I accidentally drop my fork onto the ivory tablecloth. The oil from the dressing bleeds into the fabric, turning it darker and more translucent. The chopped salad is delicious but heavy on the onions, and I can feel the heat of my breath permeating the space around me. What the hell is going on?
“I’m not trying to be ungrateful, but I think I deserve to know why one of the most famous actresses of all time would pluck me out of obscurity to be her biographer and hand me the opportunity to make millions of dollars off her story.”
“The Huffington Post is reporting that I could sell my autobiography for as much as twelve million dollars.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Inquiring minds want to know, I guess.”
The way Evelyn is having so much fun with this, the way she seems to delight in shocking me, lets me know that this is, at least a little bit, a power play. She likes to be cavalier about things that would change other people’s lives. Isn’t that the very definition of power? Watching people kill themselves over something that means nothing to you?
“Twelve million is a lot, don’t get me wrong . . .” she says, and she doesn’t need to finish the sentence in order for it to be completed in my head. But it’s not very much to me.
“But still, Evelyn, why? Why me?”
Evelyn looks up at me, her face stoic. “Next question.”
“With all due respect, you’re not being particularly fair.”
“I’m offering you the chance to make a fortune and skyrocket to the top of your field. I don’t have to be fair. Certainly not if that’s how you’re going to define it, anyway.”
On the one hand, this feels like a no-brainer. But at the same time, Evelyn has given me absolutely nothing concrete. And I could lose my job by stealing a story like this for myself. That job is all I have right now. “Can I have some time to think about this?”
“Think about what?”
“About all of this.”
Evelyn’s eyes narrow ever so slightly. “What on earth is there to think about?”
“I’m sorry if it offends you,” I say.
Evelyn cuts me off. “You haven’t offended me.” Just the very implication that I could get under her skin gets under her skin.
“There’s a lot to consider,” I say. I could get fired. She could back out. I could fail spectacularly at writing this book.
Evelyn leans forward, trying to hear me out. “For instance?”
“For instance, how am I supposed to handle this with Vivant? They think they have an exclusive with you. They’re making calls to photographers this very moment.”
“I told Thomas Welch not to promise a single thing. If they have gone out and made wild assumptions about some cover, that’s on them.”
“But it’s on me, too. Because now I know you have no intention of moving forward with them.”
“So?”
“So what do I do? Go back to my office and tell my boss that you’re not talking to Vivant, that instead you and I are selling a book? It’s going to look like I went behind their backs, on company time, mind you, and stole their story for myself.”
“That’s not really my problem,” Evelyn says.
“But that’s why I have to think about it. Because it’s my problem.”
Evelyn hears me. I can tell she’s taking me seriously from the way she puts her water glass down and looks directly at me, leaning with her forearms on the table. “You have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here, Monique. You can see that, right?”
“Of course.”
“So do yourself a favor and learn how to grab life by the balls, dear. Don’t be so tied up trying to do the right thing when the smart thing is so painfully clear.”
“You don’t think that I should be forthright with my employers about this? They’ll think I conspired to screw them over.”
Evelyn shakes her head. “When my team specifically requested you, your company shot back with someone at a higher level. They only agreed to send you out once I made it clear that it was you or it was no one. Do you know why they did that?”
“Because they don’t think I—”
“Because they run a business. And so do you. And right now, your business stands to go through the roof. You have a choice to make. Are we writing a book together or not? You should know, if you won’t write it, I’m not going to give it to anyone else. It will die with me in that case.”
“Why would you tell only me your life story? You don’t even know me. That doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m under absolutely no obligation to make sense to you.”
“What are you after, Evelyn?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“I’m here to interview you.”
“Still.” She takes a sip of water, swallows, and then looks me right in the eye. “By the time we are through, you won’t have any questions,” she says. “All of these things you’re so desperate to know, I promise I’ll answer them before we’re done. But I’m not going to answer them one minute before I want to. I call the shots. That’s how this is going to go.”
I listen to her and think about it, and I realize I would be an absolute moron to walk away from this, no matter what her terms are. I didn’t stay in New York and let David go to San Francisco because I like the Statue of Liberty. I did it because I want to climb the ladder as high as I possibly can. I did it because I want my name, the name my father gave me, in big, bold letters one day. This is my chance.
“OK,” I say.
“OK, then. Glad to hear it.” Evelyn’s shoulders relax, she picks up her water again, and she smiles. “Monique, I think I like you,” she says.
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?
*
IAM 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.”
*