She had let herself be convinced that she was too special to take the local and instead, she had taken the express. And she had justified it by telling herself her talent was genuine. Capitalized on the association of being with Steven, first as a girlfriend and later as a wife. And when he’d asked her to play Faye, he had been asking her to pay.
But she had paid, and she didn’t owe him this, she didn’t owe him anything. She was going to bump the Mary Cassatt and take The Moon and the Stars. Even if it meant the end of the marriage. In another week, it would be their third anniversary. If the marriage ended and all her money ran out one day, which it surely would, and she couldn’t get work because she was no longer linked to Steven, she would still be all right. She could always go back to hostessing. She knew how to show someone a seat.
Maddy spent the next couple of days hanging out with Kira, running, hiking, and going out to dinners. She met Kira’s circle of friends, actors, directors, musicians, some gay, some not. They were doing comedy showcases or taking acting classes, opening hotel doors or busing tables for rent money.
She had Zack call Tim Heller to get a postponement on the Mary Cassatt, and then call Walter to say she would do The Moon and the Stars. Zack loved the script and thought the role was just right for Maddy, who would get to age a couple of years over the course of the film and show extraordinary range.
One afternoon she was sitting on Kira’s porch when she heard a car pull up the driveway. She came around the side of the house and saw Steven’s Mustang. He was coming toward her.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
“I have connections.”
“Was it Zack? Because I specifically told Kira not to say anything to h—”
“I had an idea or two of where you might have gone.”
“I’m doing Walter’s movie,” she said. “Zack already told him. If you have a problem with it, then we shouldn’t be together. I can’t be married to someone who wants to control me.”
“You’re right,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m so sorry. Everything I said was out of line. You should do the projects you believe in.”
She looked at him in surprise to see if he meant it. He seemed to. She wanted to believe she knew how to read this man who had been so foreign to her just days ago.
He stepped closer but didn’t touch her. “I’m sorry I’ve been difficult,” he said. “Playing Tommy Hall, it’s gone to my head. I started to believe I was an action hero. Invincible. I’m not used to being at the top like this, the complete insanity around these movies. Walter is a good director, and Husbandry wasn’t his fault. I was out of my league.”
“I thought the critics were too hard on you. I’m proud of your performance.”
“Please forgive me,” he said.
“You have to let me be my own person,” she said. “I need to be able to have a social life. I’m young. I can stay up later than you. We’ve been too isolated.”
Steven hugged her and stroked her hair. “You can do anything you want to do. You’re so talented. I love you so much, and I haven’t been appreciating you.”
“No.”
“That’s going to change,” he said. “I won’t be like this again. It’s our anniversary. I want to get out of L.A. and remember what we promised each other. Let’s go away. Please say you’ll come away.”
They flew to Venice. All the palazzo staff members were there, and they seemed happy to see the couple, calling her “Signorina Weller,” as they always did, even though it wasn’t her name. They went to L’Accademia and looked at La Tempesta hand in hand. They went back to the trattorias where he had taken her before she knew she loved him. They went out on the Lido in his motorboat and to the Basilica on Torcello. They dined at Locanda Cipriani, where the gracious host greeted her as if she were Kim Novak.
When they came back to the palazzo, there was champagne in the bedroom and olives and bread and wine and cheese. “I love you so much,” he said. “I never want to lose you. You scared me this week.”
He got on top of her, and she was grateful that he was being warm to her again; he understood what he had done wrong, and would change. Everything was coming together now, her marriage and her work. She had a partner. Her career would get back on track and Steven loved her and their bodies were close. He moved his mouth on her navel, then lower, and she felt herself opening. “You’re so wet,” he said.
She closed her eyes and forgot where she was for a moment, and then she was coming. The champagne, the long journey, the jet lag, she wasn’t even sure what day it was anymore. He was moving in her, and she was light-headed and drunk, was he pulling out, or it seemed like he was, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t want to think about anything, she just wanted to be close to her husband who understood her and respected who she was. It was as it had been at the beginning. They were a couple.
Act Four
1
Production on The Moon and the Stars began in London in October. On the fourth day, Maddy was shooting a scene where Betty follows her husband out of the apartment and sees him kissing a man in the park. They had already done the kiss, and now they were doing the reaction. It was a difficult, emotional scene, and she wasn’t giving Walter what he wanted. She kept feeling dizzy and cold.
“Do less but do more,” Walter said, one of those directions that drove actors crazy because it was so meaningless. Maddy did a take where she cried, but he said it was “too showy.” She remembered how frustrated he had gotten when she was doing the love scenes with Billy Peck, and she hoped that Walter would not be difficult again. After the seventh take, Walter said, “What do I need to do to get you to listen to me?,” and on the word “listen,” she vomited onto the grass.
She was convinced it was food poisoning, but then it happened the next day, and the next.
The ob-gyn was in her mid-fifties and resembled Julie Christie. Dr. Liddell. She saw all the London celebs and had been recommended to Maddy by a model who’d had a role in The Pharmacist’s Daughter. When the doctor came in the exam room looking down at her file, Maddy knew. She hadn’t taken any over-the-counter tests for fear she would be noticed in the store. Because of that, she had been able to lie to herself that it was food poisoning, even though she hadn’t been running a fever.
“The urine test indicates that you’re pregnant,” Dr. Liddell said after she took her seat.
Maddy nodded nervously. The finality of it. She wanted to feel joy about becoming a mother, but the pregnancy was so ill timed, she felt only dread. She didn’t have anyone to blame but herself. She had noticed that her period hadn’t come since she went off the pill, but because she had been on it so long, she had been telling herself it was her body adjusting to the lack of hormones.
She remembered Palazzo Mastrototaro, how she wasn’t sure whether Steven had pulled out. She had been drunk on champagne, and jet-lagged, and confused, but none of that was an excuse, she should have made sure he used a condom—every time. She was an actress; to work she needed to be healthy. To work she needed to control her body. How could she have been blasé about something so important to her career?