Everybody Rise

by Stephanie Clifford

  “Here. Yes. In a tiny apartment. With my mother.”

  “Roommates with the Babs. Jesus. Your dad?”

  “Twenty-nine months.”

  “That’s crazy,” Charlotte said. “Do you think he did it?”

  “I don’t think the federal government brings cases that are made up,” Evelyn said. “But twenty-nine months? What he did is hardly worse than what guys on Wall Street are doing daily. In the scheme of things, I don’t know if he deserved what he got.”

  Charlotte kicked a stone. “I read he got a really good prison.”

  “Petersburg. His second choice.”

  “Is it like college? Where you have safeties and reaches?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. Did you know there’s a whole prison-consultancy business? My father hired some ex-con to tell him about how to behave in the clink.”

  “For one, you probably don’t call it the clink.”

  “Seriously. Don’t cut in the lunch line seemed to be the main thing. It was interesting.” Evelyn looked at the gray bay before her and thought that she would have liked a similar consultant to guide her through New York life. Don’t try to upstage the alpha female; that was probably a rule that held both in New York and in prison.

  Charlotte applied some Vaseline to her lips. “It’s still impossible to see your father in, what, orange scrubs? Is that what they wear? Do you think they let him bring his pomade in?”

  “He doesn’t use pomade.”

  “I’m sorry, Evelyn, but it’s time you knew the truth. That hair doesn’t just happen. There is serious product involved.” Charlotte swiveled her head to look at the HOT COFFEE sign on the ice-cream parlor. “Can we stop? I’m dying for caffeine.”

  “I can get you caffeine, but we’re not going here,” Evelyn said. “You’ll be pleased to learn that I get an employee discount at the best coffee place in town.” She cast it as a joke, unsure what Charlotte’s reaction would be.

  “You? You’re working at a coffee place?” Charlotte squinted. “For real?”

  “Yep. And in the evenings I’m a waitress at the Hub. You want beer and burgers, talk to me.”

  “Evelyn Beegan, a barista-slash-waitress?”

  “Char, they’re jobs, okay?”

  “No,” Charlotte said. “No. I actually think it’s good.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not. I think it’s really good. You’re working, for one. That’s a good step, seriously.”

  It started to drizzle as they passed the Ioka, advertising Knocked Up, coming to Bibville months after it had been released elsewhere. The Caffeiteria’s outside light shone yellow on the wharf, where the gray-blue sky now matched the water. Inside, the afternoon guy was wiping the counters and slipped Evelyn two free day-old almond croissants along with the girls’ coffee. The rain was still just pleasantly speckling the ground, and Evelyn and Charlotte sat outside on one of the benches overlooking the winter harbor.

  Evelyn tore off a corner of her croissant and wondered if she should bother trying to sound casual. “So how is everyone?”

  Charlotte put her croissant in her lap. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see you. Pres is in rehab, Ev.”

  “No.” Evelyn had been bracing for gossip that made her feel left out, not severe life changes among her best friends; she had been hoping that Preston was doing just fine. Evelyn put her head in her hands. “The last time I saw him, Char, at Sachem,” she said, looking at a piece of popcorn underneath the bench, “I told him everyone knew he was gay.”

  “Evelyn.”

  “I know. I know. I was drunk, which isn’t an excuse, but he just, he just turned away and then ran down the steps and that was the last time I saw him or talked to him.”

  “God, Ev. What made you say that?”

  “I think I hated it that he was calling me fake, and I felt like he was being so fake about this really core thing. I’ve thought about it a thousand times. If I could take it back, or handle it differently, believe me, I would. It couldn’t have helped with his drinking.”

  “Oh, Ev.”

  “I had a scorched-earth policy when I left, I guess. When did Pres go in?”

  “A month ago. He smashed into a tree when he was driving to Boston. I talked to him about it before he clammed up about the whole thing, and he’d swerved because he thought he saw a dog dash in front of his car. I’m not sure he really did—it was past midnight and a dog probably wasn’t out then—but he kept saying the dog looked like Hamilton. He got a DUI, but the idea that he could’ve hit a dog when he was drunk, I think that’s what made him check in and stay in.”

