The Actor and the Housewife

by Shannon Hale

  “Did you think I would?”

  Felix examined a tiny quiche shaped like a heart then put it back on the tray. “After all those panicked phone calls? Yes, it crossed my mind.”

  “I’m terrified, Felix. But there’s no question about backing out. My teeth are just too gorgeously white. Besides, I lost fifteen pounds, and I didn’t even sniff a snickerdoodle for six months. That kind of sacrifice can’t be wasted.”

  “You’re going to be beautiful,” Felix said.

  “I hope so.”

  “You are. You already are.”

  He sounded so sure. Either he believed it or he was an excellent actor.

  They wandered into the enormous sitting room with a full-sized bar and six separate sofas. Some of the crew had set up a karaoke machine on the raised fireplace. The first song was “I Will Survive,” performed by many of the women and some men who weren’t afraid to shake their groove thing. A couple of soloists followed, performing a slow Elton John and an off-key Lisa Loeb. Someone hollered for Felix. He shook his head, content to sit at the bar with Becky while she nursed her hot chocolate.

  “Go on,” she said. “They probably don’t even know that you can sing. Put them all to shame.”

  “Not in the mood.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “No, not drunk enough.”

  “That’s a lousy excuse. Go on.”

  Felix’s expression turned sly. “Only if you perform a duet with me.”

  “Nooo,” Becky said, shaking her head. She still had nightmares about auditioning for musicals, and there was that whole incident where her brothers caught her singing to the mirror. “I don’t sing—I warble. I croak. And I don’t know everyone yet, and Buddy the busboy thought I was too lowly to contemplate, and I still feel a little vulnerable and I’m not anxious to make everyone hate me. And besides, it would be a bad idea.”

  The sly expression evolved into mischievous. Felix went to fl ip through the list of songs while one of the producers (not Matthias or Karen) screeched a Céline Dion song. At the end, Felix hopped up on the brick stage, to the raucous pleasure of the audience.

  “This is a duet, but since she won’t join me, I dedicate this song to my best mate, Becky.”

  She hid behind her hands. The song was “Islands in the Stream.” There was no way she was going to squawk through any song in front of all those strangers, but especially not that one. She thought it was kind of lame.

  She was wrong.

  Felix sang both the Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers parts, and Becky could objectively say that the bouncy country tune became a little sexy with his British accent. He looked at her as he sang, making pleading motions. Soon everyone was staring. Some prodded her, saying helpful things like, “Go on, go on . . .” Her bar stool was becoming more awkward than a stage.

  “I can’t stand being serenaded,” she said, jumping up there and grabbing a sparemic.

  On the fly, Becky changed the word “lover” to “liver” and realized that Felix had done the same, and after a few bars, she was having fun. Felix didn’t leave her alone, still singing the Dolly Parton parts so Becky never had to go solo. With a little bit of hot chocolate in her system, she relaxed, letting her body do the karaoke sway. The really delicious part was joining her own voice with Felix’s, hearing how he made her sound better. It gave her chills.

  She wondered, Is this what it’ll be like to act with him?

  She hoped. She even crossed her fingers behind her back.

  Let this be it, she prayed. Let his talent pull me up higher, rather than my amateur self pull him down. Let it be good. Please let it be good.

  There was wild applause when they were done, and someone stuck in “Summer Nights,” so they stayed at the mic. Felix really hammed it up this time, forcing a severe John Travolta accent and improvising some semi-impressive lunge moves. Wally laughed so hard he kept having to remove his glasses and wipe his eyes. Several women and men joined them for the chorus parts. Someone tossed up a pair of pink underwear. It was one of the weirdest experiences Becky could remember. She grabbed Felix’s arm when they were done and said, “You’re a wild man.”

  “You’re my lady.”

  “Don’t you dare sing that Kenny Rogers number to me.”

  The music cued up.

  “Felix,” Becky said like a warning.

  “Lady,” he sang.

  She left the stage, returning to her bar stool and her cold hot chocolate. He really could be exasperating.

