Usually a screen actor gets to rest between set-ups. Most complain about how dull it is to make a film because of the down time. It's why the great ones always talk about doing theatre, yet they don't because it's a lot more work for much less pay.
But Robby had no rest on his first day of "Gun Butt." He had to play a sadistic villain when the camera was rolling, and a coked-up child when it wasn't. Alone in his dressing room, he made non-stop phone calls to his wife in a desperate attempt to reach her before she turned on the TV, and to Lisa in a desperate effort to discuss the day's events. And to top it all off, now he had to worry about death threats and a stalker.
By the time he got home he was tired, but it was a good tired. After years of sitting around hoping the phone would ring, the new action made him feel great.
He pulled up to the driveway and headed towards his front door as reporters barked out questions about his relationship with Lisa. Robby's only response was this:
"You can stay here as long as you want. Just keep it down, don't wake the neighbors, and get your feet off of my fuckin' flowers."
He entered his home to find Trudy sitting in the dark on the living room sofa, clutching a pillow. Her eyes were red and puffy. Robby could tell that she had been crying and knew in an instant that she had received the news before he could reach her. He had called her nine times that day and the blinking numbers that flashed on the answering machine told him that she had been home when he phoned her, but she had screened her calls.
"I owe you a big apology," he began.
"You sure do," was all she said back.
Robby told her that he had intended on filling her in before the fact, but he hadn't had a chance. He explained in precise detail how it had all gone down, how quickly he had to act, and how he was finally off the hook for the rape charge in the public's mind.
"You know they're going to go after you for statutory," she said to him, still concerned for his well-being even after the public humiliation he had put her through.
"No, they won't," Robby answered. "She's a virgin."
"And you know this because?" Trudy asked suspiciously.
"I saw her medical report," he answered. "Her exam was part of the D.A.s evidence, and by law they have to turn it over to the defense."
"Oh," she said, as if his answer made no difference whatsoever and then couldn't stop herself from adding, "She's not even pretty, you know."
Robby knew this was not the issue she really wanted to discuss, and dropped to his knees before her, took her hands in his and gently kissed them.
"I'm sorry, Trudy, and I love you," he begged. "I know how hard this must be for you, and I'm so sorry. I never meant to hurt you -- it was never meant to go this far. I'm not involved with anyone else, that's the honest-to-God truth. I'm just pretending, and it is working. The film is going great -- I'm talked about everywhere. In a couple of months I'll be despised enough to make my apologies, and we'll have my career again. So, please, just hang in with me a little while longer, and we will have the greatest life ever."
Trudy looked deep into his eyes and had no idea if he was lying or not. One of the downsides of being married to a gifted actor is that you can never know when they're telling the truth. By profession, they are trained to convince you of their sincerity no matter what they say or do -- it's their job, and no one was better at it than Robby.
Not that Robby lied a lot, and the ones he had made prior to the Fourth of July had always been white ones: "I loved your movie, first-time director," "Don't worry about me, Dad, I have lots of offers," and "No, that dress doesn't make you look fat."
Trudy knew the irony was that their marriage had a better chance of survival if he was, in fact, lying. If he really did have a drug or drinking problem, she would stand by him and see him through it no matter what it took. But she was not willing to live under this media circus tent for the sake of a job. If it were in fact a hoax, he would simply have to tell the media so. If it were a drug problem, he would have to go into rehab now, not in a month or two. Either way, she was going to force the issue because she didn't know what else to do. The truth had to come out, and Robby had to make good.
"You have to make a choice," she told him. "Me, or this."
Robby had known that the Lisa news conference would hurt his wife, and that he would have major explaining to do and major amends to make -- but he never expected her response to be an ultimatum. He could only assume it was the pain he had thrust upon her talking, and not the true beliefs of the thoughtful woman he so loved.
"Honey, you don't really mean that," he said.
"Yes, I do, Robert."
It wasn't only the use of the word "Robert" that made him realize she had thought about this for a long time, but her stone-cold, icy tone. This was real.
