The Actress: A Novel

by Amy Sohn

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said, standing up and going to him. “You can’t dwell on this. You’re Tommy Hall. That’s all anyone’s thinking about. And you said the footage is great.”

  “The release is still five months away,” he said. “Bridget and I had reservations about how Walter was assembling the film, but he kept reassuring us. Never again will I work with a director who wears Depends. Juhasz has set my career back decades.” He started inside.

  “Well, I don’t regret doing Husbandry for a second,” she called after him.

  “Of course you don’t!” he said, spinning around. “Because you got raves!”

  “No. Because Husbandry was what brought us together.” He nodded, but his face was white and cold.

  A few days later, when she went to take her birth control pill in the kitchen, she noticed the pack wasn’t there. Unlike her lorazepam, which she hid in the back of her nightstand drawer, her birth control was kept in one of the kitchen cabinets by the vitamins they both took.

  Steven was doing laps in the pool. When he approached the side, she leaned over and grabbed his hand. He picked up his head. “Where are my pills?” she said.

  “I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t want you to take them anymore.” His goggles were on and made him look like a bug.

  “But you can’t just steal them. They’re mine.”

  “Why don’t you want to get started on having a family?” They discussed it every couple of months. She knew he knew her reservations. Lately, he hadn’t brought it up, which she had taken to mean he was okay with postponing it.

  “We’ve talked about this. I’m only twenty-eight. We have time. I want to be an involved mother, and I’m not ready to stop working now. My career just started.”

  She thought he understood. He had seemed happy for her, happy that she was becoming a star in her own right.

  “Women work through their pregnancies,” Steven said, gripping the edge of the pool. “We’ll get you trainers to help you lose the weight. You can bring the baby to set. You’ll be able to do it your own way. Let’s get it going. Get those toxins out of your blood.”

  “Toxins?”

  “The hormones. They’re poison. I don’t want to be fifty when we start. I want to know my children. Don’t you get that? I bought a new house for you. You said you wanted something better for a family.”

  After her repeated entreaties to move someplace homier, they had closed on a new house a short walk away, an Italianate Mediterranean with a small guesthouse, warm-colored tiles, stenciled beams, and a family-friendly feel. But Steven was renovating it, consulting with contractors and architects, and he said it could be a year before they moved.

  “I do want a family, but not yet. You can’t just take my pills. It’s a violation.”

  “If you don’t want to have children with me now, you never will!”

  “That’s not true,” she said. “Don’t you want me to work?” Bridget’s phone had been ringing off the hook since the Husbandry reviews; she said the film would take Maddy to a new level. There was already Oscar buzz on Husbandry, and Bridget said Maddy might get nominated for the many awards that came before the Oscars.

  “Back of the spice drawer, underneath the cumin,” Steven said, and took off, splashing angrily as he swam.

  Out the window of the kitchen she watched him slice through the water, and hated him. He was guilting her for wanting to work. It had to have something to do with her raves and his pans. If he was jealous, she wanted him to rise above it. She didn’t understand why he couldn’t wait a few more years when he had waited half his life already. In the scheme of a lifetime, a few years meant nothing at all.

  Later that week, Steven said he wanted Maddy to come away on Jo with him. To Cabo San Lucas and back. After the Christian Bernard story came out, he had moved the boat down the coast to Orange County. He had gotten a one-week break from the action thriller he was working on and wanted her to take a break from her own film, a cancer drama called The Pharmacist’s Daughter that was being directed by Tim Heller, who had done Freda Jansons.

  “I can’t ask for that,” she said. They were in the garden of the Italian restaurant on Beverly. “We’re doing all the deathbed scenes next week.”

  “You can do whatever you want. You’re Maddy Freed.”

  She thought she detected a sneer but said nothing about it because she didn’t want to have a fight. “Even if they let me, I can’t do it to the rest of the cast,” she said. “It’s not fair.”

