“Well, Mr. Sinclair,” I said, pretending to be shocked. “We’re not even married anymore.”
And he said, “No, Miss McGhee, we most certainly aren’t.”
Later, we lay there, intertwined and breathless, and he stroked my hair and asked how I thought we should handle it. “We could just get married again,” I said. “It’d make your mom happy. Have a little ceremony before the reception.”
Hughes didn’t say anything for a long moment. But then he said he thought we should take a stand. We should announce to the world what had happened to us, he said. And we should point out that we weren’t any different from the gay couples this had happened to.
I propped myself up on one arm, squinting at him in the darkness. My parents would not like that, at all, I thought. Not that my parents’ politics were my main concern. I had just ordered some new monogrammed towels, AMS, Addison McGhee Sinclair. Suddenly I wasn’t even sure if that was my name.
“Yeah, so we have a press conference,” I said. “And then we’ll get married again?”
Hughes sat up now, too, and reached over to the bedside table for a pad and pen. He started scribbling notes—a draft, I later learned, of what some people believed was a stunning and moving pledge of allegiance with gay couples the world over.
“If we were to just drive up to the courthouse and get married,” he said, “we’d be saying we agreed that it was okay for them to annul all those other marriages, but not ours.”
My heart was beginning to sink. I realized suddenly that this was something very much like what I had feared. This was the reason I had hesitated to tell Hughes. “I don’t think we’re saying that, honey,” I said, trying not to grit my teeth. Was this the first time I ever really argued with Hughes? “I think the Supreme Court of Nevada is saying it. And if you’re going to say that it’s wrong for heterosexual couples to marry just because homosexual couples can’t, then the whole world is filled with people who are wrong.”
“Maybe the whole world is,” Hughes said solemnly. “And maybe we’re the ones who’ve been called to point it out.”
“Called?” I said. I didn’t like the tone of that. I wasn’t interested in launching any sort of crusade at this point. I’d been in the news enough lately, what with the president and the parachute pants and all.
“Look,” I said, “Hughes, honey, I already ordered monogrammed towels—AMS. They’re going to look great. And your mom, she’s planning that reception and we’ve got all these wedding gifts . . .”
I gestured vaguely behind us, toward the direction of the study, where we’d been piling the packages that were arriving by the hour, mostly from people we didn’t even know.
He looked up when I mentioned the gifts and smiled roguishly. I realized then that had been a tactical mistake. Hughes was, actually, not at all wild about the gifts. He had rather minimalist sensibilities, first of all. So watching the bellman bring up multiple sets of toasters and Crock-Pots and dish towels was more than he could stand. Second, he was rather particular and he did not understand that other people would not be. He would look at wine goblets and say something like, “Why would anyone give such a personal item as a gift? You can’t possibly predict what sort of wine goblet another person would like!”
(He himself tended to give what he called consumables as gifts. He figured that even if you didn’t like the particular style of goat cheese that he gave you, you could at least serve it to guests who might and, at any rate, it would go bad eventually and then you could throw it out, so it would not be burdening your closets for years to come.)
He started scribbling more furiously on his pad of paper.
And I rolled over and pretended to go to sleep.
Chapter 22
Hughes and I, perhaps pointedly, did not discuss the subject at hand the next “morning” as we got ready for work or during the drive into the studio. After we arrived, though, Hughes pulled the studio staff together and announced that “Addison and I have something important to say at the top of the show.” He did not want to give the specifics now, because he wanted to talk about it only once, but he wanted everyone to be prepared for an emotional conversation.
I mostly looked at the ground while he made this little speech, but once I glanced up and caught Cal’s eye. Cal looked worried, and I understood why. He was concerned about Hughes and me—first the marriage, then the presidential photo. Now there was something new. He exhaled sharply, and I fully expected him to pull Hughes and me into his office and demand a full explanation of what was going on. But he didn’t.
