He’d been in solo practice when Evelyn was younger, when they’d lived in Silver Spring, and became known for consumer lawsuits against big pharmaceutical companies. Leiberg Channing, a large plaintiffs’ law firm out of Wilmington, soon offered him a job handling its pharmaceutical lawsuits.
She’d seen her father at various trials, and he was captivating. He didn’t use notes, yet took down his opponents with one subtle point after another. He knew what to say to jurors, how to play to their emotions and get them to feel for him as well as his clients. He seemed to know exactly what to say to people everywhere except for the ones at home.
Though her father had made a lot of money on pharmaceutical lawsuits, he couldn’t seem to decide whether he was now a big shot, or he still hated big shots the way he had as a mill-town kid. He was into gifts, flashy and meant to make onlookers ooh and ahh. At Sheffield, the monthly box of fruit galettes from Harry & David that he sent were the envy of her dorm, while the giant gold Rolex he’d given her for her Sheffield graduation was embarrassingly expensive and she’d buried it in a box with old yearbooks, then bought herself small pearl studs with saved-up allowance money as her own graduation gift. When and if he spent money, it was always on his terms; he was the moral arbiter, the one who decided what was worthy and what was not, the only one who understood the value of money.
In her postcollege life, her father expected her to support herself, to work in a field he considered worthy, and also to serve the greater good. Evelyn, well aware that social-services jobs would not cover her rent or be prestigious enough to meet with either parent’s approval, instead tried, in her first months in New York, to volunteer for a girls’ mentoring group. The group had told her that there was a yearlong waiting list for mentors, she would need three professional references, and they’d really prefer someone with more career experience.
She resisted saying any of this aloud; if her father was upset about the credit-card charges, and she needed more money still, she couldn’t afford an argument. “So why are you home? Leiberg Channing is allowing teleconferenced trials?” she asked.
“You must be tired from the travel. Let’s have a talk in the morning, all right?” he said. He started to leave the kitchen, his used glass still on the counter for someone else to put in the dishwasher.
“If it’s the charges, Dad, we might as well talk now.” She frowned at the saltines label, as they were the salt-free kind. “You specifically said it was okay to put certain things on your card. And that’s a fraction of what New York costs. Honestly, lunch costs eleven dollars, and that’s for, like, a salad in a plastic container. I’ll pay you back. It’s just, with the job and everything, things are a little intense right now.”
“I think we’ll save it all until the morning,” he said. “Good night, honey. Is that a new shirt? It’s a nice color on you.” It was a new shirt, and as he left the kitchen and walked upstairs, Evelyn, nibbling around the perimeter of a saltless saltine, thought about how her father always managed to throw in something charming that made him impossible to hate.
*
The next morning, Evelyn decided to get a coffee in town to fortify herself for the argument with her parents. When she hopped off the final stair and onto the ground floor, she saw two figures to her right in the living room, her mother perusing the driveway from the front window, her father shuffling through a stack of papers.
“Evelyn.” Her mother turned a few degrees from the window and uncrossed her arms, holding them out like Evita on the balcony of the Casa Rosada, which was her signal to Evelyn to approach for a hug. Evelyn obeyed, and mother and daughter embraced by touching forearms and bobbing heads.
“Hi, Mom. You look pretty,” Evelyn said. Her mother, in a gray sweater that was far too heavy for July and a pair of white pants, in fact looked like she had put on weight, and Evelyn was still frustrated with her over the People Like Us slights. After the meandering conversation last night with her father, though, Evelyn figured she would need an ally.
Evelyn waited for instructions, but both her parents were silent. She looked from one to the other. “Well, I was just going to head into town,” she began.
“No, Evelyn, your father”—her mother made the noun heavy with sarcasm—“has something to tell you. Sit down.”
Her father was in one of his preternaturally relaxed poses, draped across a scratchy wool-upholstered armchair, his right ankle balanced on his left thigh. Evelyn tried to get a glimpse of the papers he was looking at so she could be prepared, but her father stacked them and turned them over, setting them on the coffee table. Evelyn sat on a hard wooden chair near the door.
“Well, glad to see you, Evie,” he said, stretching his lips wide. “There’s something we need to discuss.”
“Something?” Barbara spat from her post at the window.