  “I need you,” he said. She remembered the way he’d needed her to do the press the year before, and how she had helped him. Bernard’s letter had retracted every detail except that they had met at the yacht club.

  “I just want to get away from the bad press,” Steven said. “Clear my head. And I feel clearer when I’m with you.” She wanted him to act this solicitous toward her all the time. “Please come with me.”

  Though she could have asked Bridget to speak to Tim on her behalf, Maddy felt obligated to do it herself. When she did, Tim said, “It’s going to be hell to reschedule, but I’ll make it work if it’s what you want.”

  Maddy didn’t want to abandon Steven when he needed her, but the truth was, she was enjoying the film; she liked her costars and didn’t want to take a break. So she told Steven no, and the next day he said Terry would come along instead.

  The night before he was to leave, Maddy was anxious. “Why don’t you just postpone this till we’re both free?” she said.

  “Because I want to go now. And Terry knows me. Knows how to be there for me.”

  “I wish you weren’t going.”

  “Maddy, you’re not making sense. Do you want to come or don’t you?”

  “It’s too late now. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be confusing you. Have fun. I’ll miss you.”

  He turned over and shut off his light. As she lay there in the dark, she told herself not to be anxious. It was a male-bonding trip. The couple had dined with Terry and Ananda over a dozen times since getting married. Clearly, Terry was straight, and a loyal husband and father. On the boat, the men would do nothing more than talk trash, play poker, and cook.

  But maybe he wasn’t really taking Terry. There could be women, younger than Maddy, hookers. Or men. Alex. Maybe Steven had lied to her and he was still in touch with Alex.

  The first three days he was gone, she was busy with the film, but then she began to think about him nonstop, and she became unfocused on set. By the time it was Steven’s last day, she had a day off, and didn’t know what to do with herself. When Steven was around, she often wished there were no housekeepers, no Annette, but now she wanted company. Annette was on vacation, visiting friends in Portland. Steven had told her to go, saying she needed a break.

  In the morning Maddy sat on a chaise by the pool and tried to read Act One by Moss Hart, which she had checked out of the library, but she couldn’t focus on the words and realized she had read five pages without absorbing anything. She decided to get a facial at the Four Seasons spa, where they always accommodated her and gave her full privacy.

  Earlier that year she had been invited to the fashion shows in Paris. She had become interested in style, and she was enjoying working with Patti, the stylist. She had made other important hires, too: a nice Italian business manager named Craig; and the hairdresser, Gemma. She had built up a nest egg of her own from her movie roles, residuals, and a handbag campaign. She never paid for things with Steven’s credit card anymore.

  In the facial room, with her eyes covered, she got an itch and scratched her nose, and her knuckles got burned under the steam. “Ow!” she cried out. The aesthetician gave her a cold compress, but for the rest of the hour, her hand smarted and she found herself counting the minutes until it was over.

  She stopped at a newsstand on her way home and bought a pack of natural cigarettes and smoke
d one out the window of the car before she started to feel sick. At home she swam her laps, and when she got out, she didn’t feel tired. It was only three o’clock. If she could just talk to him, she would feel better, but he never took phones on the boat.

  She sat by the pool and dialed Ananda’s cell.

  Ananda was someplace loud, and when she answered, she was laughing at something. “How’s it going?” Ananda asked.

  “All right, I guess.” Maddy strained to hear if Terry was in the background. He had a deep, easily recognizable chuckle. “I was just calling to say hi. It’s been a long day.”

  “Did you want to get together? Today, tomorrow? Is everything okay?”

  Ask her. Just ask her.

  But if she asked and Ananda said the men were on the boat, then Ananda would tell Terry and Terry would tell Steven. Steven would know she hadn’t trusted him. He wouldn’t like that. It would embarrass him, especially given how painful the Christian Bernard mess had been.

  If there was some way she could ask Ananda without asking . . . “Yeah, everything’s fine,” Maddy said.

