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?”