Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper (20 page)

I was halfway through the document when I felt a dampness soak
through the silk taffeta of my dress. I looked down and saw a dark, wet stain spreading across my lap. I had forgotten to attach the bottles to the tubes of the breast pump. Oblivious, I’d pumped an entire feeding out onto my dress.

The yeasty smell of milk rose up, and I began to cry. This milk that soaked me was gold, the only ticket I had to making it through the ceremony without worrying that my babies would fuss. Also? My wedding dress was destroyed.

Meg found me sitting in the desk chair, naked from the waist up except for the nursing bra and those horrible plastic cones it held over my poor, abused breasts.

“I ruined the dress!” I cried. “And there’s no milk for the boys.”

Meg stared at me, taking it all in. “I really want to Instagram this moment.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “You do it, you die.”

“You’re no fun.” Coming up next to me, she fluffed the skirt of the gown. “There’s so much of this dress. Can’t we make it work?”

I sniffled. “Maybe.”

Using the nail scissors from my cosmetic kit, I carefully cut the taffeta away at the seams until all that was left was the silk underslip. I put it on. It fit me nicely, but it looked cheap and see-through. I cut the tulle petticoat in one long spiral, and draped it over and around myself, twisting it strategically into what the fashion world would call a reinvented toga. Meg helped me fasten it in place with the headpiece. My headache disappeared, and I had an excuse to pull out that horrible side bun. My hair fell down into natural, loose curls that complemented the bohemian toga. Looking in the mirror, I smiled. The perfect princess was gone, and in her place was . . . me. Together the two of us stared at my reflection.

“You know what’s crazy?” said Meg. “I like it better.”

“
Now
you can take the picture,” I told Meg, handing her my phone. “For reference. I’ll need to retie it next time I nurse.” Nursing, by the way, was how I would spend a good half of the ceremony. Not that anyone noticed.

And that is how Michael One’s creation suffered death by breast milk and why he later sued me for intellectual property theft. I thought I was doing him a favor by not associating him with my last-minute ensemble, but my refashioned dress brought several top design houses knocking at Lotus’s door, asking for me to wear their creations. Before I’d been merely a stylish celebrity. Now I’d been promoted to fashion icon.

Oh, and I never bothered to finish reading the prenup. I’d bought houses and made movies and opened bank accounts and paid taxes without reading any of the fine print. Why start now?

The media found us after all. Nobody was surprised except Bethamy, who ran around for fifteen minutes pretending that someone’s head would roll. I began to suspect Bethamy was the one getting the kickback for leaking our location.

We were supposed to eat dinner in the garden behind the castle, but the helicopters were circling overhead as if there was a murderer on the loose. Good old Bethamy had planned for this: A stand-by crew arrived to tent the back so we could at least have cocktails out there before coming inside, where it was quieter for the feast.

I peeked out the window of my room to get a look at the arriving guests. There were Rob’s parents—Liesl, whom Rob treated with more respect than love, and Alan, whose sad smile went forever unexplained. There was his brother, Scotty, with his girlfriend, Samantha (wearing white!), on his arm. Soon after Christmas there had been a swift and silent divorce.

Geoff arrived alone. His girlfriend, Patricia, was nowhere in sight. The official word was that Patricia was in Indonesia, on a mission, but there were also whispers that she had broken from Geoff and the Studio, and that one night she had disappeared and nobody had seen her since. But I didn’t have time to worry about Patricia today.

The scene was a little too familiar: a sea of camera flashes and celebrities and agents. I had to remind myself that this wasn’t a premiere, it was my wedding. Where for some reason everyone, even Celia Montbatten (God knows how she’d scored an invitation), was being subjected to a wholly undignified security check.

The day before, I’d been upset that my family and my oldest friends weren’t present, but that feeling had faded. I looked out at my new friends—
our
friends—and felt nothing but excitement for the life we would build together. Rob and I had first met a little more than a year earlier, but I had no fear about how quickly my children, my husband, and this marriage had come about. My closest family and friends had joined the press in deciding I was losing my own identity, becoming just another appendage of Rob’s. But the way I saw it, I wasn’t Daddy’s little girl anymore. This was the new me, the grown-up me. I was my own woman.

