The Actress: A Novel (18 page)

5

After the newlyweds returned to L.A., they were eating dinner one night when Steven wiped both corners of his mouth and said Edward Rosenman had been nagging him about a postnup. Maddy shuddered, remembering Sharoz’s warning. They had just spent a week at the Ritz, mostly staying inside the room, and Steven had been so warm, so gallant. Now he was talking about this cold, ugly document.

“Those are for people who don’t love each other,” she said. “People who are using each other.” She had lost her appetite and pushed her lamb away.

“I’ve always felt the same way. I told Edward I had no interest in it. I said I was going to be with you until death and knew you weren’t marrying me for money.”

“Of course I’m not marrying you for money. How could anyone think that?”

“Because there’s such a discrepancy between us, in terms of earning, he thought it was a good idea to put some stuff on paper. He keeps saying it’s good for both of us.”

“No, it’s not. It would be good for you. Don’t you trust me? I would never try to take you to the bank. Never. Even if you got tired of me one day.”

“I’ll never be tired of you,” he said, placing his palm on her neck. “But what you just said isn’t true. These agreements actually protect both people. Someday you’re going to be making more than I am. I really believe that. I’ll be old and poor and unemployed. You don’t want to protect the money you’ll make when you get really famous? You want me to come after it?”

“Yes, if you were unemployed,” she said. “I’d let you have it.” She shook her head at the ridiculousness of the conversation. How could they be thinking about the end of a marriage when it had just begun? “I don’t want to think about any of that stuff. I’m in love with you. I’ll never leave you.”

“If you don’t want to do it, we don’t have to,” he said. “That’s what I told Edward. In the end, it’s up to us.”

But later that night, awake in bed, she found herself worrying. Though she wasn’t some chippie after his money, she liked the idea of protecting herself as a creator, an earner, an artist in her own right. A few days later, she made some phone calls and spoke with a family lawyer, a pretty, middle-aged woman who had photos of her kids and husband. Lisa Burns Miller. She said, “You have just married someone who has a lot more money than you do. If you had called me earlier, I would have recommended a prenup, but at least this way you’ll have something. You need to protect yourself.”

“From what?”

“From a marriage that leaves you with nothing.”

“But I don’t want his money. And it’s not going to end.”

“What if you have children and you stop working to care for them, so he can make movies, and your earnings go down and then it’s hard to work? Wouldn’t you want to be compensated for that? You know how brutal your industry is on women. A postnup doesn’t mean you’re planning to divorce. It means you two are being mature adults who have a plan for if things change between you. No one can be certain of anything in life.”

With a large dose of ambivalence, Maddy retained her, and over the course of a week, Lisa and a matrimonial lawyer hired by Steven went back and forth, negotiating language. The basics were: In the first year, only ten percent of Steven’s wealth was community property, but each year it bumped up, until after ten years, it was a hundred percent community. Maddy’s income would never be considered community even if she became wealthy, and it didn’t get factored in to compute support. If they divorced, she would get $1 million a year of spousal support for each year they were married, and $50,000 a month of support per child, which would be adjusted according to the visitation schedule.

The day they went in to sign the documents, there were video cameras set up in the attorney’s office. Her lawyer said they were for documentation, to show that there was no duress, but they made Maddy feel like the whole thing was a grand performance. After they finished, she cried in the elevator.

“Don’t feel badly about this,” he said. “We decided this together. It makes us stronger.”

“I know, but I don’t ever want to look at those papers again,” she said.

“We don’t have to. Not once. I love you so much more that you did this.”

“Why?”

“Because it means you believe in yourself as much as I believe in you,” he said, and they walked in the bright sunlight from the building to the car.

O
ne of the biggest social events of the L.A. fall season was the World Children’s Welfare ball. The guests were a combination of star-studded Hollywood and charity circuit: Steven always insisted that the key to progressivism was to make it sexy. He was devoted to doing his part to eradicate poverty, both domestic and international, and through his fame, he had gotten a number of young actresses and actors involved with WCW.

