Anna Godbersen - Envy

“Oh!” she said out loud.

Several of the girls turned to look at her, and then Madame Fitzgerald did, as well. Carolina looked down, and saw how she had jammed the needle into her thumb, just under the nail. For a minute there was only the stunned hurt, but now the blood had begun to flow, across the skin and onto the unfinished skirt.

“You stupid girl!” Madame Fitzgerald crossed to where she was and jerked the garment away from Carolina, who could only go on staring at her wounded finger. The older woman grabbed her hand and roughly pulled the needle from the skin where it was lodged. “Now look what you’ve done,” she said, in an only slightly less angry tone.

Indeed, the skirt was now marked with her blood, and though Carolina would have liked to point out that the skirt wasn’t really worth wearing anyway, she knew that that logic would be lost on present company. She stood up with what pride remained and pulled on her gloves, first one and then the other. The second began to soak up the blood. Then she crossed through the rows of rabid-eyed and underfed girls, slipped her coat over her shoulders, and gave a final look at the proprietress and the young man at her side. Their faces were full of contempt. When Carolina could look at them no more, she went out into the night.

She imagined how it might appear in print — CAROLINA BROAD WALKS THE DARKENED STREETS — although she no longer felt worthy of that name. It seemed to her that everything had gone numb, and that the sensations of her body were terribly remote. She’d lost feeling in her fingers, and soon she forgot about her toes. Then, later, when she sank into a doorframe, and huddled in her coat, and laid her ear against her shoulder, it was as though she were some other girl this was all happening to — perhaps Lina Broud — and that Carolina, whoever that was, could only watch from afar.

Mothers write all the time to thank me, many of whom benefited from my wisdom before they were matrons. It is one of the great joys of my life. Still, some girls never learn, and I hear the stories of their mistakes with even greater chagrin as I grow older….

— MRS. HAMILTON W. BREEDFELT, COLLECTED COLUMNS ON RAISING YOUNG LADIES OF CHARACTER, 1899

FAR NORTH ON FIFTH AVENUE, ALMOST TO THE park, the rain had begun to fall. It came softly at first, blown at an angle by the wind, but it was soon a true downpour; Diana listened to it beat a tattoo against the walk. Inside the Hayes mansion another bottle of champagne had been opened, although nearly everyone within was already thoroughly sauced. Henry Schoonmaker was — he drooped on a couch while his new wife smiled at his side — and so was his father, who had initiated the bacchanal. He had been dancing with Edith Holland, who had had not a few drinks herself, and was reminding those with long memories of the girl she used to be, and of an episode from the seventies when certain members of society believed for the first time that there might be a Holland-Schoonmaker alliance in the works. Meanwhile, his second wife, Isabelle, spoke quietly to Abelard Gore, whose wife had attended some other engagement that night, and Prudie Schoonmaker went on chatting — it seemed that she had talked more that one evening than she had over her entire life — with the painter Lispenard Bradley, who kept glancing in Isabelle’s direction. Edith’s niece Diana was sitting on a divan in the corner, carelessly holding a champagne glass, and when the waiter came by with the bottle, she extended her arm to have it filled up.

Everyone in the room was drunk, but no matter what she did, Diana could not seem to join them. She wanted to feel anything but the seething hurt that Henry had dealt her, but champagne was of no use. It was as though she’d been taken captive by some mad scientist who was conducting an epic experiment to document the furthest, Antarctic reaches of pain. He had given Henry a knife, and told him to twist it deeper, and somewhere, behind one of these mirrors, he watched to see how the sensation played out on Diana’s fragile face. Occasionally he would add mitigating factors, only to override them with more vicious experiments. Surely this — realizing what a colossal lie it had been that Henry didn’t sleep with his wife, that in fact they would soon be a happy family of three — was the most pain he could cause her. Although, Diana reflected as she put the champagne flute to her mouth, she had thought exactly that several times before, and here she was again in uncharted waters of anguish.

“There are good paintings in the galleries, is that right?” she said to the man sitting beside her, Grayson Hayes, who she knew full well had been instructed by his sister to show her how charming he could be and whom she had tried to use to make Henry jealous and then to forget Henry, neither time with very effective results. Poor Grayson — the pawn in two losing games. She did not ask about the galleries in a flirtatious way or a suggestive way or a cagey way. She asked without guile, except in the sense that it was not so much a question as a request to be taken far from the smoking room, which was now so purple with joy.

“Yes,” he replied, hearing her request clearly and rising to offer his hand.

