Envy

by Anna Godbersen

  “Elizabeth is very delicate now,” Snowden returned without pause. “I’m sorry to say it is quite evident.”

  The girl in question glanced from her mother to Snowden, and saw that there was kindness in his simple, blocklike features. His eyes, which were set far apart under thick brows, and which were never quite brown or green, widened in her direction. He wore a shirt of sturdy white linen, and a vest of worn brown leather. It was his uniform of sorts. He was right, of course: She’d hardly had an appetite since Will’s death, and had trouble keeping down the meals she did eat. She had grown gaunt, and forgot to care for her hair, which nowadays often had the limp look of having gone unwashed.

  “And,” he went on, “it would be doing none of the family any favors for her state, or the reasons for it, to be publicly speculated on. If you fear people saying that something untoward befell our girl between October and December past, her frailty might only seem to confirm that.”

  Elizabeth’s smile was not what it used to be—in her days as a much-discussed debutante, she had been known for the radiant genuineness with which she had greeted her friends and peers, but that was a facial expression she could scarcely dream of now. Still, she tried to smile a little then. He was making the argument she might have made, if only she felt up to the task. She let her thin eyelids drift shut for a moment, and then she was back in California. Her body was warmed by the sun and close to Will’s and she was almost blinded by that light, which was so clear and direct in a way she could never have imagined in New York, where the sun set at five in the winter and the walls were all stained with the residue of oil lamps. When she opened her eyes, she was again in that cluttered dark room, with its embossed olive leather paneling and carved, stained wood ceiling, with its many antique pieces.

  Mrs. Holland’s small, determined chin twitched in Elizabeth’s direction. She drew her long fingers over her forehead and then rested her temple against her fingertips. She thought a moment, and then asked, “What do you suggest, then? That she stay indoors forever, like a prisoner of this house, as though she were some deaf mute who could not understand the world? And then what should I say to my friends, who were once merely happy that she was alive and now wonder suspiciously at our shielding her?” She paused and brought her hand down swiftly to her lap. “Those friends I have left,” she added darkly.

  Snowden stood and answered in the inverse tone. “I think I know what to do.” He moved to the fireplace, the light from the flames catching his preternaturally blond hair, and made swooping gestures with his hands. “We should have a party here, at home, where Elizabeth is most comfortable.” He paused thoughtfully. “Not a dance. A luncheon. Quiet, lovely, during the daylight hours. We can invite all the people Elizabeth used to know. The young ladies that she was friends with. Not too many, but enough to spread the word that she is quite all right and will be back in the world once the winter is over and she has begun to feel normal again.” He turned to Elizabeth. “For surely, she will be normal by then?”

  That remnant of a smile that had just crossed Elizabeth’s lips disappeared now. She looked from Snowden to her mother, and saw that his plan was already in motion in that lady’s thoughts. There was nothing to say, for Agnes Jones, and the Misses Wetmore, and her Holland and Gansevoort cousins were already as good as invited. They would arrive in the latest creations of their dressmakers, and would all be peering slantwise at Elizabeth to see if their clothing was better than hers. She was queasy with the idea of the pretense—all the greetings and superficial conversation that she would be forced to engage in. She would have to fasten a corset and dress like it mattered.

  A log in the fire, burned through the middle, broke and fell then, scattering embers onto the stone hearth. Snowden moved to stamp them out, and Elizabeth put her face into her hands, knowing that she was far more than a few cold months away from normal.

  Five

  I hear that among the younger generation couples sometimes maintain but one large bedroom for husband and wife. I suppose that this is the hallmark of an intelligent use of space, and after all, the species must be propagated. Still, I prefer the older people’s way of doing things: two well-appointed bedrooms, one each for husband and wife, an arrangement that prevents the revelation of so many irksome personal facts….”