  She was staring into the milky brown goodness when she detected a change in Felix’s tone. He wasn’t playing with the song anymore, he was digging into the words, finding beauty in their resonance, laying meaning on every note. It became sultry, tangy, heart-stopping. She felt a cold pitch in her belly and kept her eyes down. Was he looking at her? Singing like that and looking at her? What should she do? Laugh and pretend he’s kidding, glare and scold, or run away?

  He took the notes up, rising with passion so inappropriate that running away seemed her only option, and then the crowd began to hoot and applaud midsong. Becky glanced up. Celeste had arrived. She was approaching the karaoke stage in slow, lingering strides, her eyes on Felix. And his eyes were on her. He was singing to his wife, and no Kenny Rogers number had ever sounded so heated. All they did was look at each other, but Becky was prepared to book them a hotel room and call them a taxi.

  Celeste kept moving forward, timing her strides so that she arrived within touching distance just as the song ended. Felix put one arm around her waist and pulled her in, planting his mouth on her neck. Her arms rested at her sides, her smile turned to the room, and she said, “Hello all. I hope I am not crashing the party?”

  No, no! everyone assured, offering her drinks and hors d’oeuvre platters. She would have resembled a gigantic heavenly body pulling all the lesser bodies into her orbit, except that she was so thin.

  Felix gazed at his wife as she gazed at her audience, and his complete adoration emanated out in nearly tangible waves. Becky sighed a happy sigh. Love was good.

  A new song started up, and Felix and Celeste crossed the room to Becky. Celeste sat at the bar, and Felix stood behind, his arm over his wife’s.

  “You came,” he said.

  “Mmhmm.” Celeste leaned her head against his chest. “I was home and thinking, where do I want to be now? I want to be with my husband. It has been a long time since you filmed so close to home, so I have decided I will stay close too. This summer, I am everywhere.”

  Her eyes flicked to Becky. The tiniest arctic breeze blew between the two women, hardly worth mentioning, but that it gave Becky goose bumps.

  But the moment passed, and Celeste was all adoring graciousness, introducing Becky to anyone she didn’t know, hooking her arm through Becky’s and enveloping her in her warmness. And Felix stayed near Celeste.

  Becky watched him and remembered what Diana had said. She was going to have to kiss that man. And not just kiss him, but kiss him.

  She’d think about it tomorrow.

  In which Becky tries to find her Hollywood legs

  There was a read-through the next day, with the cast sitting around a conference table at Bub and Hubbub (no gypsies spotted). Becky had the entire script memorized, but she held on to her copy, her gaze clinging to the words on the page. It saved her from having to look at Wally or Felix, in case they were frowning. She was pretty sure she sounded like the lead in the junior high school play. But Felix was next to her, and his voice was so warm, and he was so funny! Soon she relaxed, and it seemed to go okay. More or less.

  She’d already gone through the preproduction hullabaloo—screen tests, haircuts, wardrobe tests, the long debate about whether, as Hattie, Becky should wear glasses (in the end, it was decided yes, in some scenes). And with her hair short and perky, and new clothes on her body, Becky found it was easier to feel like someone else, someone who might have business being in front of a camera.

  Before her first day on s
et, Felix came to the Jacks’ rented ranch house and rehearsed in private. At least, in as much privacy as anyone can have in a house with four children. While they went over lines, Sam and Hyrum wrestled at their feet.

  “When I pin you like this, you’ve gotta swish your legs around. That’s how you get leverage.”

  “Okay, Hyrum. Okay.”

  “See, I’m heavier and stronger than you, so you’ve got to use your size and speed as leverage against me. You can’t move your upper body, right? So you need to get moving with your lower body and create leverage.”

  “Okay, Hyrum. Okay. I’ll do leverage.”

  Polly lounged on the couch, her pink-panted legs straight up in the air, pointed toes swishing back and forth in an upside-down ballet move. She was on the phone with one (or more) of her friends back in Layton, and her side of the conversation went like this:

  “Yeah . . . yeah . . . yeah . . . Oh? . . . Oh. . . . Yeah . . . yeah . . . Yeah? . . . Cool . . . Okay . . . No . . . Sure . . . But . . . yeah . . .”

