“Of course I did,” she said.
“I reached out to you,” I said. I picked up a piece of bread and buttered it. But I put it down immediately, not taking a single bite.
“I wasn’t sure,” Celia said. “I mean, I wasn’t sure if you meant me.”
“I all but said your name.”
“You said ‘she.’?”
“Precisely.”
“I thought maybe you had another she.”
I had looked at other women besides Celia. I had pictured myself with other women besides her. 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.
“There is no she but you,” I told her.
Celia listened and closed her eyes. And then she spoke. It was as if she had tried to stop herself and simply couldn’t. “But there were hes.”
“This old song and dance,” I said, trying to stop myself from rolling my eyes. “I was with Max. You were clearly with Joan. Did Joan hold a candle to me?”
“No,” Celia said.
“And Max didn’t hold a candle to you.”
“But you’re still married to him.”
“I’m filing papers. He’s moving out. It’s over.”
“That’s abrupt.”
“It’s not, actually. It’s overdue. And anyway, he found your letters,” I said.
“And he’s leaving you?”
“No, he’s threatening to out me if I don’t stay with him.”
“What?”
“I’m leaving him,” I said. “And I’m letting him do whatever the hell he wants. Because I’m fifty years old, and I don’t have the energy to be controlling every single thing anyone says about me until I die of old age. The parts I’m being offered are shit. I have the Oscar on my mantel. I have a spectacular daughter. I have Harry. I’m a household name. They will write about my movies for years to come. What more do I want? A gold statue in my honor?”
Celia laughed. “That’s what an Oscar is,” she said.
I laughed, too. “Exactly! Excellent point. I already have that, then. There’s nothing else, Celia. There are no more mountains to climb. I spent my life hiding so no one would knock me off the mountain. Well, you know what? I’m done hiding. Let them come and get me. They can throw me down a well as far as I’m concerned. I’m signed on to do one last movie over at Fox later this year, and then I’m done.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. Any other line of thinking . . . it’s how I lost you. I don’t want to lose anymore.”
“It’s not just our careers,” she said. “The ramifications are unpredictable. What if they take Connor away?”
“Because I’m in love with a woman?”
“Because they think both her parents are ‘queers.’?”
I sipped my wine. “I can’t win with you,” I said finally. “If I want to hide, you call me a coward. If I’m tired of hiding, you tell me they’ll take my daughter.”
“I’m sorry,” Celia said. She did not seem sorry for what she had said so much as sorry that we lived in the world we lived in. “Do you mean it?” she asked. “Would you really give it up?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I would.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” she asked just as the waiter put her steak down in front of her and my salad in front of me. “I mean absolutely sure?”
“Yes.”
Celia was quiet for a moment. She stared down at her plate. She seemed to be considering everything about this moment, and the longer she took to speak, the farther I found myself bending forward, trying to get closer to her.
“I have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,” she said finally. “I probably won’t make it much past sixty.”
I stared at her. “You’re lying,” I said.
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. That can’t be true.”
“It is true.”
“No, it’s not,” I said.
“It is,” she said. She picked up her fork. She sipped the water in front of her.
My mind was reeling, thoughts bouncing around my brain, my heart spinning in my chest.
And then Celia spoke again, and the only reason I was able to focus on her words was that I knew they were important. I knew they mattered. “I think you should do your movie,” she said. “Finish strong. And then . . . and then, after that, I think we should move to the coast of Spain.”
“What?”
“I have always liked the idea of spending the last years of my life on a beautiful beach. With the love of a good woman,” she said.
“You’re . . . you’re dying?”
“I can look into some locations in Spain while you’re shooting. I’ll find a place where Connor can get a great education. I’ll sell my home here. I’ll get a compound somewhere, with enough space for Harry, too. And Robert.”
“Your brother Robert?”
Celia nodded. “He moved out here for business a few years ago. We’ve become close. He . . . he knows who I am. He supports me.”
“What is chronic obstructive—?”
“Emphysema, more or less,” she said. “From smoking. Do you still smoke? You should stop. Right now.”
I shook my head, having long ago given it up.
“They have treatments to slow down the process. I can live a normal life for the most part, for a while.”
“And then what?”
“And then, eventually, it will become difficult to be active, hard to breathe. When that happens, I won’t have much time. All told, we’re looking at ten years, give or take, if I’m lucky.”
“Ten years? You’re only forty-nine.”
“I know.”
I started crying. I couldn’t help it.
“You’re making a scene,” she said. “You have to stop.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“OK,” she said. “OK.”
She picked up her purse and threw down a hundred-dollar bill. She pulled me out of my chair, and we walked to the valet. She gave him her ticket. She put me in the front seat of the car. She drove me to her house. She sat me on the sofa.
“Can you handle this?” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked her. “Of course I can’t handle it.”
“If you can handle this,” she said, “then we can do this. We can be together. I think we can . . . we can spend the rest of our lives together, Evelyn. If you can handle this. But I can’t, in good conscience, do this to you if you don’t think you’ll survive it.”
“Survive what, exactly?”
“Losing me again. I don’t want to let you love me if you don’t think you can lose me again. One last time.”
“I can’t. Of course I can’t. But I want to anyway. I’m going to anyway. Yes,” I said finally. “I can survive it. I’d rather survive it than never feel it.”
“Are you sure?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’m sure. I’ve never been more sure about anything. I love you, Celia. I’ve always loved you. And we should spend the rest of the time we have together.”
She grabbed my face. She kissed me. And I wept.