Everybody Rise by Stephanie Clifford

she stayed nipping at the sailboat’s side. “Pip, show Chrissie what to do!” she yelled.
    Pip pushed the brim of her raincoat hood back. “I’m trying, Grandmother,” she said, resigned.
    â€œCome, Chrissie, look at the angle. Look at the angle. You’ll never get out of it now! Grab the rudder—watch it—watch it—no, no, no, no! Good Lord! Watch it!” Mrs. Hacking shouted as the boom swung over and nearly cracked Chrissie in the head; Chrissie desperately shoved the rudder back and forth. “I thought Bing said she knew how to sail,” Mrs. Hacking said to Preston, though she said it into the megaphone. Preston took a long drink of his cranberry juice, the T version. Evelyn reached for the bottle and took a swig in sympathy—with Chrissie, with Bing, with Pip, or with Preston, she wasn’t sure—but she was trying not to move too abruptly, lest Mrs. Hacking turn the megaphone on her.
    â€œIt’s luffing. It’s luffing!” Mrs. Hacking shouted as a wave came up and hit Chrissie in the arm. “Everyone else is around the third buoy, Chrissie! You’ve got to get out of there! This is a dead spot. Get out of there!”
    â€œCan I get back in the boat with you, Grandmother?” Pip called out.
    â€œI wish you could, Pip, but you’re going to have to finish the race.”
    A horn sounded from the other end of the lake. “That’s first place!” Mrs. Hacking yelled. “We have to get back to the party! Get some wind, Chrissie. You’re going to be out here for hours!” Pip, lying flat on her stomach in the front, waved a sad farewell.
    Mrs. Hacking gunned the motor again, heading toward Jumping Rock, and the wake deposited a few more inches of water in the sailboat once the motorboat left. Evelyn looked back, watching Chrissie get smaller. Chrissie was overly anxious and had made her own mistake in forcing an invitation to the Hacking house, claiming sailing know-how, and generally trying too hard. And Chrissie’s presence on the other side of the invisible behavior line let Evelyn stay cleanly on this side of it. Yet, looking at Chrissie dipping her cup into the freezing water that went up to her ankles, with the patrician girl in the front who was doubting her every effort, Evelyn wished a gust of wind would come and help them out.
    â€œSimpsons are moving ahead! Tom Junior is behind you with Lally!” Mrs. Hacking cried as the motorboat skipped away.
    At Jumping Rock, Evelyn jumped out of the boat and ran up to safer ground. Nick was about ten drinks in and had decided the path to the Jumping Rock guesthouse should be marked with cairns, and he enlisted Preston in gathering stones from the woods. Tired, Evelyn retreated to the boathouse deck with a bottle of S green punch, settling into a deep Adirondack chair. She was drunk enough forty minutes later that she could almost tamp the uneasiness she felt about the finish. Bing was lingering just to the side of the finish line in his boat, and when he saw Chrissie and his daughter finally coming toward the line, he made another loop so he could come in last, and his daughter and girlfriend would get the dreaded second to last. As Evelyn listened to the air horn marking Chrissie’s place, then the second air horn marking Bing’s, she exchanged the S for a T. Bing stood up in his boat to laughs and applause from the shore, bowing. Phoebe and Camilla flew down to give him hugs, and Mrs. Hacking, who’d brought her megaphone onto land, yelled her congratulations into it. Evelyn looked for Chrissie and saw her trudging up the hill, her wet and wilted scarf still glopped around her head.
    Evelyn scrambled to her feet and hurried to the boathouse bathroom, where she grabbed one of the stacked beach towels she’d noticed earlier. “Hey,” she said when she’d caught up to Chrissie. “You must be cold. I thought you could use