He was taking off his jacket. Wardrobe was due in any moment. I should have just left and gone to my own trailer. I should have let him be.
“I think you have gotten the wrong impression here, Evelyn,” Don said.
“And how is that?”
He came right up into my face. “We are not equals, love. And I’m sorry if I’ve been so kind that you’ve forgotten that.”
I was speechless.
“I think this should be the last movie you do,” he said. “I think it’s time for us to have children.”
His career wasn’t turning out the way he wanted. And if he wasn’t going to be the most famous person in his family, he surely wasn’t going to allow that person to be me.
I looked right at him and said, “Absolutely. Positively. Not.”
And he smacked me across the face. Sharp, fast, strong.
It was over before I even knew what happened, the skin on my face stinging from the blow I could barely believe had come my way.
If you’ve never been smacked across the face, let me tell you something, it is humiliating. Mostly because your eyes start to tear up, whether you mean to be crying or not. The shock of it and the sheer force of it stimulate your tear ducts.
There is no way to take a smack across the face and look stoic. All you can do is remain still and stare straight ahead, allowing your face to turn red and your eyes to bloom.
So that’s what I did.
The way I’d done it when my father hit me.
I put my hand to my jaw, and I could feel the skin heating up under my hand.
The assistant director knocked on the door. “Mr. Adler, is Miss Hugo with you?”
Don was unable to speak.
“One minute, Bobby,” I said. I was impressed by how unstrained my voice was, how confident it seemed. It sounded like the voice of a woman who had never been hit a day in her life.
There were no mirrors I could get to easily. Don had his back to them, blocking them. I pushed my jaw forward.
“Is it red?” I said.
Don could barely look at me. But he glanced and then nodded his head. He was boyish and ashamed, as if I were asking him if he’d been the one to break the neighbor’s window.
“Go out there and tell Bobby I’m having lady troubles. He’ll be too embarrassed to ask anything else. Then tell your wardrobe person to meet you in my dressing room. Have Bobby tell mine to meet me in here in a half hour.”
“OK,” he said, and then grabbed his jacket and slipped out.
The minute he was out the door, I locked myself inside and slumped down against the wall, the tears coming fast the moment no one could see them.
I had made my way three thousand miles from where I was born. I had found a way to be in the right place at the right time. I’d changed my name. Changed my hair. Changed my teeth and my body. I’d learned how to act. I’d made the right friends. I’d married into a famous family. Most of America knew my name.
And yet . . .
And yet.
I got up off the floor and wiped my eyes. I gathered myself.
I sat down at the vanity, three mirrors in front of me lined with lightbulbs. How silly is it that I thought that if I ever found myself in a movie star’s dressing room, that meant I’d have no troubles?
A few moments later, Gwendolyn knocked on the door to do my hair.
“One second!” I yelled out.
“Evelyn, we have to move quickly. You guys are already behind schedule.”
“Just one second!”
I looked at myself in the mirror and realized I couldn’t force the redness to go away. The question was whether I trusted Gwen. And I decided I did, I had to. I stood up and opened the door.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said. “You look a fright.”
“I know.”
She looked more closely at me and realized what she was seeing. “Did you fall?”
“Yes,” I said. “I did. I fell right over. Onto the counter. Jaw caught the worst of it.”
We both knew I was lying.
And to this day, I’m not sure whether Gwen asked me if I fell in order to spare me the need to lie or to encourage me to keep quiet.
I wasn’t the only woman being hit back then. A lot of women were negotiating the very same things I was at that moment. There was a social code for these things. The first rule being to shut up about it.
An hour later, I was being escorted to set. We were to film a scene just outside a mansion on the beach. Don was sitting in his chair, the four wooden legs digging into the sand, behind the director. He ran up to me.
“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” His voice was so chipper, so consoling, that for a moment I thought he had forgotten what happened.
“I’m fine. Let’s get on with it.”
We took our places. The sound guy mic’ed us. The grips made sure we were lit properly. I put everything out of my head.
“Hold on, hold on!” the director yelled. “Ronny, what’s going on with the boom . . .” Distracted by a conversation, he walked away from the camera.
Don covered his mic and then put his hand on my chest and covered mine.
“Evelyn, I’m so sorry,” he whispered into my ear.
I pulled back and looked at him, stunned. No one had ever apologized for hitting me before.
“I never should have laid a hand on you,” he said. His eyes were filling with tears. “I’m ashamed of myself. For doing anything at all to hurt you.” He looked so pained. “I will do anything for your forgiveness.”
Maybe the life I thought I had wasn’t so far away after all.
“Can you forgive me?” he asked.
Maybe this was all a mistake. Maybe it didn’t mean anything had to change.
“Of course I can,” I said.
The director ran back to the camera, and Don leaned back, taking his hands off our mics.
“And . . . action!”
Don and I were both nominated for Academy Awards for One More Day. And I think the general consensus was that it didn’t matter how talented we were. People just loved seeing us together.
To this day, I have no idea if either of us is actually any good in it. It is the only movie I’ve ever shot that I cannot bring myself to watch.
