“Plead. Plead guilty. I don’t know what you know, if you know, about the investigation. The indictment. But he’s going to plead guilty. It might mean prison.” Her voice was getting increasingly bitter. “My father in prison. Nice, right? The host committee of the Bal is going to be psyched about that one.” For once, she wanted to talk about it. “Did everyone know? Does everyone know? I know Camilla says indictments are no big deal, but Scot, the idea of my dad in prison. He’s not that tough, my dad, and prison, and my mom has never worked, and she’s going to be alone, and it’s going to be such a mess. And the money, Scot. I don’t know what to do about the money.”
“Ev?” Scot blurted.
“What?” She needed to hear that he loved her, that he would help her.
“Evelyn? Hello? Hello?”
“Scot. Scot?”
“There, I can hear you now. Sorry. I lost you there. So who did what?”
Evelyn’s face constricted. “You didn’t hear any of that.”
“No, sorry. What’s going on?”
Her eyes were still trained on her house; her mother hadn’t bothered to shut the front door. “Never mind,” she said, after an empty silence.
“No, I’m sorry, tell me.”
“It was nothing. It is nothing.”
“Something with your father?”
She walked to the front door and saw her mother sitting on the stairs. “No. Nothing. I have to go.” Evelyn pressed end.
“Who was that?” Barbara asked.
“No one. Camilla,” Evelyn said.
“Have you told her your father can’t do her party?” Barbara said. “The party he was so flattered by?”
“God.” Evelyn pressed her head against the cell phone and made it jam into her head “No, I know. I’m just—just give me a minute.”
“So many phone calls to make, and things to do,” Barbara said. “I remember that. Life. It used to be so short, Evie. Is that what yours is like? When I see the pictures of you, I think maybe it is. When the days went by in a whirl and the nights weren’t long enough, and we were frantic with excitement for the next party. I can’t grasp, now, how it all seemed like that. Can you imagine, wishing the next day would hurry and arrive? Now I wish it would hurry and pass. Life gets so long when you grow old.”
“You’re not old, Mom,” Evelyn muttered without much conviction, still pressing her head into the phone.
“What’s my obituary going to say, Evelyn?”
“What?”
“Don’t say ‘what’; you sound like a duck. I’ve spent all my life raising you and tending to your father, and what’s my obituary going to say?”
“Mom, you’re not dying.”
“Mother and wife; that’s a single line. Resident of Bibville; that’s two.”
Evelyn swallowed, watching her mother stare up at the ceiling. She wasn’t wrong.
Dully, Evelyn turned and with heavy legs walked into the piano room. The one thing Evelyn could do over the muted roar in her head was play. If she could get her fingers to move over “Somewhere” she felt like she could get her mind away from this.
When she walked through the door this time, though, she saw the cabinets first, which should have been blocked by the piano. It took a moment for her to understand that the piano was gone. The only sign that it had ever been there was a rectangular patch on the floor where the rug had been.
“Mom? Mom?” Her voice was an octave higher than usual. She ran back to the foyer. “Mom, where’s the piano?”
Her mother hadn’t moved. “Evie,” she said. “Along with a plea deal would be millions in restitution. The firm is suing him separately. And the legal bills are just astronomical. The Steinway dealer had an inquiry from an auction house.”
“You sold it?”
“We didn’t have a choice.”
All those mornings of songs. All those late afternoon sunshine-drenched sessions. All the pieces she had mentally set aside as ones she would play with her own daughter, showing her the fingering and the pressure and imagining how patient she would be with the girl. Gone. She didn’t get to play it one last time. Didn’t get to tell it what it had meant to her. The smooth ivory and the shiny black keys and the heavy pedals and the cool wood, and the songs she could coax out of there and the times her mother had played and Evelyn had sat in the sunshine and been happy.
“It’s not just the piano,” Barbara said quietly. “It’s the house. Sag Neck.”
“The house?”
