han 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.