Amy Sohn - The Actress

“Why were you two fighting last night?” she asked.

“He asked if there was someone else. I said yes, because I started seeing someone. I never lied to him about other guys before, but last night he just went crazy. I said it was ludicrous to expect me to be faithful when he was married to you. He said, ‘What if I left Maddy? Would that change anything?’ I said no. And he lost it and drove off.”

She stood up. Her legs were weak, like after the C-section, after the spinal wore off. She pushed open the door. “I’m going for a drive,” she said. “I’ll be back in an hour, and when I come in, I don’t want any trace of you.”

She got in the Prius and took the streets to the 101 headed northwest, not sure where she was going. Just wanting to drive fast. She had loved Steven. She didn’t want to believe it was all a lie. There was a chance that Ryan was making up the story. Maybe he was in love with Steven, and the things he said about Steven wanting a divorce—lies, revenge.

But when he spoke, it felt like the truth. And more upsetting than this affair, even, which seemed an affair of the heart, was that Ryan had probably been only one of many. Maddy and Steven had been separated physically almost half of the four years they had been married. Opportunity abounded. So easy. There could be dozens of lovers. Hundreds. Paid and not. And Ryan had said the Christian Bernard story was true. Her appearances, her testimonials, all a farce. Of course he had paid off Bernard to retract, maybe paid others over the years, others she didn’t know about because Steven had told her never to search their names.

She had been shocked and offended when Kira brought up a contract, but they did have a contract. It wasn’t written, and there was no salary, but it was a kind of agreement, in that she had let him do what he did.

She had ignored everyone’s warnings because in loving and being loved by Steven, she had been part of something huge and important. The charisma, the charm, the stories. He was like Tennessee Williams, shooting three bull’s-eyes in a row, all with his blind eye.

She wanted to believe he loved her once. Maybe he had, at the very beginning. The first year. But even after that, he kept making love to her. How was it possible? Always on, never off. In Venice, the time she conceived . . . the way he had kissed her and held her . . . It hadn’t felt like he was performing. It felt genuine. He had made love to her and put his mouth all over her, caressed her breasts, buried his nose in her, his tongue, until she came. Even if they hadn’t had sex since the baby. Was it so easy to act, to trick her into believing she was desired? There must have been pills, though she had never seen any in his cabinet; maybe he hid them, as she had hid hers. Or maybe he used his mind. Did what gay men had been doing for centuries: closed his eyes and thought of England.

She had married someone with two selves. And like a political wife, she had looked the other way. When the gay men whispered at parties. When he went on the boat, on the trips with Terry, and alone. That time after the Husbandry reviews, he had asked her to come, and she had been berating herself for years for saying no, but he’d known she was working. Maybe he’d known she would decline, and had only asked so as to mislead her into trusting him.

She got off the freeway at Mulholland and headed west toward the Santa Monica Mountains. A little past Laurel Canyon, she passed an overlook. She parked the car and got out, staring down at the San Fernando Valley and the trees. She remembered the flash of the cameras in her eyes that night in Berlin, the beautiful blinding light that left spots. The feeling of being on the arm of Steven Weller . . . It wasn’t undignified. It was thrilling. As he had risen, she had risen, too. She had seen her marriage transactionally, whether or not she had known it. When Steven took her hand on that press line, she told herself it was an act of generosity, and to some extent it was. But he had been claiming her, announcing that they were together, before she got a chance to decide. And she had let him. She had wanted to be claimed.

She remembered glancing at Bridget and seeing the look she’d shared with Steven. It was some kind of signal. The ever so slight nod of approval. Maddy had read it as a nod about her career, her future stardom. But perhaps it had been something else.

Bridget had managed the marriage. She had been with the two of them all along, she had been at the first party at Mile’s End. She’d seen the movie and made sure Steven did.

Every major actress in Hollywood has read for her, but none was right. As though major actresses, far more accomplished and with better résumés, had been unsuitable for Ellie. Or maybe they were right for Ellie but not for Steven. Lael had said she had flown all the way to London and never read her scenes.

They were casting for something more than a movie. The marriage was a script. A script that Walter, Bridget, and Steven had written together. They delivered it flawlessly, they were all off-book.

When Walter had told her she was cast during the dinner at Locanda Cipriani, he’d said it as though it were a foregone conclusion. Bridget and Steven had chosen her for a far more important role than she had thought. Her marriage had been made. Everyone had known it but the bride.

When Steven finally came in after three days and three nights, tan, his hair a tousled mess, Maddy was on the living room couch, her knees folded beneath her. Jake was upstairs napping. Lucia was out running errands.

Steven looked like he had been running a marathon. He sat in the armchair across from her, an Ed Ruscha behind his head. An eerie grid of L.A. lights. It had been in the study in the mansion, and now it was in their living room.

“I talked to Ryan,” she said, “and I know.” He said nothing, merely staring sadly ahead. “You were making love with him when I was having Jake, and you turned the radio off so you could. I needed you, and you sailed away.”

“I was afraid of the future.”

“You’re a phony. You always loved men. You cast me. You and Bridget. You never loved me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Are you just going to keep lying and lying? There’s no point anymore.”

“I did love you. At first . . . at the beginning, it was Bridget’s idea. She was worried about those rumors. Felt I needed to do something. She thought marriage would be a good idea, to the right woman. And then when I got to know you, I believed we could— You were so beautiful and smart. I saw you as an equal. You were my partner. In life and art. I watched you work and I—learned things. You made me a better actor. I fell in love with you after we married. That was the great surprise.”

She stared at the grid on the Ruscha. Did he have these pieces because he liked them or because they were the kind of pieces he thought he should have? Did he know what he liked or like what he thought he should? Did he have Ruscha so he could pronounce “Ruscha”?

Steven Weller was interesting, not interested.

Everything in this house was a sham. He was like those faux marbre columns she had hated so much in the mansion. He was a gay boy from Kenosha who had transformed himself into Hollywood’s sexiest leading man, from Steven Woyceck to Steven Weller. She didn’t know Steven Woyceck. Maybe Ryan did.

Maybe Steven Woyceck didn’t care for Henry James and pretended to only because Alex had. Alex Pattison had seemed comfortable with himself; whatever taste he had was his own. Maybe Steven Woyceck didn’t even like to read. Maybe he had faked his interest in art and literature all his life to make himself seem smarter and more cultured than he was.