Outtakes from a Marriage (15 page)

“Joe just left his trailer about ten minutes ago, so maybe somebody saw somebody go in,” said Catherine as she sprang for the door.

Outside, we encountered a young production assistant stomping his feet and warming his hands around a cup of coffee. Catherine marched up to him.

“Hey!” Catherine said. She looked him over carefully.

“Hey,” the PA responded tentatively.

“Were you just in Joe’s trailer?” Catherine demanded.

“Me? No!”

“How long have you been standing here?”

“I dunno. Five, ten minutes?”

“Did you see anyone besides Joe go into his trailer?”

“I saw…her.” The PA nodded at me.

“Yeah, well, that’s Joe’s wife. She’s allowed to go in his trailer!”

“Hi,” I said, smiling awkwardly. I struggled with whether or not I should reach out to shake the man’s hand, but he was being interrogated about a freshly committed bowel movement and I just couldn’t.

“And you didn’t run into Joe’s trailer to use the bathroom?”

“No!”

“Because I know it would be convenient, especially if you had to take a big…you know what. It would be an awful lot more convenient just to go in the trailer than to go all the way over to that disgusting bathroom in the church that they’re using.”

“Look,” said the kid, his face reddening, “I just told you I didn’t go in there.”

I half expected Catherine to grab the guy by the shirt collar, drag him into Joe’s bathroom, and spank him with a rolled-up newspaper. “No!” I could hear her scolding him. “Bad!” But she just glared at him and then stomped off, with me at her heels.

“They’re shooting in an old church. It’s a pedophile episode,” Catherine explained, oddly calm again, as we began walking over there.

“Didn’t they already do an episode about a child molester this season?” I asked.

“I think that was a nanny. This one’s about a priest.”

“Oh.”

“It’s going to air during sweeps week!”

That explained it. Nothing like a pedophile priest to guarantee viewers during sweeps week!

A small crowd had gathered outside the entrance to a charming but run-down old Baptist church that I had never noticed on this block. A police officer was standing in front of a street barricade where sidewalk spectators stood around with their cell phones poised to take pictures of whoever might come walking out of the church.

“Who the fuck do these people think they are, telling me I can’t walk down my own street? Man, this is fucked up,” a guy in dread-locks was ranting. The cop nodded at Catherine as she walked around the barricade and I followed her into the church.

In the entryway, a production assistant stood guard in front of a closed door. “They’re rolling,” he said to us quietly, and Catherine and I stood waiting. After a moment, a voice came over the PA’s walkie-talkie, saying, “Cut!” and the PA opened the door for us.

The inside of the church was dark and warm and it smelled like lemon oil and wood and musty leather. I imagined that when it wasn’t chock-full of people and equipment, it must be quite a peaceful sanctuary. The thick stone slab walls blocked off the noise of the city and the nearby highway. I pictured the pews lined with Sunday worshippers wearing hats and white gloves, singing hymns, joining their hands together in prayer. Today the pews were fillled with technicians and teamsters, and the floors were littered with Dunkin’ Donuts cups and napkins. At the front of the church near the altar, several large lights shone on an old man and a younger man about Joe’s age and height, with Joe’s exact haircut—Joe’s double.

“Julia!” somebody called, and I turned to see Andrea, the makeup girl, waving to me from a nearby pew. Just the woman I wanted to see.

“Hi, Andrea,” I said, and she motioned for me to come over. She cleared away a large tote filled with makeup and I sat down beside her.

“They’re just setting up this shot. I think Joe and Frank are in the back running through their lines. He’ll be out in a minute.”

“Great,” I said. “So how’re you doing?”

“Good! Good.”

We both looked toward the front of the church.

“Have you met Doug yet?” she asked me as I tried to think of what to say next.

“Doug who?”

“Doug McCarthy? He’s a new director. He did episodes three and four this season.”

“No, I haven’t met him, but I know Joe really likes him.”

“Oh yeah, he’s great. Everybody likes him. I’m sure Joe told you about Brant getting fired.”

“Uh, no…I’m not really sure who Brant is.”

“Oh, I know you’ve met him. He was the head of wardrobe,” Andrea said, and she started in on a long and generally uninteresting diatribe about Brant’s unfortunate history on this production. While she talked I thought,
Alison was right. Makeup girls love to chat.

