I only remember clinging to her, holding her as best I could. I only remember saying, “We didn’t have enough time.”
It felt as if by taking her body, the paramedics were ripping out my soul. And then, when the door shut, when everyone had left, when Celia was nowhere to be seen, I looked over at Robert. I fell to the floor.
The tiles felt cold on my flushed skin. The hardness of the stone ached in my bones. Underneath me, puddles of tears were forming, and yet I could not lift my head off the ground.
Robert did not help me up.
He got down on the floor next to me. And wept.
I had lost her. My love. My Celia. My soul mate. The woman whose love I’d spent my life earning.
Simply gone.
Irrevocably and forever.
And the devastating luxury of panic overtook me again.
Now This
July 5, 2000
SCREEN QUEEN CELIA ST. JAMES HAS DIED
Three-time Oscar-winning actress Celia St. James died last week of complications related to emphysema. She was 61 years old.
From a well-to-do family in a small town in Georgia, the red-haired St. James was often referred to as the Georgia Peach early in her career. But it was her role as Beth in the 1959 adaptation of Little Women that brought her her first Academy Award and turned her into a bona fide star.
St. James would go on to be nominated four other times and take home the trophy twice more over the next 30 years, for Best Actress in 1970 for Our Men and for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Lady Macbeth in the 1988 adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy.
In addition to her remarkable talent, St. James was known for her girl-next-door allure and her fifteen-year marriage to football hero John Braverman. The two divorced in the late 1970s but remained friendly until Braverman’s passing in 1980. She never remarried.
St. James’s estate is to be managed by her brother, Robert Jamison, husband of actress—and St. James’s former costar—Evelyn Hugo.
CELIA, LIKE HARRY, WAS BURIED in Forest Lawn in Los Angeles. Robert and I held her funeral on a Thursday morning. It was kept private. But people knew we were there. They knew she was being laid to rest.
When she was lowered to the ground, I stared at the hole in the earth. I stared at the glossy sheen of the wood of her casket. I could not keep it in. I could not keep my true self from coming out.
“I need a minute,” I said to Robert and Connor and then I turned away.
I walked. Farther and farther up the winding hillside roads of the cemetery, until I found what I was looking for.
Harry Cameron.
I sat down at his tombstone, and I cried out everything within me. I cried until I felt depleted. I did not say a single thing. I did not feel any need. I had talked to Harry in my head and my heart for so long, for so many years, that it felt as if we transcended words.
He had been the one to help me, to support me, through everything in my life. And now I needed him more than ever. So I went to him the only way I knew how. I let him heal me as only he could. And then I stood up, dusted off my skirt, and turned around.
There, in the trees, were two paparazzi taking my photo. I was neither angry nor flattered. I simply didn’t care. It cost so much, caring. I didn’t have any currency to spend on it.
Instead, I walked away.
Two weeks later, after Robert and I had gone home to Aldiz, Connor sent me a magazine with the image of me at Harry’s grave on the cover. She had attached a note to the front. It said, simply, “I love you.”
I pulled off the note and read the headline: “Legend Evelyn Hugo Weeps at Harry Cameron’s Grave Years Later.”
Even long past my prime, people were still easily distracted from seeing how I felt about Celia St. James. But this time was different. Because I wasn’t hiding anything.
The truth had been there for them to grab if they’d paid attention. I had been my truest self, searching for the help of my best friend to ease the pain of the loss of my lover.
But of course, they got it wrong. They never did care about getting it right. The media are going to tell whatever story they want to tell. They always have. They always will.
It was then that I knew that the only time anyone would know anything true about my life was when I told them directly.
In a book.
I saved Connor’s note and threw the magazine in the trash.
WITH CELIA’S PASSING AND HARRY gone and myself finally in a marriage that, while chaste, was stable, my life officially became entirely void of scandal.
Me. Evelyn Hugo. A boring old lady.
Robert and I lived a friendly marriage for the next eleven years. We moved back to Manhattan in the mid-2000s to be closer to Connor. We refinished this apartment. We donated some of Celia’s money to LGBTQ+ organizations and lung disease research.