“We’re going to have to sell it, Evie. The lawyer is working out some pittance for us to live on. It’s beyond the legal fees we’re dealing with. If your father does go to prison, that’s months without income, and of course he can’t practice law again, so what we’re left with we have to make last until death.” She gave a bitter laugh. “You asked about rent money? Well, I’ve been looking at condos. Do you know what it feels like, having Jude Carea show me around a rental condo? How happy that trollop is that I’ve fallen so far?”
Evelyn’s hand flew to her shoulder, where she began massaging it, pressing, pushing against the knots. This couldn’t all be vanishing. She could do something. It wasn’t too late yet. Any shot that her family had at survival, both social and financial, was now up to her. She was almost out of time.
The light was changing in the foyer, becoming cold and gray, when Evelyn turned to her mother with a clear, hard look in her eye. Her breathing was loud; she could hear it huffing out of her nose. “It’s going to be all right,” she said. “I have to get home. There are some things I need to do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Trophy Hall
Camilla’s erratic driving had gotten the foursome of Camilla, Nick, Scot, and Evelyn to Lake James with just one speeding ticket outside of Saratoga on the Northway; Camilla had been going ninety-three, she negotiated with the trooper to knock it down to eighty-seven, and Camilla said that by the time her family’s upstate vehicular attorney contested it in traffic court, she could get it dropped to a $200 fine and no points on her license.
Evelyn had called Camilla the moment she left Sag Neck to say that she’d love to come up for the weekend and sorry for being so flaky. She wondered whether Camilla would put both her and Jaime in rooms along the main hallway, which would make things easier. What did not make things easier was Scot being invited. When she’d met Camilla the previous night for drinks to float the idea of breaking up with Scot and see what the reaction would be, Nick had shown up at the bar with Scot at his side. The assumed inclusion annoyed Evelyn, and her digs at Scot that night got no cheering on from Camilla or Nick, which annoyed her further. Here, in the car, Scot was jabbing away at his BlackBerry and not partaking in the conversation at all. Barnacle Scot. Ubiquitous Scot.
In Bibville, after the cold thud she’d felt seeing the missing piano, she had identified Scot as being at the center of her problems. If she hadn’t spent all this time dating him, she would be in a solid position. She would be engaged to someone more prominent, blithe about her family issues, confident and settled, with money to spare. She closed off her memories of the parts of Scot she liked and made the case to herself that Scot’s sole function, the reason she’d put up with the wet kisses and the giant hands pawing at her, was to be supportive, to be the one person she could talk to about all her family problems, and he couldn’t even get that right. Her father would be sent to prison, her mother would move into a condo, and she would be out of money and tethered to this oafish midtier banker who was unable to do anything about her situation.
Unless.
Camilla pulled the car up to the marina, and the four of them headed to the waiting motorboat. At Sachem, Evelyn was relieved, for once, that she hadn’t gotten one of the best guest rooms; she and Scot had a twin-bed room, which meant she could get out of sex tonight easily.
While Evelyn read Vogue on one of the beds, Scot had gone out to do his “regimen,” as he referred to his calisthenics that he had evidently lifted from a 1910 at
hletic-training booklet. He returned with sweat rolling down his face forty minutes later, and Evelyn hoped he’d had the sense to exercise where no one could see him. When he bounded over to her to peck her on the cheek, Evelyn drew back and wiped his lip sweat off.
“Did anyone call?” he said, picking up the BlackBerry, which he’d left on his bed.
“Not a one,” she said, flipping the page of her Vogue. She was still in the thicket of advertisements before the masthead, as she’d spent the time he’d been working out trying to catalogue his faults and theorizing when and how Jaime might arrive. But nice memories of Scot kept creeping in, and she’d think of how he brought her warm milk in a grainy homemade mug one night when she was unable to sleep, then she’d push herself to counter that with the Greenwich Country Club golf game where every shot of his went sideways, and she, Nick, and Preston had to spend about four hours over nine holes looking for his lost balls. “Workout good?” she asked.
“Sixty seconds on, thirty seconds off. Power intervals.” He dropped the phone and reached for her hand, but, when she didn’t respond, withdrew his. “I ran into Camilla’s sister. Someone else is coming up later today, I guess. Another friend of Camilla’s.”
