I breathe deeply, only now realizing how shallow my breathing has been. “Thank you, Evelyn. That means a lot.”
EVELYN AND I ARE BACK in her foyer. “I’ll meet you in my office in a half hour.”
“OK,” I say as Evelyn heads down the corridor and out of sight. I take off my coat and put it in the closet.
I should use this time to check in with Frankie. If I don’t reach out to update her soon, she’ll track me down.
I just have to decide how I’m going to handle it. How do I make sure she doesn’t try to wrestle this away from me?
I think my only option is to pretend everything is going according to plan. My only plan is to lie.
I breathe.
One of my earliest memories from when I was a child was of my parents bringing me to Zuma Beach in Malibu. It was still springtime, I think. The water hadn’t yet warmed enough for comfort.
My mom stayed on the sand, setting down our blanket and umbrella, while my dad scooped me up and ran with me down to the shoreline. I remember feeling weightless in his arms. And then he put my feet in the water, and I cried, telling him it was too cold.
He agreed with me. It was cold. But then he said, “Just breathe in and out five times. And when you’re done, I bet it won’t feel so cold.”
I watched as he put his feet in. I watched him breathe. And then I put my feet back in and breathed with him. He was right, of course. It wasn’t so cold.
After that, my dad would breathe with me anytime I was on the verge of tears. When I skinned my elbow, when my cousin called me an Oreo, when my mom said we couldn’t get a puppy, my father would sit and breathe with me. It still hurts, all these years later, to think about those moments.
But for now, I keep breathing, right there in Evelyn’s foyer, centering myself as he taught me.
And then, when I feel calm, I pick up my phone and dial Frankie.
“Monique.” She answers on the second ring. “Tell me. How’s it going?”
“It’s going well,” I say. I’m surprised at how even and flat my voice is. “Evelyn is pretty much everything you’d expect from an icon. Still gorgeous. Charismatic as ever.”
“And?”
“And . . . things are progressing.”
“Is she committing to talk about any other topics than the gowns?”
What can I say now to start covering my own ass? “You know, she’s pretty reticent about anything other than getting some press for the auction. I’m trying to play nice at the moment, get her to trust me a bit more before I start pushing.”
“Will she sit for a cover?”
“It’s too early to tell. Trust me, Frankie,” I say, and I hate how sincere it sounds coming out of my mouth, “I know how important this is. But right now, the best thing for me to do is make sure Evelyn likes me so that I can try to garner some influence and advocate for what we want.”
“OK,” Frankie says. “Obviously, I want more than a few sound bites about dresses, but that’s still more than any other magazine has gotten from her in decades, so . . .” Frankie keeps talking, but I’ve stopped listening. I’m far too focused on the fact that Frankie’s not even going to get sound bites.
And I’m going to get far, far more.
“I should go,” I say, excusing myself. “She and I are talking again in a few minutes.”
I hang up the phone and breathe out. I’ve got this shit.
As I make my way through the apartment, I can hear Grace in the kitchen. I open the swinging door and spot her cutting flower stems.
“Sorry to bother you. Evelyn said to meet her in her office, but I’m not sure where that is.”
“Oh,” Grace says, putting down the scissors and wiping her hands on a towel. “I’ll show you.”
I follow her up a set of stairs and into Evelyn’s study area. The walls are a striking flat charcoal gray, the area rug a golden beige. The large windows are flanked by dark blue curtains, and on the opposite side of the room are built-in bookcases. A gray-blue couch sits facing an oversized glass desk.
Grace smiles and leaves me to wait for Evelyn. I drop my bag on the sofa and check my phone.
“You take the desk,” Evelyn says as she comes in. She hands me a glass of water. “I can only assume the way this works is that I talk and you write.”
“I suppose,” I say, sitting in the desk chair. “I’ve never attempted to write a biography before. After all, I’m not a biographer.”
