The Actress: A Novel (31 page)

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he doesn’t think about marriage the way other men do.”

In Berlin, Zack had hoped Maddy would be smart enough to get it, even if she didn’t get all of it. Later, after the wedding, he concluded that she was more complicated than he had thought. If not a contract, then an agreement.

And when it became difficult to reconcile his instincts about Maddy with the idea of an arrangement, he worked out other explanations in his head: He had misunderstood all these years and Steven didn’t like men, or he liked both, or Maddy had changed him.

Because if he did like men, and Maddy didn’t know, it meant she had been duped. By Steven. Or his mother. And if Steven could do such a horrible thing, Zack didn’t want to believe that Bridget could. In business she had lied and deceived, but to take another person’s life, to use someone as a tool . . . it meant she was a monster.

M
addy found the NICU frightening, wholly abnormal, and too bright. Tiny babies in incubators lined up, all out of the womb too early, purple and skinny, with tubes in them, these bodies so small and weak, hooked up to the big machines. Kira was at the baby’s incubator, with a slim, middle-aged pediatric nurse named Lillian. Maddy had already spoken with the neonatologist, who told her there were no signs of withdrawal in the baby, but they were monitoring him. Maddy was relieved to hear that but was agonized by the two tubes going into his tiny hand. “What are those?” she asked Lillian.

“One is antibiotics and one is an IV drip. He had some respiratory distress and we want to make sure he’s breathing properly. Do you want to hold your son?”

Lillian lifted the lid of the incubator and took him out. Put him in her lap. She put him to her breast. Lillian demonstrated the football hold. If Maddy held him like a football, to the side, his body wouldn’t put pressure on her sutures.

It was hard to coordinate the nursing with the tubes and the monitor strapped to his body, but Lillian and Kira helped her. The baby flailed but took the breast. She had been cut open, catheterized, and shaved, she had morphine and antibiotics in her blood, but her baby was nursing.

“He’s perfect,” Kira said softly. Maddy stroked his little head.

“Have you picked a name yet?” Zack asked.

“Jake,” Maddy said. “Jake Weller Freed.” She hadn’t been certain until she said it. He was going to have her last name, and her father’s. The baby was hers.

She looked down at the baby’s little head. The eyes so black. The mouth working hard on her nipple. She wanted to fatten him up so they would let them both go. “He looks like you,” Kira said.

“No, he doesn’t,” she said. “He looks like him.”

M
addy was in the NICU, nursing Jake, when she looked up to see Steven standing there. It was a day later. She hadn’t even heard him come in.

“You missed it,” she said dully. “I told you not to go and you went.” Lillian looked up and then down. There was a handful of other parents in the room, but they were focusing on their newborns. It was one of the few times Maddy had been around Steven when no one seemed to notice him.

“I’m so sorry, my love.” He leaned down, kissed her head. “They reached us on Catalina and I flew. I got here as fast as I could.”

“Why didn’t you take your phone, like you said?”

“I left it in the car, at the yacht club.”

“And the radio?”

“I thought it was on, but it was off. I feel awful. You had a month before the date. I had no idea he’d come early.” He gazed at him on her breast. “He’s perfect.”

“They want to keep him here longer. I’ve been pumping my milk so I can nurse him when we get out, so my supply doesn’t go down. It’s so complicated.”

“Hey there, buddy,” he cooed softly, running his finger down the baby’s cheek.

“I named him after my father,” she said. She handed him the baby and Steven took him, sat in another chair, gently avoiding the tubes. “Jake Weller Freed.”

He looked a little surprised but then said, “Jake Weller Freed. I like it.” He rocked the baby and touched her arm. “Are you in a lot of pain?”

“I’m on Percocet. I don’t know how long they’ll let me take it. I can’t believe you missed the delivery. What’s wrong with you? Who are you?” Her voice came out demented and shrill. She didn’t care. In every other room of Cedars-Sinai, there were probably bisexual actors in shouting matches with wives recovering from emergency C-section births that the men had missed.

“I shouldn’t have gone.”

“You care more about Ryan than me.” She kept her voice low so the others wouldn’t hear, but she was livid. “You’re in love with him.”

“Nothing you said is true. He’s my friend.”

This tiny helpless thing was counting on the two of them to help him live. How could they do that when they were so far apart? If Steven loved her, he never would have left. Or maybe he had already left her, years ago, on the boat trip to Cabo, and she hadn’t wanted to see it.

“I don’t want to be with you right now,” she said. “I want to get to know my son.”

