The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

WOULD THE BABY BE RAISED by the both of you?” Celia asked. We were lying in bed, naked. My back was lined with sweat, my hairline damp. I rolled over onto my stomach and put my hand on Celia’s chest.

The movie she was doing next was making her a brunette. I found myself transfixed by the golden red of her hair, desperate to know that they would dye it back properly, that she would return to me looking exactly like herself.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course. It would be ours. We’d raise it together.”

“And where would I fit into all of this? Where would John?”

“Wherever you want to.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means that we would figure it out as we go.”

Celia considered my words and stared at the ceiling. “This is something you want?” Celia asked finally.

“Yes,” I told her. “Very badly.”

“Is it a problem for you that I have never . . . wanted that?” she asked.

“That you don’t want children?”

“Yes.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Is it a problem for you that I cannot . . . that I cannot give you that?” Her voice was starting to crack, and her lips were starting to quiver. When Celia was on-screen and needed to cry, she would squint her eyes and cover her face. But they were fake tears, generated out of nothing, for nothing. When she really cried, her face remained painfully still except for the corners of her lips and the water brimming in her eyes that stuck to her lashes.

“Honey,” I said, pulling her toward me. “Of course not.”

“I just . . . I want to give you everything you’ve ever wanted, and you want that, and I can’t give it to you.”

“Celia, no,” I said. “It’s not like that at all.”

“It’s not?”

“You have given me more than I ever thought I could have in one life.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m positive.”

She smiled. “You love me?” she said.

“Oh, my God, what an understatement,” I told her.

“You love me so much you can’t see straight?”

“I love you so much that when I sometimes get a look at all the crazy fan mail you get, I think, Well, sure, that makes sense. I want to collect her eyelashes, too.”

Celia laughed and ran her hand across my upper arm as she stared at the ceiling. “I want you to be happy,” she said when she finally looked at me.

“You should know that Harry and I will have to . . .”

“There’s no other way?” she asked. “I thought women were getting pregnant by men just using their sperm now.”

I nodded. “I think there are other ways,” I said. “But I’m not confident in the security of the situation. Or, rather, I don’t know how to ensure that no one finds out that’s how we did it.”

“You’re saying you’re going to have to make love to Harry,” Celia said.

“You are the person I’m in love with. You are the person I make love to. Harry and I are merely making a baby.”

Celia looked at me, reading my face. “You’re sure about that?”

“Absolutely positive.”

She looked back up at the ceiling. She didn’t talk for a while. I watched her eyes as they moved back and forth. I watched her breathing as it slowed. And then she turned to face me. “If it’s what you want . . . if you want a baby, then . . . have a baby. I will . . . we will figure it out. I will make it work. I can be an aunt. Aunt Celia. And I’ll find a way to be OK with it all.”

“And I’ll help you,” I said.

She laughed. “How do you suppose you’ll do that?”

“I can think of one way to make it all a bit more palatable for you,” I said, kissing her neck. She liked to be kissed right below and just behind her ear, where her earlobe hit her neck.

“Oh, you are too much,” she said. But she didn’t say anything else. She did not stop me as I moved my hand across her breasts, down her stomach, between her legs. She moaned and pulled me closer to her, and she ran her own hand down my body. She touched me while I touched her, soft at first and then harder, faster. “I love you,” she said, breathless.

“I love you,” I said back to her.

She looked into my eyes and made me feel rapture, and that night, in giving of herself, she gave me a baby.