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“You’ve never been a biographer before, but you are one starting now.”
I nod my head. “I got it.”
“Good,” Evelyn says, relaxing into the sofa. “So where do you want to begin?”
I grab my notebook and look at the scribbled words I’ve covered the last few pages with. There are dates and film titles, references to classic images of her, rumors with question marks after them. And then, in big letters that I went over and over with my pen, darkening each letter until I changed the texture of the page, I’ve written, “Who was the love of Evelyn’s life???”
That’s the big question. That’s the hook of this book.
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Seven husbands.
Which one did she love the best? Which one was the real one?
As both a journalist and a consumer, that’s what I want to know. It won’t be where the book begins, but maybe that is where she and I should begin. I want to know, going into these marriages, which is the one that matters the most.
I look up at Evelyn to see her sitting up, ready for me.
“Who was the love of your life? Was it Harry Cameron?”
Evelyn thinks and then answers slowly. “Not in the way you mean, no.”
“In what way, then?”
“Harry was my greatest friend. He invented me. He was the person who loved me the most unconditionally. The person I loved the most purely, I think. Other than my daughter. But no, he was not the love of my life.”
“Why not?”
“Because that was someone else.”
“OK, who was the love of your life, then?”
Evelyn nods, as if this is the question she has been expecting, as if the situation is unfolding exactly as she knew it would. But then she shakes her head again. “You know what?” she says, standing up. “It’s getting late, isn’t it?”
I look at my watch. It’s midafternoon. “Is it?”
“I think it is,” she says, and she walks toward me, toward the door.
“All right,” I say, standing up to meet her.
Evelyn puts her arm around me and leads me out into the hallway. “Let’s pick up again on Monday. Would that be OK?”
“Uh . . . sure. Evelyn, did I say something to offend you?”
Evelyn leads me down the stairs. “Not at all,” she says, waving my fears aside. “Not at all.”
There is a tension that I can’t quite put my finger on. Evelyn walks with me until we hit the foyer. She opens the closet. I reach in and grab my coat.
“Back here?” Evelyn says. “Monday morning? What do you say we start around ten?”
“OK,” I say, putting my thick coat around my shoulders. “If that’s what you’d like.”
Evelyn nods. She looks past me for a moment, over my shoulder, but appearing not to actually be looking at anything in particular. Then she opens her mouth. “I’ve spent a very long time learning how to . . . spin the truth,” she says. “It’s hard to undo that wiring. I’ve gotten too good at it, I think. Just now, I wasn’t exactly sure how to tell the truth. I don’t have very much practice in it. It feels antithetical to my very survival. But I’ll get there.”
I nod, unsure how to respond. “So . . . Monday?”
“Monday,” Evelyn says with a long blink and a nod. “I’ll be ready then.”