His face turned an ashen white, and he stumbled back a step or two -- not unlike his drunken performance of the past few days -- and he wanted to vomit.
That was when Trudy realized he had been telling the truth all along. Even at his most ill, she had never seen him this ghostly color. Clearly, the mere thought of giving up either of the two things he loved most in life was making his stomach churn.
But instead of making a choice, he made a plea.
"Honey, it's not going to last long--" he began, but she cut him off.
"I can't live like this," she said. "And I won't let our son live like this either."
"You can go away for awhile," he said, suddenly inspired. "Go on a trip. Take Andy to Europe or Hawaii or -"
"No," she insisted, because the more he evaded, the more forceful she got.
"We can tell the press we're splitting up," he spoke over her. "Then, when it's all over, we'll tell them you took me back. It'll work, and we can even--"
"No!" she shouted, cutting him off once and for all. "You think they don't have tabloids in Europe? From what I hear, theirs are worse there than ours. No, Robert Earl, you have to choose. What's more important to you? Andy and me, or a job?"
He had to finally accept that there was no talking his way out of this one. He clenched his teeth to hold back the bile that was springing upwards from his belly, then gulped a couple of times to send it all floating back downwards. Then he took a few deep breaths, and made his choice.
"Okay," he said sadly. "If I have to choose, I have to choose. No contest. It's--"
"Don't you want some time to think about it?" she blurted out.
She wasn't being fair to him -- she was simply afraid. Making ultimatums is all well and good when you fully expect to win, but she knew full well that she could lose. He had made up his mind way too fast if he was going to choose her, she felt, and she wasn't emotionally prepared to give up the man of her dreams to the National Enquirer just yet.
"I don't need time to think about it," he answered confidently.
"Well, I do," she said. "Andy comes back from La Jolla Monday morning, so you've got till Sunday night."
Then she stormed into her bedroom and locked the door, and began the journey of the worst two days of her life.
If you've ever lived through the last few days of a marriage, or even a relationship that had once been wonderful, you know the symptoms. You can't sleep at night, so you're exhausted all day. You can't eat, yet you are compelled to throw up, so you suffer through the dry heaves. The one person you've grown accustomed to taking your problems to is the one person you can no longer speak to because they are now the problem. You can't phone anyone who would give you the emotional support you crave because they will undoubtedly tell you what you most don't what to hear -- leave the bastard/bitch (whatever the case may be.) Your eyes water when you read, there's nothing good on TV, and every song on the radio is a sad one.
In Trudy's case, it was all this... and worse. The world was watching. She couldn't leave her house for fear of the army of paparazzi who now lived on her front lawn. Every old high school friend was crawling out of the woodwork to leave their advice on her answering machine. Unlike the rest of us, for Trudy it wasn't that there was nothing good on TV or radio -- it was that TV and radio was all about HER.
So she sat in the darkened living room all day, afraid to move, afraid to speak to anyone, listening to all the annoyingly well-meaning advice on the answering machine, and watching pundits and comics talk about her on TV as if they knew her.
When Robby came home that Saturday night, she got up and went into their bedroom to lock the door once again. It wasn't out of anger. She was simply afraid she would change her mind, drop her ultimatum and accept the humiliation he had brought upon her. She didn't want to lose him to his career -- she only expected to.
But the truth was, Robby had every intention of choosing family. True, it would kill him to give up his career -- which telling the world his hoax was a hoax would most certainly do -- but his career meant little to him without his wife and child. So when Trudy disappeared into their bedroom that Saturday night as she awaited his decision, Robby was not overly concerned because he knew he had the answer she wanted.
So although he spent that day and the next trying to reach Lisa, it was now for a very different reason. It was no longer to take her on a public date to further the charade, but to warn her that his coming clean was imminent and to ask her what she'd like him to do to make it less embarrassing for her.
Yet still he failed to get through to her. He tried for the entire weekend and quickly realized there was no point in engaging Lisa's father in discussion anymore. He was pretty sure Cameron knew who it was each time Robby called and hung up, and he could only imagine the hatred the man must have for him.
