Amy Sohn - The Actress

She looks like a crazy woman, Bridget thought as Maddy stood over her desk at Apollo Pictures. Her hair was a mess and her face was blotchy. It was impossible to believe this was Faye Fontinell.

“You knew he could never love me,” Maddy was saying. “And you didn’t care. You chose me. Like I was some kind of toy. To do with as you pleased.”

Bridget was unsure how precarious the situation was. Steven had said only that they’d had a fight and he had left the house.

She had worried that this day would come. Over the years she had imagined what might happen if his boat trips caught up with him. But as the years passed and he was safe, she came to believe that he was changing. Really changing. That was before Christian Bernard, and even then it seemed that Steven had dodged a bullet once again.

She had to be calm and figure out what Maddy wanted. Many women thought their marriages were on the brink, but that didn’t mean they were. “I didn’t choose you,” Bridget said. “You fell in love. The two of you did that on your own.”

“You made me think you believed in me, but all you wanted was a wife. And you’re a woman. You did this to another woman!”

“I did believe in you. I wouldn’t have had you read for Walter if I didn’t.”

“Walter was going to cast whoever you told him to. He was under your thumb. You were casting me for a life.”

“Maddy, that’s not true. Dozens of actresses read for it.”

“Lael didn’t even get to read. You left her alone in a room with Steven. That was her audition. And Taylor Yaccarino—same thing.”

“Walter did it differently with every girl. You know he has an atypical process.”

“I worked so hard on those scenes. Did you ever even think I was good? When you saw my screener? Or did I just fit the specifications? Did I match some character breakdown in your mind? The Perfect Wife?”

Of course it had been more complicated than that. When it came to Steven, nothing had been explicit. As long as Bridget had known him, as close as they were. To some extent he had always been unknowable, which was what made their relationship work so well. She saw the brand and only occasionally the man. In that way, she was like his audience. It helped her imagine the character they wanted on the screen.

She had wondered, suspected, from the very beginning. But she had looked the other way and seen what she needed to see. In the mid-’80s, after she signed him, when he was still at the repertory company, he would bring around “friends.” There were glances, touches, but how could she know? Actors and their games. Young men working for no money to live out their dreams, rooming in close quarters. Later she had wondered about Terry McCarthy, but Terry got married and had children and she put that theory to rest.

There had been one boy, the night she met Steven at the sports bar after Bus Stop . He’d stayed later than the rest, and she thought she picked up on something, glances, mostly from him to Steven. Alex, his name was. After Steven started making a little money and bought the boat, the three of them had gone out on it a couple of times. The men gave her the main cabin. They slept in bunk beds in the other cabin. She didn’t question it, not then. Though the Alex fellow seemed effeminate, she guessed it was unrequited.

She had been rising as an agent, she knew it would be complicated for Steven if . . . And then he married Julia, and after they divorced, he wouldn’t talk about it. From then on it was always beautiful women, maybe too beautiful, but Steven was good-looking and people sought out their own kind. She thought the brief affairs were good for him publicity-wise, but the rumors continued, as though the serial monogamy was proof of something. And then the Internet came along and there was no way to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate news, and the bloggers, and the young generation with their constant theorizing, it was a mess. With the search fields and other people’s searches visible when you typed in your own questions, it fed on itself, became self-perpetuating. People were fascinated by the idea of someone pulling the wool over their eyes. As though every entertainer didn’t do the same thing.

The chatter only got louder after Julia’s comeback, when the media became curious about the marriage once again, with the blog items and innuendo. Bridget didn’t like the new “standards.” The actors with wives and big broods succeeded while the single men, who drank more than was “appropriate,” and grew paunches, and stayed out an hour or two too late, weren’t taken seriously. They were seen as alcoholics, fuckups.

So she’d thought it would be good to quiet the noise. Which was becoming a distraction. They needed a project, and then the Juhasz script landed on her desk and it seemed . . . synergistic.

Bridget came around the desk and tried to take Maddy’s hands in hers, but the girl jerked them away. “I always thought you had talent,” Bridget said. “I never would have wanted Steven to marry a bad actress. Now, tell me what’s going on between the two of you.”

“It’s over. I know about Ryan.”

“You should forgive him,” Bridget said quietly.

It was the boat that had done him in. She had hoped that it would stop when he got married, that he wouldn’t need it the way he had in the past. But he kept sailing away, and he was sailing when the baby was born, a colossal mistake. A mistake she would have told him not to make if he had consulted her. Leaving the radio off with a wife so far along? No man did that.

“I won’t forgive him,” Maddy said. “He’s gone. This is the end.”

“You’re crazy to end it. You have everything you could want.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” Maddy said. She went around Bridget’s desk and sat in her big swivel chair. “I just wanted to be loved.”

“But you are!” Bridget said, spinning to face her. “How can you think you’re not loved?”

“He betrayed me, and you knew, and you let him!”

“Marriage is about respect and mutual companionship. You think after five, ten, forty years together that any marriage holds because of the sex?”

“How would you know a thing about marriage?”

“The way you just spoke to me right now, you think you’re the first? I know the things they’ve said about me, that I’m frigid, I’m a dragon lady, I chew men up and spit them out. I’m oversexed or undersexed, I’m over the hill, I’m mannish and no one can love me. I never wanted to be talked about this way. I never wanted to be alone. I wanted to be loved, just like you did.

“I used to think I could find a man who would be attracted to my drive, my ambition, a man evolved enough not to be threatened. I wanted to talk about my day with someone who wanted me to do well. I wanted everything you had. Have. The mutual respect, the shared interests, the family life, the loyalty, the company. The breakfast-table chatter. My home is so silent. Think of what you’ll be giving up.”

“I don’t care. I can’t go on living a lie.” Maddy headed for the door.

I can’t go on living a lie.

It was clear she was angry. She might try to renegotiate the postnup, get better terms, claim she had been defrauded. Bridget didn’t know what he had admitted, and hoped he had been cautious. One thing she had taught him over the years was not to be an idiot during a crisis.

It would be difficult enough dealing with the bad PR from a divorce. But a homosexuality-related crisis was another level of headache. She’d thought the studio was going to fire him when the dockworker came forward, and even though Edward had prevailed in the end, it had been harrowing.

If Maddy outed Steven, it would be the end of Steven Weller as Tommy Hall. Apollo would have to let his talent option lapse. The Hall Endeavor was starting production in March in Turkey. If Maddy made a statement, they would have to rethink everything, and they could. The movie had several explosive sex scenes between Tommy Hall and a fellow spy to be played by Taylor Yaccarino. No one would believe a gay man as a hard-drinking womanizer.