Envy (6 page)

P
ENELOPE SCHOONMAKER HAD NOT YET TAKEN
off her burgundy wool coat with the black piping and high, proud collar, and already she was slouched on one of the striped settees in her bedroom in the Hayes mansion at 670 Fifth Avenue. Penelope had hurried straight upstairs because she couldn’t stand the idea of seeing her parents, who were so stupid and useless, and who had caused her so much pain by not giving her a more tasteful and established family to begin with. Sometimes she felt like a changeling of the most elegant variety.

Her former bedroom, very much like her current one, was a study in white and gold, except that it was larger and had been built with the idea of housing many, many gowns. She shot bitter looks at the pile of monogram canvas–covered Louis Vuitton trunks, with their little Japonisme initials, which she had bought in the shop on Rue Scribe in Paris long before she was married. They were her official excuse for having returned home that day. The real reason was that Henry’s
indifference—reluctance, if she were to be honest, which was not among her native characteristics—to her plan of accompanying him to Florida was growing more obvious, and she feared the Schoonmaker servants would begin to talk.

“I don’t even want to go anymore,” she said to Isaac Phillips Buck, her closest confidante, who had arrived several hours earlier to oversee the packing of the warm-weather clothing that had not yet been moved into her new wardrobe at the Schoonmaker residence. He glanced at her from the bed, where he had been folding laces, his large girth perched against its chenille edge.

“Oh, but you must, for my sake, to tell me what everyone is wearing,” said Mrs. William Schoonmaker, her mother-in-law, who had accompanied her that morning. Her tone was dry and her pretty features were framed in white fur. She had lit a cigarette somewhere between the door and the window, and she exhaled before qualifying her statement: “William is such an ass for not letting me go. I don’t know how he deludes himself that I actually like attending those silly political functions with him.”

Isabelle, who had proved such an ally to Penelope in her campaign to marry Henry, had been moody lately, and not a bit of fun. Penelope ignored the older lady’s words, pushing herself up and walking over to the bed with its heaps of decorative pillows and neat piles of accessories. She picked up
a vermilion sash and turned away from Buck as she examined it, letting her fingers glide slowly along its length.

“Don’t go,” Buck said.

“I do have to, of course.”

She didn’t mask her impatience, for Buck knew that to back out of the trip would be to shatter all appearances. He usually introduced himself by stressing his surname, as though to suggest that he was one of the old Buck clan who lived in country gentility somewhere up the Hudson, but in fact his prestige derived almost entirely from his exquisite taste and from the firmly held belief among a certain kind of New York lady that he was absolutely necessary to have on one’s payroll when there was a party to be thrown. This was the reason he had first become known to the Hayeses, and especially to their youngest member, and it meant that he was well aware how very new their reputation was, and how assiduously it was to be maintained.

“The papers all reported how you attended the luncheon with Elizabeth Holland, and that your friendship is as strong as ever.” Buck shrugged, as though that was all that might be concerning her.

“It’s not Elizabeth I’m worried about.” She sat down on the bed, and drew the smooth fabric over her face thoughtfully. “Elizabeth I can handle. But how will it look if my husband goes on a trip without me, after only two months? What will everybody say? I couldn’t let him go alone,
you
know that.”

“No.” Over by the window, Isabelle had lit another cigarette. “You couldn’t in a thousand years do that.”

“Well, at least you’re going to escape this dismal, gray city.” Buck’s small eyes, which were enveloped in well-moisturized flesh, rolled to the elaborately frescoed ceiling as his tone sank dramatically.

“True.” Penelope felt hot all of a sudden, and she jerked the buttons of her coat open one at a time. “It won’t be so bad, and I think a little sunshine might bring Henry around, but now of course I’ve gotten myself outnumbered. I mean, Miss Broad is on my side, I suppose, but she’s not as grand as she looks, and if anybody knows
that
, it’s Elizabeth. The two Hollands together will surely be always looking for some way to step on my skirt. And Teddy will be there, and everybody knows that he was always infatuated with Liz….”

She removed her coat completely now and, leaving it on the bed, stepped across the thick carpet. Her day dress of mild cerise trailed along behind, and Robber, her Boston terrier, fell from the ottoman where he had been resting and scooted under an armchair when he heard her coming. Penelope was not a girl who cried easily, but she felt capable of tears of rage, thinking of Elizabeth and Diana and their soft little faces giving her accusing glances all the way to Florida.

At the window, she took one of the cigarettes from the gold case that Isabelle had placed on the sill and allowed her
mother-in-law to fuss with her bangs briefly as she cooed sympathetically.

“You know what you need.” They both turned to see Buck cross and uncross his legs contemplatively.

