I look in on Molly’s Instagram profile, where I have not been blocked. The emo make-up and pink streaks have been replaced by a sharp peroxide bob and winged eyeliner, her cheekbones more pronounced. Juliet is holding a brand-new baby in her Instagram profile picture, and if she has just given birth, she looks particularly good on it. Maxi’s profile picture is a selfie of her, evidently taken in a dark room, just after crying.
Violet’s profile is nowhere to be seen, on any platform. Yet a search of her name fills in the missing puzzle pieces: in 2016, Violet Stafford was arrested and cautioned for harassing a K-pop singer outside his house in Sydney.
I don’t need to look too far to find Alice Andre. In fact, it’s pretty hard to escape the woman, now that she’s officially in the celebrity Premiership.
Ella Magazine, July 2015
The time: 17 May. The place: The hallowed Hôtel du Cap on the French Riviera. At this time of year, during the Cannes Film Festival, the glamour and celebrity quotient is already assured, yet the minute Alice Andre sweeps through the lobby, the writer/director/actress creates a buzz. Not just a buzz; this is akin to being in a wind tunnel.
Fame has come at a price. Andre has arrived into the hotel with security detail, and has insisted on being interviewed in a room with at least two open doors. She will not be drawn on the reasons for these specific stipulations, but sources close to Andre darkly allude to an ‘incident’, years previously, with an over-zealous fan whom she once trusted. The moment has clearly left its mark.
The night before we meet, Andre’s directorial debut,Anthropology, won a seven-minute standing ovation at its gala screening. Andre has already proved her acting chops with last year’s sleeper hitsThe Moon-Shaped MoonandA Forkful of Water. And critics have been breathless in their appraisals of her directing skills, describing the blackly comic story as ‘a masterpiece’.Anthropology, the story of a woman who agrees to become a surrogate mother for a pair of strangers only for them to abandon her, has been a long time in the making for Andre.
‘I never had the confidence to show the script to anyone,’ she tellsEllawhile overlooking the sea in her lavish suite. Though her otherworldly beauty shines through, Andre has kept it casual for her round of press interviews, wearing a Fred Perry polo shirt, skinny jeans and Converse sneakers.
‘I had shown the script to one or two people I trusted, and they told me that it would never see the light of day as a movie, so I kept it in a drawer for years. It was only relatively recently that I read it afresh and thought, Wow, this is actually not as bad as they said.’
Financiers were quick to agree, and Andre’s $50-million pet project rolled into production last year. And if the resultant buzz is anything to go by,Anthropologyshould do pretty brisk business at the box office upon its release next year.
Like many a talented woman, Andre hasn’t always had it easy. After romantic relationships with Frank Bustard, Marc Benjamin and– more recently– Ted Levy, Andre was also hampered by accusations that she was little more than a comedy groupie. She won’t reveal whether one of the ‘trusted’ people she showed an early draft ofAnthropologyto was one of her former paramours.
On hearing this question, Andre admits a laugh. ‘The only advice I give to women in this industry is: Don’t ever give away your ideas to men. No matter how much in love you think you might be, or no matter how much you believe you will get the credit. Don’t ever just be the girlfriend, letting others take credit. Do your own thing, always. It’s an age-old story, and I had to learn it the hard way. Fortunately, I did before it was too late.’
Watching Alice Andre rise up in her own right is gladdening– to think that we once shared pancakes in a Toronto diner registers as slightly surreal. I download the internet browser and add her name, and Ted’s name, to the keywords I want blocked. A goodbye of sorts to all of that.
Though I promised myself I wouldn’t, I tentatively putNaomi’s name into Google. I’m not at all surprised to find that I remain blocked in pretty much all the ways she can block me online. Her online presence is muted. I resist the temptation to dig further: to see if she went the distance with Stevie; if she got sober; if she found any kind of peace to go forward in this life.
Back at my desk, I decide to write her one letter, with absolutely no expectation that she will reply. The temptation to do so overwhelms, colours every minute of the afternoon. I pull out some typing paper and a pen, knowing that something handwritten will do just what it’s supposed to here.
I start in a sort of mania, my hand cramping, not used to writing longhand.
Dear Naomi,
I have struggled for a while on whether to send you this letter or not. Part of me knows that you never want to hear from me again, but another part of me feels terrible that we left things the way we did. I know I am probably the last person in the world you could consider a friend, but, for that short while, I really valued having you in my life.
And yes, I was horrendously careless with our friendship. I had ulterior motives that involved Ted, and I’m not proud of that. But as we shared our experiences together– not just of loss but of being women trying to make our way in the world and find any kind of peace within ourselves– I really did feel that bond between us so much.
I want to say, primarily, I’m so very sorry. What happened, and what I did, was a massive betrayal of your trust, and I need to live with the awfulness of that.
I do need you to know that I didn’t ‘pretend’ to have a child. There was a child, absolutely, but I lost that child when I was four months pregnant. There was a husband, too. How I wanted to open up properly to you and let you know what was happening in my life.
When I found out I was pregnant, I was hit with all the emotions that I presume are standard-issue: terror, delight, intimidation, excitement, pride. They arrived like a tangled ball of wool, and I could barely separate one from the other.
Then I realized that I was no longer pregnant.
There was one afternoon that changed absolutely everything for us.
I remember the genetic counsellor, walking into an airless room with our test results in his hand. My husband Johnny had his hand on my knee. The room blurred at the edges as the genetic counsellor talked.
When I came up for air every so often, I could make out various words: ‘spinal muscular atrophy’; ‘Carriers of the same recessive disorder’; ‘Inheriting non-working copies of the gene’; ‘Two per cent chance that couples are both carriers’.
‘While you and Johnny are carriers, this does not affect your own health or respective medical histories,’ the counsellor told us. We were told that while there are zero symptoms associated with being a carrier, it does mean that there was a 25 per cent chance that any child we had together would be born with the condition.
We had gone through our lives not knowing. I remember noticing Johnny had withdrawn his hand from my knee by then, and it was in that precise moment I knew we would never really make it.
All I could think about was whether a subconscious partof me knew that Johnny and I could only ever lead ourselves to this moment of heartbreak, this amount of destruction. We were hearing from a healthcare professional that whatever else we had going for us, we were incompatible, all the way along, in the way it mattered. That to have a baby, we would need considerable assistance. Others would be grateful for the science and the assistance. But not me.
I remember feeling that, even though I had invited someone as lovely as Johnny into my life, our own unique biology with each other was somehow against us. It made me wonder if another, more subconscious part of me had already realized that we were not fully right for each other. In any case, it was the moment the rot set in.