  ––VAN KAMP’S GUIDE TO HOUSEKEEPING FOR LADIES OF HIGH SOCIETY, 1899 EDITION

  THE HILLS WERE THE INTENSE GREEN COLOR nature reserves for that hour directly following a heavy rain, and the horse beneath Henry Schoonmaker moved so speedily into the damp air that he felt a little dizzy with the pace. Up ahead of him, Diana Holland—her shiny russet curls half undone and whipping against her shoulders—turned her face slightly back to make sure he followed. She was wearing a white gown that reminded him of some Grecian statue in the Metropolitan Museum, and her small body rocked with the galloping of the huge, shiny animal. He turned his gaze down to urge his own horse, already sweaty with exertion, faster, and then, as he brought his face up again to look at her, he felt the rough texture of kilim against his cheek, and remembered the pillows on the couch that he had slept on ever since he had become a married man, and which Penelope’s tastemaker, Isaac Phillips Buck, had picked up on some cruise through the Dardanelles.

  “Henry!”

  For a moment, Henry’s addled brain couldn’t distinguish what was dream and what was reality, although he held out a poignant hope that the scene with the verdant hills, the racing horses, and the youngest Holland was the one that would soon come into sharper focus. He dragged his face down, away from the harsh voice of his father, and felt again the scratchiness of the pillow against his smooth, golden skin. The feel of those imported Turkish fibers was undeniably more acute than the moist countryside air, which was in any event fading quickly, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  “Henry.”

  Henry now twisted the entirety of his long body so that he was sitting up, and then committed the first mistake of that morning: He opened his eyes, an act that caused him great pain when the flooding morning light met his weary retinas.

  “Oh,” he said feebly.

  “Yes, it hurts, I know,” his father replied, sitting on the couch next to his son. William Sackhouse Schoonmaker was a man of considerable size, broad-shouldered and full in every way, but whether his body or the sarcasm of his tone weighed more heavily on those soft black leather cushions was open for debate. He wore a suit of dark brown that shone almost purple where the light caught it, and his hair was a deep and artificial black. His face was a study in blunt features and popped blood vessels, but you could see under all that the bone structure that he had bequeathed his son. He had the appearance, now as ever, of being a very rich man. “But what are you doing here?”

  “Here?” Henry’s tone was dull, he knew, but he lacked the energy to change it. Unlike his father he was still lithe, his features still strong and clean as though they had been carved from marble, but his insides were feeling decidedly crumbly. The room they occupied was adjacent to his bedroom, in the second-floor wing that had always been largely his own. When he was a child his governess had slept here, and when he had dropped out of Harvard last spring it had been converted into a study of sorts for him—he had claimed, halfheartedly, that he might resume his studies at Columbia, where his friend Teddy Cutting had then been a senior. The floor was highly varnished parquet, and on the ceiling was a mural depicting a happy luncheon on the grass in big, loose brushstrokes. His gaze lingered there for a moment, and he was overtaken by a very childish thought: that he could jump in there and amble away.

  His father, intuiting the gist of his fantasy, cut in. “Stop thinking like a little boy, Henry,” he said.

  “All right.” Henry, who still could not manage any tone beyond a passive acquiescence, closed his eyes after he spoke. His tongue felt like some swollen fish dying on a rock. Then came the recollection of the drinks that had filled the previous evening and made it blurry and tolerable. Before a
ll that—or at least before the peak of his intoxication—there had been Diana, to whom he had tried to be near over and again since his wedding, without the slightest success. It had only been a glimpse of her, for as soon as he had entered the music room at Leland Bouchard’s, she had exited. She’d looked as healthy and rosy as any sixteen-year-old, but with that sharp pride of a woman who has been scorned and then drawn herself up, ever more glorious, from the humiliation.

  “Now, what are you doing here?”

  Henry’s hands went to his chest. His memory of how he had arrived on this couch this particular morning was incomplete, and he had gotten in the habit on mornings like these (there had been many) of patting himself down to make sure he was all in one piece. He seemed to be. He also seemed to be wearing a rumpled white dress shirt of Italian linen—the same one, as far as he could determine, that he had worn the night before—and black dress pants. His feet were covered in black socks, and his shoes were lying next to his white silk waistcoat on the floor. His tie was nowhere to be seen.

