The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo(109)

Harry sat down on my bed and looked at me. “Apparently, we are going to Wiffles.”

“You’re like putty in her hands, Harry,” I said.

He shrugged. “I feel no shame in it.” He stood up and poured himself a glass of water while I continued packing. “Listen, I have an idea,” he said. As he moved closer to me, I realized he smelled vaguely of liquor.

“About what?”

“About Europe.”

“OK . . .” I said. I had resigned to letting it go until Harry and I were settled back in New York. I assumed that then he and I would have the time, and the patience, to discuss it in more depth.

I thought the idea was good for Connor. New York, as much as I loved it, had become a somewhat dangerous place to live. Crime rates were skyrocketing, and drugs were everywhere. We were fairly protected from it on the Upper East Side, but I was still uncomfortable with the idea that Connor was growing up so close to so much chaos. And even more to the point, I was no longer sure that a life where her parents were practically bicoastal and she was being cared for by Luisa when we were gone was the best thing for her.

Yes, we’d be uprooting her. And I knew she’d hate me for making her say good-bye to her friends. But I also knew she would benefit from living in a small town. She’d be better off with a mother who could be around more. And to be frank, she was getting old enough to read gossip columns and watch entertainment news. Was turning on the television and seeing her mother’s sixth divorce really the best thing for a child?

“I think I know what to do,” Harry said. I sat down on the bed, and he sat next to me. “We move here. We move back to Los Angeles.”

“Harry . . .” I said.

“And Celia marries a friend of mine.”

“A friend of yours?”

Harry shifts toward me. “I’ve met someone.”

“What?”

“We met on the lot. He’s working on another production. I thought it was just a casual thing. I think he did, too. But I think I’m . . . This is a man I could see myself with.”

I was so happy for him in that moment. “I thought you couldn’t see yourself with anyone,” I said, surprised but pleased.

“I couldn’t,” he said.

“And what happened?”

“Now I can.”

“I’m thrilled to hear that, Harry. You have no idea. I’m just not sure this is a good idea,” I said. “I don’t even know this guy.”

“You don’t need to,” Harry said. “I mean, it’s not like I chose Celia. You did. And I’m . . . I think I’d like to choose him.”

“I don’t want to act anymore, Harry,” I said.

All through shooting this last movie, I found myself burning out. I wanted to roll my eyes when asked to do a scene more than once. Hitting my marks felt like running a marathon I’d already run a thousand times before. So easy, so unchallenging, so uninspiring, that you resent even being asked to lace up your shoes.

Maybe if I was getting roles that excited me, maybe if I still felt I had something to prove, I don’t know, maybe I would have reacted differently.

There are so many women who continue to do incredible work well into their eighties or nineties. Celia was like that. She could have turned in riveting performance after riveting performance forever, because she was always consumed by the work.

But my heart wasn’t in it. My heart was never in the craft of acting, only in the proving. Proving my power, proving my worth, proving my talent.

I’d proved it all.

“That’s fine,” Harry said. “You don’t have to act anymore.”

“But if I’m not acting, why would I live in Los Angeles? I want to live somewhere I can be free, where no one will pay attention to me. Do you remember when you were little, and whether it was on your block or a few blocks down, there was inevitably a pair of older ladies who lived together as roommates, and no one asked any questions because nobody cared? I want to be one of those ladies. I can’t do that here.”

“You can’t do that anywhere,” Harry said. “That’s the price you pay for who you are.”

“I don’t accept that. I think it’s very possible for me to do that.”

“Well, I don’t want to do that. So what I’m proposing is that you and I remarry. And Celia marries my friend.”

“We can talk about it later,” I said, standing up and taking my toiletry bag to the bathroom.

“Evelyn, you don’t get to decide what this family does unilaterally.”

“Who said anything about unilaterally? All I’m saying is that I want to talk about it later. There are a number of options here. We can go to Europe, we can move here, we can stay in New York.”