Envy (25 page)

T
HE SCHOONMAKER MANSION FELT VERY MUCH LIKE
home to Penelope that morning, and she moved through its halls with a certain swishing, imperious air that might have intimidated several of the crowned heads of Europe. She was holding a dainty china coffee cup aloft and pulling her vermilion skirt up from the floor. There was much to do that day. She would have to pick an appropriate wedding gift for her husband’s former fiancée, to begin with—and what did one get a girl in a situation like that? Penelope’s summer wardrobe had not yet been completely settled upon, and there were so many events in the coming weeks, several of which overlapped, that she would have to consider. Behind every door there was a difficult choice, but she was feeling very light and a little naughty, and she trusted herself utterly to make the right decisions. She very nearly buzzed with energy.

“Henry,” she called as she came into their suite. The bed had been made while she was having her hair arranged and
picking at a croissant, and now the room appeared in its full, smoothed over, white and gold glory. She smiled, because everything was in its place. Of course Henry was not there. She had gone to bed without him again; no doubt he had stayed up late drinking, as he had the previous days, and was still now asleep on the couch in the adjoining room. By the time she had left the party three nights before, she was the lone guest still possessed of a clear head, and so she’d been the only one to notice and interpret Henry’s return from an odd ramble, and later Grayson, and then Diana, both of them with their attire somewhat wrinkled and askew. She could only imagine what Henry had seen, and she did try to do that. After all, it was only a matter of time before he sobered up to his situation and realized it was actually a quite pleasurable one.

She sipped her coffee contentedly as she considered the spoils of her planning and scheming. It had all come off just right in the end, she thought with a smile. Of course, the pampering she was now receiving from the Schoonmaker staff was based on an inconvenient misunderstanding that would have to be cleared up sooner or later. Now that Henry knew Diana had been tainted forever, he would come back around, and her predicament could be easily remedied, although Penelope knew that she didn’t want to start making grandchildren for old Schoonmaker. Not right away. It was her first season as a married society lady, after all, and there were new clothes to
be shown off and so many gatherings to attend, and she didn’t want to grow fat and immobile just yet. It was a hand she had not yet figured out how to play. But all the cards were right, and she knew she would. The old her was back.

She smiled a little at the thought that soon Elizabeth would be unable to do anything fun, for surely her quick wedding confirmed what Penelope had suspected in Florida—that Elizabeth was going to have a child, and sooner than anybody had any right to expect.

“Henry?” she called again. She put her china cup down on the little carved table at the end of her bed and brushed past the various trunks that had arrived that morning via steamer—for she was not
totally
unprepared for the coming season—and stepped up into the adjoining room.

She was dismayed by the darkness within, and realized in a few seconds that the curtains had not been opened.

“Henry?” she said again as she went over to draw them back. Light flooded the room, illuminating the couch with its kilim pillows and soft leather cushions and the silly idyllic mural overhead. That was the place where Henry was supposed to be, and her head ticked to the side to see things out of order. She went over and brushed her hands across the cushions, as though that might give some indication of where he was at an hour of the day that was much too late for him to be carousing, but still early, for him, to be out in the world.

“Yes, Penelope?”

She turned around and put her hands behind her back as though she had something to hide. Her husband had come up through the bedroom, and he was now standing on the threshold staring at her.

“I was just…” But Penelope couldn’t finish the sentence. She was too distracted by Henry’s outfit, which was unlike anything he’d ever worn before. “Where did you get that?”

“This?” He looked down at the fitted navy coat with the brass buttons and the light blue trousers that were brought even closer to his legs by leather gaiters. The sight of Henry in uniform made her heart speed up a little, and she found herself staring into his eyes and moving toward him. He was holding a hat with two peaks in his hands, and he looked good enough to eat, though his gaze was as steady and uninviting as ever. “From the United States Army, to which I now belong.”

For a moment this notion seemed to Penelope terribly romantic, and her mind wandered to all the things a man shipping off might ask for. She smiled hazily and clamped a hand on her hip. Then she looked at Henry’s posture and knew he was not dressed up for her personal amusement. Her hand and face fell, and she moved toward him more quickly this time.

“I am shipping out today.”

A fearful urgency surged within her. “Shipping where?”

“I don’t know.” He cleared his throat. “Teddy has departed for the Philippines. I am not sure where they’ll have me stationed.”

It was just beginning to sink in that she had done something to prevent his ever leaving, and that he had countered by finding another route out of town. “You aren’t
actually
leaving New York?”

“I am going to serve my country, Penelope.” He sighed and looked away from her. There had been fight in his eyes for a minute, but it was gone now. “It will be in the paper tomorrow, but I thought I should tell you myself. I’ve caused everyone enough harm, Lord knows, and I wouldn’t want to cause any more.”

Her whole body was ticking with energy, and her mind had already traveled from what the columns would make of it, to what Henry’s father would think of her now, to the desolate feeling that was sure to settle in at the pit of her stomach when he was really, truly gone. He stepped back down into the main room. She couldn’t stand the idea of this departure, and hurled herself forward so that she fell at the feet of her husband. She would rather have him there to spar and bicker with, she would rather have him in the city doing unkind things than to lose him this way, to some foreign location. Her knees were on the floor—she could feel the unyielding wood, even through her skirt—and she reached for Henry’s legs. Her arms, which
were encased in a crepe de chine of a slightly deeper shade of red, not to mention a collection of gold bangles, clung to him then. He was still stepping backward, and as he did so he dragged her some inches.

She looked up at him and found that wetness had quite naturally flooded her eyes. “What about the baby?” she cried. She knew she was being ridiculous, but it was all she could think to say.