Penelope lit the cigarette and exhaled. Then she turned back to the view down Fifth Avenue, with its stately parade of carriages, and waited for the rest of Buck’s advice. Those people below were looking at the colossus that the Hayeses had constructed with their shiny new money, envying them and hating them all at the same time. It was a stage that her father had built for his wife and daughter, and though Penelope knew all the right lines and wore all the right costumes, still she was never the star. At least that was how it felt to her just then, as she clutched the gold drapery and despised everyone who was not in thrall to her performance and clapping and crying out brava.

“You need an ally.”

“An ally?” Penelope knew instantly that he was right, but she wasn’t ready to be reassured yet.

“So that you’re not so outnumbered.”

“I can’t possibly invite
more
people.” Penelope looked at Isabelle as though for confirmation of this statement—after all, it was her husband who would get the bill for this trip.

Isabelle shrugged. “Of course you can. It’s a party.” She made a little gesture with her right hand, leaving a cloud of smoke suspended in the air.

“People broaden the guest list all the time,” Buck went on. “Anyway, you’ll need someone to help you, especially so that
you
don’t ever have to worry about appearing to scheme. Miss Broad has all the right clothes, but she hasn’t learned to be clever yet.”

“That’s true.” Penelope glanced at the deflated blonde at her side. “I wish you could come, Isabelle. It’s so unfair that mean old Schoonmaker says you must stay here.”

Isabelle smiled at her sadly. “Thank you for saying so,” she replied in a tone that suggested that the younger girl couldn’t begin to understand her suffering.

Penelope might have asked herself if Buck didn’t want to come along, and whether or not he might have been her choicest ally, when she looked down below and saw her older brother hopping off the driver’s seat of a four-in-hand. The horses were gleaming with sweat as though they had just been ridden hard, and Grayson handed over the reins to a servant and began to trot up the Hayeses’ grand limestone steps with the clipped assurance of a born aristocrat. Although she liked to think of herself as the brighter, more cunning sibling, she had always known that he was like her—they had the same natural excess of ambition and total deficiency of sentimentality—in a way that could only be explained by shared blood. She had always been a little proud of that fact, and as she watched him disappear into the house below, an idea began to form in her mind.

Then she heard her mother-in-law exhale a romantic little sigh, and looked sidelong at the older lady. Isabelle Schoonmaker’s face had taken on a far-off, dreamy quality. It was embarrassing ever to be so obviously weak with infatuation, Penelope believed, especially when one was a Mrs. She would have searched out a way to subtly point this out, but she was distracted by the thought that it was rather impressive of Grayson to have felled such a sophisticated and desirable married lady. It was in fact a very useful skill, and might prove quite fatal when turned on a more naïve girl.

When she spoke to Buck next, Penelope’s tone had brightened considerably. “I’ll invite Grayson along. He’s my brother, so he
has
to love me.”

“No, don’t take him,” Isabelle gasped. Then her gaze darted to Buck and she lost the imploring tone. “It’s only that there are so many more ladies than men to dance with at all the balls this season, and it would be a shame to rob us of a gentleman so light on his feet.”

“Oh, you’ll get along without Grayson.” Penelope took a final inhalation of her cigarette and dropped the end of it in a potted plant. As she crossed the room again, to select her wardrobe with renewed focus and vigor, she left a trail of exhaled smoke behind. “And anyway, I already know just how I’ll use him.”

T
UESDAY DAWNED GRAY AND MISERABLE, AND MR.
Longhorn coughed all the way to the ferry station where Carolina had been told to meet the rest of the Florida party. They would cross the Hudson, she had been told, and then, in Jersey City, board the deluxe railcar that Henry Schoonmaker’s family maintained. As a maid she had overheard plans of this kind being formed, although actual travel had remained stubbornly out of her grasp. It was always her well-behaved and ever-suffering sister who had been taken along to resorts and leisure places, while she remained behind to repair old camisoles and shams at No. 17.

Thoughts of what it would be like to flee the city for an exotic locale, and to be described doing so in the papers, had kept her up most of the night, and by now the anticipation had grown almost unbearable. At times she very nearly shook with excitement. And so it was only when they turned and started their southward journey that she began to detect something imploring in the old man’s wheeze.

“My Carolina,” he said, once they had finally come to a halt at the designated pier. The color in his face, which had previously been a constant and jovial red, was all washed out now, and he seemed to be catching his breath at every word. “I wonder if you won’t consider remaining with me in New York. You know I don’t like to keep you from your youthful fun, but I woke up this morning with a terrible feeling in my lungs. I would like your company very much—I find myself wanting it more than usual….”

For Carolina, it was as though a decadent chocolate cake had been placed in front of her and then whisked away before she had taken even one bite. She felt such agitation at the prospect that she might not be able to go to Florida, that another party might flare up and be extinguished without her so much as knowing of its brightness. The very idea rattled her thoughts and caused a distinctly sour taste to grow in the back of her throat.

