The Actress: A Novel (17 page)

T
he cabdriver let her off at the Curzon Mayfair. She didn’t care what she saw, she just wanted to be in the dark. They were showing
The Apartment
with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.

One of the reasons Maddy loved
The Apartment
was that it was about a person without morality finding morality. As she sat there watching the film, the first she had been to alone since before she met Steven, she imagined a life without him.

She would get through it. They would complete
Husbandry,
both of them too professional to sabotage the film because of a breakup. She would rent a modest flat, finish the shooting, and move back to New York. Or she could stay in L.A. and try to capitalize on the connections she’d made so far. It might be harder than it had been lately, as Steven Weller’s girlfriend, but it had been hard before, in New York, and she hadn’t given up. Maybe she could move back to New York.

Outside the cinema, she kept her head low and walked a few blocks unnoticed. She had turned off her phone. She went inside a pub, ordered a pint, and found a table in the back, taking a deep pull.

She wouldn’t stay with a rage-filled man. If they built a life together, inevitably, there would be disagreements, but she could not live with someone who hurled words at her unfairly, who made her feel flattened and worthless. His anger was like that lightning cloud rising above the dome in
La Tempesta
.

Maybe she had made a terrible mistake in leaving Dan for Steven. She had been so hasty to tell herself, and Irina, that it was love. It had been love, but she was also Steven’s fan, as she had been since she was a girl. Just because you admired someone didn’t mean he was your soul mate.

She bought another pint and realized she could not remember the last time she had gone to a bar and had a drink by herself. What an easy pleasure. In L.A. she was often alone at home, but rarely alone in the world.

After she finished her beers, she got the idea to go to a fancy restaurant. She took a cab and walked into one unannounced, but the hostess
recognized her right away and she was taken to a table tucked into a back corner. She had been eating carefully throughout production but one decadent meal would make no difference. She ordered a seven-course dinner that included lobster and salmon ravioli, foie gras, and suckling pig. There was beautiful deliberation in every course, and she sat and enjoyed her food and the fame by association that had allowed her to walk into a three-star Michelin restaurant without a reservation. When the meal was over, she paid with her own credit card and not Steven’s.

By the time she got back to the house, it was dark. The bedroom was empty, but the light was on in Steven’s study. She brushed her teeth, changed into an oversize New School shirt, and got under the covers.

Steven came in and lay next to her. “Where did you go?” he asked. “I was worried.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He seemed about to say something, but his face was pained and feminine and nothing came out. “I was appalled by what you did today,” she said.

“I was, too,” he said quietly.

“Even if Walter was goading you, what you did was unconscionable. He’s an old man. You’re rude and hateful. Is that who you really are?”

“No, no, it’s not.”

“You’re like a different person. You know I’m not sleeping with Billy. If I were going to cheat on you, do you think I would do it with my costar, on the set of a film we’re both in, that you’re producing?”

“I know you’re not having an affair.”

“Then why are you treating me like this? If this is what you want, some kind of sadomasochistic relationship, I’m the wrong girl for you. This doesn’t turn me on. I don’t hate myself that much.”

He nodded, sat up against the headboard, and folded his hands in his lap. “I don’t think you hate yourself at all.”

“Maybe we jumped into this whole thing too fast. We don’t really know each other.”

“Maddy,” he said, looking afraid.

“Maybe it’s better to break up now. Before it gets more complicated. I can’t be with someone who treats me like shit.”

“I don’t want you to go. I’m so sorry I’ve been cruel to you. The way
I’ve been treating you—it’s not right. Please don’t leave me. I promise you, it’s going to be different.” He was weeping, and the tears seemed so genuine and pained, it made her think the tears in
Beirut Nights
had been real, too. “I can’t lose you.”

She pitied him a bit. Who was this small, crying man? What had made him turn from a monster into a trembling boy? She couldn’t tell if he’d been acting before or was acting now, or if he knew the difference. She thought Steven Weller might be a better actor in real life than in his films.

“I want you to stop,” she said. “Be the old Steven again, the man I fell in love with.”

He kissed her face and neck. “I love you so much,” he said. “I don’t want to be like this.”

