The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

He’d convinced himself that his wanting me was my fault. And I believed him. Look what I do to these poor boys, I thought. And yet also, Here is my value, my power. So when he dumped me—because he was bored with me, because he’d found someone else more exciting—I felt both a deep relief and a very real sense of failure.

It would take me years to figure out that life doesn’t get easier simply because it gets more glamorous. But you couldn’t have told me that when I was fourteen.

I’d told him I was someone else. And then I started getting angry that he couldn’t see who I really was.

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.

I was being designed to be two opposing things, a complicated image that was hard to dissect but easy to grab on to. I was supposed to be both naive and erotic. It was as if I was too wholesome to understand the unwholesome thoughts you were having about me.

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. Don wasn’t like that. At least, not at first. Don was happy to be near the flower, to look at the flower, to appreciate the flower simply being.

I had quickly learned that Don was only kind when he was happy, and he was only happy when he was winning.

A MAN HITS YOU ONCE and apologizes, and you think it will never happen again. But then you tell him you’re not sure you ever want a family, and he hits you once more. You tell yourself it’s understandable, what he did. You were sort of rude, the way you said it. You do want a family someday. You truly do. You’re just not sure how you’re going to manage it with your movies. But you should have been more clear. The next morning, he apologizes and brings you flowers. He gets down on his knees. The third time, it’s a disagreement about whether to go out to Romanoff’s or stay in. Which, you realize when he pushes you into the wall behind you, is actually about the image of your marriage to the public. The fourth time, it’s after you both lose at the Oscars. You are in a silk, emerald-green, one-shoulder dress. He’s in a tux with tails. He has too much to drink at the after-parties, trying to nurse his wounds. You’re in the front seat of the car in your driveway, about to go inside. He’s upset that he lost. You tell him it’s OK. He tells you that you don’t understand. You remind him that you lost, too. He says, “Yeah, but your parents are trash from Long Island. No one expects anything from you.” You know you shouldn’t, but you say, “I’m from Hell’s Kitchen, you asshole.” He opens the parked car’s door and pushes you out. When he comes crawling to you in tears the next morning, you don’t actually believe him anymore. But now this is just what you do.

You do not know how fast you have been running, how hard you have been working, how truly exhausted you are, until someone stands behind you and says, “It’s OK, you can fall down now. I’ll catch you.”

And taking pride in your beauty is a damning act. Because you allow yourself to believe that the only thing notable about yourself is something with a very short shelf life.”

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.

“So you felt bad for him? Your abuser?” “Relationships are complex,” Evelyn says. “People are messy, and love can be ugly. I’m inclined to always err on the side of compassion.” “You’re saying you had compassion for what he was going through?” “I’m saying you should have a little compassion for how complicated it must have been for me.”

“I can’t speak for all people who have been hit by someone they love, but what I can tell you is that forgiveness is different from absolution. Don was no longer a threat to me. I was not scared of him. I felt powerful and free.

Men go to bed with Gilda, but wake up with me.