“Yes, but I point to the trouble of finding the debs. Yes, our daughters will do it, but we have the Assembly, the Infirmary, which really are taking the top tier of New York girls,” protested Agathe. “There’s a feeling among the younger girls that these parties aren’t quite democratic.”
“What is more democratic than helping children?” the Lausanne woman said.
“We are inconsistent to tell our daughters and their friends to participate for charitable reasons when our group cannot go to a children’s center for one afternoon to see a program we are supporting,” Agathe said.
The women looked at their shoes and out the window.
“Well, we have two young women here. What do you think of the tradition?” Agathe said, squinting at Evelyn.
Evelyn looked at Camilla, trying to hand off the question, but Camilla reached into her bag to fiddle with her phone and Evelyn saw she had to respond.
“Being a debutante,” Evelyn said, stalling. “I think it’s a wonderful way to connect with history. To connect with what our mothers and grandmothers did, to learn about proper social behavior.”
The faces were still looking at her expectantly, and she saw she needed to establish her bona fides, even if they weren’t very bona, or fide.
“I was a debutante in Maryland, where my family is from,” she said. She saw nodding heads of sleek silver and pale yellow. This was the right track, then. “In a world where anyone can be anything, and everyone can go everywhere, and so few people know how to behave, isn’t it nice to have a tradition that says that someone is really someone?”
“Also,” said Camilla, looking up from her phone, “it’s basically champagne and pretty dresses, which teenagers like.”
Souse looked like she might clap.
“We have to go to so many tedious events—we all do, Louise, don’t look at me like that—where it’s white wine and broiled fish and the speaker going on about the Abercrombie and Kent safari at the silent auction,” Margaret Faber said. “I mean, terrible. So this is a big party with a group of people you know. Having the debutantes makes it younger, fresher, and I think it’s a lovely family event. Many, most, of us here were debs and remember it fondly, and given that our daughters are on their phones and computers constantly, isn’t it nice to give them a flavor of tradition and the world that we grew up in?”
Mrs. Faber’s defense silenced the naysayers, even Agathe.
The issue apparently decided on, Agathe dismissed the meeting, and the group wandered in to the tea. Each of the debs was having her photograph taken, and each wore a fussy sweater and lacy skirt, with carefully styled and curled hair.
Then there was a clatter, and Phoebe, Camilla’s younger sister, jumped into the room, followed by a girl who looked just like Margaret Faber: her daughter, Wythe Van Rensselaer. Phoebe stomped her foot and threw up her arms in a forties-movie-star pose. Her top was a wrinkled white oxford, and she wore ripped jeans and Keds, one with pink laces, one with chartreuse.
“Do the Phoebe, man, that’s what they say on the runways,” said Wythe, and Phoebe popped her hip to the side and strutted toward Camilla.
“Mom’s finally free?” Phoebe asked loudly. “I feel like this is her thing and I’m just standing there looking pretty. And, Milla, the other girl from Spence who’s getting her picture taken now is, like, a subzero loser. Jennifer. Ugh. I have no idea what she’s doing here.”
Camilla tapped her sister’s wrist. “Hello. You’re not standing there looking pretty. Pull your shoulders back. You look like a hunchback.”
Camilla herself was in a particularly odd outfit given that this was an afternoon tea, wearing a dress made of tweed and black leather, and spiked boots with a distinctly dominatrix air about them. Evelyn, though, was glad she had gone with bouclé: the CEO can swear and have affairs, but the aspirational junior executive has to show up to meetings on time and be polite.
“They’re total randos, Milla. I don’t know why Mom is making me do this with all these girls,” Phoebe said.
“Because Ari wants you to. Evelyn! Come meet my pest of a sister and her BFF. Phoebe, Wythe, this is my friend Evelyn.”
After Evelyn shook the girls’ hands, the Lausanne woman cast a worried look toward the library, where Jennifer was sitting for her photograph, and tapped Evelyn on the shoulder. “It is Evelyn, yes? Can you please go make sure these photographs are going all right, the girls are appropriate?”
Evelyn walked into the other room, where Jennifer’s mother, a brunette with thyroid-bulged eyes and curling-iron ringlets that matched her daughter’s, was trying to wrest the camera from the photographer to review the photos. “She has to get her dress made because she’s too petite,” the mother said.
“I’m a double zero,” the girl agreed.
The photographer seized the camera back and aimed it at the girl. “So it’s Jennifer? Tell me about what you like to do when you’re not at Spence.”