“Then stop.”

“I will. I already apologized to Walter. We had a long talk. The set’s going to be different starting tomorrow.” He took her hands. His face was close, and she could feel his warm breath in the cool room. “When those stories came out,” he said, “they made me feel like the world didn’t respect us. The papers were trying to say our relationship wasn’t real. They’ve said that about me before, about Cady and others. And maybe on some level, they were right, that I only wanted to have fun. But—I can’t have them saying it about you. It is real, what I feel about you, and I want people to know. I want everyone to know. I don’t want to be in this in-between space. I’m older than you, and I’m tired of it not being clear.”

“Tired of what not being clear?” she asked, and her hands began to shake.

“I want to live! I wasn’t living. Live all you can. It’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. You’re my life. Don’t you see?” He caressed her cheeks, his fingers behind her ears.

“See what?”

“Madeline,” he said. “I want to marry you.”

4

The Yellow Room of the Old Marylebone Town Hall was elegant and understated, with a small chandelier, marigold drapes, and a few artfully placed vases of orchids. Maddy wore a belted, off-white, flower-bedecked dress, a replica of the one Audrey Hepburn wore to the 1954 Oscars. “Maddy,” Steven was saying, slipping the ring on her finger, “as I take you to be my wife, I promise to love, honor, and respect you.” His eyes were moist, and she felt she was about to go on an incredible adventure.

She had not been certain a few weeks before, but now she was. The night of
The Apartment
, she told him she needed to think about it. He said he understood it was a big step for her, she was young, he wanted her to be certain. They made love before falling asleep in each other’s arms.

The next morning she called Irina, who told her it was a mistake. “You don’t get engaged after a fight. The fighting is a sign that something’s wrong.”

In search of a second opinion, Maddy called Sharoz, who said she should do what felt right. If she truly believed that Steven and she were meant to be together, there was no point in delaying it. Then she added, “He’s going to want a prenup, so you’d better think about whether that’s okay.” Maddy scoffed but privately worried that she was right.

Ananda McCarthy started crying as soon as Maddy told her over the phone. She said she had never seen Steven so besotted with anyone. Maddy told Ananda about the fights they’d had about Billy Peck, and Ananda was certain it was a sign that Steven loved her. She said, “He wants you to belong to him. He’s older than you. He wants a family.”

During Maddy’s breaks from shooting, she walked on the grounds of
Woodmere and tried to decide what to do. On the set, he was a different man. He became deferential to Walter, protecting him when Walter disagreed with Jimmy. When Maddy had important scenes with Billy, sexual or not, Steven didn’t come to set. On nights off, when she asked him to take her to restaurants or plays, he said yes, even though the paparazzi were always there.

She began to forgive him, began to feel that those two weeks were just a blip. And so one night, while they were making out in bed, she took his cock in her hand and said, “Yes,” and in her palm he got hard. She couldn’t believe marriage could turn a man on, and she felt all the more certain about her choice.

They went to the registry office to give their intent to marry, and found out they had to wait sixteen days before the ceremony. They picked Marylebone because it was simple and historic; Paul and Linda McCartney had married there.

Steven had his grandmother’s engagement ring shipped to England from Hancock Park, and he and Maddy went to Cartier to select bands. They had agreed to write their own vows but hadn’t shared them with each other in advance. Now, in the Yellow Room, it was real.

The only guests were Terry and Ananda McCarthy and Bridget. “I will be your partner,” Steven said, massaging her hands with his thumbs. “I will be true to you and loyal. I will care for you, laugh with you, and cry with you. I cannot wait to build a family with you. Whatever life may bring, I will be there for you. I am the song, you are the melody.”

She slipped the ring on his finger. “Steven, as I take you to be my husband, I promise to love you and take care of you. I will be kind to you and support you in your creative endeavors, your work, your art. I am your biggest fan, most loyal advocate. You are my companion, my partner.”

She thought of her father not being here to watch, not being able to witness one of the most important days of her life. The guests were all from Steven’s circle; she hadn’t been comfortable inviting Irina or Sharoz. Bridget was there for both of them, but Maddy had known her only half a year.

