The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Born Evelyn Elena Herrera in 1938, the daughter of Cuban immigrants, Hugo grew up in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City. By 1955, she had made her way to Hollywood, gone blond, and been rechristened Evelyn Hugo.

Now widowed from her seventh husband, Hugo resides in Manhattan.

Seventh is crazy lol.

It’s Monique Grant or Evelyn’s out.

Maybe I’m overthinking that photo, but I’m starting to notice a pattern: Evelyn always leaves you hoping you’ll get just a little bit more. And she always denies you.

“If I’m going to tell you about my life, if I’m going to tell you what really happened, the truth behind all of my marriages, the movies I shot, the people I loved, who I slept with, who I hurt, how I compromised myself, and where it all landed me, then I need to know that you understand me. I need to know that you will listen to exactly what I’m trying to tell you and not place your own assumptions into my story.”

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.”

And that’s what I traded my virginity for. A ride to Hollywood.

If the definition of enjoying sex means that it is pleasurable, then I’ve had a lot of sex that I didn’t enjoy. But if we’re defining it as being happy to have made the trade, then, well, I haven’t had much I hated.

There are people who see a beautiful flower and rush over to pick it. They want to hold it in their hands, they want to own it. They want the flower’s beauty to be theirs, to be within their possession, their control.

I’d had sex before, but it had never meant anything to me. I wanted to make love to Don. I loved him. And I wanted us to do it right.

Here I was, Evelyn Herrera, parading around as if my name was Evelyn Hugo and I could marry a movie star.

“Do you love me, Evelyn Hugo?” he asked. “More than anything in the world. Do you love me, Don Adler?” “I love your eyes, and your tits, and your talent. I love the fact that you’ve got absolutely no ass on you. I love everything about you. So to say yes would be an understatement.”

LOL.

Don pulled me close and put his mouth to my ear, whispering, “Me and you. We will rule this town.” We were married for two months before he started hitting me.

:/

He had flipped a switch in me. A switch that changed me from a woman who saw making love as a tool into a woman who knew that making love was a need. I needed him. I needed to be seen. I came alive under his gaze.

I had quickly learned that Don was only kind when he was happy, and he was only happy when he was winning. I had met him on a winning streak, married him as he was ascending. I was quickly learning that sweet Don was not the only Don.

“We are not equals, love. And I’m sorry if I’ve been so kind that you’ve forgotten that.” I was speechless.

Bitch boy.

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.

People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is “You’re safe with me”—that’s intimacy.

“Evelyn, who was your great love? You can tell me.” Evelyn looks out the window, breathes in deeply, and then says, “Celia St. James.”

“Heartbreak is loss. Divorce is a piece of paper.”

Evelyn takes a second to answer, and in that moment I realize that she has just agreed to the very thing she swore she would never do—a Vivant cover—just so I won’t walk. Evelyn wants me for something. And she wants it bad. And now I’m finally starting to suspect that I should be scared.

“Nothing means anything without you,” she said. “Everything that isn’t you is a pile of dog shit.”

“I kissed the television screen,” I said. “When you won. I kissed you on the TV, and I chipped my tooth.”

This is so cute lmao.

“I’d give it all up, you know. All of it. The money and the jobs and the fame. I’d give it all up just to be with you, just to be normal with you.” “You have no idea what you’re saying, Celia. I’m sorry, but you don’t.” “What’s really going on here is that you’re not willing to give it up for me.”

You wonder what it must be like to be a man, to be so confident that the final say is yours.

“I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to live this way. I don’t want to drive an awful brown car to your home so no one knows I’m here. I don’t want to pretend I live by myself in Hollywood when I truly live here with you in this house. And I certainly don’t want to love a woman who would screw some singer just so the world doesn’t suspect she loves me.” “You are twisting the truth.” “You are a coward, and I can’t believe I ever thought any differently.”

Ouchhh.

“And yet when it comes to being a human, you seem to have absolutely no idea where to start.” “You don’t mean that.” “You are a whore, Evelyn. You let men screw you for fame. And that is why I’m leaving you.”

Damn. This is getting nasty.

“I loved you so much that I thought you were the meaning of my life,” Celia said, crying. “I thought that people were put on earth to find other people, and I was put here to find you. To find you and touch your skin and smell your breath and hear all your thoughts. But I don’t think that’s true anymore.” She wiped her eyes. “Because I don’t want to be meant for someone like you.”

And now that I don’t have her, and I have more money than I could ever use in this lifetime, and my name is cemented in Hollywood history, and I know how hollow it is, I am kicking myself for every single second I chose it over loving her proudly.

Never let anyone make you feel ordinary.

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.

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

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

That was how it was with Celia. When you denied her what she wanted, when you hurt her, she made sure you hurt, too.

“There is a very small part of me that has wanted to bed you since I met you, Evelyn Hugo.” I laughed and hit him on the arm. “No, there is not.” “A small part,” Harry said, defending himself. “It goes against all my greater instincts. But it is there nonetheless.”

LOL.

“I love you so much that when I sometimes get a look at all the crazy fan mail you get, I think, Well, sure, that makes sense. I want to collect her eyelashes, too.”

She looked into my eyes and made me feel rapture, and that night, in giving of herself, she gave me a baby.

It was Harry who told me I looked beautiful, even though we both knew I’d seen better days. It was Harry who read script after script, looking for the perfect project for me to take on once Connor was old enough. It was Harry who slept next to me every night, who held my hand as we fell asleep, who held me when I was convinced I was a terrible mother after I scratched Connor’s cheek giving her a bath.

“If there are all different types of soul mates,” I told Harry one afternoon, when the two of us were sitting out on the patio with Connor, “then you are one of mine.”

It’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.

John opened the basket. Celia poured wine. Harry leaned over and kissed Connor’s forehead. It was one of the last times we were all together, laughing, smiling, happy. A family. Because after that, I ruined it.

“All I’ve ever wanted was for you to be truly mine. But you’ve never been mine. Not really. I’ve always had to settle for one piece of you. While the world gets the other half. I don’t blame you. It doesn’t make me stop loving you. But I can’t do it. I can’t do it, Evelyn. I can’t live with my heart half-broken all the time.”

“Evelyn, you are not capable of giving it up. And you never will be. And it will be the tragedy of my life that I cannot love you enough to make you mine. That you cannot be loved enough to be anyone’s.”

Patricia was not a woman who wanted to make love. She wanted to get fucked. And we showed that. And people hated how much they loved it.”

“No, I lost the woman I loved because I cared about being famous as much as I cared about her. It had nothing to do with my sexuality.”

“There’s a difference between sexuality and sex. I used sex to get what I wanted. Sex is just an act. Sexuality is a sincere expression of desire and pleasure. That I always kept for Celia.”

I broke Celia’s heart because I spent half my time loving her and the other half hiding how much I loved her. Never once did I cheat on Celia. If we’re defining cheating by desiring another person and then making love to that person. I never once did that. When I was with Celia, I was with Celia.

But I loved Celia, and I shared my true self only with Celia.

Celia may have left me in a huff, but it was a death by a thousand cuts. I hurt her with these tiny scratches, day after day. And then I got surprised when it left a wound too big to heal.

Which is about the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love, give them just enough good to make them stick through a hell of a lot of bad.