“…Joe couldn’t stand him. We have a new guy now, Al, and he and Joe get along great. He’s funny. Everybody’s been teasing Joe about that thing in the
Post
this morning, so Al put a ‘Gay Pride’ T-shirt in Joe’s trailer with the rest of his wardrobe and—”

“What thing in the
Post
?”

“Joe didn’t tell you?”

“No, I haven’t spoken to him today.”

“Oh, well, it’s one of those blind items, where they don’t say who it is they’re talking about, but it sounds like they’re talking about Joe, you know. There must be a
Post
around here someplace. Let me see if I can find one….”

Andrea stood and wandered down the rows, looking for a paper, and I started to get a sinking feeling. She returned to our pew, riffling through the pages of a beat-up newspaper.

“Here it is,” she said, handing the paper to me.

There at the bottom of “Page Six” was:

What married male star of a hit cop show was seen picking up an attractive young man at a popular New York club recently, adding fuel to the, um, flaming online rumors that his marriage might be a sham?

I read it over several times. Then I said, trying to conceal the panic in my voice, “And people think this is supposed to be Joe?”

“Yeah, well, not really, but everybody’s been giving him a hard time about it. You know, married star of a cop show…”

“Oh yeah, I see….”

“I mean, they could mean Richard Davis from that show
Rookie,
but that shoots in L.A. and this happened in New York….”

“There are tons of cop shows,” I said. “Doesn’t Kiefer Sutherland play a cop on that show
24
?”

Andrea’s eyes lit up. “Kiefer Sutherland is gay? How do you know? Are you and Joe friends with him?”

“No, I wasn’t saying he’s gay, I was just saying that there are a lot of cop characters on TV.”

“I don’t think he plays a cop on
24.
Wait a minute, here comes somebody who’ll know….”

I followed Andrea’s gaze to see a very beautiful young woman approaching us. She was cheerful-looking and petite and she wore the type of clothing that looks lovely on the cheerful petite but clownish on the rest of us. She had a little red wool ski cap that perched at a jaunty angle on her head. Long, silky auburn hair flowed from beneath the cap and over her shoulders. What had looked like a hand-knit sweater from a distance turned out to be a multicolored poncho. She wore very tight jeans that accentuated her slender hips and slim thighs, and on her feet were a pair of lime green moccasins. I tried to imagine the same getup on my five-foot-eight frame, with my abundant (although somewhat less noticeable these days, due to stress) butt. I would have looked like a big pear-shaped oaf in those jeans, with that crazy short poncho. She looked like a young Audrey Hepburn. I knew it was Jenna.

“Hey, what a great surprise!” said Joe’s voice behind me. I turned to see him entering my pew from the opposite side.

“Hi, honey,” I said. Joe gave me a kiss and I whipped my head around to see what Jenna’s reaction would be. She remained calm and composed.

Andrea called out to her, “Katie, do you watch
24
?”

“I’ve seen it. It’s not, like, a regular show of mine. But I’ve seen it.”

Not Jenna. This girl Katie had a thick Long Island accent. She wasn’t Jenna.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” said Joe. Behind him, a pair of teamsters was trying to make their way toward the altar with a life-size bronze-painted Jesus on a crucifix. “Coming through!” one of them called out, and Joe moved forward into the pew, allowing Jesus to be schlepped down the aisle behind him. He was obviously constructed out of Styrofoam, because the two men held Him high above their heads, each effortlessly bearing the cross with one hand.

“Is Kiefer Sutherland supposed to be a cop on his show?” Andrea asked Joe.

“I think he’s a spy or something,” said Joe. “Why?”

“Julia and I were trying to figure out who that blind item was about.”

“Oh, it was definitely meant to be me. My publicist just found out that there’s all this stuff about me being gay on Gawker. They have dates when I was apparently out with some guy, but she’s going to go back over my schedule and figure out what I was doing each night to prove that that site is full of lies. I’m thinking of suing.”

“Is there any way for them to figure out who posted those tips?” I asked calmly.
Breathe,
I told myself.
Breathe.

“Of course they can. Everyone who posts on the site has to register. They’ll have to track the people who wrote those lies, and maybe I can sue them, too.”

A group of boys in choir gowns were now being led down the aisle behind Joe, his cue to get ready for his next scene.

