they were the kind of pieces he thought he should have? Did he know what he liked or like what he thought he should? Did he have Ruscha so he could pronounce “Ruscha”?

Steven Weller was interesting, not interested.

Everything in this house was a sham. He was like those
faux marbre
columns she had hated so much in the mansion. He was a gay boy from Kenosha who had transformed himself into Hollywood’s sexiest leading man, from Steven Woyceck to Steven Weller. She didn’t know Steven Woyceck. Maybe Ryan did.

Maybe Steven Woyceck didn’t care for Henry James and pretended to only because Alex had. Alex Pattison had seemed comfortable with himself; whatever taste he had was his own. Maybe Steven Woyceck didn’t even like to read. Maybe he had faked his interest in art and literature all his life to make himself seem smarter and more cultured than he was.

“Don’t say you loved me,” she said. “If you did, you wouldn’t have betrayed me.”

“But I do love you. I wanted it to be enough. I kept thinking, hoping, that I had changed. It happens. For thirty years you think one thing about yourself, and then you meet someone and you become someone else. But no matter how much I loved you, there was this longing for something different. So I tried to be two people at once. I had my . . . other world, and I had you. I told myself that with men, it was transactional. Physical. Scratching an itch. Sometimes I could believe it. But it became harder. To keep lying and lying. Each time I took out
Jo
, I would say it was the last time, but it never was. You don’t know what it’s like to have to hide all the time.”

“You ruined my life. At our wedding, you vowed you would be true to me and loyal.”

“I kept thinking I could get control over it. When I met Ryan, it was confusing. It was different from the other times.”

“Ryan said you told him sex with me disgusts you.”

“I never said that. I never spoke that way about you, Maddy!”

She didn’t know what to believe. She trusted Steven even less than she trusted Ryan Costello. “What about Terry? Was he your lover, too?”

“Never.”

“You were with him on that trip to Cabo after your bad reviews.”

He shook his head. “That was someone else.”

“Who? Actually, don’t tell me. What if I had called Terry or Ananda to check on you?”

“They always had instructions.”

“So they know.”

“They love me. And they understand that this part of me doesn’t have to do with what I feel for you.”

“They were at our wedding. They were in on this, and she pretended she was so happy for me.”

“I told them it’s an addiction. It
is
an addiction. I keep trying to fix it, but—”

“That guy, Christian Bernard from the old yacht club. You
did
have an affair with him, and you did coke and poppers and all the stuff the story said you did. Even though you say you hate drugs.” His shoulders slumped. “I did those appearances to defend you, and it was true all along. I asked you to tell me the truth, and you looked right into my eyes and lied to me.”

He said nothing. She remembered the blue dress she had worn to
Harry,
the roaring elation of the crowd when she’d said he was the best lover she’d had. She had been an actress for her husband, and she had been good at it. Bridget had plucked her for that very reason. “You made a fool of me!”

“I didn’t want any of it to be true. No one knows, Maddy. You did such a good job. You changed the tide.” He sat next to her on the couch and put his arm around her, but she shrugged it off.

“Who are you?” she said. “Do you know?”

“Sometimes I think I do.”

“Do you even like Biedermeier? Did you ever read Nelson Algren, or do you just quote him?”

“Of course I’ve read Algren.”

“Why do you keep a photo of Alex in a box in your drawer?”

He looked as though he was about to protest, to attack her for snooping, but he must have seen something in her face. He couldn’t manipu
late her anymore. And then he seemed to give up. “I have my things. I had a life before you.”

“You think that if you keep a part of yourself in a box, then it’s not really who you are, but that’s not true. Who took the picture of you on that boat?”

“Bridget. We were all on it together.”

“So she knew.”

“She thought Alex and I were friends.”

“It’s not possible. She must have seen the way you . . . She knew. It’s why she wanted you to have a wife. So she went and found a director she could manipulate. She knew Walter needed her, wanted his work to reach a larger audience. You used me. You had me sign the postnup because you knew one day you would be done with me, and you wanted to protect your money. I had an expiration date from the very beginning.”

“Maddy,” Steven said. “When I married you, I
wanted
it to be forever. It was Bridget who suggested the postnup. I didn’t care about the money. I was prepared to give you whatever you wanted if it didn’t work out, because I wanted it to work out. I love you. And I love Jake. The sex with you . . . It wasn’t fake. We could have more children. We can make this work.”

“You’re just saying that because Ryan broke up with you. You’re crawling back to me, but only because he’s through with you. If he wanted to keep it going, it would go on and on like this. You would play with Jake in the house, be the all-star father, and then go to the guesthouse at night to be with Ryan. Where am I in that picture? Am I just Jake’s mother? Where were you the last couple of days?”

“On the boat.”

“With who?”

“No one. I was alone.”

“I don’t believe you’ve been alone on that boat once since we met.”

“This time I was. I was trying to figure out what matters. It’s you. You’re all that matters. We can stay together.”

“No, we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have no respect for you anymore.”

Steven nodded at Maddy and went to the bookshelf, running his hands down the first editions. These were the books that Alex had read aloud to him in bed so long ago, and he had wanted to read them to Ryan, but now Ryan was gone, and he would never get the chance.

The night in the pool, when they fought, he could feel him slipping away and wanted to stop it but was angry with Ryan. For not loving him. And he yelled. Ryan had asked to crash but it turned out that he was dating someone, an architect; the guy was working on his house. Of course it was an architect. Ryan was always talking about Julius Shulman and the Stahl House and Richard Neutra, and when he read books in bed, he would put on a pair of reading glasses, though Steven tried them on once and couldn’t detect a prescription.

Steven had sneaked on the boat to see him as often as he could after
Office Mate
, but then Ryan broke it off. When he called again and wanted to see Steven just before Jake’s birth, he had been excited. Ryan loved him again. That was why he had taken Ryan on
Jo
. They had talked about their future. He said Steven’s “choice” was the problem. Steven had said that Ryan was making a choice, too, coy in interviews about his romantic life, escorting pretty young women to premieres. When Ryan said that he was just waiting for the right time to come out, Steven didn’t believe it.

Ryan said that if Steven lost the franchise, it wouldn’t matter, because he’d already made two Tommy Halls and it was dangerous to get typecast. As for Maddy, he said, “You gave her a perfect life.” Steven didn’t like discussing Maddy with Ryan. When he was with Ryan, he wanted it to be the two of them. And on the water it was. He could picture Ryan’s back as he stood out looking at the blue, so healthy and tan, two dimples on either side of the spine, above his board shorts. Now it was over and he had lost Ryan, and from the look on Maddy’s face he was about to lose her, too.

“I loved you,” Steven said in the study, turning to her.

“Did you use condoms? Have you made me sick?”

He had been waiting for this. “I’m clean, I’m careful. I never wanted to hurt you. When you got pregnant . . . I thought I could stop all of this. And I will stop. Ryan was the last. I’ll be a good husband to you. Not like before. Let’s work on this. It will be different. Better.” He went
to her and embraced her, ran his hands through her hair, began to sob. She looked at him as if he frightened her. He could see the hate in her eyes.

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.”

S
he 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.