Everybody Rise (36 page)

“Well, at least you're on top of things, Evelyn, dear,” Souse said. “What a terrific dress. Calvin?”

“Naeem Khan,” Evelyn said.

“Of course. Girls these days are so hip, aren't they, Push? Well, you look lovely. I hope my prodigal daughter shows up. At this rate, she'll be late for the presentation. I thought this kind of behavior would cease in her twenties, but apparently not.”

“It is too bad,” Evelyn said. “I wish more people my age appreciated tradition. I'll hunt her down myself if I have to. Mrs. Faber, it was so nice to see you again, and I'm sure I'll see you later tonight. If you don't need my help here, I'd better get back upstairs and keep an eye on things. Phoebe and Wythe look wonderful, really. You'll be so proud of them when you see them.”

At eight Evelyn went downstairs, where the guests were distributing double kisses, the preference of the Europeans. “I need to find the Swiss ambassador,” one muttered to another. “Isn't he the man in the corner, with the red pocket square?”

“No, no, that's the Swiss consul,” the other replied.

At the entrance to the ballroom, photographers were taking pictures. Margaret Faber did meant-to-look-candid poses with her husband, and Souse with Ari, and the photographers seemed to already know whom they wanted to shoot, and whom they didn't want. Evelyn didn't approach, in case she didn't make the cut.

Her phone buzzed. “Walking in,” Camilla had texted, and when Evelyn looked over to the entrance, the photographers were snapping Camilla's photo.

The orchestra was swinging away to “Dites-Moi,” and Evelyn watched Camilla finish getting her photo taken and come up to her. “Should we get our table assignment?” Camilla said.

As they walked to table ten, Camilla said, “Evelyn, I still haven't received the check from your father.”

“Oh?” Evelyn said, opening her clutch and examining the contents.

“The invitations have gone out already,” Camilla said. “It's in three weeks. If he has to give a gift of stock or something, that's fine, but his secretary has been weird whenever I've called.”

“India,” Evelyn said. “He's been on a long trip to India. Pharmaceutical development there.”

“Wherever he is, I need the donation. I asked him months ago so I wouldn't need to deal with this last minute.”

“I know. I know.”

“The group reached a record level of donations this year thanks in part to him. There's a press release going out next week.”

“I'm on it, Camilla.” Evelyn grabbed one of the gilded chairs at table ten, which was already filled with A-list guests, including Ari and Souse. “I'm on it.”

The girls slipped into their seats as the orchestra transitioned into an upbeat national anthem, and Souse held a finger up at her daughter, tsk-tsking her. Then the room darkened and a spotlight rose on a small boy, dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy, singing “La Marseillaise.” The crowd rose to their feet and sang along with him: “Aux armes, citoyens!”

Agathe, the Bal's chairwoman, took the stage, welcoming the guests with a wave as waiters served generous chunks of lobster over green beans with a sauce béarnaise. She introduced the evening's honoree, the head of the European studies department at Columbia. He was the third choice, Evelyn recalled from one of the planning meetings, after the first two selections had awkwardly declined, citing the professional difficulty of associating themselves with debutantes.

The lights went down as the presentation began, and the master of ceremonies, the head of fixed income at Whitcomb Partners, who was married to one of the hostesses, looked down at his first note card.

“Wythe Van Rensselaer is the director of a documentary film on street-graffiti artists in the style of the German Expressionists, a champion two-hundred-meter sprinter on varsity track, has had the pleasure of spending summers doing nonprofit work in Laos and Botswana, and likes playing poker. Her brothers John and Frederick were escorts at the ball in the past. She will be attending Yale in the fall.” There were audible “oohs” from the crowd when Yale was mentioned. Wythe, decisively, came out on the arm of her escort, curtsied, and walked excruciatingly slowly toward the edge of the dance floor as Phoebe stepped forward.

“Phoebe Rutherford speaks fluent French, Latin, ancient Greek, Serbian, and Latvian. She especially enjoys archery and needlepoint.”

Souse whipped her head to look at Camilla, who put her hand in front of her mouth.

“What?” Camilla whispered. “We thought it was funny. She could be into needlepoint and archery and all those languages.”

“This is not a joke,” Souse hissed.