Evelyn looks at me pointedly. She sits opposite me, on the sofa. “Let me explain something to you. When I was fourteen years old, my mother had already died, and I was living with my father. The older I got, the more I realized that it was only a matter of time until my father tried to marry me off to a friend of his or his boss, someone who could help his situation. And if I’m being honest, the more I developed, the less secure I was in the idea that my father might not try to take something of me for himself.
“We were so broke that we were stealing the electricity from the apartment above us. There was one outlet in our place that was on their circuit, so we plugged anything we needed to use into that one socket. If I needed to do homework after dark, I plugged in a lamp in that outlet and sat underneath it with my book.
“My mother was a saint. I really mean it. Stunningly beautiful, an incredible singer, with a heart of gold. For years before she died, she would always tell me that we were gonna get out of Hell’s Kitchen and go straight to Hollywood. She said she was going to be the most famous woman in the world and get us a mansion on the beach. I had this fantasy of the two of us together in a house, throwing parties, drinking champagne. And then she died, and it was like waking up from a dream. Suddenly, I was in a world where none of that was ever going to happen. And I was going to be stuck in Hell’s Kitchen forever.
“I was gorgeous, even at fourteen. Oh, I know the whole world prefers a woman who doesn’t know her power, but I’m sick of all that. I turned heads. Now, I take no pride in this. I didn’t make my own face. I didn’t give myself this body. But I’m also not going to sit here and say, ‘Aw, shucks. People really thought I was pretty?’ like some kind of prig.
“My friend Beverly knew a guy in her building named Ernie Diaz who was an electrician. And Ernie knew a guy over at MGM. At least, that was the rumor going around. And one day, Beverly told me she heard that Ernie was up for some job rigging lights in Hollywood. So that weekend, I made up a reason to go over to Beverly’s, and I ‘accidentally’ knocked on Ernie’s door. I knew exactly where Beverly was. But I knocked on Ernie’s door and said, ‘Have you seen Beverly Gustafson?’
“Ernie was twenty-two. He wasn’t handsome by any means, but he was fine to look at. He said he hadn’t seen her, but I watched as he continued to stare at me. I watched as his eyes started at mine and grazed their way down, scanning every inch of me in my favorite green dress.
“And then Ernie said, ‘Sweetheart, are you sixteen?’ I was fourteen, remember. But do you know what I did? I said, ‘Why, I just turned.’ ”
Evelyn looks at me with purpose. “Do you understand what I’m telling you? When you’re given an opportunity to change your life, be ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The world doesn’t give things, you take things. If you learn one thing from me, it should probably be that.”
Wow. “OK,” I say.
“You’ve never been a biographer before, but you are one starting now.”
I nod my head. “I got it.”
“Good,” Evelyn says, relaxing into the sofa. “So where do you want to begin?”
I grab my notebook and look at the scribbled words I’ve covered the last few pages with. There are dates and film titles, references to classic images of her, rumors with question marks after them. And then, in big letters that I went over and over with my pen, darkening each letter until I changed the texture of the page, I’ve written, “Who was the love of Evelyn’s life???”
That’s the big question. That’s the hook of this book.
Seven husbands.
Which one did she love the best? Which one was the real one?
As both a journalist and a consumer, that’s what I want to know. It won’t be where the book begins, but maybe that is where she and I should begin. I want to know, going into these marriages, which is the one that matters the most.
I look up at Evelyn to see her sitting up, ready for me.
“Who was the love of your life? Was it Harry Cameron?”
Evelyn thinks and then answers slowly. “Not in the way you mean, no.”
“In what way, then?”
“Harry was my greatest friend. He invented me. He was the person who loved me the most unconditionally. The person I loved the most purely, I think. Other than my daughter. But no, he was not the love of my life.”
“Why not?”
“Because that was someone else.”
“OK, who was the love of your life, then?”
Evelyn nods, as if this is the question she has been expecting, as if the situation is unfolding exactly as she knew it would. But then she shakes her head again. “You know what?” she says, standing up. “It’s getting late, isn’t it?”
