My Lucky Star (10 page)

The Malenfant girls, though vile little thugs at heart, had indisputably dimpled and adorable surfaces, and, as this was the
heyday of the child star, their parents wasted no time in hauling them off to Hollywood. Ironically it was their brother who
struck gold first when he was cast as the juvenile lead in
Careful There, Elsie!
Monty, affecting a British accent he has never entirely lost, played the son of a British war widow who marries a Yank fighter
pilot and must then adapt hilariously to life in Brooklyn. The film, a surprise hit, inspired two sequels and a brief vogue
for the catchphrase “Talk American, wouldja!”

Diana and Lily watched enviously as their baby brother ascended fame’s ladder while they settled for extra work in pictures
calling for schoolgirls en masse. They were persistent, though, and finally landed speaking roles, playing the ingenue’s flighty
sisters in the operetta
Krakow Serenade.
A scene in which Lily naughtily smoked Papa’s pipe convinced a producer to cast her as Lorna, a farm girl seduced into a
life of vice in the gritty film noir
Soiled.

The film was a solid hit. For the next year or so Lily rode high while Diana, now the sole unsung Malenfant, struggled and
seethed. But, as everyone (save, of course, young Amos) knows, it was Diana who got the last laugh.

She won her first lead after starting an affair with a producer who’d bought the rights to a syrupy novel written by—you guessed
it!— Prudence Gamache. Its heroine was a young nun whose sister, a gangster’s moll, shoots her boyfriend in self-defense and
gets sent up the river. The nun, heartsick, forsakes convent life and hauls her beads off to the pen. There she ministers
to the inmates, stares down many a knife and knuckle, and helps Sis and pretty much the whole prison find God. The picture,
No Shield but a Wimple,
won Diana her first Oscar. From then on her ascent to fame’s zenith was as inexorable as her siblings’ decline.

In Monty’s case the word “decline” is perhaps unfair. He’d never burned with his sisters’ white-hot ambition and was quick
to make sport of his limited gifts. He pursued his career haphazardly into his twenties, at which point the studio, alarmed
by his indiscreet cavorting with Hollywood’s gay demimonde, laid down the law —marry or else. Monty merely curtsied, told
them on what they could lunch, and quit. He became a realtor, invested shrewdly in the Valley, and made himself a bundle.

Lily, by contrast, has clung to her dwindling fame with grim tenacity, exploring every avenue open to an actress whose brief
stardom has faded. She has tried character roles, TV, and summer stock, with stops along the way in nightclubs, game shows,
commercials, and state fairs. She remains active or, at any rate, available to this day.

We come now to the present generation. Both sisters shared their parents’ desire to produce illustrious offspring, and in
this ambition as well, Diana’s triumph over Lily was brutal and complete.

For most of the sixties Lily was married to Buddy Biggs, who’d produced her daffy schoolteacher sitcom
Sorry, Miss Murgatroyd!
The marriage was childless, a great sadness to Lily though she could hardly blame Buddy, given his success in impregnating
both her best friend and her housemaid.

Diana by contrast produced a son who proved remarkably precocious at the fame game, managing to win worldwide attention seven
months in advance of his actual birth.

His father was the Italian film star Roberto Donato, whose marriage to Diana was one of those tempestuous, plate-throwing
liaisons that leave gossip columnists misty-eyed with gratitude. On the very eve of Diana’s petition for divorce, a drunken
Roberto drove his Lamborghini off a bridge. Diana promptly went into extravagant mourning, fainting daily in some suitably
public place. A month later, just as the clamorous coverage of the grief-stricken widow had begun to subside, Diana announced
she was carrying Roberto’s child. The ensuing frenzy of sympathy didn’t let up till Stephen’s birth, which was greeted with
the sort of fanfare usually reserved for heirs to the British throne and human litters of not less than six.

Little Stephen made his film debut at the age of ten, starring opposite Mom in
Sophie and Sam,
a depression-era comedy about a light-fingered street urchin taken in by a softhearted saloon singer. Stephen’s performance
earned him his first Oscar nomination. Diana, who was not nominated, put an immediate moratorium on her son’s acting career,
citing her desire to give him a “normal, wholesome childhood,” which, in this case, meant a Swiss boarding school.

