The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

AS I WALK INTO THE subway tunnel and through the turnstiles, I keep wondering if I should turn back.

Should I knock on her door?

Should I call 911?

Should I stop her?

I can walk right back up the subway steps. I can put one foot in front of the other and make my way back to Evelyn’s and say “Don’t do this.”

I am capable of that.

I just have to decide if I want to do it. If I should do it. If it’s the right thing to do.

She didn’t pick me just because she felt she owed me. She picked me because of my right-to-die piece.

She picked me because I showed a unique understanding of the need for dignity in death.

She picked me because she believes I can see the need for mercy, even when what constitutes mercy is hard to swallow.

She picked me because she trusts me.

And I get the feeling she trusts me now.

My train comes thundering into the station. I need to get on it and meet my mother at the airport.

The doors open. The crowds flow out. The crowds flow in. A teenage boy with a backpack shoulders me out of the way. I do not set foot in the subway car.

The train dings. The doors close. The station empties.

And I stand there. Frozen.

If you think someone is going to take her own life, don’t you try to stop her?

Don’t you call the cops? Don’t you break down walls to find her?

The station starts to fill again, slowly. A mother with her toddler. A man with groceries. Three hipsters in flannel with beards. The crowd starts gathering faster than I can clock them now.

I need to get on the next train to see my mother and leave Evelyn behind me.

I need to turn around and go save Evelyn from herself.

I see the two soft lights on the track that signal the train approaching. I hear the roar.

My mom can get to my place on her own.

Evelyn has never needed saving from anyone.

The train rolls into the station. The doors open. The crowds flow out. And it is only once the doors close that I realize I have stepped inside the train.

Evelyn trusts me with her story.

Evelyn trusts me with her death.

And in my heart, I believe it would be a betrayal to stop her.

No matter how I may feel about Evelyn, I know she is in her right mind. I know she is OK. I know she has the right to die as she lived, entirely on her own terms, leaving nothing to fate or to chance but instead holding the power of it all in her own hands.

I grab the cold metal pole in front of me. I sway with the speed of the car. I change trains. I get onto the AirTrain. It is only once I am standing at the arrivals gate and see my mother waving at me that I realize I have been nearly catatonic for an hour.

There is simply too much.

My father, David, the book, Evelyn.

And the moment my mother is close enough to touch, I put my arms around her and sink into her shoulders. I cry.

The tears that come out of me feel as if they were decades in the making. It feels as if some old version of me is leaking out, letting go, saying good-bye in the effort of making room for a new me. One that is stronger and somehow both more cynical about people and also more optimistic about my place in the world.

“Oh, honey,” my mom says, dropping her bag off her shoulder, letting it fall wherever it falls, paying no attention to the people who need to get around us. She holds me tightly, with both arms rubbing my back.

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.