Then, announced by a tinkle from her bracelets, in came Push. Evelyn knew it was Push right away by the hurried worry of a servant behind her, and because she wore a kind of blouse Evelyn had never seen, all swooshy around the neck. Her hair was pulled back into something that looked like a cinnamon bun, held in place by will and a chopstick. Push wore red lipstick, which Evelyn’s mother had once told her was only worn by call girls, and though Evelyn didn’t totally know what those were, she was pretty sure that Push was not one of them and her mother might be wrong on that.
“Barbara, so lovely to see you again, you haven’t aged a day,” cried Push as she approached the couch that Barbara had jumped up from. Evelyn half stood, then sat again, completely forgetting whether she was supposed to be upright or seated when she shook an adult’s hand. She was confident in her handshake, though; her mother had had her refine her handshake two years ago, because to have a weak handshake is to invite disrespect.
Then the grown-ups were talking, and it was a while before Push noticed Evelyn, hovering in a squat over the chair in case she was called upon to either sit or stand.
“Well! This must be your daughter!” Push said. “Hello, I’m Mrs. Van Rensselaer,” she said, extending a hand to Evelyn, and Evelyn shook it with purpose, and responded, “I’m Evelyn. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Are you going to be a Hollins girl, too?” Push said.
“I hope to be,” Evelyn said, in an accent she thought sounded close to the Baroness Schraeder’s from The Sound of Music.
“Well! How lovely,” said Push. She turned to Barbara with a smile. “I have a daughter, too, though she’s just a toddler. We’ll see if we can sign her up for Hollins someday, too.”
The adults continued chatting, then Push signaled to someone, and a tray of tea was placed on the table, and Evelyn figured out what she and her mother had been practicing for at the Plaza.
Push poured a cup for Barbara, then one for Evelyn, who lifted it by the handle. She watched to see if Push would put in cream with her tea. She did, after the tea, so Evelyn deduced it was English breakfast, and Evelyn reached for the cream, too. Then Push put in lemon, which Evelyn had thought was a no-no, and Evelyn, lost, looked to her mother, but her mother was not paying attention.
“Well, it’s so nice to see old friends,” Barbara began. “And just wonderful to be back in New York. The city has so much verve.”
“It’s a wonderful place to live,” agreed Push.
“One thing we’re sorely lacking in Bibville is the sort of cultural life you have here,” Barbara said. “I took Evelyn to the Frick yesterday and she was just transported.”
This was not true; Evelyn had liked the water pool, but the art was boring.
“Bibville,” Push said vaguely.
“A lovely spot on the Eastern Shore, heavy with politicians come summertime.”
“The Eastern Shore.”
“Maryland.”
“Of course.”
“The Frick is doing fascinating work,” Barbara continued. “You’re on the board there, I think I remember.”
Push furrowed her brow. “Just recently, yes.”
“It’s such a worthy institution.”
“Yes.”
Evelyn’s mother curled her pinkie around the teacup’s handle. “I’m hoping to spend more time in New York now that Evie’s nearly out of the house,” she said.
“Is she really almost out of the house? How old are you, Evelyn?”
“Ten,” Evelyn said.
“Almost eleven,” her mother said, “and we’re seriously considering boarding school.”
This was the first Evelyn had heard about it but, being an enthusiastic reader of Pen Pals, a teen-novel series about girls named Palmer and Shanon who attended boarding school, she was into it.
“Well, my boys are at Sheffield and they just adore it. I was a Porter’s girl. So you’ll hear only good things from me.”
“I’ll hate to lose my darling, but you know how it goes. Regarding New York. I so loved it when we came here in college. I was thinking, I’d love to get more involved in the Frick.”
Push lifted the teapot, and placed it back down again, glancing toward the door, but the servant had gone. Barbara continued, “Its collection is so strong. It is, of course, such a center of social life here.”
“Thank you. It is a remarkable institution. I can’t imagine where Rosa has gone. Wouldn’t you like some shortbread?”
“Thank you, no. Regarding the Frick, though, I’d very much like to be more involved there. If you remember, I was a huge art enthusiast at Hollins.”
