Everybody Rise (23 page)

Mrs. Faber's defense silenced the naysayers, even Agathe.

The issue apparently decided on, Agathe dismissed the meeting, and the group wandered in to the tea. Each of the debs was having her photograph taken, and each wore a fussy sweater and lacy skirt, with carefully styled and curled hair.

Then there was a clatter, and Phoebe, Camilla's younger sister, jumped into the room, followed by a girl who looked just like Margaret Faber: her daughter, Wythe Van Rensselaer. Phoebe stomped her foot and threw up her arms in a forties-movie-star pose. Her top was a wrinkled white oxford, and she wore ripped jeans and Keds, one with pink laces, one with chartreuse.

“Do the Phoebe, man, that's what they say on the runways,” said Wythe, and Phoebe popped her hip to the side and strutted toward Camilla.

“Mom's finally free?” Phoebe asked loudly. “I feel like this is her thing and I'm just standing there looking pretty. And, Milla, the other girl from Spence who's getting her picture taken now is, like, a subzero loser. Jennifer. Ugh. I have no idea what she's doing here.”

Camilla tapped her sister's wrist. “Hello. You're not standing there looking pretty. Pull your shoulders back. You look like a hunchback.”

Camilla herself was in a particularly odd outfit given that this was an afternoon tea, wearing a dress made of tweed and black leather, and spiked boots with a distinctly dominatrix air about them. Evelyn, though, was glad she had gone with bouclé: the CEO can swear and have affairs, but the aspirational junior executive has to show up to meetings on time and be polite.

“They're total randos, Milla. I don't know why Mom is making me do this with all these girls,” Phoebe said.

“Because Ari wants you to. Evelyn! Come meet my pest of a sister and her BFF. Phoebe, Wythe, this is my friend Evelyn.”

After Evelyn shook the girls' hands, the Lausanne woman cast a worried look toward the library, where Jennifer was sitting for her photograph, and tapped Evelyn on the shoulder. “It is Evelyn, yes? Can you please go make sure these photographs are going all right, the girls are appropriate?”

Evelyn walked into the other room, where Jennifer's mother, a brunette with thyroid-bulged eyes and curling-iron ringlets that matched her daughter's, was trying to wrest the camera from the photographer to review the photos. “She has to get her dress made because she's too petite,” the mother said.

“I'm a double zero,” the girl agreed.

The photographer seized the camera back and aimed it at the girl. “So it's Jennifer? Tell me about what you like to do when you're not at Spence.”

“I hardly have time not to be at school,” Jennifer said. “I'm taking four APs and doing fencing.”

“She just won a painting prize, the Courbet Award. Her teacher said she'd never heard of anyone actually winning the prize in all the years she'd been submitting Spence girls,” her mother said.

“Okay. Relax the lips. You must be off to college, right?” the photographer asked.

Her mother fielded this one, too. “Whitman. In Washington. It's essentially the Williams of Washington.”

“Have you always known you'd be a deb?” the photographer asked, moving her tripod over a few inches.

“I—”

“When she was asked, which was just after she sent in her Whitman acceptance, in December, Jennifer said to me, ‘Do women still do debuts? It's so old-fashioned.' I said to her, ‘It tells people who you are. If you do it, for the rest of your life, you can always say, ‘I was a debutante.' It was her decision, entirely,” her mother said.

“You were one, too?” the photographer asked.

“I could have been.” The mother took notice of Evelyn at this point, and Evelyn evaluated her quickly. Just behind her was another painting Evelyn remembered from before, an abstract in angry daubs of black and blue, tinged with malice. No, this mother could not have been. This mother was a product of a suburb in New Jersey, who had probably not known that debutantes still existed until she made it into the city and pushed her stage-managed daughter to add one more credit to her social résumé. Jennifer's very presence here cheapened the whole ball, made it something that the Infirmary and Assembly attendees could frown upon.

“Some people feel, maybe, put off by it, but that's just because they're not part of it,” Jennifer said. “It kind of represents being accepted into society. My dress—it's so funny, everyone thinks it's a wedding dress, and I'm, like, I'm seventeen—is just classic. Sweetheart neckline with a full skirt. Mom, can you touch up my lipstick, please?”

“It's in my purse in the other room. I'll be right back,” said the mother, hurrying past Evelyn.

“I'll take a break, too,” the photographer said, and headed out another door.

