“That’s because they’re so old their food is pureed. Shazam!” Nick said.
Evelyn smiled, ballooning with the weirdly good feeling of a lie well told, and tapped her ball with her mallet. Jaime put his mallet on the ground and turned to Nick. “I hate to break up the game, but, my friend, I have to go into town. If you want to come in with me, I could use the company.”
“Stay here.” Camilla pouted. “We can send the caretaker into town for whatever you need.”
“No, I promised to drop this off to Jack myself. I’m in the same town; I can make the delivery.”
“Well, don’t take Nick, then. He promised me a game of tennis this afternoon.”
“I have to go into town,” Evelyn said. She could feel Camilla glaring at her. As Camilla started to say something, Jaime’s deep voice got there first. “Great,” he said.
“Evelyn,” Camilla started to say, before Evelyn overrode it with an “Excuse me for a second,” and tossed down her croquet mallet. She ran upstairs to her bathroom and, after a quick layer of lip stain and a combing of her eyelashes, started back down. But the door to Camilla’s room was open, and lying on a dresser, just a few feet away, was Camilla’s bracelet of Racquet Club victories.
Evelyn looked right and looked left, and didn’t see or hear anyone. She took a light step forward, and paused again. She would just borrow it for the afternoon and put it right back. Friends borrowed each other’s jewelry all the time. It was just sitting there. Glinting. If Jaime noticed it on her, he might believe that she, too, had Racquet Club lineage. She looked over her shoulder again, then dashed into the room and slipped it into her pocket.
Evelyn put on the bracelet during her made-up errand in town, telling Jaime she was supposed to pick up a wooden serving bowl with silver antlers for Preston’s mother. At the counter, as she paid, she removed the bracelet from her pocket and fastened it onto her left wrist, so Jaime would see it from the driver’s seat. It felt heavy and delicious and right.
She twirled her wrist back and forth as Jaime drove around the edge of James Pond, soothing herself with the pleasing clink of the rackets. She leaned in to adjust the radio’s volume, making the bracelet hit the volume dial. “This bracelet is so clunky,” she said. “My grandfather and great-grandfather were both serious Racquet Club members, and I think these were their most treasured possessions. They barely took care of their other heirlooms—our silver was so tarnished you could barely see that it was silver—but these were always polished and in perfect condition. Men love their victories, I guess.”
He glanced over; she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“Camilla has one, too,” she said, as an insurance policy in case he’d noticed the bracelet before, “which is why we were instant friends. I’d had all the rackets for ages but had never thought of putting them into a bracelet.” She reached for the sun visor.
“It’s nice,” he said loosely, then turned into a long lane. Evelyn looked at the sign and saw Jaime had driven them to the Lake James Club, a private men’s club that, famously, only changed the rules banning tuberculars and Jews ten years ago.
“Do you mind? One of my father’s colleagues is here and needed some documents,” Jaime said.
“No, of course not,” Evelyn said. “I’ll just wait out here.”
“You’re going to sit in the car?”
She turned red—she had thought women weren’t allowed in the club at all. She hated getting these things wrong. “No, no. I’d love to come in, if that’s all right.”
He smiled. “It’s all right by me. It’s hardly a confidential business deal.”
She followed him as he hurried through the club. He greeted the guard and quickly scooped some peanuts from the bar into a tiny plastic cup, popping them into his mouth and sucking them in a way that made Evelyn’s stomach light up. They passed indoor-tennis courts and a large library covered in Oriental carpets. He peered into that, then wheeled around, put a hot hand on her shoulder, and said, “Wait here.” With the imprint of his hand feeling like a brand, Evelyn watched as he gave a folder to an older man, chatted, laughed, then shook the man’s hand and rejoined her. “Finished,” he said with a smile. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
She was following him back toward the exit when he stopped, turned, and leaned in so closely that she could see the shine on his teeth and smell his scent of sweat and metal, and her lower abdomen went into spin cycle. “Do you want to see something?” he said.
She said yes.
He loped up two sets of stairs, and pushed open a door to a dim hallway with large windows on one side. It smelled of dust, and as her eyes focused, she saw it was filled with mounted dead animals’ heads, deer and elk and foxes and bears and, at her feet, a snapping raccoon. Against the right wall were ducks, beautifully feathered and decorative and now dead. “Where are we?” she asked.