He even wondered if Cameron was in fact his stalker. Robby had still only caught peripheral glimpses of a hand, a foot, or a shadow of the stalker. But if it was the seventeen-year-old's father, Robby knew that he was in trouble. If he had had a seventeen-year-old daughter, and some forty-year-old had been messing with her, he would be out for blood, too.
Of course, it could also be Lisa's boyfriend, Cheyenne's brother, or any other "School, Sweet School" wacko fan who had come out of the woodwork now that Robby was back in the limelight.
For the third day, Trudy sat on the couch in the dark, clutching the little throw pillow. She picked up the phone to call Andy in La Jolla. Brittany answered, and said that Andy and Markie were swimming in the ocean with her screenwriter husband. She could get him if Trudy wanted.
Trudy said not to disturb him, let him have his fun, and asked how he was doing.
"We're keeping him away from the news," answered the trophy wife. "Worry not. But it's only a matter of time till he hears something. You've got to figure out what you're going to tell him when you leave his father. You should be working on that now."
Trudy thanked her for the advice -- although it was just another county heard from -- and asked her to let Andy know that she had called. "He can call back if he wants, but he doesn't need to," she said.
So she got off the phone and turned on the TV. Virtually every channel showed Robby and Lisa on the mountain where she had accused him of rape, or Robby and Lisa at the hospital entrance where they had pledged their undying love to one another.
She had seen the clips a million times, but this time she noticed something different, a glaring truth that she had never noticed before.
Robby seemed terrified as he awaited Lisa's response, but for the first time Trudy realized it was the same joyous terror he had displayed in his days of live theatre, as well as the many times he had hosted "Saturday Night Live." It was his terrifying delight of performing without a net, where success is imminent and failure even closer.
Even as he lay on the ground, bleeding, after Lisa's father had punched him in the nose, Trudy could've sworn she detected a slight smile on her husband's face.
Robby was happy.
And that changed everything!
By the time her husband returned home that Sunday evening, his bags were packed and set out in the living room, and a hotel reservation had been made for him.
"What's this?" he asked about the luggage. "My choice is you -- it always has been. I've been waiting since Friday to tell you, but you wouldn't let me. But, now, here it is. I don't know what I'll do -- we'll move back to Iowa and I can teach, I guess. Whatever. I don't want anything if I can't have it with you."
"You have to go, Robby," Trudy said regretfully.
"What are you talking about?" he asked. "I made my choice, and it's you."
"Robby, our divorce is the logical conclusion of the myth you have set into motion," she said. "It will give you everything you want, only it has to be without me."
"Trudy, I don't want a career if it means having it without you," he pleaded.
"And I don't want you being miserable anymore," she answered as she suppressed a sniffle or two. "You'll get over me -- but in the last eight years you couldn't get over the loss of your career. No matter what I did, you were just sinking lower and lower. If you had stayed there any longer, you might've turned to drugs or alcohol or teen-age girls for real. But now you're alive again, hopeful, happy. You've got to do this, Robby. I'm just so sorry I don't have the strength to do it with you. So, leave me before I start crying again."
"I can't," he said. "I'm simply physically unable to walk out on you. I'm going to end this charade right now. I don't see that I have a choice."
So he opened the door and started towards the press, but Trudy jumped in front of him to block his way. And the ladies and gentleman of the press scrambled for their cameras and/or notepads because it was clear that something big was about to happen.
"I understand how difficult this is for you, my love," she softly told her husband so the media couldn't hear. "So let me make it easy for you."
Then she walked out the door to speak to the press herself.
*** Up Next: "Trudy Tells The Press" ***
The main characters in this e-novel are fictional and are not intended to portray or resemble any actual individuals, whether living or dead (except for Jeff Abugov who is a real screenwriter, director and producer.) Although certain real people and companies are mentioned in this e-novel, all of the events are fictional and are not intended to portray or resemble any actual events.
Copyright © 2015 Tinseltrash, Inc.