HERE IS THE THING ABOUT fury.
It starts in your chest.
It starts as fear.
Fear quickly moves to denial. No, that must be a mistake. No, that can’t be.
And then the truth hits. Yes, she is right. Yes, it can be.
Because you realize, Yes, it is true.
And then you have a choice. Are you sad, or are you angry?
And ultimately, the thin line between the two comes down to the answer to one question. Can you assign blame?
The loss of my father, when I was seven, was something for which I only ever had one person to blame. My father. My father was driving drunk. He’d never done anything like it before. It was entirely out of character. But it happened. And I could either hate him for it, or I could try to understand it. Your father was driving under the influence and lost control of the car.
But this. The knowledge that my father never willingly got behind the wheel of a car drunk, that he was left dead on the side of the road by this woman, framed for his own death, his legacy tarnished. The fact that I grew up believing he’d been the one to cause the accident. There is so much blame hanging in the air, waiting for me to snatch it and pin it on Evelyn’s chest.
And the way she is sitting in front of me, remorseful but not exactly sorry, makes it clear she’s ready to be pinned.
This blame is like a flint to my years of aching. And it erupts into fury.
My body goes white-hot. My eyes tear. My hands ball into fists, and I step away because I am afraid of what I might do.
And then, because stepping away from her feels too generous, I edge back to where she is, and I push her against the sofa, and I say, “I’m glad you have no one left. I’m glad there’s no one alive to love you.”
I let go of her, surprised at myself. She sits back up. She watches me.
“You think that giving me your story makes up for any of it?” I ask her. “All this time, you’ve been making me sit here, listening to your life, so that you could confess, and you think that your biography makes up for it?”
“No,” she says. “I think you know me well enough by now to know I’m not nearly naive enough to believe in absolution.”
“What, then?”
Evelyn reaches out and shows me the paper in her hand.
“I found this in Harry’s pants pocket. The night he died. My guess is that he’d read it and it was the reason he’d been drinking so much to begin with. It was from your father.”
“So?”
“So I . . . I found great peace in my daughter knowing the truth about me. There was immense comfort in knowing the real her. I wanted to . . . I think I’m the only person alive who can give that to you. Can give it to your dad. I want you to know who he truly was.”
“I know who he was to me,” I say, while realizing that that’s not exactly true.
“I thought you would want to know all of him. Take it, Monique. Read the letter. If you don’t want it, you don’t have to keep it. But I always planned on sending it to you. I always thought you deserved to know.”
I snatch it from her, not wanting even to extend the kindness of taking it gently. I sit down. I open it. There are what can only be bloodstains on the top of the page. I wonder briefly if it’s my father’s blood. Or Harry’s. I decide not to think about it.
Before I can read even one line, I look up at her.
“Can you leave?” I say.
Evelyn nods and walks out of her own office. She shuts the door behind her. I look down. There is so much to reframe in my mind.
My father did nothing wrong.
My father didn’t cause his own death.
I’ve spent years of my life seeing him from that angle, making peace with him through that lens.
And now, for the first time in nearly thirty years, I have new words, fresh thoughts, from my father.
Dear Harry,
I love you. I love you in a way that I never thought possible. I have spent so much of my life thinking that this type of love was a myth. And now here it is, so real I can touch it, and I finally understand what the Beatles were singing about all those years.
I do not want you to move to Europe. But I also know that what I may not want may very well be the best thing for you. So despite my desires, I think you should go.
I cannot and will not be able to give you the life you are dreaming of here in Los Angeles.
I cannot marry Celia St. James—although I do agree with you that she is a stunningly beautiful woman, and if I’m being honest, I did nurse a small crush on her in Royal Wedding.
But the fact remains that though I have never loved my wife the way I love you, I will never leave her. I love my family too much to fracture us for even a moment of time. My daughter, whom I desperately hope you can one day meet, is my reason for living. And I know that she is happiest with me and her mom. I know that she will live her best life only if I stay where I am.
Angela is perhaps not the love of my life. I know that now, now that I’ve felt real passion. But I think, in many ways, she means to me what Evelyn means to you. She is my best friend, my confidante, my companion. I admire the forthrightness with which you and Evelyn discuss your sexuality, your desires. But it is not how Angela and I work, and I’m not sure I’d want to change that. We do not have a vibrant sex life, but I love her the way one loves a partner. I would never forgive myself for causing her pain. And I would find myself desperate to call her, to hear her thoughts, to know how she is, every moment of every day if I was not with her.
