Chapter 6
“You have to go,” Patrice said.
“I know I have to go.”
“You’re saying it like a woman who’s planning to get food poisoning on Thursday.”
Amelia didn’t answer that, because she had in fact thought about it.
The Foundation’s fall benefit was the biggest night of the year.
Four hundred people at the Waverly Club in black tie, eating small food and writing large checks.
For three years it had been the night the program was shown off to the city.
For three years she had worked the room on Lucas’s arm, smiling, shaking hands, telling the story of a kid from Albany or Macon or Valdosta until somebody’s eyes got wet and a checkbook came out.
This year every person in that room would know. Every one of them would watch her walk in.
“The Harlan people are sending someone,” Patrice said.
“I’m announcing the grant from the podium.
That’s your grant. You wrote it. You’re going to stand at the program table and let four hundred rich people clap for you, and then you’re going to let them write checks, because your kids need the room.
” She softened a little. “You don’t have to stay late.
You don’t have to talk to anybody you don’t want to. But you have to be there.”
“I’ll be there.”
“And Amelia.” Patrice looked at her over her glasses. “Wear whatever you want. I mean that. You don’t owe them a show.”
* * *
She bought a dress.
It was black and plain and had cost less than the shoes she’d left in her closet in Buckhead.
She bought it at a department store in the mall, off the rack, and had it taken in at a tailor on Memorial Drive who told her she had good shoulders.
She wore it with her grandmother’s small pearl earrings and flat black shoes she could walk in.
She put her hair up.
She stood in front of the bathroom mirror in the Cabbagetown apartment and looked at it. Up. Working, not performing. She hadn’t planned it. Her hands had just done it.
She left it that way.
* * *
The Waverly Club sat on a hill in Buckhead behind a mile of iron fence, a white house with columns that had been built by a railroad man and bought by his friends when he went broke.
The ballroom was gold and cream, with three chandeliers and tall windows looking out on a lawn lit up like a stage.
There were round tables for four hundred.
There was a string quartet. There were servers in white jackets carrying trays of tiny crab cakes that no one ate.
The room changed the moment she walked in.
It wasn’t a hush. These people were too well trained for a hush.
It was more like a ripple, the way a field of grass bends when the wind goes through it.
Heads turned and then turned back. Conversations dipped a half-second and then picked up again, a little louder.
Somebody laughed a little too brightly near the bar.
She kept walking.
“Amelia! Darling!” Libby Carter got to her first, in silver, with her arms out. “Oh, you look wonderful. Doesn’t she look wonderful, Sloane?”
“So brave,” Sloane Whitfield said, arriving at her other side. “Honestly. Just so brave.”
They both kissed the air near her cheeks. Up close their faces were bright and soft with pleasure, like women at the start of a very good movie.
“Libby. Sloane.” Amelia smiled at them. It was a small, pleasant smile, and it did not reach anywhere. “Your husbands are here?”
“Oh, somewhere.” Libby waved at the room. “At the bar, probably. Why?”
“No reason,” Amelia said. “Tell Tom I said hello. And Dave.” She looked at Sloane. “Tell Dave I remember the golf trip.”
Sloane’s face went still. It was a quick stillness, a half-second, and then it smoothed back over. But Amelia saw it. She saw Sloane understand that Amelia knew which golf trip, and what had been said on it, and who had carried it home.
“Of course,” Sloane said faintly.
Amelia walked on.
They watched her go. She didn’t turn around. Her face was warm, and she kept her chin level and her hands loose at her sides. She had studied these people for five years. She knew how to walk through a room. She had just never done it angry.
* * *
Maureen was by the windows.
She was small and silver-haired and perfect in dark blue, standing with two women from the museum board. She saw Amelia from across the room and excused herself, and came, gliding the way she always glided, as if the floor were arranging itself under her feet.
Amelia had not seen her since before. Since before Zane’s study, before the list, before Well. She’s done beautifully. I’d never have guessed.
“Amelia, dear.” Maureen took her hand in both of hers. Her hands were small and cool. “You look well. I’m so glad you came. I was worried you wouldn’t.”
“The program needs the room.”
