The Luxe l-1

by Anna Godbersen

  Elizabeth hurried up the familiar narrow back stairs and peeked in on her mother’s bedroom, which looked as though no one had set foot there in a long time.

  “Miss Liz…”

  Elizabeth pulled shut the door to her mother’s bedroom and saw that Claire had come up behind her. “Yes?” She wished she knew why she felt embarrassed for poking around her own house.

  “Mrs. Holland is downstairs.”

  “Thank you, Claire.” Elizabeth turned and this time took the main staircase, which was carpeted in a rich Persian runner. She was about halfway down, and practically mouthing that she could not marry Henry Schoonmaker, when she saw the man in their foyer. He was bent in front of her Vermeer, and he was looking through an ornate magnifying glass at the top right corner. That was where the signature was, just above the jug of wine. Elizabeth wanted to shout at him that he couldn’t touch her things, but some instinct, perhaps her habitual sense of politesse, kept her silent.

  “We do not have fakes in this house, Mr. Broussard,” Mrs. Holland announced coldly, stepping closer to him.

  The man, who was dressed in black and whose long hair was tucked under his collar, turned his head to assess the speaker. He stared at her for several rude seconds and then went back to examining Vermeer’s brushstrokes. When he was satisfied, he pulled a cloth from his satchel and wrapped up the painting. He stood, put his hand into his coat, and produced an envelope.

  “Here it is,” he said brusquely.

  Elizabeth watched as her mother cracked the envelope and looked inside. Seeing her painting in the hands of a stranger produced a heavy sadness in her, which began to grow into a kind of helpless anger.

  “It’s all in there,” the man went on impatiently.

  “I’m sure it is,” Mrs. Holland said. “But I would hate to have to trouble you to come back if anything were amiss.”

  The man waited until Mrs. Holland gave him the nod, and then he shook her hand and went out into the street. The door came back into its frame with a bang that seemed to cause the whole house to shudder. Elizabeth hesitated on the stair as her mother watched the man go, her black-swathed body framed by the light coming in through the glass pane of the door. Then she sighed and turned sharply. She managed a few steps before she saw Elizabeth, standing halfway to the second floor.

  “What are you doing there?”

  After watching her mother sell off one of her family’s most prized possessions, Elizabeth wondered if she would ever be able to look at her the same way again. The woman below no longer looked like a fearsome arbiter of society. She appeared small and frail and pitiable. She appeared old.

  “I was just looking for you…to ask you something…” Elizabeth managed to say.

  “Well, what, then?”

  Elizabeth felt as though her heart had frozen over. All her grand emotions, her sense of self-importance, her need to show Will her loyalty and make him stay had drained away. Her family wasn’t just poor; they were desperate. She had only one choice, and that was to marry Henry. She wasn’t going to have another opportunity like that. “I just wanted to ask if you would like claret with dinner?”

  There was a long, silent moment in which Mrs. Holland kept a watchful gaze on her daughter. She blinked once and then said, “No, my dear. We had better save that in case the Schoonmakers come for dinner some night.”

  Elizabeth nodded feebly. There was nothing else to say, and so she turned away from her mother and went, with leaden feet and a sore heart, to find Mrs. Faber. She would tell her not to bother decanting any wine for their meal that night, or any other night, until she was a Mrs. Schoonmaker.

  Twenty

  TRANSATLANTIC CABLE MESSAGE

  THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY

  TO: Penelope Hayes

  ARRIVED AT: New York, NY

  1:25 p.m., Tuesday, September 26, 1899

  Dear Penelope

  Reports of your dinner party episode have reached me even in London. I have been meaning to send you a real letter, and will do so. In the meantime, remember that we were born of the same blood. Be fierce, little sister, or the world will handle you fiercely. No more public vomiting.