“It is a joke,” Camilla said.

“Do you know how hard I've worked on this? How hard all these women have worked on it?”

“Oh, Mother, honestly. It's a party.”

“Evelyn got here at five o'clock today. You didn't even bother to show up until after the party started, and it isn't Evelyn's sister out there tonight. I don't demean your events.”

“It was just a joke,” Camilla said. “I thought it would be funny.”

“Well, it isn't.” Souse was tapping her fingers frantically.

Evelyn, on the other side of Souse, leaned toward her and said, in a voice low enough she hoped Camilla couldn't hear, “I'm so sorry. I would never have let her put that in the bio had I known.”

“Thank you,” said Souse, abruptly pushing her chair back from the table. She had disappeared by the time the MC said, “Jennifer Foster is a champion fencer, has released a CD of her own songs, and recently had her painting entitled
Empty Houses
as a finalist for the prestigious Courbet Award, the first girl from Spence to do so in two years. In the fall, she will be attending Whitman College, a small liberal-arts college considered the Williams of Washington.”

Evelyn noticed Souse at the side of the stage, whispering something to Agathe, the chairwoman. Agathe gave their table a worried look, then she nodded.

The girls lined up with their escorts behind them, stiffly smiling as the photographer took pictures, then filed onto the dance floor for a jolting waltz.

The orchestra finished “Try to Remember,” and Evelyn poked Camilla. “Is that a reference to how blacked out all the debs are going to get tonight?”

“If they're not already,” Camilla said.

“Phoebe looked fantastic.”

“She did, didn't she?”

The lights went back up onstage, shining on Agathe, who looked nervous and was saying something to the MC. “Very well,” he boomed into the microphone, not realizing it was on. Agathe skittered to the side of the stage.

“Now, as is the tradition at the Bal Français, we have la danse d'honneur, in which we ask a former debutante to come forward and begin the second dance with our esteemed ambassador,” the MC said. The spotlight swooped over to Evelyn's table, where Camilla sat up and gave a humble Oscar-nominee nod. “This year the hostesses of the Bal Français are pleased to ask Miss Evelyn Beegan to lead the dancing. Miss Beegan?”

Evelyn was squinting in the spotlight when she heard the applause, and looked to see Camilla smiling and looking straight ahead.

“Miss Beegan?” the MC said.

Evelyn stood up, her legs feeling awfully shaky. Her mother had enrolled her in a waltzing class at some strip-mall dance studio when she was a teenager, despite Evelyn's protests that she would never, ever need to know how to waltz. Well done, Mom, she thought. Evelyn looked once more at Camilla, who was staring at the MC, clapping, and dipped her head. It was all meant to be, wasn't it? The applause crescendoed, and it felt like it was washing around her in lovely warm waves. Then a more intense spotlight hit her, so bright that she couldn't see anything. A flashbulb went off from her left side. She could picture Jaime looking at the photograph later, realizing just who she was. She smiled, tentatively at first, then broad and confident as the applause and the light lifted her up. It was for her this time. At last, it was all for her.

The spotlight followed her as she walked to the center of the dance floor and held out her hand to the ambassador. “C'est un plaisir,” she said in a mellifluous tone. She focused on his feet—if she was supposed to have debbed, she should know how to waltz perfectly—and matched his steps as the orchestra played “Que Sera, Sera.” It had been one of her mother's favorite piano pieces, but it sounded so much lusher and realer here. Back-two-three, back-two-three, they whizzed around the room, covering the length and width of it as the ambassador turned her and spun her and they picked up speed, whirling and twirling and practically galloping. As the final notes played, the ambassador held her hand in an elegant arc as he gave a deep bow and she a modest curtsy. The ballroom lights came up, and a bright pop momentarily blinded Evelyn. Then the bulbs started flashing all around her, and she heard her name gather power like a wave: “Evelyn!” “Evelyn, over here!” “Evelyn, to the left!” “Evelyn, who are you wearing?” “Evelyn, straight ahead!” “Evelyn!” “Evelyn!” “Evelyn!” No more was she an and-guest, and-friend, the perennial second tierer. Everyone whom she'd ever met could see she was there, that she was worthy of attention. Joseph Rowley, who had audibly groaned when they were paired together at the Eastern Tennis Club's twelve-and-under mixed doubles round-robin. Margie Chow, her Sheffield prep-year roommate who hadn't wanted to room together after the first year. The people bothering her about rent and Barneys would find out who she was and that they shouldn't have been upsetting her. They would all shake their heads, rueful, regretful. Evelyn had that spark all along, didn't she? Wasn't she something? Weren't we stupid not to see it? Camilla, and Jaime, and Nick, and Charlotte. Preston, Preston would forgive her. And her mother, her mother! How happy Barbara would be. “Evelyn, over here!” “Evelyn!” The flashbulbs exploded, and everyone watching finally knew her name. They knew that she, Evelyn Beegan, belonged.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

