Everybody Rise (3 page)

The four years since her Davidson graduation had gone by at once too slowly and too quickly, and Evelyn found herself in her mid-twenties without the life she had expected to have. Girls her age were either forging ahead in their careers or in serious relationships that would soon produce rings and engagement parties. Her mother had offered to pay for Evelyn to freeze her eggs, and she hadn't turned down the offer right away. It wasn't so much that she wanted a husband and babies. But it would be nice to have a place for once, to have people look at her and think she was interesting and worth talking to, not to have them politely fumble for details about her life and instantly forget her. (Murray Hill, right? No, the Upper East Side. Ah, and Bucknell? No, Davidson.)

People Like Us could be her chance, even if her parents didn't see it that way. Her father said that that group hardly needed another way to cut itself off from everyone else. And her mother's response when Evelyn had told her about it was, “So rather than bothering to get to know the interesting social set in New York, you're now acting as a sort of paid concierge to them? This is why we sent you to Sheffield?”

She conceded she'd long been intimidated by the group of people she was now supposed to recruit. Earlier at the game, she had scouted out some of them, wondering if this social set would get its comeuppance as time went on, the guys devolving into thick-stomached drinkers, the girls becoming haggard. That would prove that her mother hadn't been right about the appeal of this group. Yet the girls looked great, easy and free with just the tiniest hint of private-beach tan, enamel Hermès bracelets clinking on their wrists, and the guys looked handsome and self-assured, bankers and lawyers and politicians-in-training. Eavesdropping, she'd overheard them dissecting an etiquette violation at a San Francisco private club and had initially backed away, worried they would pass her over and make her feel like nothing. Given her new job, though, she forced herself to talk to a couple of them whom she knew through Preston, and she'd managed to line up a few candidates for PLU. Evelyn was determined to make this work, to prove to her parents and to the people who'd overlooked her that she was someone. The city thought she wasn't going to make it. The city was wrong.

Preston had been sidelined by a friend of his father's, and Evelyn and Charlotte started heading toward the stadium. Another cheer started, and the girls did their accompanying hand motions in unison:

When - we fight - we fight - with literary

Tropes - and themes - and leit - motifs because we

Are - the school - that's known - for melancholy

Wri - ter types - and po - et laureates and

If - lacrosse - is not - our forte then we

Urge - the oth - er team - to try composing

I- ambic - penta - meters, allusions,

Ripostes, similes

And puns!

Close to the end of the cheer, the Sheffield side lost the rhythm, but they screamed out “puns” in unison, as though it were the ultimate insult to the other team.

Barbara, taking up half a row of seats with a giant stadium blanket, waggled her fingers at Charlotte and Evelyn. Sheffield got the ball and the crowd started shouting as Evelyn squeezed in.

“Your earring looks smudged,” Barbara said.

“Mother, I am going to throw the earring into this crowd if you do not stop harping on it,” Evelyn said as she heard a snort from Charlotte.

Barbara rearranged herself on the blanket, and the crowd howled a mass downward arpeggio when Enfield took the ball back.

It's all right, it's okay, you're gonna work for us someday,
rose the cheer from the Sheffield side.

 

CHAPTER TWO

Next Stop, Lake James

Evelyn looked at her bed, strewn with dresses, sweaters, jeans, boots, sandals, and Patagonias, and tried once again to narrow down what she'd need for an Adirondack weekend.

She flipped open her ringing cell phone. “Hi, Mom,” she said.

“Are you bringing the Lilly?” Barbara said.

“Honestly, Mother, you're calling me to see what I'm packing? I've been to Preston's place, remember? You haven't.”

“You'll never regret bringing a Lilly Pulitzer dress to a summer weekend,” Barbara said firmly from the other end of the line.

Evelyn was headed to Preston's summer house in Lake James, in the Adirondacks, for Memorial Day, with the goal of recruiting more People Like Us members. Upon starting the job at People Like Us, Evelyn had waited a few days for the co-CEOs, Arun and Jin-ho, to tell her what the membership goals were and how she was supposed to achieve them—go to Spence School pickup with a sign-up sheet? They hadn't, though. People Like Us was a true start-up: an unrefurbished office in Chelsea, folding tables serving as desks, beige IBMs salvaged from some previous start-up.

