Everybody Rise

by Stephanie Clifford

  The courtroom blurred around Evelyn’s father, who twisted his head to look at her. It was a look she’d seen only once in her life, when a blind man had been crossing the street and a semitruck driver laid on the horn and the man turned, terrified, his hands up, shaking, thinking these were the final moments of his life and he couldn’t even see what was coming.

  People were getting up now, the hearing over. Twenty-nine months? Almost double the suggested minimum sentence? Sending a message about the blind pursuit of money? Her father had messed up, but why were the consequences so severe for him? Companies were offering bribes to expand faster internationally, investors were scamming their clients, manufacturers were skirting environmental regulations, all to make ever more money, yet no one from those groups was in court. No one from there was going to prison.

  Her father started to shuffle forward, and Evelyn thought of the boy with the flattop haircut who just wanted to show all those rich kids that they didn’t run the world.

  Rudy was opening the gate into the spectators’ section to lead her father out, and Evelyn stumbled to her feet. “I’ll handle this,” she said.

  “There’s press outside. You don’t know how to handle it,” Rudy said.

  “I do know how to handle it,” Evelyn said. She pulled her father to the side; he was staring at the ground. She waited until the crowds had dispersed, then took the elevator down with him. Outside, she could see a few photographers gathered.

  “I don’t know…,” Dale began, but he was too stunned to finish.

  Evelyn took his elbow. “We’ll just head straight to the car, okay, Dad? You don’t have to say anything. Just look straight ahead. I know photographers. Just follow my lead. We’ll get through this.”

  She pushed open the courthouse door, passed the photographers clicking and running after them, and kept her eyes locked straight ahead as she escorted him to the car. As she opened the door for her father, he looked at her and said, his eyes still wide and frightened, “Thank you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Self-Surrender

  Dale’s self-surrender date was December 19, and despite Rudy’s pleas to push it back after the holidays, the Bureau of Prisons wouldn’t budge. Before he left, Dale told Evelyn that he’d settled with her rental company; she’d forgotten he’d been the guarantor on her lease. When she’d said that she had a job and should handle it herself, he gave her the Bedazzler, which she hadn’t seen in months. “Couldn’t resist one last settlement,” he said.

  On December 19, Barbara walked out to the living-dining room with a cup of tea, wearing a St. John suit that Evelyn hadn’t seen since Sag Neck and didn’t think her mother had brought to the Marina Air.

  “Your father’s coming at ten?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s about a three-hour drive and he wanted to leave some time in case we got lost. I guess you don’t want to be late reporting for prison,” Evelyn said.

  “What are they going to do if you’re late? Send you to prison?” Barbara said, and laughed, a strange, sharp sound that Evelyn hadn’t heard in a long time.

  “Mom!” Evelyn said, giggling despite herself.

  Dale rang the doorbell that morning, an uncommonly warm morning for a Bibville December, looking like he was about to go golfing, in a light khaki jacket, pink polo shirt, khaki pants, and tennis shoes. He was missing his usual alligator belt; Evelyn wondered whether that was the sort of thing that prison guards would take from one’s belongings and sell.

  “Hi, Daddy. You look nice.” Evelyn wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to say, but the corners of his eyes crinkled a little bit.

  “Thank you, honey. And thank you for driving me. I’ll be the envy of all the fellows at prison with such a pretty chauffeur.” The pads of fat that used to give him a chubby-cheeked grin were gone. He looked past her to her mother. “Barbara, hello.”

  Barbara’s teacup was in front of her, but she hadn’t had a sip. “Dale,” she said, her voice trembling.

  Evelyn waited a minute, then jangled the keys, trying to add merriment. “So, are you ready?” she said to her father.

  “I just want to say good-bye to your mother,” he said.

  Barbara stood up quickly, nearly knocking over her cup. “I think I’ll go with you,” she said. “What are you both looking at me like that for? It’s a nice day for a drive.”

