Jennifer shook her head mutely and dashed out of the room, her curls shaking. Evelyn watched her go and now the comb in her hand felt ridiculous—what was she doing, harassing a teenager? Then she felt a squeeze on her arm from Phoebe, and looked back to see the other debs staring at her with awe.
“Love Evelyn,” Phoebe said to Camilla, who had just cut a path through the crowd of debs to join them. “But I don’t even want to do this ball. My dress is kind of fan-fucking-tastic, though. I got it at a vintage shop for twenty dollars. I think it was originally a slip.”
“Jennifer’s,” Evelyn said, mimicking the girl’s mincing voice, “has a sweetheart neckline with a full skirt.” Phoebe and Wythe laughed, and the debs in the background did, too. Even Camilla smirked.
“Ugh. I’m going to ask the band to play ‘Hot Legs’ when I do my curtsy,” Phoebe said.
Camilla let out a lengthy sigh. “Can you and Wythe stop this alt-whatever-it-is you’re doing? Please? Just get normal dresses and invite normal escorts and we can all get through this in one piece. Evelyn?”
“Camilla’s right,” Evelyn said. “At my deb ball there was a girl in Doc Martens, and it just made her look nuts.”
The younger girls hooted. “Doc Martens! How old are you?”
“Doc Martens. Oh, my God, the grunge era just kept going,” said Camilla.
“Her mother almost fainted when she lifted her dress to curtsy.” The strange thing was, Evelyn could picture this almost as if she did remember it.
“Where did you deb?” Phoebe asked.
“Oh, in Maryland, where I’m from. The Bachelors’ Cotillion.”
“Bachelors’,” Camilla repeated. “I can’t believe that about the Doc Martens.”
“Lucky it wasn’t flannel.”
Wythe leaned in, examining Evelyn’s gray pearl-drop earrings; Evelyn had put the molarlike pearl studs in a box a month earlier and hadn’t brought them out since. “Those are fierce,” Wythe said, snapping her fingers in a Z formation. “Phoebs, do you have a cig?”
Phoebe and Wythe were barreling toward the door, though the tea was still in full swing, when Souse finally resurfaced. “Oh, Mother, thanks for giving me the opportunity to become a debutante and fulfill your every wish,” Evelyn heard Phoebe saying to Souse in a singsong tone.
“Oh, Phoebe,” Souse said back. “Do you have money for a cab?”
Phoebe, now needy, smiled sheepishly. Souse delivered $20, then, after Phoebe raised her eyebrows, another $20 into her hand.
As the girls left, Souse turned to Evelyn and motioned a waiter for two champagnes.
“Hello, again. I’m exhausted. Come, sit. My two minutes with my daughter, isn’t it modern? Phoebe’s upset her father, Fritz, is not coming. What am I supposed to do, dance with two men at once? Ari gave quite a bit of money to the organization, so he staked his claim to this. Fritz will do the Assembly. We must take turns. Now, sit, Evelyn.” Souse plucked a crustless sandwich from a tray. “One of the most civilized things I do is have teatime daily, so this is my indulgence for this afternoon. How badly can a day go when you have a finger sandwich in the middle of it?”
“Our housekeeper always made really good cucumber ones, with just the littlest bit of butter,” Evelyn said. They hadn’t hired Valeriya until a few years ago, and the only food Evelyn had seen her produce was the hard rolls she brought from home and occasionally forgot in the Beegans’ cupboard.
The demonstration of caste solidarity seemed to work, though, as Souse said, “So I understand you’re from Baltimore.”
“My mother’s family is, yes.”
“Have they been there a long time?”
This was a line of questioning that would have unnerved Evelyn just a few months earlier. Evelyn, however, had been reading, and she had been practicing. The mistruths skipped off her tongue. She told of the shipping business, the side-by-side Tudors for her maiden great-aunts in Roland Park, the tales she grew up with of Baltimore before automobiles, the family connection to Johns Hopkins, the summer place on the Eastern Shore that they decided to make their full-time residence—everything, she thought, that Souse would need to pinpoint her as old money.
“How lovely. I barely know Baltimore, but it’s so nice that it has such tradition,” Souse said when she was finished. “And Camilla tells me you have a boyfriend.”
“I do, yes. Scot.”
“Who is he?”
“Ah, he works in finance. Morgan Stanley’s media group. He works with David Greenbaum.”
“Finance. You girls these days are such traditionalists. My generation, we were all rebels, and the girls these days, well, it’s the Eisenhower fifties, isn’t it? Then there’s Ari. Real estate. Truly. I met Ari on a rainy day on Madison, isn’t that terrible? At a bar, if you can believe that. He got drunk quite fast, because, as it turns out, he only has one kidney. He’s really very good to the girls.”
“I’d imagine. I can tell Camilla has a lot of respect for him.”