Evelyn lifted a dress, shook it out, and dropped it in the trunk. “I had the loveliest night last night. We went to the Captain’s Ball—did you go?”
Margie shot her a look, wondering if Evelyn were being purposefully mean, knowing Margie wouldn’t have had anyone to go to the ball with, but Evelyn looked wide-eyed and open. “I only stopped by,” Margie said. She had walked by the ballroom after dinner and peered inside, where the evening was warming up, women luminous in their finest dresses, saved for the occasion, the orchestra playing softly, a few couples testing the dance floor. She had indeed longed to go in, to join the glittering party, to sit down at a table of those gay people and drink champagne, to take a dance with a man in a tuxedo. She had danced so much the year of her debut, and now she hardly danced at all. When she went to balls at home, she was often trapped at a table full of women older and sadder than her—true spinsters, or widows—and Margie had started taking a book and sneaking off in order to avoid that fate. But here, she didn’t know anyone, and when she looked down at her dress, a beaded thing of eggplant and black crêpe georgette, it looked dull and drab and unworthy. If she went in, she would only stand by the wall and watch everyone else’s good time. Instead, she had taken her notebook and gone to the conservatory, where a pianist played softly to the empty room, and she wrote a story about a girl on a ship who goes to a ball and meets a handsome man who dances with her all night, and when it was finished, she cried a few tears of resentful happiness and went to bed.
“Well, it was absolutely berries. Truly, Margie, you ought to have come. Now let’s get off this ship and go to Paris. I’m dying to buy a new dress—I haven’t had a thing to wear all week.”
By the time Evelyn finished her haphazard packing job and dressed, there was still a stream of people flooding from the ship. A porter hurried ahead with their luggage. At the post box, Margie dropped a letter to her mother, full of pleasant lies, to go on the ship’s return journey. She had invented charming dinner conversations they hadn’t had, described dances she hadn’t attended, and people she hadn’t met. And her mother said all her dreaming would never come in handy.
On the train, Evelyn chattered inanely and endlessly until Margie had to excuse herself to go to the dining car simply to get a break. She didn’t know which was worse—worrying about the trouble Evelyn was sure to land herself in if Margie left her to her own devices in a strange city, or having to stay with her. A taxicab, directed by Margie’s clumsy, thick-tongued French, took them to their hotel, Margie and Evelyn pressing their noses against the windows. “Look!” Margie said as they passed, “Notre-Dame! The Place de la Concorde! The Champs-élysées!” She laid her hand flat against the window as though she could run her fingers over every inch of Paris, touch it the way Robert Walsh had touched her that night all those years ago.
At the thought, Margie pulled back as though she had been shocked. Evelyn’s face was still pressed to the window, but Margie could see the younger girl’s eyes were closed. She had fallen asleep there, leaning against the cool glass.
What had made her think of Robert, after all this time? She didn’t want to think of him, not here, not now. She’d had that one night, one perfect night, and there was no point in spoiling it with reality. She wanted Europe to be about romance and joy, about newness and adventure. She wanted it to be different. She didn’t want her happiness spoiled by being reminded of who she had been in America.