  The parking lot at that hour was filled with people doing their daily exurban tasks: a woman lifted several huge plastic Lowe’s bags with shelving poking from them out of the back of her SUV, and another screamed at her child that she was in charge of him and not the other way around. As Barbara and Dale walked toward the car, they looked like dolls of a different scale, her mother plumping out as her father caved in.

  In the car, Evelyn put on a Hank Williams CD, one of her father’s favorites. To her surprise, as she backed out of the Marina Air lot, she heard her mother’s deep voice from the back, singing along to “Jambalaya.”

  “Mom? You’re a secret Hank Williams fan?” she said.

  “I’ve always hated my singing voice. It’s flat,” Barbara said.

  Hank had moved on to “Half As Much,” and the washed-out winter colors on the side of the road whizzed by.

  “I’ll get everything back,” Dale said suddenly. “I have a plan. Once I’m out. I know I can’t practice law anymore, but there’s a whole list of things I’m planning on. I can’t technically be a lawyer, but I can still be one heck of a consultant. I’m going to put both of you right back in Sag Neck.”

  “Dad.” Evelyn looked at her father, who was staring out the side window. “You don’t need to get it all back. It might not even be possible.”

  “It’s always possible.”

  Evelyn looked at the road. She knew that wasn’t true. A person can’t re-create an old life with everything and everyone he once had. People react and interact, develop, and the puzzle pieces change shape and no longer fit together with a satisfying snap.

  “Barbara,” Dale said. “Will you be all right?”

  She heard a click of a soda can opening from the backseat, and saw that her mother was now enjoying a Tab. “Vending machine,” Barbara said by way of an answer. “I never supposed I would live somewhere with a vending machine, but it’s rather useful, having a cold soda available at all hours. I’ve stopped making my own ice, in fact.”

  “Is that right?” Dale said.

  “There’s an ice machine right at the end of the hallway. It’s all the ice you could ever want and I don’t have to do a thing.”

  Evelyn glanced at her father, who had a little smile starting, then caught her mother’s eye in the rearview mirror and gave her a respectful nod.

  “And you, Evie? Are you going to be all right? You’re not missing New York too badly?” Dale asked.

  Evelyn watched the lane paint markers at the side of the car, thinking about how to answer that question. She owed so much on all of her credit cards. The Caffeiteria was a good step, and at least she was earning something, but her debt was so massive, always hovering gray around the edges of whatever else she was doing, that it wouldn’t be enough. She could work there for years and still have bills looming.

  She had been waiting, she thought. Always waiting. In New York, waiting for her life to be replaced by some other, more interesting life on offer. Waiting for money that she felt ought to be hers to flood in and elevate her position, from some male source, her father, Scot, Jaime. Waiting to be recognized and accepted in the social scene, starring on Appointment Book. When she thought about it, she had always imagined her future self in pictures with her face on others’ bodies, in others’ dresses, at others’ parties, in others’ poses. Now, back home, she had been biding time, waiting for some sign about what her life’s goal ought to be. Maybe it didn’t work like that. Maybe you had to change things step-by-step.

  The fact that New York still existed was puzzling. It was disconnected from her present, this car and the prison drop-off. It wa
s far from her feet, which tingled after standing all day, and her hair, which smelled like coffee even after multiple shampoos, and the tug of the espresso-machine filter handle, the turn of the frother dial, the cool splash of white milk against the metal cup. In Bibville, she looked different enough from how she had as a kid that old classmates didn’t seem to recognize her, and her mother’s former friends would order skim lattes and scuttle away, embarrassed for Barbara or her or themselves, she couldn’t tell. Her twenty-eighth birthday was not too many months away, and she was living at home, working at a coffee shop, with a father who would be an inmate in a matter of hours and a mother who was not highly equipped for real life, and she was deep in debt. This was not the best set of facts, but as she put her foot on the gas, they just seemed like facts. No more, no less.

  “Yeah,” Evelyn said. “Yeah, I’m going to be all right.”

  When they pulled into the prison parking lot three hours later, Evelyn looked for reasons that it wouldn’t be so bad. There was grass, and there were different brick buildings like at Sheffield, and the group of men in olive-green jumpsuits waiting to get on a truck were at least chatting with one another. Evelyn turned off the car’s engine, and after they got out of the car she and Barbara gathered next to Dale. Evelyn looked around, wondering if a guard would come retrieve him.

