Amy Sohn - The Actress

And so she decided to believe him.

By the time Maddy went on Harry, she had already done a morning show, a prime-time, and a cover interview with People. Flora’s strategy was “limited and well placed,” targeting women. On the prime-time sit-down, Maddy showed photos from her wedding album and recounted the story of how she and Steven had met. The People spread (four pages, photo-heavy, including candids from her life with Steven) had broken records for Internet traffic and newsstand sales.

The PI had tracked down Christian Bernard, who had been in hiding in Miami Beach and was already scared about the repercussions of the story. His retraction letter, which was being written by his lawyer, was expected any day. It was just down to the wording.

It had been Maddy’s idea to go on Harry. At first Flora said a comedy show would make a mockery of the story. It was the wrong forum for Maddy’s audience. Maddy argued that it was the right forum for Tommy Hall fans, those coveted eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old men, and so after half a dozen extended conference calls with one of the producers and Flora and Bridget on the line with her, the appearance was scheduled.

Maddy had gone on Harry twice already, the week before Jen aired, and when I Used to Know Her came out. She didn’t particularly like going on the late-night shows because she didn’t feel funny enough, but Harry Matheson, a charming, laconic redhead, was the most likable of all the guys.

When he eased into the question, Maddy was crossing one leg over the other and thinking that her dress was too short. It was electric blue and very slinky. Patti Young, a stylist she’d been working with the past year, had selected it. Though Maddy had practiced sitting in it, it seemed to be riding up more now. Her hair was loose around her face. Her English hair stylist, Gemma, who had come to the house to help her get ready, had used the word “postcoital” to describe it.

The first minute or so of the interview had been easy. Softballs about her current projects, jokes about New York versus L.A. But everyone knew why she was there. She didn’t have a movie to promote. As she was tugging her hem down, Harry Matheson said, “We’ve all been reading a lot about your husband in the tabloids.” The crowd got hushed. “As everyone here knows, you’re married to Steven Weller.” Faint cheers, a few titters. “Who’s going to play Tommy Hall. Which is very exciting, by the way. I’m a huge fan of the novels.”

“They’re really great novels.”

“Apparently, some guy, I guess”—Harry looked down at a card—“a dockworker down the coast a little, said he and Steven had a thing.” As he spoke, she was careful not to nod—if she nodded, it would seem like she was agreeing—but she couldn’t get angry, either. She smiled faintly, attentively, Be interested, not interesting. She knew the high-def video was getting the slightest nuance of her expression. “And he provided a lot of details. I mean, this would shock the pants off a lot of people here. I wondered if you wanted to comment on the story.”

There were a few lone giggles, and then they died out. She could feel Harry feeling the silence; you weren’t supposed to be quiet on TV. But Harry was tolerating it, letting it go on longer than he would with another guest. Because he knew, as they all did, that this was why she had wanted to do the tour. He knew this was television gold.

As she opened her mouth, she felt the stage fright that she had experienced when she did theater, which had abated now that she was doing films, where she didn’t have to worry about dropping lines. The light obscured the faces in the audience but not completely: She was aware of the eyes and the mouths. On her movie sets, there was no audience, and now she was performing in front of an audience again, even if it was in Burbank and not on Theatre Row.

“I heard about that story,” she said. The audience laughed at the understatement. Good, they were on her side, at least a little bit. “And you know, for legal reasons, I can’t get into the specifics of what the guy is saying. But I can say a little bit.” She was reminded of how nervous she had been at the Mile’s End panel. The problem then was that she hadn’t seen the panel as a performance of its own. This appearance was, too. “And I’m sorry if it’s more information than you wanted to know, Harry, but I have to tell you, Steven Weller is the best lover I have ever had.” Which was true. She and Steven did it a few times a week, when they were in the same city. However, the last ten days they hadn’t touched each other, both of them too terrorized to make love. He had been remote, someone beaten and afraid.

The audience was guffawing. A few people clapped, they were eating it up, she felt that she might have them.