The crowd below saw me emerging and burst into applause. I posed for photos at the top of the double stairway leading down to the main hall. Rob joined me for more photos, and then he and I walked separately down the two staircases, joining where they met and continuing down the aisle together. More photos. And then, it was time.

It was “The Wedding of the Year,” as
Rounder
would dub it in a six-page spread the following week. Another overly choreographed pageant. Another tabloid grand slam, with us on the cover of all three big magazines. Lotus was thrilled.

The man at my side was the quintessential leading man. I myself had already gotten married onscreen three times. I could play this part in my
sleep. So at first, by habit, that’s what I did. I acted. Calm. Blushing. In love. When the priest spoke, I let an expression of somber piety settle on my face. Even when we kissed, I knew how to make it look cinematic and so did Rob.

But mid-kiss, something happened. Rob paused, holding me close, and I heard a small gasp. It came from me. For all the fanfare and cameras, the breast milk fiasco and guest list drama, I believed in this romance. He was my life, my love. We kissed again, through both of our tears and laughter, and, at last, we were a completely unstaged mess of
love.

T
his is what it meant to take the twins on a walk around our gated neighborhood in Brentwood. In the kitchen, Elsie, the cook, would hand me a sack of snacks. Down the hall, Meg would confirm that I’d be back within an hour for a phone call with earthCosmetics (or whomever). At the doorway, as Lala wriggled Leo’s pudgy arms into a sweater, Lewis would ask if we needed a ride. And, always, a security guard would trail us, promising to stay so far back that I’d never know he was there.

I knew.

I rarely socialized anymore, not with Rob traveling so much, but I was never alone. Everywhere I went, everything I did, was aided, managed, and observed by our staff. I started to feel more watched than protected.

During the twins’ first couple of years, Rob made three movies in a row. Spain, then Iceland, then London. Their first solid foods came from craft services. They learned to manage steps by climbing in and out of his trailer in Reykjavik. But when Leo started trying to eat pennies and pebbles off the soundstage floor and Cap began ritually throwing up on every plane ride, we retreated to Malibu, where we stayed until I got tired of pulling Leo’s sand-filled fist away from his mouth, and decamped to Brentwood.

Today Rob was in Uzbekistan, working on a stunt where he engaged an enemy on top of a moving plane at ten thousand feet. Being Rob, he was performing the stunt himself, on top of a moving plane at ten thousand feet.

Meanwhile, I was in childproofed Brentwood, playing hide-and-seek with Cap and Leo in the backyard. Leo had very specific rules he wanted me to follow. He was the only one who got to hide, and he always hid behind the same skinny jacaranda tree trunk. I’d pretend not to be able to find him, and after about thirty seconds he would come running out, yelling, “I’m
right here
, Mama!” Then he’d run right back to the same tree and yell, “Mama, find Leo
again
!” He really must have had a poor opinion of my intelligence back then. Meanwhile, Cap was going through an attachment phase. He clung to my leg the entire time, and then when Leo came running out, Cap would echo everything he said. “Mama, find Cap
again
!”

When we got tired of hide-and-seek, we made three-letter words out of alphabet blocks on the patio under the shade of the pergola.

I knew every one of the babies’ board books by heart. I’ve always been able to look at a page of a script and memorize it on sight. It’s a skill I picked up on
American Dream
. Now this ability felt like a curse, the singsong pages of
Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?
and
But Not the Hippopotamus
echoing in my head all day long. I was so immersed in babyland that once, when talking to Meg, I interrupted myself. “Plane!” I said, pointing excitedly to one flying overhead. As if Meg were a two-year-old to whom a passing plane was breaking news.

By my own choosing, my career was unofficially on hold. When I had bowed out of
Skye London
, my agent, Cherry, simply stopped calling. There was never an open discussion about what the long-term plan was or whether she was still my representative. This was how it went in Hollywood, the unspoken play of ACE and other agencies. They either called
you or they didn’t. But—just in case you became hot again—they never dropped you.

The Studio, where I’d been spending so much time before the boys were born, wasn’t the refuge I’d hoped for. There were no other babies around—sessions for children began at age six. Twice a week I slipped out of the house to practice, but my days of brunches in the courtyard and lingering after a practice to catch an interesting lecture were over.