I look at my watch. It’s midafternoon. “Is it?”
“I think it is,” she says, and she walks toward me, toward the door.
“All right,” I say, standing up to meet her.
Evelyn puts her arm around me and leads me out into the hallway. “Let’s pick up again on Monday. Would that be OK?”
“Uh . . . sure. Evelyn, did I say something to offend you?”
Evelyn leads me down the stairs. “Not at all,” she says, waving my fears aside. “Not at all.”
There is a tension that I can’t quite put my finger on. Evelyn walks with me until we hit the foyer. She opens the closet. I reach in and grab my coat.
“Back here?” Evelyn says. “Monday morning? What do you say we start around ten?”
“OK,” I say, putting my thick coat around my shoulders. “If that’s what you’d like.”
Evelyn nods. She looks past me for a moment, over my shoulder, but appearing not to actually be looking at anything in particular. Then she opens her mouth. “I’ve spent a very long time learning how to . . . spin the truth,” she says. “It’s hard to undo that wiring. I’ve gotten too good at it, I think. Just now, I wasn’t exactly sure how to tell the truth. I don’t have very much practice in it. It feels antithetical to my very survival. But I’ll get there.”
I nod, unsure how to respond. “So . . . Monday?”
“Monday,” Evelyn says with a long blink and a nod. “I’ll be ready then.”
I walk back to the subway in the chilly air. I cram myself into a car packed with people, holding on to the handrail above my head. I walk to my apartment and open my front door.
I sit on my couch, open my laptop, and answer some e-mails. I start to order something for dinner. And it is only when I go to put my feet up that I remember there is no coffee table. For the first time since he left, I have not come into this apartment immediately thinking of David.
Instead, what plays in the back of my mind all weekend—from my Friday night in to my Saturday night out and my Sunday morning at the park—isn’t How did my marriage fail? but rather Who the hell was Evelyn Hugo in love with?
I AM ONCE AGAIN IN Evelyn’s study. The sun is shining directly into the windows, lighting Evelyn’s face with so much warmth that it obscures her right side from view.
We’re really doing this. Evelyn and me. Subject and biographer. It begins now.
She is wearing black leggings and a man’s navy-blue button-down shirt with a belt. I’m wearing my usual jeans, T-shirt, and blazer. I dressed with the intention of staying here all day and all night, if need be. If she keeps talking, I will be here, listening.
“So,” I say.
“So,” Evelyn says, her voice daring me to go for it.
Sitting at her desk while she is on the couch feels adversarial somehow. I want her to feel as if we are on the same team. Because we are, aren’t we? Although I get the impression you never know with Evelyn.
Can she really tell the truth? Is she capable of it?
I take a seat in the chair next to the sofa. I lean forward, with my notepad in my lap and a pen in my hand. I take out my phone, open the voice memo app, and hit record.
“You sure you’re ready?” I ask her.
Evelyn nods. “Everyone I loved is dead now. There’s no one left to protect. No one left to lie for but me. People have so closely followed the most intricate details of the fake story of my life. But it’s not . . . I don’t . . . I want them to know the real story. The real me.”
“All right,” I say. “Show me the real you, then. And I’ll make sure the world understands.”
Evelyn looks at me and briefly smiles. I can tell I have said what she wants to hear. Fortunately, I mean it.
“Let’s go chronologically,” I say. “Tell me more about Ernie Diaz, your first husband, the one who got you out of Hell’s Kitchen.”
“OK,” Evelyn says, nodding. “It’s as good a place to start as any.”
Poor Ernie Diaz
MY MOTHER HAD BEEN A chorus girl off Broadway. She’d emigrated from Cuba with my father when she was seventeen. When I got older, I found out that chorus girl was also a euphemism for a prostitute. I don’t know if she was or not. I’d like to think she wasn’t—not because there’s any shame in it but because I know a little bit about what it is to give your body to someone when you don’t want to, and I hope she didn’t have to do that.
