by Joe Keenan
The film was a solid hit. For the next year or so Lily rode high while Diana, now the sole unsung Malenfant, struggled and seethed. But, as everyone (save, of course, young Amos) knows, it was Diana who got the last laugh.
She won her first lead after starting an affair with a producer who’d bought the rights to a syrupy novel written by—you guessed it!— Prudence Gamache. Its heroine was a young nun whose sister, a gangster’s moll, shoots her boyfriend in self-defense and gets sent up the river. The nun, heartsick, forsakes convent life and hauls her beads off to the pen. There she ministers to the inmates, stares down many a knife and knuckle, and helps Sis and pretty much the whole prison find God. The picture, No Shield but a Wimple, won Diana her first Oscar. From then on her ascent to fame’s zenith was as inexorable as her siblings’ decline.
In Monty’s case the word “decline” is perhaps unfair. He’d never burned with his sisters’ white-hot ambition and was quick to make sport of his limited gifts. He pursued his career haphazardly into his twenties, at which point the studio, alarmed by his indiscreet cavorting with Hollywood’s gay demimonde, laid down the law —marry or else. Monty merely curtsied, told them on what they could lunch, and quit. He became a realtor, invested shrewdly in the Valley, and made himself a bundle.
Lily, by contrast, has clung to her dwindling fame with grim tenacity, exploring every avenue open to an actress whose brief stardom has faded. She has tried character roles, TV, and summer stock, with stops along the way in nightclubs, game shows, commercials, and state fairs. She remains active or, at any rate, available to this day.
We come now to the present generation. Both sisters shared their parents’ desire to produce illustrious offspring, and in this ambition as well, Diana’s triumph over Lily was brutal and complete.
For most of the sixties Lily was married to Buddy Biggs, who’d produced her daffy schoolteacher sitcom Sorry, Miss Murgatroyd! The marriage was childless, a great sadness to Lily though she could hardly blame Buddy, given his success in impregnating both her best friend and her housemaid.
Diana by contrast produced a son who proved remarkably precocious at the fame game, managing to win worldwide attention seven months in advance of his actual birth.
His father was the Italian film star Roberto Donato, whose marriage to Diana was one of those tempestuous, plate-throwing liaisons that leave gossip columnists misty-eyed with gratitude. On the very eve of Diana’s petition for divorce, a drunken Roberto drove his Lamborghini off a bridge. Diana promptly went into extravagant mourning, fainting daily in some suitably public place. A month later, just as the clamorous coverage of the grief-stricken widow had begun to subside, Diana announced she was carrying Roberto’s child. The ensuing frenzy of sympathy didn’t let up till Stephen’s birth, which was greeted with the sort of fanfare usually reserved for heirs to the British throne and human litters of not less than six.
Little Stephen made his film debut at the age of ten, starring opposite Mom in Sophie and Sam, a depression-era comedy about a light-fingered street urchin taken in by a softhearted saloon singer. Stephen’s performance earned him his first Oscar nomination. Diana, who was not nominated, put an immediate moratorium on her son’s acting career, citing her desire to give him a “normal, wholesome childhood,” which, in this case, meant a Swiss boarding school.
Stephen did not resume his career until he was twenty-two, by which time he’d grown into a world-class dreamboat, combining his mother’s luxuriant chestnut hair with his father’s aquiline nose and bedroom eyes. In his first film as an adult, he played a brilliant schizophrenic violinist in the three-hankie classic Chamber Music. This won him his second Oscar nod, and though he lost again, his stardom was now firmly established and has remained undimmed for fifteen years.
Like many a savvy star, he divides his projects between “art” and commerce, alternating high-minded dramas with comedies and thrillers. His most financially successful movies thus far have been the Caliber films. In these, three to date, he plays Simon Caliber, a private detective whose every case, no matter how mundane at the outset, soon plunges him into some crisis of global proportions. Were Caliber hired to rescue a kitten from a tree, you could be sure the tabby would turn out to be some genetically altered mutation whose fur balls were pure doomsday virus.
