Evelyn stood up, her legs feeling awfully shaky. Her mother had enrolled her in a waltzing class at some strip-mall dance studio when she was a teenager, despite Evelyn’s protests that she would never, ever need to know how to waltz. Well done, Mom, she thought. Evelyn looked once more at Camilla, who was staring at the MC, clapping, and dipped her head. It was all meant to be, wasn’t it? The applause crescendoed, and it felt like it was washing around her in lovely warm waves. Then a more intense spotlight hit her, so bright that she couldn’t see anything. A flashbulb went off from her left side. She could picture Jaime looking at the photograph later, realizing just who she was. She smiled, tentatively at first, then broad and confident as the applause and the light lifted her up. It was for her this time. At last, it was all for her.
The spotlight followed her as she walked to the center of the dance floor and held out her hand to the ambassador. “C’est un plaisir,” she said in a mellifluous tone. She focused on his feet—if she was supposed to have debbed, she should know how to waltz perfectly—and matched his steps as the orchestra played “Que Sera, Sera.” It had been one of her mother’s favorite piano pieces, but it sounded so much lusher and realer here. Back-two-three, back-two-three, they whizzed around the room, covering the length and width of it as the ambassador turned her and spun her and they picked up speed, whirling and twirling and practically galloping. As the final notes played, the ambassador held her hand in an elegant arc as he gave a deep bow and she a modest curtsy. The ballroom lights came up, and a bright pop momentarily blinded Evelyn. Then the bulbs started flashing all around her, and she heard her name gather power like a wave: “Evelyn!” “Evelyn, over here!” “Evelyn, to the left!” “Evelyn, who are you wearing?” “Evelyn, straight ahead!” “Evelyn!” “Evelyn!” “Evelyn!” No more was she an and-guest, and-friend, the perennial second tierer. Everyone whom she’d ever met could see she was there, that she was worthy of attention. Joseph Rowley, who had audibly groaned when they were paired together at the Eastern Tennis Club’s twelve-and-under mixed doubles round-robin. Margie Chow, her Sheffield prep-year roommate who hadn’t wanted to room together after the first year. The people bothering her about rent and Barneys would find out who she was and that they shouldn’t have been upsetting her. They would all shake their heads, rueful, regretful. Evelyn had that spark all along, didn’t she? Wasn’t she something? Weren’t we stupid not to see it? Camilla, and Jaime, and Nick, and Charlotte. Preston, Preston would forgive her. And her mother, her mother! How happy Barbara would be. “Evelyn, over here!” “Evelyn!” The flashbulbs exploded, and everyone watching finally knew her name. They knew that she, Evelyn Beegan, belonged.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
After the Ball
On Sunday morning, Evelyn rose early and went to look at Appointment Book’s new postings. She was pictured in a gliding waltz at the top of the page, with the caption “Dancing Dreams—Evelyn Beegan selected for the danse d’honneur at the Bal Fran?ais.” She browsed through Patrick McMullan and saw herself in photo after photo. For kicks, she logged in to People Like Us and searched for her name. Someone in Istanbul had reposted a photo and written, “LOVE her Naeem.”
She had sent Camilla an e-mail upon reading it, “Look at Appointment Book! Good picture of you,” which was true, though Camilla was in a group photo and Evelyn was shot alone. Camilla didn’t write back. A couple of hours later, she e-mailed Camilla again: “The dancing went soooo late. So tired:(”
Still nothing. To try and mend things secondhand, Evelyn wrote Souse a particularly eloquent, or so she thought, thank-you note about the ball, assuming she would get some feedback about it from Camilla. Then she sent Nick some lighthearted texts about the coming weekend at Lake James and the Fruit Stripe, which Souse had decreed would be held then, to gauge whether Camilla had said something about her to him, but his responses were normal. She thought, frequently, of calling Preston, but how would she start the conversation?
Evelyn alternated between leaving her phone at full volume for when Jaime called—he’d have to have heard that she’d done the danse d’honneur by now—and turning it off so that she wouldn’t be distracted by waiting for him to call back, but in either case she stared at the phone like it was a bomb. She turned it on, and off, and on, and off, and no new missed calls or voice mails came up. Not from Jaime. And not from Camilla.
To clear out her voice-mail box so there would be room if Jaime needed to leave a message, she eventually listened to the voice mail from her father from Friday. It was a single sentence: “I thought you’d want to know that my guilty plea was today, which you apparently forgot,” he said in a quiet voice. An image of him, ashamed, in front of the judge, popped into her mind, then she rerouted herself. He had gotten himself into this, and it was all his doing. What did her parents expect from her? Comfort? Support? As though they were offering the same? They weren’t doing anything to help the family’s situation. She was. They’d have to get by on their own.