  Fiona was in the kitchen listening to some fairly loud music, and from the slight quaking of the floor, it seemed, practicing a dance that involved a lot of stomping.

  The noise didn’t bother Felix; he had an actor’s focus. And it was easy for Becky to tune them out, a skill she’d perfected long ago. When her children were in trouble, she had dog ears, picking up a cry for help from a mile away. But let them be muddled in a nonlethal sibling spat or a tirade of whining for something they couldn’t have, and Becky might as well have been relaxing in the countryside, no sound but the wind clicking through the sycamore leaves.

  The only hitch was Ryan, who couldn’t decide if he wanted to be in awe of Felix or rib his big sister. It didn’t take her long to banish him to his bedroom.

  Mike came in from the study to perch on the fireplace and read the newspaper, occasionally looking at the duo with an inscrutable expression.

  “How’s it look, honey?” Becky asked.

  “You’re great, Bec, but your partner sounds a little . . . British.”

  Felix gave a wan smile. “That is a tragedy.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up,” Mike said. “It takes a lot of practice to achieve our level of hick and make it sound natural.”

  Becky laughed. She couldn’t get enough of Mike being smart with Felix.

  The rehearsals helped, but the next morning she arrived on location at the deli where her first scene would be shot, and she panicked. Her legs wobbled as if her bones considered dissolving, her heart raced so much that she found herself looking around for something life-threatening to face.

  Felix patted her shoulder and shook his head with a casual, friendly frown, as if to say, “It’s nothing. Don’t spend a moment worrying. Everything’s fine.”

  She nodded, as if to say, “Sure, okay. Everything’s fine. You’re right.”

  It wasn’t, so she had to pretend it was. That was the real acting.

  She straightened and faced the room, robing herself in her persona of Mommy of Four. If there was a problem (and there would always be a problem), then she could fix it. She couldn’t do everything, would never know everything, but there was no sliver of doubt in her that she was the best person on this earth to be her children’s mother.

  I’m the best person in this room to play this part, she told herself. So stop trembling and moping and just do it, Becky.

  She began to do it; she began to feel it. Felix made it easier. Acting with him was like dancing with him—he led lightly, casually, so that she barely felt his hand on her back, and yet when he led, she didn’t miss a step.

  “You’re a master,” she whispered to him after their first take.

  He smiled with just a touch of the smug. “You may be able to clean a house, raise four children, bake zucchini bread, and whistle Rach-maninoff at the same time, but this”—he waved a hand around him—“is my world.”

  “Oh, you are so lucky I’m trying to be on my best behavior and can’t laugh at you right now.”

  “I’m sure you’ll make up for it later.”

  That first shot took twelve takes, but at last the director called, “Print it.”

  Felix whispered, “See, I said you would be beautiful.”

  They wrapped for the day before dinnertime, and Becky rushed home to her family, spilling into the sofa and exhaling loudly.

  “Call off the search. I survived.”

  In moments Sam was on top of her, burrowing into her arms till she hugged him tight. Mike sat on the edge of the couch, lifting her feet onto his lap.

  “How’d it go?”

  “It went. Okay, I guess. Have you eaten yet?”

  Mike shook his head, and his stomach squeaked.

  “Hello, empty belly. Did you forget to have lunch?”

  “No, I . . .” Mike shrugged. “I’ve been fasting for you today, praying it’d go well. You know.”

  “Aw, hon.” She reached over burrowing Sam to grab Mike’s hand. “That was the extra push I felt. Your prayers were floating all around me, like the birds in Cinderella that help her get dressed. You have bird prayers.”

  He shrugged again. “I try.”

  “Thank you.” It made her feel a little misty-eyed, so she didn’t say much else until dinner: take-out Chinese.

  After the first couple of weeks, Becky relaxed into this new, strange, but still wonderful kind of summer. The kids were having a blast going to the beach every day with Uncle Ryan and taking excursions to all the Los Angeles places they’d seen in the movies. And on Becky’s days off the whole family celebrated enough to shame a decade of summers.

