Anna Godbersen - Envy

Standing in the window, Diana could not help but think how all of Carolina’s stature and finery could be traced back to that one little item in the paper. At the time, her only true motivation had been money. But now she knew how satisfying writing could be, how you could create a whole person and event with a small insinuation. Why, she wouldn’t be surprised if her item on Eleanor Wetmore transformed that sorry girl’s desires into reality, or if she couldn’t turn Henry around with a few well-formed sentences. Already she was imagining how happy Barnard was going to be about the trip, and all the stories that she could wire him.

“Yes,” Mrs. Holland, warming herself in a chair by the fire, agreed. “I was worried about you at the beginning, Elizabeth, but by the end you seemed like your old self.”

Diana’s gaze traveled to her sister, who was standing nearer the high windows that faced down on the walk. Her hair, which had returned to its ash blond shade since December — it had still been sun-streaked from her time in California then — was drawn into a low bun, and she was turned so that Diana could see the side of her face at a quarter angle. The halo around her head was lit up and pale, but the dark shadows under her cheekbones were pronounced. She looked tired, and Diana wondered guiltily if she hadn’t pushed her too hard.

“I do worry about the proposed travel plans for Miss Elizabeth, however,” Snowden continued. Outside, Penelope’s driver urged the horses forward. Elizabeth did not respond immediately, and instead watched as they pulled away from the curb. Diana moved toward her sister and put her arm around her waist, as though that might shore her up to lobby further for their southern journey.

“It’s all right, Mr. Cairns.” Elizabeth turned her back toward the window and allowed herself to be hugged by her younger sister, who grew ever more aware of her fragility now that they were in each other’s arms. “I think it would be good for me to be out in the world a little.”

“You don’t have to go,” Diana forced herself to say, though she knew that the way she was looking at her sister made a quite opposite statement. How she wished she had Elizabeth to herself for a little, so they could discuss what Henry’s real intentions were, and also how high and mighty Penelope had acted at lunch, and what a tremendous insult it was that she’d come at all, and did anyone really think she was beautiful with those oversize features anyway?

“But it wouldn’t be so very difficult if you came with me.” Elizabeth spoke in a soft but determined voice as she pushed one of Diana’s stray glossy curls behind her ear. “And we will be with our old friend Henry Schoonmaker, whom we have barely had time to see since his marriage, and perhaps put to rest any lingering discomforts he may have over our former connection. If you go with me,” she went on, giving Diana a purposeful look, “then it will be all right.”

Diana pressed closer, trying to somehow or other impart a bit of her own strength to her older sister. The fluttering of her heart, and the yearning to see Henry’s face up close again, came involuntarily at the sound of his name. She hoped her mother did not notice. Already she was imagining the sight of him on a railway platform, and how his expression would change subtly when he recognized her among the crowd. In this fantasy she was able to read all his feelings for her in a few minutes, and afterward the horrible wondering that kept her up at night and ruined her sleep would cease.

Even when a girl is married, she still never completely leaves her mother and father’s home.

— LADIES’ STYLE MONTHLY, FEBRUARY 1900

PENELOPE SCHOONMAKER HAD NOT YET TAKEN off her burgundy wool coat with the black piping and high, proud collar, and already she was slouched on one of the striped settees in her bedroom in the Hayes mansion at 670 Fifth Avenue. Penelope had hurried straight upstairs because she couldn’t stand the idea of seeing her parents, who were so stupid and useless, and who had caused her so much pain by not giving her a more tasteful and established family to begin with. Sometimes she felt like a changeling of the most elegant variety.

Her former bedroom, very much like her current one, was a study in white and gold, except that it was larger and had been built with the idea of housing many, many gowns. She shot bitter looks at the pile of monogram canvas — covered Louis Vuitton trunks, with their little Japonisme initials, which she had bought in the shop on Rue Scribe in Paris long before she was married. They were her official excuse for having returned home that day. The real reason was that Henry’s indifference — reluctance, if she were to be honest, which was not among her native characteristics — to her plan of accompanying him to Florida was growing more obvious, and she feared the Schoonmaker servants would begin to talk.

“I don’t even want to go anymore,” she said to Isaac Phillips Buck, her closest confidante, who had arrived several hours earlier to oversee the packing of the warm-weather clothing that had not yet been moved into her new wardrobe at the Schoonmaker residence. He glanced at her from the bed, where he had been folding laces, his large girth perched against its chenille edge.

“Oh, but you must, for my sake, to tell me what everyone is wearing,” said Mrs. William Schoonmaker, her mother-in-law, who had accompanied her that morning. Her tone was dry and her pretty features were framed in white fur. She had lit a cigarette somewhere between the door and the window, and she exhaled before qualifying her statement: “William is such an ass for not letting me go. I don’t know how he deludes himself that I actually like attending those silly political functions with him.”

