Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste:

Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.

And therefore is Love said to be a child,

Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

They sat in cushioned chairs at a burnished roundtable. The lighting was reverential, spiritual , evoking the mahogany jewel box temple of an Emirates airport lounge. Chet Stoddard wore his trademark silver-hinged Persols, discreetly absurd seersucker suit, and dumbass bowtie.

His head subtly lowered as he spoke in hushed, trademark reverence, a P. T. Barnum reciting showbiz psalms.

“It’s 1995. You’re a household word. Beloved by the filmgoing public, deeply respected by your peers. You have an Academy Award on the mantel and in the years that follow will acquire two more: one for Best Actress — your second — and a third for Best Supporting. But in 1995, Dusty Wilding makes a decision — a choice —that will cause a seismic shift, a challenge to the paradigm, virtually altering the landscape of popular and political culture. She comes out as a gay woman. Why?”

She paused. Mystery-smiled. Slowly, softly blinked. Looked downward, while forming a humble response. Everything about her was warm and direct, elegant, uncompromising.

“I just think it was a way of taking control of my life. You know, Chet, my role model was always Elizabeth Taylor. Still is! She was so brave . And when she knew something was right, Liz didn’t give a hoot what the world thought. I think — I think I wanted to have that kind of courage. And I knew in my heart what I was doing was right.”

She never gave interviews while making a movie, but Chet was an old friend who’d always given her the same respect accorded to more typical guests, movers and shakers on the world stage of politics, science, human rights. Writers and mavericks, Nobelists even. He was in L.A. for a month doing Hollywood-centric shows, and she was happy to do him the favor, even in the middle of a shoot.

“You’re one of the rare actresses who does it all”—he went on, a trademark steamroller of quantifying slavishness—“from screwball comedy to tent-pole blockbusters like Bloodthrone to edgy, independent film. Tell us a little about what you’re working on now.”

It was cold in the studio. Her arms were studded by gooseflesh, like the pointillist clouds of a mackerel sky.

“Well, it’s called Sylvia & Marilyn —”

“About the poet Sylvia Plath.”

Chet got his serious, I’ve-done-my-homework groove on.

“Yes. It’s an amazing, alternate history that takes place in 1985.”

“Directed by Bennett Miller.”

“The amazing Bennett Miller.”

“ Capote. Moneyball. Foxcatcher . Had you worked with him before?”

“No! But whenever I ran into him, I was shameless . You know — I’d just kind of corner him and say, ‘We better work together… or else .’”

The host’s dead whore smile hung by the fire while the eyes decamped to consult his notes. “The film takes place in 1985 but Plath died in ’63, by suicide.”

“Yes. And the film explores — Dan Futterman wrote the script and it’s brilliant — what might have happened if she had lived.”

“Her husband was Ted Hughes—”

“Also an amazing poet,” said the actress.

She was so watchable: the cascades of red hair, the vintage YSL suit, the legendary porcelain skin.

“His book Crow was a college favorite of mine,” said Chet, flaunting his trademark brains. “Did you do much research?”

“A fair amount. And she — she’s so amazing. I was really interested in — fascinated by the time before she became ‘Sylvia Plath.’ The years in New York when she worked for Mademoiselle .”

“When she was trying to make her name. Now, Hughes was a notorious womanizer. Many say that Sylvia killed herself over one of his affairs.”

“With Assia Wevill,” said Dusty, with a nod. “Assia killed herself too! And she killed the child they had together—”

“Wow.”

“—a little girl that he never acknowledged as being his own.”

“What was it about Hughes?”

“He was very handsome. And a poet. A great poet…”

“The women were not happy campers. Was he an homme fatale ?”

“Well, I don’t sit in judgment, Chet,” laughed Dusty. “But in our movie — spoiler alert! — Sylvia leaves him .”

“For Marilyn Monroe,” he said, with winking comeuppance.

“And Ted Hughes takes his own life! Marilyn is her true love.”

“In the film.”

“In the film. Oh my God, Bennett is going to kill me! I’m going to blame it on you, Chet! You always get me talking, you’re a very bad man.” He took the compliment with a trademark grin of smarm and humblebrag. “But you know, actually they were born around the same time. I think Marilyn was a bit older than Sylvia.”

“Did the two ever meet?”

“ That I don’t know. I’m sure Bennett does.”

“So something could have happened.”

“I think it’s kind of amazing to think so. That’s the brilliance of Dan’s script — its plausibility. You start to think, Did this really happen? It’s brilliant and thought-provoking, but great fun.”

“Can you tell us about the work you do for Hyacinth House?”

(Coyly prefaced by the wince of a smile, to punctuate the segue.)

“I’ve been working with the foundation for almost twenty-five years.” She was glad to suddenly be talking about something real. “They’re an amazing organization that’s literally changed thousands of people’s lives. And mine as well. I think of them as family.”

—

The married couple slept in separate rooms. Not just to sustain eroticism but because it felt civilized and right — though when Allegra began to show, she had a craving to share a bed with her wife. One of the things that turned her on, Dusty too, was pregnancy porn. They streamed it on the BeoVision, watching two women making love and suckling each other’s milk, sometimes both in the third trimester. When Allegra wanted to branch out and watch a man join the fun, Dusty would huff and leave the room in faux disgust while Allegra giggled like a scamp. After the miscarriage, they didn’t watch those videos anymore.

Five a.m….

She heard the gate open as Marta let the driver in. She spooned her lover, reaching around to caress the gravid belly with her fingers. Allegra acknowledged the touch with a small, narcotic exhalation, and the actress disengaged, bending to softly kiss the baby bump good-bye.

She showered, threw on her favorite decade-old Lululemons, and went to the kitchen. The dutiful majordomo had a mini-croissant and cappuccino waiting (in the vintage Tonight Show cup Allegra bought Dusty online) and was sweetly chastised by her employer for such unsolicited devotions. What would she do without Marta? She left the fattening croissant.

She paused before the mirror in the entrance hall, taking her first real look of the day: a fifty-three-year-old makeup-free movie morningstar, beatific and unadorned, half astonished she’d survived, fragile and unbreakable, childlike, ancient, with lustrous, hardcore, wide-open heart — redoubtable warrior-queen and doubting heroine, her own personal favorite in a suite of silver gelatin images from an illuminated manuscript bound in vellum and for glory, consecrated to the coffee tables of an Annie Leibovitz Elysium. She was her mother’s daughter, burdened by the miseries of that provenance, and the mother of all daughters too, exuberantly dunked in public ownership, holy terror, and joyful noise.