Amy Sohn - The Actress

She took her laptop into bed and got Steven on Skype. They’d been trying to Skype once a day. He had started a cop comedy, set in Boston but shooting in L.A., called Booked.

When he answered, she could see that he was in his study. “Hey,” he said, but his eyes were flicking to the side.

“I had a fight with Irina,” she said.

“Who?”

“My friend. From The New School. I’ve told you about her. We went to see this play at BAM and—” She heard voices in the background, followed by laughter. It sounded like women and men. “Who is that?”

“I’m having a little get-together. Some people from the movie.” There were at least three or four voices. She was surprised he would let guests into the study, since nowadays he kept it locked.

“Oh. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you what ha—”

“It’s not a good time. I’ll try you tomorrow, okay?” The image froze. He had closed his laptop without saying goodbye.

Maddy was shooting a dinner-party sequence in a midtown restaurant known for its zebra-pattern wallpaper. Kira was in the scene, and two handsome comers playing their boyfriends. Maddy’s was played by Jared Wilkinson, a bumbling comedic actor who specialized in Ralph Bellamy types.

It was a long talky scene that they had to shoot repeatedly so Elkan could get all the reaction shots. There were continuity problems, and the over-the-shoulders grew frustrating and tedious. There were parts of acting that were transcendent and others that made you feel like a prop.

When they broke for lunch, Maddy was relieved. Craft Services had taken over a church basement a few blocks away, and she went down the buffet line and then headed toward Jared and Kira’s table. She saw Jared whisk something away and hide it on his lap. “What is that?” Maddy asked, sitting down.

“Nothing,” Kira said quickly.

“Come on,” she said lightly. “What is it? What were you guys looking at?”

“It’s really nothing,” Jared said, and the expression on his face was so mysterious that she lunged for the thing on his lap. The New York Post. She scanned the front page and then Page Six, which was on page twelve, till she got to the blind items. “Which A-list leading man holds all-male stag parties with his handsome ‘bro-friends’ at his home in L.A. whenever his wife is away on location?”

She left her food on the table and ran down the street into her trailer. It was humiliating to have her cast mates read this, mocking her marriage, when after this, she would have to go work with them.

Kira was pounding on the trailer door, calling her name. Maddy let her in, more to stop the commotion outside than to hear what she had to say. She shut the door but stayed standing so Kira wouldn’t linger. “Maddy, I’m sorry,” Kira said. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

“You guys could not have made it more obvious.”

“I wasn’t even reading it. You think I would ever read that fascist rag? It was Jared’s.”

“You were acting like teenagers. Please just go.”

But Kira walked to the couch and made herself comfortable. She occupied every space she was in as if she owned it. “Just listen to me for a second,” she said.

“I don’t want to.” If only she hadn’t grabbed the paper. You didn’t learn who you were in a newspaper that left stains on your hands.

“I saw you on those shows last year,” Kira said. “Defending your marriage. I felt sorry for you.”

“He retracted it! The guy was a grifter.”

Maddy didn’t like the way Kira was looking at her, with horrified pity. “Just listen to me for a second,” Kira said. “What if it’s possible? What if all these rumors and blogs and blind items add up to something? And he cheats on you with men?”

“He doesn’t.” Maddy collapsed next to her on the couch. “You’re not the world authority on homosexuality.”

She could feel herself weakening. She hadn’t been able to talk to Irina, and she couldn’t talk to Bridget, and Ananda was Terry’s wife. There was the loneliness of fearing you weren’t loved and the loneliness of not being able to speak to anyone about it. She had tried to tell Dan, but he’d ruined everything.

“I know I’m not,” Kira said. “But if you found out that he was cheating on you—with a woman or with a man—would you still want to be with him?”

Maddy couldn’t take it anymore. She put her face in her hands and said, “He has been with a man.” Kira sat still, saying nothing, as though she knew a single word might cause Maddy to shut her mouth. Then she told Kira about Alex from the playhouse, and the inscription, and her talk with Steven by the pool. She made her swear never to tell anyone. After Maddy finished, Kira shook her head. Her eyes were wide and knowing.

