I feel no pressure to stop crying. I feel no need to explain myself. You don’t have to make yourself OK for a good mother; a good mother makes herself OK for you. And my mother has always been a good mother, a great mother.
When I am done, I pull away. I wipe my eyes. There are people passing us on the left and the right, businesswomen with briefcases, families with backpacks. Some of them stare. But I’m used to people staring at my mother and me. Even in the melting pot that is New York City, there are still many people who don’t expect a mother and daughter to look as we look.
“What is it, honey?” my mom asks.
“I don’t even know where to start,” I say.
She grabs my hand. “How about I forgo trying to prove to you that I understand the subway system and we hail a cab?”
I laugh and nod, drying the edges of my eyes.
By the time we are in the backseat of a stale taxi, clips of the morning news cycle repeating over and over on the console, I have gathered myself enough to breathe easily.
“So tell me,” she says. “What’s on your mind?”
Do I tell her what I know?
Do I tell her that the heartbreaking thing we’ve always believed—that my father died driving drunk—isn’t true? Am I going to exchange that transgression for another? That he was having an affair with a man when his life ended?
“David and I are officially getting divorced,” I say.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she says. “I know that had to be hard.”
I can’t burden her with what I suspect about Evelyn. I just can’t.
“And I miss Dad,” I say. “Do you miss Dad?”
“Oh, God,” she says. “Every day.”
“Was he a good husband?”
She seems caught off guard. “He was a great husband, yes,” she says. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just realized I don’t know very much about your relationship. What was he like? With you?”
She starts smiling, as if she’s trying to stop herself but simply can’t. “Oh, he was very romantic. He used to buy me chocolates every single year on the third of May.”
“I thought your anniversary was in September.”
“It was,” she says, laughing. “He just always spoiled me on the third of May for some reason. He said there weren’t enough official holidays to celebrate me. He said he needed to make one up just for me.”
“That’s really cute,” I say.
Our driver pulls out onto the highway.
“And he used to write the most beautiful love letters,” she says. “Really lovely. With poems in them about how pretty he thought I was, which was silly, because I was never pretty.”
“Of course you were,” I say.
“No,” she says, her voice matter-of-fact. “I wasn’t really. But boy, did he make me feel like I was Miss America.”
I laugh. “It sounds like a pretty passionate marriage,” I say.
My mom is quiet. Then she says, “No,” patting my hand. “I don’t know if I would say passionate. We just really liked each other. It was almost as if when I met him, I met this other side of myself. Someone who understood me and made me feel safe. It wasn’t passionate, really. It was never about ripping each other’s clothes off. We just knew we could be happy together. We knew we could raise a child. We also knew it wouldn’t be easy and that our parents wouldn’t like it. But in a lot of ways, that just brought us closer. Us against the world, sort of.
“I know it’s not popular to say. I know everybody’s looking for some sexy marriage nowadays. But I was really happy with your father. I really loved having someone look out for me, having someone to look out for. Having someone to share my days with. I always found him so fascinating. All of his opinions, his talent. We could have a conversation about almost anything. For hours on end. We used to stay up late, even when you were a toddler, just talking. He was my best friend.”
“Is that why you never remarried?”
My mom considers the question. “You know, it’s funny. Talking about passion. Since we lost your dad, I’ve found passion with men, from time to time. But I’d give it all back for just a few more days with him. For just one more late-night talk. Passion never mattered very much to me. But that type of intimacy that we had? That was what I cherished.”
Maybe one day I will tell her what I know.
Maybe I never will.
Maybe I’ll put it in Evelyn’s biography, or perhaps I’ll tell Evelyn’s side of it without ever revealing who was sitting in the passenger’s seat of that car.
Maybe I’ll leave that part out completely. I think I’d be willing to lie about Evelyn’s life to protect my mother. I think I’d be willing to omit the truth from public knowledge in the interest of the happiness and sanity of a person I love dearly.
I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just know that I will be guided by what I believe to be best for my mother. And if it comes at the expense of honesty, if it takes a small chunk out of my integrity, I’m OK with that. Perfectly, stunningly OK.
“I think I was just very fortunate to find a companion like your father,” my mom says. “To find that kind of soul mate.”
When you dig just the tiniest bit beneath the surface, everyone’s love life is original and interesting and nuanced and defies any easy definition.
And maybe one day I’ll find someone I love the way Evelyn loved Celia. Or maybe I might just find someone I love the way my parents loved each other. Knowing to look for it, knowing there are all different types of great loves out there, is enough for me for now.
There’s still much I don’t know about my father. Maybe he was gay. Maybe he saw himself as straight but in love with one man. Maybe he was bisexual. Or a host of other words. But it really doesn’t matter, that’s the thing.
He loved me.
And he loved my mom.
And nothing I could learn about him now changes that. Any of it.
The driver drops us off in front of my stoop, and I grab my mother’s bag. The two of us head inside.
My mom offers to make me her famous corn chowder for dinner but, seeing that I have almost nothing in the refrigerator, agrees that ordering pizza might be best.
When the food comes, she asks if I want to watch an Evelyn Hugo movie, and I almost laugh before realizing she’s serious.
“I’ve had the itch to watch All for Us ever since you told me you were interviewing her,” my mom says.
“I don’t know,” I say, not wanting to have anything to do with Evelyn but also hoping that my mom will talk me into it, because I know that on some level, I’m not yet ready to truly say good-bye.
“C’mon,” she says. “For me.”
The movie starts, and I marvel at how dynamic Evelyn is on-screen, how it is impossible to look at anything but her when she’s there.
After a few minutes, I feel the pressing urge to get up and put on my shoes and knock down her door and talk her out of it.
But I repress it. I let her be. I respect her wishes.
I close my eyes and fall asleep to the sound of Evelyn’s voice.
I don’t know when exactly it happens—I suspect I made sense of things when I was dreaming—but when I wake up in the morning, I realize that even though it is too early yet, I will, one day, forgive her.
NEW YORK TRIBUNE
Evelyn Hugo, Legendary Film Siren, Has Died
BY PRIYA AMRIT
MARCH 26, 2017
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