  There was a loud giggle in the background, but it was a woman’s giggle. “What?” Ananda shouted. “I’m sorry, my sister’s in town, and we’re having drinks and—”

  “Oh, have fun with her. I have a really early call time tomorrow anyway. We’ll talk soon.” Maddy clicked off, listening to the awful birds, the birds that reminded her that it would be hours before it was dark.

  She smoked five more cigarettes and felt nauseated and wondered why she had done it. In the kitchen, she ran the butts under the faucet and threw them in the kitchen garbage where he wouldn’t see them; he hated cigarettes almost as much as he hated pills. On her way to the stairs, she stopped at his study door, but it was locked. He was pushing her out of his life and if she told him she had noticed it was locked, it would only prove to him that he had been right not to trust her.

  Upstairs, she went into her study and shut the door, even though she was alone. Her fingers typed swiftly in the search field, “Alex Duse Repertory Company Steven Woyceck.” She paused a long moment before hitting enter.

  The first few hits were duds. A guy named Alex Duse who blogged about a theater in Kentucky. A mommy blog by a woman in Duse, Idaho, named Alexandra Woyceck.

  She tried “Duse Repertory Company,” and an amateurish-looking Web page popped up. The title was “Duse Repertory Company, 1965–1991.” It had a gallery of photos organized by year, with all the different repertory companies. Production photos and candids. Awake and Sing! Othello. Little Murders. Bus Stop.

  Steven was in a lot of the photos, looking young and confident, with longer hair and softer eyes. The last one, at the bottom, was marked, “1984–1985.”

  She enlarged the thumbnail. The actors looked attractive and hopeful, with large 1980s hair. She was able to locate Steven quickly. He had his arm around the blond guy from the snapshot taken on Jo. She scanned the caption, the names, “L. to R.” “Casey Landis, Steven Woyceck, Alex Pattison, Mason Rose.” The faces were so innocent and young.

  In the search field she tried “Alex Pattison Duse.” Nothing. “Alex Pattison theater Los Angeles.” A listing popped up in seconds. Professor Alex Pattison, Theater Arts, Los Angeles College. The page included a photo, his CV, his building with room number, office, and phone number. She grabbed her cell phone, stared at the page on her laptop, and back at the phone. What if the professor were there and he told her some version of events that didn’t gibe with Steven’s? If a journalist hadn’t already hunted him down in the fifteen years since Steven had become famous, then most likely there was nothing to tell.

  In the bedroom, she put two pills under her tongue and waited for them to work. It was only eight o’clock and she usually didn’t take them this early.

  She lay in the blackness, thinking about that Danny Kaye movie she had seen as a child, a video rental with her father, who had loved Kaye. Wonder Man. Every time he tried to go offstage, the thugs were waiting for him, so he stayed onstage, not for joy but for survival. Offstage was death; onstage was life.

  She and Steven had talked about the film on Bridget’s patio in Mile’s End, the night everything began. She was afraid of Steven now, didn’t trust what he told her. She had been reckless in her love for him. Leaving New York without a second thought, leaving the stage. Steven had been her stage. With him, she’d felt safe and protected, no matter how rash it had seemed to Irina or Kira. Now she thought of everything, everyone, she had left behind. She had been afraid that if she took things slowly, he wouldn’t want her at all. All this time she had been thinking that Steven was the stage—when maybe he was the gangster waiting in the wings.

  Steven was already home when Maddy returned from set the next night at eight-thirty. She bounded into the house. He called out to her from his study, and then he was opening the study door before she had a chance to try it.

  She threw her arms around him. “You’re back!” she said, going in for a kiss.

  “You kiss so openmouthed,” he said.

  “You never had a problem with my kissing before,” she said.

  “I never said anything before. Your mouth, it’s so open. I like it softer. Gentler. Like this.” He kissed her, but she was self-conscious. His eyes looked different. His hair was sandy and his face was tan but unkind.

