Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper (34 page)

A
lot has been written about “Lizzie’s escape,” but it’s all a collection of half-truths, best guesses, and completely made-up scenes stolen, as far as I can tell, from old episodes of
Batman
. Here’s what really happened.

It all went down, as everyone knows, during the Venice Film Festival, where One Cell had few contacts and Rob and I had a skeleton crew.

Tomorrow
held its annual party, this time celebrating its one hundredth issue, at the Cini Foundation on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Rob knew the island well—the monastery had been used as a filming location for two of his movies (
Glass Houses
and
The Son
).

The magazine had ferries shuttling guests to the island, but Rob insisted on a private gondola for the two of us. This ended up being the
less
private option, since all the press—who were not allowed onto the island or into the party—had nothing to do but hover around on boats trying to get shots. They swarmed us, our poor gondolier shouting uselessly at the other boatmen in Italian. At some point all you can do is run with it, hence those gorgeous photos of us, kissing in the gondola, silhouetted in front of a spectacular sunset, looking, for all the world, like the last shot of a romance. Oh, it was the perfect final image for our storybook marriage. The only thing missing was the credits scrolling by.

Tomorrow
’s Venice party was straightforward: a roomful of A-listers enjoying one another. The Venice version was more laid back than their Oscar party. Because it was smaller, there was no VIP area and guests weren’t given time slots for their arrival. It was a place where Rob and I could feel almost normal. Except that every time we tried to take a picture in the photo booth, we’d get drawn into a conversation while the photo was drying, and by the time we turned back, our picture had been stolen. The third time we tried, Rob stood blocking the little dispenser slot, arms crossed, daring anyone to sneak past.

Ordinarily, I rode out this sort of event with a mix of boredom and scorn. It was an obnoxious stew of self-congratulatory sycophants. But this time, knowing it was all about to end, I stopped watching the power plays and networking with a cynical eye. Instead, I went for it. I flirted with Matthew Brau, Rob’s agent and the head of ACE. I helped Jason See retie his bow tie. I tried to teach the live mynah bird that Celia Montbatten wore perched on her shoulder (part of the dress?) to say “Celia is divine.”

In the ladies’ room, I ran into my former
American Dream
costar, Wendy Jones, and gushed, “Wendy, I have something to confess. I’ve always been a little jealous of you. I know it’s silly, but, I mean, you’re so
gorgeous
. It’s
insane
. And on top of that, I have
so
much respect for your art. That’s all. I just wanted you to know.”

Wendy hugged me, crushing her silicone implants into my shoulder. “I totally get it. It’s always been hard for me to have women friends. So many are jealous. But I’m really a girls’ girl! Anyway, you were a really good actor, too.”

I noted her use of the past tense, but it was basically true. “Thank you,” I said, smiling. “I actually just did a part in a little movie. Parker O. Witt. But Rob’s work is much more important. I’m just happy to be able to support him.”

I floated at Rob’s side, leaning in to his shoulder and smiling as he graciously accepted praise and congratulations. Every so often I brushed lint off his lapel or fixed an unruly lock of hair.

“Hold that thought,” he said, interrupting a producer who’d come to report on the opening night ticket sales. “Let me kiss my beautiful wife.”

“Rob!” I blushed and giggled. We kissed, and then I turned to the producer. “You have to excuse us. We’ve barely had time together lately. Tonight is a bit of a reunion.”

I played my part to perfection. Rob Mars’s wife, elegant, supportive, humble, happy, in love—plastic perfection in a plastic world. At the end of the night, for my coup de grâce, I bummed a breath mint off Geoff Anciak.

The next day Rob had seven hours of nonstop interviews for
The Life of Digby Dane
in a conference room at the hotel. Our itinerary had me and the boys on a private tour of a glassblowing studio. On our way out, we stopped by the conference room to say good-bye to Rob. Only I knew how final that good-bye would be.

As I approached, the journalists were sitting in a line of chairs outside the room. There were no cameras, and as we walked past it was quiet but for a few overeager hellos from reporters, hoping for some reason I’d pause to say anything. It was the most polite group of press I’d ever experienced, but I suppose they feared that if they pissed me off, I would put the kibosh on their time with Rob. I smiled politely as I walked past.

Saying good-bye to Rob that day was one of the greatest acting challenges of my life. It had to be the good-bye of a wife who was about to take their sons on a glassblowing excursion and would see her husband again in a few hours. But also, somehow, when Rob looked back at this moment, I wanted him to know everything I was feeling right now. Pain, love,
despair. I wasn’t heartless; I didn’t want to hurt him; I knew he had deceived me because he knew no other way. And yet, I wanted him to know that he left me no choice.

He slouched comfortably in his chair, his shirtsleeves rolled up. When he saw me, he brightened, that handsome smile spreading across his face. Unknowable, he still gleamed as bright and perfect as ever. Unknown, I was lost in the shadows.

I lingered when I kissed him, tears welling in my eyes.

“What is it, Elizabeth? Are you okay?”

And then something clicked, and I knew exactly what to say to him. Emil had drafted it for Rob in the most recent delivery of scripts that I’d found on Rob’s desk back in Malibu. I didn’t know if Rob had seen the new pages yet, but I took a chance. The lines I spoke fell under the header “Last Words Before a Long Absence.”