  “Do we go in with you?” Evelyn said.

  “I don’t want you to, honey. I have to go register with the officer and it’ll take a while. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  “I’ll take your jacket,” Barbara said. “I don’t trust the federal system to get anything right, and they’re certainly not going to lose a perfectly good jacket if I can help it. What about your ring?”

  “My prison consultant said it’s technically allowed.”

  “Those men inside will be melting it for money in a matter of seconds. I’ll hold on to it for you,” Barbara said.

  Dale twisted his wedding ring off, and handed it to Barbara with a questioning look in his eye. Evelyn watched as her mother folded her fingers around the ring, then grasped Dale’s hand and squeezed it tight. Dale let his head fall on her shoulder. Evelyn stepped a few paces back, behind the trunk, to give them some space.

  She heard them murmuring, and a few minutes later, her father cleared his throat. “Evie?”

  “Yeah.” She joined them again.

  “It’s time to go.”

  She stepped forward and hugged him. “I should’ve asked: Are you going to be all right?”

  “Dang straight,” he said. He winked, and kissed a startled Barbara, then he was gone, inside a trailer on the prison grounds.

  That evening, back in Bibville, Evelyn headed to the Regis Library, which was quiet, the computer kiosks empty. She sat down in front of one and Googled “Debt counseling Maryland or Delaware.” Three days later, she was leaving an office in Wilmington with two strict budgets and a negotiated payment plan with her credit-card companies. One budget, for now, included a mandate to either increase her hours at the Caffeiteria or get a second job; she knew the Hub, the beer-and-burger place, needed a waitress. The other plan was for when she was, God willing, not living at her mother’s apartment in Bibville and had a better-paying full-time job and was actually covering her own rent somewhere, albeit rent at the laughable level of $700 a month, which would translate into a fold-out couch somewhere in Queens. She was starting now on paying off the bills, some up front, some in steady monthly chunks over the coming years, a slow cleanup of the mess she had made.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  On the Dock

  Barbara pushed through the door holding bags from the Food Lion in Easton. Barbara had discovered Juicy Couture sweatsuits as of late and was wearing a peach velour hoodie and sweats, for apparently elastic waistbands were the one upside of being ousted from society.

  The doorbell rang long and loud, surprising Evelyn. It was her day off, and she was still wearing pajamas though it was late in the afternoon, watching as Dorothy dissed Rose to Blanche. She couldn’t remember the last time she had heard the apartment’s doorbell. “Evelyn, will you see who’s at the door?” her mother called from the kitchen.

  Evelyn opened the door slightly, ready to shoo away the Jehovah’s Witness or whoever it was, but there was a burp of cold air and she felt someone on the other side pushing against her. Through the crack of the door, the top of a head with messy light-brown hair appeared, and—

  “Jesus Christ,” said Charlotte, shoving open the door. “You’re actually here.”

  Evelyn’s left lip curled up in a smile. “Yes.”

  “What the fuck, Ev?” Charlotte lifted a hand as if to hit her. “Is that the Golden Girls theme song?”

  “That’s your first question?”

  “No. No. Sorry. I was in Annapolis for work, and I thought—I didn’t know where you went. I had no idea where you went, Evelyn.”

  Evelyn wrapped her arms around herself. “Did it matter?”

  “Well, yes. Your cell phone was disconnected, your Bibville landline didn’t work, your apartment was emptied. What did you think I’d think? Bad shit happens to girls in New York and I was worried.”

  “Bad shit did happen to a girl in New York. How did you find me?”

  “Alumni office. They once called me at a hotel in Dallas where I was working on a company integration, so it’s really no surprise they found you at a fixed address. Meanwhile, didn’t you think of mentioning to your old friend that you were packing up and leaving the city?”

  Evelyn moved to give Charlotte a hug, but Charlotte shrank back. “We didn’t hug at graduation, we aren’t going to hug now. I will bite you. With my sharp little canine teeth. My bladder is about to explode; there are seemingly no bathrooms between Annapolis and Bibville. Can I pee?”