His most recent picture was Lothario, a drama about a shallow playboy who, faced with a terminal illness, revisits his many conquests in the hopes of experiencing true love before he dies. He finally finds it with Frances McDormand, who plays a plain but compassionate hospice nurse fifteen years his senior. The picture, though derided as shamelessly manipulative by some, grossed a fortune, and Stephen, who’d starved himself whippet thin for the wrenching final scenes, was widely considered a shoo-in for the Oscar that had twice eluded him.
Throughout Stephen’s career rumors have persisted that he’s secretly gay. The press, displaying its usual deference to megastars, has mostly tiptoed around these rumors but has, on occasion, gently elicited his response to them. His answers have spanned the full panoply of tactics available to the closeted megastar.
He has played coy, refusing to be nailed down while deftly leaving the impression that his evasiveness stems solely from a waggish impulse to twit the reporter. He’s been statesmanlike, citing the bond he feels with his gay fans and professing to be flattered that some among them wish, however mistakenly, to claim him for their own. He’s waxed indignant, saying he’s answered the question so often that to pose it again impugns his integrity. His most frequent and cleverest ploy is to simply bore the press into submission, pontificating on the masculine and feminine dualities within all of us until even the most prurient scoop hound changes the subject to how he enjoyed shooting in Prague.
Five years ago a tabloid published a story about a long-ago roommate of Stephen’s who claimed they’d enjoyed a brief but torrid affair. Stephen denied the story but declined to sue, arguing that his accuser, a failed actor, had only made the charge to gain notoriety and that a lengthy, sensational trial was just what the scoundrel wanted.
This argument seemed to satisfy the great unwashed. The washed, however, were still plenty suspicious, so Stephen fired his publicist and hired Sonia Powers, the town’s most formidable media tamer. Six months later he married Gina Beach, a spokesmodel turned actress who’d appeared in his second Caliber film as the sexy physicist Caliber finds murdered in his bed. Wags joked that it was her turn to find him dead in the sack, but the marriage has lasted four years and the couple are still, as they confide to the press with numbing regularity, “very much in love.”
THERE, THEN. That should set the stage for the Amish contingent as well as any recently rescued castaways. To the vast majority of you who already knew all this and a good deal more about the Malenfants, I apologize. Of what follows, I assure you, you know nothing.
Seven
SO THERE WE WERE WHEN LAST GLIMPSED, standing face-to-face with an implacably inhospitable screen legend. Her ferocity robbed me of speech, but Gilbert, who’s made of smoother stuff, actually smiled as though the phrase “Get the fuck out of my house” were some Wildean bon mot.
“There, Philip!” he said with what struck me as positively insane good cheer. “What did I tell you?”
He turned his congenial smile to Diana.
“I knew the moment we walked in that we’d come at a bad time. I suggested we slip away and reschedule but Philip, he’s such a fan of yours—well, we both are!—he insisted we at least stay to meet you, however briefly. Now we have, and may we say what an honor it’s been. Please forgive us for intruding at a time when something’s so obviously troubling you. I don’t suppose it’s anything we could assist you with in some way?”
I’d never until this moment quite realized how potent a weapon pure charm could be. Diana, hearing so gracious a response to her truculence, just stood there, flummoxed, like a confused repertory actress who’s barged onstage as Lady Macbeth only to find the rest of the company playi
ng Hay Fever.
“Well,” she said, her tone calmer and more refined, “that’s terribly nice of you, but it’s a family matter. It involves my sister and... well, that’s all I can say.”
“Is she ill?” asked Gilbert, concerned.
“If only.”
A brief silence descended. I was uncomfortably aware that Diana’s newfound civility toward us was based in part on our promise to leave immediately. Gilbert knew this too but, loath to depart without the prize we’d come for, kept the flattery flowing in the hope of prolonging our tenuous welcome.
“Well, we’re off!” he lied. “But first, could you satisfy my curiosity about that stunning painting of you over the fireplace?”
“It’s from Tomorrow Be Damned, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes. Can you believe they wanted me to pay for it?”
“No!” said Gilbert, deeply affronted.
“But what a movie!” I said. “I won’t embarrass you by saying how many times I’ve seen it.”
