Everybody Rise (46 page)

“My prison consultant said it's technically allowed.”

“Those men inside will be melting it for money in a matter of seconds. I'll hold on to it for you,” Barbara said.

Dale twisted his wedding ring off, and handed it to Barbara with a questioning look in his eye. Evelyn watched as her mother folded her fingers around the ring, then grasped Dale's hand and squeezed it tight. Dale let his head fall on her shoulder. Evelyn stepped a few paces back, behind the trunk, to give them some space.

She heard them murmuring, and a few minutes later, her father cleared his throat. “Evie?”

“Yeah.” She joined them again.

“It's time to go.”

She stepped forward and hugged him. “I should've asked: Are
you
going to be all right?”

“Dang straight,” he said. He winked, and kissed a startled Barbara, then he was gone, inside a trailer on the prison grounds.

That evening, back in Bibville, Evelyn headed to the Regis Library, which was quiet, the computer kiosks empty. She sat down in front of one and Googled “Debt counseling Maryland or Delaware.” Three days later, she was leaving an office in Wilmington with two strict budgets and a negotiated payment plan with her credit-card companies. One budget, for now, included a mandate to either increase her hours at the Caffeiteria or get a second job; she knew the Hub, the beer-and-burger place, needed a waitress. The other plan was for when she was, God willing, not living at her mother's apartment in Bibville and had a better-paying full-time job and was actually covering her own rent somewhere, albeit rent at the laughable level of $700 a month, which would translate into a fold-out couch somewhere in Queens. She was starting now on paying off the bills, some up front, some in steady monthly chunks over the coming years, a slow cleanup of the mess she had made.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

On the Dock

Barbara pushed through the door holding bags from the Food Lion in Easton. Barbara had discovered Juicy Couture sweatsuits as of late and was wearing a peach velour hoodie and sweats, for apparently elastic waistbands were the one upside of being ousted from society.

The doorbell rang long and loud, surprising Evelyn. It was her day off, and she was still wearing pajamas though it was late in the afternoon, watching as Dorothy dissed Rose to Blanche. She couldn't remember the last time she had heard the apartment's doorbell. “Evelyn, will you see who's at the door?” her mother called from the kitchen.

Evelyn opened the door slightly, ready to shoo away the Jehovah's Witness or whoever it was, but there was a burp of cold air and she felt someone on the other side pushing against her. Through the crack of the door, the top of a head with messy light-brown hair appeared, and—

“Jesus Christ,” said Charlotte, shoving open the door. “You're actually here.”

Evelyn's left lip curled up in a smile. “Yes.”

“What the fuck, Ev?” Charlotte lifted a hand as if to hit her. “Is that the
Golden Girls
theme song?”

“That's your first question?”

“No. No. Sorry. I was in Annapolis for work, and I thought—I didn't know where you went. I had no idea where you went, Evelyn.”

Evelyn wrapped her arms around herself. “Did it matter?”

“Well, yes. Your cell phone was disconnected, your Bibville landline didn't work, your apartment was emptied. What did you think I'd think? Bad shit happens to girls in New York and I was worried.”

“Bad shit did happen to a girl in New York. How did you find me?”

“Alumni office. They once called me at a hotel in Dallas where I was working on a company integration, so it's really no surprise they found you at a fixed address. Meanwhile, didn't you think of mentioning to your old friend that you were packing up and leaving the city?”

Evelyn moved to give Charlotte a hug, but Charlotte shrank back. “We didn't hug at graduation, we aren't going to hug now. I will bite you. With my sharp little canine teeth. My bladder is about to explode; there are seemingly no bathrooms between Annapolis and Bibville. Can I pee?”

“Evelyn, dear! Who's at the door?” she heard from her mother's bedroom—her mother must have slunk in there when Evelyn answered the door—then a crash as her mother rounded the corner too fast. Evelyn turned her head to see her mother, resplendent in a caftan and a hair turban, looking like Elizabeth Taylor after one of her fat-camp sessions.

“Mom, can you give me a minute?”

Barbara apparently could not, and had not dressed for company for nothing. She peered over Evelyn, smelling of the vintage Babs leather perfume. “My goodness, Charlotte! What a delight. It was so nice of you to come all this way to see Evie. I quite like your hair out of those pigtails.” She affixed her great claw, manicured, somehow not chipped despite the reality that she now did dishes and cleaning, to the door and pulled it open wide so Charlotte could enter.