“Okay,” he said. “That’s okay. Should I go home or—”

“I don’t care anymore. Just go.” He gave her an odd look as though about to say something, and then gently handed her the baby and went out.

T
he morning they left the hospital, Maddy had clothing and heels brought in, and a glam squad for natural-looking hair and makeup. Flora had arranged everything so the media knew when the family would be coming out and no one outlet would have “the first shots.”

Dozens of photographers were gathered outside behind the stanchions. It would be an orderly affair. When the time came, Steven and Maddy posed outside with Jake in her arms and Steven’s arm around her. Flora was there, overseeing everything. As agreed, the photographers re
frained from yelling their names so as not to upset the baby. All Maddy could hear were the digital shutters clicking. They posed for several minutes. Maddy smiled wearily, playing the role of exuberant new mother. It was all cream blush, all fake. No one knew Steven had missed the birth.

But he
had
missed it, and every day since, she had been replaying the delivery, rewinding to the moment when she had the dream and imagining that her water had not broken. She wanted to fix Jake’s birth so he hadn’t come early and she’d delivered him naturally, in the birthing room they had toured, with the tub and the wood paneling. In this vision of the birth, Steven was there, and he caught the baby and cut the cord, and afterward she could smell the vernix on Jake’s face. She was broken and imperfect, her body wouldn’t cooperate, a woman’s body was supposed to push. It had been the dream that had started it all, the nightmare and then the broken amniotic sac. She shouldn’t have napped. If you didn’t sleep, you didn’t dream.

3

Who is it?” Zack called out to Natalie from the desk of his new office. They communicated through an open door all day. In September, after two years at the Bentley Howard office in L.A., he had left to launch his own company, Laight Street Entertainment, which he had named after his old block in Tribeca. He had used his trust to capitalize some of it, but the rest came from investors he had met and courted during his time in L.A. Who had been watching him build a better and bigger list, who believed that he could go out on his own at an age when most people would be considered foolish to do so.

When Natalie told him Steven was on the line, he paused before putting on his headset. It had been an insane morning. The script had gone out at five
P.M.
the day before, and already he had offers from three of the six studios. It was his first submission as independent manager-producer, and he knew the sale price would shape the perception of his company.

Velvet
was by a young screenwriter client who had been working on it for a year. It was based on the true story of an Australian jewel thief in the 1980s named Frank McKnight—a tight, edge-of-your seat tale with a coiled, charismatic lead. McKnight was a get for any actor in his mid-thirties. Hyper-intelligent and manic, he had a troubled marriage and a thrill-seeking nature. And he was the greatest fucking jewel thief who ever lived.

The offers that had come in last night and this morning were all in the mid-sixes, which Zack thought boded well. He was hoping for a mil.

He wondered if Steven was putting out a feeler for Zack’s management services. Bridget had folded Ostrow Productions and officially taken
over as Apollo Pictures CEO and chairwoman just one week ago. Steven was said to be taking meetings with high-profile agents and managers, but there was no way he would hire Zack. A brand-new company, a twenty-nine-year-old manager, even younger than his wife. Steven wasn’t the kind of person to take a chance, not in work or in life.

“Put him through,” Zack called.

“Zack,” Steven said. “First of all, I wanted to thank you again for being so good to Maddy at the hospital.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Zack asked tightly.

“I know, but it was a difficult situation, and you were there for her. She’s so grateful to you.”

“Someone had to be there.”

Steven paused dramatically and then said, “So I read
Velvet
. And I wanted to congratulate you. It’s a perfect hybrid. A smart heist movie. Reminds me of the best suspense features of the ’seventies. Like
The Day of the Jackal
and
Three Days of the Condor
. I just—you’re a player now. When I met you, you were just a boy.”

Zack knew Steven Weller would never call anyone just to say congratulations. He said nothing, only waited. Like a good journalist.

“I was calling because—I’d like to throw my name into the ring,” Steven said.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“For Frank. McKnight.” Zack tapped his fingers together and pivoted to regard the painting of Kid Berg. Every time he examined it, he saw something new. Sometimes the fighter seemed aggressive, tough, invincible. Other times he looked like a scrappy young kid. “I think I would get a lot of bodies into the theater,” Steven was saying. “And you and I would work well together as producer and actor. You remind me of your mother when she was starting out.”

Zack stood up and went to the window of his office. A woman in a jog bra was walking a Pomeranian. “Thank you for saying all of that, Steven.”

“It’s true.”