My family is my heart. And I cannot break us up. Not even for the type of love that I have found with you, my Harry.
Go to Europe. If you believe it is what is best for your family.
And know that here, in Los Angeles, I am with mine, thinking of you.
Forever yours,
James
I put down the letter. I stare straight ahead into the air. And then, and only then, it hits me.
My father was in love with a man.
*
IDON’T KNOW HOW LONG I sit on the couch, staring at the ceiling. I think of my memories of my dad, the way he would throw me up in the air in the backyard, the way he would every once in a while let me eat banana splits for breakfast.
Those memories have always been tinged by how he died. They have always had a bittersweetness to them because I believed it was his mistakes that took him from me too soon.
And now I don’t know what to make of him. I don’t know how to think of him. A defining trait is gone and is replaced by so much more—for better or for worse.
At some point, after I start replaying the same images over and over in my mind—memories of my father alive, imagined images of his final moments and his death—I realize I can’t sit still anymore.
So I stand up, I walk into the hallway, and I start looking for Evelyn. I find her in the kitchen with Grace.
“So this is why I’m here?” I say, holding the letter in the air.
“Grace, would you mind giving us a moment?”
Grace gets up from her stool. “Sure.” She disappears down the hall.
When she’s gone, Evelyn looks at me. “It’s not the only reason I wanted to meet you. I tracked you down to give you the letter, obviously. And I had been looking for a way to introduce myself to you that wasn’t quite so out of the blue, quite so shocking.”
“Vivant helped you with that, clearly.”
“It gave me a pretense, yes. I felt more comfortable having a major magazine send you than calling you up on the phone and trying to explain how I knew who you were.”
“So you figured you’d just lure me here with the promise of a bestseller.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Once I started researching you, I read most of your work. Specifically, I read your right-to-die piece.”
I put the letter on the table. I consider taking a seat. “So?”
“I thought it was beautifully written. It was informed, intelligent, balanced, and compassionate. It had heart. I admired the way you deftly handled an emotional and complicated topic.”
I don’t want to let her say anything nice to me, because I don’t want to have to thank her for it. But my mother instilled in me a politeness that kicks in when I least expect it. “Thank you.”
“When I read it, I suspected that you would do a beautiful job with my story.”
“Because of one small piece I wrote?”
“Because you’re talented, and if anyone could understand the complexities of who I am and what I’ve done, it was probably you. And the more I’ve gotten to know you, the more I know I was right. Whatever book you write about me, it will not have easy answers. But it will, I predict, be unflinching. I wanted to give you that letter, and I wanted you to write my story, because I believe you to be the very best person for the job.”
“So you put me through all this to assuage your guilt and make sure you got the book about your life that you wanted?”
Evelyn shakes her head, ready to correct me, but I’m not done.
“It’s amazing, really. How self-interested you can be. That even now, even when you appear to want to redeem yourself, it’s still about you.”
Evelyn puts up her hand. “Don’t act like you haven’t benefited from this. You’ve been a willing participant here. You wanted the story. You took advantage—deftly and smartly, I might add—of the position I put you in.”
“Evelyn, seriously,” I say. “Cut the crap.”
“You don’t want the story?” Evelyn asks, challenging me. “If you don’t want it, don’t take it. Let my story die with me. That is just fine.”
I am quiet, unsure how to respond, unsure how I want to respond.
Evelyn puts out her hand, expectantly. She’s not going to let the suggestion be hypothetical. It’s not rhetorical. It demands an answer. “Go ahead,” she says. “Get your notes and the recordings. We can burn them all right now.”
I don’t move, despite the fact that she gives me ample time to do so.
“I didn’t think so,” she says.
“It’s the least I deserve,” I tell her, defensive. “It’s the fucking least you can give me.”
“Nobody deserves anything,” Evelyn says. “It’s simply a matter of who’s willing to go and take it for themselves. And you, Monique, are a person who has proven to be willing to go out there and take what you want. So be honest about that. No one is just a victim or a victor. Everyone is somewhere in between. People who go around casting themselves as one or the other are not only kidding themselves, but they’re also painfully unoriginal.”