“I’m glad someone enjoyed it. I went through hell making it. The director was a monster.”
“Yes,” said Gilbert with a knowing nod. “One hears that.”
What one in fact heard was that the famously rancorous shoot owed most of its turmoil to Diana, who, convinced that the actor playing Alexandre Dumas was stealing the picture from her, threw such frequent and violent tantrums that the crew nicknamed her the “Cunt of Monte Cristo.”
“Well, lovely meeting you,” said Diana with warm finality.
“Off we go!” said Gilbert. “And as for rescheduling —?”
“Yes,” she said vaguely. “Some other time.”
She swept out the door and proceeded down the hall so briskly we had to scamper to keep up with her.
“Knowing how busy you must be, we’re happy to work around your schedule,” said Gilbert.
“Well, this week is terrible, ” she replied. “And I doubt the next will be much better. You know, I’m not sure we really need to meet again at all.”
Gilbert and I exchanged a panicked glance as Diana regally descended the staircase.
“Don’t you want to talk about the script?”
“Oh, I don’t think we need bother with that. I can see you’re both very bright and I’m sure you’d do a wonderful job. There are a few other writers we’re talking to. Once we’ve decided we’ll let you know.”
She timed this speech to end precisely as we reached the front door, and not even Gilbert, who’d thus far maintained the silkiest poise, could conceal his dismay at being sent packing without a rain check.
“Give my love to Max,” smiled Diana, clearly pleased at how efficiently she’d discharged her obligation to him. She then gave us her back and marched briskly toward the stairs.
It was at this precise moment, as the bassinet containing our careers was hurtling toward the falls, that the front door opened and Stephen Donato, like some Adonis ex machina, entered the foyer and our lives.
The Star had apparently arrived fresh from a workout or a run. He wore black cotton gym shorts and a gray T-shirt that clung damply to his broad chest, leaving a sweat stain that nestled in the cleft between his pectorals like some Rorschach of desire. His wavy brown hair was tousled and sweat-dampened and his square dimpled jaw was darkened by a two-day growth of beard so sexy as to make death by razor burn seem the happiest of fates. The dreamy hazel eyes regarded Gilbert and me with what may, I suppose, have been mere courtesy, but which seemed, after Diana’s Gorgon glare, like the radiant compassion of some benevolent yet fuckable saint.
“Stephen!” cried Diana, wheeling dramatically. “Thank heaven you’re here!”
“Hey, Mom,” he said. Casually. As though mortal.
“Where have you been, Stephen! I’ve been calling you for the last hour!”
“We were out taking a run.”
He turned to Gilbert and me, who were staring at him like two dogs eyeing a rotisserie. He smiled, extending his hand for us to shake, and though I was a good half foot closer to him, Gilbert darted in first.
“Hi. Stephen Donato.”
“Gilbert Selwyn. So good to meet you,” he trilled. He continued to shake Stephen’s hand well past any seemly span of time, compelling me to nudge him discreetly aside. I gave Stephen’s hand a firm masculine shake while offering a wry smile meant to convey that I shared his politely concealed amusement over my colleague’s absurdly kittenish behavior.
“Phil Cavanaugh,” I said crisply even as a voice within me cried, “I want your T-shirt for a pillowcase and death to the maid who washes it!”
“Sorry we’re late,” said Stephen.
“They were just going,” said Diana.
“Oh, did we miss the meeting?”
I wondered what he’d meant by “we.” Then I noticed that Diana was gazing past us with a look of weary distaste. I turned around and there, framed in the doorway, was Stephen’s wife, Gina Beach.
It will give you some idea how swiftly and completely desire had unhinged me when I confess that I viewed her on first sight with that beady critical eye we reserve for our rivals in romance. Her wee nose seemed to me insufferably pert, her hair unpersuasively blond. Her breasts, I granted, were bouncy perfection but so large in relation to her scrawny torso as to render their authenticity dubious in the extreme. She had, it appeared, joined Stephen on his jog. Sweat did not become her.
“Gina,” said Diana, her voice swooping a disappointed octave, “I hadn’t realized you’d be joining us.”
“Stephen asked me to. I read that book A Song for Greta last night — cried my eyes out!”
