The Actor and the Housewife (26 page)

The next morning they had a press junket, where Becky and Felix sat in a hotel room while reporter after reporter came in for private interviews, four minutes apiece. Almost every reporter asked a variation of the same three questions: “What’s the movie about? Are you two really best friends? Any funny incidents from the filming that you could share?” The first forty times Becky and Felix told the garlic and herring story, it was still mildly funny. By about Telling 53, Becky was fantasizing about
putting a spike through her own temple. Soon they gave up altogether.

Reporter: “So, what’s this movie about?”

Becky: “It’s a western . . .”

Felix: “A scifi western.”

Becky: “Yeah, that’s right, a scifi western. I play the harlot with the heart of gold.”

Felix: “And I’m an alien lawman. I wear a hat.”

Becky: “A white hat.”

Felix: “A big white hat.”

Becky: “With holes cut out for his antennae.”

Felix. “A huge white hat with holes. Also, my character doesn’t have ears.”

Becky: “Or a nose.”

Felix: “Or a nose.”

Reporter: “Um . . . are we talking about
Blind Love
?”

Becky: “Or eyes. He hasn’t got any eyes.”

Felix: “And we fall in love. But it’s doomed.”

Becky: “Because my character is a shady lady.”

Felix: “And because of my enormous white hat with holes.”

Becky ( jabbing him): “Don’t spoil the ending!”

Felix: “Right. Sorry. Forget I said anything about the hat.”

Becky: “Also, there’s a musical number.”

Felix: “Becky’s brilliant in it.”

Becky (smiling shyly): “Stop it. You steal the show with the tap dancing.”

Reporter: “Tap dancing?”

Felix: “My mum taught Little Clodders tap school. I re-create one of her signature numbers in this film. It’s quite emotional, given that my character doesn’t have any eyes.”

Becky: “Or a nose.”

Felix: “Or a nose.”

Reporter: “I see. Uh, sounds like fun. So, moving on . . . um, are you two really best friends?”

Becky and Felix: “No.”

Reporter: “Alrighty then. Um, any anecdotes you can tell us?”

Becky: “You tell it, Felix.”

Felix: “Okay, okay. There was this time when—you remember this, Becky?—when I was in my trailer and I was opening an envelope, and I got a paper cut.”

Becky: “A paper cut right on his finger! Can you imagine?”

Felix: “I had to wear a ban dage, and there I was, about to shoot another scene!”

Becky and Felix laughed heartily. They paused and looked at each other, and then broke out into a second round of guffawing.

Reporter (trying to laugh): “Wow. Such fun. Guess my time is up.”

The next reporter came in.

Next Reporter: “So, tell. What is this movie about?”

Felix: “It’s a disaster flick.”

Becky: “That’s right. I play the plucky young scientist who sees it all coming.”

Felix: “And I’m the world-weary sheriff who saves the day.”

Becky: “After he kills me with molten lava.”

Felix: “It’s irony. You don’t expect it, then,
wham
! A nice twist.”

Becky: “A disaster flick with a twist.”

Felix: “And no special effects.”

Becky: “Also, it closes with a Broadway revue.”

Celeste was true to her word, and Becky had a fabulous gown. It was black, with elbow-length straight sleeves, the neckline and skirt reminiscent of a 1950s house dress, the fabric not clingy, sparing too much detail of the shape of her hips and butt. She’d pulled her hair back in an elegant bun, wore silver hoops in her ears and new black heels, and felt as pretty as she had any right to.

She and Felix (in his five-thousand-dollar tuxedo) arrived together in a chauffered Rolls-Royce. They pulled up to the theater and someone in a headset opened the car door, muttering into the tiny microphone, “Felix Callahan is here. Repeat, Felix on the red carpet. Also his costar.”

Felix stayed in the car a moment, squeezing Becky’s hand.

Felix stayed in the car a moment, squeezing Becky’s “Did I tell you how happy I am that you’re here?”

“You did, but you can tell me again.”

“I lose myself in these things.”

“I know, sweetie.”

He smiled. “You’re not going to be able to pull off the unattractive, frumpy house wife after tonight. You look stunning.”

She was wearing a girdle. She didn’t confess this to Felix, but it should be mentioned—she was wearing a girdle.

“You look fairly photogenic yourself, Felix Callahan.”

Fans outside were screaming. Through the white noise of hollers and hoots emerged a rhythmic shout. Becky strained to understand.

“Felix, they are chanting your name.”