A MAN HITS YOU ONCE and apologizes, and you think it will never happen again.
But then you tell him you’re not sure you ever want a family, and he hits you once more. You tell yourself it’s understandable, what he did. You were sort of rude, the way you said it. You do want a family someday. You truly do. You’re just not sure how you’re going to manage it with your movies. But you should have been more clear.
The next morning, he apologizes and brings you flowers. He gets down on his knees.
The third time, it’s a disagreement about whether to go out to Romanoff’s or stay in. Which, you realize when he pushes you into the wall behind you, is actually about the image of your marriage to the public.
The fourth time, it’s after you both lose at the Oscars. You are in a silk, emerald-green, one-shoulder dress. He’s in a tux with tails. He has too much to drink at the after-parties, trying to nurse his wounds. You’re in the front seat of the car in your driveway, about to go inside. He’s upset that he lost.
You tell him it’s OK.
He tells you that you don’t understand.
You remind him that you lost, too.
He says, “Yeah, but your parents are trash from Long Island. No one expects anything from you.”
You know you shouldn’t, but you say, “I’m from Hell’s Kitchen, you asshole.”
He opens the parked car’s door and pushes you out.
When he comes crawling to you in tears the next morning, you don’t actually believe him anymore. But now this is just what you do.
The same way you fix the hole in your dress with a safety pin or tape up the crack in a window.
That’s the part I was stuck in, the part where you accept the apology because it�
�s easier than addressing the root of the problem, when Harry Cameron came to my dressing room and told me the good news. Little Women was getting the green light.
“It’s you as Jo, Ruby Reilly as Meg, Joy Nathan as Amy, and Celia St. James is playing Beth.”
“Celia St. James? From Olympian Studios?”
Harry nodded. “What’s with the frown? I thought you’d be thrilled.”
“Oh,” I said, turning further toward him. “I am. I absolutely am.”
“You don’t like Celia St. James?”
I smiled at him. “That teenage bitch is gonna act me under the table.”
Harry threw his head back and laughed.
Celia St. James had made headlines earlier in the year. At the age of nineteen, she played a young widowed mother in a war-period piece. Everyone said she was sure to be nominated next year. Exactly the sort of person the studio would want playing Beth.
And exactly the sort of person Ruby and I would hate.
“You’re twenty-one years old, you’re married to the biggest movie star there is right now, and you were just nominated for an Academy Award, Evelyn.”
Harry had a point, but so did I. Celia was going to be a problem.
“It’s OK. I’m ready. I’m gonna give the best goddamn performance of my life, and when people watch the movie, they are going to say, ‘Beth who? Oh, the middle sister who dies? What about her?’ ”
“I have absolutely no doubt,” Harry said, putting his arm around me. “You’re fabulous, Evelyn. The whole world knows it.”
I smiled. “You really think so?”
This is something that everyone should know about stars. We like to be told we are adored, and we want you to repeat yourself. Later in my life, people would always come up to me and say, “I’m sure you don’t want to hear me blabbering on about how great you are,” and I always say, as if I’m joking, “Oh, one more time won’t hurt.” But the truth is, praise is just like an addiction. The more you get it, the more of it you need just to stay even.
“Yes,” he said. “I really think so.”
I stood up from my chair to give Harry a hug, but as I did, the lighting highlighted my upper cheekbone, the rounded spot just below my eye.
I watched as Harry’s gaze ran across my face.
He could see the light bruise I was hiding, could see the purple and blue under the surface of my skin, bleeding through the pancake makeup.
“Evelyn . . .” he said. He put his thumb up to my face, as if he needed to feel it to know it was real.
“Harry, don’t.”
“I’ll kill him.”
“No, you won’t.”
“We’re best friends, Evelyn. Me and you.”
“I know,” I said. “I know that.”
“You said best friends tell each other everything.”
“And you knew it was bullshit when I said it.”
I stared at him as he stared at me.
“Let me help,” he said. “What can I do?”
“You can make sure I look better than Celia, better than all of ’em, in the dailies.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“But it’s all you can do.”
“Evelyn . . .”
I kept my upper lip stiff. “There’s no move here, Harry.”
He understood what I meant. I couldn’t leave Don Adler.
“I could talk to Ari.”
“I love him,” I said, turning away and clipping my earrings on.
It was the truth. Don and I had problems, but so did a lot of people. And he was the only man who had ever ignited something in me. Sometimes I hated myself for wanting him, for finding myself brightening up when his attention was on me, for still needing his approval. But I did. I loved him, and I wanted him in my bed. And I wanted to stay in the spotlight.
“End of discussion.”
A moment later, there was another knock on my door. It was Ruby Reilly. She was shooting a drama where she played a young nun. She was standing in front of the two of us in a black tunic and a white cowl. Her hood was in her hand.
“Did you hear?” Ruby said to me. “Well, of course you heard. Harry’s here.”
Harry laughed. “You both start rehearsals in three weeks.”
