Chapter 5 #2
Though not best described as a typical leading man, Levy, 40, has an undeniable charm. Slightly jowly, with a jawline that seems to suit the nature of his everyman work, he wears a baseball cap pulled down over a mass of wiry dark brown hair that obscures his preternaturally animated brown eyes.
Some who know Levy from his time at the Harepepper Theatre Company speak of a painfully shy and reticent player. Others mention a Jekyll and Hyde performer who suddenly springs to life once the limelight finds him. The emerging picture is that of a blazing, but slightly reluctant, talent.
‘He’s not a scenester at all,’ says fellow actor Miriam Waters, who has performed with Levy several times.
‘He comes, he inhabits whatever character he is asked to, he goes home. It’s ironic, because he’s actually pretty good at what he does, but I suspect he is terrified at the idea of being widely recognized for it. ’
He’s in under my skin, so I decide to google Ted Levy a bit more. Another article; this time in the Toronto Daily.
Toronto Daily, 25 August 2008
A spot as a leading figurehead in Canada’s acting pantheon could well be Ted Levy’s for the taking, but the prospect doesn’t interest him. Perhaps his sense of being an outsider suggests why.
Growing up in the affluent Bathurst Street of Toronto, Levy enjoyed a typically middle-class Jewish upbringing.
His mother was an elementary school teacher, while his father, now remarried, works as an accountant in Alberta.
His parents divorced when Levy was a teenager and his father went on to remarry.
He has a step-sister who is a kindergarten teacher – although in interviews he won’t be drawn on any further details on his family.
‘Things got dark,’ is all Levy will say on the matter, over lunch at La Salsa. ‘My dad was not a good guy when we were kids. To any of us. We talk occasionally now, but it took us a long time to even get back into a room together.’
Causing mayhem in middle school with impressions of his teachers during math class, Levy also recalls being something of an attention-seeker in his earlier years.
‘It all mellowed out for me in high school, though,’ he recalls. ‘I just wanted to blend in, desperately.’
Blending in definitely doesn’t appear to be part of Levy’s master plan these days.
‘I mean, some of the roles I take on can seem a little left of centre, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m an extrovert, or as colourful, or as outspoken as any of them,’ he says, shrinking even further into our booth. ‘Honestly, I’m so normal, it’s kind of funny.’
A few days later, as I’m waiting for reruns of Bullseye to start and with Johnny long retired to the scratcher, I faff about on Facebook, on Twitter.
Essie Marie has now opened Twitter and MySpace accounts in addition to her Facebook profile – why not be someone else entirely new on there as well?
I check my emails. I am actively trying to ignore Ted Levy, and it’s taking quite an amount of effort to not think about the very idea of him.
In the end, it all becomes too much and I type ‘Ted Levy’ into Google.
The words on autocomplete make my heart jump.
‘Ted Levy girlfriend’. ‘Ted Levy wife’. ‘Ted Levy net worth’.
‘Ted Levy Canadian’. The ‘wife’ search brings up nothing, but I fall instantly on an old Getty image.
‘Ted Levy and girlfriend Linda Morello’.
It takes mere seconds for the image to fully pop up on my screen, but it feels like hours.
I drink every pixel in. Their bodies are cleaved together intimately in the closeness of a long-time couple.
They are both smiling for the camera but somehow holding something back from it, something just for themselves.
Ted’s face is turned towards her, as though the intrusion of the camera has momentarily broken something lovely and secret between them.
I zoom in on Linda. Her eyes are warm brown, twinkling with happiness.
She looks like a regular woman, the sort I’d be friends with.
I start to imagine what it might be like to be friends with both of them.
Opening the door to them at a dinner party, thanking them for the lovely expensive wine they’ve just brought, telling them that I’ve just spent an absolute bloody fortune on burrata and tapenades, sit anywhere you like.
Linda’s top in the image is unfashionable, but impressively low-cut.
I look at the softness of the skin below her clavicles and imagine him touching her there.
Her teeth are crooked in a way that seems to make me like Ted Levy even more.
Heavy with curiosity, I search for some more information on her and them.
No sign of her on LinkedIn or Facebook. ‘Bit rude,’ I tut at the room.
I google ‘Linda Morello Toronto’ and there’s a Linda Morello working in a Tim Hortons coffee shop on the harbourfront and she’s in management and that can’t be her, surely?
