Summary
Evelyn continues her narrative, reflecting on how her marriage to Rex was an honest agreement that benefited them both. When she proposed the marriage, she negotiated that she was not necessarily going to sleep with him, and that he could sleep with other women as long as he was discreet. Since the agreement would be good for his career as well, Rex readily agreed. Rex and Evelyn married in November 1962, a few weeks before their film premiered. The film got a lot of public interest and positive reviews. Around December 1962, Celia was reported as being engaged to a famous football quarterback named John Braverman.
On the night of the Oscars, neither Evelyn nor Rex won, and that night, Evelyn felt sad and lonely without Celia. Evelyn almost had sex with Rex, but changed her mind. However, the next day, Harry called Evelyn about a deal she had been offered: Paramount Pictures was offering a three-picture deal to her and Rex North. The deal would make Evelyn extremely rich; it also meant that she and Rex would have to stay married for longer than anticipated. For the next few years, Rex and Evelyn lived contentedly in their fake marriage. However, he eventually told Evelyn that he had fallen in love with the actress Joy Nathan, and wanted to marry her. Evelyn was happy for Rex, but immediately started to think about how to dissolve their marriage without impacting their careers and upcoming movie. Evelyn's initial plans were foiled because Joy was pregnant, so the marriage had to end quickly, and it was going to be obvious that Joy and Rex had been having an affair.
Evelyn quickly came up with a new plan to explain the end of the marriage. She proposed the cover story of having an affair with Harry Cameron, at the same time as Rex was having an affair with Joy. That would ensure neither party looked bad, and also drum up interest in their forthcoming film. When she approached Harry about the plan, Harry confided that he was in a secret relationship with John Braverman (Celia's husband). Nonetheless, he was willing to go along. Evelyn staged an incident where paparazzi "caught" her and Harry kissing in a car. Once the news of their affair broke, Evelyn and Rex divorced without any negative impact on their careers. Harry and Evelyn became engaged; they had privately spoken about possibly starting a family together.
At the 1967 Academy Awards, Evelyn was nominated for a Best Actress role, as was Celia. The ceremony was the first time the two women had been in the same room for 5 years. Neither of them won, and they ran into each other in the washroom afterwards. They talked about how much they both missed one another, and ended up having sex in the washroom, even though it was very risky. Their chemistry and the risk they would take confirmed that they wanted to get back together. A few months later, Evelyn married Harry. The two of them moved to New York, and bought an apartment very close to where Celia and John lived. The four of them spent almost all of their time together, and the two apparently heterosexual marriages allowed the two same-sex couples to spend time openly and safely together. When the Stonewall Riots occurred in 1969, they all reflected on the increased activism of LGTBQ people fighting for the right to be themselves. Sometimes Celia and Evelyn fought because Celia couldn't fully understand Evelyn's identity as a bisexual woman, or her determination to hide their relationship. Celia also continued to build a successful career (she won a second Oscar in 1970), while Evelyn increasingly worried about what would happen to her as she grew older and less physically attractive.
When Evelyn turned 36, she had been happily married to Harry for almost seven years. She and Harry talked about starting a family, and agreed that they would like to have a biological child together. Evelyn raised the subject with Celia, who agreed, even though she disliked the idea of Harry and Evelyn having sex. In 1975, Evelyn gave birth to her daughter, Connor Cameron. Caring for their daughter brought Evelyn and Harry even closer together.
To Evelyn's surprise, Celia suggested that Evelyn take a part in Max Girard's new movie, Three AM, as her first role after becoming a mother. Evelyn agreed, because she wanted to ensure she did not lose her reputation and currency as a bombshell. However, she learned that she would be playing opposite Don Adler. Evelyn was not intimated by Don anymore; his career was not doing well, and she was so happy in her new life that she felt she had nothing to fear. Don and Evelyn met before filming started; he apologized, and promised to treat her respectfully. As the movie filmed, Evelyn also grew increasingly excited about the quality of what they were creating. Close to the end of filming, Max asked Evelyn to film a very graphic sex scene with Don; she agreed, and chose not to mention this scene to Celia. However, after the scene wrapped, Evelyn immediately felt guilty. She went home and told Celia that she had been asked to do the scene; Celia said she could understand the rationale, but begged Evelyn not to do it. Evelyn was forced to confess that she had already filmed the scene.
Celia and Evelyn broke up again; Celia filed for divorce from John, and moved back to Los Angeles. Evelyn breaks off her narrative, and she and Monique speak about how these choices impacted her. Evelyn explains that she did not receive critical acclaim for the film because people were uncomfortable with the raw and vulnerable depiction of her sexuality. She also explained that her need to maintain her celebrity and build her career drew a wedge between her and Celia.
