Chap­ter 29

For two months, I was liv­ing in near bliss. Celia and I nev­er talked about Mick, because we didn’t have to. Instead, we could go wher­ev­er we want­ed, do what­ev­er we want­ed.
Celia bought a sec­ond car, a bor­ing brown sedan, and left it parked in my dri­ve­way every night with­out any­one ask­ing ques­tions. We would sleep cradling each oth­er, turn­ing off the light an hour before we want­ed to fall asleep so that we could talk in the dark­ness. I would trace the lines of her palm with my fin­ger­tips in the morn­ings to wake her up. On my birth­day, she took me out to the Polo Lounge. We were hid­ing in plain sight.
For­tu­nate­ly, paint­ing me as some woman who couldn’t keep a hus­band sold more papers—for a longer peri­od of time—than out­ing me. I’m not say­ing the gos­sip colum­nists print­ed what they knew to be a lie. I’m sim­ply say­ing they were all too hap­py to believe the lie I was sell­ing them. And of course, that’s the eas­i­est lie to tell, one you know the oth­er per­son des­per­ate­ly wants to be true.
All I had to do was make sure that my roman­tic scan­dals felt like a sto­ry that would keep mak­ing head­lines. And as long as I did that, I knew the gos­sip rags would nev­er look too close­ly at Celia.
And it was all work­ing so god­damn beau­ti­ful­ly.
Until I found out I was preg­nant.

“You are not,” Celia said to me. She was stand­ing in my pool in a laven­der pol­ka-dot biki­ni and sun­glass­es.
“Yes,” I said. “I am.”
I had just brought her out a glass of iced tea from the kitchen. I was stand­ing right in front of her, loom­ing over her, in a blue cov­er-up and san­dals. I’d sus­pect­ed I was preg­nant for two weeks. I’d known for sure since the day before, when I went to Bur­bank and saw a dis­creet doc­tor Har­ry had rec­om­mend­ed.
I told her then, when she was in the pool and I was hold­ing a glass of iced tea with a slice of lemon in it, because I couldn’t hold it in any­more.
I am and have always been a great liar. But Celia was sacred to me. And I nev­er want­ed to lie to her.
I was under no illu­sions about how much it had cost Celia and me to be togeth­er and that it was going to con­tin­ue to cost us more. It was like a tax on being hap­py. The world was going to take fifty per­cent of my hap­pi­ness. But I could keep the oth­er fifty per­cent.
And that was her. And this life we had.
But keep­ing some­thing like this from her felt wrong. And I couldn’t do it.
I put my feet into the pool next to her and tried to touch her, tried to com­fort her. I expect­ed that the news would upset her, but I did not expect her to hurl the iced tea to the oth­er side of the pool, break­ing the glass on the edge, scat­ter­ing shards in the water.
I also did not expect her to plunge her­self under the sur­face and scream. Actress­es are very dra­mat­ic.
When she popped back up, she was wet and disheveled, her hair in her face, her mas­cara run­ning. And she did not want to talk to me.
I grabbed her arm, and she pulled away. When I caught a glimpse of her face and saw the hurt in her eyes, I real­ized that Celia and I had nev­er real­ly been on the same page about what I was going to do with Mick Riva.
“You slept with him?” she said.
“I thought that was implied,” I said.
“Well, it wasn’t.”
Celia raised her­self up out of the pool and didn’t even both­er to dry off. I watched as her wet foot­prints changed the col­or of the cement around the pool, as they cre­at­ed pud­dles on the hard­wood and then start­ed damp­en­ing the car­pet on the stairs.
When I looked up at the back bed­room win­dow, I saw that she was walk­ing back and forth. It looked like she was pack­ing.
“Celia! Stop it,” I said, run­ning up the stairs. “This doesn’t change any­thing.”
By the time I got to my own bed­room door, it was locked.
I pound­ed on it. “Hon­ey, please.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Please,” I said. “Let’s talk about this.”
“No.”
“You can’t do this, Celia. Let’s talk this out.” I leaned against the door, push­ing my face into the slim gap of the door­frame, hop­ing it would make my voice trav­el far­ther, make Celia under­stand faster.
“This is not a life, Eve­lyn,” she said.
She opened the door and walked past me. I almost fell, so much of my weight had been rest­ing on the very door she had just flung open.
But I caught myself and fol­lowed her down the stairs.
“Yes, it is,” I said. “This is our life. And we’ve sac­ri­ficed so much for it, and you can’t give up on it now.”
“Yes, I can,” she said. “I don’t want to do this any­more. I don’t want to live this way. I don’t want to dri­ve an awful brown car to your home so no one knows I’m here. I don’t want to pre­tend I live by myself in Hol­ly­wood when I tru­ly live here with you in this house. And I cer­tain­ly don’t want to love a woman who would screw some singer just so the world doesn’t sus­pect she loves me.”
“You are twist­ing the truth.”
“You are a cow­ard, and I can’t believe I ever thought any dif­fer­ent­ly.”
“I did this for you!” I yelled.
We were at the foot of the stairs now. Celia had one hand on the door, the oth­er on her suit­case. She was still in her bathing suit. Her hair was drip­ping.
“You didn’t do a god­damn thing for me,” she said, her chest turn­ing red in splotch­es, her cheeks burn­ing. “You did it for you. You did it because you can’t stand the idea of not being the most famous woman on the plan­et. You did it to pro­tect your­self and your pre­cious fans, who go to the the­ater over and over just to see if this time they’ll catch a half frame of your tits. That’s who you did it for.”
“It was for you, Celia. Do you think your fam­i­ly is going to stick by you if they find out the truth?”
She bris­tled when I said it, and I saw her turn the door­knob.
“You will lose every­thing you have if peo­ple find out what you are,” I said.