Evelyn stayed where she was, her eyes flicking over Charlotte's as Charlotte took in the scene. For Charlotte, who had been to Sag Neck for several long weekends and Thanksgivings, it must have been like a game of Memory, Evelyn thought. Match the overstuffed couch wedged under the blinds to the one that sat in the piano room at Sag Neck. Find, in the stack of paintings piled against one wall, the one of a foxhunt that hung in the Sag Neck foyer.

Charlotte was standing uncertainly on the doorstep, her earlier bounty-hunting fire tempered.

“Mom,” Evelyn said, more firmly. “I need to talk to Charlotte alone.”

“I won't hear of it, after the long drive she must have had,” Barbara said a bit too chirpily. “Charlotte, you'll have to forgive my daughter. I think she's lost her sense of propriety since leaving New York. Come in. Evelyn, will you get some cheese?”

Evelyn raised her free hand to smooth her eyebrows. “Some cheese,” she repeated. “Sure. Let's see. We have some pepper jack, I think. Can I get you a slice?”

“I don't really need cheese,” said Charlotte, pulling her blazer closer to her body.

“No. I'm sorry. It's cold. Come in. The bathroom's just down the hall, on your left.”

Inside, Barbara was whirling around, straightening up stacks of magazines and removing items from the refrigerator. “We're just loving living downtown. It's a little more exciting than the old house, which had just gotten way too big to manage,” she said as Charlotte passed her. “Can you imagine, being alone in that house at night? It was really frightening. I just hated going downstairs.” Barbara placed a small stack of cocktail napkins monogrammed with BTB and—were those Cheez-Its?—on a tray that Evelyn hadn't been aware had made the journey from Sag Neck.

When Charlotte came back, Barbara set the tray in front of her. “I've found these delicious little cheese nibblies,” Barbara said. “I'm sure they're loaded with calories, and we'll all have to do our penance at the gym, but since it's just a girls' outing, why not?”

Charlotte dutifully took two Cheez-Its and a napkin. “Mmm.”

“It's so lovely to see Evie's old friends,” Barbara said, smoothing her turban. “Just lovely, really. Charlotte, can I get you something to drink? We have some white wine, or I could look in the cocktail cabinet to see what I might put together.”

“I think—Char, just give me two seconds to change, all right?” Evelyn said.

“Do you know, I'd just been thinking about Sheffield,” Barbara began as Evelyn hurried to her room and threw on jeans and a sweatshirt. As she returned to the living room, Charlotte shot her an alarmed look; Barbara was saying “… and she won't talk to me about it, of course, but it seems like if Evie were just to extend an invitation to Camilla…”

Evelyn took a Cheez-It and hauled Charlotte from the couch. “We're going downtown!” Evelyn said, as Charlotte said, “Thank you for the snacks, Mrs. Beegan!”

Charlotte and Evelyn were silent for the first part of the walk, passing the bare-branch trees in the park, the closed-for-winter-outdoor-patio Thai place, and the small brick town hall, but as they passed the bank, Charlotte spoke. “So you've been—”

“Here. Yes. In a tiny apartment. With my mother.”

“Roommates with the Babs. Jesus. Your dad?”

“Twenty-nine months.”

“That's crazy,” Charlotte said. “Do you think he did it?”

“I don't think the federal government brings cases that are made up,” Evelyn said. “But twenty-nine months? What he did is hardly worse than what guys on Wall Street are doing daily. In the scheme of things, I don't know if he deserved what he got.”

Charlotte kicked a stone. “I read he got a really good prison.”

“Petersburg. His second choice.”

“Is it like college? Where you have safeties and reaches?”

“I wouldn't be surprised. Did you know there's a whole prison-consultancy business? My father hired some ex-con to tell him about how to behave in the clink.”

“For one, you probably don't call it the clink.”

“Seriously. Don't cut in the lunch line seemed to be the main thing. It was interesting.” Evelyn looked at the gray bay before her and thought that she would have liked a similar consultant to guide her through New York life. Don't try to upstage the alpha female; that was probably a rule that held both in New York and in prison.

Charlotte applied some Vaseline to her lips. “It's still impossible to see your father in, what, orange scrubs? Is that what they wear? Do you think they let him bring his pomade in?”

“He doesn't use pomade.”

“I'm sorry, Evelyn, but it's time you knew the truth. That hair doesn't just happen. There is serious product involved.” Charlotte swiveled her head to look at the H
OT
C
OFFEE
sign on the ice-cream parlor. “Can we stop? I'm dying for caffeine.”

