“I don’t want to,” Evelyn said.
To her surprise, Barbara was silent. To her greater surprise, Barbara crossed to the bed and sat down on it and picked at the corner of a bolster pillow. Evelyn tried to categorize this behavior—she had only seen her mother sit on her bed perhaps twice in her life, when Evelyn had been sick. Barbara plucked loose a thread from the pillow and was slowly unraveling it. Evelyn slipped over to the bed and quietly took the pillow away from her mother. Evelyn felt strange standing above her.
“This is not good, Evelyn.” Barbara was staring at where the pillow had been.
“Maybe it’s okay. We don’t know.” Evelyn awkwardly proffered the bolster back, but Barbara didn’t seem to see it.
“This is not good.”
Overhead, the fan whirred and moved the thick summer heat around the room but didn’t provide any relief.
“He thought—I thought—it would be easier. Background seemed like it wouldn’t matter; it was the sixties. I wasn’t a hippie, but it seemed to be all changing. Something for a new generation. And it just—he just—it all fell away. Those early years were so hard. Your father just worked, and I was alone, trying to make linoleum seem like something good.” She paused, smoothing her hand over the covers. “You think it doesn’t matter how money is made. It’s always there, though. Always around, underneath it, is how he made it. A trial lawyer. Suing the people who are actually working and inventing.”
Evelyn squeezed the pillow hard. She did know, too well, that it mattered how money got made, or, more important, when. She’d seen it at Sheffield, where the girls with terrific middle names that signified old family money had sailed into and out of whatever circles they wanted to, confident they would be accepted, and she saw it now with Camilla. You couldn’t cover up the smell of new money, sharp and plastic as a vinyl shower curtain just out of its box. You could try, layering over it with old houses, old furniture, and manners that mimicked those of people who’d been living this life for centuries. But unless your fortune was generations old, too, it—you—would never count in the same way.
She loosened her grip on the bolster. The issue with her father was awful, but maybe it was allowing a new Barbara to come forward. A Barbara who was accessible, vulnerable even. A Barbara who sat on her daughter’s bed.
Barbara stood up then and brushed her hands together. “Evelyn. This mess with your father is going to hit, and it’s going to hit soon. If they charge him, if this ends up in a trial or a plea bargain, it could mean money, too. Us paying the government money. You have to cement where you are in New York before then. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Your position. Your reputation. I think your website job may be good for you, after all. You’re friendly with Camilla Rutherford now, and you’re reviving your friendship with Preston. You’ve got to keep on it. You need something solid underneath you before this all—” She let her hands drop. “Do you understand?”
Evelyn carefully replaced the pillow on the bed and tucked the loose thread behind it. “I understand.”
“Those friendships could be very, very important.” Barbara looked searchingly at her daughter. “I’d like you to come to the Channings’.”
Evelyn nodded slowly and gave her mother what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’ll come.”
When Evelyn went downstairs in her dress, her mother’s shoulders were back and her eyes were fierce, and on the car ride over Barbara talked about how Sally’s garden had become infested with aphids this year. Somewhere between Evelyn’s room and the front door, her mother had heard a cue, and she had remembered her lines and taken the stage. Their conversation would be left in the wings; it had nothing to do with their assigned parts.
CHAPTER EIGHT
New York, New York
Evelyn leaned toward the Amtrak window, searching for the TRENTON MAKES, THE WORLD TAKES sign, which she always looked for on the ride back to New York. She knew now that Trenton was a run-down Jersey city, but she remembered the first time she’d seen it, on her first trip to New York when she was ten. Everything on that train ride up had been magical, and she had cast Trenton as some kind of Santa’s workshop after seeing that sign, a town that spun sugar candy and gossamer wings.