“I’m leaving,” I say. “I can’t take any more today.”
Evelyn starts to say something, and I stop her.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want to hear anything else from you. Don’t say another goddamn word, OK?”
I can’t say I’m surprised when she speaks anyway. “I was just going to say that I understand and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I say, just as I remember that Evelyn and I aren’t done.
“For the photo shoot,” she says.
“I’m not sure I’m prepared to come back here.”
“Well,” Evelyn says, “I very much hope that you do.”
WHEN I GET HOME, I instinctively throw my bag onto the couch. I am tired, and I am angry, and my eyes feel dry and stiff, as if they have been wrung out like wet laundry.
I sit down, not bothering to take off my coat or my shoes. I respond to the e-mail my mother has sent containing her flight information for tomorrow. And then I lift my legs and rest my feet on the coffee table. As I do, they hit an envelope resting on the surface.
It is only then that I realize I even have a coffee table in the first place.
David brought it back. And on it rests an envelope addressed to me.
M—
I should never have taken the table. I don’t need it. It’s silly for it to sit in the storage unit. I was being petty when I left.
Enclosed is my key to the apartment and the business card of my lawyer.
I suppose there is not much else to say except that I thank you for doing what I could not.
—D
I put the letter down on the table. I put my feet back up. I wrestle myself out of my coat. I kick off my shoes. I lay my head back. I breathe.
I don’t think I would have ended my marriage without Evelyn Hugo.
I don’t think I would have stood up to Frankie without Evelyn Hugo.
I don’t think I would have had the chance to write a surefire bestseller without Evelyn Hugo.
I don’t think I would understand the true depths of my father’s devotion to me without Evelyn Hugo.
So I think Evelyn is wrong about at least one thing.
My hate is not uncomplicated.
WHEN I GET TO EVELYN’S apartment in the morning, I’m unsure when I even made the actual decision to come.
I simply woke up and found myself on my way. When I rounded the corner, walking here from the subway, I realized I could never have not come.
I cannot and will not do anything to compromise my standing at Vivant. I did not fight for writer at large to bunt at the last minute.
I’m right on time but somehow the last to arrive. Grace opens the door for me and already looks as if a hurricane hit her. Her hair is falling out of her ponytail, and she’s trying harder than usual to keep a smile on her face.
“They showed up almost forty-five minutes early,” Grace says to me in a whisper. “Evelyn had a makeup person in at the crack of dawn to get her ready before the magazine’s makeup person. She had a lighting consultant come in at eight thirty this morning to guide her on the most flattering light in the house. Turns out it’s the terrace, which I have not been as diligent about cleaning because it’s still cold out every day. Anyway, I’ve been scrubbing the terrace from top to bottom for the past two hours.” Grace jokingly rests her head on my shoulder. “Thank God I’m going on vacation.”
“Monique!” Frankie says when she sees me in the hallway. “What took you so long?”
I look at my watch. “It’s eleven-oh-six.” I remember the first day I met Evelyn Hugo. I remember how nervous I was. I remember how larger-than-life she seemed. She is painfully human to me now. But this is all new to Frankie. She hasn’t seen the real Evelyn. She still thinks we’re photographing an icon more than a person.
I step out onto the terrace and see Evelyn in the midst of lights, reflectors, wires, and cameras. There are people circled around her. She is sitting on a stool. Her gray blond hair is being blown in the air by a wind machine. She is wearing her signature emerald green, this time in a long-sleeved silk gown. Billie Holiday is playing on a speaker somewhere. The sun is shining behind Evelyn. She looks like the very center of the universe.
She is right at home.
She smiles for the camera, her brown eyes sparkling in a different way from anything I’ve ever seen in person. She seems at peace somehow, in full display, and I wonder if the real Evelyn isn’t the woman I’ve been talking to for the past two weeks but, instead, the one I see before me right now. Even at almost eighty, she commands a room in a way I’ve never seen before. A star is always and forever a star.
Evelyn was born to be famous. I think her body helped her. I think her face helped her. But for the first time, watching her in action, moving in front of the camera, I get the sense that she has sold herself short in one way: she could have been born with considerably less physical gifts and probably still made it. She simply has it. That undefinable quality that makes everyone stop and pay attention.