Maybe if I was getting roles that excited me, maybe if I still felt I had something to prove, I don’t know, maybe I would have reacted differently.
There are so many women who continue to do incredible work well into their eighties or nineties. Celia was like that. She could have turned in riveting performance after riveting performance forever, because she was always consumed by the work.
But my heart wasn’t in it. My heart was never in the craft of acting, only in the proving. Proving my power, proving my worth, proving my talent.
I’d proved it all.
“That’s fine,” Harry said. “You don’t have to act anymore.”
“But if I’m not acting, why would I live in Los Angeles? I want to live somewhere I can be free, where no one will pay attention to me. Do you remember when you were little, and whether it was on your block or a few blocks down, there was inevitably a pair of older ladies who lived together as roommates, and no one asked any questions because nobody cared? I want to be one of those ladies. I can’t do that here.”
“You can’t do that anywhere,” Harry said. “That’s the price you pay for who you are.”
“I don’t accept that. I think it’s very possible for me to do that.”
“Well, I don’t want to do that. So what I’m proposing is that you and I remarry. And Celia marries my friend.”
“We can talk about it later,” I said, standing up and taking my toiletry bag to the bathroom.
“Evelyn, you don’t get to decide what this family does unilaterally.”
“Who said anything about unilaterally? All I’m saying is that I want to talk about it later. There are a number of options here. We can go to Europe, we can move here, we can stay in New York.”
Harry shook his head. “He can’t move to New York.”
I sighed, losing my patience. “All the more reason for us to discuss this later.”
Harry stood up, as if he was about to give me a piece of his mind. But then he calmed down. “You’re right,” he said. “We can discuss it later.”
He came over to me as I was packing my soap and makeup. He took my arm and kissed my temple.
“You’ll pick me up tonight?” he said. “At my place? We’ll have the whole trip to the airport and the flight to discuss it more. We can throw back a couple of Bloody Marys on the plane.”
“We will figure this out,” I told him. “You know that, right? I’m never going to do anything without you. You’re my best friend. My family.”
“I know,” he said. “And you’re mine. I never thought I could love someone after John. But this guy . . . Evelyn, I’m falling in love with him. And to know that I could love, that I can . . .”
“I know,” I said, grabbing his hand and squeezing it. “I know. I promise I’ll do whatever I can. I promise you we will figure this out.”
“OK,” Harry said, and then he squeezed my hand back and walked out the door. “We will figure this out.”
* * *
MY DRIVER, WHO introduced himself as Nick as I got into the back of the car, picked me up at around nine in the evening.
“To the airport?” Nick said.
“Actually, we’re going to make a stop on the Westside first,” I said, giving him the address of the home where Harry was staying.
As we made our way across town, through the seedy parts of Hollywood, over the Sunset Strip, I found myself depressed about how unseemly Los Angeles had gotten since I’d left. It was similar to Manhattan in that regard. The decades had not been good to it. Harry was talking about raising Connor here, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we needed to leave both big cities for good.
As we were stopped at a red light close to Harry’s rented home, Nick turned around briefly and smiled at me. He had a square jaw and a crew cut. I could tell he had probably bedded a number of women based on his smile alone.
“I’m an actor,” he said. “Just like you.”
I smiled politely. “Nice work if you can get it.”
He nodded. “Got an agent this week,” he said as we started moving again. “I feel like I’m really on my way. But, you know, if we get to the airport with time to spare, I’d be interested in any tips you have for somebody starting out.”