Ruby hit Harry on the arm playfully. “No, not that part! Did you hear Celia St. James is playing Beth? That tart’s gonna show us all up.”
“See, Harry?” I said. “Celia St. James is going to ruin everything.”
THE MORNING WE STARTED REHEARSALS for Little Women, Don woke me up with breakfast in bed. Half a grapefruit and a lit cigarette. I found this highly romantic, because it was exactly what I wanted.
“Good luck today, sweetheart,” he said as he got dressed and headed out the door. “I know you’ll show Celia St. James what it really means to be an actress.”
I smiled and wished him a good day. I ate the grapefruit and left the tray in bed as I got into the shower.
When I got out, our maid, Paula, was in the bedroom cleaning up after me. She was picking the butt of my cigarette off the duvet. I’d left it on the tray, but it must have fallen.
I didn’t keep a neat house.
My clothes from last night were on the floor. My slippers were on top of the dresser. My towel was in the sink.
Paula had her work cut out for her, and she didn’t find me particularly charming. That much was clear.
“Can you do that later?” I said to her. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m in a rush to get to set.”
She smiled politely and left.
I wasn’t in a rush, really. I just wanted to get dressed, and I wasn’t going to do that in front of Paula. I didn’t want her to see that there was a bruise, dark purple and yellowing, on my ribs.
Don had pushed me down the stairs nine days before. Even as I say it all these years later, I feel the need to defend him. To say that it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. That we were toward the bottom of the stairs, and he gave me a shove that bumped me down about four steps and onto the floor.
Unfortunately, the table by the door, where we kept the keys and the mail, is what caught my fall. I landed on it on my left side, the handle on the top drawer getting me right in the rib cage.
When I said that I thought I might have broken a rib, Don said, “Oh, no, honey. Are you all right?” as if he wasn’t the one who pushed me.
Like an idiot, I said, “I think I’m fine.”
The bruise wasn’t going away quickly.
Paula burst back in through the door a moment later.
“Sorry, Mrs. Adler, I forgot the—”
I panicked. “For heaven’s sake, Paula! I asked you to leave!”
She turned around and walked out. And what pissed me off more than anything was that if she was going to sell a story, why wasn’t it that one? Why didn’t she tell the world that Don Adler was beating his wife? Why, instead, did she come after me?
* * *
TWO HOURS LATER, I was on the set of Little Women. The soundstage had been turned into a New England cabin, complete with snow on the windows.
Ruby and I were united in our fight against Celia St. James stealing the movie from us, despite the fact that anyone who plays Beth leaves the audience reaching for the hankies.
You can’t tell an actress that a rising tide lifts all boats. It doesn’t work that way for us.
But on the first day of rehearsals, as Ruby and I hung out by craft services and drank coffee, it became clear that Celia St. James had absolutely no idea how much we all hated her.
“Oh, God,” she said, coming up to Ruby and me. “I’m so scared.”
She was wearing gray trousers and a pale pink short-sleeved sweater. She had a childlike, girl-next-door kind of face. Big, round, pale blue eyes, long lashes, Cupid’s bow lips, long strawberry-red hair. She was simplicity perfected.
I was the sort of beautiful that women knew they could never truly emulate. Men knew they would never even get close to a woman like me.
; Ruby was the elegant, aloof sort of beauty. Ruby was cool. Ruby was chic.
But Celia was the sort of beautiful that felt as if you could hold it in your hands, like if you played your cards right, you might just get to marry a girl like Celia St. James.
Ruby and I both were aware of what kind of power that is, accessibility.
Celia toasted a piece of bread at the craft services table and slathered it with peanut butter and then bit into it.
“What on earth are you scared of?” Ruby said.
“I have no idea what I’m doing!” Celia said.
“Celia, you can’t really expect us to fall for this ‘aw shucks’ routine,” I said.
She looked at me. And the way she did it made me feel as if no one had ever really looked at me before. Not even Don. “That hurts my feelings,” she said.
I felt a little bit bad. But I certainly wasn’t going to let on. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said.
“Yes, you absolutely did,” Celia said. “I think you’re a bit of a cynic.”
Ruby, that fair-weather friend, pretended to hear the AD calling for her and took off.
“I just have a hard time believing a woman the entire town is saying will be nominated next year is doubting her ability to play Beth March. It’s the chewiest, most likable role in the whole thing.”
“If it’s such a sure thing, then why didn’t you take it?” she asked me.
“I’m too old, Celia. But thank you for that.”
Celia smiled, and I realized I’d played right into her hands.
That’s when I started to take a liking to Celia St. James.
LET’S PICK UP HERE TOMORROW,” Evelyn says. The sun set long ago. As I look around, I notice the remains of breakfast, lunch, and dinner scattered across the room.
“OK,” I say.
“By the way,” she adds as I start to pack up. “My publicist got an e-mail today from your editor. Inquiring about a photo shoot for the June cover.”
“Oh,” I say. Frankie has checked in on me a few times now. I know I need to call her back, update her on this situation. I’m just . . . not sure of my next move.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Page 8