  “Oh, God, Char. That’s so scary. He wasn’t hurt himself? With the tree?”

  “Bruised up, but air bags and seat belt. He paid for the tree’s restoration, actually. It was some kind of prized elm.”

  “Char, I should’ve tried harder. After that scene at Sachem, I should’ve apologized, or knocked on his door, or done something. I just felt like he didn’t want to see me—I’m sure he didn’t want to see me—and then everything imploded. Pres. Jesus. Is anyone there with him? His parents?”

  “They don’t allow visitors during the first several weeks but I’m sure they check in on him.”

  “Has Nick called him? Camilla? Were they in touch with him during the accident and all that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “God. It’s like a pack of hyenas. They don’t have use for the weak. Have you gone up to see him?”

  “No, it’s still the no-visitors period. Even once he can have visitors, the best I can swing is one afternoon. Things are insane at Graystone. My boss is convinced the market’s going to tank soon—the underlying economics right now are a disaster—so we’re trying to wrap up a bunch of acquisitions. I’m only here, in Bibville, because I had to meet with a toy company in Annapolis this morning and don’t have to be back in the city until tonight. And Preston needs, I don’t know. Needs someone, something more. An afternoon of me dropping in for coffee isn’t going to help that much. I’m still going to go up when I can, but I feel like he needs a real friend there. And you know Pres. He’s never going to ask for help. I only know he’s in rehab because he wasn’t responding to my e-mails or calls after he told me about the accident, and finally I lost it—the island of the disappearing friends—and called Mrs. Hacking, and she gave me his number at this facility. It’s some swanky place in Marblehead. I swear I wouldn’t have known that it was a rehab place except Mrs. Hacking gave me the number for the main line, and the receptionist answered it, ‘Seaview House, offering specialized addiction treatment since 1987, how can I help you?’”

  “Since 1987, huh?” Evelyn kicked Charlotte’s leg.

  “I have a really specific memory. I remember thinking it must’ve started because all the traders were drinking themselves to death up there then. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

  “Vraiment.” Evelyn smiled sadly. “How long’s he there for?”

  “I think another month or so inpatient, then there’s some extended outpatient treatment. I wish you two hadn’t had your breakdowns simultaneously.”

  Evelyn lifted her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Eh.” Charlotte shrugged. “I moved to Brooklyn in September. How’s that for change?”

  “To get away from my haunting memory?”

  Charlotte laughed. “Sort of, actually. Manhattan was getting ridiculous. Sex and the City tour buses overtaking Bleecker and condos left and right. Poor Jane Jacobs. Brooklyn’s great. Lots of creative types. Do you want the updates on the rest of your crew?”

  Evelyn took a deep breath. “Hit me.”

  “Nick and Scot’s hedge fund is alive and well. Nick’s greasing the palms for money, Scot’s doing all the work. They’re betting against subprime CDOs.”

  “Nick is betting against Wall Street?”

  Charlotte laughed. “If it makes him money, right? I saw the prospectus. Nick has access to all these r
ich kids with money to throw around, and then Scot is doing the actual work. I’ve got to say, it seems like Scot got in at just the right time. Alan Greenspan said last month he thought housing was actually a bubble. I think it’s going to make them a ton.”

  “Doesn’t it ever stop?”

  “On Wall Street? Not until it does, right? Anyway, if there is a crash, Scot and Nick are positioned to kill it.”

  Evelyn flicked a bit of crust out into the water of the bay. “Is he dating anyone?”

  “Scot? Yeah, Nick set him up with this girl Geordie. She went to Princeton, a few years younger than us. She works in publishing. I think it’s pretty serious.”

  “She’s nice to him?”

  Charlotte nodded. That hurt particularly badly; Evelyn did want Scot to be happy, and she knew they weren’t right together, but she still missed him. After all her misplaced bets, it was Scot who was going to be a big winner, after all.

