Don was unable to speak.
“One minute, Bobby,” I said. I was impressed by how unstrained my voice was, how confident it seemed. It sounded like the voice of a woman who had never been hit a day in her life.
There were no mirrors I could get to easily. Don had his back to them, blocking them. I pushed my jaw forward.
“Is it red?” I said.
Don could barely look at me. But he glanced and then nodded his head. He was boyish and ashamed, as if I were asking him if he’d been the one to break the neighbor’s window.
“Go out there and tell Bobby I’m having lady troubles. He’ll be too embarrassed to ask anything else. Then tell your wardrobe person to meet you in my dressing room. Have Bobby tell mine to meet me in here in a half hour.”
“OK,” he said, and then grabbed his jacket and slipped out.
The minute he was out the door, I locked myself inside and slumped down against the wall, the tears coming fast the moment no one could see them.
I had made my way three thousand miles from where I was born. I had found a way to be in the right place at the right time. I’d changed my name. Changed my hair. Changed my teeth and my body. I’d learned how to act. I’d made the right friends. I’d married into a famous family. Most of America knew my name.
And yet . . .
And yet.
I got up off the floor and wiped my eyes. I gathered myself.
I sat down at the vanity, three mirrors in front of me lined with lightbulbs. How silly is it that I thought that if I ever found myself in a movie star’s dressing room, that meant I’d have no troubles?
A few moments later, Gwendolyn knocked on the door to do my hair.
“One second!” I yelled out.
“Evelyn, we have to move quickly. You guys are already behind schedule.”
“Just one second!”
I looked at myself in the mirror and realized I couldn’t force the redness to go away. The question was whether I trusted Gwen. And I decided I did, I had to. I stood up and opened the door.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said. “You look a fright.”
“I know.”
She looked more closely at me and realized what she was seeing. “Did you fall?”
“Yes,” I said. “I did. I fell right over. Onto the counter. Jaw caught the worst of it.”
We both knew I was lying.
And to this day, I’m not sure whether Gwen asked me if I fell in order to spare me the need to lie or to encourage me to keep quiet.
I wasn’t the only woman being hit back then. A lot of women were negotiating the very same things I was at that moment. There was a social code for these things. The first rule being to shut up about it.
An hour later, I was being escorted to set. We were to film a scene just outside a mansion on the beach. Don was sitting in his chair, the four wooden legs digging into the sand, behind the director. He ran up to me.
“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” His voice was so chipper, so consoling, that for a moment I thought he had forgotten what happened.
“I’m fine. Let’s get on with it.”
We took our places. The sound guy mic’ed us. The grips made sure we were lit properly. I put everything out of my head.
“Hold on, hold on!” the director yelled. “Ronny, what’s going on with the boom . . .” Distracted by a conversation, he walked away from the camera.
Don covered his mic and then put his hand on my chest and covered mine.
“Evelyn, I’m so sorry,” he whispered into my ear.
I pulled back and looked at him, stunned. No one had ever apologized for hitting me before.
“I never should have laid a hand on you,” he said. His eyes were filling with tears. “I’m ashamed of myself. For doing anything at all to hurt you.” He looked so pained. “I will do anything for your forgiveness.”
Maybe the life I thought I had wasn’t so far away after all.
“Can you forgive me?” he asked.
Maybe this was all a mistake. Maybe it didn’t mean anything had to change.
“Of course I can,” I said.
The director ran back to the camera, and Don leaned back, taking his hands off our mics.
“And . . . action!”
Don and I were both nominated for Academy Awards for One More Day. And I think the general consensus was that it didn’t matter how talented we were. People just loved seeing us together.
To this day, I have no idea if either of us is actually any good in it. It is the only movie I’ve ever shot that I cannot bring myself to watch.
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.
The same way you fix the hole in your dress with a safety pin or tape up the crack in a window.
That’s the part I was stuck in, the part where you accept the apology because it’s easier than addressing the root of the problem, when Harry Cameron came to my dressing room and told me the good news. Little Women was getting the green light.
“It’s you as Jo, Ruby Reilly as Meg, Joy Nathan as Amy, and Celia St. James is playing Beth.”
“Celia St. James? From Olympian Studios?”
Harry nodded. “What’s with the frown? I thought you’d be thrilled.”
“Oh,” I said, turning further toward him. “I am. I absolutely am.”
“You don’t like Celia St. James?”
I smiled at him. “That teenage bitch is gonna act me under the table.”
Harry threw his head back and laughed.
Celia St. James had made headlines earlier in the year. At the age of nineteen, she played a young widowed mother in a war-period piece. Everyone said she was sure to be nominated next year. Exactly the sort of person the studio would want playing Beth.