After the Ball

On Sunday morning, Evelyn rose early and went to look at Appointment Book's new postings. She was pictured in a gliding waltz at the top of the page, with the caption “Dancing Dreams—Evelyn Beegan selected for the danse d'honneur at the Bal Français.” She browsed through Patrick McMullan and saw herself in photo after photo. For kicks, she logged in to People Like Us and searched for her name. Someone in Istanbul had reposted a photo and written, “LOVE her Naeem.”

She had sent Camilla an e-mail upon reading it, “Look at Appointment Book! Good picture of you,” which was true, though Camilla was in a group photo and Evelyn was shot alone. Camilla didn't write back. A couple of hours later, she e-mailed Camilla again: “The dancing went soooo late. So tired:(”

Still nothing. To try and mend things secondhand, Evelyn wrote Souse a particularly eloquent, or so she thought, thank-you note about the ball, assuming she would get some feedback about it from Camilla. Then she sent Nick some lighthearted texts about the coming weekend at Lake James and the Fruit Stripe, which Souse had decreed would be held then, to gauge whether Camilla had said something about her to him, but his responses were normal. She thought, frequently, of calling Preston, but how would she start the conversation?

Evelyn alternated between leaving her phone at full volume for when Jaime called—he'd have to have heard that she'd done the danse d'honneur by now—and turning it off so that she wouldn't be distracted by waiting for him to call back, but in either case she stared at the phone like it was a bomb. She turned it on, and off, and on, and off, and no new missed calls or voice mails came up. Not from Jaime. And not from Camilla.

To clear out her voice-mail box so there would be room if Jaime needed to leave a message, she eventually listened to the voice mail from her father from Friday. It was a single sentence: “I thought you'd want to know that my guilty plea was today, which you apparently forgot,” he said in a quiet voice. An image of him, ashamed, in front of the judge, popped into her mind, then she rerouted herself. He had gotten himself into this, and it was all his doing. What did her parents expect from her? Comfort? Support? As though they were offering the same? They weren't doing anything to help the family's situation. She was. They'd have to get by on their own.

On Tuesday, a weird number began calling her; she answered the first time, hoping Jaime was calling from Venezuela. Instead, it was a different collection agency, this time for AmEx. Evelyn had said that they had the wrong number, then briefly quarantined the phone in her refrigerator.

By Wednesday morning, with no word from Camilla or Jaime, Evelyn deduced that something terrible must have happened to Jaime. His grandmother dying, maybe. Even if he hadn't liked her, he would've gotten in touch. She was a fellow houseguest at Camp Sachem and had done the danse d'honneur at the Bal Français, for God's sake. Unless Verizon had had some sort of outage when she'd sent the text with her phone number? Had Verizon had an outage? Where was Camilla? She needed people on her side.

These billiard-ball thoughts were angling around her head as Evelyn hurried toward Central Park on the warm Wednesday afternoon. She had gotten nowhere with the Sloan Kettering associates committee, and certainly wasn't going to get Preston's help with his mother now, so she had signed up to volunteer for it with the hope that work on the ground would turn into a committee role. Evelyn had been assigned to help pass out water at a 5K run/walk to raise money for the children's hospital.

As Evelyn picked up tiny paper cups from the setup station, she practically collided with Brooke Birch, also wearing a V
OLUNTEER
badge, carrying an armful of energy-gel packets.

“Brooke?”

Brooke looked around quickly, but found no obvious exit route. “Evelyn,” she said.