The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo(58)

I wanted to be the kind of person who made dinner, who scrubbed a toilet, who was available to my daughter at all times.

“Are any of your movies big in Spain?” I asked.

“Nothing recently,” Celia said. “Yours?”

“Just Boute-en-Train,” I said. “So no.”

“Do you really think you’ll be able to handle this?”

“No,” I said, even before I knew what Celia was specifically talking about. “Which part do you mean?”

“Insignificance.”

I laughed. “Oh, God,” I said. “Yes. That’s about the only part I am ready for.”



WHEN THE PLANS were finalized, when I knew what school Connor would go to, what houses we were going to buy, how we were going to live, I walked into Connor’s room and sat down on her bed.

She was wearing a Duran Duran T-shirt and faded jeans. Her blond hair was teased at the crown. She was still grounded from when I had caught her having a threesome, so she had no choice but to sit there with a sour face and listen as I spoke.

I told her I was retiring from acting. I told her we were moving to Spain. I told her I thought she and I would be happier living with good people, away from all the fame and the cameras.

And then I very gently, very tentatively, told her that I was in love with Celia. I told her I was going to marry Robert, and I explained why, succinctly and clearly. I did not treat her like a child. I spoke to her as an adult. I finally gave her the truth. My truth.

I did not tell her about Harry, about how long I had been with Celia or anything that she didn’t need to know. Those things would come in time.

But I told her what she deserved to understand.

And when I was done, I said, “I’m ready to hear everything you have to say. I’m ready to answer any questions at all. Let’s have a discussion about this.”

But all she did was shrug her shoulders. “I don’t care, Mom,” she said, sitting on her bed with her back against the wall. “I really don’t. You can love whoever. Marry anybody. You can make me live wherever. Go to whatever school you decide. I don’t care, OK? I just don’t care. All I want is to be left alone. So just . . . leave my room. Please. If you can do that, then the rest of it, I don’t care.”

I looked at her, stared right into her eyes and ached for her aching. With her blond hair and her face thinning out, I was starting to fear that she looked more like me than Harry. Sure, conventionally speaking, she would be more attractive if she looked like me. But she should look like Harry. The world should give us that.

“All right,” I said. “I will leave you alone for now.”

I got up. I gave her some space.

I packed up our things. I hired movers. I made plans with Celia and Robert.

Two days before we left New York, I walked into her bedroom and said, “I’ll give you your freedom in Aldiz. You can choose your own room. I’ll make sure you can come back here to visit some of your friends. I’ll do whatever I can to make life easier for you. But I need two things.”

“What?” she said. Her voice sounded disinterested, but she was looking at me. She was talking to me.

“Dinner together, every night.”

“Mom—”

“I’m giving you a lot of leeway here. A lot of trust. All I’m asking for is two things. One is dinner every night.”

“But—”

“It’s nonnegotiable. You only have three more years until you’re in college anyway. You can handle one meal a day.”

She looked away from me. “Fine. What’s the second?”

“You’re going to see a psychologist. At least for a little while. You’ve been through too much. We all have. You need to start talking to someone.”

When I had tried this before, months earlier, I was too weak with her. I let her tell me no. I wasn’t going to do that this time. I was stronger now. I could be a better mother.

Maybe she could detect it in my voice, because she didn’t try to fight me. She just said, “OK, whatever.”

I hugged her and kissed the top of her head, and just when I was going to let go, she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me back.





EVELYN’S EYES ARE WET. THEY have been for some time. She stands up and grabs a tissue from across the room.

She’s such a spectacular woman—by which I mean she, herself, is a spectacle. But she’s also deeply, deeply human. And it is simply impossible for me, in this moment, to remain objective. Against all journalistic integrity, I simply care about her too much not to be moved by her pain, not to feel for all she has felt.

“It must be so hard . . . what you’re doing, telling your story, with so much frankness. I just want you to know that I admire you for it.”

