The first thing Graham did for Declan was work with the PR people and Kaz Lameric’s company to set up press junkets for Normandy, which would allow TV and newspaper reporters to interview the actors and directors. Normally, such events would have taken place before the movie came out, but because of the low budget and the low expectations, none had been arranged. Now there would be a local one in L. A. After the holidays, international junkets would follow in Tokyo, London, Rome and Cannes, all accompanied by premieres in those cities.
The first one took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I spent most of that week watching the interviews of Declan on TV. He was on the morning shows; he was on the noon news; he was on the entertainment “news” programs. I taped these shows religiously, marking each one with the name of the show, the date and the approximate time Dec was on. Meanwhile, I sat on the couch and perused magazines and newspapers, clipping out items about Dec and how he was the “new hot property” in Hollywood.
I was thrilled for him, but I missed him. Between Max and Graham and the PR people and the seemingly hundreds of others who now wanted a piece of him, he was busier than he had ever been in his life. I grew lonely in the apartment, but it wasn’t solely because I was there by myself. It had more to do with the chilly realization that I didn’t know my husband as well as I had thought. Oh, I don’t mean that he wasn’t devoted when he got home, or that he was acting differently. What I mean is that I truly didn’t know as much about Dec as I’d assumed I did, and this became painfully obvious watching him being interviewed on all those shows.
“What is your ultimate goal, in terms of acting?” he was asked by the Today Show correspondent.
“Theater is my passion,” Declan answered. On the screen, he sat on a black director’s chair, a Normandy movie poster behind him. “And so my ultimate goal would be to write a play and star in it.”
I blinked a few times from my position on the couch. That was his big acting goal? Why didn’t I know that? Or had I heard it and forgotten?
“And in your dream world,” the interviewer continued, “what theater would be lucky enough to get this play?”
Somewhere on Broadway, I thought.
“Somewhere in Dublin,” Declan said.
And later, I saw Declan being interviewed by the blonde on E! News Daily. “So, Dec,” she said chummily. I had noticed that chummy and irreverent was this woman’s M. O. “You’ve been linked with Lauren Stapleton, who’s such a great actress.”
“Ha!” I shouted from the couch.
“And I know you’ve worked with her,” the chummy blonde said. “But if you could work with any actress in the world right now, who would it be?”
Declan made a show of pulling on his chin as if this was a tough, tough question. Jesus, if he says he wants to work with Lauren again, I thought, I will move out right now.
“Katharine Hepburn,” he said with finality. “I wish I could have been acting while she was here.”
“Huh,” I said. I had no idea he was a fan of hers. I apparently had no idea about so many things in Dec’s head.
“But wait a minute,” the chummy blonde said, interrupting Declan’s poetic riff about the late Ms. Hepburn. “I said, ‘right now.’ If you had to work with any woman right now, who would it be?”
“Any woman?” Dec said, shifting in his seat. Was he flirting with the chummy blonde? “Well, then I’d have to make my wife an actress, because truly she’s the only woman I want to work with.”
I sat up straighter on the couch and smiled. Maybe I didn’t know everything about him, but I’d heard what I needed.
Two weeks after Normandy came out, I got a call from my ex-boyfriend, Steven. Emmie had given him my number. Emmie always liked Steven because he was charming and would stay up all night listening to her stories about working with authors like Britton Matthews and Mackenzie Bresner. I realized later that Steven was probably so charming and able to stay up so late because of the coke habit he hid relatively well, but I never told Emmie that. And I never told her about that last big fight Steven and I had.
In fact, Steven and I hadn’t spoken since two weeks after that fight when I went back to his apartment to gather my shoes from his closet, my makeup from his bathroom drawer.
“Don’t forget this,” he’d said with sarcasm, holding aloft a lace thong with one finger. He was dressed all in black that day—black pants, black long-sleeved T-shirt and a black baseball cap. He looked like a modern-day Satan.
When I went to take it from him, he held it high over my head.
“Jump,” he said, a sneer on his face.
“Fuck you.” I turned and left the apartment.
But years had passed by the time I got his call in L. A. It was one o’clock in the afternoon, and I had just come in from visiting Rosita with a design for a gauzy slip dress. I told Rosita that the dress was something I wanted to wear to one of the many events Dec now had on his calendar, but the truth was, I hoped to try to make the dress part of my new collection. I hadn’t admitted that to Rosita, though, and not even to Declan, because it was such a toss-up as to whether the line would sell. I would develop it—maybe four dresses, three different blouses, a few skirts and some pants. I would beg and plead buyers from department stores, boutiques and catalogs to view the clothes. And then I would wait to see if anyone was in a buying mood. If not, all that work would have been for naught, something I was all too familiar with.
When I came back from seeing Rosita that day, I couldn’t stop thinking about all the collections I had designed before that didn’t make it. Would this be yet another in that long tradition?
