As I walk in my front door and put my bag on the sofa, it strikes me again just how needlessly petty it was of him to take the coffee table. His new San Francisco studio came fully furnished courtesy of the generous relocation package offered with his promotion. I suspect he put the table in storage, along with the one nightstand he insisted was rightfully his and all of our cookbooks. I don’t miss the cookbooks. I don’t cook. But when things are inscribed to “Monique and David, for all your many years of happiness,” you think of them as half yours.
I hang up my coat and wonder, not for the first time, which question gets closer to the truth: Did David take the new job and move to San Francisco without me? Or did I refuse to leave New York for him? As I take off my shoes, I resolve once again that the answer is somewhere in the middle. But then I come back to the same thought that always stings afresh: He actually left.
I order myself pad thai and then get in the shower. I turn the water to nearly scalding hot. I love water so hot it almost burns. I love the smell of shampoo. My happiest place might just be under a showerhead. It is here in the steam, covered in suds, that I do not feel like Monique Grant, woman left behind. Or even Monique Grant, stalled writer. I am just Monique Grant, owner of luxury bath products.
Well after I’ve pruned, I dry myself off, put on my sweatpants, and pull my hair away from my face, just in time for the deliveryman to make his way to my door.
I sit with the plastic container, trying to watch TV. I attempt to zone out. I want to make my brain do something, anything, other than think about work or David. But once my food is gone, I realize it’s futile. I might as well work.
This is all very intimidating—the idea of interviewing Evelyn Hugo, the task of controlling her narrative, of trying to make sure she doesn’t control mine. I’m often inclined to overprepare. But more to the point, I’ve always been a bit like an ostrich, willing to bury my head in the sand to avoid what I don’t want to face.
So, for the next three days, I do nothing but research Evelyn Hugo. I spend my days pulling up old articles about her marriages and her scandals. I spend my evenings watching her old movies.
I watch clips of her in Carolina Sunset, Anna Karenina, Jade Diamond, and All for Us. I watch the GIF of her coming out of the water in Boute-en-Train so many times that when I fall asleep, it plays over and over in my dreams.
And I start to fall in love with her, just the littlest bit, as I watch her films. Between the hours of eleven P.M. and two A.M., while the rest of the world is sleeping, my laptop flickers with the sight of her, and the sound of her voice fills my living room.
There is no denying that she is a stunningly beautiful woman. People often talk about her straight, thick eyebrows and her blond hair, but I can’t take my eyes off her bone structure. Her jawline is strong, her cheekbones are high, and all of it comes to a point at her ever-so-swollen lips. Her eyes are huge but not so much round as an oversized almond shape. Her tanned skin next to her light hair looks beachy but also elegant. I know it’s not natural—hair that blond with skin that bronze—and yet I can’t shake the feeling that it should be, that humans should be born looking like this.
I have no doubt that’s part of the reason film historian Charles Redding once said that Evelyn’s face felt “inevitable. So exquisite, so nearly perfect, that when looking at her, you get the sense that her features, in that combination, in that ratio, were bound to happen sooner or later.”
I pin images of Evelyn in the ’50s wearing tight sweaters and bullet bras, press photos of her and Don Adler on the Sunset Studios lot shortly after they were married, shots of her from the early ’60s with long, straight hair and soft, thick bangs and wearing short-shorts.
There is a photo of her in a white one-piece, sitting on the shoreline of a pristine beach, with a large, floppy black hat covering most of her face, her white-blond hair and the right side of her face illuminated by the sun.
One of my personal favorites is a black-and-white shot from the Golden Globes in 1967. She is seated on the aisle, her hair pulled into a loose updo. She is wearing a light-colored lace gown with a deep scoop neckline, her cleavage controlled but on full display and her right leg escaping through the high slit of the skirt.
There are two men seated next to her, names lost to history, who are staring at her as she looks ahead at the stage. The man next to her is staring at her chest. The one next to him is staring at her thigh. Both of them seem enraptured and hoping to see the tiniest bit farther.
Maybe I’m overthinking that photo, but I’m starting to notice a pattern: Evelyn always leaves you hoping you’ll get just a little bit more. And she always denies you.
Even in her much-talked-about sex scene in Three A.M. from 1977, in which she writhes, reverse-cowboy style, on top of Don Adler, you see her full breasts for less than three seconds. It was rumored for years that the incredible box-office numbers for the film were because couples were going to see it multiple times.
How does she know just how much to give and just how much of herself to withhold?
And does that all change now that she’s got something to say? Or is she going to play me the same way she played audiences for years?
Is Evelyn Hugo going to tell me just enough to keep me on the edge of my seat but never enough to truly reveal anything?
I WAKE UP A HALF hour before my alarm. I check my e-mails, including one from Frankie with the subject line “KEEP ME UPDATED,” yelling at me in all caps. I make myself a small breakfast.
I put on black slacks and a white T-shirt with my favorite herringbone blazer. I gather my long, tight curls into a bun at the top of my head. I forgo my contacts and choose my thickest black-framed glasses.
As I look in the mirror, I notice that I have lost weight in my face since David left. While I have always had a slim frame, my butt and face seem to be the first to pick up any extra weight. And being with David—during the two years we dated and the eleven months since we married—meant I put on a few. David likes to eat. And while he would get up in the early mornings to run it off, I slept in.
Looking at myself now, pulled together and slimmer, I feel a rush of confidence. I look good. I feel good.
Before I make my way out the door, I grab the camel cashmere scarf that my mother gave me for Christmas this past year. And then I put one foot in front of the other, down to the subway, into Manhattan, and uptown.
Evelyn’s place is just off Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park. I’ve done enough Internet stalking to know she’s got this place and a beachfront villa just outside of Málaga, Spain. She’s had this apartment since the late ’60s, when she bought it with Harry Cameron. She inherited the villa when Robert Jamison died almost five years ago. In my next life, please remind me to come back as a movie star with points on the back end.
Evelyn’s building, at least from the outside—limestone, prewar, beaux arts style—is extraordinary. I am greeted, before even walking in, by an older, handsome doorman with soft eyes and a kind smile.
“How may I help you?” he says.
I find myself embarrassed even to say it. “I’m here to see Evelyn Hugo. My name’s Monique Grant.”