  Grayson L. Hayes

  PENELOPE HAYES GRIPPED HER BOSTON TERRIER, Robber, as she read the telegram. She peered across the grand drawing room, with its matching blue-and-white silk-upholstered pieces from the Louis XV period and its polished black walnut floor, to where her mother was sitting with Webster Youngham, the architect. Mother wanted it known that the Hayeses were commissioning him again, this time to build a “cottage” in Newport, the kind that came with fifty-six rooms and marble floors throughout. This was not the sort of news one kept to oneself, so she was going on in marathon-style in the hope that he would be forced to stay and thus seen by as many visitors to the Hayeses’ as possible.

  Penelope examined her mother, Evelyn Archer Hayes, who was wearing a dress of a lavender shade that she was really much too old for, and that cinched her girth unpleasantly. Penelope promised herself that she would never get half that big. Then she stood, letting Robber fall and skitter across the floor, and walked over to one of the floor-to-ceiling ormolu-encrusted mirrors that filled the spaces between Old Master paintings, to look at a more visually appealing subject.

  “Penelope, watch that animal on my floor,” her mother called from the sofa where she was lounging.

  Penelope rolled her eyes at herself in the mirror, and then puckered her lips to assess their fullness. “You know his nails are clipped,” she replied. Mrs. Hayes had always been annoying, but ever since Penelope had discovered the engagement of her Future Husband and her Former Best Friend, she found every swallow or breath her mother took to be a personal affront to her sensibility. She listened for rotund Mrs. Hayes to go back to her yapping, and then crumpled the telegram and dropped it into a silver vase bursting with yellow roses. She wished her big brother was in New York to defend her, but a reprimanding telegram from abroad made her feel precisely the opposite of protected.

  Penelope’s dark hair rose in a dramatic pompadour up from her forehead, and was collected in a small bun at the nape. Grand curlicues and frizzy ringlets were the fashion for girls her age, but Penelope knew perfectly well what suited her already dramatic face. She checked her eyebrows and rubbed the soft skin over her cheekbones so that it took on some color. She was happily examining the sea-foam-blue acres of her dress when the enormous arched pocket doors were pulled open by one of the maids.

  Her mother gestured at the maid as though she knew the visitor was for her, but the maid nodded politely and proceeded to Penelope. Of course.

  “Miss Holland has just presented her card,” she said.

  Penelope exhaled sharply at the sound of that name she hated, and went back to looking at herself in the mirror. She crumpled the card and thought for a moment. She would have liked nothing more than to give Elizabeth the full brunt of her cold shoulder, but that would only result in a rather pedestrian, unfulfilling revenge. Be fierce, she reminded herself.

  “Miss Holland can visit with me if she must.”

  “Very good,” the maid said as she backed out of the mahogany-framed doorway.

  Penelope looked around the room and took great satisfaction in the fact that it was better than the room the Hollands received in, and also in the fact that her mother was there but distracted by the architect. That would prevent her, in any event, from slapping Elizabeth across her stupid blond head. The dress Penelope had on was exceedingly flattering, she reminded herself the elaborate bodice, the mandarin collar with the keyhole opening at the chest and it was embellished all over with tiny waves, embroidered in real gold thread. She went over to where Robber was curled, in a gold trough that was lined with aubergine velvet, scooped him out, and walked moodily across the floor with her small creature snuggled against her chest.

  She listened to the housekeeper’s formal announcement of the visitor, which included a loud and grand enunciation of that incredibly
distasteful name: Miss Elizabeth Holland. It brought the delicate hair at the nape of her neck to standing. Penelope kept her face down, close to Robber’s black head, and listened to Elizabeth walk, on timid little feet, across the Hayeses’ precious polished floor. When Elizabeth was close enough that Penelope could hear her nervous breathing, she looked up and met her eyes.

  “Penelope…” Elizabeth’s brow creased and her mouth quivered around the name.

  Penelope stared back at Elizabeth, who was wearing a dress of camel-colored silk, for a healthy interval before she even thought about saying anything. “What? You came this far uptown, and you still can’t think of anything to say?”

  “No, I…I have so many things to say. I feel awful about the other night, and ”

  “It’s really pathetic,” Penelope interrupted then, “that you would have to compete with me in this way.” She looked past her former friend and saw that her mother was overjoyed to be greeting Ava Astor, daughter-in-law of the great Mrs. Astor, who was apparently her new best friend.