“I can get you caffeine, but we're not going here,” Evelyn said. “You'll be pleased to learn that I get an employee discount at the best coffee place in town.” She cast it as a joke, unsure what Charlotte's reaction would be.

“You? You're working at a coffee place?” Charlotte squinted. “For real?”

“Yep. And in the evenings I'm a waitress at the Hub. You want beer and burgers, talk to me.”

“Evelyn Beegan, a barista-slash-waitress?”

“Char, they're jobs, okay?”

“No,” Charlotte said. “No. I actually think it's good.”

“You're lying.”

“I'm not. I think it's really good. You're working, for one. That's a good step, seriously.”

It started to drizzle as they passed the Ioka, advertising
Knocked Up
, coming to Bibville months after it had been released elsewhere. The Caffeiteria's outside light shone yellow on the wharf, where the gray-blue sky now matched the water. Inside, the afternoon guy was wiping the counters and slipped Evelyn two free day-old almond croissants along with the girls' coffee. The rain was still just pleasantly speckling the ground, and Evelyn and Charlotte sat outside on one of the benches overlooking the winter harbor.

Evelyn tore off a corner of her croissant and wondered if she should bother trying to sound casual. “So how is everyone?”

Charlotte put her croissant in her lap. “That's one of the reasons I wanted to see you. Pres is in rehab, Ev.”

“No.” Evelyn had been bracing for gossip that made her feel left out, not severe life changes among her best friends; she had been hoping that Preston was doing just fine. Evelyn put her head in her hands. “The last time I saw him, Char, at Sachem,” she said, looking at a piece of popcorn underneath the bench, “I told him everyone knew he was gay.”

“Evelyn.”

“I know. I know. I was drunk, which isn't an excuse, but he just, he just turned away and then ran down the steps and that was the last time I saw him or talked to him.”

“God, Ev. What made you say that?”

“I think I hated it that he was calling me fake, and I felt like he was being so fake about this really core thing. I've thought about it a thousand times. If I could take it back, or handle it differently, believe me, I would. It couldn't have helped with his drinking.”

“Oh, Ev.”

“I had a scorched-earth policy when I left, I guess. When did Pres go in?”

“A month ago. He smashed into a tree when he was driving to Boston. I talked to him about it before he clammed up about the whole thing, and he'd swerved because he thought he saw a dog dash in front of his car. I'm not sure he really did—it was past midnight and a dog probably wasn't out then—but he kept saying the dog looked like Hamilton. He got a DUI, but the idea that he could've hit a dog when he was drunk, I think that's what made him check in and stay in.”

“Oh, God, Char. That's so scary. He wasn't hurt himself? With the tree?”

“Bruised up, but air bags and seat belt. He paid for the tree's restoration, actually. It was some kind of prized elm.”

“Char, I should've tried harder. After that scene at Sachem, I should've apologized, or knocked on his door, or done something. I just felt like he didn't want to see me—I'm sure he
didn't
want to see me—and then everything imploded. Pres. Jesus. Is anyone there with him? His parents?”

“They don't allow visitors during the first several weeks but I'm sure they check in on him.”

“Has Nick called him? Camilla? Were they in touch with him during the accident and all that?”

“I don't think so.”

“God. It's like a pack of hyenas. They don't have use for the weak. Have you gone up to see him?”

“No, it's still the no-visitors period. Even once he can have visitors, the best I can swing is one afternoon. Things are insane at Graystone. My boss is convinced the market's going to tank soon—the underlying economics right now are a disaster—so we're trying to wrap up a bunch of acquisitions. I'm only here, in Bibville, because I had to meet with a toy company in Annapolis this morning and don't have to be back in the city until tonight. And Preston needs, I don't know. Needs someone, something more. An afternoon of me dropping in for coffee isn't going to help that much. I'm still going to go up when I can, but I feel like he needs a real friend there. And you know Pres. He's never going to ask for help. I only know he's in rehab because he wasn't responding to my e-mails or calls after he told me about the accident, and finally I lost it—the island of the disappearing friends—and called Mrs. Hacking, and she gave me his number at this facility. It's some swanky place in Marblehead. I swear I wouldn't have known that it was a rehab place except Mrs. Hacking gave me the number for the main line, and the receptionist answered it, ‘Seaview House, offering specialized addiction treatment since 1987, how can I help you?'”