Anna Godbersen: Envy

“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.

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.”

Carolina rested her hand on the brass-edged door of the phaeton and blinked at the house where she’d once laid her head. It seemed rather narrow to her now, and almost dour with its plain brownstone façade. The iron grille of the enclosed porch looked tacked on as an afterthought, and the windows in straight lines up and down stared obtusely at the street. The life she’d lived there felt remote to her, like an awful story she had been told once, or a nightmare she had been jolted from suddenly. She thought briefly of Will — who had been such a good, beautiful boy — and how he had made the mistake of loving high and mighty Elizabeth Holland. It was a mistake he had died for. That was a sad direction, though, and Carolina turned her thoughts back around as Penelope’s driver opened the little door and helped her down to the curb.

She took a big, greedy breath of air and looked toward Penelope, who always knew just what to do. They linked arms — a thing Penelope only did with her in public. She had to. It was their agreement to appear to be friends; that was what Penelope had traded her for the secret about Diana Holland having done unladylike things with Henry, in her own bedroom, late one December night, after his engagement with Elizabeth had ended but before his engagement with Penelope had yet begun. Then they walked up the old stone steps, Carolina’s long, gray, fur-trimmed skirt swishing against Penelope’s black accordion-pleated one.

The door swung back, and a young woman with neatly brushed-back copper hair welcomed them. The planes of her face were broad and fair, rather like Carolina’s, except that Carolina’s were darkened by a smattering of freckles even in the cold middle of February. The girl’s welcoming smile faded, and she paused dumbly in the dark and narrow foyer.

“Mrs. Henry Schoonmaker and Miss Carolina Broad.” Penelope indicated how she would like to be announced as she removed a hat festooned with small black birds. “Mr. Schoonmaker is preparing for a trip and will not be able to join us. Miss Broad came in his place. She is a particular friend of mine.”

Carolina, too, removed her hat, which was a rakish, top hat — style thing, and handed it to the maid with a wink. The maid was well known to her. She was in fact her sister, Claire Broud, who loved to hear stories of beautiful people and their doings but was too good and shy to join them herself. Not so the younger Broud — now Broad, since a typo in a society column had announced her presence in elite New York and forever re-christened her. The sisters saw each other whenever possible — although it was often difficult for Carolina, what with all her new friends — and still understood each other enough that Claire was able, with a few bats of her lashes, to let her younger sibling know that she would try her best to act normal.