Every Christmas, we threw a benefit for homeless youth organizations in New York City. After years on a quiet beach, it was nice to be members of society again in some ways.
But all I really cared about was Connor.
She had worked her way up the ladder at Merrill Lynch, and then, shortly after Robert and I moved back to New York, she admitted to him that she hated the culture of finance. She told him she had to leave. He was disappointed that she hadn’t been happy with what had made him happy; that was obvious. But he was never disappointed in her.
And he was the first person to congratulate her when she took a job teaching at Wharton. She never knew that he had made a few calls on her behalf. He never wanted her to know. He merely wanted to help her, in any and all ways that he could. And he did that, lovingly, until he died at age eighty-one.
Connor gave the eulogy. Her boyfriend, Greg, was one of the pallbearers. Afterward, she and Greg came to stay with me for a while.
“Mom, after seven husbands, I’m not sure you’ve had any practice living on your own,” she said as she sat at my dining room table, the same table she used to sit at in a high chair with Harry, Celia, John, and me.
“I lived a very full life before you were born,” I told her. “I lived alone once, and I can do it again. You and Greg should go live your lives. Really.”
But the moment I shut the door behind them, I realized just how huge this apartment was, just how quiet.
That’s when I hired Grace.
I had inherited multiple millions from Harry, Celia, and now Robert. And I had only Connor to spoil. So I also spoiled Grace and her family. It gave me happiness to give them happiness, to give them just a little bit of the luxury I’d had for most of my life.
Living alone isn’t so bad once you get used to it. And living in a big apartment like this, well, I’ve kept it because I wanted to give it to Connor, but I have enjoyed some aspects of it. Of course, I always liked it more when Connor would spend the night, especially after she and Greg broke up.
You can make quite a life for yourself hosting charity dinners and collecting art. You can find a way to be happy with whatever the truth is.
Until your daughter dies.
Connor was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer two and a half years ago, when she was thirty-nine. She was given months to live. I knew what it was like to realize that the one you love would leave this earth well before you. But nothing could prepare me for the pain of watching my child suffer.
I held her when she puked from the chemo. I wrapped her in blankets when she was so cold she was crying. I kissed her forehead like she was my baby again, because she was forever my baby.
I told her every single day that her life had been the world’s greatest gift to me, that I believed I was put on earth not to make movies or wear emerald-green gowns and wave at crowds but to be her mother.
I sat next to her hospital bed. “Nothing I have ever done,” I said, “has made me as proud as the day I gave birth to you.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ve always known that.”
I had made a point of not bullshitting her ever since her father died. We had the sort of relationship where we believed each other, believed in each other. She knew she was loved. She knew that she had changed my life, that she had changed the world.
She made it eighteen months before she passed away.
And when they put her in the ground next to her father, I broke like I have never broken before.
The devastating luxury of panic overtook me.
And it has never left.
THAT’S HOW MY STORY ENDS. With the loss of everyone I have ever loved. With me, in a big, beautiful Upper East Side apartment, missing everyone who ever meant anything to me.
When you write the ending, Monique, make sure it’s clear that I don’t love this apartment, that I don’t care about all my money, that I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if people think I’m a legend, that the adoration of millions of people never warmed my bed.
When you write the ending, Monique, tell everyone that it is the people I miss. Tell everyone that I got it wrong. That I chose the wrong things most of the time.
When you write the ending, Monique, make sure the reader understands that all I was ever really looking for was family. Make sure it’s clear that I found it. Make sure they know that I am heartbroken without it.
Spell it out if you have to.
Say that Evelyn Hugo doesn’t care if everyone forgets her name. Evelyn Hugo doesn’t care if everyone forgets she was ever alive.
Better yet, remind them that Evelyn Hugo never existed. She was a person I made up for them. So that they would love me. Tell them that I was confused, for a very long time, about what love was. Tell them that I understand it now, and I don’t need their love anymore.