  The whites grew around Elizabeth’s hazel eyes. “No, no, it’s not like that at all. I had no idea that you were so in love with Henry Schoonmaker. You never told me. Penelope, you’ve got to believe me, I am so, so sorry about everything.”

  Penelope snorted and pretended to look everywhere but at Elizabeth. She could not help a few good sideways glances at the enormous diamond on her left hand. “You don’t know him like I do. Believe me, it’s not going to be all lovey-dovey for you.”

  “Penelope.” Elizabeth reached for a hand that her friend quickly snatched away. “I can’t explain right now, but you have to believe me that I didn’t pursue Henry, and that when he proposed to me I swear, someday I will explain everything I had to accept.”

  Penelope examined her friend’s pleading face, her eyes welling to the brink of tears, and realized that Elizabeth didn’t even want to marry Henry Schoonmaker. It didn’t make any real sense to Penelope, as she herself had been physically ill for five days now with the thought of losing him. But it was perfectly clear that Elizabeth had not the tiniest inclination to gloat. She seemed, in fact, to be unhappy. And she was definitely sleep-deprived and not looking her best. These were consolations of a kind.

  Penelope gave Elizabeth a softer look and began to walk slowly along the edge of the room so that her friend had to scurry along behind. “You humiliated me,” she said in a low, hurt tone.

  “I know, Penny, but I didn’t mean to.”

  “They were all laughing at me, you know.” She sniffed as though she were more hurt than she was angry. “It was the severity of the shock. Such a shock you gave me!”

  “I know. I cannot even begin to tell you how sorry ”

  “And you just said nothing. You just stood there. You listened to my story, and you might have warned me, but you said absolutely nothing.”

  Elizabeth began to fidget with the embroidered edge of her camel-colored bolero. “I was speechless, Penelope, really or I would have ” She broke off, which was a happy thing for Penelope, as her voice had reached an almost whining pitch.

  “Can you imagine what that silence must have felt like?” Penelope tried to look more wounded than exasperated.

  Elizabeth looked down again and bit her lip. “No, I cannot.” Her eyes shifted, and she seemed to realize that all her fidgeting might soon damage her jacket. She clasped her hands together and went on, attempting brightness: “But just think, you will be able to meet and flirt with so many different men, while I will be married young and then for forever. You can still change your mind in love, again and again and again!”

  “True,” Penelope said guardedly. She let her elbow float up and waited for Elizabeth to take it. They walked slowly past the great canvases and into the smaller adjoining navy-and-white toile-wallpapered sitting room, where Mother and Mr. Youngham and Ava Astor would not be able to watch them. Penelope took a breath and tried to ease into some kind of niceness. “Anyway, Liz, I couldn’t be mad at you for long. I’m just glad that you’ll be the one who gets him and not one of those other stupid girls.”

  Elizabeth seemed momentarily taken aback by the mean sentiment, but then recovered her voice. “Thank you for being understanding. Thank you so very, very much.”

  Penelope tried to return Elizabeth’s gratitude with a smile that might conceivably be read as warm. A little color was coming back into Elizabeth’s cheeks, and indeed she looked enormously relieved. But her guilt was still fluttering inside her Penelope could see it, and she was ready to take full advantage. They took a seat on a little cranberry-colored velvet settee, with Robber squeezed between them.

  “I’ve been so miserable thinking I might have hurt your feelings. It would be terrible if, now that one of us is engaged, we wouldn’t be able to make good on our promise to be each other’s maid of honor.” Elizabeth smiled, almost shyly now, her eyes moving slowly up from the dog’s black eyes to his owner’s blue ones.

  Penelope smiled back, widely and unabashed. She forced herself to take Elizabeth’s hand looking again at the ring as she did and gave it a little pressure. There wasn’t going to be any wedding, of course, not if Penelope got her way. And she was beginning to see that the closer she kept Elizabeth, the easier it was going to be to muck everything up.

  “You really still want me to be your maid of honor?” she almost whispered.

  “Of course, who else could I possibly?”