“The trophy hall,” he said. His breath tickled her neck and she held perfectly still. “Whenever a member shoots something particularly worthy, it goes into here. I shot that one.” He indicated a duck so gorgeous it looked hand-painted, with a handsome black mohawk and a lush patch of white next to its eye, its mounting plate balanced on a rickety chair.
“That one was beautiful,” he said. “Flying with its mates over Saranac. I got three of them, but this was the cleanest shot.”
She swallowed hard. “They’re defenseless,” she said.
“They’re ducks, Evelyn.”
“Isn’t this a wildlife protection area?”
“All you need is a permit.”
She tried to smile.
“Touch it,” he said.
She didn’t move.
“Go on, touch it.” He put his hand on her lower back, and she started to tremble. “It’s good luck,” he said. “Touch it.”
He was now inches from her, with his hand warm and firm on her back, and she was able to feel his body rise and fall through the conduit of his hand when he breathed. “You can make a wish if you touch it,” he said. “You look like you want a good wish.”
He pushed her forward. The duck was mounted on a board shaped like a shield, and she couldn’t help thinking of its last moments, flying boldly over the still lake, thinking he was safe and free. “Just take your hand, like this,” Jaime said. He’d now slid his right hand to her waist, and his left hand was on her left arm. With a sudden movement, he thrust her hand on the duck’s head, pushing the rackets into her wrist, holding her hand there even when she reflexively tried to withdraw it from the duck’s spiky feathers. He pressed harder, moving her hand to the duck’s body and spreading it out. “Good girl, Evelyn,” he said. His belt buckle pressed into her back, and she felt him straddle her legs. She was breathing heavily, too heavily, not ladylike, half terrified and half aroused. She pushed the thought of the duck aside and willed Jaime to press harder against her, here in this dirty upstairs hallway. She felt like there was a blinking red light emitting from their points of contact, his smooth, tan hand, his cold metal wristwatch, the buckle against her spine, his loafer pressing against her sandal. “Make your wish,” he said in a low voice, and she did, then turned her face so her eyes would lock with his and he would just be able to see the fringes of her long eyelashes. “Like that, Jaime?” she said in her own low voice, looking up at him, trying to echo his tone.
He snapped his hand away and moved back, checking his watch. “We should get back,” he said, and walked toward the door, leaving her heaving with her hand still pressed against the dead duck.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Typee
Dinner was served in the octagonal dining room at Sachem, along a long wooden table that, tonight, held seventeen. Souse had come up in the afternoon, and the crowd was more eclectic than at the Hackings’: the couple who owned Camp Adekagagwaa, and a pensive Asian man whom they described, apparently sincerely, as their “poet-in-residence” for the summer; a provost at Yale named Gardiner; a minister at Harvard who was also named Gardin
er; a woman who had come in third at the golf U.S. Open in 1993; a wine importer named Chipp with two p’s, who always got the first crates of Beaujolais Nouveau in the States; the guitarist for Whitesnake and his twenty-year-old girlfriend; a stout older lady who had unsuccessfully pushed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to do a pornography exhibit around the borrowed Madame X when she was on its board; a stout younger lady who said she worked at Cartier for years but “work just didn’t take.” Evelyn thought they were lively, and enjoyed showing off for Jaime as she asked about Block Island and Bar Harbor. She loved, too, that at Sachem, her hands wouldn’t have to touch a dirty dish, as there was staff for that, and Evelyn’s status was high enough that she no longer had to work as a houseguest-aide.
Preston arrived by boat just after dessert had been served. Having Preston there gave her social standing a boost, Evelyn thought, but it also made outright flirtation with Jaime that much more difficult—an old friend didn’t let you get away with much.
“Weren’t you supposed to be here for dinner? Where have you been?” Evelyn asked as she leaned in to kiss his cheek.
“Hither and yon,” he said, opening his jacket to reveal a flask.
“What on earth, Pres? The Rutherfords have a fabulous wine cellar.”
“I like a personal stash.” Preston was half singing.
“Are you drunk?” Evelyn asked.