I thought I could get involved in Rob’s project for One Cell, the New York Studio. I’ve always loved New York, and helping with the interior design of a studio that had a New York vibe sounded like it wouldn’t place inordinate demands on my already taxed attention span. One morning after Practice, I saw Rob talking with Angus Murphy, the project manager for New York. I left the boys playing on the lawn and went up to them.

“Rob has told me so much about the New York Studio,” I said.

Angus raised an eyebrow and glanced at Rob. “You don’t say?” Something passed between the two of them, an odd little nod of reassurance from Rob, as if to confirm that we had indeed talked about the project.

“I’d love to get involved, if there’s a way. I mean, I don’t know much about architecture and building, but I do like design, and there’s really nothing for me to do at Rob’s houses. They’re completely done already.”

“How wonderful,” Angus said. “We’d love your help when we get closer to that stage, right, Rob?”

“Definitely,” Rob said. “I was going to suggest it myself.”

But when would that time come? I couldn’t seem to pin them down.

There was no way I was going to keep my parents out of their grandsons’ lives for good. They had come to meet the boys on their first birthday, but my father and I kept our distance. He’d hold a baby in his arms, singing “Red River Valley” or “Shenandoah,” the songs he’d used as my lullabies.
But when his eyes caught mine, the warmth left his face and he quickly looked away. This had been our first fight—my first rebellion, really—and we were both too proud to let it go. I needed him to apologize for arranging my meeting with Rob without telling me. And my father was still outraged that I’d turned down
Skye London
, throwing away my career. My mother tried to sweep it all under the rug. “The Pattersons made the assumption that I was at your wedding,” she said in a private moment, “and I would prefer if you let them go on thinking that.” It killed her, missing the wedding, though I’d made it clear that she was welcome to attend . . . without my father.

For now, Cap and Leo were oblivious to the privilege into which they’d been born, though they did love the boxes of clothes and toys that arrived in the mail every day. Whatever was in a box, Leo put it to use right away, modeling designer kidwear or attaching himself to the newest toy and keeping it tucked under his arm all day and night. As for Cap, well, he mostly went for the boxes themselves and whatever packing material came in them. They say that siblings find ways not to compete, and my sweet Cap’s approach was to let Leo have everything. I was keeping a close eye on this dynamic.

I didn’t want my sons to walk around wearing or carrying promotional items—they weren’t billboards. Originally, I had planned to triage the onslaught of gifts before the kids saw them, separating the gifts into giveaway piles, birthday presents for friends, and special occasion treats for the boys. But it became impossible for even Meg to sort and manage the relentless tide, and the boys quickly learned to listen for the telltale thumps as the security guards delivered that day’s booty at the side door. So in the end it was a free-for-all. I worried that this was a slippery slope, the combination of circumstance and laziness that at first spoiled celebrity kids and eventually brought them to ruin. Some moms worry about whether their kids are hitting appropriate milestones, how to make them
eat their vegetables, and what brand of diapers is most absorbent. Me, I feared that the mini biker jackets and designer snack bags were gateway indulgences that would lead Cap and Leo to spending their waking hours staring at the latest high-tech devices, to demanding luxury sports cars from their father (who wouldn’t think twice about providing them), and to frequenting the nightclubs of Sunset Strip, ordering bottle service and doing God knows what else kids did today.

Also, I had nanny issues. When the twins were born, Lala had been sent over by Lotus’s domestic-staffing division, and she was unquestionably qualified. She kept them on a firm schedule. Her voice was always calm and direct. With Lala, even Cap always went right down for his nap while it took me a half hour of peeling his arms from around my neck. The problem was that I was convinced Lala hated me. It wasn’t anything she said or did. It was the look she gave me when I asked her not to use the TV in the twins’ room. It was the way she told them to “go to your mama” when I came in the room, as if greeting me were an obligation my children should endure in the name of propriety. Maybe the bad vibe was grounds enough to dismiss a nanny. After all, she was there to help me. The Practice was supposed to have given me the confidence to take charge of my own life. It should have helped me decide what to do. But I wasn’t upholding my A-student record—the minute I’d become a mother I’d slacked off my practice of the Whole Body Principles. Just like I’d slacked off working out. And maintaining my skin and hair. And having a life. At any rate, I couldn’t bring myself to let Lala go. First of all, the children loved her. And second, well, look at me. Look at the way I lived. I was the Lady of the Manor, and Lala saw firsthand what a ridiculously luxurious life I led. If I were a nanny, I’d hate me, too. I kind of respected her for it.

