Amy Sohn - The Actress

“I thought the critics were too hard on you. I’m proud of your performance.”

“Please forgive me,” he said.

“You have to let me be my own person,” she said. “I need to be able to have a social life. I’m young. I can stay up later than you. We’ve been too isolated.”

Steven hugged her and stroked her hair. “You can do anything you want to do. You’re so talented. I love you so much, and I haven’t been appreciating you.”

“No.”

“That’s going to change,” he said. “I won’t be like this again. It’s our anniversary. I want to get out of L.A. and remember what we promised each other. Let’s go away. Please say you’ll come away.”

They flew to Venice. All the palazzo staff members were there, and they seemed happy to see the couple, calling her “Signorina Weller,” as they always did, even though it wasn’t her name. They went to L’Accademia and looked at La Tempesta hand in hand. They went back to the trattorias where he had taken her before she knew she loved him. They went out on the Lido in his motorboat and to the Basilica on Torcello. They dined at Locanda Cipriani, where the gracious host greeted her as if she were Kim Novak.

When they came back to the palazzo, there was champagne in the bedroom and olives and bread and wine and cheese. “I love you so much,” he said. “I never want to lose you. You scared me this week.”

He got on top of her, and she was grateful that he was being warm to her again; he understood what he had done wrong, and would change. Everything was coming together now, her marriage and her work. She had a partner. Her career would get back on track and Steven loved her and their bodies were close. He moved his mouth on her navel, then lower, and she felt herself opening. “You’re so wet,” he said.

She closed her eyes and forgot where she was for a moment, and then she was coming. The champagne, the long journey, the jet lag, she wasn’t even sure what day it was anymore. He was moving in her, and she was light-headed and drunk, was he pulling out, or it seemed like he was, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t want to think about anything, she just wanted to be close to her husband who understood her and respected who she was. It was as it had been at the beginning. They were a couple.

Production on The Moon and the Stars began in London in October. On the fourth day, Maddy was shooting a scene where Betty follows her husband out of the apartment and sees him kissing a man in the park. They had already done the kiss, and now they were doing the reaction. It was a difficult, emotional scene, and she wasn’t giving Walter what he wanted. She kept feeling dizzy and cold.

“Do less but do more,” Walter said, one of those directions that drove actors crazy because it was so meaningless. Maddy did a take where she cried, but he said it was “too showy.” She remembered how frustrated he had gotten when she was doing the love scenes with Billy Peck, and she hoped that Walter would not be difficult again. After the seventh take, Walter said, “What do I need to do to get you to listen to me?,” and on the word “listen,” she vomited onto the grass.

She was convinced it was food poisoning, but then it happened the next day, and the next.

The ob-gyn was in her mid-fifties and resembled Julie Christie. Dr. Liddell. She saw all the London celebs and had been recommended to Maddy by a model who’d had a role in The Pharmacist’s Daughter. When the doctor came in the exam room looking down at her file, Maddy knew. She hadn’t taken any over-the-counter tests for fear she would be noticed in the store. Because of that, she had been able to lie to herself that it was food poisoning, even though she hadn’t been running a fever.

“The urine test indicates that you’re pregnant,” Dr. Liddell said after she took her seat.

Maddy nodded nervously. The finality of it. She wanted to feel joy about becoming a mother, but the pregnancy was so ill timed, she felt only dread. She didn’t have anyone to blame but herself. She had noticed that her period hadn’t come since she went off the pill, but because she had been on it so long, she had been telling herself it was her body adjusting to the lack of hormones.

She remembered Palazzo Mastrototaro, how she wasn’t sure whether Steven had pulled out. She had been drunk on champagne, and jet-lagged, and confused, but none of that was an excuse, she should have made sure he used a condom—every time. She was an actress; to work she needed to be healthy. To work she needed to control her body. How could she have been blasé about something so important to her career?

“Is this a surprise?” Dr. Liddell asked.

“A little,” Maddy said. “I went off the pill in August. And we went on vacation and—we weren’t careful enough.”

“Based on the estimated last menstrual you gave me,” said the doctor, “you’re about seven weeks along.”

“When would you expect me to start showing?”

“With first pregnancies, it can be as long as five or six months. It’s different for every woman. I’d like to do an ultrasound today. We should be able to hear the heartbeat by now.”

Maddy went to the exam room and waited, and then Dr. Liddell came in. As she put the wand on Maddy’s belly, they looked at the screen. There was a little peanut. And she could hear the lub-dub of the heart. “Oh my God,” she said. There was a living being inside of her that she had made with Steven, that had come out of their love. If only they had timed their love a little better.

Afterward Maddy asked what she should do about the vomiting, and Dr. Liddell said, “Eat small meals. Crackers. Ginger helps. Eat as soon as you wake up. Keep some food by your bed. If it continues, call me.”

As Maddy walked out of the office, she told herself to stay positive. The pregnancy would inform the work; it would make her performance better. She could imagine the excitement on Walter’s face when she told him—the vibrancy of an expectant lead. Audiences would see her glow, and costuming would be no problem since it was so early, and the shoot was short.

She called Steven in Rhode Island from the Dorchester. When she told him, he said, “Oh my God. How did this happen?”

“I told you I was off the pill.”

“But we were careful, we’ve used condoms.”

