“Really?” Ronni can hardly sit still, wriggling with delight as she looks into his eyes. “Are you saying I’ve got the part?”
“Do you want the part?”
“Oh, Pappy! This is the part I’ve been dreaming of all my life! This is wonderful!”
“So you do want the part?” He is smiling at her with a smile she doesn’t recognize from all those years ago, a smile she wouldn’t have been able to read, even if she weren’t wriggling with an excitement that failed to prepare her for what was about to happen.
“I do.”
“If you really want the part,” he says, leaning back on the sofa, his voice low as he moves his legs apart, “all you have to do is be nice to me. Be very nice to me.”
• • •
Usually, a massage is enough to calm Ronni down. The studio sends a masseuse once a week to the house. Usually it’s on a Thursday, but Ronni calls her agent as soon as she gets home, and requests—no, demands—the masseuse come today. She drove home gritting her teeth, replaying her audition over and over.
Be nice to me. She knows, as every young actress in Hollywood knows, what that particular euphemism means. She has never done it, and she will never do it. Andras Marko can go fuck himself.
Oh, but she would have been perfect for the role. And she was certain she had gotten it. The screen test went as well as any screen test in her career. She could see the people in the room rapt as they watched her. She was naïve, and innocent, and inhabiting the character so well, she forgot that she was Ronni Sunshine, actress and B-movie star, and thought she was a young mother whose daughter had been kidnapped. She had them. When it ended, there was that split second where she blinked, had to come back to herself, and she looked around that room, at the faces of all those people sitting in there, and she knew she had them. They believed her too.
That sleazeball Andras. When had he become a sleazeball? How had that sweet, nurturing man she worked with all those years ago become the gross, presumptuous, sleazy director who spread his legs for her today and expected her to acquiesce? Had fame and fortune corrupted him that much? Well. Clearly, it had. Ronni could name ten actresses in ten seconds who’d built their careers on the casting couch. She had never been one of them. She had never needed to be one of them.
She wasn’t about to start now. No matter how badly she wanted the part.
As she drove home, she could feel the tension building in her neck and shoulders, a headache already starting to pound. Stress. Disappointment. Fury. How dare he.
A wave of nausea hit her as she walked into the house. She ran to the bathroom, disgusted with herself for throwing up, at having such an extreme reaction to what had just happened. But she was more disgusted with him. That was when she picked up the phone and called her agent.
The massage table is set up, as it always is, in her bedroom. As soon as she lies down, she’s hopeful she will get some relief. But as the masseuse kneads her back in the darkened room, all Ronni can think about is Andras, with a fury and an upset that no amount of stroking or kneading can dissolve.
Long, exasperated sighs keep coming from her mouth. She hears the front door close downstairs and the voice of the German nanny as she shepherds Nell and Meredith in from their afternoon activities.
A thump of small footsteps comes racing up the stairs. She hears “Mommy? Mommy? Mommy!” in ever-escalating shrieks until the door to her bedroom, her quiet, peaceful sanctuary, bursts open, and her two daughters tumble in and clatter over to the table.
“Not now, girls,” she snaps, her words harsher than intended, her head turned to the side as the masseuse pauses. “Mommy is busy. Go and find Iris.”
“But I want to show you what I made in school today.” Nell, the eldest, stands her ground, proffering artwork, as Ronni feels a surge of fury. This is her time, for God’s sake. After the day she’s had, doesn’t she deserve some time to try to feel better?
“Not now!” she says, even more harshly than before. Meredith, who has been standing by the door, lets out a small whimper, and both the girls run out, to the safety of their nanny, who is patiently waiting for them outside their mother’s bedroom. Ronni hears the woman reminding the children she told them not to disturb their mother. But they still have to learn that when the door is closed and the massage is under way, it is never a good time.
