The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  “I’m trying to be happy for Ruby,” I said, laughing just a little bit as I used a piece of toilet paper to carefully dry my eyes. “But it’s not exactly my style.”

  “Mine either,” she said.

  I opened the door. And there she was. Blue dress, red hair, small stature with a presence that filled the whole room. And when her eyes set on me, I knew she still loved me. I could see it in the way her pupils widened and softened.

  “You are as gorgeous as ever,” she said as she leaned against the sink, her arms holding her weight behind her. There was always something intoxicating about the way Celia looked at me. I felt like a rare steak in front of a tiger.

  “You’re not so bad yourself,” I said.

  “We probably shouldn’t be caught in here together,” Celia said.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because I suspect more than a few people seated in there know what we once got up to,” she said. “I know you’d hate for them to think we were up to it again.”

  This was a test.

  I knew it. She knew it.

  If I said the right thing, if I told her I didn’t care what they thought, if I told her I’d make love to her in the middle of the stage in front of all of them, I just might be able to have her back.

  I let myself think about it for a moment. I let myself think about waking up tomorrow to her cigarette-and-coffee breath.

  But I wanted her to admit it wasn’t all me. That she had played a part in our demise. “Or maybe you just don’t want to be seen with a . . . what was the word you used, I believe it was whore?”

  Celia laughed and looked down at the floor and then back up at me. “What do you want me to say? That I was wrong? I was. I wanted to hurt you like you hurt me.”

  “But I never meant to hurt you,” I said. “Never once would I have done a single thing to hurt you on purpose.”

  “You were ashamed to love me.”

  “Absolutely not,” I said. “That is absolutely untrue.”

  “Well, you certainly went to great lengths to hide it.”

  “I did what had to be done to protect both of us.”

  “Debatable.”

  “So debate it with me,” I said. “Instead of running away again.”

  “I didn’t run far, Evelyn. You could have caught up with me, if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t like being played, Celia. I told you that the first time we went out for milk shakes.”

  She shrugged. “You play everyone else.”

  “I have never claimed that I wasn’t a hypocrite.”

  “How do you do that?” Celia said.

  “Do what?”

  “Act so cavalier about things that are sacred to other people?”

  “Because other people have got nothing to do with me.”

  Celia scoffed, somewhat gently, and looked down at her hands.

  “Except you,” I said.

  I was rewarded with the sight of her looking up at me.

  “I care about you,” I said.

  “You cared about me.”

  I shook my head. “No, I didn’t misspeak.”

  “You certainly moved on fast enough with Rex North.”

  I frowned at her. “Celia, you know better than that.”

  “So it was fake.”

  “Every moment.”

  “Have you been with anyone else? Any men?” she asked. She was always jealous of the men, worried she couldn’t compete. I was jealous of the women, worried I wouldn’t compare.

  “I’ve had a good time,” I said. “As I’m sure you’ve had.”

  “John isn’t—”

  “I’m not talking about John. But I’m sure you haven’t kept chaste.” I was fishing for information that might break my heart, a flaw of the human condition.

  “No,” she said. “You’re right about that.”

  “Men?” I asked, hoping the answer was yes. If it was men, I knew it didn’t mean anything to her.

  She shook her head, and my heart broke just a little bit more, like a tear that deepens from strain.

  “Anyone I know?”

  “None of them were famous,” she said. “None of them meant anything to me. I touched them and thought of what it felt like to touch you.”

  My heart both ached and swelled to hear it.

  “You shouldn’t have left me, Celia.”

  “You shouldn’t have let me leave.”

  And with that, I had no more fight in me. My heart cried out the truth through my throat. “I know. I know that. I know.”

  Sometimes things happen so quickly you aren’t sure when you even realized they were about to begin. One minute she was leaning against the sink, the next her hands were on my face, her body pressed against me, her lips between mine. She tasted like the musky creaminess of thick lipstick and the sharp, spiced sting of rum.

  I was lost in her. In the feel of her on me once again, the sheer joy of her attention, the glory of knowing she loved me.

  And then the door was flung open, and the wives of two producers walked in. We broke apart. Celia pretended she had been washing her hands, and I moved to one of the mirrors and fixed my makeup. The two women talked together, caught up in their conversation, barely noticing us.

  They entered two stalls, and I looked at Celia. She looked at me. I watched her turn off the faucet and take a towel. I worried that she might walk right out the bathroom door. But she didn’t.

  One of the wives left, and then the other. We were finally alone again. Listening closely, we could tell the show had come back from a commercial break.

  I grabbed Celia and kissed her. I pushed her up against the door. I couldn’t get enough of her. I needed her. She was as much of a fix to me as any drug.

  Before I even stopped to consider the danger, I lifted her dress and slipped my hand up her thigh. I held her against the door, I kissed her, and with one hand I touched her the way I knew she liked.

  She moaned slightly and put her hand over her mouth. I kissed her neck. And the two of us, our bodies tightly wound, shuddered against the door.