Felix nodded. “You see, this is exactly why I need you here.”

“To tell you what they’re chanting?”

“To laugh at it, darling. Or I might take it seriously.”

He helped her out of the Rolls. Cameras were fl ashing. Not a lot of cameras—the romantic comedy was a small release, by Hollywood’s standards, and the premiere was no circus. Still, there was a line of entertainment television reporters to pass through, and the mob of fans behind barricades.

Becky and Felix moseyed through the polite chaos, answering questions, stopping for photographs. When Celeste pulled up after the more famous of the supporting cast members, everyone wanted photographs of her with Felix, and Becky stepped back. And back. And a little farther back.

Occasionally one of the reporters would ask her, “What was it like working with Felix Callahan?”

“Splendid,” she’d say, or sometimes, “Wonderful.” She made a game of it, tapping into her mental thesaurus: “Terrific, amazing, astonishing, startling, staggering, shocking, appalling . . . also, really nice.”

Her own family arrived in a rental car at the tail-tail-tail end of the motorcade, and Becky grabbed Mike’s arm. He was wearing his best church suit, dark blue. Fiona and Polly strolled down the carpet, self-aware and trying fiercely not to grin. They were holding each other’s hands as they hadn’t since they were little girls. Hyrum and Sam ran about until a production coordinator asked Becky to rein them in. She put her arms around their shoulders and whispered promises of ice cream cones.

“Are you okay?” Mike asked.

“Oh yeah. I’d be a lot more uncomfortable if they pretended to be interested in me.”

“Really?”

She watched Felix working the crowd, shaking hands, signing autographs, posing with Celeste. “Yes, really.” She felt no desire to sign her name or (of all ridiculous things) hear it chanted. And she felt proud of him, so gallant and adored. Although she had been just a little surprised by how easily he’d let go of her arm once the cameras started fl ashing.

As if in answer to her thought, Felix rushed over. “Don’t leave me again! I’m drowning out here. I need you on my arm. Do you mind, Mike?”

ike stepped aside, taking hold of his two boys. “It’s your night. You camp girls go crazy.”

Soon the production coordinators were shooing everyone inside the theater. Felix and Becky entered last, her hand on his arm. The auditorium was filled with cast and crew, their family members, friends of the producers, big shots and their kids. And they applauded for Becky and Felix as they walked down the aisle.

“Wow,” she said. Her feet had an airy feeling, as if she were floating on the applause.

“You get used to it,” he said.

“Stop it. You can’t possibly.”

He looked around and grinned. “No, I suppose not. Not if you don’t want to.”

“I know it’s not for me, but it’s still pretty amazing.”

She waved at everyone, felt her skin shiver under the gaze of hundreds, and prayed silently, Please like the film. Please, please, please.

She’d seen the movie before at a private viewing with Wally. She thought it was funny. But would they? And was her performance wince-worthy? Did she shame Felix? Would she look bloated and unhealthy on a really big screen, like the corpse of a sea lion washed ashore? Or even a seal or otter or a smaller animal, but still bloated with the pallor of death about her? And flies too . . . flies buzzing about, angry buzzing flies laying eggs in her bloated—“What are you thinking about?” Felix whispered as the opening credits rolled.

“Flies,” she said.

“You’re imagining the whole you-as-whale-corpse thing again, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely not.” The title lit up the screen. “Sea otter.”

“Hmph.”

At the movie’s first funny incident, the audience chuckled. At the second, more chuckling, though on the laughter continuum, it was much closer to “polite” than “uncontrollable.” She gripped the arm rest to resist hiding her face in her hands.

“It’s funny,” Mike whispered from her left side. “It really is.”

She leaned over to catch sight of her kids’ faces. All four were turned up to the screen, eyes wide and serious, lips slightly parted, or in Sam’s case, mouth completely gaping. No smiling, no laughing.

Mike whispered, “But what do kids know, huh?”

“True,” she said, taking a small comfort. “Sam thinks Japan is a company that makes computer games.”

Then Felix’s character started in on the blind charade, and the chuckling turned up to a real laugh. And then they roared.

“You hear that?” she whispered to Felix. “You hear? They love you! You’re brilliant.”

Felix kept his eyes on the screen, but a small smile curled his lips. “That was really fun. Those weeks with you. Thank you.”

“Tell me I don’t look like dead beached whale. Please, just one more time and I promise I’ll never ask you again.”

“You don’t look remotely like a dead beached whale.”

“You don’t look remotely “Or sea otter?”