Stephen did not resume his career until he was twenty-two, by which time he’d grown into a world-class dreamboat, combining
his mother’s luxuriant chestnut hair with his father’s aquiline nose and bedroom eyes. In his first film as an adult, he played
a brilliant schizophrenic violinist in the three-hankie classic
Chamber Music
. This won him his second Oscar nod, and though he lost again, his stardom was now firmly established and has remained undimmed
for fifteen years.

Like many a savvy star, he divides his projects between “art” and commerce, alternating high-minded dramas with comedies and
thrillers. His most financially successful movies thus far have been the Caliber films. In these, three to date, he plays
Simon Caliber, a private detective whose every case, no matter how mundane at the outset, soon plunges him into some crisis
of global proportions. Were Caliber hired to rescue a kitten from a tree, you could be sure the tabby would turn out to be
some genetically altered mutation whose fur balls were pure doomsday virus.

His most recent picture was
Lothario,
a drama about a shallow playboy who, faced with a terminal illness, revisits his many conquests in the hopes of experiencing
true love before he dies. He finally finds it with Frances McDormand, who plays a plain but compassionate hospice nurse fifteen
years his senior. The picture, though derided as shamelessly manipulative by some, grossed a fortune, and Stephen, who’d starved
himself whippet thin for the wrenching final scenes, was widely considered a shoo-in for the Oscar that had twice eluded him.

Throughout Stephen’s career rumors have persisted that he’s secretly gay. The press, displaying its usual deference to megastars,
has mostly tiptoed around these rumors but has, on occasion, gently elicited his response to them. His answers have spanned
the full panoply of tactics available to the closeted megastar.

He has played coy, refusing to be nailed down while deftly leaving the impression that his evasiveness stems solely from a
waggish impulse to twit the reporter. He’s been statesmanlike, citing the bond he feels with his gay fans and professing to
be flattered that some among them wish, however mistakenly, to claim him for their own. He’s waxed indignant, saying he’s
answered the question so often that to pose it again impugns his integrity. His most frequent and cleverest ploy is to simply
bore the press into submission, pontificating on the masculine and feminine dualities within all of us until even the most
prurient scoop hound changes the subject to how he enjoyed shooting in Prague.

Five years ago a tabloid published a story about a long-ago roommate of Stephen’s who claimed they’d enjoyed a brief but torrid
affair. Stephen denied the story but declined to sue, arguing that his accuser, a failed actor, had only made the charge to
gain notoriety and that a lengthy, sensational trial was just what the scoundrel wanted.

This argument seemed to satisfy the great unwashed. The washed, however, were still plenty suspicious, so Stephen fired his
publicist and hired Sonia Powers, the town’s most formidable media tamer. Six months later he married Gina Beach, a spokesmodel
turned actress who’d appeared in his second Caliber film as the sexy physicist Caliber finds murdered in his bed. Wags joked
that it was her turn to find him dead in the sack, but the marriage has lasted four years and the couple are still, as they
confide to the press with numbing regularity, “very much in love.”

T
HERE, THEN
. That should set the stage for the Amish contingent as well as any recently rescued castaways. To the vast majority of you
who already knew all this and a good deal more about the Malenfants, I apologize. Of what follows, I assure you, you know
nothing.

S
O THERE WE WERE WHEN LAST GLIMPSED,
standing face-to-face with an implacably inhospitable screen legend. Her ferocity robbed me of speech, but Gilbert, who’s
made of smoother stuff, actually smiled as though the phrase “Get the fuck out of my house” were some Wildean bon mot.

“There, Philip!” he said with what struck me as positively insane good cheer. “What did I tell you?”

He turned his congenial smile to Diana.

“I knew the moment we walked in that we’d come at a bad time. I suggested we slip away and reschedule but Philip, he’s
such
a fan of yours—well, we both are!—he
insisted
we at least stay to meet you, however briefly. Now we have, and may we say what an honor it’s been. Please forgive us for
intruding at a time when something’s so obviously troubling you. I don’t suppose it’s anything we could assist you with in
some way?”