I get up from the table and walk to the sink. I wash my hands, because I hate how clammy they feel. I dry them. I look at her. “I hate you, you know.”
Evelyn nods. “Good for you. It’s such an uncomplicated feeling, isn’t it? Hatred?”
“Yes,” I say. “It is.”
“Everything else in life is more complex. Especially your father. That’s why I thought it was so important that you read that letter. I wanted you to know.”
“What, exactly? That he was innocent? Or that he loved a man?”
“That he loved you. Like that. He was willing to turn down romantic love in order to stand by your side. Do you know what an amazing father you had? Do you know how loved you were? Plenty of men say they’ll never leave their families, but your father was put to the test and didn’t even blink. I wanted you to know that. If I had a father like that, I would have wanted to know.”
No one is all good or all bad. I know this, of course. I had to learn it at a young age. But sometimes it’s easy to forget just how true it is. That it applies to everyone.
Until you’re sitting in front of the woman who put your father’s dead body in the driver’s seat of a car to save the reputation of her best friend—and you realize she held on to a letter for almost three decades because she wanted you to know how much you were loved.
She could have given me the letter earlier. She also could have thrown it away. There’s Evelyn Hugo for you. Somewhere in the middle.
I sit down and put my hands over my eyes, rubbing them, hoping that if I rub hard enough, maybe I can make my way to a different reality.
When I open them, I’m still here. I have no choice but to resign myself to it.
“When can I release the book?”
“I won’t be around much longer,” Evelyn says, sitting down on a stool by the island.
“Enough with the vagaries, Evelyn. When can I release the book?”
Evelyn absentmindedly starts folding an errant napkin that is sitting haphazardly on the counter. Then she looks up at me. “It’s no secret that the gene for breast cancer can be inherited,” she says. “Although if there were any justice in the world, the mother would die of it well before the daughter.”
I look at the finer points of Evelyn’s face. I look at the corners of her lips, the edges of her eyes, the direction of her brows. There is very little emotion in any of them. Her face remains as stoic as if she were reading me the paper.
“You have breast cancer?” I ask.
She nods.
“How far along is it?”
“Far enough for me to need to hurry up and get this done.”
I look away when she looks at me. I’m not sure why. It’s not out of anger, really. It’s out of shame. I feel guilty that so much of me does not feel bad for her. And stupid for the part of me that does.
“I saw my daughter go through this,” Evelyn says. “I know what’s ahead of me. It’s important that I get my affairs in order. In addition to finalizing the last copy of my will and making sure Grace is taken care of, I handed over my most-prized gowns to Christie’s. And this . . . this is the last of it. That letter. And this book. You.”
“I’m leaving,” I say. “I can’t take any more today.”
Evelyn starts to say something, and I stop her.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want to hear anything else from you. Don’t say another goddamn word, OK?”
I can’t say I’m surprised when she speaks anyway. “I was just going to say that I understand and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I say, just as I remember that Evelyn and I aren’t done.
“For the photo shoot,” she says.
“I’m not sure I’m prepared to come back here.”
“Well,” Evelyn says, “I very much hope that you do.”
*
WHEN I GET HOME, I instinctively throw my bag onto the couch. I am tired, and I am angry, and my eyes feel dry and stiff, as if they have been wrung out like wet laundry.
I sit down, not bothering to take off my coat or my shoes. I respond to the e-mail my mother has sent containing her flight information for tomorrow. And then I lift my legs and rest my feet on the coffee table. As I do, they hit an envelope resting on the surface.
It is only then that I realize I even have a coffee table in the first place.
David brought it back. And on it rests an envelope addressed to me.
M—
I should never have taken the table. I don’t need it. It’s silly for it to sit in the storage unit. I was being petty when I left.
Enclosed is my key to the apartment and the business card of my lawyer.
I suppose there is not much else to say except that I thank you for doing what I could not.
—D
I put the letter down on the table. I put my feet back up. I wrestle myself out of my coat. I kick off my shoes. I lay my head back. I breathe.
I don’t think I would have ended my marriage without Evelyn Hugo.
I don’t think I would have stood up to Frankie without Evelyn Hugo.
I don’t think I would have had the chance to write a surefire bestseller without Evelyn Hugo.
I don’t think I would understand the true depths of my father’s devotion to me without Evelyn Hugo.
