“I know that.”
“But you’ve always been legitimate.”
“I know that now, too,” I told her.
“I thought you would call me after you won the Oscar. I thought maybe you would want to show me, you’d want to shove it in my face.”
“Did you listen to my speech?”
“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.”