I then search for ‘Linda Morello Ted Levy’ and I can already feel the sweat on my upper lip when Google autocorrect fills out the rest. ‘Breakup’.
Canadatheatrenews.ca, 1 July 2008
Rising theatre star Ted Levy splits with high school sweetheart Linda Morello
Ted Levy took to the stage at the Tarragon last night despite nursing heartbreak after calling it quits with his partner and sometime collaborator Linda Morello.
Insiders say that things have been entirely amicable and, moving forward, Linda will always be Levy’s greatest professional champion.
‘They were just moving at different speeds, in different circles,’ says a friend, who also hinted that despite the friendly nature of the breakup, the actor is still ‘hurting’.
I look back at the Getty image of Linda and Ted anew, and it seems somehow different. She is no longer the luckiest girl in the world. Instead, she’s the woman who let it all go. She couldn’t move at a different speed, in the same circle?
‘Who’s Linda Morello?’ says Johnny, a disembodied voice on my shoulder. I hadn’t even heard him come into the room.
There is no proper way to explain that I am looking at a complete stranger in Canada because she used to be the girlfriend of someone a bit famous and a bit attractive.
‘A friend of someone I went to school with,’ I tell him instead.
‘Yeah, what’s she got to do with you?’ he replies.
That has me stumped. ‘I just thought I knew her from somewhere, that’s all.’
‘Oh, OK.’ This appeases him somewhat. ‘It’s going on three a.m., you know,’ he reminds me as he turns for the door.
‘I say this as an ally – sleepwalking through your first day back at work probably isn’t the best idea you’ll have ever had.
’ Johnny went back to work the day after the Meeting in the hospital, a decision I still can’t be sure how I feel about.
Lying to one’s husband doesn’t feel all that great. And yet keeping some sort of secret from him, something that is just mine, sort of does.
As I walk back into the brown-walled office the following morning, there’s Cathy, who has assumed the other seat opposite me while Francesca is on maternity leave.
Whoever my temporary replacement was must have been shockingly bad company, because Cathy walks right at me without stopping, enveloping me in a crease-faced hug in one graceful, practised motion.
‘Aw, baby,’ she keens into my ear. ‘Baby, baby.’ After five seconds she breaks away and returns to her desk, where the matter of my ailing heart is, I understand, now in the past. Well, I suppose that’s that dealt with.
Carrie has insisted on meeting me after work, and the fervour of this insistence makes me think that this has less to do with helping me through my first day back at work, and more to do with something else.
‘I have some news to share,’ she affirms before we have even flipped open our drinks menus. ‘I think I might have met someone.’
Usually, this is not a cause for sit-down drinks. Carrie meets Someones all the time, and the Someones rarely turn into Anyones. Then she goes and orders an Old-Fashioned and I know something’s up. The way she says it … it’s different this time.
‘So, there’s a spark there,’ I affirm. Carrie will only countenance follow-up dates once there is sufficient Spark in the mix, and I’ve long given up telling her that this five-alarm-fire chemistry she insists on as a baseline requirement sends her on an absolute hiding to nothing.
‘The spark is actually your stomach flip-flopping out of anxiety,’ I’ve previously told her, more than once.
‘Funnily enough, I’m not sure I fancy him all that much. Like, physically. He’s not really my type,’ Carrie says, trying to process her own confusion about this. This has my attention. ‘Like, he’s a bit compact, or something.
‘I don’t know. We’re just … seeing where it goes,’ she adds, shaking her head softly. And that’s how I know that Billy, the new guy, is going to be sticking around for as long as he wants to.
‘He’s just … I don’t know. Kind?’ she ventures. ‘He makes me laugh.’
Something that feels like jealousy sits in my chest, as foreign as someone’s first-ever cigarette.
‘Well, we’ll have to meet him, so, size him up for you,’ I say, trying to sound upbeat.
‘Here’s the thing. He says he can only ever meet one new person a week. He says any more people than that really eats into his social-energy reserves. So it’ll have to be in a while, and we’ll probably have to do it without Johnny.’
‘Oh Jesus, Carrie.’ I bark an unkind laugh. ‘Forever the patron saint of utter fucking weirdos.’
It’s out in the air before I’ve even thought the comment through, and it’s too late to take back now. She tries to laugh it off, but a line has been crossed and I know that whatever happens from here on out with Billy, I’ve slightly stained it.