Evelyn was sitting very still.
“Well.” Push adjusted her napkin. “There are docent programs, though I would think they’re better suited for people who live here. The schedules can be surprisingly demanding.”
“I was really more interested in a board position, should one open up.”
“A board position? Barbara, I think that’s—that’s really up to the other directors and the executives and the development office. I’m nothing more than a glorified party planner on that board, really. I have very little influence.”
Barbara smoothed her skirt. “Well, my husband’s firm is always looking for corporate sponsorships.”
At this, Push looked up. “What firm?”
“Leiberg Channing.”
Push didn’t look like she’d ever heard of it. “Mmm.”
“They’re out of Wilmington, and they are very influential. Very influential.”
“I’m sure they are,” Push said. “We really don’t deal with other cities very much; we really are a New York institution. I so appreciate your interest, but I’m really not the one to handle this. Certainly there are some galleries in Bib-Bib—in Maryland that would be thrilled to have your help.”
Barbara pulled her lips in toward her teeth.
Push raised a finger, and this time Rosa materialized, responding to the three-inch change in Push’s finger altitude. Rosa whisked the half-full teacup and saucer Evelyn had been holding from her lap, and then the whole tea tray was gone. “Well, I’m so glad you liked the Frick. I’ll be sure to tell the curator that it pleased the discerning eye of a Hollins girl,” Push said pleasantly. “All those funny art classes we were forced to take. Ah, that reminds me of why we’re here. I’m so glad you told me you were visiting New York, because I can’t stand doing this sort of thing over the telephone—it’s so impersonal, I think. Now, I hate to be so direct, but this is a reunion year, and we were hoping you might increase your level of support.”
Evelyn saw her mother had turned her head toward the window, faking rapt interest in the rabbit-colored sky and building tops. Evelyn glanced at Push, who was looking expectantly at Barbara, but Evelyn knew this game and knew it would go nowhere. Evelyn waited until the silence got so extended she wanted to scream and tried to will her mother to say something, but Barbara didn’t. Then Evelyn gave Push a hesitant smile.
“My mother really loved Hollins. She talks about it all the time.”
Push’s gaze moved to the left, then down, as though she were looking through binoculars to locate an especially small amphibian.
“Oh! Isn’t that lovely!” she said.
Evelyn tapped her ankles against themselves, and pressed her knees together. “It sounds like it was such a fun experience. Tinker Day especially sounded so fun.”
“Oh, my dear, Tinker Day was such a wonderful Hollins tradition, wasn’t it, Barbara?”
Barbara turned her head slightly back with a disconnected smile, as though Push and her daughter were on a television screen, objects of mild interest but in which she had no emotional stake.
Push didn’t seem fazed. “That’s right, and Tinker Day meant classes were canceled for the day, and everyone would tromp up Tinker Mountain,” she said. “Some of the girls got quite physical on that hike. What savages we were!”
“Didn’t you have good picnics once you got there?” Evely
n asked.
“The picnics, oh, yes, of course! Oh!” Push clapped her hands very loudly. Rosa hurried in, but then hurried back out when she saw that Push was just being enthusiastic, not giving orders. “I think I have something you’ll like very much! Come, come.” In an instant Push had sprung from her chair and was charging toward a swinging side door. Evelyn rose, too, then looked back to her mother. Barbara was looking straight at Evelyn, and the skin around her lips had gone slack. An acid claw started scraping against the side of Evelyn’s stomach, but she was out of her chair already, and Push was waiting expectantly. Evelyn turned and followed Push through several small rooms to a library, with wooden cases of books sitting upon more cases, and a ladder on wheels that attached at the upper wall.
“Now, it’s in here somewhere,” Push was saying, gliding on the ladder and pushing it with one leg, like a scooter, around the room. “I haven’t looked at this in years, but I suspect—come here!” Push said. Evelyn did. Push was now flinging ribbons and cards about from a small box, then picked out a wide pink-and-green ribbon. “Here it is! This is what I wore my sophomore-year Tinker Day, as a headband, you see. We all wore such strange things, and it was marvelous to wear something that an alumna had worn. Now, if you’re going to be a Hollins girl, I think you ought to have it.”
