Good as Dead(73)

I started looking the second the check cleared. We would get new construction this time, something closer to the studios so my husband could get to his meetings without any stress.

I had reservations about Andy staying in business with Jack after what his son did to that poor family, but the script was under contract, and we had bills to pay, whether or not the family was crazy.

And the fact is, we don’t know what happened, not really. I liked Holly and tried to be her friend, but whatever bizarro arrangement she had made with Jack Kimball was none of my business. It was wrong of me to poke around in her private life. It’s not like I had been living in integrity myself!

I would have gone to see them, but Holly and Savannah never came back to the house, not even to retrieve their things. As I peered out Margaux’s window at the house, with its sunken roof and blackened walls, I wondered if my house burned, what I would take? Surely I’d come back for my jewelry—not just because it’s valuable, but because it’s meaningful to me. Much of it was inherited, it connects me to my ancestors, my past, who I am today. I’d want my wedding dress—not to wear it again, but for the memories woven into the fabric. I’d want my favorite books, for the notes written in the margins that show the evolution of my thoughts. And of course I’d take anything framed—photos, diplomas, awards, babies’ footprints—to remind me of the milestones that had shaped our lives.

I hate when people dismiss the loss of an object because “it’s just a thing.” Things are important. They give comfort, shelter, style, identity. The sum total of your things is a road map of your life. They show where you’ve been, what you accomplished, who you loved, who loved you back. They are an expression of who you are. You can learn a lot about a person by their things. Material things are not what’s most important in life, of course! There is nothing that makes me happier than my child’s laughter or her hand holding mine. But anyone who says they would not cry if they lost their childhood blankie or their wedding ring or the house they grew up in is either lying or a saint.

I remembered Holly’s suicide attempt, and the cocoon of sadness that followed her around that house. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe she never wanted a Bosch oven or a Baccarat chandelier. They certainly didn’t make her happy. I thought about how I contorted myself to live in this crumbling house, how unhappy I had been without things that were familiar to me, how far away from myself I had felt.

Perhaps Holly and I were the same after all. Both of us had been living a lie.

And now we both were where we belonged.

JACK

Acting is all about finding truth in made-up situations. I know that seems like a paradox, that’s why it’s hard. An actor’s job is to be completely honest while pretending to be someone else, in a place that’s dressed up to look like somewhere else, while telling a story that isn’t true.

A good actor is a master of deception. Sometimes we get lost in the role, and the line between what’s real and what’s imagined gets blurred. I’ve never fallen in love with a co-star, but I understand why it happens. If you’re really good at pretending to be in love with someone, sometimes you fool even yourself.

My son was not an actor, but when the press decided that he burned that girl’s house down because he was mad with jealousy, he played the part. They made it easy for him, because even his denials were seen as proof that of course it was true—the boy doth protest too much!

But there was one person who didn’t believe the narrative—his mother. She knew our son too well. She had felt his indifference about the girl. She didn’t buy what the press was selling.

“I don’t think he was in love with that girl,” she told me as they hauled him off to jail. “He didn’t act like a boy in love.”

She asked me if I believed it, or if there was more to the story. I was tempted to lie. But I knew that, even with all my acting training, I couldn’t, not to her. I didn’t know how to play myself in a made-up story. She knew my process. She would see my tells. There was no way to hide the truth, not from her.

I told her on a Sunday, and she was packed and gone by Monday. My son was in jail, Evan had resigned, and for the first time in my life, I was completely alone.

I didn’t have a big bottle of Vicodin lying around, but there were other ways to do what Holly had done, and if I’d had the courage, I might have tried them. I thought about Holly a lot those first few weeks as I slept anywhere but in my bedroom and ate standing at the kitchen counter to avoid seeing Kate’s empty place. I was mortified that I’d tried to bury this woman’s grief by gifting her a dream house. I knew now it was preposterous to think a princess would want to live in the castle without her prince, and that I was cruel to have suggested it.

A week into my sequestration, a man in a suit came to my door. I assumed it was the law and readied myself to get carted off to jail. But it wasn’t a policeman. It was the attorney Evan had hired to represent my son. I nearly wept at the kindness of the gesture. After everything I’d put him through, he still had my back. In that moment, I knew definitively I hadn’t deserved him, and felt genuinely relieved that he’d finally left me.

I had thought the press would drag me through the mud, but in the end, they probably saved my life. Because they wrote their own version of the story—that my son was ill, my wife was heartless, I was the victim. My fan base was energized. People all over the world sent messages of love and support. Rather than plummet, my star rose to new heights. The studio begged me to make a movie. I had a script that I liked under option, written by an investigative reporter I’d be wise to keep busy, so I agreed.