“Why don’t you tell them I’m dating someone?”
“I don’t want you to make the same mistake as I did. Marrying someone on the fringes of the circle just puts you on the fringes of the circle, don’t you see? The life you’re conscripted to, of constant social adjustments because your husband doesn’t bother with what he thinks are silly social niceties, isn’t a pleasant one. Rules are rules for a reason. Scot doesn’t even play tennis. Do you really want to spend your life with someone who can’t play tennis?”
“Mom, that’s so old-fashioned,” Evelyn said. Yet Evelyn had felt disappointment when Scot sat on the sidelines during the tennis games at Nick’s, lost in his history book, not caring that he couldn’t play, while Evelyn had to partner with Nick’s fat friend from Enfield who flung sweat all over the court.
“I wanted to talk to you about Jaime Cardenas. He’s on all the junior benefits committees, and went to Harvard and Stanford business school. Fernando Cardenas’s son. Do you know him yet?” Barbara said.
Evelyn was often amazed by her mother, who managed to track young New York social circles almost as closely as Evelyn now had to, despite Barbara’s barely knowing how to use the Internet. Evelyn didn’t know Jaime, but she knew of Jaime; she had Googled Jaime several times after seeing him in some pictures with Camilla. The family fortune started with a Venezuelan bottling plant a few generations ago, and then Jaime’s grandfather had built up a conglomerate of consumer products, retail and banking businesses. Jaime was now a vice president at the family business and had hit the New York social scene with some force, including an unheard-of election to the Met Museum’s board of trustees at the age of twenty-eight. He was one of her eventual targets for People Like Us, but she hadn’t yet run into him to give him the pitch. “It’s pronounced ‘Haime,’ Mom, and ‘de Carden-yaz.’ Or ‘de Carden-yas.’ Jaime de Cardenas. Scot went to Harvard, too.”
“The business school isn’t the same thing as the college. Jaime de Cardenas.” Her mother said it slowly and as if there were olives stuffed in her mouth; Evelyn wondered if it was the only Spanish she’d ever spoken apart from “Rioja.” “Good. So you do know him.”
“Not really.”
“Now, normally I’m not sure how I’d feel about someone, you know, Chicano,” Barbara was saying.
“I don’t think people say ‘Chicano’ anymore.”
“The fact is, the world is changing.”
“I’m sure Jaime will be delighted to hear that.”
“Stop that sarcasm. It’s unbecoming. I think you should consider dating him.”
It was Sheffield all over again. Her mother thought a simple directive was sufficient to make Evelyn achieve social glory. Just make friends with so-and-so from Watch Hill. Just date a Venezuelan billionaire. Yet her mother had never made it at that level, Evelyn thought, and had been trying to make up for it ever since.
“I have a boyfriend,” Evelyn said.
“Call it what you will. Evelyn, I hate to say it, but your looks will start to fade, and your body will start to sag. It’s been happening to me for the last thirty years, and it’s just dreadful. When I think about what I could have done at twenty-six—well. Jaime de Cardenas is linked to Spanish nobility. That is something you just can’t argue with. Susie—you remember Susie, her daughter is in Washington—was saying he’s heading the Save Venice ball this year.”
Save Venice, and the young friends of the Frick, and the Apollo Circle at the Met Opera, yes, yes, Evelyn knew.
“You ought to keep an eye out for him. He sounds like the last of the eligible bachelors,” Barbara said.
Evelyn saw Scot, at the other end of the hallway, waiting for her and doing an awkward arm stretch. Her mother’s verdict was in; Evelyn was silent for a while, pressing her thumb over the top joint of her pinkie.
“That’s all I wanted to say,” Barbara finally said. “Can you please help me with my coat?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Summer in the City
Camilla had deemed one of the final summer weekends an “urban incursion,” ignoring Scot’s correction that an “incursion” was a sudden invasion and not the opposite of “excursion.” “It’ll be fabulous,” Camilla had said to Evelyn. “All of the restaurants will be practically empty, and we can go anywhere we like, and do Pilates, and don’t have to wait for appointments at Exhale.”
“You never have to wait for appointments at Exhale,” Evelyn had said.
Camilla had just smiled.