“Now, don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “I wouldn’t want you to get the misperception that I’ve had a lot of lovers. Because I haven’t. I’m from Vermont.” Scattered giggles. “Based on my small but quality list, I can tell you that if Steven doesn’t like women, that would come as a news flash to my clitoris.”

She had memorized that line, which was all about the syllables in “clitoris.” Flora hadn’t liked the sentence at first, but Maddy had swayed her: She said the way to fight the ugliness of the Bernard story was to be blithe and confident. She said Harry’s viewers would get this.

It must have shocked the live audience to hear the word “clitoris” spoken clearly, because they were screaming with pleasure. It took a solid five seconds for Harry to shut them up. When they finally did, he mugged and said, “I’d like to be the anchorman delivering the news flash to your clitoris,” and the audience went crazy all over again.

Steven was waiting for her in the greenroom. Flora was there, Edward and Bridget, Terry. It was like a war room, with all his supporters. When Maddy came in, they all stood up. Terry said, “You were perfect,” though his brow was knotted, as if it had been hard for him to watch Steven go through the past week and a half.

Steven was coming toward her. Later, she would remember the look on his face, a kind of gratitude that could be interpreted as love. He hugged her while the trio went on and on about how it couldn’t have gone any better, how she was a natural. She put her face in his chest so as to drown out their voices. She didn’t want to be around anyone else, she wanted to be alone with Steven, the man she loved, the man she knew.

In bed later that night, he kissed her cheek, her shoulders, and she was relaxing, feeling not precisely open, the way she had in Venice on her first trip, but getting there, getting there, and he pushed her back onto the bed and she softened.

He was making love to everything about her that made her female. There was no way he could have been with that man. He was going down, down, and he put his tongue in her, and her eyes rolled back. Her hips fell open, and then, on the verge of orgasm, she brought her pelvis down to meet his and he was moving against her until they came at the same time. The story would be retracted and everyone would know, but that wasn’t the important part. They had won. They had triumphed over the press, and now his fans knew it and the studio knew it, too, and soon everything would go back to normal.

About a year after her Harry appearance, Maddy was eating breakfast by the pool when Steven came out and threw a pile of printouts on the table with a scowl. They were the reviews of Husbandry. The couple had attended the premiere the night before, a charmed night, and they’d had a happy reunion with Walter and Billy. The audience had loved the film, and Maddy had been proud of her work and her husband’s.

She had been planning to read the reviews later. Though she told interviewers she didn’t read her own press, that was a lie. She scanned them quickly, knowing from Steven’s face that the news wasn’t going to be good. The critics had loved Maddy and Billy, but Steven’s reviews were almost universal pans. He was “out of his league in such a dramatic role.” “Wooden” and “remote.” “His perpetually downcast eyes make it seem as though he is trying to find his mark.”

She thought the reviews were too cruel. Steven’s performance had been a bit stilted, but it was because Louis was tightly wound. Watching the film in their screening room for the first time, she’d felt the three of them had created something magical, each character compelling if not wholly sympathetic. Her scenes with Billy were both arousing and arresting, and during the final confrontation she gripped the armrests, almost unsure which character was going to die.

“They’re wrong about you,” she said now.

“Walter sabotaged me in the editing room,” he said, looming over the patio table. “He humiliated me. We never should have given him final cut. He deliberately chose my weakest takes.”

“I don’t think he did that.”

“He was attracted to you and jealous of me for having you. He’s a pig. And after I hit him, he never forgave me. He just pretended to. This film was his punishment.”

She remembered consoling Dan about his pan at Mile’s End, but back then there had been other positive reviews to focus on. The most innocuous of Steven’s Husbandry reviews called him “not a detriment to the production.”

Her reviews were as warm as Steven’s were cold: “quietly brave,” “operatic,” “proof of the awesome power of female sexuality.” It had been a triumphant year for her. After winning raves for I Used to Know Her, she’d begun fielding big offers—mostly dramatic roles, many of them period films or adapted from successful modern novels—and her quote was now $1 million.