  “What about Camilla?” Evelyn asked quietly. She still occasionally gave in to the impulse to Google Camilla and saw that there had been new additions to Camilla’s social roster. She was dating someone from the Vanity Fair 100, a list of tech and media types, the founder of a voice-recognition start-up that Yahoo was rumored to be acquiring for a few hundred million.

  “I see her here and there. She’s gotten really into a couple of arts organizations, one with glass-blowing or something, and another with graffiti artists. It’s pretty funny, actually. She’s at downtown parties constantly now, and the last time I saw her she was saying she was going to move to the Meatpacking District.”

  Evelyn bit an almond sliver in half. They had all moved on so quickly, after she had done so much work to care about and get to know the first—and what she thought was the ultimate—elite circle. Charlotte was describing a Camilla-hosted party on the Soho House rooftop for the emerging artist Tayeb Idrissi, who took posts from something called Twitter and made them into word maps. As Charlotte began detailing Tayeb’s installation at Storm King, Evelyn felt the almond’s ragged edge against her tongue and felt, suddenly, that she couldn’t hear it anymore.

  “You know what, Char? Sorry. I know I asked, but I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter. If it’s not Tayeb whoever, it’ll be something else, and someone else, and I’d always be playing catch-up. I was always playing catch-up.”

  Charlotte tipped her head back and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she asked, “What were you doing, Ev?”

  “In New York?”

  “In New York. You became sort of a bitch.”

  “Tell it like it is, Char.” Evelyn flexed her toes.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s kind of true.”

  “With Camilla and everything, you mean? I guess it was that scene we were in—”

  “I wasn’t really in it, Ev. That was all you.”

  “Okay, fine. The scene I was in. It was just so much. The money it took. The competition over the invitations. The parties.” Evelyn ran her hands over the wooden bench, grasping for how to explain this to Charlotte, who wasn’t fazed by this stuff. “It sounds ridiculous, saying it out loud, because it’s just parties, but it mattered to me.” She was starting to sniffle, and wiped her nose and looked in some horror at the trail it left on her sleeve, then laughed. “New York made me crazy. I was just trying to make it.”

  “You were trying to make it in Edith Wharton’s New York, Ev. That barely exists anymore. Look at the Times wedding announcements. It’s ‘She works at McKinsey and he’s an economics professor.’ It’s all merit based.”

  “It is not, Char. I know the Times wedding announcements, trust me. It’s all ‘He’s a director at Goldman and she’s studying early childhood development at Bank Street School of Education and her father ran asset management at blabbity-blah, and they just bought a house in Cos Cob.’”

  “Okay. There are a lot of bankers in there, but society isn’t that closed anymore.”

  “Isn’t it? Go to a deb ball and tell me that.”

  “Other people are throwing open the doors. The entrepreneurs and the artists and the whatnot—no, you laugh, but they make old money interesting. Why do you think Camilla’s all of a sudden becoming a patron of the arts?”

  Evelyn shook her head slightly.

  “You wanted so badly to get in, when you should have been trying to get out,” Charlotte said.

  Evelyn cast her arm forward, sending the last bit of the croissant into the water, and it plopped with a satisfying splash into the bay. A lone Canada goose quickly honked over, gobbled it up, and flew off. Finally, Evelyn said, “Get out to where?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. That whole Upper East Side life, though—it isn’t the only version of life in New York. In Brooklyn, there are all sorts of interesting people, the kind that New York used to have, writers, and graphic designers, and beer makers.…”

  “Beer makers?” The raindrops were starting to fatten.

  “Ev, I think…” Charlotte looked at the water, searching for the words. “What you were trying to be, wasn’t that all about your mother?”

  Evelyn looked down at her feet, taking time to put together her response. “Without my mother to report to, without her ideas of it, I’m not sure it would have been quite as appealing, yeah. But it was me, Char. It wasn’t her up there attending debutante parties and going to benefits and stealing bracelets.”

  Charlotte pulled down her lower lip. “You stole a bracelet?”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “I guess not.”