  We could have been caught at any moment. If one woman in the whole auditorium chose to visit the ladies’ room during those seven minutes, we’d have lost everything we’d worked so hard for.

  That is how Celia and I forgave each other.

  And how we knew we couldn’t live without each other.

  Because now we both knew what we were willing to risk. Just to be together.

  PhotoMoment

  August 14, 1967

  EVELYN HUGO WEDS PRODUCER HARRY CAMERON

  Fifth time’s a charm? Evelyn Hugo and producer Harry Cameron married last Saturday, during a ceremony on the beaches of Capri.

  Evelyn wore an off-white silk gown and had her long blond hair down and parted in the middle. Harry, known for being one of the better-dressed Hollywood players, wore a cream-colored linen suit.

  Celia St. James, America’s Sweetheart, attended as the maid of honor, and her fabulous hubby, John Braverman, served as the best man.

  Harry and Evelyn have been working together since the ’50s, when Evelyn came to fame in such hits as Father and Daughter and Little Women. They admitted they were having an affair late last year when they were caught in flagrante while Evelyn was still married to Rex North.

  Rex is now married to Joy Nathan and the proud papa of their little girl, Violet North.

  We’re glad that Evelyn and Harry have decided to finally make it official! After such a shocking beginning to their relationship and a long engagement, all we can say is it’s about time!

  CELIA GOT ABSOLUTELY SMASHED DURING the wedding. She was having a hard time not being jealous, even though she knew the whole thing was fake. Her own husband was standing next to Harry, for crying out loud. And we all knew what we were.

  Two men sleeping together. Married to two women sleeping together. We were four beards.

  And what I thought as I said “I do” was It’s all beginning now.
Real life, our life. We’re finally going to be a family.

  Harry and John were in love. Celia and I were sky-high.

  When we got back from Italy, I sold my mansion in Beverly Hills. Harry sold his. We bought this place in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side, just down the street from Celia and John.

  Before I agreed to move, I had Harry look into whether my father was still alive. I wasn’t sure I could live in the same city he lived in, wasn’t sure I could handle the idea of running into him.

  But when Harry’s assistant searched for him, I learned that my father had died in 1959 of a heart attack. What little he owned was absorbed by the state when no one came forward to claim it.

  My first thought when I heard he was gone was So that’s why he never tried to come after me for money. And my second was How sad that I’m certain that’s all he’d ever want.

  I put it out of my head, signed the paperwork on the apartment, and celebrated the purchase with Harry. I was free to go wherever I wanted. And what I wanted was to move to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I persuaded Luisa to join us.

  This apartment might be within a long walk’s distance, but I was a million miles away from Hell’s Kitchen. And I was world-famous, married, in love, and so rich it sometimes made me sick.

  A month after we moved to town, Celia and I took a taxi to Hell’s Kitchen and walked around the neighborhood. It looked so different from when I left. I brought her to the sidewalk just below my old building and pointed at the window that used to be mine.

  “Right there,” I said. “On the fifth floor.”

  Celia looked at me, with compassion for all I had been through when I lived there, for all I had done for myself since then. And then she calmly, confidently took my hand.

  I bristled, unsure if we should be touching in public, scared of what people would do. But the rest of the people on the street just kept on walking, kept on living their lives, almost entirely unaware of or uninterested in the two famous women holding hands on the sidewalk.

  Celia and I spent our nights together in this apartment. Harry spent his nights with John at their place. We went out to dinner in public, the four of us looking like two pairs of heterosexuals, without a heterosexual in the bunch.

  The tabloids called us “America’s Favorite Double-Daters.” I even heard rumors that the four of us were swingers, which wasn’t that crazy for that period of time. It really makes you think, doesn’t it? That people were so eager to believe we were swapping spouses but would have been scandalized to know we were monogamous and queer?

  I’ll never forget the morning after the Stonewall riots. Harry was at rapt attention, watching the news. John was on the phone all day with friends of his who lived downtown.

  Celia was pacing the living room floor, her heart racing. She believed everything was going to change after that night. She believed that because gay people had announced themselves, had been proud enough to admit who they were and strong enough to stand up, attitudes were going to change.

  I remember sitting out on our rooftop patio, looking southward, and realizing that Celia, Harry, John, and I weren’t alone. It seems silly to say now, but I was so . . . self-involved, so singularly focused, that I rarely took time to think of the people out there like myself.

  That isn’t to say that I wasn’t aware of the way the country was changing. Harry and I campaigned for Bobby Kennedy. Celia posed with Vietnam protesters on the cover of Effect. John was a vocal supporter of the civil rights movement, and I had been a very public supporter of the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But this was different.

  This was our people.

  And here they were, revolting against the police, in the name of their right to be themselves. While I was sitting in a golden prison of my own making.

  I was out on my terrace, directly in the sun, on the afternoon after the initial riots, wearing high-waisted jeans and a black sleeveless top, drinking a gibson. And I started crying when I realized those men were willing to fight for a dream I had never even allowed myself to envision. A world where we could be ourselves, without fear and without shame. Those men were braver and more hopeful than I was. There were simply no other words for it.