So the theme song started and the credits rolled and I looked over my Royal Copenhagen Flora Danica teacup, winked, and said: “Wake up, honey. It’s morning now.” (That teacup and saucer, I will have you know, cost an astonishing twelve hundred dollars. For one cup and saucer! What can I say? I was, in those heady brief days of two incomes, a bit of a spendthrift.) Hughes gave a quick overview of some headlines of the day and then turned to Baxter. “But before we go further, Addison and I have something we’d like to say.”
I would later learn by reading the board discussions that a lot of people thought Hughes was going to announce I was pregnant. Weatherjunkie said, in a short post, that a pregnancy was what he had suspected, and it was a thought that made him “depressed and ill.” He did not explain why he had that reaction, but I had often thought that Weatherjunkie seemed to have a bit of a crush on me. (Me meaning Addison McGhee the television hostess, not me the person who posted messages under the name ObjectiveObserver.)
Anyway, the pregnancy fears or hopes were dashed when Hughes instead announced that our marriage had been mistakenly annulled and that we had decided “by mutual consent”—whatever that meant—to let the annulment stand until every other couple who’d had their marriage annulled could also remarry.
“Wow,” Baxter said, not knowing really what to say and rather resenting, I think, not being given more of a detailed idea of what to expect. Here he was, being asked to react for the whole world, in front of the whole world.
There was a moment of silence. Baxter said “Wow” again and then asked: “How do you feel about this, Addison?”
I smiled, in a way that was meant to be brave but struck me as a little weak when I viewed it back later. “I’m happy to be able to make a statement, I guess,” I said, looking at Hughes for approval. (In retrospect, I spent a lot of time looking to Hughes for approval.) “And I’m happy to do this until we’ve made our position clear.”
“And our position,” Hughes said, as if clarifying my point rather than basically contradicting it, “is that we won’t get married until everyone else can.”
Then he patted me on the knee and introduced the cooking segment. Our marriage was not mentioned again during the show, but when it was over we had long lists of media calls to return. Hughes handled all the meaty parts of the interviews, and I talked about the “hurt that I now know firsthand.”
A New York Times reporter asked what we would do in the meantime, while the issue was being fought in the courts. I looked at Hughes, curious myself for the answer. He seemed surprised by the question, but didn’t hesitate. He slung his arm over my shoulder and pulled me close. “I suppose we’ll do what all the other couples are doing,” he said. “We’ll continue being married, whether Nevada knows it or not.
“This is,” he added, “a battle over public policy. Our private lives won’t change.”
He blinked. Twice.
I gasped quietly. The reporter was standing to leave and didn’t notice my gasp, but Hughes did. He glanced over at me with unblinking eyes, kissed my forehead, then blinked. Did that count as blinking three times? I wasn’t sure.
When I got back to Hughes’s apartment that afternoon, I saw that the monogrammed towels had arrived.
Chapter 23
A few minutes ago, the woman in the next cell—the embezzler I mentioned earlier—had a visitor. It turned into a bit of an incident. The visitor was a guy, a former boy
friend or husband, I guess. Or current boyfriend and husband, I suppose. I don’t know why I should presume that people have broken up just because they appear to hate each other.
The visiting room is way down the hall and on the other side of two big prison-style lock-down doors. But still we could hear the shouting here in our cells. The guards apparently threw the guy out, and the embezzler was returned to her cell in tears. She grunted several times and walked laps around her cell.
I caught her eye and smiled in what I hoped was an encouraging, supportive way. “Pacing is the best thing to do,” I said finally. “I’ve always believed in it myself.”
She looked at me suspiciously then looked away. “I just never thought we’d ever be so mean to each other,” she said.
I reached through the bars to pat her on the shoulder. She looked up at me then and asked me a personal question that made me gasp.
I was struck at that moment by the fact that while my mistakes and my marriage were being discussed daily in the world outside prison, no one here had ever asked me about them before. I am not sure if it’s due to politeness or disinterest. But the embezzler asked. She said: “What on earth did you ever see in that Hughes guy?”