“But I can tell you right now that I would never cast you as Frank McKnight. You’re completely wrong for him.”

“Really? I feel like I could bring out a lot of the humor, and you know
audiences already buy me as an action—”

“I don’t mean to upset you, but you’re just too old. Frank McKnight is in his thirties. I need an actor with vitality. Someone more warm-blooded.”

Zack thought of Berg, who had fought ten rounds against then-unbeaten Cuban Kid Chocolate at the Harlem Polo Grounds in 1930. Berg was persistent and steady and kept it up, and by the end Kid Chocolate couldn’t lift his hands.

“We could have a long conversation about whether audiences find my blood warm,” Steven said, “but regardless of that, I could bring you attention on a level that . . .”

“That what?”

“That will be hard for you to get from anyone else, given your unknown screenwriter.”

“You know, Steven, it’s funny you say that. Because I founded this company with the mission of telling good stories and a belief that good stories can also make money. I believe that American audiences are hungry for material that challenges them, makes them think, and provokes them. I’ve been developing this script for two years, and I have faith that this is a story that needs telling. I will get attention for this movie, wherever we land, and the man who plays McKnight is going to be the one who’s most right for him. Because that’s part of telling a good story. I have no doubts that this film will find its audience, even without Steven Weller. All right? No hard feelings.” And he clicked off before Steven could get in another word.

I
n the fall, when Jake was a few months old, Maddy and Steven did a family photo spread for
People
. They donated the $1 million fee to World Children’s Welfare. The photos showed them cooing over Jake, and they were taken in a studio so no one would have any indication what the nursery looked like. In the interviews, they talked about what a joy it was to be parents, despite the sleeplessness and the crying. They talked about how the experience had changed them. Steven said Maddy was an amazing and selfless mother, but during the sit-down, as she watched his mouth move, it sounded phony and depressing.

She knew she could not stay with Steven, but every time she pic
tured leaving, she would think about Jake and feel trapped. Only a selfish mother kicked out the father when the child was this young. This tiny baby needed not only Maddy but Steven, too. How could she disrupt her young son’s life?

It didn’t help her decision-making that Steven had turned out to be a doting dad. During the day, the three of them would go out together. Steven would carry Jake in the BabyBjörn, and they would go hiking or to a playground or the zoo. There would be photographers and people would smile and sometimes she could convince herself that they were happy. But they connected only over Jake.

At home one night, she came in to find Steven making funny noises with his mouth as he read a board book to Jake in the nursery. The baby in his lap, Steven looked like a man who had never been quite so happy. As she stood there in the doorway, she worried not only that Jake preferred Steven, which was painful enough, but also the opposite. Jake was his miniature, his boy. Steven could feel love for him that he could never feel for Maddy, or maybe never had.

That November, in the midst of awards season,
The Moon and the Stars
came out. Maddy watched a screener from bed while nursing Jake. It was excruciating to watch Kira, who put her own stamp on the role of Betty, and Maddy kept imagining the things she would have done differently.

As Jake grew bigger, learned to walk, smile, laugh, and eat, Maddy’s mood begin to lift. She decided to go off the Zoloft. At first she was anxious about it, but she went down slowly and found she could sleep at night, and even fall back asleep, after she nursed him. They had let go of the baby nurse and hired a live-in Polish nanny named Lucia.

She started to see a therapist named Dina Friedberg, who had been recommended to her by Dr. Baker. In her visits with Dina, Maddy talked a lot about the night Jake was born. She said she was certain that Steven and Ryan were lovers. She told her about Alex Pattison and the Christian Bernard story and her press blitz.

“Maybe I deserve a husband who cheats on me,” Maddy said after confessing about the night she spent with Dan.

“What do you mean?” Dina, who had bony cheeks and hair to her waist, asked from her boxy gray armchair.

“Because I cheated on him.”

“But didn’t you think he was betraying you before that night with Dan?”

“Yeah. I don’t know if that makes it right, though.”

In their sessions, Dina would try to pry out of Maddy what fidelity represented to her. And Maddy realized it mattered, it wasn’t nothing. She understood that some couples didn’t care, but when she had married Steven, she had believed in and expected his faithfulness. Even if she had been stupid to do so. And he knew she felt it was important. To her, fidelity was part and parcel of love. She had felt adrift because she was uncertain of his loyalty, and because of that she had gone to Dan, and it had been wrong, but she couldn’t undo it. Now she had to figure out whether to stay married.

