22. Anna
ANNA
Isee it on my phone before I'm fully awake.
Someone tagged me in it. Then someone else. Then twelve more people who wanted to make sure I didn't miss it.
A photo from the Sentinel rehearsal. Luke and Rebecca, close together, her hand on his arm, both of them laughing at something. The kind of photo that looks like nothing and means everything depending on how you're feeling when you see it.
More comments pile up under it.
Chemistry doesn’t lie.
Looks like true love.
Poor Anna.
I put the phone face down.
Pick it up again.
This shouldn't bother me.
The comments are already a thousand deep. They're obviously together. Look at the way he's looking at her. Goodbye Anna Simmons. What did she expect?
Couldn't even get my name right.
I know what PR looks like. I know the difference between a staged moment and a real one.
Luke comes in from running with Zeke, shirt soaked through, hair pushed back off his face. He sees my expression before I say anything.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking you out on social media. Did you see this?" I hold it up.
"Nah, I leave this shit to Elle."
I hold up the picture of him and Rebecca looking into each other's eyes.
"I worked with this old movie actor. One scene.
I asked him for advice. He said never read your press.
" He sits down. "I worked on a series I asked the lead guy.
Same thing. Never read your own press. Then I did this little play in Burbank — only play I've ever done, how I got Delia by the way — LA Times reviews came out.
Mine were great. This eighty-six-year-old woman in the cast, Gladys, wasn't so lucky.
Got panned. It devastated her. She was eighty-six years old, and it crushed her.
I could see it night after night, what it did to her.
So I don't read this shit. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell me what my press says.
That's what Elle and the PR people are for. "
He leans back.
"What you're looking at is a studio system trying to sell tickets on a two hundred million dollar investment."
"Okay."
"You should know better by now. It's called acting." He kisses me on the forehead.
He gets up. Goes to shower.
I touch where he kissed me.
It's nothing. Two words. The kind of answer that closes a conversation without actually answering anything. I've said those two words myself a hundred times in the last few months.
I want to say: I know you. I know when you're acting and when you're not. This is not acting.
I put the phone in my pocket and go get my keys.
I need to get out of the house.
I pull into Pavilions. The store is quiet mid-morning. I move through the aisles with a basket on autopilot. Bread — Nina be damned. I stop in front of it. Put it back.
I turn the corner.
Tampons.
Pregnancy tests.
Huh.
The math arrives the way math does when you've been avoiding it. Slow at first, then all at once. I count back twice. Then a third time hoping the answer changes.
It doesn't.
Eight weeks.
I stand in the aisle for a long time. A woman squeezes past me with a cart. An employee restocks something on the shelf above my head. The store keeps moving around me and I just stand there.
I pick up two boxes. Put one back.
Drop it. Pick it up.
I look around to make sure no one I know is there.
I buy both and go sit in the car.
Someone honks. Scares the shit out of me. They want my space.
I turn on the car and pull out. Drive home.
I come into the house quietly.
Luke and Danny's voices carry from the backyard. No Nina. Zeke comes over and I ignore him.
He follows me upstairs anyway.
I go to my old room. Lock Zeke out.
Both tests on the edge of the sink. I read the instructions twice even though there's nothing complicated about them.
I wait.
The window above the sink looks out over the backyard.
Below me Luke and Danny are going at it on the mat, circling each other.
Oh shit. They actually exchange real blows. Ronny has to step between them. They reset. They're laughing but the fighting got intense. Real. "Breath. Let's slow it down," Ronny says.
I look down at the tests.
Both of them.
Same answer.
Ninety-nine percent accurate. For both to be wrong would be one in ten thousand.
I sit on the edge of the tub.
I thought I'd feel one thing.
I feel about seventeen things at once and I can't sort them into any order that makes sense.
"Holy shit, Anna, what the fuck."
I'm an actress. My feelings should be clearer than this.
I look down. Danny has Luke in a headlock. Luke taps out.
"Holy shit."
I sit on the side of the toilet.
I press my hand flat against my stomach.
There's nothing to feel yet. I know that. But I press my hand there anyway.
I wrap the tests in tissue. I put them in my duffel bag, under the seventy-five thousand dollars.
Wash my hands. Look at myself in the mirror until my face stops doing whatever it's doing.
I'm pale.
I lie down on the bed. I stay there for an hour.
Nina knocks on my door. "I made lunch, you hungry?"
"I'll come down."
I sit at the kitchen counter while Nina arranges the plates. I pretend to answer emails.
I watch Luke and Danny finish training through the glass.
I eat lunch. I smile at the right moments. I say the right things.
I eat before they're done training.
Then I get in the Mercedes and drive two streets over and park and call Chloe.
She picks up on the second ring.
"Hey, what's?—"
"I'm pregnant."
Silence.
"Chloe?"
"I'm here." Her voice shifts. "Are you sure?"
"Two tests. Ninety-nine percent accurate each. For both to be wrong is one in ten thousand."
A breath. "Where are you?"
"In the car. Two streets from the house."
"Does Luke know?"
"Nope."
"Anna—"
"I found out a few hours ago and I've been sitting at the kitchen counter watching Nina make chicken trying to figure out how to say it."
"You have to tell him."
"I can't."
"Anna. Soon."
"Chloe. Can you let me breathe for one second?"
She goes quiet. Gives me the second.
"He doesn't want children."
"He told you this?"
"Yes, he made it very clear."
"He still has a right to know."
"He's leaving in a few weeks," I say. "I can't drop this bomb on him as he's about to go do the most important thing in his life."
"So your plan is to say nothing."
"I don't have a plan. But I can't tell him."
"Anna." Gentle but firm. "He deserves to know. Whatever happens after is up to both of you. But you don't get to make that decision for him."
I look out the windshield.
"It will change everything."
"It will change everything. That's not the question."
"What's the question?"
"What you're saying is he may reject you if you tell him."
A kid rides a bike down the sidewalk. Wobbly. Training wheels still on. Completely unafraid.
I start crying.
"Okay, take it easy," she says.
"My life was perfect for the first time and I fucked it up."
"Anna, you didn't do this by yourself."
Chloe talks me halfway off the ledge.
I sit in the car for another ten minutes after we hang up.
The city moves around me. Indifferent. Enormous. Not one of its ten million people having any idea.
I drive home.
Luke is still in the backyard with Danny when I pull in. I can hear them through the gate. The particular sound of two people who have figured out how to be easy with each other.
It's a good sound.
I go inside.
Nina puts a glass of water in front of me without being asked.
I know what I have to do.