“It was just one night,” Maddy said. “It doesn’t mean he’s gay now.”

“He was so young then,” Kira said, “and it was a different era. The mid-eighties? Do you know the stigma against gay men then? With AIDS, and the homophobia, and people thinking you could get it from touching . . .”

“So?”

“For a man to sleep with another man in the ’eighties . . . it means he had to really want it. Whether he cheats on you or not, whether he’s closeted even to himself I don’t know, but Steven is gay.”

“You and I made out, and you never thought I was gay!”

“It’s different for men.”

“Come on.”

“I’m sure he cares deeply for you, and I’m sure he wants to be straight, but what you just told me—I don’t think he can be.” Kira sighed and took both of Maddy’s hands in hers. “Do you want to be married to a man who can never love you, no matter how hard he tries?”

“That isn’t Steven.”

“Things aren’t perfect with Reggie and me, she thinks I’m hyper-social, she has a drinking problem and also a bit of a bread addiction, but I know she loves me. And I know she loves women. And it’s a relief because I have this thing where I fall in love with women who aren’t gay.” Kira bent her head and then lifted it. “I’ve been exactly where you are right now. Which is why I know you’re setting yourself up for a lot of pain. Don’t you want to be with someone who loves you the way you want to be loved?”

“How do you know how I want to be loved?”

“Because I saw you with Dan when we were shooting the movie. I saw the way you looked at each other. Dan loved you completely.”

Maddy thought of Dan’s hands on her body at his house. He had asked for money, just moments later, and she’d gone home feeling miserable. “Steven loves me completely,” she said.

“I know how much you want to be an actress. But you don’t have to do it this way.”

“What way?”

“You don’t have to turn your work into your life. You made your life a movie.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, there is no contract?”

“I know there isn’t,” Kira said. “If you had a contract, you’d be much less unhappy.”

“I married Steven because I love him. Now would you please get out of my trailer?”

Kira went to the door, and when she got there she said, “I only want the best for you.”

“That’s not true at all,” Maddy told her. “You don’t even know me.”

When Maddy returned from New York, Alan drove her straight to the new house. Steven had moved them without telling her. The house still had the beams she had loved on their first visit, the mural on the fireplace, and the loggia (a word Steven had taught her), but beyond that nothing was the same. He had stripped it of much of the very detail that had charmed her. There were severe angles, and everything was in gray, and it had a coldness that hadn’t been there when they first saw it. It was covered with drop cloths. Drapes and dust. She had been in a rush to move in, but when she saw the plaster everywhere, she regretted that she had complained about the mansion. She needed a home that was peaceful.

“What do you think?” Steven asked after he embraced her in the loggia.

“It doesn’t feel ready.”

“Most of it is. The bedrooms are. I thought you’d be happy. We’ll get it finished. I just want everything to be right. I wanted you to feel like this was a place we would have together.” He came to her and held her face in both hands. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Why?”

“For doing an Elkan Hocky. He’s never cast me in a movie. Aren’t you proud of yourself?”

“I guess so.”

“The shoot was good for you. You seem much better. I think it was helpful for us to get some time apart.”

She didn’t feel healthy, but if he was saying it, she wasn’t going to argue. He was being kind to her. She felt guilty that she had betrayed his trust by telling Kira about Alex. Maddy was anxious that Kira might unload it on the kind of person, some gay-rights activist, who would spill it to a tabloid. That was the last thing Steven needed after what they had gone through with The Weekly Report.

Annette was calling from the kitchen and Steven left the room. Maddy collapsed onto a couch and the plastic tarp crinkled beneath her. No matter which way she moved, it went on with its wretched sound.

Maddy had a two-week break before her next film, The Cocktail Hour, was to begin, so she was spending a lot of time doing yoga and reading. One morning she decided to jog to the Wilshire library. She was browsing in the literature stacks, which had a good selection of hardcovers from the ’70s and ’80s, when she heard a voice behind her. “Have you read Anita Brookner?”

It was Julia Hanson, dressed down in a gauzy top and dark jeans that showed off her fit figure. “No,” Maddy said carefully, backing up a few inches.