  “There’s a plan to riot again tonight,” John said as he joined me on the patio. He had such an intimidating physical presence. More than six feet tall, two hundred and twenty-five pounds, with a tight crew cut. He looked like a guy you didn’t want to mess with. But anyone who knew him, and especially those of us who loved him, knew he was the first guy you could mess with.

  He may have been a warrior on the football field, but he was the sweetheart of our foursome. He was the guy who asked how you slept the night before, the guy who always remembered the smallest thing you said three weeks ago. And he took it on as his job to protect Celia and Harry and, by extension, me. John and I loved the same people, and so we loved each other. And we also loved playing gin rummy. I can’t tell you how many nights I stayed up late finishing a hand of cards with John, the two of us deadly competitive, trading off who was the gloating winner and who was the sore loser.

  “We should go down there,” Celia said, joining us. John took a seat in a chair in the corner. Celia sat on the arm of the chair I was in. “We should support them. We should be a part of this.”

  I could hear Harry calling John’s name from the kitchen. “We’re out here!” I yelled to him, at the same moment as John said, “I’m on the patio.”

  Soon Harry appeared in the doorway.

  “Harry, don’t you think we should go down there?” Celia said. She lit a cigarette, took a drag, and handed it to me.

  I was already shaking my head. John outright told her no.

  “What do you mean, no?” Celia said.

  “You’re not going down there,” John said. “You can’t. None of us can.”

  “Of course I can,” she said, looking to me to back her up.

  “Sorry,” I said, giving her the cigarette back. “I’m with John on this.”

  “Harry?” she said, hoping to make one final successful plea.

  Harry shook his head. “We go down there, all we do is attract attention away from the cause and toward us. The story becomes about whether we’re homosexuals and not about the rights of homosexuals.”

  Celia put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled. She had a sour look on her face as she blew the smoke into the air. “So what do we do, then? We can’t sit here and do nothing. We can’t let them fight our fight for us.”

  “We give them what we have and they don’t,” Harry said.

  “Money,” I said, following his train of thought.

  John nodded. “I’ll call Peter. He’ll know how we can fund them. He’ll know who needs resources.”

  “We should have been doing that all along,” Harry said. “So let’s just do it from now on. No matter what happens tonight. No matter what course this fight takes. Let’s just decide here and now that our job is to fund.”

  “I’m in,” I said.

  “Yeah.” John nodded. “Of course.”

  “OK,” Celia said. “If you’re sure that’s the way we can do the most good.”

  “It is,” Harry said. “I’m sure of it.”

  We started filtering money privately that day, and I’ve continued to do so the rest of my life.

  In the pursuit of a great cause, I think people can be of service in a number of different ways. I always felt that my way was to make a lot of money and then channel it to the groups that needed it. It’s a bit self-serving, that logic. I know that. But because of who I was, because of the sacrifices I made to hide parts of myself, I was able to give more money than most people ever see in their entire lifetime. I am proud of that.

  But it does not mean I wasn’t conflicted. And of course, a lot of the time, that ambivalence was even more personal than it was political.

  I knew it was imperative that I hide, and yet I did not believe I should have to. But accepting that something is true isn’
t the same as thinking that it is just.

  Celia won her second Oscar in 1970, for her role as a woman who cross-dresses to serve as a World War I soldier in the film Our Men.

  I could not be in Los Angeles with her that night, because I was shooting Jade Diamond in Miami. I was playing a prostitute living in the same apartment as a drunk. But Celia and I both knew that even if I had been free as a bird, I could not go to the Academy Awards on her arm.

  That evening, Celia called me after she was home from the ceremony and all the parties.

  I screamed into the phone. I was so happy for her. “You’ve done it,” I said. “Twice now you’ve done it!”

  “Can you believe it?” she said. “Two of them.”

  “You deserve them. The whole world should be giving you an Oscar every day, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I wish you were here,” she said petulantly. I could tell she’d been drinking. I would have been drinking, too, if I’d been in her position. But I was irritated that she had to make things so difficult. I wanted to be there. Didn’t she know that? Didn’t she know that I couldn’t be there? And that it killed me? Why did it always have to be about what all of this felt like for her?

  “I wish I was, too,” I told her. “But it’s better this way. You know that.”

  “Ah, yes. So that people won’t know you’re a lesbian.”

  I hated being called a lesbian. Not because I thought there was anything wrong with loving a woman, mind you. No, I’d come to terms with that a long time ago. But Celia only saw things in black and white. She liked women and only women. And I liked her. And so she often denied the rest of me.

  She liked to ignore the fact that I had truly loved Don Adler once. She liked to ignore the fact that I had made love to men and enjoyed it. She liked to ignore it until the very moment she decided to be threatened by it. That seemed to be her pattern. I was a lesbian when she loved me and a straight woman when she hated me.

  People were just starting to talk about the idea of bisexuality, but I’m not sure I even understood that the word referred to me then. I wasn’t interested in finding a label for what I already knew. I loved men. I loved Celia. I was OK with that.