How uncultured her voice was. How lamentably twangy.
“I thought,” she continued, “that is, Stephen and I both thought, that I could play Lisabetta. Y’know, the one Heinrich falls for?”
“You’d be perfect!” fibbed Gilbert.
Gilbert’s endorsement won a grateful smile from Gina and we introduced ourselves.
“So, you’re the ones who know Max?” she said.
“Know him? He’s practically my dad.”
She gazed around the foyer as though doing a head count.
“Weren’t there three of you?”
We said that our partner Claire sent her regrets but she was nursing a cold and would never have forgiven herself if she’d passed it along to any of them.
“Well, you tell her thank you for me,” said Gina emphatically. “I wish more people were considerate that way. I had a photo shoot last week and this guy doing my hair, he’s hacking his lungs out and, I’m like, hello! ”
“Did you hear the way she said that, Philip? Pure Lisabetta.”
We were now facing away from Diana, and I wondered nervously how she was taking all this. Not only were we blithely ignoring our banishment, we were bolstering her daughter-in-law’s impertinent assumption that she was ft to share a screen with her. I stole a glance at Diana and saw that my anxiety was well-founded. She was standing ramrod stiff by the stairs wearing an expression that called to mind Hedda Gabler as portrayed by Yosemite Sam. Stephen, noting her demeanor, asked gently—such tenderness in his voice!—if something was wrong.
“YES! As I thought I’d made perfectly damn CLEAR I cannot deal with this project today! Something’s come up, something very upsetting, and I need to discuss it with you!”
“Right this minute?”
“YES!” she barked and, glowering at Gina, added, “Alone!”
She turned, stormed off down a short hallway, and, extending her arm like a battering ram, disappeared through a swinging door.
“Sorry, hon,” said Stephen to the woman who could never love him as I could. “You don’t want to be around her when she’s this way.”
“She’s always this way,” noted Gina. She spun around and, in a pale imitation of Diana’s imperious exit, flounced petulantly into the living room. He watched her go, then favored us with a beleaguered smile.
“Sorry, guys,” he said. “We’re not alwa
ys this crazy.”
“Just one of those days,” I said.
He turned and disappeared down the short hall. I was sorry to see him go though delighted to watch him go, the view from behind being a honey and one I could ogle freely without him noticing. After he’d gone we stood a moment in dreamy silence, mired in that trancelike zone where worship and lust collide.
“He’s gorgeous!” whispered Gilbert.
“Stunning.”
“In shorts yet!”
“We sure won that lottery.”
“We have got to get this job, Philly!”
“I know!” I concurred from the depths of my soul. “If it weren’t for Diana—”
“Yikes, what a bitch!”
“I’ll say!”
“And looking pretty rough too.”
“Tell me. That face has more fine lines than The Importance of Being Earnest. ”
We agreed that our one slim hope of victory would be if Diana, having unburdened her woes to Stephen, retired to her fainting couch. Then Stephen, finding us still waiting, would surely consent to hear us out. In the meanwhile we’d suck up to Gina, who might, despite Diana’s clear disdain for her, prove a useful ally.
We sidled discreetly into the living room, a vast high-ceilinged chamber that seemed designed to make you kick yourself for having left your powdered wig at home. Gina, looking incongruous in her running togs, sat sulking on a richly brocaded gold sofa. I feared she’d resent the intrusion but she seemed, if anything, to have been waiting for us.
“She loves to do this to me,” she declared with a wounded frown.
“Diana?”
“Constantly! She loves to make me feel I’m not part of the family, like I’m some... interloper! I’ve reached out to her so many times but nothing I do is ever good enough.”
At first we felt surprised, even flattered that a glamorous film star (albeit one whose acting we abhorred and whose husband we longed to purloin) had taken us so swiftly into her confidence. We did not yet realize that her openness owed less to our empathic faces than her impulse to talk about herself during all hours not given over to sleep. When there was no suitable friend or relation on hand to listen, then a screenwriter would suffice, as would a stylist, driver, or elevator occupant. To be Gina’s confidant you did not need to be her peer. You just had to be in earshot.