“Honey,” I said, pulling her toward me. “Of course not.”
“I just . . . I want to give you everything you’ve ever wanted, and you want that, and I can’t give it to you.”
“Celia, no,” I said. “It’s not like that at all.”
“It’s not?”
“You have given me more than I ever thought I could have in one life.”
“You’re sure.”
“I’m positive.”
She smiled. “You love me?” she said.
“Oh, my God, what an understatement,” I told her.
“You love me so much you can’t see straight?”
“I love you so much that when I sometimes get a look at all the crazy fan mail you get, I think, Well, sure, that makes sense. I want to collect her eyelashes, too.”
Celia laughed and ran her hand across my upper arm as she stared at the ceiling. “I want you to be happy,” she said when she finally looked at me.
“You should know that Harry and I will have to . . .”
“There’s no other way?” she asked. “I thought women were getting pregnant by men just using their sperm now.”
I nodded. “I think there are other ways,” I said. “But I’m not confident in the security of the situation. Or, rather, I don’t know how to ensure that no one finds out that’s how we did it.”
“You’re saying you’re going to have to make love to Harry,” Celia said.
“You are the person I’m in love with. You are the person I make love to. Harry and I are merely making a baby.”
Celia looked at me, reading my face. “You’re sure about that?”
“Absolutely positive.”
She looked back up at the ceiling. She didn’t talk for a while. I watched her eyes as they moved back and forth. I watched her breathing as it slowed. And then she turned to face me. “If it’s what you want . . . if you want a baby, then . . . have a baby. I will . . . we will figure it out. I will make it work. I can be an aunt. Aunt Celia. And I’ll find a way to be OK with it all.”
“And I’ll help you,” I said.
She laughed. “How do you suppose you’ll do that?”
“I can think of one way to make it all a bit more palatable for you,” I said, kissing her neck. She liked to be kissed right below and just behind her ear, where her earlobe hit her neck.
“Oh, you are too much,” she said. But she didn’t say anything else. She did not stop me as I moved my hand across her breasts, down her stomach, between her legs. She moaned and pulled me closer to her, and she ran her own hand down my body. She touched me while I touched her, soft at first and then harder, faster. “I love you,” she said, breathless.
“I love you,” I said back to her.
She looked into my eyes and made me feel rapture, and that night, in giving of herself, she gave me a baby.
PhotoMoment
May 23, 1975
EVELYN HUGO AND HARRY CAMERON HAVE A BABY GIRL!
Evelyn Hugo is finally a mother! At the age of 37, the stunning bombshell is adding “parent” to her résumé. Connor Margot Cameron, 6 pounds, 9 ounces, was born late last Tuesday at Mount Sinai Hospital.
Dad Harry Cameron is said to be “over the moon” about the little bambina.
With a string of hits behind them, Evelyn and Harry are sure to consider the littlest Cameron their most exciting coproduction yet.
I WAS IN LOVE WITH Connor from the moment she looked at me. With her full head of hair and her round blue eyes, I thought, for a moment, she looked just like Celia.
Connor was always hungry and hated being alone. She wanted nothing more than to lie on me, quietly sleeping. She absolutely adored Harry.
During those first few months, Celia shot two movies back-to-back, both out of town. One of them, The Buyer, was a movie I knew she was passionate about. But the second, a mob movie, was exactly the sort of work she hated. On top of the violence and darkness, it shot for eight weeks, four in Los Angeles and four in Sicily. When the offer came in, I was expecting her to turn it down. Instead, she took the part, and John decided to go with her.
During the time they were gone, Harry and I lived almost exactly like a traditional married couple. Harry made me bacon and eggs for breakfast and ran my baths. I fed the baby and changed her nearly hourly.
We had help, of course. Luisa was taking care of the house. She was changing the sheets, doing the laundry, cleaning up after all of us. On her days off, it was Harry who stepped in.
It was Harry who told me I looked beautiful, even though we both knew I’d seen better days. It was Harry who read script after script, looking for the perfect project for me to take on once Connor was old enough. It was Harry who slept next to me every night, who held my hand as we fell asleep, who held me when I was convinced I was a terrible mother after I scratched Connor’s cheek giving her a bath.