So I think Evelyn is wrong about at least one thing.
My hate is not uncomplicated.
*
WHEN I GET TO EVELYN’S apartment in the morning, I’m unsure when I even made the actual decision to come.
I simply woke up and found myself on my way. When I rounded the corner, walking here from the subway, I realized I could never have not come.
I cannot and will not do anything to compromise my standing at Vivant. I did not fight for writer at large to bunt at the last minute.
I’m right on time but somehow the last to arrive. Grace opens the door for me and already looks as if a hurricane hit her. Her hair is falling out of her ponytail, and she’s trying harder than usual to keep a smile on her face.
“They showed up almost forty-five minutes early,” Grace says to me in a whisper. “Evelyn had a makeup person in at the crack of dawn to get her ready before the magazine’s makeup person. She had a lighting consultant come in at eight thirty this morning to guide her on the most flattering light in the house. Turns out it’s the terrace, which I have not been as diligent about cleaning because it’s still cold out every day. Anyway, I’ve been scrubbing the terrace from top to bottom for the past two hours.” Grace jokingly rests her head on my shoulder. “Thank God I’m going on vacation.”
“Monique!” Frankie says when she sees me in the hallway. “What took you so long?”
I look at my watch. “It’s eleven-oh-six.” I remember the first day I met Evelyn Hugo. I remember how nervous I was. I remember how larger-than-life she seemed. She is painfully human to me now. But this is all new to Frankie. She hasn’t seen the real Evelyn. She still thinks we’re photographing an icon more than a person.
I step out onto the terrace and see Evelyn in the midst of lights, reflectors, wires, and cameras. There are people circled around her. She is sitting on a stool. Her gray blond hair is being blown in the air by a wind machine. She is wearing her signature emerald green, this time in a long-sleeved silk gown. Billie Holiday is playing on a speaker somewhere. The sun is shining behind Evelyn. She looks like the very center of the universe.
She is right at home.
She smiles for the camera, her brown eyes sparkling in a different way from anything I’ve ever seen in person. She seems at peace somehow, in full display, and I wonder if the real Evelyn isn’t the woman I’ve been talking to for the past two weeks but, instead, the one I see before me right now. Even at almost eighty, she commands a room in a way I’ve never seen before. A star is always and forever a star.
Evelyn was born to be famous. I think her body helped her. I think her face helped her. But for the first time, watching her in action, moving in front of the camera, I get the sense that she has sold herself short in one way: she could have been born with considerably less physical gifts and probably still made it. She simply has it. That undefinable quality that makes everyone stop and pay attention.
She spots me as I stand behind one of the lighting guys, and she stops what she’s doing. She waves me over to her.
“Everyone, everyone,” she says. “We need a few photos of Monique and me. Please.”
“Oh, Evelyn,” I say. “I don’t want to do that.” I don’t want to even be close to her.
“Please,” she says. “To remember me by.”
A couple of people laugh, as if Evelyn is making a joke. Because, of course, no one could forget Evelyn Hugo. But I know she’s serious.
And so, in my jeans and blazer, I step up next to her. I take off my glasses. I can feel the heat of the lights, the way they glare in my eyes, the way the wind feels on my face.
“Evelyn, I know this isn’t news to you,” the photographer says, “but boy, does the camera love you.”
“Oh,” Evelyn says, shrugging. “It never hurts to hear it one more time.”
Her dress is low-cut, revealing her still-ample cleavage, and it occurs to me that it is the very thing that made her that will be the thing to finally take her down.
Evelyn catches my eye and smiles. It is a sincere smile, a kind smile. There is something almost nurturing about it, as if she is looking at me to see how I’m doing, as if she cares.
And then, in an instant, I realize that she does.
Evelyn Hugo wants to know that I’m OK, that with everything that has happened, I will still be all right.
In a moment of vulnerability, I find myself putting my arm around her. A second after I do, I realize that I want to pull it back, that I’m not ready to be this close.
“I love it!” the photographer says. “Just like that.”
I cannot pull my arm away now. And so I pretend. I pretend, for one picture, that I am not a bundle of nerves. I pretend that I am not furious and confused and heartbroken and torn up and disappointed and shocked and uncomfortable.
I pretend that I am simply captivated by Evelyn Hugo.
Because, despite everything, I still am.