“What we are,” she said, turn­ing toward me. “Don’t go around try­ing to pre­tend you’re dif­fer­ent from me.”
“I am,” I said. “And you know that I am.”
“Bull­shit.”
“I can love a man, Celia. I can go mar­ry any man I want and have chil­dren and be hap­py. And we both know that wouldn’t come eas­i­ly for you.”
Celia looked at me, her eyes nar­row, her lips pursed. “You think you’re bet­ter than me? Is that what’s going on? You think I’m sick, and you think you’re just play­ing some kind of game?”
I grabbed her, imme­di­ate­ly want­i­ng to take back what I’d said. That wasn’t what I meant at all.
But she flung her arm away from me and said, “Don’t you ever touch me again.”
I let go of her. “If they find out about us, Celia, they’ll for­give me. I’ll mar­ry anoth­er guy like Don, and they’ll for­get I even knew you. I can sur­vive this. But I’m not sure that you can. Because you’d have to either fall in love with a man or mar­ry one you didn’t love. And I don’t think you’re capa­ble of either option. I’m wor­ried for you, Celia. More than I’m wor­ried for me. I’m not sure your career would ever recover—if your life would recover—if I didn’t do some­thing. So I did the only thing I knew. And it worked.”
“It didn’t work, Eve­lyn. You’re preg­nant.”
“I will take care of it.”
Celia looked down at the floor and laughed at me. “You cer­tain­ly know how to han­dle almost any sit­u­a­tion, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, unsure why I was sup­posed to be insult­ed by that. “I do.”
“And yet when it comes to being a human, you seem to have absolute­ly no idea where to start.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“You are a whore, Eve­lyn. You let men screw you for fame. And that is why I’m leav­ing you.”
She opened the door to leave, not even look­ing back at me. I watched her walk out to my front stoop, down the stairs, and over to her car. I fol­lowed her out and stood, frozen, in the dri­ve­way.
She threw her bag into the passenger’s side of her car. And then she opened the door on the driver’s side and stood there.
“I loved you so much that I thought you were the mean­ing of my life,” Celia said, cry­ing. “I thought that peo­ple were put on earth to find oth­er peo­ple, and I was put here to find you. To find you and touch your skin and smell your breath and hear all your thoughts. But I don’t think that’s true any­more.” She wiped her eyes. “Because I don’t want to be meant for some­one like you.”
The sear­ing pain in my chest felt like water boil­ing. “You know what? You’re right. You aren’t meant for some­one like me,” I said final­ly. “Because I’m will­ing to do what it takes to make a world for us, and you’re too chick­en­shit. You won’t make the hard deci­sions; you aren’t will­ing to do the ugly stuff. And I’ve always known that. But I thought you’d at least have the decen­cy to admit you need some­one like me. You need some­one who will get her hands dirty to pro­tect you. You want to play like you’re all high and mighty all the time. Well, try doing that with­out some­one in the trench­es pro­tect­ing you.”
Celia’s face was sto­ic, frozen. I wasn’t sure she’d heard a sin­gle word I’d said. “I guess we aren’t as right for each oth­er as we thought,” she said, and then she got into her car.
It wasn’t until that moment, with her hand on the steer­ing wheel, that I real­ized this was real­ly hap­pen­ing, that this wasn’t just a fight we were hav­ing. That this was the fight that would end us. It had all been going so well and had turned so quick­ly in the oth­er direc­tion, like a hair­pin turn off the free­way.
“I guess not” was all I could say. It came out like a croak, the vow­els crack­ing.
Celia start­ed the car and put it in reverse. “Good-bye, Eve­lyn,” she said at the very last minute. Then she backed out of my dri­ve­way and dis­ap­peared down the road.
I walked into my house and start­ed clean­ing up the pud­dles of water she’d left. I called a ser­vice to come and drain the pool and clean the shards of glass from her iced tea.
And then I called Har­ry.
Three days lat­er, he drove with me to Tijua­na, where no one would ask any ques­tions. It was a set of moments that I tried not to be men­tal­ly present for so that I would nev­er have to work to for­get them.
I was relieved, walk­ing back to the car after the pro­ce­dure, that I had become so good at com­part­men­tal­iza­tion and dis­as­so­ci­a­tion. May it make its way to the record books that I nev­er regret­ted, not for one minute, end­ing that preg­nan­cy. It was the right deci­sion. On that I nev­er wavered.
But still I cried the whole way home, while Har­ry drove us through San Diego and along the Cal­i­for­nia coast­line. I cried because of every­thing I had lost and all the deci­sions I had made. I cried because I was sup­posed to start Anna Karen­i­na on Mon­day and I didn’t care about act­ing or acco­lades. I wished I’d nev­er need­ed a rea­son to be in Mex­i­co in the first place. And I des­per­ate­ly want­ed Celia to call me, cry­ing, telling me how wrong she’d been. I want­ed her to show up on my doorstep and beg to come home. I want­ed … her. I just want­ed her back.
As we were com­ing off the San Diego Free­way, I asked Har­ry the ques­tion that had been run­ning through my mind for days.
“Do you think I’m a whore?”
Har­ry pulled over to the side of the road and turned to me. “I think you’re bril­liant. I think you’re tough. And I think the word whore is some­thing igno­rant peo­ple throw around when they have noth­ing else.”
I lis­tened to him and then turned my head to look out my win­dow.
“Isn’t it awful­ly con­ve­nient,” Har­ry added, “that when men make the rules, the one thing that’s looked down on the most is the one thing that would bear them the great­est threat? Imag­ine if every sin­gle woman on the plan­et want­ed some­thing in exchange when she gave up her body. You’d all be rul­ing the place. An armed pop­u­lace. Only men like me would stand a chance against you. And that’s the last thing those ass­holes want, a world run by peo­ple like you and me.”