Henry bent and put his hands firmly under her armpits and pulled her up to her feet. “There is no baby,” he said when they were again at each other’s eye level.

“But—”

“I wish all the best for you, my dear,” Henry said in a way that made Penelope feel she’d been boxed and stored in some back closet of his life. She could feel the seconds slipping away, and knew that she had precious few to figure out a way to prevent his leaving.

“But
Henry
.”

He let his dark eyes linger on her one second longer, and then he put the hat on his head. He was only a few feet from the door, and Penelope rushed toward the bed, pulling back her skirts from her feet but not caring particularly if she ripped them. She hit the blankets wailing.

“Henry, Henry, Henry, don’t leave!” The tears had become a hot torrent now, and her whole torso shook with the
terrible fate of being abandoned in Henry’s house alone. “I’m nothing without you!”

It was true, she realized just after she’d said it. She balled up her fists and pounded them against the gold-embroidered bedspread, but minutes passed to no avail. When she did look up, Henry was gone. He had been gone a long time.

She sniffled and blew her nose into her sleeve, not caring if she ruined it. Tomorrow she would order another one made. She pushed herself up on her elbow, and tried to dry her cheekbones with the heel of her palm. Eventually her chest stopped heaving, and she began to slowly regain normal breath.

“Oh, Henry,” she said quietly to herself.

Outside, the rain, which had been interminable for two days, was beginning to weaken, and she knew that if she got up, and put her face back together, that she would be able to see her situation anew. She couldn’t stop him now; for now, he was gone. But there was tomorrow, and the day following, and forever after that. She stood and called for her maid. She was no one’s fool, and she had plenty of time to figure out how to get him back.

T
HE LETTER ARRIVED IN THE AFTERNOON WHEN
the rain was still strong, and the messenger had gotten drenched. Diana had looked at the thing fearfully as it sat on the ceramic platter by the door, for she had become certain that Henry had seen what she had done, and that he’d written down his invective toward her. It was only after dinner, when everyone else was asleep—somehow, superstitiously, that made Diana feel that her thoughts were less likely to be read—that she went to fetch it. She wasn’t yet sure if she would be able to consume his message in its entirety.

Edith, who had still not fully recovered from the debauchery at the Hayeses’, had glanced at the letter before dinner, but she apparently lacked the energy to pry. “Oh, to be young as you,” was all she’d said, before going to bed early.

Still, some hours passed, and the sky began to turn purple, before Diana found the courage to break the seal.
That act gave her little tremors, and so she put the letter down for another while. She gave herself a speech, and decided that she was nothing if she didn’t face the consequences of her actions. So she picked up the letter for good and went over to the white bearskin rug and folded her legs, and her skirts, up under her. She took a breath and then began the heartbreak. By the time she set it down she felt quite different again.

Diana read the letter three times and pressed the back of her hand into her face and tried not to cry. She blinked furiously, but it was no use. She cried in front of the fire and then she moved to the bed to cry some more. She cried over her willful actions, and all the stupid misunderstandings that had passed between her and the only man she had ever loved, and most of all for the distance that now separated them. It had yawned to a great expanse and was now too wide to bridge. The worst of it was that so many betrayals seemed to have grown from lack of faith on both their parts, and not because of any bad intentions.

She went to her window and looked out at all the twinkling windows and above them all the faint stars. How many
false impressions lived out there? she wondered. How many hearts broken through carelessness and failures of nerve? How many decades-old mistakes festered behind fine window dressings? Then she cried a little more, until her small body felt dry and spent. There was no use, she knew, crying anymore.

She went over to her vanity—it was an elaborate piece of dark wood furniture, ornamented with carved flowers and angels, and it had offered up her reflection on so many nights when she had still been full of girlish wonder. She looked older now, she knew. The skin under her eyes appeared trampled on, and her features stood out more starkly from her face. Still, she suspected that she was young enough that a few real kisses and a good night’s sleep would be enough to make her look fresh again.

She rested her elbows on the table and cupped her forehead with her palms. She pushed her fingers up into her hair and clutched it in fists. “Oh me, oh me,” she whispered to herself as she began to agitatedly draw the pins out of her hair.

When she had finally pulled them all out, and her rich brown curls stood out around her head like wildfire in the brush, she knew that the sleep could wait, but she had to get those real kisses. Her hands fumbled across the table until they took hold of a pair of scissors. For a moment she clutched their gold-plated handles and wondered if she hadn’t gone a little mad. But there was a pure, reflective quality to her eyes that had
been missing over the past week, and she knew that what she was about to do was the only thing that made any sense at all.

She began to cut. As she made slow and exacting movements, the hair began to fall away. It collected in tufted hills at her feet, but she kept steady and focused on the mirror in front of her, until her head was crowned by nothing more than a boy’s short wisps. She had such a soft and feminine face, it was difficult to imagine that she could pass for anything but a girl, but her conviction had grown all the while, and now a niggling thing like that couldn’t stop her. She was going to follow Henry, even if it meant joining the army, even if it meant living as a man. Anyway, there was that new, aged quality to her features—maybe that was all she needed to complete the illusion.

It was very late when she turned her chin a final time, and examined the newly bare nape of her neck in the old vanity. She felt a hundred pounds lighter, and when she stood up, she knew she was carrying only the most crucial things. She packed a small case and tucked Henry’s letter inside it. Then she put out the lights and slipped down the stairs.

Diana wore a men’s bowler with the initials
H. W. S.
sewn into the lining and an old French army coat. She looked at No. 17 for a long moment, before she at last began walking toward the river. The rain had stopped, and the air was clean and just chilly enough to make one feel alive, the way all promising beginnings do.