“Today?” she blurted, then tried to appear absorbed by the ugly knit tote for sale.
“Yeah, you knew other people were coming? I thought it was just this group.”
“I—she mentioned something about it. I just thought it was later this weekend.”
“Nope,” Scot said, and wiped his forehead, flinging tiny beads of sweat onto Evelyn, whose whole body tensed. He headed toward the bathroom. “Today. The caretaker was just taking the boat over to pick them up.”
Evelyn could see a narrow sliver of bathroom from her seat; Scot was folding his clothes and placing them, stacked, on the sink, so they wouldn’t develop wrinkles during the five minutes he would spend in the shower. She heard him turn the water on, then groan as he stepped in. She couldn’t pull this off with Scot here.
His BlackBerry began ringing. Evelyn slid backward against the bed, so Scot couldn’t see her from the bathroom if he got out of the shower, then reached across to look at it. DAVID GREENBAUM WORK, the screen read. It took her only a moment to locate the phone icon on the BlackBerry.
“Scot Tannauer’s line,” she said pleasantly.
“What? I need Scot,” said the gruff voice on the other end.
“I’m so sorry, he stepped out for a moment. Maybe I can help? This is Evelyn Beegan, his girlfriend.” She practically choked on the word.
“Yeah, I need to talk to Scot.”
“Something’s come up at work?”
“You could say that. I know he’s up prancing around the Catskills, but tell him to call me, Greenbaum, right away.”
“The Adirondacks. It sounds serious, Mr. Greenbaum. You’re sure you just need him to call you? You don’t need him in the office?”
“How is he supposed to get into the office when he seems to have gone away for the weekend with his girlfriend?”
“We’re not far from the city, honestly. If he leaves now, he can be in the office by tonight.”
“Good. Fine. Good. Have him come straight here.”
“He’ll be there.”
A few minutes later, she heard the shower turn off. She didn’t want to see Scot fresh from the shower, mussed and clean and hopeful, like a little boy. She stood with her back to the bathroom door and knocked on it. “David Greenbaum called,” she said. “He kept calling, so I picked up, in case there was an emergency.”
“What did he want?” Scot said, anxious.
“He needs you back in the city. ASAP.”
“Darn it,” Scot muttered. “I should call him.”
“No, it’s okay. He said just to head back. Not to call.”
“Darn. I’m going to have to go. I’m really sorry.”
“No, it’s work, and it’s okay. He sounded kind of mad.”
“I should never have come.”
“It’s fine. I’ll go figure out when the next train is. I think there’s one around four and you’ll be back in the city tonight.”
“You’re a lifesaver.” He peeked out from the door and kissed her shoulder, and a look of pain flashed across her face.
After she got off of the Amtrak toll-free line, she relayed to Scot that there was a 4:05 train to Albany, and he could switch there for the city, then she arranged for a taxi to wait for him at the marina and told him to wait by the dock for the caretaker to take him back to town. She went down to find the cook to let him know that they would be one fewer for dinner and was walking back from the dining building when she heard the roar of the motorboat at the main boathouse, meaning the caretaker was back with Jaime. She ducked into a clutch of trees, the undergrowth plants tickling her ankles, and heard Scot talking in English-accented Spanish.
“So it’s ‘Es un placer—’”
“Placer,” someone else said, correcting Scot’s pronunciation, in a voice that sounded like it had been steeped in pine trees and tobacco.
“Placer hacer negocios—”
“Negocios.”
“Con ustedes.”
“Sí. Perfecto.”
“Placer hacer negocios,” Scot repeated. “Thank you. I have to go to Mexico City in a couple of weeks for a meeting—encuentro, right?—with a … clientado?”
“Cliente,” said the rich voice. “You’ll do just fine.”
“What the fuck, Scot? What is this, Spanish Immersion Day?” Evelyn heard Nick say. “Jaime, buddy.”
“Oh,” said Scot. “Oh, I just thought I would try out some of my Spanish.”