  “Sleeping?”

  “Evidently.”

  Henry stood. “It was a long night,” he replied, sounding—with exactly no effort—like he could sleep for another hundred years. He bent to pick up his waistcoat, and regretted it instantly. The swift movement had caused a kind of stabbing agony around his forehead. He brought himself up quickly, and drew on what energy he had to remain upright.

  The elder Schoonmaker stood, cleared his throat, and softened his tone. “Henry…” He looked at his son, and for a moment his thoughts seemed to have gone to some place in the distant past. They stood awkwardly there, in that paneled and ornamented room, shifting in their places. “There’s been a promising development in my quest for the mayoralty.”

  Henry, who a moment before had hoped he might escape his father’s wrath, now felt a twitch of dread. W. S. Schoonmaker was a ruthless businessman, and he had inherited and made several fortunes already, but he’d recently decided that he wanted his earthly name to ascend a new level of fame and glory, and it was for this reason that he longed to enter the fray of politics. He believed he should be mayor, which caused him to fear and rail against his son’s profligacy as never before and to curtail his son’s sprees whenever possible. His new ambition made him fond of threatening disinheritance, and it had transformed him into a formidable pusher of Henry Schoonmaker, the married man.

  “Oh?” There were very few things that Henry liked discussing less than his father’s political ambitions.

  “Yes. The Family Progress Party needs a candidate for their mayoral ticket, and it seems we believe in many of the same things.”

  “What kind of things?” Henry asked ironically. He did not have the courage, or the mental strength, to point out the obvious absurdity of this prospect. For many of the people who voted for the Family Progress Party also had the misfortune of living in tenements that were owned by the Schoonmakers’ holding company, where they surely had requested services like heat and hot water and been turned down flat.

  “Well, in science and innovation,” his father replied impatiently. “In the progress of society, and in humankind’s mission to improve the world as they found it. And of course, on the fundamental joy of family as the raison d’être of all men.”

  Henry smothered his laugh with his fist and turned toward the windows. He had not disguised his opinion about his father’s words well enough, however—he could tell by the way the old man loomed behind him.

  “I suppose you doubt my dedication to family.” His father’s tone had changed quite suddenly and was now full of ire. “Well, you know nothing.”

  “I do know…” Henry began, but faltered. He wasn’t even sure what it was he had wanted to say.

  “Shut up, Henry. It doesn’t matter, anyway, what you think of me or what I think of you. It matters what the people of this great city see in both of us. Do they see a family of louche, careless individuals, or purposeful businessmen with wives and children to nurture?”

  “I have no children,” Henry said. This seemed to him, in the moment, like a true stroke of luck. His physical discomfort was coming in waves now, and for a moment the tide seemed to ebb as he thought of that one crucial way in which he was still free.

  “No.” His father laughed cruelly. “And you’re not going to get them by sleeping on the couch. I’ve queried the staff, and they say you wake up here every morning. Can it be that you haven’t—?”

  “No.” Henry glanced at his father, and saw a horrid concoction of amusement, rage, and disbelief on his face. The two men stared at each other for a long moment, whole monologues going unsaid across their features.

  “Well,” the elder Schoonmaker went on, more peacefully than his tone of a few seconds before might have implied, “you’ll have to stop behaving like silly children. I want a grandchild by the election. That’ll be November of 1901, Henry, so you have plenty of time. A boy would be nice. A big healthy boy, to hold aloft over the crowds. Try for that.”

  “Dad, I really don’t think—”

  “Am I interrupting?” The two Schoonmaker men turned sidewise, to the door that adjoined the bedroom and the study. Penelope was standing there, fully dressed in a fluted skirt of blue and white tartan and a shirt of cream chiffon with a high, whalebone collar. Her dark hair rose, silken and shiny, from her smooth forehead. The counterfeit concern on her face melted into an ingratiating smile, and then she tipped her head. “Good morning, Mr. Schoonmaker.”

  “Good morning, Penelope.”