Analysis
Evelyn's marriages to Rex North and then to Harry Cameron provide juxtaposition to her marriages with Don and Mick, and show her maturation as a character. Evelyn's marriage to Don showed that, as a young woman, she was naive and not a good judge of character. Her marriage to Mick reflected her increased ability to read situations, but was also an example of risky short-term thinking (the Las Vegas setting for that marriage reflects how it was a gamble on which Evelyn both won and lost - she saved her reputation, but lost Celia). In her next two marriages, Evelyn chooses more wisely and acts with greater integrity. She doesn't love Rex, but she does like and respect him, and she treats him with trust and respect. As a result, Rex and Evelyn's marriage is companionable and mutually beneficial. It is fake in the sense that it is not based on romantic feelings, and the two of them never have sex, but they are honest with each other and support one another. Likewise, Evelyn's marriage to Harry gives her a stable and enduring domestic life, and eventually the ability to start a family. These marriages are important because they refuse a binary in which "authentic" relationships are good, and "fake" relationships are bad; Evelyn's marriages to Rex and Harry meet her needs, advance her goals, and provide her with a certain kind of happiness, even if they are unconventional in many ways.
Nonetheless, Evelyn's heart remains with Celia, and their reunion after five years apart reflects the depth of their love for one another. However, a period of happiness between them ends in another breakup after Evelyn betrays Celia a second time. The tumultuous relationship between Evelyn and Celia is important because it allows for nuanced representation of a queer relationship: neither Evelyn nor Celia is perfect, and their relationship has challenges. In fact, the on-again, off-again nature of their relationship is where the true drama of the plot resides; despite the narrative of Monique's biography seemingly focusing on Evelyn's marriages, the drama and interest becomes about whether or not Evelyn and Celia can make their relationship work. This dynamic further enhances the split between surface and reality in Evelyn's life; anyone looking at the mere facts of her biography would say that she had a tumultuous love life, but they would fail to understand the real reason why.
This dynamic also unsettles social and literary expectations in which heterosexual relationships become engines for plot, and often contrast with the stability of friendships. Exploring the trope of intimate (thought not necessarily sexual) relationships between women in Victorian literature, Sharon Marcus writes that, "Marriage plots depend on the constantly altering relationships between a heroine and her suitors and on the more or less stable relationship between the heroine and a female friend" (79). Jenkins Reid's novel inverts this structure, with the relationship between Celia and Evelyn becoming the site of volatility and change, while it is a male friend (Harry Cameron) who creates an enduring and stabilizing influence.
This inversion and destabilization of the primacy of the heterosexual marriage plot is deepened during the lengthy period in which Evelyn and Celia effectively live as a married couple, under the cover of both being married to men (who are also in a relationship with one another). This time might represent one of the happiest periods of Evelyn's life; moving to New York during this time reflects how she distances herself from her earlier life, and from the insistent pressure of maintaining her Hollywood star status. It also offers a way for Evelyn to come full circle; during her time in Hollywood, Evelyn was determined to completely eliminate her origins and past, but living in New York, she can reconcile who she was with the woman she has become. By showing Celia around the neighborhood she grew up in, for example, Evelyn shows greater maturity and vulnerability than she has displayed in previous relationships.
The time spent as a foursome is perhaps one of the novel's most powerful arguments for rethinking and challenging historical expectations of marriage as a monogamous, heterosexual institution between two people. While Harry and John, and Evelyn and Celia, are sexually exclusive with one another, they get additional love and companionship from the entire group dynamic. This arrangement also allows Evelyn and Harry to become parents together, without being romantic partners. This arrangement represents a radical reimagining of marriage and family, particularly at a time when the legal recognition of same sex marriage was decades away. Anthropologist Kath Weston has written about how members of the queer community have reimagined and reinvented family structures in various ways, responding to the positioning of "gay people outside both law and nature [which serves to create] exclusion from the world of kinship" (4).
Given that the novel's plot rarely references specific historical events, it is notable that Jenkins Reid describes Evelyn and her closest circle responding to the news of the Stonewall Riots (1969). The riots were a series of protests by the gay community in response to police raids on a well-known gay bar in Greenwich Village; they generated a new and heightened sense of visibility for members of the LGTBQ community in America, and opened the door to subsequent demands for justice and equality. Evelyn, John, Celia, and Harry debate what role they can play in this burgeoning movement and ultimately decide to maintain their closeted status while quietly donating large sums of money. This decision represents another example of ethical ambiguity in Evelyn's actions, as it could be debated whether she acted in the best interest of the movement, or her own.
The progression of Evelyn's narrative also allows her to discuss her experiences with aging and motherhood, and how these experiences threatened her status as a sex symbol (and thus, her career). Even as one of the most beautiful and desired women in the world, Evelyn does not feel secure that she will be able to maintain this status. This insecurity is heightened by Celia taking on a more stereotypically masculine role of wanting Evelyn to maintain her desirability and allure. Even as a fellow woman, whom some might expect to be more sympathetic, Celia has expectations of who she wants Evelyn to be.