I’d never until this moment quite realized how potent a weapon pure charm could be. Diana, hearing so gracious a response
to her truculence, just stood there, flummoxed, like a confused repertory actress who’s barged onstage as Lady Macbeth only
to find the rest of the company playing
Hay Fever.

“Well,” she said, her tone calmer and more refined, “that’s terribly nice of you, but it’s a family matter. It involves my
sister and... well, that’s all I can say.”

“Is she ill?” asked Gilbert, concerned.

“If only.”

A brief silence descended. I was uncomfortably aware that Diana’s newfound civility toward us was based in part on our promise
to leave immediately. Gilbert knew this too but, loath to depart without the prize we’d come for, kept the flattery flowing
in the hope of prolonging our tenuous welcome.

“Well, we’re off!” he lied. “But first, could you satisfy my curiosity about that stunning painting of you over the fireplace?”

“It’s from
Tomorrow Be Damned
, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes. Can you believe they wanted me to
pay
for it?”

“No!” said Gilbert, deeply affronted.

“But what a movie!” I said. “I won’t embarrass you by saying how many times I’ve seen it.”

“I’m glad
someone
enjoyed it. I went through hell making it. The director was a monster.”

“Yes,” said Gilbert with a knowing nod. “One hears that.”

What one in fact heard was that the famously rancorous shoot owed most of its turmoil to Diana, who, convinced that the actor
playing Alexandre Dumas was stealing the picture from her, threw such frequent and violent tantrums that the crew nicknamed
her the “Cunt of Monte Cristo.”

“Well, lovely meeting you,” said Diana with warm finality.

“Off we go!” said Gilbert. “And as for rescheduling —?”

“Yes,” she said vaguely. “Some other time.”

She swept out the door and proceeded down the hall so briskly we had to scamper to keep up with her.

“Knowing how busy you must be, we’re happy to work around your schedule,” said Gilbert.

“Well, this week is
terrible,
” she replied. “And I doubt the next will be much better. You know, I’m not sure we really
need
to meet again at all.”

Gilbert and I exchanged a panicked glance as Diana regally descended the staircase.

“Don’t you want to talk about the script?”

“Oh, I don’t think we need bother with that. I can see you’re both very bright and I’m sure you’d do a wonderful job. There
are a few other writers we’re talking to. Once we’ve decided we’ll let you know.”

She timed this speech to end precisely as we reached the front door, and not even Gilbert, who’d thus far maintained the silkiest
poise, could conceal his dismay at being sent packing without a rain check.

“Give my love to Max,” smiled Diana, clearly pleased at how efficiently she’d discharged her obligation to him. She then gave
us her back and marched briskly toward the stairs.

It was at this precise moment, as the bassinet containing our careers was hurtling toward the falls, that the front door opened
and Stephen Donato, like some Adonis
ex machina,
entered the foyer and our lives.

The Star had apparently arrived fresh from a workout or a run. He wore black cotton gym shorts and a gray T-shirt that clung
damply to his broad chest, leaving a sweat stain that nestled in the cleft between his pectorals like some Rorschach of desire.
His wavy brown hair was tousled and sweat-dampened and his square dimpled jaw was darkened by a two-day growth of beard so
sexy as to make death by razor burn seem the happiest of fates. The dreamy hazel eyes regarded Gilbert and me with what may,
I suppose, have been mere courtesy, but which seemed, after Diana’s Gorgon glare, like the radiant compassion of some benevolent
yet fuckable saint.

“Stephen!” cried Diana, wheeling dramatically. “Thank heaven you’re here!”

“Hey, Mom,” he said. Casually. As though mortal.

“Where have you been, Stephen! I’ve been calling you for the last hour!”

“We were out taking a run.”

He turned to Gilbert and me, who were staring at him like two dogs eyeing a rotisserie. He smiled, extending his hand for
us to shake, and though I was a good half foot closer to him, Gilbert darted in first.

“Hi. Stephen Donato.”

“Gilbert Selwyn.
So
good to meet you,” he trilled. He continued to shake Stephen’s hand well past any seemly span of time, compelling me to nudge
him discreetly aside. I gave Stephen’s hand a firm masculine shake while offering a wry smile meant to convey that I shared
his politely concealed amusement over my colleague’s absurdly kittenish behavior.