“Nick, how are you?” said the voice, now in an alluringly deep British accent with a tinge of American. “It’s not a problem at all, Scot. I’m glad you could practice. I have no doubt you’ll do very well down there. Pleasure meeting you. Good luck getting back today.”
“Thank you. Gracias. I just need to—have you seen Evelyn? I thought she was supposed to be here, but, I’ve got to—well.”
Evelyn checked her watch. If the train was at 4:05, Scot would have to leave immediately. She stayed within the trees.
“Can you tell her I had to go?” Scot said.
“No problem,” Nick said.
Evelyn waited, trying to slow down her breathing, until she heard the motorboat rev and a thonk that must be Scot’s big foot getting into the boat. She smoothed her hair and stepped out from behind the trees.
She had been expecting someone quite tall, but Jaime de Cardenas was small, tan, and fit, with biceps neatly packed into each fatless arm. He looked as if he ran twelve miles several times a week, and was in the gym every other day doing weights and attracting looks from Equinox’s boys and girls alike.
“I was just looking at the ducks down by the tennis court. There’s the most fascinating group of—oh, hello! I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Evelyn Beegan,” she said.
*
A game of croquet was soon assembled, after Camilla skipped out and decreed it so. Evelyn was doing rather well—not, of course, beating Camilla, but holding her own.
Camilla tapped her mallet against Jaime’s. “How’s your room?” she said.
“It’s great,” Jaime said. “This place is amazing, CHR. I don’t know why I haven’t been up here in so long.”
“Did you used to come up here a lot?” Evelyn said.
“Oh, God, for high-school summers, Sachem was the be-all, end-all,” Jaime said. “All of us from St. George’s would come up to see the girls of St. Paul’s in their swimsuits. Remember, CHR? That one summer when you were going through that religious phase? She made us all parade to church every Sunday. She was in the choir at St. Paul’s and was an awfully saucy choirgirl.”
Camilla crinkled her eyes at Jaime in a way Evelyn hadn’t seen before; she seemed softer, as though the top coat of nail polish had not been put on. “You make it sound like I was a backup singer, darling. I was a soloist.”
�
��That’s right. I remember your ‘Ave Maria.’ It was worth the forced sanctity.”
This wasn’t going in Evelyn’s direction; Jaime had barely looked at her. She needed to establish herself, fast. “Isn’t every boarding school essentially a forced churchgoing experience?” she said, shading her eyes. “At Sheffield, where I went, there was morning chapel every day. They would sort of nod at the Jews and the Muslims and pretend like it was nondenominational, but it was so clearly church.”
Jaime turned to her and let his eyes rise and fall over her body, too slowly to be casual. “Sheffield,” he repeated thoughtfully. Evelyn could feel an almost physical trail where his eyes had moved.
“Yes, Evelyn went to Sheffield from a funny town in Maryland. It must have been so foreign to you, Evelyn,” Camilla said with a flip of her hair.
“I had grown up in London, so it was awfully foreign to me, too,” Jaime said. His eyes flickered, but Evelyn couldn’t read them.
“It would’ve been stranger for Evelyn.” Camilla smacked her mallet and sent her ball hurtling over a bump, then it gently turned and dropped through a wicket. “Perfect,” she said. “So I’m surprised, Evelyn, that you’re playing getting-to-know-you with Jaime. Didn’t you say you’d met him?”
Evelyn tried to look puzzled. “Did I? I don’t think so.”
“I do,” Camilla said. “You said you ran into him at the Harvard Club. Maybe when you were there with your boyfriend?”
“It’s possible,” Evelyn said quickly. “Nick, it’s your turn, isn’t it?”
“The Harvard Club? Am I that ancient looking?” Jaime said with a laugh.
“I thought it sounded odd,” Camilla said, gazing coolly at Evelyn. “Her boyfriend—”
“Do you know what I heard about the Harvard Club?” Evelyn interrupted. Her mind spun for something plausible. “When they tried to update the menu and take the old-school dishes, like beef Wellington and clams casino, off the menu, members lost their minds and threatened to quit the club en masse.”
“I believe it,” Jaime said. “I can’t imagine members have the most adventurous palates.”
Everybody Rise Page 25
