The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“I’m not a good person, Monique. Make sure, in the book, that that’s clear. That I’m not claiming to be good. That I did a lot of things that hurt a lot of people, and I would do them over again if I had to.”

Some marriages aren’t really that great. Some loves aren’t all-encompassing. Sometimes you separate because you weren’t that good together to begin with.

But once he has his hand on the doorknob, I realize that I have put into motion the end of a lackluster life in the interest of eventually finding a great one.

“It’s because I see you. It is because I ache for you. It is because, from the very moment I set my eyes on you, my body was full of desire for you. It is because I have been falling in love with you for decades. The camera sees you as I see you. And when that happens, you soar.”

I didn’t know exactly what I wanted. Except that I wanted more of him. I wanted the experience of him again. I kissed him. I moaned. I eased him on top of me. I closed my eyes, and for the first time in years, when I closed them, I did not see Celia. “Yes,” I said as he made love to me. “I’ll marry you.”

We were both to blame. But you were the only one to ever apologize. Please let me rectify that now: I’m sorry, Evelyn.

But everyone, for what had felt like my whole life, had always been divided into “Celia” and “not Celia.” Every other woman I considered striking up a conversation with might as well have had “not Celia” stamped on her forehead. If I was going to risk my career and everything I loved for a woman, it was going to be her.

And that you have to be willing to deny your heritage, to commodify your body, to lie to good people, to sacrifice who you love in the name of what people will think, and to choose the false version of yourself time and time again, until you forget who you started out as or why you started doing it to begin with.

I couldn’t let my daughter find out her father had been driving drunk and killed someone. Had killed his lover. Had killed the man who he said was showing him he could love again.

Harry died an hour later.

“Nothing I have ever done,” I said, “has made me as proud as the day I gave birth to you.” “I know,” she said. “I’ve always known that.”

:(

Better yet, remind them that Evelyn Hugo never existed. She was a person I made up for them. So that they would love me. Tell them that I was confused, for a very long time, about what love was. Tell them that I understand it now, and I don’t need their love anymore.

Say to them, “Evelyn Hugo just wants to go home. It’s time for her to go to her daughter, and her lover, and her best friend, and her mother.” Tell them Evelyn Hugo says good-bye.

“The man in the car with Harry,” Evelyn says. “The one I left.”

“Harry had fallen in love with a Black man. His name was James Grant. He died on February 26, 1989.”

OMG!

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.

Damn.

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.

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 looks at me, and for one split second, I can read her expression. It is subtle, and it is fleeting. But it is there. And I know that my suspicions are right. Evelyn Hugo is saying good-bye.

Evelyn trusts me with her story. Evelyn trusts me with her death. And in my heart, I believe it would be a betrayal to stop her.

You don’t have to make yourself OK for a good mother; a good mother makes herself OK for you.