  “Diana? I mean, she’s your sister; won’t she be hurt?”

  Elizabeth looked pained by the mention of her sister, and Penelope had the happy realization that Elizabeth was sacrificing Diana in favor of her. She couldn’t help but laugh at a thought, and had to sputter out the name that went with it: “Agnes Jones?”

  Elizabeth looked almost shocked by this suggestion, and then her face broke and she, too, was laughing at the hilarity of the idea. The tension between them seemed to evaporate. “That would be such a disaster,” Elizabeth managed, wiping away a giddy tear.

  “Or Prudie? I mean ”

  “Penelope, you’re the only one I can count on.”

  “All right. Fine.” She batted an eyelash and took both of Elizabeth’s hands. “It’s done.”

  “And there’s an event on Friday night the one for Admiral Dewey at the Waldorf-Astoria. That’s the first public event that Henry and I will attend, as a couple. Will you be there with me, as my maid of honor?”

  “Of course.” Penelope tried not to smile too broadly. Already, she was being let in where she could do the most harm.

  “I need a new dress for the occasion, of course, and I’m going to my final fitting at Lord and Taylor’s on Thursday.” Elizabeth’s cheeks were flushed with the relief of making plans now. “Come with me, and we can get something for you, too.”

  “All right. But really, that’s not the dress you should be focusing on. You’ll wear white to the wedding, of course. But who will make your wedding dress? It will have to have quite a long train, and ”

  “Oh yes,” Elizabeth interrupted, and before she knew what was happening, Penelope was listening to her friend go on about ivory versus ecru, and all the varieties of pink flowers, about whom she should ask to be the other bridesmaids, and what Penelope really thought of the ring, anyway.

  Grayson Hayes’s little sister did not vomit in public again, though she did feel like it. Watching the bright eyes of Elizabeth Holland as she imagined out loud the garments of a very large, very rich wedding party brought Penelope’s anger back acutely. But despite the gales of bitterness that would have ruined the complexion of a weaker-willed girl, Penelope Hayes kept on smiling. A smiling friend was a true friend, she reminded herself, and that was how she had to appear for now, anyway.

  Twenty One

  With the early arrival of Admiral Dewey’s fleet in the New York harbor yesterday, and the frenzied preparations for the two parades one by sea on Friday, and one by land on Saturday it would seem that the city will finally have something to
talk about besides the engagement of society scions Mr. Henry Schoonmaker and Miss Elizabeth Holland.

  — FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL PAGE, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27,1899

  “COME ON, RINGMASTER!” CRIED TEDDY CUTTING, shaking his fist in the air.

  “Move, you old nag!” Henry added in a somewhat less generous tone. He was sitting beside his friend in the steep and rickety wooden grandstand seats at Morris Park, drinking Pabst from bottles with blue ribbons on them, eating salted peanuts, and generally acting like a man several notches down in class. The racetrack in the Bronx was much prettier from his family’s box, but on this particular day Henry was avoiding the judgmental specter of his father, and the Schoonmaker box was a show of opulence intended to make its visitors ever-mindful of its owner’s worldly accomplishments. Henry’s worldly goal at the moment was drinking enough beer to be happy and forgetful. “Mooooove!” he cried, in the direction of a mahogany blur of thoroughbred.

  Teddy tipped his brown derby back on his head, so that tufts of blond hair emerged from under his hat, and clapped his hands together rowdily as their horse approached the finish line. Ringmaster, with the little red-and-white-clothed jockey on his back, was in second, but as he approached the finish line, he was overtaken. Teddy clapped his hands once in frustration when he saw that his horse had come in fourth. “Well, there goes another twenty bucks,” he said, tossing his racing card under their seats.

  “Oh, come on,” Henry replied, moving his black straw boater to a jauntier angle and leaning his elbows on the seat behind him. “It’s not all about money.”

  “Says you.” Teddy smiled good-naturedly. “So who’s our money on next? La Infanta?”

  “Why don’t we just bet on all the horses next time, and then we won’t have to worry about losing. I for one am just glad that we’re out of the city, and away from all that madness.”