• • •
Things are not much better at breakfast the next morning. Ronni wakes slowly. The room is still ghostly quiet and pitch-black, thanks to her satin eye mask and wax ear plugs. Robert is traveling in the Midwest until later today, which is both liberating and irritating. She likes him home, likes him being by her side, likes him taking care of her.
The girls have gone to school. The only audible noise is the faint sound of the vacuum downstairs, which means Rosa is here.
Ronni lies for a while in bed, thinking about her audition. She can’t stop thinking about it. She woke up in the early hours, still angry, only managing to fall back to sleep at around four. And now it’s past nine, and quiet, and all she can think about is the audition. The disgust has abated, leaving her second-guessing herself. This is a huge part, after all. Having it would propel her to superstar status. Marilyn Monroe did it all the time, was renowned for sleeping with those on high to get a part. And that was Marilyn Monroe! Who does Ronni Sunshine think she is, not doing the same thing?
But I’m married, she tells herself. I am a mother. It’s inconceivable that I would do such a thing.
She lies in bed, staring into space, the pink satin eye mask pushed up to the top of her head. This part! This movie! They could undoubtedly push her up there to the one thing she has always craved, proper movie star status. This role could change her life.
And all she had to do was . . . what? She isn’t sure. A blow job might have sufficed. Wasn’t that what his spread legs meant? And a blow job isn’t exactly infidelity, is it? If she were to give Andras a blow job—she shudders in disgust at the thought—but if she were to do it, just once, just to get the job, she could still claim to be faithful. It wouldn’t be the lowest of the low, surely.
But she can’t. Surely she can’t. Can she? She always knew she was his type, but back then he wasn’t famous enough to have dared make the move. Or perhaps she was too young. Either way, he has always cast women in his movies who look just like her: blond, petite, exotic.
Ronni reaches over to her nightstand for a handheld pearl mirror and brings it a few inches in front of her face, staring at herself.
The product of a Swedish mother and an Anglo-Jewish father, even first thing in the morning (for her), Ronni is exotic. She is exactly Andras’s type. Dark skinned like her father, petite, with her mother’s large green eyes that have the tiniest of slants, and thick blond hair, she has been destined for stardom from the moment she was born. Not the B-movie stardom she has enjoyed for the last twelve years—the kind of stardom where she will sometimes get better tables in restaurants and asked for autographs should she encounter people who may have seen her movies—but the real Hollywood superstar stardom. The kind of stardom that can generate the parting of the Red Sea.
Adoring parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles watched as she performed for them as a child, her green eyes sparkling as she sang, dipped, and twirled on a wooden box her father had made for her as an impromptu stage. They kept it behind the sofa in the living room of their pretty stucco Georgian house just off Downshire Hill in London’s leafy Hampstead.
At eighteen she got her first film part. At twenty she moved to Hollywood. At twenty-one she had an affair with Warren Beatty, which, although not entirely unusual for a beautiful young actress in Hollywood at that time, nevertheless resulted in her being featured in all the gossip columns. At twenty-two she landed the first in a number of leading roles in B movies. At twenty-three, she unexpectedly discovered she was pregnant, courtesy of a passionate but relatively new r
elationship with Robert Sunshine, who was beginning to make a name for himself in New York with commercial real estate deals.
He was developing a shopping mall in Los Angeles and traveled there frequently. Ronni, still climbing her way up the movie ladder, had accepted a booking to be a hostess at one of Robert’s cocktail parties. Her role was to greet and charm.
By the end of the night, it was clear that Robert was the most charmed of all. The affair went from there, and what with the pregnancy, she married him and took his name, as the gossip columnists went wild. Ronni Sunshine! Didn’t it sound like she was heading for the top? They moved into a rambling wooden contemporary nestled in Laurel Canyon that felt like a magical tree house.
Ronni hated being pregnant, felt like a giant moose. Her figure, which she had always worked so hard to maintain as a young actress embarking on a career in which looks were paramount, was transformed into something unrecognizable.
