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She opened the door and walked past me. I almost fell, so much of my weight had been resting on the very door she had just flung open. But I caught myself and followed her down the stairs.
“Yes, it is,” I said. “This is our life. And we’ve sacrificed so much for it, and you can’t give up on it now.”
“Yes, I can,” she said. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to live this way. I don’t want to drive an awful brown car to your home so no one knows I’m here. I don’t want to pretend I live by myself in Hollywood when I truly live here with you in this house. And I certainly don’t want to love a woman who would screw some singer just so the world doesn’t suspect she loves me.”
“You are twisting the truth.”
“You are a coward, and I can’t believe I ever thought any differently.”
“I did this for you!” I yelled.
We were at the foot of the stairs now. Celia had one hand on the door, the other on her suitcase. She was still in her bathing suit. Her hair was dripping.
“You didn’t do a goddamn thing for me,” she said, her chest turning red in splotches, her cheeks burning. “You did it for you. You did it because you can’t stand the idea of not being the most famous woman on the planet. You did it to protect yourself and your precious fans, who go to the theater over and over just to see if this time they’ll catch a half frame of your tits. That’s who you did it for.”
“It was for you, Celia. Do you think your family is going to stick by you if they find out the truth?”
She bristled when I said it, and I saw her turn the doorknob.
“You will lose everything you have if people find out what you are,” I said.
“What we are,” she said, turning toward me. “Don’t go around trying to pretend you’re different from me.”
“I am,” I said. “And you know that I am.”
“Bullshit.”
“I can love a man, Celia. I can go marry any man I want and have children and be happy. And we both know that wouldn’t come easily for you.”
Celia looked at me, her eyes narrow, her lips pursed. “You think you’re better than me? Is that what’s going on? You think I’m sick, and you think you’re just playing some kind of game?”
I grabbed her, immediately wanting to take back what I’d said. That wasn’t what I meant at all.
But she flung her arm away from me and said, “Don’t you ever touch me again.”
I let go of her. “If they find out about us, Celia, they’ll forgive me. I’ll marry another guy like Don, and they’ll forget I even knew you. I can survive this. But I’m not sure that you can. Because you’d have to either fall in love with a man or marry one you didn’t love. And I don’t think you’re capable of either option. I’m worried for you, Celia. More than I’m worried for me. I’m not sure your career would ever recover—if your life would recover—if I didn’t do something. So I did the only thing I knew. And it worked.”
“It didn’t work, Evelyn. You’re pregnant.”
“I will take care of it.”
Celia looked down at the floor and laughed at me. “You certainly know how to handle almost any situation, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, unsure why I was supposed to be insulted by that. “I do.”
“And yet when it comes to being a human, you seem to have absolutely no idea where to start.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“You are a whore, Evelyn. You let men screw you for fame. And that is why I’m leaving you.”
She opened the door to leave, not even looking back at me. I watched her walk out to my front stoop, down the stairs, and over to her car. I followed her out and stood, frozen, in the driveway.
She threw her bag into the passenger’s side of her car. And then she opened the door on the driver’s side and stood there.
“I loved you so much that I thought you were the meaning of my life,” Celia said, crying. “I thought that people were put on earth to find other people, and I was put here to find you. To find you and touch your skin and smell your breath and hear all your thoughts. But I don’t think that’s true anymore.” She wiped her eyes. “Because I don’t want to be meant for someone like you.”
The searing pain in my chest felt like water boiling. “You know what? You’re right. You aren’t meant for someone like me,” I said finally. “Because I’m willing to do what it takes to make a world for us, and you’re too chickenshit. You won’t make the hard decisions; you a
