“How old is he?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Jesus, Celia. He’s a child,” I said.
“That’s exactly what people will say. They’ll be shocked that you’re dating him.”
“And when Max tries to slander me?”
“It won’t matter what he’s trying to claim about you. It will look like he’s just bitter.”
“And then?” I asked.
“And then, down the line, you marry my brother.”
“Why am I going to marry Robert?”
“So that when I die, everything I own will be yours. My estate will be under your control. And you can keep my legacy.”
“You could appoint that to me.”
“And have someone try to take it away because you were my lover? No. This is better. This is smarter.”
“But marrying your brother? Are you crazy?”
“He’ll do it,” she said. “For me. And because he’s a rake who likes to bed almost every woman he sees. You’d be good for his reputation. It’s a win-win.”
“All this instead of just telling the truth?”
I could feel Celia’s rib cage expand and contract underneath me.
“We can’t tell the truth. Did you see what they did to Rock Hudson? If it was cancer he was dying of, there’d be telethons.”
“People don’t understand AIDS,” I said.
“They understand it just fine,” Celia said. “They just think that he deserves it because of how he got it.”
I rested my head on the pillow while my heart sank in my chest. She was right, of course. The past few years, I’d watched Harry lose friend after friend, former lovers, to AIDS. I’d watched him cry his eyes red out of fear that he’d get sick, for not knowing how to help the people he loved. And I’d watched Ronald Reagan never so much as acknowledge what was happening in front of our eyes.
“I know things have changed since the sixties,” she said. “But they haven’t changed that much. It wasn’t that long ago that Reagan said gay rights weren’t civil rights. You can’t risk losing Connor. So I’ll call Jack, my friend in the House of Representatives. We’ll plant the story. You’ll shoot your movie. You’ll marry my brother. And we’ll all move to Spain.”
“I’ll have to talk to Harry.”
“Of course,” she said. “Talk to Harry. If he hates Spain, we’ll go to Germany. Or Scandinavia. Or Asia. I don’t care. We just need to go somewhere where people won’t care who we are, where people will leave us alone and Connor can live a normal childhood.”
“You’ll need medical care.”
“I’ll fly where I need to. Or we can bring people to me.”
I thought about it. “It’s a good plan.”
“Yeah?” Celia was flattered, I could tell.
“The student has become the master,” I said.
She laughed, and I kissed her.
“We’re home,” I said.
This wasn’t my home. We’d never lived here together before. But she knew what I meant.
“Yes,” she said. “We’re home.”
Now This
July 1, 1988
EVELYN HUGO AND MAX GIRARD DIVORCE TURNS UGLY AMID REPORTS OF HUGO CHEATING
Evelyn Hugo is headed to divorce court one more time. She filed papers citing “irreconcilable differences” this week. And while she’s an old hand at this, it looks like this one’s gonna be a doozy.
Sources say Max Girard is seeking spousal support, and reports have surfaced claiming that Girard is bad-mouthing Hugo all over town.
“He’s so angry he’s saying just about anything he can to get back at her,” an insider close to the former couple says. “You name it, he’s said it. She’s a cheater, she’s a lesbian, she owes him her Oscar. It’s clear he’s very heartbroken.”
Hugo was recently seen out with a much younger man last week. Jack Easton, a Democratic congressman from Vermont, is only twenty-nine years old. That’s more than two decades younger than Evelyn. And if the photos of their evening together out to dinner in Los Angeles are any indication, it looks like a blossoming romance.
Hugo doesn’t have a great track record, but in this case, it seems like one thing is clear: Girard’s comments certainly sound like sour grapes.
HARRY WASN’T ON BOARD.
He was the one piece of the plan that wasn’t up to me, the one person I wasn’t willing to manipulate into doing what I wanted him to do. And he didn’t want to leave everything behind and fly off to Europe.
“You’re suggesting I retire,” Harry said. “And I’m not even sixty yet. My God, Evelyn. What on earth am I going to do all day? Play cards on the beach?”