The idea for the site, and the funding, came from a Swiss septuagenarian who was a Habsburg and wanted to connect with people of his ilk as he traveled to Dubai or the Maldives. He had hired Arun and Jin-ho, Stanford business school grads, and had left the rest up to them. They, in turn, seemed to be leaving the membership strategy completely up to Evelyn.

Evelyn started by studying the website New York Appointment Book and the social pages of the
Times
, trying to get a feel for who was who in society and who People Like Us might want as its American members. Her notion was that PLU should start with top-tier members to create buzz and exclusivity.

At the top of Evelyn's list was Camilla Rutherford. Evelyn had seen Camilla in person only once, when Evelyn was at the bar at Picholine, passing time with an overpriced Old Speckled Hen until
Barbara Cook's Broadway!
at the Vivian Beaumont started. The maître d' was on the phone with someone for a good twenty minutes, giving the person turn-by-turn directions from Chelsea. When Camilla walked in, the waiters hushed as though Madonna had arrived, and the maître d' apologized for having given such unclear directions. Evelyn, who had overheard the whole thing, thought they were perfectly clear and wondered why the man was so contrite. Then she glanced at Camilla, and just the fact of the girl's confidence, not to mention her beautiful hair and perfectly pressed silk blouse, made Evelyn feel wrinkled, her hair greasy, her toenails ratty.

Babs was well aware of Camilla, and had pushed her as a friend even when Evelyn was at Sheffield. Evelyn had heard of her at Sheffield, of course. Camilla-from-St. Paul's was a conversation topic whenever Preston's New York set returned from vacations. Camilla was now an associate director of special events for
Vogue
, a job reserved for the beautiful and the chic, women who added luster to parties simply by showing up. On Appointment Book, the one social site that socialites actually read, Camilla emerged as the clear center of Young New York. In a tiered dress the color of milky coffee, Camilla Rutherford lounging on a bench at the Met for its Egyptian-wing party. At the Young Collectors Council for the Guggenheim, in a black silk blouse and zigzag skirt, holding champagne. In a flamenco-looking getup that Evelyn would never have been able to pull off at For Whom the Belles Toll, a Spanish Civil War–themed fund-raiser for the New York Public Library. Identifying Camilla as a prospect was easy. Signing her up as one was the challenge.

That's when Evelyn remembered that Camilla had a camp in Lake James, where Preston had his summer place, and she'd known what to do. The way to attract these people was on their literal turf—not on city streets, where any huckster or green-energy evangelist with a clipboard could approach them, but at their hard-to-get-to summer homes where Evelyn's very presence would show she belonged. She'd e-mailed Preston to see if he was spending Memorial Day at Shuh-shuh-gah, his Lake James camp, and he'd e-mailed back, “Comme d'habitude.”

“Can I crash?” she'd replied, and his response was a simple, “Oui.” Things with old friends were so nicely simple.

Earlier in the week, she'd done a membership-strategy presentation about her idea, showing Arun and Jin-ho pictures of the Belles Toll event and a few others. “Look at how the people are interacting,” she'd said. “Why has anyone come to this fund-raiser, other than a love of the library? It's because their friends asked them. ‘Buy a table.' ‘Give at the Supporters level.' That's how this world works. There are people at the center, and they are the influencers. They set the trends. They're the ones who are dictating what parties to go to. Where to vacation. What sites someone might want to sign up for,” she said. “Focusing on numbers instead of quality is a surefire way to lose any credibility we have with this group. So. We'll take a page from their own playbook. It's going to be one-on-one recruitment, one-on-one appeals, just like we're putting together a library fund-raiser. A quiet sell.” She'd ordered cards for People Like Us, nice card stock, and handed them out to the staff members who were headed to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard and the Hamptons and Aspen for Memorial Day to give to the right sorts. Arun and Jin-ho had been impressed.

