“They’ll hate me and probably lose respect for you if they think I won’t give you a baby,” I said, despite the fact that it was exactly what was going on between us. That was the elephant in the room, of course. This was all sort of true.
“But they’ll pity you both if they think she can’t,” Celia said.
“Pity? What are you talking about, pity? I don’t want to be pitied. There’s no power in pity. You can’t sell movies with pity.”
And then Harry spoke up and said, “Like hell you can’t.”
*
WHEN THE PHONE rang at ten after six, Paula answered and then rushed into the bedroom to tell me the doctor was calling.
I picked up the line with Don beside me.
Dr. Lopani read the script written for him.
I started crying, as loudly as I could on the off chance that Paula had decided to mind her own business for once.
A half hour later, Don went downstairs and told Paula we had to let her go. He wasn’t nice about it; in fact, he was just mean enough to piss her off.
Because you might run to the tabloids to tell them about the miscarriage of your employers. But you’ll definitely run to the tabloids and tell them about the miscarriage of the people who just fired you.
Sub Rosa June 29, 1959
BLESS DON AND EVELYN! THEY NEED IT!
The couple who has everything but can’t have what they truly want . . .
In the home of Don Adler and Evelyn Hugo, things are not what they seem. It may appear that Evelyn is putting off Don’s advances when it comes to baby making, but the truth turns out to be quite a different tale.
Because all this time we thought Evelyn was pushing Don away, it turns out she was working overtime. Evelyn and Don desperately want a little Don and Evelyn running around the house, but nature has not been kind.
It seems every time they find themselves “in the family way,” things take a sad turn—a tragedy that has befallen them this month for the third time.
Let’s send Don and Evelyn our best wishes.
It just goes to show that money can’t buy happiness, folks.
THE NIGHT AFTER THE NEW article came out, Don was not convinced that it had been the right move, and Harry was busy but wouldn’t say with what, which I knew meant he was seeing someone.
And I wanted to celebrate.
So Celia came over to the house, and we split a bottle of wine.
“You’ve got no maid,” Celia said as she was searching around the kitchen for a corkscrew.
“No,” I said, sighing. “Not until the studio is done vetting all the applicants.”
Celia found the corkscrew, and I handed her a bottle of cabernet.
I never spent much time in the kitchen, and it was sort of surreal to be there without someone looking over my shoulder, offering to make me a sandwich or find whatever I was looking for. When you are rich, parts of your house don’t really feel like they are yours. The kitchen was one of them for me.
I looked through my own cabinets, trying to remember where the wineglasses were. “Ah,” I said when I found them. “Here.”
Celia looked at what I was handing her. “Those are champagne flutes.”
“Oh, right,” I said, putting them back where I’d found them. We had two other sizes. I showed one of each to Celia. “Which?”
“The rounder. Do you not know glassware?”
“Glassware, serving ware, I don’t know any of it. Remember, honey, I’m new money.”
Celia laughed as she poured our drinks.
“I’ve either not been able to afford it or have been so rich someone would do it for me. Never anywhere in between.”
“I love that about you,” Celia said as she took a full glass and handed it to me. She took the other for herself. “I’ve had money my whole life. My parents act as if there is a recognized nobility in Georgia. And all of my brothers and sisters, with the exception of my older brother, Robert, are just like my parents. My sister Rebecca thinks my being in movies is an embarrassment to the family. Not so much because of the Hollywood aspect but because I’m ‘working.’ She says it’s undignified. I love them, and I hate them. But that’s family, I guess.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I . . . don’t have much family. Any, really.” My father and the rest of the relatives I had back in Hell’s Kitchen had not succeeded in contacting me, if they had even tried at all. And I hadn’t lost one night of sleep thinking about them.
Celia looked at me. She appeared to neither pity me nor feel uncomfortable for all that she’d had growing up that I didn’t have. “All the more reason for me to admire you the way I do,” she said. “Everything you have you went out and got for yourself.” Celia leaned her glass into mine and clinked. “To you,” she said. “For being absolutely unstoppable.”
I laughed and then drank with her. “Come,” I said, leading her out of the kitchen and into the living room. I put my drink down on the hairpin-leg coffee table and walked over to the record player. I pulled out Billie Holiday’s Lady in Satin from the bottom of the stack. Don hated Billie Holiday. But Don wasn’t there.
“Do you know her real name is Eleanora Fagan?” I said to Celia. “Billie Holiday is just so much prettier.”
I sat down on one of our blue tufted sofas. Celia sat on the one opposite me. She folded her legs underneath her, her spare hand on her feet.
“What’s yours?” she asked. “Is it really Evelyn Hugo?”
I grabbed my wineglass and confessed the truth. “Herrera. Evelyn Herrera.”
Celia didn’t react really. She didn’t say, “So you are Latin.” Or “I knew you were faking it,” as I feared she might be thinking. She didn’t say that it explained why my skin was darker than hers or Don’s. In fact, she said nothing at all until she said, “That’s beautiful.”
“And yours?” I asked. I stood up and moved over to the couch where she was sitting, to close the gap between us. “Celia St. James . . .”
“Jamison.”
“What?”
“Cecelia Jamison. That’s my real name.”
“That’s a great name. Why did they change it?”
“I changed it.”
“Why?”
“Because it sounds like a girl who might live next door to you. And I’ve always wanted to be the kind of girl you feel lucky just to lay your eyes on.” She tilted her head back and finished her wine. “Like you.”
“Oh, stop.”
“You stop. You know damn well what you are. How you affect the people around you. I’d kill for a chest like that and full lips like yours. You make people think of undressing you just by showing up in a room fully clothed.”
I felt flushed hearing her talk about me like that. Having her talk about the way men saw me. I’d never heard a woman talk about me that way before.
Celia took my glass out of my hand. She threw the wine back into her own throat. “We need more,” she said, waving the glass in the air.
I smiled and took both glasses into the kitchen. Celia followed me. She leaned against my Formica counter as I poured.
“The first time I saw Father and Daughter, do you know what I thought?” she said. Billie Holiday was now faintly playing in the background.