I put the letter on the table. I consider taking a seat. “So?”
“I thought it was beautifully written. It was informed, intelligent, balanced, and compassionate. It had heart. I admired the way you deftly handled an emotional and complicated topic.”
I don’t want to let her say anything nice to me, because I don’t want to have to thank her for it. But my mother instilled in me a politeness that kicks in when I least expect it. “Thank you.”
“When I read it, I suspected that you would do a beautiful job with my story.”
“Because of one small piece I wrote?”
“Because you’re talented, and if anyone could understand the complexities of who I am and what I’ve done, it was probably you. And the more I’ve gotten to know you, the more I know I was right. Whatever book you write about me, it will not have easy answers. But it will, I predict, be unflinching. I wanted to give you that letter, and I wanted you to write my story, because I believe you to be the very best person for the job.”
“So you put me through all this to assuage your guilt and make sure you got the book about your life that you wanted?”
Evelyn shakes her head, ready to correct me, but I’m not done.
“It’s amazing, really. How self-interested you can be. That even now, even when you appear to want to redeem yourself, it’s still about you.”
Evelyn puts up her hand. “Don’t act like you haven’t benefited from this. You’ve been a willing participant here. You wanted the story. You took advantage—deftly and smartly, I might add—of the position I put you in.”
“Evelyn, seriously,” I say. “Cut the crap.”
“You don’t want the story?” Evelyn asks, challenging me. “If you don’t want it, don’t take it. Let my story die with me. That is just fine.”
I am quiet, unsure how to respond, unsure how I want to respond.
Evelyn puts out her hand, expectantly. She’s not going to let the suggestion be hypothetical. It’s not rhetorical. It demands an answer. “Go ahead,” she says. “Get your notes and the recordings. We can burn them all right now.”
I don’t move, despite the fact that she gives me ample time to do so.
“I didn’t think so,” she says.
“It’s the least I deserve,” I tell her, defensive. “It’s the fucking least you can give me.”
“Nobody deserves anything,” Evelyn says. “It’s simply a matter of who’s willing to go and take it for themselves. And you, Monique, are a person who has proven to be willing to go out there and take what you want. So be honest about that. No one is just a victim or a victor. Everyone is somewhere in between. People who go around casting themselves as one or the other are not only kidding themselves, but they’re also painfully unoriginal.”
I get up from the table and walk to the sink. I wash my hands, because I hate how clammy they feel. I dry them. I look at her. “I hate you, you know.”
Evelyn nods. “Good for you. It’s such an uncomplicated feeling, isn’t it? Hatred?”
“Yes,” I say. “It is.”
“Everything else in life is more complex. Especially your father. That’s why I thought it was so important that you read that letter. I wanted you to know.”
“What, exactly? That he was innocent? Or that he loved a man?”
“That he loved you. Like that. He was willing to turn down romantic love in order to stand by your side. Do you know what an amazing father you had? Do you know how loved you were? Plenty of men say they’ll never leave their families, but your father was put to the test and didn’t even blink. I wanted you to know that. If I had a father like that, I would have wanted to know.”
No one is all good or all bad. I know this, of course. I had to learn it at a young age. But sometimes it’s easy to forget just how true it is. That it applies to everyone.
Until you’re sitting in front of the woman who put your father’s dead body in the driver’s seat of a car to save the reputation of her best friend—and you realize she held on to a letter for almost three decades because she wanted you to know how much you were loved.
She could have given me the letter earlier. She also could have thrown it away. There’s Evelyn Hugo for you. Somewhere in the middle.
I sit down and put my hands over my eyes, rubbing them, hoping that if I rub hard enough, maybe I can make my way to a different reality.
When I open them, I’m still here. I have no choice but to resign myself to it.
“When can I release the book?”
“I won’t be around much longer,” Evelyn says, sitting down on a stool by the island.
“Enough with the vagaries, Evelyn. When can I release the book?”
Evelyn absentmindedly starts folding an errant napkin that is sitting haphazardly on the counter. Then she looks up at me. “It’s no secret that the gene for breast cancer can be inherited,” she says. “Although if there were any justice in the world, the mother would die of it well before the daughter.”
I look at the finer points of Evelyn’s face. I look at the corners of her lips, the edges of her eyes, the direction of her brows. There is very little emotion in any of them. Her face remains as stoic as if she were reading me the paper.
“You have breast cancer?” I ask.
She nods.
“How far along is it?”
“Far enough for me to need to hurry up and get this done.”
I look away when she looks at me. I’m not sure why. It’s not out of anger, really. It’s out of shame. I feel guilty that so much of me does not feel bad for her. And stupid for the part of me that does.
“I saw my daughter go through this,” Evelyn says. “I know what’s ahead of me. It’s important that I get my affairs in order. In addition to finalizing the last copy of my will and making sure Grace is taken care of, I handed over my most-prized gowns to Christie’s. And this . . . this is the last of it. That letter. And this book. You.”
“I’m leaving,” I say. “I can’t take any more today.”
Evelyn starts to say something, and I stop her.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want to hear anything else from you. Don’t say another goddamn word, OK?”
I can’t say I’m surprised when she speaks anyway. “I was just going to say that I understand and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I say, just as I remember that Evelyn and I aren’t done.
“For the photo shoot,” she says.
“I’m not sure I’m prepared to come back here.”
“Well,” Evelyn says, “I very much hope that you do.”
WHEN I GET HOME, I instinctively throw my bag onto the couch. I am tired, and I am angry, and my eyes feel dry and stiff, as if they have been wrung out like wet laundry.
I sit down, not bothering to take off my coat or my shoes. I respond to the e-mail my mother has sent containing her flight information for tomorrow. And then I lift my legs and rest my feet on the coffee table. As I do, they hit an envelope resting on the surface.
It is only then that I realize I even have a coffee table in the first place.
David brought it back. And on it rests an envelope addressed to me.