Splendor l-4

by Anna Godbersen

  “May I look?” she asked, tiptoeing forward and picking up the box.

  “Why not?” Henry replied flatly. He reached into his breast pocket and removed a cigarette. The sweet smell of tobacco smoke filled her nose as she drew back the lid and saw the huge sapphire set in a corona of diamonds.

  “Oh!” she gasped.

  “It was for Diana.”

  Penelope’s dark eyebrows sailed into a perfectly alabaster forehead. “Even after this, she wouldn’t stay?”

  “No.” Henry exhaled, as though to cut off a path of conversation. “Where is your prince?”

  A thousand lies played on Penelope’s tongue, but none of them seemed likely to restore her dignity. “He departed for Europe this afternoon,” she began matter-of-factly. She winced, remembering how thoroughly she had been used, how foolishly she had believed him to be in love, and all the other fantasies of a very far-flung life she’d allowed herself to cultivate. But there was no getting around facts that would soon be printed in the columns. “He went back to tell his family that he’s engaged to the daughter of the count de Perignon.”

  “Oh.” Still Henry did not look away from the view of the skyline, which cut geometric shapes out of that array of dying color. “I’m sorry you lost him,” he added, and she thought he was, perhaps, sincere.

  “Yes, well, men are ever fools,” Penelope returned, some snappish pride returning to her tone at last. “Give me one of those.”

  Henry twisted his neck and assessed her. Then he offered a cigarette from a slim gold case, and lit it for her with a match.

  “What a wreck we’ve made of everything,” Penelope said as she exhaled into the growing darkness. There was still a throb in her head, but she found that it calmed her to stand like this, taking smoke into her lungs, speaking in tones of exhaustion and regret with the boy whose attainment she had once upon a time believed would fix everything.

  “Yes,” Henry replied, although he didn’t sound particularly remorseful. He sounded broken, and tired, and indifferent. They didn’t speak again until their cigarettes had burned down, and then he lit another two and handed one to Penelope. She took it, and was grateful. “Whoever would have imagined,” he went on eventually, with a rueful laugh, “a year ago this time — it was hot like now, remember? And you and your family were living on Fifth Avenue, and we met in hotel rooms all over the city and neither of us took anything very seriously. And now we are married, and miserable, and everything is in tatters.”

  “At least you wear misery well, Mr. Schoonmaker,” she replied dryly.

  He responded with the same sad laugh. “What does any of it matter?”

  “You mean, what does it matter if we wear our misery and humiliation hideously or gorgeously? It doesn’t, I suppose. But as long as we’re both miserable and handsome and here, we might as well have a drink.” For a moment she feared she had been too friendly, and that he would finally tell her to leave. “I could use one,” she added hastily.

  “Yes.” Still Henry wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I think that’s the right idea.”

  She placed her cigarette between her lips and walked over to the collection of cut glass bottles on the sideboard. She poured them each a glass of Scotch, and then returned to the window, handing Henry a glass and then lowering herself into the chair beside his. She did not care anymore that she looked a little worse for wear — her hair simple, parted in the middle, undone. Her defenseless slip. Without all the padding of a gown, she knew, she sometimes appeared too thin, but what did it matter now? Henry had taken his cuff links off, and he wore the well-tailored white shirt unbuttoned at the collar.

  “Cheers.” She raised her glass, and attempted a wicked smile. Their drinks made a clinking sound. “To broken hearts.”

  “To broken hearts.” His black eyes darted to her for a moment, and then he took a sip. “Perhaps we deserve each other,” he added, shifting his weight and letting it relax deeper into the cushions of his chair. He appraised her and then sighed, as though he were waiting out some pain, like a stubbed toe, that seems monstrous for a moment but is forgotten soon thereafter.

  Penelope lifted her long legs, crossing her delicate ankles and resting them on Henry’s thigh. There was no response from him, but neither did he brush her away. She bent her neck and looked down on Fifth Avenue. The sun faded from the sky and the light around them grew purple and soft, and she began to feel that they might go on, just as they were, for a very long time.

  Epilogue

  “I AM ALWAYS RELIEVED TO SEE IT SHRINK.”

  Diana Holland turned her hatless head of abbreviated curls, which had become completely wild in the wind high above the Lucida, to see a girl of about her own age, well dressed, utterly unpretty but nonetheless possessed of some quality that wanted to be looked upon. “When what shrinks?” Diana asked.