Barbara was still jabbering away, and Evelyn walked to her window, where she swiped her finger across the thick grime-dust that had accumulated overnight. “I hadn't seen Preston in so long before Sheffield-Enfield. Whatever happened with the two of you?” Barbara said.

“Nothing happened. He was in London for, what, three years? So I barely saw him.”

“His brother, too,” Barbara was saying. “He was a nice young man. Sheffield turns them out well.”

“Bing went to med school in the Virgin Islands because he couldn't get in anywhere in the States. And he has, like, an eight-year-old.”

“Well. Don't rule out men who've been married. Divorced men would be very grateful to have someone young and pretty on their arm.”

“Mother, there is an end button on this phone, and I am not afraid to use it.” Evelyn jammed the phone between her shoulder and ear and began tossing clothes in her duffel. Her train was leaving soon.

“I always thought you and Preston would get married,” Barbara continued. “His manners are lovely and he's so good at tennis. A man like that would make life easy, Evelyn. Think of how easy it would be to entertain, or go out to parties, with a husband like that. Who actually enjoys social interaction and always has such funny things to say. Preston's always the belle of the ball. The beau of the ball, I suppose.”

Evelyn folded a thick wool sweater. She had considered it, too—the simple math of her and Preston marrying, leading their lives like a figure eight, doing their own activities during the day, coming together at night for parties and dinners, separating again afterward, presumably taking lovers on the side. She always screened her life-with-Preston scenes in black and white, accessorized with tiny round martini glasses and long cigarette holders. What she could not imagine was a night alone in the same house—without even getting to the mechanics around avoiding sleeping together, she shuddered at the awful intimacy of his wet toothbrush.

“What is your plan for the summer, Evelyn?”

“Lake James, at the moment.” She knew her mother was asking about the rest of the summer. Some marketing people at her former employer, the textbook publisher, had gone in on a summer share on the Jersey Shore, but even if Evelyn had had the money for that, she didn't know what to say to those people, who made frat-boy jokes about dirty Sanchezes and quoted
Caddyshack
. On the other hand, staying in New York in summer wasn't all that appealing, either; last summer had meant lots of Sam Adams Summer Ale by herself on hot weekend days when it seemed like just her and the Dominican Day parade.

“You're doing that so you can do your website sales. At any rate, you can't just rely on Preston's mother's hospitality every weekend. A single woman is a strain on every hostess. It's a struggle to find a single man for a dinner partner.”

“Mom. I'm already going to Lake James. Take your victories, okay? And, for the fourteenth time, it's not website sales.”

“Did you pack the Lilly?”

Evelyn shook her head. “Good-bye, Mother.” She tapped the phone on the bed, then stuffed the Lilly Pulitzer dress into her bag.

Evelyn dragged her duffel to the creaking elevator and through her building's lobby. She lived on the Upper East Side, in an apartment she could barely afford despite its being in a “troubling” part of the neighborhood, as her mother put it. When Evelyn had rented it, she had never lived in Manhattan before and didn't realize desirable real estate changed midblock. This had landed Evelyn in a building called the Petit Trianon, on Seventy-fourth Street on the wrong side of Third. When Barbara sent letters to Evelyn, she always addressed them to Evelyn Topfer Beegan, Le Petit Trianon, as though Evelyn resided at a country estate.

She passed the plants fighting for sunlight in the lobby, overcast with a fluorescent-green tinge. The victor these days was an aloe vera whose giant tentacles lay despondently on the tiled floor. Some time ago the plant had spawned, and a young handyman had put the babies in tiny planters, with F
REE TO
G
OOD
H
OMES
signs in front of the makeshift nursery. When Evelyn had returned from the bodega that morning, a homeless person had already peed on them, leaving a dark and stinking puddle around their bases.

*   *   *

When Evelyn stepped off the train at the Lake James station seven hours later, the sky was veiled with low gray clouds and held the threat of snow. In May, as the rest of New York bowed to summer, the Adirondacks clasped winter as tightly as they could. Winter was their season, and they weren't going to let go of it so easily. Evelyn shivered. The train hooted away, and though Evelyn knew the station was close to the road, she couldn't even hear car engines.