He leered toward her. “I don’t touch the stuff. Where’s your erstwhile boyfriend? Your man-about-town?”
“He had to leave. There was a crisis with work.”
“Is there gin in this joint?”
“You seem like you’ve had plenty, frankly. Charlotte has me keeping an eye on you, you should know.”
“Charlotte has you what? Are there G and Ts here?” Preston said.
“I meant to ask, did your mother get a chance to talk to anyone about Sloan Kettering?”
He drew his lips into a line. “If Fritz Rutherford were still here, there would be G and Ts everywhere.”
“Preston, pay attention, would you? I thought your mother could mention that I’m helping with the Bal Français.”
His eyes locked on to hers and Evelyn felt a surprising jolt of fear. “I am paying attention,” was all he said, and then he turned to talk to the adults.
Souse excused herself soon after greeting Preston, saying she was pooped, and Camilla suggested the young people go to the Typee. Evelyn trailed them, letting a skipping Phoebe lead the way, listening to the others’ shouts in the dark. Halfway up the hill, she paused, turning back to look at the camp, her feet on the springy ground, the cold night air and dark lake and bright stars enveloping her, her friends’ voices receding.
She had lived for so long resisting her mother’s version of what her life ought to be, thinking her mother didn’t know much about life at all. When Evelyn was seventeen and taking her Intro to Psychology course at Sheffield, she had recognized her mother in descriptions of depression and repression. At one point, she suggested that her mother see a psychiatrist to figure out how to express how she was feeling. Barbara, scrubbing a metal pan with steel wool, had thrown the pan against the sink with a crash. “You want to know how I’m feeling, Evelyn?” she said. “Every day, I get up and say, ‘Do the dishes, or overdose on pills?’ That’s how I’m feeling. Is that helpful?”
Barbara was wrong about life, Evelyn had thought as she’d gone to Davidson and purposely not rushed the preppy sorority, making snide comments from afar as those girls smiled and chittered their way through college. Wrong, Evelyn had thought as she’d moved to New York, determined to make it on her own. Wrong, Evelyn had thought as she filled her summers with work and sweated on subway platforms while Preston and his friends went to fabulous, cool-aired vacation towns.
But Barbara was right.
Evelyn had fought her mother long and hard for a life that, prior to meeting Camilla, turned out to consist of TV and takeout. She was living in New York, but she wasn’t living in New York. Then, just as the stable foundation of her parents and home in Bibville started to give way, Evelyn finally gave these people a chance and found that they accepted her. She had found her place. She was here.
“Ev! Did a bear get you?” Camilla shouted.
“‘If you go out in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise!’” Preston sang, Nick joining in.
Evelyn drifted up the path to the Typee and across its porch. The main room here was cozy and cabinlike, with everything done in Yale’s colors: blue couch, white rug, blue blankets. Fritz Rutherford was long gone from Sachem, but his alma mater lived on.
Preston was largely avoiding her and everyone, as he took off his jacket and drunkenly nestled himself in an armchair with an old Archie comic book whose pages were wavy, wet and dried through many a rainstorm. When Jaime saw the book and asked Evelyn whether she was a Betty or a Veronica, she laid two fingers on his arm and said maybe she was a bit of both. She filled a tumbler with Scotch. It smelled like a Band-Aid, but she drank it down quickly, then drank down another.
She looked at Jaime, who was starting to get blurry, as he lit a cigar, and thought about the signals he had given her that afternoon. It was all working, and so easily. He would cover the donation for Camilla’s Luminaries thing, absolutely; $25,000 was probably what he spent on a weekend out of town. What sort of form did wedding invitations with South Americans with three hundred middle names take? she wondered. Would it be covered in Vogue? Jaime was laughing, Nick was wiping his nose, she was drinking another glass of Scotch, and everyone was singing “Umbrella” and she and Jaime were dancing.
Then she was outside with Preston, the night air slicing through her. He was saying something but she didn’t want to listen, so she leaned over the railing, looking below her for the broken bottles, but she couldn’t see any of them. She leaned farther, fascinated by the lights reflected on the lake, then Preston yanked her collar. “What the hell are you doing?” he said.