“But my luggage is all packed…” she returned weakly. She could smell the ocean now and hear the trampling of feet on the docks.

A poor excuse for a smile crossed her face, but she could not sustain it after looking another moment into Longhorn’s eyes. They were milky and lacking the usual sharp appraisal. For a moment all her nervous desires to be on the train already, to be one of the bright, lovely things leaving the city
behind, quieted. She couldn’t remember ever being asked to stay anywhere with such ardency. Though there had never been even a hint of romance between her and her benefactor, she felt for a moment the warm glow of being needed spread across her chest.

“Your maid will fetch them back.”

The words hung in the air as she recalled all the new dresses that her dressmaker, Madame Bristede, had been paid extra to rush so that they would be ready for that morning. Carolina had imagined wearing them to the dances and dinners in Florida, and perhaps on the train, which she had heard was quite elaborately equipped. Her maid, a girl slightly younger and far more competent than she had been in that capacity, had arrived early with the several new trunks in which those dresses were packed, just to see that they were loaded to the ferry with care. She was wearing a black coat and hat—Carolina caught a glimpse of her through the bustle, standing quite formally on the wooden planks. Carolina longed to be already there, amidst all the workers and the travelers, in her far better coat, which was trimmed in blond mink. She would tell the girl—Cathy was her name—that she should hurry up and board with all the other servants, and then they would be off.

“That’s true,” Carolina acquiesced at last. She put her bee-stung lips together and her dark eyebrows rose delicately at the awful prospect.

“We’ll have another evening tonight, and you may invite whomever you like,” Longhorn continued. The effort of speech was apparently too much for him, however, because he subsided into a fit of coughing and had to bend away from her to disguise its intensity. Carolina had to admit that she’d enjoyed the little evening he had thrown to wish her a bon voyage the night before. She and Lucy Carr, the divorcée, had played cards and talked of clothes and screamed with laughter over something or other, she couldn’t remember what anymore. It had been entertaining, but she didn’t want to do it again. She wanted to go someplace new, and she wanted all the readers of all the gossip columns in the city to know what very good company she kept.

“Is he all right?”

Carolina blinked and tried to put away her self-pity. She glanced from Longhorn, who was doubled over and hacking uncontrollably, to Robert, who stood just outside the carriage window, his dark beard and eyes full of concerned skepticism. She was about to tell Robert that no, she didn’t think so, they should probably turn around now and go back to the hotel, and could he summon Cathy and give her the new instructions? But then Carolina’s gaze drifted, by chance, over Robert’s shoulder to the place on the wide pier where Leland Bouchard stood. The yellow tones in his overgrown wheat-colored hair stood out against the horrible gray backdrop—
the day was so overcast you could scarcely see the other vessels in the Hudson River—and he was wearing a scarf with black and white stripes that was tucked into his fitted, knee-length coat. He helped his valet bring a single trunk onto the high wooden platform, and when he stood up again, he paused with all the grand self-possession of a Roman statue. Then he turned in her direction.

“Miss Broad!”

She blushed when she realized she had been staring. Her blush deepened when she realized that he remembered her name, and then she could not help herself from leaning forward against the coach’s window and reaching past Robert to wave eagerly at him.

“Hello!”

“You’re not with the Schoonmaker party too, are you?” he called out.

“Yes,” she said. The cold air outside was bracing, and in that moment she saw clearly what it was she had to do. “Oh, yes!”

“I am, as well—Grayson Hayes invited me. I will see you on the ferry, then!” He removed his hat and made a gallant swooshing bow motion, before disappearing back into the crowd. Carolina watched the bodies that swarmed the place where he’d been, obscuring her view of him in moments, and then she turned back to her companion.

The coughing had subsided, and he brought himself back up and gave her a smile with just a trace of apology in it. He opened his mouth to speak—but Carolina didn’t want to hear any of the reasons he wished her to remain with him in New York.

“But I have never been off this little island,” she gushed hopefully. “I’ll be back before you know it. Perhaps you will already be feeling better by then?”

Longhorn’s smile faltered. “You’re right, my dear, you should not miss any of the fun on my account. Go, but don’t forget me when you do, and come back soon.”

Carolina was so pleased to have his blessing that she threw herself forward and embraced him. “Thank you. I will. Oh, I will, I will, I will!”

“Bon voyage, my dear.”

He clasped her hand for perhaps one moment too long, and then she pulled away and allowed Robert to help her to the street. She tried to tell Longhorn’s valet how important it was to get the old gentleman home and out of the cold quickly—she thought she did. But she was hardly paying attention anymore. Already she was moving forward, her skirts drawn back from the filthy street, as she joined the crowd of travelers streaming to the ferry. All she could think of was the fact that Leland was out there, among them. The very idea made her heart race.