Evelyn looked up at the older woman uncertainly.
“Go on, take it!”
The ribbon was made of rough grosgrain, knotted at the ends and faded. Evelyn took it as though it were an injured swallow, placing it gently in her cupped hand.
“Thank you very much,” she said.
“It’s my pleasure. It’s wonderful when the next generation gets involved with Hollins. Now. We’d better get back to your mother, shouldn’t we?”
“Yes, Mrs. Van Rensselaer,” Evelyn said.
When they reentered the living room, Barbara was standing with her shoulders back. “Thank you for the tea,” Barbara said in a low voice.
“Of course, Barbara. Do think about the donation. Really, if your husband’s firm is interested in philanthropy, I can’t think of a better place for it to focus than Hollins. Some of the scholarship programs are really—”
“I see,” Barbara said, and began to walk back toward the elevator without glancing at Evelyn. She was half a room away by the time Evelyn figured she had better follow her.
“Now,” said Push gaily, shouting from the sitting room, “I’ve put you and your husband down for five thousand. He might expect a call from the development office. I’m so glad Hollins can count on you! Esse quam videri, as the school taught us! Good-bye, lovely to see you again! Enjoy Bibbington!”
Evelyn barely made it into the elevator before the doors closed, and her stomach increased its tumult when Barbara did not speak as the elevator dropped, nor as the black car with its motor running swallowed them. Evelyn fingered the fraying material of the ribbon, still tucked in her hand, which felt like a cat’s soothingly rough tongue. Each minute that passed in furious silence piled up the pressure and made it more impossible to fix the situation.
It was not until they were in the Plaza elevator that Barbara spoke.
“Well. That was quite a performance.” Her voice was like a lid on a pot of boiling water.
The claw in Evelyn’s stomach scraped again, harder this time. She made her voice soft, hoping it sounded vulnerable. “What do you mean?”
Barbara’s mouth warped into an awful pout, and she wrinkled her nose. “Oh, my mother just loves Tinker Day,” she said, in a voice an octave too high. “Oh, I’m just so excited to be a Hollins girl.” The claw’s scrapes were turning to hot liquid now. “What on earth did she want to show you?”
“What?” Evelyn asked, stalling.
“When she took you back. What was it she wanted to show you?” Barbara jammed the key into the hotel room door and nearly kicked it open.
“Just some stuff from the school. A yearbook.”
“A yearbook?” Barbara squinted at Evelyn. “Did she give you something?”
“No,” said Evelyn, tightening her fist around the now-damp piece of ribbon.
“You’re lying.” Her mother’s voice went lower. “You’re terrible at it. Let’s see it.” Barbara held out her hand. Evelyn tightened hers.
“Now,” Barbara said.
Evelyn backed toward the wall, toward a large chest of drawers, where she thought she could quietly hide the ribbon. Her mother grabbed her wrists before she could get there, and uncurled her fist and pulled out the memento.
“What is this? Hollins colors—something to do with Tinker Day? Did you ask for this?”
“No—no. Mrs. Van Rensselaer gave it to me.”
“Like hell she did. After you were hustling in there like a goddamn traveling salesman. You never had any sense of pride. Just like your father.”
Evelyn flinched with each word, trying to back away farther, but there was nowhere to go.
“I’ll tell you what you can do with this goddamn Tinker Day souvenir,” Barbara said. She whirled and walked toward a wastebasket, then paused, doing an about-face to the bathroom, brushing by Evelyn so hard that their elbows collided. Evelyn stood still with her eyes shut, trying not to breathe too aggressively. She heard a flush, then water from the sink, and then the bathroom door close. Evelyn wondered how still she could make her body. She was afraid that if she made too much of a sound, it would make her mother exit the bathroom before the anger had blown over. So she stood, hands at her sides, listening only to the whir of the air conditioner go on and then off in even pauses as it tried to keep the room a constant temperature. She found that if she breathed just a half amount of the normal air through her nostrils, her chest would not even rise. She could even very nearly float out of her body, and look at the top of her head from the ceiling.