  One Saturday Celeste and Felix sailed the whole Jack family to Catalina, while Uncle Ryan took the day off to meet some indie film-makers Felix had introduced him to. Celeste was magical, tanned and lovely in short-shorts and a striped shirt, her chestnut hair aflame in the wind. Becky wondered if it got tiring, being so beautiful all the time, if Celeste ever wished to take a break and just be normal. She was darling with the girls, sitting on the bow with their legs dangling over, bare feet tickled by ocean spray.

  Mike was always eager to learn something new and manly, so he and Felix ran the boat, chatting about sails and rudders and chutes and ladders and who-knew-what. She made a mental note that the two men could in fact carry on a conversation, if supplied a practical topic.

  As they traveled over heaving waves and under hard blue sky, Becky hid behind sunglasses and pretended to steer so she could watch her little boys undetected. The moment Hyrum suspected his mom was observing him and his brother play—and worse, approving!—would be the moment he called it quits, returning to doleful ways, muttering with old anger about being forced away from his friends all summer. But for now, Hyrum and Sam ran around with kerchiefs on their heads, yelling “Ahoy!” and “Thar she blows!” The sight was chocolate on her tongue that never melted.

  They ate fresh seafood at a restaurant facing the bay, and eight separate people passed by their table with the express purpose of saying to Felix, “I love your work.” That was what everyone said, not just on Catalina, but at Disneyland and at restaurants and walking down the street helping Polly find chic souvenirs for her friends back home: “I love your work.” Why those four words? Sure, there were also the “I’m a huge fan” people, and the flustered “I can’t believe it’s really you” people, but 90 percent of the time, if words were spoken, they were “I love your work.”

  “Is that the official celebrity-sighting motto?” Becky wondered aloud.

  “Must be a new fad,” Felix said. “Usually all I hear is, ‘My baby kicked when I saw you! It must be a spiritual sign. Be my best friend,’ that sort of thing.”

  Really, the “I love your work” people were the least annoying. Felix was regularly accosted by young filmmakers as well as seasoned filmmakers, philanthropists wanting money or to use his name, and of course the autograph seekers and tourists with eager cameras.

  “Everyone wants something from you
,” Becky said. “Not you, the real you, but the superstar Felix Callahan. It must get tiring. It seems like they don’t care about you—they just want what you can do for them.”

  “Everyone but you, darling.”

  Her tear ducts stung, and she blinked rapidly and turned away, wondering if it was true.

  Sometimes Felix groaned at the attention from fans, sometimes he pretended deafness, but more and more often, he managed to respond politely.

  “Take a look at our boy, Celeste,” Becky said. “It’s getting so we can take him out in public.”

  And they did go out quite a bit, with Celeste and Felix slipping into the Jack family without much fuss. The couple was a real boon to outings—they got seated quickly at restaurants, and family games of soccer were much more sporting.

  So days off were great, but days on set weren’t too shabby either.

  Becky hadn’t worked outside the home since Fiona was born, and so much time away from the kids was worrying (Uncle Ryan let you do what?!), but then again, she got to work alongside Felix.

  “Hello, passably talented,” she’d say as soon as she ran into him on set, and give him two cheek kisses—Becky was a pro at this now, no lip contact, just the barest grazing of cheeks.

  “Hello, darling,” he’d say.

  Then they’d be über-professional, talk only about the upcoming scene, sit as quietly as church mice, listening to the director, waiting their turn. But as soon as they were released on a lunch break or film-ing wrapped for the day, it was like school was out for the summer.

  The set was a petri dish for practical jokes. A live donkey awaited Felix in his trailer, thoughtfully nibbling on a towel. The wardrobe mistress showed Becky her outfit for an upcoming scene—a bustier and stilettos. Becky blushed and stuttered until she heard Felix snickering behind the dress racks. At Becky’s request, Lorraine in craft services baked a muffin filled with mushed anchovies especially for Felix. The following week a handsome young police officer showed up on set looking for Becky, which was alarming until he pushed Play on a CD player and began to sing “Happy Birthday.”