I took off my structured white shirt and black gabardine slacks. I changed into a pair of shorts and one of Declan’s T-shirts and sat on the balcony. I had the phone on the table with me, but lately I’d been letting voice mail pick up. The calls were so rarely for me. Yet I felt a deep desire for human contact of any kind right then, so when the phone rang, I snatched it immediately.
“Felicity,” Steven said. It had been his nickname for me, a play on my last name.
“Jesus, what are you doing?” I said. I couldn’t help but smile a little. I was needy, and I was all too happy to let time work its magic, leaving behind more good memories than bad. In that instant, I remembered when Steven and I first dated, and how his voice on the phone could make me smile. I remembered how he used to study my designs and make incisive comments I didn’t expect from him. I remembered the linguine with lemon cream sauce he would make for us when he got home from the bar.
“I’m calling you,” he said. “It’s been too long.”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s been long enough.”
He laughed. “God, you were always a pain in the ass.”
“Me? Don’t get me started, Steven.”
“Yeah, right. So what’s going on out there? I can’t believe you abandoned New York.”
“Love makes you do strange things.”
“So you’re in love, huh?”
“I’m married.”
“Maybe you’re not aware, but love and marriage don’t always equate.”
“In this case they do.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Well, I’m glad for you, Felicity.”
“Thanks,” I said, because I believed him. He sounded calmer than I remembered, somehow older and wiser.
We talked for at least twenty minutes. We caught up on each other’s friends and families. Steven promised to look in on Emmie for me. I told him about L. A., how I loved certain things—the ocean, my jogs around Venice, Declan. I told him how I didn’t love so many other things—the driving, the annoying newness of the city, the “business” everyone was in but me.
“You’ll just have to come back to New York for a visit,” Steven said.
I’d been thinking the same thing. I wanted to take Declan to visit Emmie. I wanted to wash L. A. from my hair, even if it was for only a few days. The problem was that the holidays wer
e looming, we were leaving for Dublin after Christmas, and Declan had so many other things on his plate right now. But Steven’s words had struck their mark.
“Maybe we will,” I said. “I’m really dying to get back to Manhattan.”
“Absolutely. Come home for a while, and come to my place.”
“You’ve opened a new bar?”
“A bar and restaurant,” he said proudly. “It’s called Jasmine. It’s French Vietnamese. You’ve got to see it.”
“That’s fantastic. I’d like to check it out.”
“You’d bring Declan, too. Right?” It was the first time that Steven had said my husband’s name, and something about his simpatico tone rang false.
“Most likely,” I said, wary.
“It would really help me out, Kyra.”
“What would?” I stood up from the table and put a hand on the balcony railing, feeling a sudden alarm.
“If you could bring Declan here, I’d get a lot of pub, you know? It would mean a lot to me.”
I brought the hand to my head, and squeezed my eyes shut. “You’re unbelievable. You know that? You called me because of Declan, didn’t you?”
A tiny pause erupted in the conversation. I knew I was right.
“No,” Steven said. “I don’t even know what you’re saying.”
“Yes, you do! Jesus, Steven!” I don’t know why I was so hurt. I shouldn’t have expected any more from him, but a zing of pain hit me just the same.
“Kyra, don’t get all emotional. I’m just asking a favor.”
“And I’m just telling you to fuck off.”
A couple days later, Dec and I attended a cocktail party in Malibu thrown by his new manager in Dec’s honor. It was so exciting to be there, with Dec in the spotlight among all these important Hollywood types, but all night I noticed something different about the way Dec was speaking. Too quickly, it seemed at first, then with more of an Irish lilt than usual. But I was being towed around by Graham’s wife, Sherry (a woman who had to be a few years younger than I and, therefore, about thirty years younger than Graham), introductions were being made, and so I really only orbited Dec during most of the party.
Finally, I was able to excuse myself and go to the bathroom, a stark white space with a wall of windows overlooking the Pacific. I stared outside for a while, wondering at the velocity with which Declan (and by default, I) had been invited to a place where even the toilets had ocean views.
When I came out, I saw Declan talking to Max and three other people. One guy, who was in his forties and bore a resemblance to John Belushi, I’d been told was a studio president that Declan had always wanted to meet. The woman next to him was his wife. The other man was in his sixties, someone I didn’t recognize, which was not surprising since I know so few people in this industry.
The whole group was laughing at Declan, at a story he was telling. Dec quickly introduced me to everyone, and went back to the story.
“It’s the truth,” he said, “people in Dublin can swear better than any people on this earth.”
I’d heard him say this before. In fact, Declan could rattle off strings of profanities in the most creative ways, and he insisted that his talent was minimal compared to the rest of the Dubliners. But it was the way he had spoken the sentence that was odd. “Truth” sounded like “troot,” and “Dublin” sounded like “Dooblin.” And suddenly his speech was peppered with questions instead of statements. (“Didn’t I, now? Didn’t I grow up only a stone’s throw from the River Liffey?”)
