The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo(53)

“So you are not a lesbian,” he said.

“I don’t want to discuss this with you.”

“Well, you’re going to. You have to.”

“No,” I said, gathering the letters and envelopes and shoving them into my pockets. “I don’t.”

“Yes,” he said, blocking the door. “You do.”

“Max, get out of my way. I’m leaving.”

“Not to see her,” he said. “You can’t.”

“Of course I can.”

The phone started ringing, but I was too far away to answer it. I knew it was the driver. I knew that if I didn’t leave, I might miss my flight. There would be other flights, but I wanted to catch that one. I wanted to get to Celia as soon as possible.

“Evelyn, stop,” Max said. “Think about this. It makes no sense. You can’t leave me. I could make one phone call and destroy you. I could tell anyone, anyone at all, about this, and your life would never be the same.”

He wasn’t threatening me. He was simply explaining to me what was so clearly obvious. It was as if he was saying, Honey, you’re not thinking clearly. That won’t end well for you.

“You’re a good man, Max,” I said. “I can see you being angry enough to try to hurt me. But I’ve known you to at least try to do the right thing most of the time.”

“And what if this time I don’t?” he said. And there, finally, was the threat.

“I’m leaving you, Max. It either happens now or it happens later, but it’s happening sometime. If you decide you want to try to bring me down over it, then I guess that’s just what you’ll have to do.”

When he wouldn’t move, I shoved him out of the way and walked right past him out the door.

The love of my life was waiting, and I was going to go get her back.





WHEN I GOT TO SPAGO, Celia was already seated. She was wearing black slacks and a gauzy cream-colored sleeveless blouse. The temperature outside was a warm seventy-eight degrees, but the restaurant’s air-conditioning was on high, and she looked just a little bit cold. Her arms were covered in goose bumps.

Her red hair was still stunning but now clearly dyed. The golden undertones that had been there before, the result of nature and sunlight, were now slightly saturated, coppery. Her blue eyes were just as enticing as they always had been, but now the skin around them was softer.

I’d been to a plastic surgeon a few times in the past several years. I suspected she had, too. I was wearing a deep-V-necked black dress, belted at the waist. My blond hair, a bit lighter now from the gray that had been creeping in and cut shorter, was framing my face.

She stood when she saw me. “Evelyn,” she said.

I hugged her. “Celia.”

“You look great,” she said. “You always do.”

“You look just like you did the last time I saw you,” I said.

“We never did tell each other lies,” she said, smiling. “Let’s not start now.”

“You’re gorgeous,” I said.

“Ditto.”

I ordered a glass of white wine. She ordered a club soda with lime.

“I don’t drink anymore,” Celia said. “It’s not sitting with me the way it once did.”

“That’s fine. If you want, I can toss my wine right out the window the moment it gets to the table.”

“No,” she said, laughing. “Why should my low tolerance be your problem?”

“I want everything about you to be my problem,” I said.

“Do you realize what you’re saying?” she whispered to me as she leaned across the table. The neck of her blouse opened and dipped into the bread basket. I was worried it would graze the butter, but somehow it didn’t.

“Of course I realize what I’m saying.”

“You destroyed me,” she said. “Twice now in our lives. I have spent years getting over you.”

“Did you succeed? Either time?”

“Not completely.”

“I think that means something.”

“Why now?” she asked. “Why didn’t you call years ago?”

“I called you a million times after you left me. I practically knocked down your door,” I reminded her. “I thought you hated me.”

“I did,” she said. She pulled back a bit. “I still hate you, I think. At least a little bit.”

“You think I don’t hate you, too?” I tried to keep my voice down, tried to pretend it was a chat between two old friends. “Just a little bit?”

Celia smiled. “No, I suppose it would make sense that you do.”

“But I’m not going to let that stop me,” I said.

She sighed and looked at her menu.

I leaned in, conspiratorially. “I didn’t think I had a shot before,” I told her. “After you left me, I thought the door was closed. And now it’s open a crack, and I want to swing it wide open and walk in.”

“What makes you think the door is open?” she asked, looking at the left side of the menu.

“We are having dinner, aren’t we?”

“As friends,” she said.

“You and I have never been friends.”

She closed her menu and put it down on the table. “I need reading glasses,” she said. “Can you believe that? Reading glasses.”

“Join the club.”

“I can be mean sometimes when I’m hurt,” she reminded me.

“You’re not exactly telling me something I don’t know.”

“I made you feel like you weren’t talented,” she said. “I tried to make you think you needed me because I made you legitimate.”

“I know that.”

“But you’ve always been legitimate.”

“I know that now, too,” I told her.

“I thought you would call me after you won the Oscar. I thought maybe you would want to show me, you’d want to shove it in my face.”

“Did you listen to my speech?”

“Of course I did,” she said.

“I reached out to you,” I said. I picked up a piece of bread and buttered it. But I put it down immediately, not taking a single bite.

“I wasn’t sure,” Celia said. “I mean, I wasn’t sure if you meant me.”

“I all but said your name.”

“You said ‘she.’ ”

“Precisely.”

“I thought maybe you had another she.”

I had looked at other women besides Celia. I had pictured myself with other women besides her. But everyone, for what had felt like my whole life, had always been divided into “Celia” and “not Celia.” Every other woman I considered striking up a conversation with might as well have had “not Celia” stamped on her forehead. If I was going to risk my career and everything I loved for a woman, it was going to be her.

“There is no she but you,” I told her.

Celia listened and closed her eyes. And then she spoke. It was as if she had tried to stop herself and simply couldn’t. “But there were hes.”

“This old song and dance,” I said, trying to stop myself from rolling my eyes. “I was with Max. You were clearly with Joan. Did Joan hold a candle to me?”

“No,” Celia said.

“And Max didn’t hold a candle to you.”

“But you’re still married to him.”

“I’m filing papers. He’s moving out. It’s over.”

“That’s abrupt.”

“It’s not, actually. It’s overdue. And anyway, he found your letters,” I said.

“And he’s leaving you?”

“No, he’s threatening to out me if I don’t stay with him.”

“What?”

“I’m leaving him,” I said. “And I’m letting him do whatever the hell he wants. Because I’m fifty years old, and I don’t have the energy to be controlling every single thing anyone says about me until I die of old age. The parts I’m being offered are shit. I have the Oscar on my mantel. I have a spectacular daughter. I have Harry. I’m a household name. They will write about my movies for years to come. What more do I want? A gold statue in my honor?”

Celia laughed. “That’s what an Oscar is,” she said.

I laughed, too. “Exactly! Excellent point. I already have that, then. There’s nothing else, Celia. There are no more mountains to climb. I spent my life hiding so no one would knock me off the mountain. Well, you know what? I’m done hiding. Let them come and get me. They can throw me down a well as far as I’m concerned. I’m signed on to do one last movie over at Fox later this year, and then I’m done.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do. Any other line of thinking . . . it’s how I lost you. I don’t want to lose anymore.”

“It’s not just our careers,” she said. “The ramifications are unpredictable. What if they take Connor away?”

“Because I’m in love with a woman?”

“Because they think both her parents are ‘queers.’ ”

I sipped my wine. “I can’t win with you,” I said finally. “If I want to hide, you call me a coward. If I’m tired of hiding, you tell me they’ll take my daughter.”

“I’m sorry,” Celia said. She did not seem sorry for what she had said so much as sorry that we lived in the world we lived in. “Do you mean it?” she asked. “Would you really give it up?”