She rested her palm just lightly on his, and allowed him to lead as they exited. The party had now reached such a pitch that no one noticed the absence of these two, and they strode through the halls of a house that could have fit ten of the Hollands’ home inside of it. If Diana had thought that leaving the room where Henry and his wife were celebrating their happiness would soothe her, she was finding herself very wrong now. Her small frame was still trembling with the knowledge of what the Schoonmakers’ life together was — what it must have always been, even while she’d imagined all the different ways that Henry might truly, secretly belong to her. He had taken advantage of her, or at least he had intended to. She tried to feel lucky that she had discovered the truth so soon, but her ability to see silver linings had been thoroughly damaged by this last shock.

“The paintings in this gallery are particularly nice.”

They had entered a dimly lit room, and Grayson raised a candle, which he had acquired somewhere on their walk, although Diana found herself less than interested in examining the canvases.

“Miss Diana, I am glad we are alone. I’ve been wanting to tell you how often over the last week I have found myself thinking about you.”

She turned to Grayson, and found that his face looked not only handsome, which of course it always did, but open and earnest. That was a surprise. “Is your interest in me sincere, or is it some scheme of your sister’s?” she asked in a plain, quiet voice.

“My interest — and that word doesn’t do it justice — is beyond sincere. Now. Please don’t make me tell you how it began, but believe me when I say that doesn’t matter anymore.” Grayson reached forward to tuck a curl behind her ear, and his eyes stared into hers with an adoration that she could not possibly match. She saw that his aim was true, or that he was at least intent on making her believe that. But could she ever trust herself to know the difference?

“Tell me why.” After Henry’s treatment of her, she wasn’t sure that men could honestly love women, but she wanted to believe it. She wanted to be told pretty things, and for the frightening clip of her heart to slow to something more reasonable.

“Well”—Grayson laughed softly—“because you are beautiful and curious and because you like to go places and feel life. Because I feel free with you, and unbound from all the stupid constraints of my dull self.”

“Oh.” Diana moved backward against the wall. She wondered if Henry had ever felt that way — maybe at the beginning, before he’d realized how easily she could be manipulated? But there was Henry again, invading her thoughts, twisting the knife, and she groaned a little without meaning to.

Grayson put a hand on her waist gently.

“Do you think you’ll go on feeling those things?” she asked after a pause.

He took a breath. “I can’t imagine stopping.”

She opened her eyes, but did not meet his before blowing out the candle. Then she reached for him, placing her hands on his shirt and shoulders and pulling him nearer. The brass holder clattered to the ground. She could feel his breathing against her neck, and decided that she liked it. She had never imagined being touched by someone other than Henry, but she found in the event that close proximity to another’s body made the knife wounds somewhat less excruciating. She opened her mouth and brought it up to Grayson’s.

“I’ve never felt so much for a woman before,” Grayson said, when, after a minute, he pulled back from her. “I find that I want to be with you always and—”

Diana was nodding along with him, but she didn’t want to hear more. She wanted to be kissed again until the kissing subsumed all her other feelings. She put the crown of her head against the wallpaper, inviting him to kiss the skin of her throat. There was a hesitance at first, but then he did bend to put his lips there, before moving again to her mouth, where he kissed her lightly over and over. She wrapped her arms around his neck, spreading her fingers just below his hairline. She had nearly forgotten the hour, or the people they had left behind in the other room, when Grayson protested again.

“Do you think they will miss us?” He was panting a little.

Diana tried to catch her breath. “Not yet,” she answered. Grayson blinked at her — perhaps he was trying to determine how well she knew her own desires. In the dark, he looked just like Henry, or close enough.

“Miss Di,” he went on sweetly, “I don’t want to seduce you into…”

He trailed off as Diana stared at him. She had been thinking of the way Henry used to be able to gaze at her from across the room and make her feel that he was at her side drawing his fingertips across her skin. Still the memory made her weak. At that moment, with the shouts of the Schoonmaker party still faintly audible off in the next wing, with the rain falling against the elaborate eaves and sleep still too far away, it seemed that only one thing might possibly make her stop thinking of what Henry had done to her. She raised her finger and pressed it across his lips, urging quiet.

“Please,” she whispered.

Then he hoisted her up, so that she was rested against the top of the oak wainscoting. Her pale green skirt and white crinoline were all around them, like a wave breaking against a jetty, and she felt her whole self butter flying open. He bent to press his mouth to her shoulders, and she discovered that that felt nice. His arms were under her, holding her aloft, and she found she liked that, too. Then she pressed back against him, knowing full well that she would give him all, willing him to take her down into some abyss of forgetting.

She had lost all sense of herself, and turned away from Grayson so that he might more easily bury his lips against her neck, when she saw a figure in the umber halo of the doorframe. Was it Henry, or did she only imagine him everywhere? Then the figure was gone, and she knew she would never have anything quite so sweet and new and pure as what she’d had with Henry again.

Men’s reaction to the news that they are to be first-time fathers is often inadequate, if only out of nervousness; if they are wise, they will look to their own fathers, who have had plenty of time to get used to the idea, for cues.