The ball was at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The newlyweds shared a table with Terry and Ananda, Bridget, and others in Steven’s circle. Steven was shooting a remake of
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
, and Maddy had begun production on
Line Drive,
about the relationship between an Iowan sportswriter father and his daughter. It was strange to make all these movies that no one would see for close to a year, which was why she was looking forward to the release of
I Used to Know Her
in October. Dan would be there, and Kira, though Maddy was more nervous about seeing Kira. She and Dan emailed from time to time and she considered him a friend.

The live auction was interminable, the auctioneer making entertainment-industry jokes, testosterone-jawed men in tuxes drunkenly raising paddles as their wives hooted. Forty-five minutes in, Maddy excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.

She passed women doing their lipstick at the mirror and adjusting
the implants in their redundant bras. “I was just talking about it with my shrink,” a platinum blonde was saying to a friend, “and I finally get that my father’s money issues come from his Jainism and his age.”

Maddy went into one of the stalls, and when she emerged to wash her hands, she noticed that someone was next to her. A woman. Staring at her in the mirror.

Julia Hanson. From the billboards. She was striking, with shiny dark hair, and she wore a high-necked burgundy gown and long diamond earrings. She was more beautiful than Maddy had thought, and there was something overly and frighteningly intense about her.

“You’re the new wife,” Julia said.

“I . . .”

“Are you lonely yet?”

Maddy looked at Julia’s reflection and said, “I don’t think I—”

“When I look back, I remember the loneliness. During his sailing trips on
Jo
. The guys’ nights. Whenever he was off with Alex.”

“Who’s Alex?” Maddy asked, unable to stop herself.

“From the theater. The repertory company.”

Maddy had never heard Steven mention an Alex from the Duse. She didn’t want to know about this person, didn’t want to know the details of Steven’s time with Julia and why it had gone wrong. She thought about the postnup and felt she had been wrong to sign it. Julia seemed cynical about marriage and Maddy had signed a document outlining what she would get if it ended.

“I have to go,” Maddy said. Why were they the only two in the ladies’ room? There had been half a dozen women a few moments ago.

“He needs you more than he needed me,” Julia said. “Because he’s older. It was time. The entertainment community is so narrow-minded. He must have felt pressure. He’ll say you’re his one true love. But you can’t be. Alex was the only person he ever really loved.”

Alex
. Why, oh why, did it have to be a name like that and not Janine or Melissa?

“What do you mean by that?” Maddy asked hoarsely.

“The one he still dreams of years later. The one he can’t get out of his head no matter how hard he tries. We all have someone like that.”

Maddy went to the door and Julia followed quickly, gripping her arm. Maddy could feel her nails digging into the flesh. “I hear you’re very good,” Julia said. “Keep working. Even when he tells you that you should be home. He calls himself a feminist, but it’s a lie. I’ve never met a man who hated women more. And I’ve lived in Los Angeles twenty-five years.”

Instead of returning to her table, Maddy made a long circuit around the room. She scanned the crowd for Julia, but didn’t see her. She had disappeared among the throng or left. Feeling faint, Maddy stopped at one of the bars and drank a glass of water slowly, as the auctioneer sold a kiss from a premium-cable star.

She walked slowly back to the table so her breathing would return to normal by the time she arrived, but when she reached for her wineglass, she saw that her hand was shaking. “Everything okay?” Steven whispered, squeezing her tightly.

“Fine,” she said, and took a large swig.

W
hen they got back to Hancock Park, Steven went to bed, and Maddy went into her study and closed the door. On her laptop, she began to type: “Alex Duse Repertory Company Steven Woyceck.” Without pressing enter, she moved the mouse over to the images tab. Then she stopped herself.

Even if Alex from the theater was a man, what did it matter? Steven had been in the company in the mid-’80s. Even if there was some man back then, it didn’t mean they were in touch now. Steven had married her. He was capable of getting hard, fucking her, and ejaculating in her night after night. Why make herself paranoid? Julia had probably wanted her to do just this, had wanted to sully Maddy’s marriage because she was jealous.

