Later that day, Patti came over to consult with her about dresses, and soon Patti was sending over different possibilities. Maddy felt better physically, most of her baby weight gone, the color back in her cheeks.
She selected a strapless champagne-colored Marchesa covered in crystals, with a two-foot silky tulle train. It was like a ballerina bridal dress but form-fitting, and around the neckline were little pieces of fabric that looked like winged birds.
When Steven arrived in a limousine he had rented for the occasion, and she emerged from the house, he stepped from the car and shook his head. “You’re beautiful,” he said.
“I really hope this isn’t a stupid idea,” she said.
He came around the side of the car. “We could get married again. People have done it before.”
“Steven,” she said quietly. “I’m your date tonight, but that’s it. I’ll never attend another event with you. This is the last one.”
“I know.”
Alan opened the door and she got in first, gathering her train around her. When they pulled up to the theater, she saw it all. The pen of fans on risers. The line of celebrities walking the L-shaped carpet to the golden entrance with its golden curtains held to the side.
As they emerged, there was a roar and the fans leaped to their feet. The screaming was deafening and reminded her of Berlin. Once again she was a cog in a machine.
She had been wrong to come, wrong to cave to Steven. Now that she no longer had to.
Slowly, they made their way to the video crews, posing again and again for the gathered photographers on one side. Steven took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. They knew exactly how to stand next to each other, they had done it so many times. She pivoted to her left, her good side. There were shouts: “Can you turn your back, please, Maddy?” and “Maddy, look this way!” and “How about a three-quarter?” Again and again they posed, some together, some apart, so the photographers could get a full shot of the dress.
Finally, they approached one of the entertainment-news crews. Kira, in a dark green V-neck dress, was talking; when she saw Maddy behind her, she turned and embraced her, widening her eyes at Maddy’s date, and pulled them both in front of the camera. Kira kissed Steven graciously, and he congratulated her on her nomination. As Kira stepped aside to let the interviewer have his time with the couple, she whispered to Maddy, “You managed to upstage me.”
Kira moved to her next interview, and Maddy and Steven answered dumb predictable questions for the dopey young reporter. She said kind things about Kira’s performance, and the guy was good enough not to mention that she’d had to back out, even though everyone knew about it.
After they had given half a dozen interviews, they made their way toward the entrance. As they moved up the line, slowly, slowly, the ticket-taking drawn out so the fans could get their last glimpses of everyone famous on the line, Steven put his mouth to her ear. “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he whispered. “And I don’t want to keep hiding. I want Jake to know me. All these years I told myself there was no other choice, but there was. I’m going to tell the world who I am. If I lose Tommy Hall, I don’t care.”
She was shocked. Did he mean here, tonight? The orchestra was quick to cut off people during acceptance speeches, not to mention any other kind. But he was Steven Weller, and the producers would recognize international news when they saw it.
She looked at him again, her eyes welling with pride. Her ex-husband was about to make history. And the moment would be immortalized on camera, the cameras that had been his friend all these years, the cameras that had brought him everything he had, including Maddy. Including Jake.
They made their way to the reporter waiting to talk to them. Holding her hand, Steven walked just a few steps ahead.
Inside the theater, they sat side by side, watching the endless ceremony, laughing appropriately at the jokes. The beginning was slow. The host, a faded comedian in his sixties, opened with a big song-and-dance number. Steven was to present the best-editing Oscar, to be given out toward the end of the first hour. When a production assistant tapped him on the shoulder during a commercial break to take him backstage, Steven squeezed Maddy’s hand. She looked up at him to see if he really meant it, if he was really going to do this thing. But he was already gone.
As Steven made his way up the aisle, he knew that when he walked back down, everything would be different. These were his last moments as the Steven Weller everyone knew, and tonight would be marked as the turning point. It was terrifying, and he still didn’t know exactly what he was going to say, he hadn’t wanted to memorize it, but when he was done, he would be a different person. A real father to his son. You had to be honest to be a good parent; otherwise you set a terrible example.
Everything was going to be fine. He’d been in the industry long enough that he had earning power, any producer would see that, the studios knew it, and there would be goodwill, especially from GLAAD, an organization that had surpassed the ADL in Hollywood power. He would lose the third Tommy Hall; they would put it in turnaround to “rethink” the casting, he knew that.
But he would bounce back. It might take some time, but he would bounce back. Audiences were sophisticated now, they knew gay people, it was why gay marriage was going to pass, the tide was shifting and audiences could suspend disbelief, they suspended disbelief every time they watched a straight guy play a fag for an award, a beautiful actress don a prosthetic nose.
He was nearing the back of the theater, and he saw Harry Matheson, the late-night host, sitting in the audience next to his wife. It was his red hair that caught Steven’s eye. As Steven moved down the aisle, Harry gave him a thumbs-up.
Steven remembered Maddy going on Harry and discussing his sexual prowess. She had been “on” that night, herself but not herself, the perfect actress. And then she had come into the greenroom, and it was as though she had been flattened.
One night when he was on the boat with Christian, they’d had a conversation about porn titles. Christian was so young, only twenty-four, that he didn’t even know about the days when pornos had stories. Steven remembered one he had watched in the early 1990s, a takeoff of a sitcom called Jack and Mike. The porn title was Jacking Mike, and on the boat, they had laughed about it. He had felt relaxed in moments like that; those moments were why he went on Jo with Christian and the others before and after.
He had been taking a risk with Christian, who was out of his usual circle of agents and agents’ assistants and art directors and stylists, who were doing fine on their own and had nothing to gain from outing him. But he was a sweet kid, such an open face. They had flirted every time Steven went to the boat, and he had seen Steven with the other guys, and somehow he had weaseled his way on, though Steven had had an instinct that it was a bad idea. He had let his guard down, but for a month or two, he had gotten away with it, until he got the call from Edward.
When the story broke, he had felt trapped, he had been sure it was the end, but then Maddy had stepped up to help him out. He hadn’t even had to ask. That was how much she loved him. Now he would tell the truth, and in telling the truth, he would be outing her as a liar. They would replay her clip ad infinitum, back to back with the speech he was about to give. This was about much more than the stakes for him. It was about more than undoing a fifteen-year-old image and reversing the lengths he had gone to in order to work, in order to keep working, in order to get to the top.