I hesitated and then blurted out what I think is the truth, something that is much like the truth at least. “Well, he’s good looking,” I said, but I realized this was lame. “And he’s smart. And sophisticated. He’s not like the guys I knew at home. He’s urbane. I remember when Peter Jennings died, all the obits called him urbane. And I realized that growing up in Nebraska, with my accent and my teeth and my acne, all I ever really wanted, even before I knew the word for it, was to be urbane.”
I sighed. “Or at least, you know, to date someone who was.”
The embezzler nodded.
“Anyway,” I continued, “I certainly didn’t meet anyone urbane in Nebraska or LA. It’s a very rare quality, you know. But then, Hughes entered my life. He was sophisticated and suave. He really is dashing and dapper. He’s like a young Peter Jennings. He’s the epitome of America. I guess that’s what I liked about him.”
The embezzler looked at me for a long moment and then chuckled a little. “Peter Jennings was Canadian,” she said.
“Nah,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “He was.”
We sat there in silence, and then soon she was watching Lifetime again and I was busy with my marker, deleting several pages that I had just completed, pages that gave a rather detailed account of the latter days of my marriage to Hughes. (If they can technically be counted as “days of my marriage,” since legally the whole thing was already all over.)
But today, after listening to the embezzler and the man she loves and hates, I’ve decided that really, there is nothing to be gained from going over the details. Marriages end for a million different reasons, but they end—ultimately—in the same way, with tears and sorrow and disillusionment and suspicion.
Things were said that will never be forgotten, but at least for my part of it, they will never be shared. Nothing was said that would help Cassie, I’m sure.
I don’t know how much of it was true anyway. As I’ve already said, I do not feel even now like I know what happened in Hughes’s and my marriage. On the day of our wedding, I believed with all my heart that our relationship had been building toward that moment, perhaps with uneven and irregular pacing, but that was only because of erratic schedules and cultural confusions and sleep deprivation.
But by the time we were taking our “stand”? I will confess that I wondered, still wonder, if our marriage had been planned from the get-go as a publicity stunt. Depending on the day, I can concoct a scenario in which Hughes planned the whole thing, either for the simple pleasure of being the most-talked-about name in the news for a few days, or to “prove” he was not gay, or to, ultimately, acknowledge that he was, by aligning himself with a cause he had not yet publicly embraced. You can put together all sorts of interesting and contradictory scenarios and the one thing they share is this: I was the patsy. But that’s crazy, isn’t it? That’s what I always decide.
It’s just like me to come up with some grand and dramatic scenario rather than simply admit that I’m a two-bit Hollywood actress with an all-too-Hollywood marriage. Except that I didn’t even work in Hollywood anymore. Hadn’t in a long time. But you know what I mean.
You may wonder if I ever asked Hughes directly. Of course, I asked him. And while I will not give you a blow-by-blow account of our final days together, I suppose I owe you at least that much—to tell you the firsthand account he gave of himself to me.
Unfortunately, this key question of mine came during a somewhat heated confrontation. I shouted it at him and I slammed a kitchen cabinet door for emphasis. (I had been looking for the balsamic, which his cook had stashed in the far back reaches of his pantry.)
To Hughes’s credit, he took a moment to cool off and answered me in a serious and solemn way, which made me feel better. But he also answered in a rambling and confusing way that simultaneously made me feel worse. “You were the one, Addison. The only one,” he said.
Whatever that meant.
Then he blinked three times and confused matters further still.
“You just blinked,” I said. “You’re lying.”
Hughes sighed.
“Everyone blinks, Addison.”
I guess really I’m in no position to judge. Talking to the embezzler just now, I realized that my desire to marry Hughes was less than pure. I was crazy about him. Still am, I guess. But it was a craziness fed by a need to escape a lifetime of people smirking at my name or my avoidance of pork products or my parents. Even when people were being nice, complimenting my English or taking honest pleasure in my family’s dramatic triumph over adversity, it was grating to me. I didn’t want to be special or different. I just wanted to be American, to be part of the establishment.