“Of course it does. Of course.” Maureen’s eyes moved over her face, reading it. Then she reached up with one hand, and Amelia knew what she was going to do, because she had done it five Christmases in a row. The small cool hand came up toward her shoulder.
Amelia stepped back.
It was one step. Small. Maureen’s hand stopped in the air where Amelia’s shoulder had been, and stayed there a second, and then came down slowly to her side.
Neither of them said anything.
“I remember your hat,” Amelia said quietly. “From the Derby party. You said I had such a good eye.”
Maureen’s face did not change. Maureen’s face never changed. But her eyes did something, a small flicker, like a candle in a draft.
“You did,” Maureen said. “You do.”
“I know what you said to Lucas afterward.”
Silence. The string quartet played something light and quick. Across the room somebody dropped a glass, and there was a burst of laughter.
“Enjoy your evening, Maureen,” Amelia said, and went to find the program table.
* * *
Zane caught her near the stage.
“Mimi!” He was the only person who had ever called her that, and she had never liked it. He came at her with his arms out and his face pink. “There’s my girl. Listen, listen. I just want to say. No hard feelings, right? That old thing? It was a joke. We were kids. You know that.”
She looked at him. He meant it. That was what was so remarkable. He was standing in front of her with a drink in his hand and his arms still half out for a hug, and he meant every word. He really thought it was an old thing. He really thought she would laugh.
“How’s your wall, Zane?” she said.
He blinked. “My wall?”
“It must look empty.”
For a second something almost crossed his face. Then it didn’t, and he laughed, big and easy. “Ha! She’s funny. She was always funny. Lucas always said.” He clapped her on the arm. “Okay. No hard feelings. Good. Great.”
He went back to the bar. She watched him go and thought: He doesn’t know. He’ll never know. He’ll die not knowing what he did.
She didn’t know if that made it better or worse.
* * *
Lucas was across the room.
She had known he would be. She had been not-looking at him since she walked in, the way you don’t look at the sun.
But she knew where he was every second. He was by the far wall near the stage, talking to two men from the Foundation board.
He was in black tie. He had lost weight.
His hair was grayer at the temples than it had been a month ago, or maybe she just hadn’t looked at it properly in a month.
He didn’t come to her.
She waited for him to. She braced for it. He didn’t. Once, their eyes met across the room, over four hundred heads. He held her look for a second. Then he nodded, slightly, and looked away first.
She let her breath out.
* * *
At nine, Patrice took the podium.
She thanked everyone for coming. She thanked the sponsors and the committee and the club. And then she said, “I have some news I’m very proud to share,” and she told the room about the Harlan Trust.
She told it well. She said national and competitive and one of the strongest proposals of the cycle.
She said the panel chair wanted to meet the woman who wrote it.
And then she said, “That woman is Amelia Fletcher, who built this program three years ago from nothing, and who wrote every word of that proposal herself. Amelia, stand up.”
Amelia stood up at the program table.
The room clapped. It was real applause, warm and long.
Some of it was for the grant. Some of it, she knew, was people enjoying the sight of her standing there, the brave wife, the girl from the night crew who’d pulled it off again.
She didn’t care. She stood with her hands at her sides and let them clap for the thing she had done with her own two hands, and she felt, for about thirty seconds, like the ground was solid under her.
She sat down. Patrice went on to thank a few more people. Then she said, “And now, a few words from Lucas Fletcher.”
* * *
He came up the stairs to the stage and stood at the podium.
The program table was right at the front, near the stairs. From where she sat, Amelia was maybe twenty feet from him. Closer than anyone except Patrice.
He didn’t have notes. He put his hands flat on the sides of the podium and looked out at the room for a long moment before he spoke.
“I’ll be brief,” he said. “Most of you know my family has supported this Foundation for a long time. My grandfather started it. My mother has chaired it for twenty years. I’ve written a lot of checks to it, and I’ve made a lot of speeches like this one, and I don’t think I’ve ever meant one.”
A small nervous laugh from somewhere in the room.
“I want to mean this one,” he said. “Three years ago, my wife built a scholarship program here. She built it after she was told no. She built it herself.” He stopped.
Something moved in his throat. “Tonight she won one of the hardest grants in the country, and she wrote it alone. I’m very proud of her.
I don’t have the right to be, but I am.”
The room was quiet now.