I was a stay-at-home mom, except that I couldn’t do any of the things normal moms do: go to the park, meet other moms for coffee, have playdates, take music classes for tots. I
really
had to stay at home. We’d been
sent a fleet of free strollers, every double stroller on the market, most of which I donated to a women’s shelter, but I never used the ones I kept. The boys and I couldn’t stroll anywhere outside our gated enclave. The tiny distance between the car and a store or appointment was hard enough to navigate. When photographers jumped out at us, Leo stared at them and growled like a bear. Cap buried his face in my shirt and whimpered.

I’d bought into this life. As everyone knows, being rich and famous has come to mean that your candid photograph is worth money, and anyone is free to take one at any time, so long as you are on public property. It’s the price you pay. I get it. You can’t exactly say that I was fully informed of this when I accepted the role on
American Dream
. I was seventeen; I wanted to be an actor; I took the first part that came along. And yet, if at the time or any day since someone had given me the choice, I would have taken it all—the career and anything that came with it—in a flash, without a second thought. It was the same when I married Rob. I knew I was catapulting to a new level of exposure, and I didn’t just accept it. I embraced it, the whole deal, whatever it might include.

But I, like any young aspiring actor, never considered what my choices would mean for the children I might have in the unimaginable future. In the ideal bubble that any parent tries to create around a toddler, fear and anxiety don’t exist—maybe there’s a page in
Goodnight Moon
the child doesn’t like, or a door slams unexpectedly, but in general I think we can all agree that little children shouldn’t be surrounded by aggressive men holding big cameras and shouting names they recognize and words they don’t understand. I didn’t think of that until I was already pregnant and it was too late. Now I saw my recent fears becoming reality: The cameras’ bright beams of judgment would follow Cap and Leo for their entire shared childhood. The shadowy crowd of figures holding those cameras would obscure the streets and trees and people from view, blocking sidewalks and doorways and windows. The photographers, blasted by their
own lights into silhouette, would be the constant foreground of my children’s view, blotting out reality, forming a horizon behind which the sun always set. Our children wouldn’t skip ahead of us to investigate a flower or push down a protruding sprinkler head. They could never, ever, ever play hide-and-seek in a park. If they learned to roller-skate or bike, it would happen in the great rooms and long halls of our houses or in rinks that we rented after hours.

Only Pops, my old paparazzo nemesis, adjusted his behavior when the twins were born. He now kept a respectful distance, and would chastise the other paparazzi: “Back up, guys. Let them walk. You’re frightening the babies.” I wasn’t naïve—I knew it was most likely his new strategy to curry favor—but, even when it got him nowhere, he stayed faithful to his new approach. It was a little eddy of humanity in a river of intrusion. As for the rest of them, I wanted to hand out T-shirts reading “I scared a toddler today.” Fine, earn a living. But own the truth of what you do.

Now the boys were nearly two, and I wanted them to meet other kids. The books said that was important so that they didn’t define themselves by each other. Ignoring the warnings of everyone around me (actually, just Lala and her furrowed brow), I asked Meg to research activities for them, and we signed up for a class called Double the Fun in Brentwood, at Little Hands.

On the drive to our first class, I examined the strange knot of unease in my gut that had tightened when I fell during my pregnancy. I had never thought of myself as shy. Quiet, maybe, but never shy. But it had been such a long time since I’d had normal interactions with normal people. I summoned my rusty One Cell training.
Emotions are a chemical reaction
, I thought, climbing out of the car. No matter what happened, I would walk steadily. I would be another one of the moms. I would offer my boys the opportunities they deserved. I could do this. It was just another role to play. The Studio helped actors gain control—and it had prepared me for this odd version of parenting.