“The lights are pretty,” she said drunkenly, shifting her weight to one foot, then the other.
“I don’t mean that, and you know it. You’re in there doing the lambada with Jaime? What about Scot?”
“What about Scot? He’s not here, last time I checked. Last time I checked, I didn’t need permission to dance.”
“I’m not talking about permission. Who are you trying to impress? You’re twisting yourself into knots trying to fit in with this crowd. It isn’t worth it, Evelyn. It is not worth it.”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you!” Evelyn teetered backward, and steadied herself with a hand on the rough wooden railing. “That’s rich, Preston Hacking. Twisting in knots? Please. Practice what you preach. You’re twenty-eight years old and you’re all knotted up and phony yourself. What, are you jealous of me? Are you the one who wants to be in there rubbing up against Jaime?”
His face went slack, and he turned away from her, toward the lake.
“Oh, that’s right. Keep on hiding, Pres. Nobody’ll ever guess your little secret. Ssshhhh, don’t say a word. But please, keep lecturing me about how I shouldn’t knot myself up trying to fit in. Meanwhile, you can’t seem to admit that you’re gay when the entire world knows it. Like, come on out, Preston Hacking! Come on out!”
Her last word hung in the silent air, especially because Preston still wasn’t moving. His thin silhouette was black against the blue sky, black as the trees and mountains and the lake. She felt like there was a cyclone in her head, whizzing around in a circle and about to pick her off the ground and take her with it.
“I never expected this from you,” he said, in a voice low and clogged with anger. Then he ran. He clattered down the Typee steps and she heard his hard-soled shoes hit the packed ground of the path.
“Preston!” She ran down the stairs after him, and then her feet hit the hard dirt and caught on a root and she took a big, smacking fall, landing hard on her hands and getting the breath knocked out of her for a moment. She looked up; she couldn’t se
e or hear Preston. She took two shaky, clattering breaths and hit the ground with her palms once, twice, again.
Then she stood up, dusted off her knees and hands, and went back upstairs to the party.
“To youth,” Jaime was saying slurringly, sloshing a square bottle of something anise smelling into everyone’s glasses. Evelyn downed one, then downed the one that Jaime had poured for Preston. Phoebe was stretched out in front of the fire, and Camilla and Nick were playing speed-Scrabble, and there was Preston’s jacket that he’d left behind, and Evelyn drank another tumbler of Scotch so she didn’t have to feel anything when she looked at it. Now Evelyn was sitting next to Jaime at last, her head bent with his over an old book about Adirondack guideboats.
Evelyn staggered to the bathroom, and saw her reflection looked ruddy, so she slapped her face to try to get the color evenly distributed on it. Returning, she looked blearily around the group in the living room. The beauty and perfect finish of the girls had given way to oily noses and puffing hair and red welts on their feet from their shoes. The boys, earlier fresh and shaved and smelling of soap, were now smelling of hormones and alcohol, their beards starting to push through their coarse skin, their mouths dry and hot with old Scotch. Where were her shoes? The gloss on her toes was like shiny blood. Preston had left, and Evelyn knew he was mad at her and knew it was important to remember why but she couldn’t. Nick was saying something to her in the hallway, and then Nick and Camilla and Phoebe went running down the hill and Phoebe fell, laughing in the dark, and it reminded Evelyn of something but she couldn’t concentrate on what. Just one lamp was on now, and Evelyn was sucking on Jaime’s ear, and time mixed itself up. She couldn’t taste the alcohol anymore, and added some Scotch to her Scotch because someone had given her nonalcoholic Scotch. Here was Jaime, grinning and singing, and now the lights were off, and everything was fine, spinning, fine.
*
Gray, swirls. Cold. She was cold. Her head, then her body, cold body. Quaking, naked, Evelyn came to on the Yale-blue couch, trying to warm herself under someone’s scarf. She had the cloud of something bad having transpired around her, but woke and, even as she felt the chilled air and located herself in the strange room, did not know for maybe three seconds, four, what it was that had happened. She felt fine, was barely hungover. Then the coldness of her toes and fingers was replaced by another feeling, an awareness of stickiness between her legs. She sat up, her body heavy. Her stomach cramped.
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