I was eleven when she died of pneumonia. Obviously, I don’t have a lot of memories of her, but I do remember that she smelled like cheap vanilla, and she made the most amazing caldo gallego. She never called me Evelyn, only mija, which made me feel really special, like I was hers and she was mine. Above all else, my mother wanted to be a movie star. She really thought she could get us out of there and away from my father by getting into the movies.
I wanted to be just like her.
I’ve often wished that on her deathbed she’d said something moving, something I could take with me always. But we didn’t know how sick she was until it was over. The last thing she said to me was Dile a tu padre que estaré en la cama. “Tell your father I’ll be in bed.”
After she died, I would cry only in the shower, where no one could see me or hear me, where I couldn’t tell what were my tears and what was the water. I don’t know why I did that. I just know that after a few months, I was able to take a shower without crying.
And then, the summer after she died, I began to develop.
My chest started growing, and it wouldn’t stop. I had to rifle through my mom’s old things when I was twelve years old, looking to see if there was a bra that would fit. The only one I found was too small, but I put it on anyway.
By the time I was thirteen, I was five foot eight, with dark, shiny brown hair, long legs, light bronze skin, and a chest that pulled at the buttons of my dresses. Grown men were watching me walk down the street, and some of the girls in my building didn’t want to hang out with me anymore. It was a lonely business. Motherless, with an abusive father, no friends, and a sexuality in my body that my mind wasn’t ready for.
The cashier at the five-and-dime on the corner was this boy named Billy. He was the sixteen-year-old brother of the girl who sat next to me in school. One October day, I went down to the five-and-dime to buy a piece of candy, and he kissed me.
I didn’t want him to kiss me. I pushed him away. But he held on to my arm.
“Oh, come on,” he said.
The store was empty. His arms were strong. He grasped me tighter. And in that moment, I knew he was going to get what he wanted from me whether I let him or not.
So I had two choices. I could do it for free. Or I could do it for free candy.
For the next three months, I took anything I wanted from that five-and-dime. And in exchange, I saw him every Saturday night and let
him take my shirt off. I never felt I had much choice in the matter. Being wanted meant having to satisfy. At least, that was my view of it back then.
I remember him saying, in the dark, cramped stockroom with my back against a wooden crate, “You have this power over me.”
He’d convinced himself that his wanting me was my fault.
And I believed him.
Look what I do to these poor boys, I thought. And yet also, Here is my value, my power.
So when he dumped me—because he was bored with me, because he’d found someone else more exciting—I felt both a deep relief and a very real sense of failure.
There was one other boy like that, whom I took my shirt off for because I thought I had to, before I started realizing that I could be the one doing the choosing.
I didn’t want anyone; that was the problem. To be perfectly blunt, I’d started to figure my body out quickly. I didn’t need boys in order to feel good. And that realization gave me great power. So I wasn’t interested in anyone sexually. But I did want something.
I wanted to get far away from Hell’s Kitchen.
I wanted out of my apartment, away from my father’s stale tequila breath and heavy hand. I wanted someone to take care of me. I wanted a nice house and money. I wanted to run, far away from my life. I wanted to go where my mom had promised me we’d end up someday.
Here’s the thing about Hollywood. It’s both a place and a feeling. If you run there, you can run toward Southern California, where the sun always shines and the grimy buildings and dirty sidewalks are replaced by palm trees and orange groves. But you also run toward the way life is portrayed in the movies.
You run toward a world that is moral and just, where the good guys win and the bad guys lose, where the pain you face is only in an effort to make you stronger, so that you can win that much bigger in the end.
It would take me years to figure out that life doesn’t get easier simply because it gets more glamorous. But you couldn’t have told me that when I was fourteen.
So I put on my favorite green dress, the one I had just about grown out of. And I knocked on the door of the guy I heard was headed to Hollywood.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Page 4