  “New York,” the girl replied, not unkindly but as though it were obvious, and then went back to watching the figures, their handkerchiefs aloft, growing blurry, indistinct, minuscule as the ship pulled out into the river. In another moment Diana found that amongst a multitude of emotions, she too was experiencing a kind of relief. Of course there was a humming exhilaration as well, and a bruised longing for Henry, and for the other things she had loved well and given up. She had watched him for a while, standing on the dock in his slim-fitting black clothes, gazing up at the ship as though it might somehow explain to him what he had lost. She believed he was still there now, but it was impossible to be sure, once he had become so small and the churning white wake behind the ship had grown so big. For some time she told herself it all would have been bearable if she had still had his hat, but then she realized that from a literary perspective it was far better that she had lost it then, on the docks, and not later on in the years to come, when she would be moving from one garret to another and always misplacing things of sentimental value.

  They would be restless years packed with mistakes and ardor. She would mend her broken heart, only to find it broke easily again. Different men loved differently, she would discover, and every one would leave her a little older, a little wiser, and with more feeling to translate into the pages of her notebooks. She would receive letters from Henry over the years, and though the strength with which he urged her to return would wane over time, he would never lose that tone of regretful desire. She had not lied on the pier — he would always be her first love.

  Diana lingered on the saloon deck and examined the passenger list, for among them would be notable people who might invite her to parties in her new city, or provide little stories to telegram Davis Barnard about. There were several names she knew, and others that she recognized — all occupying finer cabins than she. Among them were Governor Roosevelt’s niece, Eleanor, who was born the same year as Di ana and was on her way to finishing school in England. There was also the prince of Bavaria, traveling with the countess de Perignon and her daughter, who was said to be about Diana’s age, and not remotely the same flavor as Penelope. And though Diana felt no joy at this denouement, she couldn’t help but smile wanly. For no matter how worldly the former Penelope Hayes believed herself to be, she still had a particularly American naïveté, and it was a good joke that she had been so blinded by her desire to bed a royal that she had allowed herself to be completely taken advantage of. It was fitting, really, like the ending of a good story. That girl’s fate was to go on, married to the handsome husband she had wanted so badly at eighteen. They would never be completely faithful again, or understand each other for any very extended period of time. They would appear together at parties and occasionally share a laugh, and they would betray each other again and again, in that curious mating ritual of their kind.

  Perhaps it was the weather up high on the open ocean, or maybe the little tremors over what she had done, but Diana was experiencing a heightened sensitivity to everything at just that moment. She believed it to be born of a profound relief that this kind of marriage was not her own fate, in the way that colors
appear especially bright to a person who has just cheated death. Of course, Elizabeth’s marriage would not be like that, for she had finally found herself with someone so entirely devoted to her that his eye would never wander and his tongue would never be capable of cruelty. They would have a child, Keller Cutting, and then several more. They would use the Holland oil windfall to decorate beautiful homes in New York and Newport. There would be grand parties, to rival Mrs. Schoonmakers’, with whom Mrs. Cutting would maintain a wary, knowing camaraderie. The columns would always refer to them as rival hostesses, although in truth Mrs. Cutting never took the socialite part of her life so seriously again.

  That world was over, anyway. The most talked-of parties of the coming years would be those thrown by the Broad sisters, Claire and Carolina, whose humble origins everyone was happy to forget under a great swell of champagne and exotic party favors and the sort of antics that become calcified into legend almost as they occur. Names like Holland and Schoonmaker and Hayes would soon sound old-fashioned amongst that new, fast set.

  But those stories are in the future. The city of Diana’s birth grew miniature in the distance, like a diorama for schoolchildren. It was manageable that way; she could explain everything she had seen and done there. In time, she would: There would be intricate novels of drawing room betrayals and love that couldn’t be. Her brain was beating with them. From far away, on a clear day, she saw how all those mighty mansions were only temporary delusions, and how fashion would march on, and the chateaus and palazzos of American merchants would fall to the wrecking ball so that department stores might rise above.

  Slowly the sky turned from the color of cornflower to that of hyacinth, and the Ferris wheel at Coney Island appeared like a ring of diamonds against the twilight. New York — that city made of canyons between tall buildings, and ornate houses filled with glittering things that might trap a girl forever — was nothing more than a few dots on an infinite landscape. The atmosphere was crystalline and afforded her a perfect view. Only from this place was she able to see how limited the city was, after everything, and how wide open the world could all of a sudden become.

  Acknowledgments

  I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has worked so hard to turn The Luxe series into real live books. Thank you, thank you, Sara Shandler, Farrin Jacobs, Josh Bank, Les Morgenstein, Andrea C. Uva, Nora Pelizzari, Lanie Davis, Joelle Hobeika, Allison Heiny, Kristin Marang, Cristina Gilbert, Melissa Bruno, Kari Sutherland, Barb Fitzsimmons, Alison Donalty, Ray Shappell, Elise Howard, Susan Katz, and Kate Jackson. And thanks also to James McLeod, for always asking what Hem would do.

  About the Author

  ANNA GODBERSEN was born in Berkeley, California, and educated at Barnard College. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

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