  “We don’t even go to Cichetti’s anymore, the grocery store on Main, because my mother is convinced that our fall from grace has tainted the neighbors’ opinion of us so. She doesn’t even see her old friends.” Evelyn looked out across the gray water, which was starting to splash up against the dock.

  “What is the plan now, Ev?”

  “What, my Gilmore Girls setup with my mom isn’t appealing?”

  “I’m serious. You’re young, you’re pretty, you have money—”

  “No. I mean, first of all, twenty-seven isn’t exactly ingenue age. But money I do not have. My parents had to pay off the mortgage on the house, and the proceeds from the house sale are tied up in the settlement with Leiberg Channing, and there was a nine-million-dollar restitution to the government plus the legal fees. My mother still finds it uncouth to talk about money, so, trust me, I’ve tried to figure it out, but I don’t think there’s any money, at least not judging from the way she’s barely spending it. I’m on my own.”

  “Wow. Well, at least you were down here to help out with the sentencing and all that.”

  “I should’ve been down here more. Helping them pack up, and hanging out with my dad, but everything in New York was such a mess and it seemed like if I could just get a little more time there—” Her voice broke, and she felt tears coming, and as she started to blink them back reflexively, she wondered why. So she allowed them to roll, hot relief down her cheeks.

  “Hey. Hey.” Charlotte threw an arm around her. “You’re still here, kid.”

  “I’m in Bibville,” Evelyn said as she took a big, snotty inhale.

  Charlotte squeezed Evelyn’s shoulder. “Why wouldn’t you say anything? About your dad, I mean? I tried to talk to you about it, and you were so, I don’t know. Like it wasn’t happening.”

  Evelyn looked at her friend, Charlotte’s hair frizzing in the mist. “What could I have said, Char? I thought maybe no one knew or put two and two together. What good would it have done, really, talking about it?”

  “Well, you might have fought a little harder to keep your job. And talking can lead to deeper connections. So my therapist said.”

  “Don’t tell the WASPs,” Evelyn said.

  The raindrops started to spatter on the dock as Evelyn thought about the New York she had left behind, and the new New York that Charlotte, Camilla, and the others were discovering. She rose, and extended her hand. “Come on, Char. You’re getting so
aked. You’re not used to the rains of the Bib. We’ll get you a shower and a delightful Barbara Beegan monogrammed towel, and we’ll have dinner at the Hub before you have to drive back. I’m rolling in money from tips and can afford extra garlic toast.”

  “I would not say no to extra garlic toast,” Charlotte said, pulling her blazer tight. “Vámanos.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Northeast Regional

  The train jolted Evelyn awake as it pulled past Trenton. She looked out the window for the passive-aggressive TRENTON MAKES, THE WORLD TAKES sign, but she had missed it this time. She had with her just a cheap red rolling suitcase, given to her as a going-away present from the people at the Caffeiteria. She was going back to Bibville the weekend after next, for another trip to Petersburg with her mother; she had promised to track down the e-mail address of a personal-finance guru whom Dale wanted to arrange prison seminars with.

  About two months after Charlotte’s visit, Evelyn told her mother she was leaving. Her library-computer excursions had turned up the addresses of several well-reviewed coffee places and restaurants in New York that might be hiring, and some Craigslist roommate-wanted postings that she could actually afford with a job like that. Preston’s old cell-phone number didn’t work anymore, and though she’d swallowed her pride and called Mrs. Hacking a few times, she’d gotten their answering machine and had just left messages that this was Evelyn and she hoped Mrs. Hacking would tell Preston she was thinking of him.

  After being very cross on the drive to the train station and saying that she didn’t have all day to chauffeur people around, Barbara had actually teared up when the train arrived. She patted Evelyn on the head and said that it had been wonderful having her little girl at home, that she didn’t know what she would do without her.

  “You know what? How many women, at your age, get a chance to start over? You’re a free woman, for a little while at least,” Evelyn said.

  Barbara had pursed her lips, then smiled. “Perhaps,” she said. She patted Evelyn on the head again.

  “I’m just a train ride away if you need anything.”