“There’s an e. e. cummings poem I was reading—maybe you know it? ‘I carry your heart with me—I carry it in my heart.’”

I looked at Rob. His eyelids fluttered. Was it surprise?

“That’s very sweet,” Rob said. Did I detect a sadness in his voice? Had he realized that I, his wife, knew that our most intimate moments were scripted by someone who was a stranger to me? I wanted him to understand why I had left. But I also wanted him to know how much I had wanted to believe in us, so the next words I spoke were my own.

“I miss you already,” I said. “I feel like I’ve always missed you; even when we’re together I miss you. I want to climb into your heart, but you’re always just out of reach.” There it was, the truth. I hoped he would remember it. I may have been the one doing the leaving, but he had never been there in the first place.

“I love you too,” Rob said. To me, it rang hollow.

Cap, at my side, said good-bye to Rob when I did, but Leo was hiding in the thick hotel curtains, trying to start up a game of peekaboo with
Jake, who was tapping his pencil on his clipboard. We were putting Rob off schedule.

“Come say good-bye to Daddy,” I said.

Leo ran to Rob and put his hands on his knee. “Daddy, will you put me to bed tonight?” It was a question he asked at some point every day. He never complained if Rob wasn’t home at bedtime, but he liked to know the plan.

Rob glanced up at me for the answer. He never knew our schedule. “Probably not tonight,” I said to Leo. There was nothing on our calendar—I should have lied and said we’d both be at the hotel—but if all went smoothly he wouldn’t see him again for a long time.

“Bye!” Leo chirped, and started pulling me toward the door.

I knelt down next to him. “Give Daddy a real hug and a kiss, okay?”

Rob would, at least, remember that it mattered to me. Whatever was ahead of us, I resolved that once we were safely gone, the first thing I was going to do was tell him that I would completely support and nurture his relationship with his sons. Little did I know that after that day we wouldn’t speak again for more than a year.

Leo climbed into Rob’s lap and kissed his cheek. Instinctively, I scanned the room to make sure none of the hotel staff were sneaking a cell phone snapshot.

There were two cars waiting for us. The one Jake had arranged was in the back of the hotel, with Lewis standing by to take us to our glassblowing appointment. Another one, under a false name, was at the side of the hotel. When the coast was clear, we ducked into the idling car, where our bodyguard/driver Max was at the wheel. He drove straight to the airport.

Fifteen minutes into the car ride, I called Lewis to tell him we were running late.

“Give me twenty, okay?”

A half hour later, just as we were boarding the plane, I called Lewis again. “Actually, I have a headache. We’re not going to go today.”

Everyone except Lewis thought we were with Lewis, heading to the glassblowing factory. This bought us an unknown amount of time. At some point Lewis would encounter Jake. And Jake would try to track us down. He would text me, and I would respond that I was in the hotel room, resting.

We boarded the plane, my heart racing. People in retreat at Fernhills had no contact with the outside world. Patricia had disappeared. Geoff’s threatening image loomed in my head. We had to pull this off, and we only had one shot. If Rob’s team realized I was trying to leave, if they stopped me before I succeeded, then they would have optics on their side. Once Rob controlled the story, his people could use their power, money, and influence to fight me for custody of the kids. The case could drag on for years, exposing our lives, dragging Cap and Leo into the kind of mess that would take years of therapy to overcome. I didn’t think Rob was capable of harming us, but he was used to getting his way. I thought of Lexy. She had tried, in her own way, to warn me.

I must have squeezed Cap’s hand too tightly. He yelped and pulled his fingers out of my grip.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” I said.

“Play with Mama’s phone?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, handing him my iPhone.

“No, me!” Leo said, and the bickering began. Less screen time for the boys in New York, I resolved. In the months of planning I’d gotten lax.

Papillon—the intrepid Frenchman whose book about his escape to freedom had stayed with me—Papi never had the luxury of escaping via private plane. He braved sharks, quicksand, hurricanes, and inhospitable
governments. He befriended fellow prisoners, officers, foreigners, and indigenous people at every turn, winning them over to his right to make a fresh start. He refused to let his prison sentence define him. Once he knew in his heart who he was meant to be, he gave every ounce of strength he could summon to become that person. He was an imperfect man and a hero. If Papi could do it, wearing flour sacks, with his only money shoved in a watertight container where no man could find it, then I could damn well leave my Louboutins behind forever.
Suck it, Malibu
, I thought.
New York, here I come
.

In one of his movies, my husband would have shown up at the last minute, sprinted down the runway, and shouted out his love for me, winning me back just before the plane taxied away. I watched out the window as the pilot waited to get approval for takeoff.

Then—was I being paranoid?—I thought I saw Rob’s pilot standing on the tarmac, watching me. Would representatives from the Studio be waiting when I landed in New York? Could I trust the flight attendants? I half expected Geoff himself to burst out of the cockpit like a demon. I instinctively touched my wrist, where there was a panic button with a direct line to Aurora, who was waiting for us at our new apartment in Brooklyn. Obviously involving the police at any point would be a horrible public scandal, but if I pushed that button, Aurora would get help.