She snapped back within three months of her daughter’s birth, and soon won the part of a young housewife in a gothic horror movie that was set to be a huge hit, but didn’t do as well as anyone hoped. Most of all, Ronni.
She continued working. She was one of the lucky ones, she supposed, although it didn’t feel like it. Being a steadily working actress, occasionally being recognized, wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
The stardom she craved was always just out of her reach. Her pregnancies weren’t planned, either of them. But she believed having a successful husband, a good-looking, glamorous husband, would surely help propel her further.
Now, finally, she has a real shot at something big. A role that will put her in the major leagues. And all it will take to get it is a blow job. Perhaps she could call Andras today and ask to meet with him again, apologize for storming out in disgust. She could tell him it was her time of the month. She’ll think of something.
She thinks about him sitting on the sofa, his legs spread, an eyebrow raised, and a wave of nausea hits her just as there is a knock on the door and Rosa comes in without waiting for her to answer. Rosa does this all the time, oversteps her boundaries. If she wasn’t such a good housekeeper, Ronni always says she would have got rid of her years ago, but the house is sparkling, the children love her, and the truth is, Ronni loves her too.
“You wanna get up?” Rosa stands in the doorway. “The man is here to fix the pool and I don’t know what to tell him. Mr. Robert says to talk to me, but I don’t know nothing. You wanna talk to him?” Rosa peers at Ronni and seems to suddenly notice she is a frightening shade of gray. “You okay?” she says.
Ronni jumps out of bed with her hand clapped over her mouth and races to the bathroom. She just about makes it to the toilet, where she heaves into the bowl, her stomach clenching in tight cramps, her body heaving and retching, even though nothing comes out except the tiniest bit of stomach bile.
She splashes her face with cold water, relieved the nausea has passed, then swishes water around her mouth. When she comes back into the bedroom, Rosa is still standing in the doorway, this time with her arms crossed and one eyebrow raised.
“I’m absolutely fine,” says Ronni. “Can you make sure my black dress is pressed? The one with the deep neckline? I’ll be going out in two hours.”
two
Mommy! You look pretty!”
Ronni sails into the kitchen, twirling around her daughter in her long eggplant Halston dress, feeling feminine and beautiful as the little girl lets out a peal of laughter. Meredith laughs in delight as her mother circles around her, leaning down to flutter butterfly kisses along her little pudgy cheek.
“Where are you going?” asks Meredith.
“Just to school for Nell’s little poetry performance,” she says, shaking out the chiffon scarf and wrapping it around her shoulders. “Do I look alright?”
“You look like the movie star you are,” says Iris, a nanny who has lasted beyond six months, long enough to know what flattery will get her with her employer.
“What about the stomach?” Ronni turns to the side, showing the tiniest of swells. “Don’t I look enormous? Aren’t I huge?”
Iris blanches in horror. “You don’t look pregnant at all. But even if you did, pregnant women are beautiful. It’s what our bodies are made for. You must be proud to be pregnant, not ashamed.”
“I am not ashamed.” Ronni sinks into a chair at the table, unconsciously reaching out for a French fry from Meredith’s plate, only realizing the sin she is about to commit when the food is almost touching her lips. She puts it back on Meredith’s plate, wiping her fingers on the tablecloth. “I just don’t want people to know unless they have to know. There is still work I can do as long as I’m not showing.”
“What about the part in that movie? With the kidnapped child? Is that your next project?”
Ronni frowns. “It was offered to me,” she says, as the memory of Andras in his office flashes into her mind, “but I turned it down once I realized I was pregnant. The filming schedule didn’t work.”
The whole debacle was something she prefers not to think about. She went back to speak to Andras. She did what she needed to do to get the part, determined to forever put it out of her mind as soon as it was over, determined that no one would ever find out, no one would ever need to know how low she had sunk for the sake of her career. She told Andras that she was married, and happy, that this was a one-off, and he agreed, even as he was unzipping his pants for the blow job she reluctantly gave him.
