The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“We both end up famous and talented? Competing for every job in town?” “I suppose that is one option.”

I want to be friends with a woman like that. That’s what I’m saying. Real friends. None of this Ruby Reilly, backstabbing, talking-about-each-other-behind-our-backs crap. Friendship. Where each of us gets better, lives better, because we know the other.”

“I will be your second-best friend, next to Harry Cameron.”

I took Celia’s hand and turned us around. “Wave to the crowd,” I said, smiling. “Like we’re the goddamn queens of England.”

We stood there, in black and green, redhead and blonde, one of us all ass and the other all tits, waving to the crowd as if we ruled them.

Everyone was going to walk out of this theater talking about Celia St. James.

when you’ve been bested, sometimes it’s good to recognize it and move on.”

She can admit it, freely. Now. Here.

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

“I feel like I spent my entire life loving her.”

I loved Celia, but I also, before her, loved Don. In fact, I’m positive that if Don hadn’t turned out to be a spectacular asshole, I probably never would have been capable of falling in love with someone else at all. I’m bisexual. Don’t ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box, Monique. Don’t do that.”

Harry was like me. Harry was in it for the glory. He was in it because it kept him busy, kept him important, kept him sharp. Harry, like me, had gotten into it for the ego.

“Our interests aren’t aligned, Evelyn,” he said. “Yours and mine. You see that, right?”

Homosexuals were misfits. And while I didn’t think that made them bad people—after all, I loved Harry like a brother—I wasn’t ready to be one of them.

“I did it once, I can do it again,” I said to him as we walked to the door. “I can build the whole thing back up from scratch.” “I have never doubted that you could do a single thing you put your mind to.” Harry

“It’s me and you.” “Me and you, true blue.”

I have to “Evelyn Hugo” Evelyn Hugo.

Evelyn laughs. “Look at you,” she says. “You keep this up, you might just rule your own part of the world one day.”

Awwa

Look, there’s a reason she’s Celia Saint James. She’s been playing that good-girl routine for years.

The rest of us aren’t so pure. But I like you this way. I like you impure and scrappy and formidable. I like the Evelyn Hugo who sees the world for what it is and then goes out there and wrestles what she wants out of it. So, you know, put whatever label you want on it, just don’t change. That would be the real tragedy.”

I had Harry. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I had family.

“How long were the two of you together by that point?” “Three years?” Evelyn says. “Just about.”

“You thought she’d come back to you,” I say. “I knew she’d come back to me,” Evelyn says. “And she knew it, too. We both knew our time wasn’t over.”

But now its all over. So you fight for your love, and you tell them every second of the day that you love them because you don't know when your life will be over.

THAT’S HOW MY STORY ENDS. With the loss of everyone I have ever loved. With me, in a big, beautiful Upper East Side apartment, missing everyone who ever meant anything to me.

When you write the ending, Monique, make sure it’s clear that I don’t love this apartment, that I don’t care about all my money, that I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if people think I’m a legend, that the adoration of millions of people never warmed my bed. When you write the ending, Monique, tell everyone that it is the people I miss. Tell everyone that I got it wrong. That I chose the wrong things most of the time. When you write the ending, Monique, make sure the reader understands that all I was ever really looking for was family. Make sure it’s clear that I found it. Make sure they know that I am heartbroken without it.

“Everything else in life is more complex.

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.

No matter how I may feel about Evelyn, I know she is in her right mind. I know she is OK. I know she has the right to die as she lived, entirely on her own terms, leaving nothing to fate or to chance but instead holding the power of it all in her own hands.

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

:(

When you dig just the tiniest bit beneath the surface, everyone’s love life is original and interesting and nuanced and defies any easy definition.

maybe one day I’ll find someone I love the way Evelyn loved Celia. Or maybe I might just find someone I love the way my parents loved each other. Knowing to look for it, knowing there are all different types of great loves out there, is enough for me for now.

:(

There’s still much I don’t know about my father. Maybe he was gay. Maybe he saw himself as straight but in love with one man. Maybe he was bisexual. Or a host of other words. But it really doesn’t matter, that’s the thing. He loved me. And he loved my mom. And nothing I could learn about him now changes that. Any of it.

Evelyn Hugo was bisexual and spent the majority of her life madly in love with fellow actress Celia St. James. She wanted you to know this because she loved Celia in a way that was in turns breathtaking and heartbreaking. She wanted you to know this because loving Celia St. James was perhaps her greatest political act. She wanted you to know this because over the course of her life, she became aware of her responsibility to others in the LGBTQ+ community to be visible, to be seen. But more than anything, she wanted you to know this because it was the very core of herself, the most honest and real thing about her. And at the end of her life, she was finally ready to be real.

This.

they are just husbands. I am Evelyn Hugo. And anyway, I think once people know the truth, they will be much more interested in my wife.”

I love thiz