  He sat on the couch. She climbed into his lap. “So did it fly by?” he asked. “Like I said it would?”

  “No, it seemed like you were gone forever. I was so lonely.” She kissed him again, trying to be conscious of how he said he liked it, and though he kissed back, he seemed distracted. She ran her hand down his cheek and noticed a small red mark near his carotid artery. Broken blood vessels.

  “I’ve been doing some thinking while you were gone,” she said, “and I want to move into the new place soon. I don’t want to wait a year.”

  “It’s not ready. I told you, it’s hell to live in a place that’s being renovated.”

  “But that house will be ours. This one is yours. I’ve never been comfortable here. When you were gone—I feel like this is haunted.”

  He lifted her gently off his lap, stood up, and went to the window, his hand on the drapes. He stood in profile as though looking at something very far away. “Maddy, I love you very much, and it’s because I love you that I’m saying this.” He was going to tell her that things would change. There would be no more boat trips, and he was sorry he had been cruel after the Husbandry reviews came out; they would take a trip to Palazzo Mastrototaro. He turned to her. “You don’t seem well.”

  “I am well,” she said, astounded. “It’s just hard for me. We’ve been apart so much the last year, with you off in Prague all that time. I know you’re busy, but sometimes it seems like you’re avoiding me.”

  “This is our life. It’s the work that we both want to do. No one said it would be simple. I love you very much. But you’re not the woman I fell in love with.”

  The rage rose from her belly to her throat. He was accusing her of being crazy. The last few days, she had felt crazy, but before that, she hadn’t been conscious of it. And he hadn’t said anything about this before. They were separated more than they were together. If, on the phone, she often said she missed him, it wasn’t unusual. It meant she loved him.

  “You have something on your neck,” she said.

  He moved his hand daintily to his neck and went to a mirror on the side of the room. “This? We went swimming by a reef. I got stung by a jellyfish.” He seemed cool, collected.

  “It looks like a hickey.”

  “You think this is a hickey?” he asked. He said it as if he found the word hilarious.

  “How am I supposed to know? The boat was where Christian Bernard said everything happened. And I think it’s weird that you never take your phone.”

  “You’re bringing up that gold-d
igger again? After a year?”

  Every month or so, when she was feeling lonely or bored or some combination, she would go on her laptop and type in “Christian Bernard.” He had become a celebrity in his own right, even though he’d gone back on his story. He had shot a porn video, and he had a manager, and you could book him for $350 a half hour for a private video chat. He appeared to be living in Vegas. She would stare at the gallery of photos, examining his dark eyebrows and full lips, and scroll through them, imagining him and Steven together in the main cabin. After half an hour or so, when she could no longer take it, she would turn off the computer and vow never to do it again, until the next time she got bored or lonely and did it again.

  The day the retraction had come out, Steven had invited some people over, Bridget and Flora and some staff from Edward’s office. It was festive, and in a quiet moment she pulled Steven aside and asked whether Edward had paid Christian Bernard. “Of course not,” Steven said. “He threatened to sue, and that was enough to make Bernard realize he would lose in court.”

  “So no one bribed him to say it wasn’t true,” she had said.

  “No. He knew it was all over.”

  Now, in the study, she felt she had been a moron to believe that no money had changed hands. “Were you really with Terry the last couple of days?” she asked.

  “Of course I was.”

  “Are you having an affair with him?”

  “You want to know what Terry and I did this week? Why don’t you call and ask him.” He went to the phone on the desk, picked it up, and held it out in front of his body as if it were a gun. “We played guitar, we cooked, we listened to baseball, played cards, and talked. Drank Scotch. Okay? You want a minute-by-minute itinerary?” That nasty tone in his voice, that obnoxious, patronizing tone. He put the phone in its cradle but didn’t come to her. “I wanted you to come with me on Jo. I begged you. But you cared more about your career than our marriage.”