But why was he doing it? To entertain the crowd? That seemed to be it. Max chuckled happily. The studio president gestured toward someone else at the party (“Ya gotta hear this!” he said), and soon there were four other people huddled close to Declan. People cocked their ears because when that brogue got heavy it became even harder to understand, and yet they were all smiling that isn’t-he-charming smile, giving each other looks, knowing they would be relating this story to everyone they ran across tomorrow.
How strange it was to listen to him talk like that, as if someone else, some enhanced version of my husband, had inhabited his body.
At one point, the studio president’s wife, an elegant woman in her late forties, turned to me and introduced herself as Leila. “Do you know how rare it is to find someone like your husband in Hollywood?” she said. “I mean, do you really get it? He is just wonderful.”
“Yes,” I said simply, trying not to make a face. What would she have done, I wondered, if I had said, He is wonderful at oral sex, but he can’t clean a kitchen to save his life.
In my head I imagined the other questions I was surely about to hear from Leila. Do you know how amazing he is? God, do you realize how lucky you are to have him? These were the type of questions people constantly asked me since Normandy came out. Speaking in low, hushed, reverent tones, the person was always completely unaware of how insulting these queries were. They assumed, first of all, that I was some poor, pathetic woman who would have lived a life of misery and destitution had it not been for some cosmic alignment that brought me into Declan’s world. Secondly, they presupposed that I didn’t know the man I’d married, that maybe I actually found him stupid and slow and idiotic, and only through the words of these people would I wake up and recognize my accidental good fortune.
“My God, do you hear him?” Leila said. “He is so hysterical.”
“That he is.” And you should hear this story when he’s not doing his Paddy McIrish imitation.
“You must be so proud.”
“I am,” I said truthfully. Despite it all, I was immensely proud of the way Declan held his own in that crowd. He more than held his own, actually. He was the star.
“I love your dress,” Leila said. She reached out and touched the skirt. I was wearing one of my fifties swing dresses, but I’d had this one made with a wild seventies Pucci print.
“It is fabulous,” said a voice from behind me.
I turned. It was Kendall Gold.
Even I knew Kendall Gold. She was the daughter of a famous comedic actress, who had made her own name by taking on quirky roles and period pieces until she won an Oscar last year. Her face was ubiquitous on every magazine rack. With her sunny blond hair, and her allegedly sunny disposition, she was America’s “It” girl of the moment.
We introduced ourselves, and Leila, Kendall and I drifted away from the group around Declan. We talked fashion. I told them how I’d designed my dress. As they oohed and aahed over it, I found myself experiencing a rare, happy moment that had nothing to do with Declan. I gave them each one of my new business cards. Kyra Felis, Designer the cards read optimistically.
“Let me know if I can design something for either of you,” I said. Immediately I felt like a door-to-door salesman, pitching vacuum cleaners to housewives.
I had to drive home that night, because Dec had had way too much to drink. Maneuvering the car at night, in unknown territory, was even more terrifying than usual. I was hanging over the wheel, peering into the darkness at the curves in the road.
“So what was that back there?” I said to Declan. “Were you trying out for the part of a leprechaun?”
“What do you mean?” I noticed the brogue was much lighter now that we were in private.
I started faking his accent, mimicking a few of his phrases. “You might has well have done a jig,” I said.
He laughed. Yes, he admitted, he was putting on a bit of a show, but he really wasn’t faking it. That was how he used to talk when he was young. He brought it back occasionally, usually when he’d had a few drinks. People liked it. They responded to it, and he missed home. It made him happy to talk like a real Irishman once in a while.
“Does it bother you, then?” he said.
I hesitated, still squinting at the road.
Finally, I said, “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re acting. And yet there were no cameras, no one to call ‘cut’ or ‘action’. You were doing it on y
our own.”
“So what?”
A decent question. Why was it annoying me so? Finally, I figured it out. “How am I supposed to know if you’re acting with me?”
“Ah, love, because you know me.” He leaned over the console and rubbed my arm. “You knew then I was just pretending. You’d always know. And besides, I’d never act with you. I don’t have to.”
We’d come into some area of civilization again, and I stopped at a light. He leaned farther into my seat, nuzzling my neck.
“You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how,” he said, using a Clark Gable voice.
I pulled back and looked at him.
“See,” he said. “You knew. You’ll always know.”
chapter 16
It was ten in the morning, a few days after Graham’s party, and I’d just gotten in from a run, when the phone rang.
“Please hold for Kendall Gold,” said a woman, who sounded very busy.
“Excuse me?” I said into the phone.
No response.
I panted and used the bottom of my T-shirt to wipe sweat off my forehead. I shifted the phone to the other ear. When nothing happened for a few seconds, I was about to hang up.
But then I heard, “Kyra? Are you there?”
“Kendall?” I said.
“Yeah, hi. I met you at that party in Malibu.”
“Sure,” I said. “Are you looking for Declan?”
“No, no. I wanted to talk to you.”
I pulled the phone away and stared at it for a second. Why was Kendall Gold calling me?
“You there?” I heard her say.
I put the phone back to my ear. “Yep, right here. Uh…how are you?”
The Year of Living Famously Page 11