The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo(14)

“Why not?”

“Because that was someone else.”

“OK, who was the love of your life, then?”

Evelyn nods, as if this is the question she has been expecting, as if the situation is unfolding exactly as she knew it would. But then she shakes her head again. “You know what?” she says, standing up. “It’s getting late, isn’t it?”

I look at my watch. It’s midafternoon. “Is it?”

“I think it is,” she says, and she walks toward me, toward the door.

“All right,” I say, standing up to meet her.

Evelyn puts her arm around me and leads me out into the hallway. “Let’s pick up again on Monday. Would that be OK?”

“Uh . . . sure. Evelyn, did I say something to offend you?”

Evelyn leads me down the stairs. “Not at all,” she says, waving my fears aside. “Not at all.”

There is a tension that I can’t quite put my finger on. Evelyn walks with me until we hit the foyer. She opens the closet. I reach in and grab my coat.

“Back here?” Evelyn says. “Monday morning? What do you say we start around ten?”

“OK,” I say, putting my thick coat around my shoulders. “If that’s what you’d like.”

Evelyn nods. She looks past me for a moment, over my shoulder, but appearing not to actually be looking at anything in particular. Then she opens her mouth. “I’ve spent a very long time learning how to . . . spin the truth,” she says. “It’s hard to undo that wiring. I’ve gotten too good at it, I think. Just now, I wasn’t exactly sure how to tell the truth. I don’t have very much practice in it. It feels antithetical to my very survival. But I’ll get there.”

I nod, unsure how to respond. “So . . . Monday?”

“Monday,” Evelyn says with a long blink and a nod. “I’ll be ready then.”

I walk back to the subway in the chilly air. I cram myself into a car packed with people, holding on to the handrail above my head. I walk to my apartment and open my front door.

I sit on my couch, open my laptop, and answer some e-mails. I start to order something for dinner. And it is only when I go to put my feet up that I remember there is no coffee table. For the first time since he left, I have not come into this apartment immediately thinking of David.

Instead, what plays in the back of my mind all weekend—from my Friday night in to my Saturday night out and my Sunday morning at the park—isn’t How did my marriage fail? but rather Who the hell was Evelyn Hugo in love with?





I AM ONCE AGAIN IN Evelyn’s study. The sun is shining directly into the windows, lighting Evelyn’s face with so much warmth that it obscures her right side from view.

We’re really doing this. Evelyn and me. Subject and biographer. It begins now.

She is wearing black leggings and a man’s navy-blue button-down shirt with a belt. I’m wearing my usual jeans, T-shirt, and blazer. I dressed with the intention of staying here all day and all night, if need be. If she keeps talking, I will be here, listening.

“So,” I say.

“So,” Evelyn says, her voice daring me to go for it.

Sitting at her desk while she is on the couch feels adversarial somehow. I want her to feel as if we are on the same team. Because we are, aren’t we? Although I get the impression you never know with Evelyn.

Can she really tell the truth? Is she capable of it?

I take a seat in the chair next to the sofa. I lean forward, with my notepad in my lap and a pen in my hand. I take out my phone, open the voice memo app, and hit record.

“You sure you’re ready?” I ask her.

Evelyn nods. “Everyone I loved is dead now. There’s no one left to protect. No one left to lie for but me. People have so closely followed the most intricate details of the fake story of my life. But it’s not . . . I don’t . . . I want them to know the real story. The real me.”

“All right,” I say. “Show me the real you, then. And I’ll make sure the world understands.”

Evelyn looks at me and briefly smiles. I can tell I have said what she wants to hear. Fortunately, I mean it.

“Let’s go chronologically,” I say. “Tell me more about Ernie Diaz, your first husband, the one who got you out of Hell’s Kitchen.”

“OK,” Evelyn says, nodding. “It’s as good a place to start as any.”





Poor Ernie Diaz





MY MOTHER HAD BEEN A chorus girl off Broadway. She’d emigrated from Cuba with my father when she was seventeen. When I got older, I found out that chorus girl was also a euphemism for a prostitute. I don’t know if she was or not. I’d like to think she wasn’t—not because there’s any shame in it but because I know a little bit about what it is to give your body to someone when you don’t want to, and I hope she didn’t have to do that.