  “I am sorry to interrupt,” she went on like the sweet girl she most certainly was not. “But I’ve just received an invitation to the Hollands’, this Sunday, for luncheon. We must go, for dear old Elizabeth’s sake, and show her that there isn’t any discomfort between us. She will see, of course, that we were the right match all along, and that we love her no less for having nearly taken my place….”

  A terse “no” was ready on Henry’s tongue, as it always was when he conversed with his wife, and he wasn’t sure whether he was more disgusted with the way his father and Penelope were now smiling at each other, or by the idea of appearing at the Hollands’ house as a married man. He had explained his actions with every conceivable combination of words, but he had yet to receive any kind of indication that Diana had even read his letters. But he went on writing to her because he didn’t know what else to do, which was the same motivation that led him to hang his head now. “Teddy and I have planned a trip to Palm Beach, to get away from this damned cold and do some fishing. We are leaving Tuesday, and I have precious little time for social events before then—”

  “I didn’t know you were going to Palm Beach,” came Penelope’s crisp reply.

  “It was a sudden impulse,” he replied lamely. Henry knew that Penelope was giving him an accusing look, but he couldn’t bear to meet her eyes. “Which is why there is still so much to be done…” he mumbled at his lap.

  “In that case,” Penelope went on with a firm hand to the hip, “I will arrange for your luggage and travel things, and I will book passage for myself so that I can see to everything for you in Palm Beach.”

  Henry wasn’t sure what kind of expression his face assumed just then, but Penelope returned one of triumphant satisfaction.

  “I will bring a friend along for company,” she concluded, almost to herself.

  “Good,” his father put in, sealing all of it.

  “All right.” Henry tried to smile a little at both of them. He could tell that his father wanted to go on needling him about making a family of healthy Schoonmaker babies—an idea so bizarre and wrong to Henry that he couldn’t begin to mentally approach it in his current state. He knew the old man would again, but not now. Not with Penelope there, all prettily made up like any guileless, cosseted girl of their class. Propriety was good for something after all, Henry reflected with bitter humor, as he brushed past his wife and went into the bedroom to get a few hours’ proper sleep.

  Six
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  Carolina—

  Luncheon at the Hollands’

  this afternoon? Wouldn’t it be fun

  if you showed up and reminded

  Elizabeth how far beyond her

  you’ve risen? I will come by

  in the carriage at noon.

  —Mrs. Henry Schoonmaker

  “OH, DEAR OLD SEVENTEEN,” CAROLINA BROAD SIGHED, her voice dusted by an entirely disingenuous nostalgia, as Penelope Schoonmaker’s covered phaeton came to a stop on the south side of Gramercy Park.

  When Penelope’s note had arrived that morning, asking her if she didn’t want to come along to a Sunday luncheon at the Hollands’, her initial reaction had been a kind of panic. She had first suffered the recollection of those plain black linen dresses that she used to have to wear—not even the more dignified white-collared uniforms that the maids in the Hayeses’ house wore—and of the rough treatment the skin of her hands had been dealt during her service there. But then she had looked into her closet at all the dresses and jewelry, all the shoes and gloves and smart little jackets that she had acquired as the special friend of Mr. Longhorn. And she had thought on the Hollands’ poverty—which they had managed to keep secret for so long, but which had inevitably become somewhat known—and she had reassured herself that now was her time, and that the Holland women should be made to see it.

  “I wonder why they want you here,” she wondered aloud, realizing only after she had spoken that this question might sound cruel.

  Penelope, if she had found it so, did not appear wounded. “Oh, they need me much more than I need them,” she answered blithely as she checked her face in her carved ivory compact mirror. Beyond her profile, framed in the carriage window, were the trees of the park, which had become bare and leafless since Carolina had last seen them. “Surely old Mrs. Holland knows by now that I am privy to Elizabeth’s dirty little secret, and anyway, nobody in society likes a jilted former fiancée. It is not a coveted role. I’m mostly looking forward to how they react to seeing you here.”