Jennifer pinched her cheeks.

“Mom, can you touch up my lipstick, please?” Evelyn heard in a mocking voice—Phoebe—so expertly calibrated that even Evelyn could hardly hear it, though Phoebe was just inches away from her. Phoebe picked up a fake pearl necklace from a pile of accessories that sat next to the photographer and threw it at Wythe, who caught it with one hand. “Wythe! Style me,” Phoebe commanded, and Wythe looped the necklace three times around Phoebe's neck.

The other debs crowded in behind them, wanting to figure out the rules of engagement.

“Well? Jennifer? How's your photograph going?” Phoebe said.

“Good,” said Jennifer, lifting her nose.

“I don't know. I think you need something. A beehive. With some glasses, maybe,” Wythe said.

“A beehive,” Phoebe mused. “Very fifties housewife. I think it would look great, Jenny–Jen–Jenno.”

“My mom did my hair,” Jennifer said.

“Oh, your mom did your hair? I didn't know. Wythe, her mom did her hair.”

“Well, then,” Wythe said. “Even more reason to change it.”

Jennifer, still in the chair, smiled hesitantly and tugged at one of her ringlets. She glanced at Evelyn, and Evelyn could hear the breathing of the other debs around her, watching to see how far this would go. Evelyn was supposed to be the adult here. She should step in.

“Evelyn! Will you tell Jennifer she needs a hair makeover?” Phoebe said.

As Evelyn looked at the girl with her overdone curls, her overdone Jersey mother waiting somewhere, she felt a tremolo of power rise and vibrate, and then her hand shot out and grabbed a comb from the accessories table. “I think a beehive would look great,” Evelyn said, surprised by how tart and good the words felt on her tongue.

Wythe shouted “Hooray!” as Phoebe chanted “Go, Jennifer! Beehive! Beehive!”

Evelyn took a step closer to Jennifer, wielding the comb like a knife. She wanted to not just comb out the curls but to yank the comb through the girl's hair, to see how it felt to be the high-school queen that everyone feared.

“Beehive! Beehive!” Wythe chanted as Phoebe tossed faux pearls into the air in ecstasy.

Evelyn was just reaching out to ensnare Jennifer's limp, sad curls when the Lausanne woman, passing by the room, caught part of the exchange. “What's happening, girls? Jennifer, you should not fuss with your hair. And put all those necklaces back. Really, can't you girls follow simple instructions? Did I not tell you to listen to Evelyn?” She gave Evelyn a sympathetic smile.

Jennifer shook her head mutely and dashed out of the room, her curls shaking. Evelyn watched her go and now the comb in her hand felt ridiculous—what was she doing, harassing a teenager? Then she felt a squeeze on her arm from Phoebe, and looked back to see the other debs staring at her with awe.

“Love Evelyn,” Phoebe said to Camilla, who had just cut a path through the crowd of debs to join them. “But I don't even want to do this ball. My dress is kind of fan-fucking-tastic, though. I got it at a vintage shop for twenty dollars. I think it was originally a slip.”

“Jennifer's,” Evelyn said, mimicking the girl's mincing voice, “has a sweetheart neckline with a full skirt.” Phoebe and Wythe laughed, and the debs in the background did, too. Even Camilla smirked.

“Ugh. I'm going to ask the band to play ‘Hot Legs' when I do my curtsy,” Phoebe said.

Camilla let out a lengthy sigh. “Can you and Wythe stop this alt-whatever-it-is you're doing? Please? Just get normal dresses and invite normal escorts and we can all get through this in one piece. Evelyn?”

“Camilla's right,” Evelyn said. “At my deb ball there was a girl in Doc Martens, and it just made her look nuts.”

The younger girls hooted. “Doc Martens! How old are you?”

“Doc Martens. Oh, my God, the grunge era just kept going,” said Camilla.

“Her mother almost fainted when she lifted her dress to curtsy.” The strange thing was, Evelyn could picture this almost as if she did remember it.

“Where did you deb?” Phoebe asked.

“Oh, in Maryland, where I'm from. The Bachelors' Cotillion.”

“Bachelors',” Camilla repeated. “I can't believe that about the Doc Martens.”

“Lucky it wasn't flannel.”