  “Evelyn, dear! Who’s at the door?” she heard from her mother’s bedroom—her mother must have slunk in there when Evelyn answered the door—then a crash as her mother rounded the corner too fast. Evelyn turned her head to see her mother, resplendent in a caftan and a hair turban, looking like Elizabeth Taylor after one of her fat-camp sessions.

  “Mom, can you give me a minute?”

  Barbara apparently could not, and had not dressed for company for nothing. She peered over Evelyn, smelling of the vintage Babs leather perfume. “My goodness, Charlotte! What a delight. It was so nice of you to come all this way to see Evie. I quite like your hair out of those pigtails.” She affixed her great claw, manicured, somehow not chipped despite the reality that she now did dishes and cleaning, to the door and pulled it open wide so Charlotte could enter.

  Evelyn stayed where she was, her eyes flicking over Charlotte’s as Charlotte took in the scene. For Charlotte, who had been to Sag Neck for several long weekends and Thanksgivings, it must have been like a game of Memory, Evelyn thought. Match the overstuffed couch wedged under the blinds to the one that sat in the piano room at Sag Neck. Find, in the stack of paintings piled against one wall, the one of a foxhunt that hung in the Sag Neck foyer.

  Charlotte was standing uncertainly on the doorstep, her earlier bounty-hunting fire tempered.

  “Mom,” Evelyn said, more firmly. “I need to talk to Charlotte alone.”

  “I won’t hear of it, after the long drive she must have had,” Barbara said a bit too chirpily. “Charlotte, you’ll have to forgive my daughter. I think she’s lost her sense of propriety since leaving New York. Come in. Evelyn, will you get some cheese?”

  Evelyn raised her free hand to smooth her eyebrows. “Some cheese,” she repeated. “Sure. Let’s see. We have some pepper jack, I think. Can I get you a slice?”

  “I don’t really need cheese,” said Charlotte, pulling her blazer closer to her body.

  “No. I’m sorry. It’s cold. Come in. The bathroom’s just down the hall, on your left.”

  Inside, Barbara was whirling around, straightening up stacks of magazines and removing items from the refrigerator. “We’re just loving living downtown. It’s a li
ttle more exciting than the old house, which had just gotten way too big to manage,” she said as Charlotte passed her. “Can you imagine, being alone in that house at night? It was really frightening. I just hated going downstairs.” Barbara placed a small stack of cocktail napkins monogrammed with BTB and—were those Cheez-Its?—on a tray that Evelyn hadn’t been aware had made the journey from Sag Neck.

  When Charlotte came back, Barbara set the tray in front of her. “I’ve found these delicious little cheese nibblies,” Barbara said. “I’m sure they’re loaded with calories, and we’ll all have to do our penance at the gym, but since it’s just a girls’ outing, why not?”

  Charlotte dutifully took two Cheez-Its and a napkin. “Mmm.”

  “It’s so lovely to see Evie’s old friends,” Barbara said, smoothing her turban. “Just lovely, really. Charlotte, can I get you something to drink? We have some white wine, or I could look in the cocktail cabinet to see what I might put together.”

  “I think—Char, just give me two seconds to change, all right?” Evelyn said.

  “Do you know, I’d just been thinking about Sheffield,” Barbara began as Evelyn hurried to her room and threw on jeans and a sweatshirt. As she returned to the living room, Charlotte shot her an alarmed look; Barbara was saying “… and she won’t talk to me about it, of course, but it seems like if Evie were just to extend an invitation to Camilla…”

  Evelyn took a Cheez-It and hauled Charlotte from the couch. “We’re going downtown!” Evelyn said, as Charlotte said, “Thank you for the snacks, Mrs. Beegan!”

  Charlotte and Evelyn were silent for the first part of the walk, passing the bare-branch trees in the park, the closed-for-winter-outdoor-patio Thai place, and the small brick town hall, but as they passed the bank, Charlotte spoke. “So you’ve been—”