Isabelle, who had proved such an ally to Penelope in her campaign to marry Henry, had been moody lately, and not a bit of fun. Penelope ignored the older lady’s words, pushing herself up and walking over to the bed with its heaps of decorative pillows and neat piles of accessories. She picked up a vermilion sash and turned away from Buck as she examined it, letting her fingers glide slowly along its length.

“Don’t go,” Buck said.

“I do have to, of course.”

She didn’t mask her impatience, for Buck knew that to back out of the trip would be to shatter all appearances. He usually introduced himself by stressing his surname, as though to suggest that he was one of the old Buck clan who lived in country gentility somewhere up the Hudson, but in fact his prestige derived almost entirely from his exquisite taste and from the firmly held belief among a certain kind of New York lady that he was absolutely necessary to have on one’s payroll when there was a party to be thrown. This was the reason he had first become known to the Hayeses, and especially to their youngest member, and it meant that he was well aware how very new their reputation was, and how assiduously it was to be maintained.

“The papers all reported how you attended the luncheon with Elizabeth Holland, and that your friendship is as strong as ever.” Buck shrugged, as though that was all that might be concerning her.

“It’s not Elizabeth I’m worried about.” She sat down on the bed, and drew the smooth fabric over her face thoughtfully. “Elizabeth I can handle. But how will it look if my husband goes on a trip without me, after only two months? What will everybody say? I couldn’t let him go alone, you know that.”

“No.” Over by the window, Isabelle had lit another cigarette. “You couldn’t in a thousand years do that.”

“Well, at least you’re going to escape this dismal, gray city.” Buck’s small eyes, which were enveloped in well-moisturized flesh, rolled to the elaborately frescoed ceiling as his tone sank dramatically.

“True.” Penelope felt hot all of a sudden, and she jerked the buttons of her coat open one at a time. “It won’t be so bad, and I think a little sunshine might bring Henry around, but now of course I’ve gotten myself outnumbered. I mean, Miss Broad is on my side, I suppose, but she’s not as grand as she looks, and if anybody knows that, it’s Elizabeth. The two Hollands together will surely be always looking for some way to step on my skirt. And Teddy will be there, and everybody knows that he was always infatuated with Liz….”

She removed her coat completely now and, leaving it on the bed, stepped across the thick carpet. Her day dress of mild cerise trailed along behind, and Robber, her Boston terrier, fell from the ottoman where he had been resting and scooted under an armchair when he heard her coming. Penelope was not a girl who cried easily, but she felt capable of tears of rage, thinking of Elizabeth and Diana and their soft little faces giving her accusing glances all the way to Florida.

At the window, she took one of the cigarettes from the gold case that Isabelle had placed on the sill and allowed her mother-in-law to fuss with her bangs briefly as she cooed sympathetically.

“You know what you need.” They both turned to see Buck cross and uncross his legs contemplatively.

Penelope lit the cigarette and exhaled. Then she turned back to the view down Fifth Avenue, with its stately parade of carriages, and waited for the rest of Buck’s advice. Those people below were looking at the colossus that the Hayeses had constructed with their shiny new money, envying them and hating them all at the same time. It was a stage that her father had built for his wife and daughter, and though Penelope knew all the right lines and wore all the right costumes, still she was never the star. At least that was how it felt to her just then, as she clutched the gold drapery and despised everyone who was not in thrall to her performance and clapping and crying out brava.

“You need an ally.”

“An ally?” Penelope knew instantly that he was right, but she wasn’t ready to be reassured yet.

“So that you’re not so outnumbered.”

“I can’t possibly invite more people.” Penelope looked at Isabelle as though for confirmation of this statement — after all, it was her husband who would get the bill for this trip.

Isabelle shrugged. “Of course you can. It’s a party.” She made a little gesture with her right hand, leaving a cloud of smoke suspended in the air.

“People broaden the guest list all the time,” Buck went on. “Anyway, you’ll need someone to help you, especially so that you don’t ever have to worry about appearing to scheme. Miss Broad has all the right clothes, but she hasn’t learned to be clever yet.”

“That’s true.” Penelope glanced at the deflated blonde at her side. “I wish you could come, Isabelle. It’s so unfair that mean old Schoonmaker says you must stay here.”

Isabelle smiled at her sadly. “Thank you for saying so,” she replied in a tone that suggested that the younger girl couldn’t begin to understand her suffering.

Penelope might have asked herself if Buck didn’t want to come along, and whether or not he might have been her choicest ally, when she looked down below and saw her older brother hopping off the driver’s seat of a four-in-hand. The horses were gleaming with sweat as though they had just been ridden hard, and Grayson handed over the reins to a servant and began to trot up the Hayeses’ grand limestone steps with the clipped assurance of a born aristocrat. Although she liked to think of herself as the brighter, more cunning sibling, she had always known that he was like her — they had the same natural excess of ambition and total deficiency of sentimentality — in a way that could only be explained by shared blood. She had always been a little proud of that fact, and as she watched him disappear into the house below, an idea began to form in her mind.