“Don’t say that,” Evelyn says. “OK? Just do me a favor, and don’t say anything like that. I know who I am. By tomorrow you will, too.”

“You keep saying that, but we’re all flawed. Do you really believe you’re past redemption?”

She ignores me. She looks out the window, without even looking at me.

“Evelyn,” I say. “Do you honestly—”

She cuts me off as she looks back at me. “You agreed not to press. We’ll be done soon enough. And you won’t be left wondering about anything.”

I look at her skeptically.

“Really,” she says. “This is one thing on which you can trust me.”





Agreeable Robert Jamison





Now This

January 8, 1990




EVELYN HUGO MARRIES FOR THE SEVENTH TIME

Evelyn Hugo got married this past Saturday to financier Robert Jamison. While this is the seventh trip down the aisle for Evelyn, it is the first for Robert.

If his name sounds familiar, it might be because Evelyn isn’t the only member of Hollywood royalty he’s linked to. Jamison is an older brother of Celia St. James. Sources say the two met at a party of Celia’s just two months ago. They have been falling head over heels in love since.

The ceremony took place at the Beverly Hills courthouse. Evelyn wore a cream-colored suit. Robert looked dapper in pinstripes. Evelyn’s daughter with the late Harry Cameron, Connor Cameron, was the maid of honor.

Shortly after, the three left on a trip to Spain. We can only assume they are off to visit Celia, who just recently bought property off the southern coast.





CONNOR CAME BACK TO LIFE on the rocky beaches of Aldiz. It was slow but steady, like a seed sprouting.

She liked playing Scrabble with Celia. As she’d promised, she ate dinner with me every night, sometimes even coming down to the kitchen early to help me make tortillas from scratch or my mother’s caldo gallego.

But it was Robert she gravitated toward.

Tall and broad, with a gentle beer belly and silver hair, Robert had no idea what to do with a teenage girl at first. I think he was intimidated by her. He was unsure what to say. So he gave her space, maybe even more of a wide berth.

It was Connor who reached out, who asked him to teach her how to play poker, asked him to tell her about finance, asked him if he wanted to go fishing.

He never replaced Harry. No one could. But he did ease the pain, a little bit. She asked his opinion about boys. She took the time to find him the perfect sweater on his birthday.

He painted her bedroom for her. He made her favorite barbecue ribs on the weekends.

And slowly, Connor began to trust that the world was a reasonably safe place to open your heart to. I knew the wounds of losing her father would never truly heal, that scar tissue was forming all through her high school years. But I saw her stop partying. I saw her start getting As and Bs. And then, when she got into Stanford, I looked at her and realized I had a daughter with two feet placed firmly on the ground and her head squarely on her shoulders.

Celia, Robert, and I took Connor out for dinner the night before she and I left to take her to school. We were at a tiny restaurant on the water. Robert had bought her a present and wrapped it. It was a poker set. He said, “Take everybody’s money, like you’ve been taking mine with all those flushes.”

“And then you can help me invest it,” she said with devilish glee.

“Atta girl,” he said.

Robert always claimed that he married me because he would do anything for Celia. But I think he did it, in at least some small part, because it gave him a chance to have a family. He was never going to settle down with one woman. And Spanish women proved to be just as enchanted by him as American ones had been. But this system, this family, was one he could be a part of, and I think he knew that when he signed up.

Or maybe Robert merely stumbled into something that worked for him, unsure what he wanted until he had it. Some people are lucky like that. Me, I’ve always gone after what I wanted with everything in me. Others fall into happiness. Sometimes I wish I was like them. I’m sure sometimes they wish they were like me.

With Connor back in the United States, coming home only during school breaks, Celia and I had more time with each other than we ever had before. We did not have film shoots or gossip columns to worry about. We were almost never recognized—and if people did recognize one of us, they mostly steered clear and kept it to themselves.

There in Spain, I had the life I truly wanted. I felt at peace, again waking up every day seeing Celia’s hair fanned on my pillow. I cherished every moment we had to ourselves, every second I spent with my arms around her.