He studied the screen, evaluating. She elbowed him in the ribs.

In which a tabloid attacks the home front

Felix’s agent, Larry, phoned, saying he’d had inquiries about her for future projects. She declined.

“I may write more screenplays, but my acting days are done.”

She’d had a couple of funny moments in the show and otherwise played a respectable straight character to Felix’s comic genius. The kissing scene had turned out surprisingly un-wince-worthy and maybe even a little bit lovely. But if she tried any other role, acted opposite any other man, she was certain she’d fall fl at on her face. Besides, she didn’t want the actor’s life.

And after her third viewing of the movie, she was also quite happy that her real life was not a romantic comedy, a story where the first kiss reigns supreme. It had taken a year of marriage to realize marital felicity had little to do with the heart-shaking, cloud-walking craziness of falling in love. She’d had a friend, Heather, who after five years decided her marriage was belly-up, mostly because she didn’t feel that head-over-heels sensation anymore. She divorced and moved, and Becky had lost touch, but at last report, Heather was divorcing for a second time, perhaps still on her quixotic quest for permanent infatuation. Becky understood the need for a little romance reminder from time to time, to experience the thrill of it through a character on a screen or in a book. But after leaving the movie theater or putting down the novel, she always felt oh-so-glad to be Mike’s wife, even when all they did before bed was talk about how to exterminate their ant infestation.

Marriage was good. Home was best. Becky snuggled into the couch next to Sam to read another book while the tangy, garlicky scent of cooking lasagna filled the house, and felt quite certain that this was her place.

Mostly she tried to pretend the movie had never happened. That wasn’t always easy—she had been on
Oprah
after all. Some news was welcome: she had worried that the story line might off end sight-impaired communities, but Felix’s acting had pulled it through. He found the humor in the situation and pointed it at himself.

Felix warned her, “Do not read reviews. Ignore them. Avoid them. Abstain with every gram of that indomitable Mormon willpower you possess.”

For two weeks after the release Becky walked around in a brilliantly blind haze of ignorance. Then she got an e-mail from Darci, a high school acquaintance now living in Virginia:

She became aware of Polly, reading over her shoulder.

“Mom, you okay?”

“I wondered how I did. I saw myself up there and I wasn’t sure, but now I know.”

“You were really good, Mom. You really were.”

“I was ‘occasionally convincing.’ That’s not bad for a freshman effort, huh? And if I didn’t expect to be outsparkled by the likes of Stockard Channing, then I had another thing coming, indeed I did. Didn’t I? I did. Very much so.”

Polly wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders. “I love you, Mom.”

“Thanks, honey,” Becky said with a little laugh. “I shouldn’t need comfort. This is all very expected. At least my novice performance didn’t make Felix look bad. That was my only concern.” She heaved a breath. “It’s good. It is.”

It wasn’t the only hug Polly would be giving her mother in the coming weeks. It must have been a slow celebrity-news week, because a tabloid television show premiered “Exposé: The
Blind Love
Affair.”

NARRATOR

Felix Callahan and Celeste Bodine—one of Hollywood’s most glamorous couples. And one of the happiest?

Bad photo of Becky Jack, squinting in the sun.

NARRATOR

Not if she has anything to do with it. Will one woman’s secret love tear two marriages apart?

Photo of Becky and Felix on The Tonight Show, laughing with Jay Leno.

NARRATOR

Felix Callahan and Becky Jack claim they are nothing more than friends, despite having starred together in a steamy romance. But Hollywood insiders tell a different story.

TONIA JEANU

Writer for Exclusive! magazine

It’s painfully transparent that Becky Jack, a married mother of four, is very much in love with her so-called best friend Felix Callahan. She writes a screenplay about an ordinary-looking woman and a handsome man who falls completely in love with her. Is she fooling herself, or does she just think the rest of us are clueless? Is Callahan clueless too? Watch out, Celeste Bodine, or a nasty little Cinderella just might steal your husband out from under you.

NARRATOR

(mockingly)

Despite overwhelming evidence, friends of Jack refute the claims.

RUSS “THE WIG-MAKER” NIMAR

Blind Love Crew Member

Becky’s family was on set all the time. She and her husband are very close. There was never anything but a friendly relationship between Felix and Becky. Music: dramatic cello. Zoom in and move back on a copy of Blind Love script, vertigo effect.

NARRATOR

(in ominous tones)

But skeptics claim one need look no further for proof than in the screenplay itself, penned by Jack’s own hand.