Slowly, she began to see the possibility of a future without Steven, though it would be impossible to do anything until Jake was more independent and she was physically back on her feet. She was still nursing him three to four times a day.

Thinking about
Pinhole
and the prospect of someday playing Lane Cromwell, she hired a personal trainer and nutritionist. The pounds fell off. She began to get strong.

Zack had sent out the screenplay, and a New York–based production company, Reckless Entertainment, fell in love with it. The head of the company, Christine Nabors, had been in indie film since the ’80s; she flew in to L.A. to discuss her ideas. Maddy, Zack, and Christine had a three-hour lunch meeting at a new Asian restaurant in a condo building in Century City, and Maddy was so taken by Christine’s enthusiasm and track record that she decided to go with her without sending it anywhere else. Christine began sending Maddy director reels to watch, and though she took two meetings, she didn’t quite click with either director.

One Saturday in December, when Lucia had the day off, Maddy went out for a walk with Jake, who was about seven months old. They returned to find a strange car in the driveway. The light in the guesthouse was on, and suddenly Ryan Costello came out, swept up the baby, and spun him around. “What are you doing here?” Maddy spat.

“Steven didn’t tell you? My house in Malibu is being renovated, and he said I could crash here.”

“No, he didn’t tell me.” Jake was crying out with glee. “That’s not good
for babies,” she said, and whisked him away.

Inside the house, she dialed Steven. The call went to voice mail. When he came in a few hours later, she said, “How could you let him stay here without asking me?”

“I’m sorry. I meant to tell you. It’s just for a couple weeks. He needs a crash pad and—”

“Ryan can afford to stay in a hotel.”

“You’ve never liked him.”

“No, I don’t like him. I thought I had already made it clear. I don’t want this man in our life.”

“It’s not up to you who’s in my life,” he said, then went upstairs into the bedroom and slammed the door.

That night Steven left and didn’t come home for dinner, and Ryan’s car was gone. Maddy ate early with Jake. She fell asleep for a few hours and was awakened by loud laughter. Out the window, she saw Ryan and Steven in the pool, hanging off the edge. They had whiskey glasses resting on the deck and Steven was saying, “And Brando was so broke, he had to hitchhike!”

Ryan laughed and said, “You’re making that up.”

“Read it in the memoir,” Steven said.

Maddy went back to bed and put a pillow over her head. But she was too restless to stay still.

When she went to the window again, the men had moved away from the edge. They were both in the water, and though they weren’t physically close, maybe five feet apart, she caught a glimpse of her husband’s face in the moonlight. She drew in her breath. His eyes were dancing. He was besotted. It was the way he looked at Alex in the photo.

Steven had looked at her when he made love to her the first time. It was so obvious now, as it had been obvious in Wilmington. These men were lovers. They had been lovers on
Jo
when Jake was born, and they had been lovers in North Carolina before that. And maybe in between, even when Steven said they were no longer in touch. It could have been going on for two years.

He had installed his lover in their guesthouse and was swimming with him in their pool. As though he no longer cared if she knew. As though they had an “understanding.” He wanted her to leave him or he believed
she had known all along—or both.

She let the curtain go and went into her walk-in. She moved her hand across the dresses that she had worn to the charity balls and premieres and openings and parties since she moved to L.A. Her fingers stopped at the red strapless Marchesa. She held it up against her body in the mirror. She had been so innocent in Berlin. She had believed she was Cinderella.

To Steven it had all been a grand show. Maddy had never enchanted Steven. Only a man could. A Ryan Costello. An Alex Pattison. A Christian Bernard, who wasn’t some grifter but a young man Steven had trusted, who likely had turned on him because Steven had ended the affair. Edward must have known, and Flora, and Bridget, he probably told them the truth while he had lied to her. Why wouldn’t he? They were the team, and you had to be honest with your team.

She wanted to be angry with Steven, but she was disgusted with herself for shutting her own eyes. She had loved him so much that she had made herself believe the lies. That had been her fault, not his. In school she had played Elizabeth Proctor in
The Crucible
, and every night, when she had to convince John to sign the confession, she believed that he would, and thus would not hang. Every performance it came as a surprise to her that he had torn up the confession and would die. Her belief was so strong that each night the surprise felt real.

It was the same with Steven: She had acted herself into denial. It was because of her need for him. She wanted to be his more than she wanted him to be faithful. He had been selfish, but there was selfishness, too, in looking the other way. Her desire for him had been so great that she had been willing to accept a kind of lumpy half-love, flawed, temporal, and incomplete.