He was sleeping when Maddy went back in the bedroom. He often got bone-tired after these balls and charity events, where he was always drinking whiskey, and fell asleep as soon as they returned. Sometimes they would make love in the morning, after he had showered. He said he was more of a morning person.

She reached for him, wanting to feel close, to feel his body near hers.
His skin grew warmer. She kissed his chest, his belly. Moved down below his navel and took him in her mouth. She felt it get big inside her, big because of what she was doing. She waited for him to stop her and pull her on top of him, but instead he held her hair and moaned and she let him, and as she bobbed above him, his eyes closed. She rose up and down and realized she was sore on her upper arm. She couldn’t figure out what it was from until she remembered that it was the spot Julia had grabbed.

I
n the morning, Steven left before she awoke. She had a late call time that day, ten
A.M.
, a blessing because she wanted to be alone. She went down to the kitchen, drank a smoothie standing up, then went to his study. She had not gone in since before England, before the wedding, but she felt there was a connection between her talk with Julia and that open drawer. She darted in and shut the door swiftly behind her. The room was flooded with light; he had left the drapes open.

The key was still wedged in behind the photo of his mother, and Maddy’s fingers trembled as she used it to open the bottom desk drawer. Inside were the folders, but behind them, this time, was a wooden box. So there
had
been something that night he was talking on the phone. She shoved the folders forward with her hand and lifted the box. It had a treble clef painted on it. It was ugly and looked like the kind of thing he would laugh at if he saw it at a store.

She lifted the lid. Inside was a sterling silver man’s ring in the shape of a greyhound dog; a note on a napkin that said “Went to watch the sun rise”; and a weathered, glossy, three-by-five photo. It showed Steven and a handsome, tan, blond man, both in their twenties. They were carefree, the wind in their hair, and they were on
Jo,
she recognized immediately. The man was looking at the camera and Steven was looking at him, an arm draped casually around him. The date on the back said August 1986. She flipped it over. Steven’s eyes hypnotized her. Dancing and full. What kind of man named his boat after Jo Van Fleet?

She wondered if Steven thought of that hairless youthful body when he was in bed with her, that strong jaw, those noble cheeks. Maybe they
were just friends, it was too hard to tell from a photo. Maybe she was connecting dots she wasn’t supposed to.

She put back the items, replaced the box in the drawer, closed and locked it, and stashed the key behind the photo. She went to one of the windows. She could see a hint of her reflection, the pool and the azalea bushes beyond. She stared at her face and said, “Don’t be homophobic.”

Of course the blond boy had been his lover. He had to be.

So long ago. It didn’t mean Steven was gay. Dan had done a circle jerk at Jewish summer camp where they raced to see who could come first; that was about as homo as you could get.

It would be unusual if Steven
hadn’t
had same-sex experiences. He was an actor, after all, and half the men in her grad school had been gay. But in bed in London, during that awful time, he had said, “It’s not my thing.”

She stepped away from the window to the middle of the room, imagining what it was like to work in here, read in here, think in here. To be Steven Weller. The Steven Weller who talked on the phone late at night to his staff, or maybe not his staff but exes and friends she had never met. The Steven Weller who read classic literature, or pretended to, who displayed books like trophies, none of them dog-eared or stained by use.

She stared at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The Henry James books were arranged alphabetically. She stopped at
The Ambassadors,
remembering the first boat ride in Venice when he had said it was his favorite book. She flipped open the cover, and the book opened to the title page. “Steve—Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. Love always, Alex.”

The room felt chilly, like a morgue. The phrase had sounded strange when he’d said it in their bed in Regent’s Park, but she had never asked him. If only she had started her James education with
The Ambassadors
and not
The Portrait of a Lady
. She would have recognized those words when he spoke them. And then she would have known.

Alex loved these words and Steven had recycled them to propose to her. It was Alex whom he loved, Alex whom he loved still, Alex to whom he had wanted to propose. Whether a man or a woman, the man in the photo or another, there was someone in Steven’s past whose love coursed
through him and governed everything he did. Someone she could never replace, a Rebecca de Winter. She replaced the book on the shelf and fled from the room as though from a fire.