“You should stay and watch these kids sing, honey,” Joe said to me, kissing me good-bye. “They’re real members of the Harlem Boys Choir.”

“Yeah, they sing like angels,” said Andrea, then when Joe walked away she said to me, “Have you read this week’s script?”

“No, I never read the scripts anymore,” I said. “I used to….”

“It’s great. The priest has been abusing one of the boys in the choir. The boy’s going to be doing the solo—they’re supposed to be rehearsing—and while the boy sings ‘Ave Maria,’ there are tears streaming down his face…. That reminds me, I better make sure I have the eye drops.” Andrea started rummaging through her makeup bag. “Here we go….”

“So what happens?” I asked.

“Oh, so the boy is singing and crying, and the priest is all evil looking and laughing at the boy, and then Joe comes storming in and they get into a skirmish and Joe goes to shoot the priest and accidentally shoots the boy! It’s a ‘To Be Continued’ episode.”

Oh Jesus,
I thought, looking apologetically up at the Styrofoam Savior hanging above the altar. Even He looked embarrassed. No wonder I stopped reading the scripts! I looked at my watch and realized that I was due in Jonathan’s salon for my hair extensions in less than an hour and still needed to drop our car off at the garage.

“I gotta go,” I said to Andrea. “Will you please tell Joe and Catherine that I said good-bye?”

“Sure, sweetie,” said Andrea.

I ended up being early for my appointment with Jonathan, so I sat in the waiting area and flipped through a gossip magazine that somebody had left on the seat beside me. It was the one with a regular column called “Stars—They’re Just Like Us!”—a two-page spread of candid photos showing celebrities doing things that are supposed to be surprisingly normal.

“They eat with their hands!” said a caption under a photo of Will Smith popping a morsel into his mouth at a sidewalk café.

“They forget their umbrellas!” said another, showing a drenched Zooey Deschanel trudging through a Manhattan downpour.

I thought about the contributions I could provide with my own exclusive access to one particular luminary. “They floss on the bed while watching TV!” “They leave milk out on the counter until it spoils!” “They cheat at Scrabble!” I came up with a variety of annoying things Joe did, little domestic crimes, but I knew that none of them, perhaps not even his adulterous affair, equaled the hateful slander that I had posted on Gawker. Why had I done it? Ever since I left the set, my mind kept wandering back to the poisonous posts and the various “what ifs.” What if, at this very minute, Joe’s lawyers were serving Gawker with a summons or a warrant or whatever else would enable them to gain access to a list of the site’s registered users? I imagined the slow, disbelieving smiles appearing on their faces as they learned that the poster was actually his wife. I thought about the way that they would pass on the shocking information to Joe. “We’ve got some…bad news,” they would say. “You’d better sit down.”

I was still playing out this revelation of my betrayal when Jonathan came to collect me for my extensions. He sensed my somber mood and didn’t talk much throughout the process, which was much more complicated than I had anticipated. Jonathan took long, thin strands of human hair in various shades of blond and fastened them to my own hair with some sort of glue-gun/flat-iron contraption. He began at noon. By three o’clock, when I was well into imagining my lost custody battle, Jonathan finished with the gluing, and my hair, once barely past my chin, now hung halfway down my back. My scalp was tender and sore from the pulling, and my hair looked eerily similar to my Barbie doll’s the time I decided to give her a haircut when I was a little girl. It didn’t taper at the bottom but instead ended in long, chunky, uneven sections. Not a great look. Jonathan sent me off to be shampooed and I winced in pain as the shampoo girl scrubbed the tightly glued sections that lay in hard knots all around the top of my scalp. Back at the chair, Jonathan started to trim the bottom of my hair. “Not too much,” I said, not only because the extensions were expensive and it felt wasteful to cut them, but also because I started to realize I looked younger with long hair. I momentarily stopped fretting and admired the way my hair swung around my shoulders in long, silky, sandy-blond waves. My hair had never looked this good.

I left the salon and hadn’t walked two blocks before I encountered—get this—two firemen, walking toward me all geared up. One was talking on his phone, but the other looked me up and down and then said, “Hey!” with a big smile. Before I had a chance to think about it, I said, “Hey!” with a big smile right back. Not “Fuck off” like I would have said fifteen years ago, but “Hey!” with the big smile.