“I will take care of you when you are sick and cheer you on when wonderful things happen,” Maddy continued. “Whatever life may bring,
I am yours.”

Steven had wrapped a glass in cloth to represent the Jewish tradition, and with one stomp, he smashed it. The guests cheered.

As he kissed her, Maddy felt the room swirl. She was beginning her life. When someone was right for you, there was no point in waiting. She felt grateful for the strife that had come before, because it had crystallized what she felt for him, caused him to step up and be a man. In her ear, Steven whispered, “I feel like everything’s about to begin.”

B
ridget was very still as the new couple embraced. It was incredible to see the leap of faith they were taking when they had known each other only several months. Steven was stubborn and did things at his own pace. It was one of her favorite qualities about him: that he was not beholden to conventional ideas about men. It had been thrilling to see the changes in his personality, especially after he realized he might lose Maddy and became a better producer, a more attentive costar.

But in that historic room, Bridget knew her relationship with Steven had changed. They had never been deep friends but their intimacy surpassed friendship, it was a meeting of the minds, sometimes an ESP. All that would change. Maddy was the marker between the present and the future.

Bridget had never wanted to marry; as a child in 1950s Flatbush, she had been bored by her friends’ endless wedding enactments. As a teenager, she had visited Coney Island with her friends, and they’d all written with sticks in the sand their plans for their future. Every other girl wrote about the man she would marry. Bridget wrote, “I want to work.”

For almost twenty years, singlehood had been something she’d shared with Steven. “Maybe both of us were meant to live alone,” he had said after one breakup. She had been the most important woman in his life. She had even been his date when he needed one, and many times he had stepped up to assist her. Now he would no longer need her escort services. He had a booster, acting partner, and consigliere in one package.

Someday these two would have children, and Bridget would know these children forever, even if she could not say the same of Maddy. (Brid
get had been urging him to get a prenup, but he’d refused. He wanted to marry quickly, he said, and he wanted there to be no doubts. She was holding out hope for a postnup, which was better than nothing.)

She could imagine the baby’s face. A girl. The baby would be good-looking, for sure, and one of the most photographed in entertainment history. Maybe they would make Bridget a godmother and she could bring presents and take the baby to the parks, though God save anyone who mistook her for Grandma. She liked the idea of being a beneficent aunt. Not the mother. She had no desire to be a mother again.

For a while she had dreamed of another baby. When Zack was ten, she was dating a college math professor named Clark who had silver hair. He had been scarred by his divorce, and he thought Bridget was beautiful and powerful, and in bed he wanted to bury his face in her.

They dated on and off for about a year. She loved the sex, but he didn’t feel comfortable at industry events, and sometimes it was easier to leave him home. They spent much of their time together at his house, because she didn’t want Zack to get too close to a man who might not stay. And then one month her period never came. She had been forty-six. Clark wanted her to keep the baby, but by that point she had made her peace with having only Zack. It was already difficult enough to be a good manager and try to be a good mother, see his school plays, check his homework, be home in time for dinner on weeknights.

And she had been old, and she didn’t want to go through all the testing just to find out there was something wrong, then have to end it. She didn’t tell Clark until after she had gone to the doctor, after it was all over. He was stunned and hurt. “You should have talked to me,” he kept saying. They tried to make a go of it for a few more months, but when he broke it off, saying she had betrayed him, she was relieved.

So Zack had been the only, and now he was ungracious and he blamed her for his problems. It started when she changed the contingency age in the trust and now it was continuing, with his jealousy regarding her client. He avoided one-on-one time and refused to live in L.A., despite or perhaps because of the pain this caused her. If Steven and Maddy had a child, the child wouldn’t resent her. Children only resented the mother. If it was a girl, they could go out to lunch and get their hair done and
Bridget could visit her in college and tell her she could be whatever she wanted to in life.

Maddy and Steven were exiting the room. Bridget remembered the rice—she had brought rice for everyone—and she threw it at them, beaming at Terry and Ananda on the other side of the aisle. As they passed, Steven smiled at Bridget, and the smile took over his face.