I wanted to be the daughter of a former Supreme Court justice and a ballet dancer, the grandchild of a couple who built half the country’s libraries. I wanted, at least, to be the in-law.
Being the daughter of a pig-blood mopper and a Wal-Mart greeter wasn’t the same.
I really loved Hughes. But I see now that my panting pursuit of my co-host was the natural extension of what I’d been chasing my whole life—I just wanted to fit in. Besides, Hughes looks so boyish when his eyes get crinkly. I’ve always been a sucker for crinkly eyes. Have I mentioned that?
Suffice it to say, no matter how valiantly I fought to save our marriage or at least to understand it, I realize in retrospect that, for me, the marriage really ended on the morning that Hughes made his little announcement to the world about our annulment. Baxter had absorbed the news and said: “How do you feel about this, Addison?”
At that moment I had realized with a sharp ache that Hughes had never himself inquired.
Soon I moved out of Hughes’s apartment. I checked back into the Ritz and brazenly told them to bill Cal. I was unreasonably upset and disappointed to learn that the room I’d lived in up until my marriage had now been given to another guest. I understood they would have. They would have to. But I was still disappointed, even though they made a big point of giving me a better room and a nice welcome basket with fruit.
The porter patted me on the back as he unloaded my bags. “I knew,” he said, “the moment I saw your face when Hughes started talking about ‘an opportunity to take a stand now and forever,’ I knew there was more going on.”
I bit my lip and tried to hand him a tip and he waved me off. “No, no,” he said, as he turned to go. “It was my pleasure . . .” He stopped then, turned back to me. “Should I call you Mrs. Sinclair?”
I took his hand in my right hand and patted it with my left. “No,” I said. “Just call me Addison. Addison McGhee.”
He nodded and I nodded. I can’t tell you how touched I was by that exchange—a bellman refusing my tip, asking me how I would prefer to be addressed. It struck me at that moment that no o
ne had ever before asked me what I wished to be called, and I realized that maybe that is the reason I was so excited about those monogrammed towels. Women have fought over the years to keep their “own” names and I have, in principle, supported that fight. (I begged Courteney not to add Arquette to her name. I said, “Really, it’s not like it’s helped Patricia. Or Rosanna. Or, for that matter, David.” But since I was just a waitress at SI at that point—Courteney was visiting with the Alabama relatives—she just looked at me uncomfortably and asked for more raspberry-infused vinegar for her salad.)
But taking Hughes’s name was, for me, a feminist move itself. A lifetime ago, a stranger named me. A man no less. Now I would decide for myself what I was to be called. So if Addison McGhee Sinclair wasn’t going to work out, perhaps I should choose something else. I could become Miranda Marlin or Darcy Sanchez or Seville Chan.
Or maybe I should go back to Ada Sinmac Ghee. Or at least Ada McGhee. Baxter already calls me that. I’ve always sort of liked it.
I unpacked my laptop and plugged it into the wall and started reading the boards. I had given them up, basically, during my marriage. But that night, I was on a board binge. Isn’t that the way with addiction?
I was surprised and heartened, I suppose, to realize that most people thought I was the victim in the whole thing. There were all sorts of conspiracy theories, similar to the ones I had already created in my own mind. Hughes was the bad guy in just about all of them, thank goodness.
Weatherjunkie and B-basher were still out of commission. Perhaps they had gotten bored with the whole thing. Who could blame them? All their witty insights and informed opinions didn’t really matter in the current climate, where the discussion was all about innuendo and smear.
But I enjoyed it. I did not go to bed at all, reading the lively chatter about Hughes and me and our “shamarriage”—people on the boards just love those sort of coined meldings.
I was shocked when I finally glanced at the clock and realized it was time to get dressed for work.
Cover Girl Confidential Page 15