At the ultrasound, Dr. Baker asked if they wanted to know the gender and Maddy said no, she thought it was better for it to be a surprise; Steven, perhaps sympathetic to her fraught early weeks, yielded.
He decided they needed to build a wing for the baby, complete with live-in baby-nurse quarters. Maddy didn’t want one, remembering Irina’s prediction that they would get one.
Steven came home with swatches of sheets and crib wood and rugs in colors that could work for either a boy or a girl because he said the whole pink-or-blue thing was stupid.
Though Maddy was eager to maintain her sex life with Steven, he seemed increasingly disturbed by her body’s new shape as the pregnancy progressed. More often than not, sex consisted of her fellating him. She was hurt that he didn’t seem attracted to her, but he talked constantly about the baby and his excitement, and she decided his desire for family was more important than whatever issues he had with her body.
He began work on a comedy set in a Chicago public school, and most nights he came straight home from set. He no longer talked about Ryan Costello. She asked him once if they’d had a falling-out and he said, “I finally realized he was immature. I was wrong to have thought he was a friend.”
One morning in January, shortly after her five-month visit, she met Dan for a walk in Runyon Canyon. “You look fantastic,” he said in the parking lot when she got out of the car. “Your tits are big now.”
“Yeah, I have actual breasts,” she said. “It’s weird. I feel like my body’s doing what it’s meant to, you know?”
“I can’t believe you’re going to be a mother.”
“Me, neither. It’s trippy. It’s really trippy.”
They started on the path, Dan slowing his pace because it was harder now for Maddy to move quickly. She asked if he was dating anyone and he said no one serious. “I’m kind of in this place of wanting to learn to be on my own,” he said. “I’m just more into my work.”
Silver Spring had been a critical and commercial success, scooping up a slew of critics’ nominations and earning a respectable return on its $500,000 budget. On its heels, Dan had scripted another small indie that would be financed entirely by his backers and still allow him final cut. His actors, as they had on Silver Spring, would get a percentage of the back end in lieu of a lot of money up front.
He had sent the new script, still untitled, to her at the hospital in England. It was a drama about a young couple in Brooklyn and their friendship with a quirky older male neighbor who becomes entangled in both of their lives. Maddy liked it and gave him a lengthy set of notes, and they went back and forth a few times, Dan asking her for elaboration, Maddy happy to provide it.
“How have you been keeping busy?” he asked as a Rhodesian ridgeback bounded past, the owner trailing behind. “Is it strange not working?”
“Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“Sure.”
“I’m writing a script.”
“Really? That’s fantastic. You’ve always been a good writer.”
“Even though you wanted me to give up my rights?” she asked with a sly smile.
“How many times are you going to make me apologize? I was a Hollywood neophyte. I would never do something like that today. So what’s your screenplay about?”
She told him all about Lane Cromwell as they hiked, until they stopped at a lookout, where she told him more. She talked about Lane’s affairs, her career, and her mental problems. He listened intently and said it sounded like she had absorbed everything possible about this woman’s life.
“Your first screenplay,” he said, “I mean the first one you’re writing all alone, and it’s so ambitious.”
“Maybe no one will want to make it. But I feel like I have to finish it. I felt this need to tell her story.”
“And you want to play her, I assume?”
“Well, of course. But who knows if I’ll be able to make it happen?”
“Of course you will. You’re Maddy Freed. You can do anything you want.”
“Do you mean Steven Weller’s wife can do anything she wants?”
“I mean Maddy Freed. You’re a star. Don’t you know that?”
“When I had to back out of Walter’s movie, I felt like no one would want to work with me again. It was such a mess, being in the hospital and being in England. And then Kira taking over the role.”
“Are you still speaking to her?”
“We’re . . . cordial.” Maddy had wanted to be able to snap back into a friendship with Kira, but felt it would be painful to be near her. “All these things at once, I was losing weight and I couldn’t sleep and I was so anxious about the baby. I had to go on antidepressants. I’m on them now.” She had gone off the lorazepam while in the hospital and hadn’t needed it since.
“You did the right thing.”
“Steven was freaked out about it. He said he didn’t want the medicine going into the baby. Now we just don’t talk about it.”
“He’s a fucking idiot. It’s like on the airplanes when they say you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put one on your child.”
“Exactly,” she said. He still understood her. “Anyway, I thought I would never work again. And I realized if I wrote something for myself, with a role for me to play, it might be different. When you’re an actor, you have to wait for people to hire you. When you’re a writer, you can just—write. Please don’t tell anyone about this, though.”
“No, of course not.”
“Zack’s the only one who knows. I didn’t even tell Steven.”
“He doesn’t know, and Zack and I do?”
“I don’t want him to see it until it’s done. I need it to be mine for now. Like how you were with Silver Spring.”
“Yeah.”
They turned and started on the hiking path again. “I envy you,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because you’re in complete control of your films.”
“Yeah, but we did it for a tiny amount of money and a very small cast.”
“The scale doesn’t matter. You’re making your own stuff again, like you were when I met you. And it’s going well. If the next one does even a little bit of business, then they’ll give you the money to do a third and a fourth, and you can keep working like that until you’re old.”
“Or until they don’t want to finance me anymore.”
“That won’t happen. People will keep paying for you to make stuff. If you asked me for help again, I would give it to you.”
He put his arm around her for a second. “Thank you,” he said.
“It’s a good investment,” she said. “Even if I didn’t like you, I’d back you. I put in twenty-five grand and got a hundred and fifty thousand back. You’re way better than the stock market.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
She panted a little as she climbed, and he asked if she wanted to stop, but she said she was fine. “So . . . are you excited to be a mom?” he asked. “I mean, is it real to you?”
“Now that the baby’s kicking, it is. But honestly, I’m just trying to write as much as I can, because once the baby’s born, I won’t be able to. It’s like this ticking clock inside of me. A good one. It’s motivating me.”
“Can I ask you something?” he said, picking up a stick and holding it out like a cane. “You got pregnant right after you started shooting Walter’s movie. And you were so passionate about that role. I know you weren’t expecting to get sick, but was the baby planned?”