A script of Arm Candy lying on a desk.

And insiders report that Jack wrote a second screenplay called Arm Candy, the story of an actor and a model who fake a relationship to increase their celebrity status.

People magazine open to a spread of Felix and Celeste under the title “Hollywood’s Hottest Couples.”

NARRATOR

Through this supposedly fictional story, was Jack actually revealing secret information about one of Hollywood’s most photographed couples? Is Felix Callahan and Celeste Bodine’s marriage a sham?

Felix and Celeste pause to be photographed on a red carpet.

NARRATOR

Is his displayed affection for his wife simply a show for the paparazzi . . .

Felix and Becky laughing together on set of Blind Love.

NARRATOR

. . . while his true love, a married woman, can remain secret?

But the hassle—the stares and the explaining, and the questions her kids faced at school . . .

Avoid the very appearance of evil, Becky thought grimly.

If she hadn’t gone and found a famous guy friend, none of those accusations would have been possible, and some mornings she believed it wasn’t worth it.

At the first Hyde family dinner after the exposé, she winced in anticipation of dark looks and
I-told-you-sos
, but surprisingly, her siblings took up verbal pitchforks.

“I can’t believe those unscrupulous bottom-feeders!” Jerry slammed his fist into his hand. “It’s all a bunch of lies. Boy, it makes me want to—”

“You’d already written
Arm Candy
when you met Felix,” her sister, Diana, said. “They don’t even check facts, do they? It’s unethical.”

“And
Blind Love
too,” said John’s wife, Laurie. “Didn’t you come up with that premise years ago?”

“Yeah, I remember that one from when we used to play Original Movie Plot on road trips,” Greg said.

“They were too caught up in their splash titles and thrumming music to actually investigate,” Ryan said.

“I’m writing a letter to the show, and the network,” said Diana.

“So am I,” her father said. “They owe you an apology, Becky, and a retraction at the very least.”

“How dare they?” Jerry hit his fist against his hand. “It makes me want to—”

“You don’t deserve this, sweetheart.” Becky’s mom wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

“
They’ll
be sorry,” said Jerry, who had never hit anyone in his life and still held the record for the fewest fouls committed in Davis High basketball history. “They attacked you. It’s slander. And it makes me want to—”

“You should sue,” Greg said, who had taken the LSAT before deciding to work in landscaping. “You should sue them to kingdom come.”

Becky wasn’t the litigious type, and suing sounded less a panacea and more like a fine way of protracting the ugliness. Besides, the ickiness that poured from that exposé and stuck to her was abating. Her family was on her side.

“Hey, Jerry.” She sidled up to him in their mother’s bright yellow kitchen as he refilled his ice cream bowl. “So, what changed?”

He looked at her with those wide open eyes, his stare as befuddled as always, then the blinking started, and she knew he understood. “I ran into someone the other day—Augie Beuter.”

“Augie! How is he?”

“Fine, I guess. He’s got three kids; they’re living in Draper. I hadn’t seen him in years, then our families ended up seated next to each other at the BYU game. Anyway, I was remembering you and him in high school. We all thought that you really were secretly . . . you know . . . for each other and would end up married. But you didn’t. You knew all along. It wasn’t that kind of a thing—you two really were just friends. How come you didn’t stay friends?”

She shrugged. “His girlfriend Jen—now his wife—she was uncomfortable with me. And I was head over heels for Mike and didn’t want any reason to scare him away. And that was it. I missed Augie for a long time and I felt guilty about missing him. But I don’t regret it. At the time, backing away and giving our spouses more space in our lives felt like the right thing to do.”

Jerry’s eyes were blinking rapidly, then they stuttered to a stop. “And Felix?”

“I’m going with my gut. This time I don’t have to lose my Augie.”

Jerry swatted her on the shoulder. “Okay then, Bec. And if you need some muscle to take out those tabloid folk . . .” He brandished an ice-cream-stained fist as he walked away.

“Thanks, Jerry.”

In grade school, all he’d had to do was stand behind her to scare away those meanie kids. She wasn’t sure Jerry’s potbelly and dumbfounded expression would have the same effect on cable channel corporate lawyers, but it was nice to know she had an ally.

“Tom Cruise.” The whisper was sudden in Becky’s ear. Becky startled. It was Diana.

“Tom Cruise. That’s who it would be for me. Not the real Tom Cruise—I mean, I don’t know if I’d actually like him in person or if we’d have anything in common. But that face . . .”