CHAPTER NINE
Wall Street Blues
The Amtrak deposited Evelyn at Penn Station, and she followed the crowd up the escalators and into the waiting room, still fogged with the New York of sixteen years ago. She got a cab in seconds, as the long July Fourth weekend had rendered the city empty on a Sunday. Her family had gotten through the Channings’ party, as Evelyn knew they would, Barbara forced and gay, Dale discussing a motion, Evelyn hanging back by the crab cakes and deviled eggs. No one, inside the family or out, had mentioned the grand jury investigation again. Still, Evelyn was drained from the weekend, and she tapped her finger against the cab’s window, wondering if it was too late to cancel her second date with Scot that night. He’d chosen a French bistro on Sixty-ninth, and the thought of watching Scot dither over steak tartare versus steak au poivre sounded deadly. After the cab dropped her at her apartment, though, the investigation was taking over her thoughts, and she decided she needed to get outside and interact with someone. She would pay for her half of the meal, she reasoned, and let Scot know at the end of it that while she had enjoyed meeting him, this—them—wasn’t quite working.
Evelyn had reluctantly agreed to a first date with Scot when he’d called after the Lake James weekend. She had come to the date armed with four or five conversational topics but hurtled through these before the waiter even put down the bread basket. She was pulling the conversation, and the yoke was heavy. They traded sentences about themselves: he grew up in California, but moved to Arizona after his mother got remarried, and had always felt like he wasn’t an Arizona guy, but hadn’t really felt at home until getting his MBA at Harvard. She said that she grew up in a Chesapeake Bay town, and the water and the shore were beautiful. He talked about his college thesis on the overlap between Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek, and she tried to stifle a yawn. So he changed the subject, or thought he was changing the subject, to talk about the capital-gains tax rate, but that led to an argument with himself over the inheritance tax. He was sweet, a nice guy, and when he kissed her after the first date and she rather obviously wiped the saliva from her mouth, she felt like a jerk. She also couldn’t nail down a good reason not to go out with hi
m again.
Evelyn prepared for dates like she was cramming for a test in a class she’d barely attended. For Harris Reardon, a dull McKinsey consultant she’d dated straight out of college, Evelyn had studied fantasy baseball until she had strong opinions on B. J. Upton’s RBIs. For Jack Lynch, a friend of a friend of Charlotte’s who was a research analyst at Bear Stearns, she’d tried to learn enough about wine that she could talk of the nose and the bouquet as pretentiously as he did. This was how she approached all men, figuring out which version of herself to present in order to get a guy interested in her.
Evelyn couldn’t quite put her finger on why her dating life had never taken off. It had been slow from the start, in Bibville. The boy she had a crush on in middle school, Josh Meisel, had shown a brief and surprising interest in her in sixth grade, when he would call her on her private line during Quantum Leap to ask about the math homework, but at school Evelyn was too nervous to talk to him and, during their rare conversations, stared into the middle distance with an expression she thought looked European. It did not entrance him.
The world always said to just be yourself, but it turned out when Evelyn was herself, no guys were at all interested, so she was left with games of make-believe, expressing enthusiasm for whatever the men wanted to do, be it rock climbing or going to a cheese-beer pairing or a Knicks game.
As she walked west on Seventy-fourth, trying to keep thoughts of her father’s case out of her head, she managed until a woman in a gray suit who had the sharp angles of a prosecutor gave her an unsettling second glance. Evelyn turned south. At Seventy-second, she started to wonder what papers the case had been covered in. By Seventieth, she worried that her father would go to jail. By Sixty-ninth, when she turned west, she thought that all her friends and her bosses at PLU might know already and were just snickering behind her back about it. When she finally stopped outside Le Charlot, her whole life was careening away.
She thought she had composed herself when she walked inside and saw Scot at a table sipping water. She walked over, and meant to open her mouth and say something light and happy, and instead she found that she was standing with an open mouth and with no sound coming out, and then she was crying.
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