Wythe leaned in, examining Evelyn's gray pearl-drop earrings; Evelyn had put the molarlike pearl studs in a box a month earlier and hadn't brought them out since. “Those are fierce,” Wythe said, snapping her fingers in a
Z
formation. “Phoebs, do you have a cig?”

Phoebe and Wythe were barreling toward the door, though the tea was still in full swing, when Souse finally resurfaced. “Oh,
Mother
, thanks for giving me the opportunity to become a debutante and fulfill your every wish,” Evelyn heard Phoebe saying to Souse in a singsong tone.

“Oh,
Phoebe
,” Souse said back. “Do you have money for a cab?”

Phoebe, now needy, smiled sheepishly. Souse delivered $20, then, after Phoebe raised her eyebrows, another $20 into her hand.

As the girls left, Souse turned to Evelyn and motioned a waiter for two champagnes.

“Hello, again. I'm exhausted. Come, sit. My two minutes with my daughter, isn't it modern? Phoebe's upset her father, Fritz, is not coming. What am I supposed to do, dance with two men at once? Ari gave quite a bit of money to the organization, so he staked his claim to this. Fritz will do the Assembly. We must take turns. Now, sit, Evelyn.” Souse plucked a crustless sandwich from a tray. “One of the most civilized things I do is have teatime daily, so this is my indulgence for this afternoon. How badly can a day go when you have a finger sandwich in the middle of it?”

“Our housekeeper always made really good cucumber ones, with just the littlest bit of butter,” Evelyn said. They hadn't hired Valeriya until a few years ago, and the only food Evelyn had seen her produce was the hard rolls she brought from home and occasionally forgot in the Beegans' cupboard.

The demonstration of caste solidarity seemed to work, though, as Souse said, “So I understand you're from Baltimore.”

“My mother's family is, yes.”

“Have they been there a long time?”

This was a line of questioning that would have unnerved Evelyn just a few months earlier. Evelyn, however, had been reading, and she had been practicing. The mistruths skipped off her tongue. She told of the shipping business, the side-by-side Tudors for her maiden great-aunts in Roland Park, the tales she grew up with of Baltimore before automobiles, the family connection to Johns Hopkins, the summer place on the Eastern Shore that they decided to make their full-time residence—everything, she thought, that Souse would need to pinpoint her as old money.

“How lovely. I barely know Baltimore, but it's so nice that it has such tradition,” Souse said when she was finished. “And Camilla tells me you have a boyfriend.”

“I do, yes. Scot.”

“Who is he?”

“Ah, he works in finance. Morgan Stanley's media group. He works with David Greenbaum.”

“Finance. You girls these days are such traditionalists. My generation, we were all rebels, and the girls these days, well, it's the Eisenhower fifties, isn't it? Then there's Ari. Real estate. Truly. I met Ari on a rainy day on Madison, isn't that terrible? At a bar, if you can believe that. He got drunk quite fast, because, as it turns out, he only has one kidney. He's really very good to the girls.”

“I'd imagine. I can tell Camilla has a lot of respect for him.”

“Can you? I wouldn't know it. Tell me, Evelyn, because Camilla certainly won't, is she bringing anyone to the ball? A date, I mean?”

“She was thinking of bringing Nick Geary, just as a friend, though. I think Camilla's happy being on her own right now, to be honest. It's not for lack of interest on the men's part.”

“Oh, I know, I know. Shouldn't she be dating, though? I don't know. I don't understand how the young people do it these days. Everyone's so busy. Like Jaime de Cardenas, do you know him?”

Evelyn sat up. “We've met once or twice. He seems like a terrific fellow.”

“He is. And a marvelous shot.”

“Game?”

“Ducks, primarily. It's really something. He comes up to Sachem when he can, and it's fun for everyone. Though it's been ages. Young people these days. Everyone's overtaxed. I meant to tell you, Camilla's so glad to have your father as her guest at the Luminaries dinner.”

The Luminaries dinner, with its $25,000 price tag, which Evelyn hoped Camilla had forgotten about. She was about to equivocate when she realized that if Souse was glad to have her father attend the dinner, Camilla must not have told Souse about the grand jury investigation, and that really didn't matter, not as long as everyone believed in Evelyn's august lineage.

“My father is just thrilled to be going,” Evelyn said.

“His gift is quite generous. Truly. Oh, dear, Push is flapping her wings at me. I still haven't found silent auction items and must go atone. I'm glad we got to talk. Why hadn't we met before?”