“In Venice, the first night, I think. Do you remember?”

“I was so tired,” he said. “The jet lag.”

“I should have made you use protection,” she said. “It was my responsibility.” She was quiet and then said, “So are you happy?”

“Of course I am. This is what I’ve been wanting. I was ready to start as soon as we got married. We’re going to have a family. Are you happy?”

“I will be when I feel better,” she said. “Right now it seems like everything’s going wrong.” She told him she was worried about the vomiting, had thrown up again as soon as she got back from the doctor.

“It’ll resolve,” he said. “You’ll be fine. You’re young. I’m going to figure out how to get a break so I can see you. I want to look at you, look at your belly.”

Over the next week, the nausea and vomiting resolved somewhat as she sneaked small meals to the set, nibbled crackers, and bought ginger pills. She was certain that was the worst of it and decided not to tell the costume designer or Walter. It was early, anything could happen.

But about a week after her visit to Dr. Liddell, they were shooting a scene where Betty goes to a poetry slam. It was an important scene, just after her discovery of the affair. They had taken over an old Swinging London café and decorated it to look authentic. There were a hundred extras, all in period clothing. They were shooting day for night, and as soon as Maddy entered the room in full makeup and costume, she threw up all over her minidress. That was when she knew it was the end.

Dr. Liddell weighed her, ran a few tests, and went with her to the ER. She had lost weight since the last visit. In the ER, they put her on an electrolyte drip and moved her to a private room.

Dr. Liddell said Maddy would need to be hospitalized for at least a week, possibly more. She was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum: vomiting so severe it was dangerous to the fetus. She would be put on a drip indefinitely and monitored until she began to gain weight.

As soon as the doctor left the room, Maddy began to weep. On the phone, Steven said he would get there as soon as he could. “I don’t want to lose it,” she said.

“You’re not going to. You’re in good hands. I’ll be there soon.”

She called Zack because she couldn’t bear to call Walter herself. He said he would let Walter know. “What about the bonding company?” she asked.

“Let’s take it one step at a time, okay? Let’s just wait to hear what Lloyd’s has to say.”

When Steven arrived at the hospital two days later, she embraced him and broke into tears again. Since her pregnancy had been diagnosed, she had barely been sleeping, not taking any lorazepam for fear it might harm the fetus. For the past year or so, she had been taking it three or four nights a week.

With no respite, her mind had been alternating between worries about the baby, the film, and her inability to sleep, all of which were tied together. If she couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t gain weight, and if she couldn’t gain weight, she couldn’t get discharged, and if she couldn’t get discharged, she couldn’t work.

In the hospital that morning, she had complained to Dr. Liddell, who had confirmed that it could cause birth defects, and had sent a doctor to see her, a psychiatrist, a woman, who specialized in reproductive issues. The psychiatrist told her that lorazepam was the safest of all benzodiazepines for pregnancy, and that she could take it for a few weeks along with Zoloft, until the Zoloft started to kick in. Then she could go off the anti-anxiety medication.

“What if I can’t do the movie?” she asked, burying her face in Steven’s shoulder.

“We’ll get it worked out. For now you have to focus on getting rest.”

“But I want to work. I want to be Betty.”

“We have to keep the baby safe,” he said. “Maybe Walter can stop the production until you get better. He’s very committed to you.”

“This has been the strangest couple of days,” she said. “I went from not knowing I was pregnant to knowing to worrying about the baby nonstop.”

“That’s what it means to be a mother,” he said. He said it like it was good, but she wasn’t sure she agreed.

“I wish we’d been more careful in Venice,” she said.

“You can’t blame yourself. There’s no perfect time for a pregnancy.”

“I just wanted to do this film. And now everything’s ruined.”

“Don’t you want to be a mother?”

“I want to be a mother, but I also want to be an actress,” she said.

“You’re going to get better,” he said.

“I’ve been taking pills at night,” she said. She told him she had been relying on them since Husbandry, whenever things were bad between them or she had an early call, and then she told him about the psychiatrist and the antidepressant.

“You can’t take those when you’re pregnant,” he said. “They’re not good for the baby.”

“Are you kidding? Millions of women do and the babies are fine. And I know they’ll work. I did well on them after my father . . .”

“I don’t want my baby to be born with medicine in his body,” Steven said.

My baby. His body. How did he know it was a boy? As far as she knew, it wasn’t either gender yet. “Do you want your pregnant wife to be a basket case?” Maddy said. “There’s a reason they torture people with sleep deprivation. I’m telling you this because it’s your baby, too, but I’m not asking your permission. I have to help myself. And if you care about me, you’ll want me to.”

“I’m going to do some research on it.”

That night, on the lorazepam, she slept. Her relief in the morning outweighed her concerns. She told herself to trust the reproductive psychiatrist about the drugs. She told herself the woman probably treated pregnant patients far more unstable than Maddy.

Steven stayed in London; after a week, she was still in the hospital room, hooked up to an IV. The vomiting had continued, and she was on the drip all day and night.

Production on the film had been halted, and Walter was going back and forth with Lloyd’s of London about how to proceed. Steven wanted to stay longer, but she said he should go back. She didn’t like him hovering when there was nothing to do but wait. She was like a baby herself, being monitored for weight gain. She had gone from woman to patient.