She had no idea she was pregnant at the time. They were due to start filming in six months. She would be eight months pregnant. She hadn’t even signed the contract yet when she realized her condition. She met with the studio and asked for filming to be pushed back by three months. They said they would consider it, but that afternoon a messenger showed up on the doorstep with a letter. Their offer had been rescinded. They wished her lots of luck with her pregnancy and her career.
“There will be lots more, yes?” says Iris. Ronni says nothing. The last thing she needs is to be comforted by the nanny.
“Ronni?” Robert comes into the kitchen, going straight over to Meredith and covering her with kisses as she squeals and laughs. He reaches over her shoulder to take a handful of French fries and pop them in his mouth before looking over at Ronni.
“You look very dressed. Are you sure that’s the appropriate attire for a second grade class party?”
Ronni stares at him. She chose well, she thinks. He is the perfect complement to her, with his towering height and long legs, his dark hair and handsome, preppy looks. She chose well even though they seem to be drifting apart, even though there are times she feels they are speaking to each other from different planets, have lost what little they had in common in the first place. “Do you even know me? How do you think I’m supposed to dress? In Jordache jeans and Bass Weejuns? Or clogs? I’m not a suburban housewife. I’m an actress. And most of the parents at the school are in the industry, which means this isn’t about a class party, it’s about work.”
“You know they’ll all be in jeans and sneakers, and it’s a new school for us. Are you sure you don’t want to just blend in?” He looks at her face before backtracking. “If you feel good in that, who am I to tell you differently.”
Ronni stares at him before turning on her heel and walking out of the kitchen. All she needed to hear was that she looks beautiful. It doesn’t seem so much to ask. He is traveling, and distracted, and things are so different from when they first got together, when Robert treated her like his precious jewel, when he couldn’t get over how lucky he was that she had chosen him.
three
There is a murmur around the room of parents when Ronni walks in. She has made sure they are late; she always makes sure they are late. Not too much, just enough to be able to create a bit of a stir.
There are a couple of major stars who have their children in this elementary school, but non
e in Nell’s grade. She is the biggest celebrity here, even though her star does not appear to be rising just now.
Still, she has a face that is familiar to the people in the room. Even if you didn’t know her name, you would recognize her from a late-night movie you accidentally stumbled upon and paused to watch before flicking over until you hit The Tonight Show. She has a face you may have registered while driving past a giant poster on Sunset Boulevard. Not right in the front, but to the right. Not the lead, but in the picture.
The parents who aren’t sure murmur to the people they are standing with. Who is that? She must surely be someone, in that fabulously over-the-top dress for a classroom party. She looks like a movie star, so beautiful, with those gorgeous eyes. She’s definitely familiar, but they can’t quite place her.
“That’s Ronni Sunshine, the actress,” their friends murmur back. “You know, she was in . . . oh, what was she in? She’s been in so much. You’ve definitely seen her. Those gothic horror movies. What are they called? Oh, why can’t I think. Mommy brain! I can’t remember anything anymore.”
Ronni swishes through the crowd, casting gracious beatific smiles on the parents. Those she knows she stops to air kiss, always European-style, one on each side.
“You look beautiful!” everyone says, for indeed she does, pregnancy always suiting her, giving her a glow that radiates around the room. But the glow is real, quite aside from the pregnancy; she has always blossomed in the face of an effusive compliment.
The children are all huddled in a corner, excitedly whispering among themselves as the parents take their seats. Nell stands slightly off to the side, noticeable for her height—she is the tallest in the class, towering over everyone by at least four inches—and her stillness. The other children jig from side to side, unable to be still, waving to their parents, whirling around to catch the attention of a child on the other side of the group. Not Nell. Nell stands, staring into space, the only movement her lips, which, if you look very closely, are ever so slightly mouthing the words of her poem as she ensures she knows it by heart, reciting it over and over again.