Anna Godbersen - Envy

Forty One

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.

— MAEVE DE JONG, LOVE AND OTHER FOLLIES OF THE GREAT FAMILIES OF OLD NEW YORK

“WHAT A JOY AN EXPANDING FAMILY IS,” THE elder Mr. Schoonmaker declared as his heavy body sank back into his chair. He had, for the moment, grown tired of raising his glass in celebration of his son and daughter-in-law and their family manqué. It was a lucky thing for Penelope, who must be weary — Henry could only assume — of trying so arduously to blush whenever his father referenced her condition. It was a lucky thing for him, too, as there was no expression he even knew to attempt. At the head of the table, Penelope’s father stared, stultified, into his dessert wine. On the other end, her mother was beside herself with giggles, and winked at anyone who so much as glanced in her direction. The other guests went along, gamely enough, with the calls for more champagne and every time a greater need for congratulation and excitement.

“That was lovely,” Richmond Hayes offered halfheartedly as the waiters descended on the oak-paneled dining room to remove the final course. The guests paused in their chatter and looked over at the man of the house, for even they knew there would be more. Henry wondered if they were as exhausted by it all as he was. But everyone likes a party, especially when it is already well under way, and their eyes were very bright.

“Mr. Hayes,” said Mrs. Hayes, “shouldn’t we invite our guests into the smoking room for digestifs?”

The men and women arranged along the long table murmured their approval, and then Richmond Hayes agreed, not altogether convincingly, that it was a good idea. Henry could not bring himself to glance at Diana, who sat across from him only partially obscured by the arrangements of pink begonias. Everyone was pushing back their chairs and standing. The gentlemen were reaching for the arms of the ladies they had escorted in, somewhat less tipsily, several hours ago.

“Henry, sit by your wife,” old Schoonmaker commanded once they had all, somewhat stumblingly, relocated.

Penelope turned to him, from her place on a settee, her eyes as large and trusting as a doe’s. It was dizzying, he thought, all the different emotions she could feign. In her pale pink, expertly tailored dress she looked just the part of the young mother who cares for nothing so much as her children, although he could never believe again that she was even partially such a person. Not after the way she had used them long before they were so much as born. He walked around to her and sat at her side, but could not bring himself to meet her gaze.

Hours passed like this. At first, Henry rejected the champagne that was poured for him. He’d been sober all week, and he still felt that he should keep himself strong and ready and brave. But then he began to wonder about the slight possibility that Penelope might be telling the truth, and the very notion caused him to demand a drink and down it in a hurry. Then he ordered another and another. When the sounds of the others’ voices had grown giddy and loud enough to drown out what Henry had to say, he addressed his wife.

“You can’t really be.” His voice was hushed and a little slurred, but he managed to focus his black eyes carefully on her and remain hopeful.

“What do you mean, Mr. Schoonmaker?” she returned innocently.

Henry glanced across the room, where women were rearranging their skirts in order to appear to the best advantage of the chandelier light and the waiters were circling with full decanters that he would have liked to have gotten both of his hands on and absconded with to some dark corner. There was a huge, gilt-framed mirror over the fireplace, tipped slightly forward to give a view of the room as though from above. In the far corner of the scene Henry saw his own reflection, in his black slacks and tails, and beside him his wife, in her subtle and artistic dress. For a moment, he saw what they all saw: two perfectly matched, tall, dark, lithe people, too in love to join in the shrieking of all the others. He hated himself for having glimpsed that picture.

“It was only once, a week ago, two — I can’t remember.” Henry sighed and shifted his jaw. “I don’t believe it.”

“All right, then.” Penelope let her white shoulders rise and fall in careless acknowledgment.

“You’re not.” For the first time that evening, Henry’s dread ebbed.

She rolled back her eyes and let her mouth open slightly. “Well, I’m not completely positively sure that I am.” Then she brought her gaze to his. “It’s possible, of course.”

Henry let out a sigh from the bottom of his chest and shook his head in relief. There was no baby, there was no family. He could leave her after all. It would only take a little longer, and the conversation with his father would be somewhat more awkward. But he could still do as he had planned.

“Oh, Henry, don’t be cruel.”

Her face had gotten all crumpled, and though he didn’t know what she was about, he felt the fears creeping back from the base of his skull.

“I told you how it is,” he said carefully.

“But now it’s all different!”

“Penny, don’t be stupid, you said yourself—”

Penelope looked down at her gloved hands, with their circles of rubies at the wrists, and began to squeeze them together. “I’d be careful whom you call stupid,” she said quietly. “For instance, you haven’t even considered how it will look when you leave your pregnant wife. It is awfully different now, don’t you see?”

“I don’t think that lie is leaving this room, my dear.” Henry closed his eyes briefly and rubbed his forehead. “After all, what are you going to do in nine months, when there is no baby?”

Penelope moved closer to him, and her eyes drooped down sadly as though what she was about to say had already come to pass. “Wouldn’t that be so much worse?” she went on in a whisper. “If you left your wife because she couldn’t carry your first son to full term?”

Henry swallowed hard. He glanced around him, as though the walls and the furniture and even the guests were made of iron. They might as well have been. In a few seconds he realized that they all constituted a kind of prison. They looked back at him now, smiling, not knowing what their belief had changed them into. They beamed and watched the Henry Schoonmakers, thinking they were trading lovers’ secrets. Penelope must have gleaned this too, because she moved forward and into the illusion, bringing her body less than an inch from his, pressing away from the soft cushions.

“Anyway, I don’t think you have much to leave me for,” she whispered in his ear. “What do you think your little Di has been up to all this time?”

When she fell back against the armrest she giggled showily in a way that reminded him of the rest of the room, with its jovial din and witless pitch. The air around him had grown smoky and almost too thick to breathe. Everyone was talking at a level that made it impossible to hear any one conversation over another. Henry turned about in his seat, searching for Diana, but saw her nowhere. There was her chaperone — visibly drunk and dancing with his father. He saw the divan where Diana had last been, but it was empty now.

Up above the empty seat was a painting of a man, drawn to scale, in vaguely military dress, riding a horse that had reared up on its hind legs. The horse’s hooves clawed the air and his eyes were full of fear and fire; meanwhile, his rider looked proudly, calmly, at some battle down below. Henry would have liked to believe that he was like the rider, but he knew he was now playing the other role. His gaze fell to Penelope, who winked knowingly.

“Don’t you wonder where she’s run off to?” She smirked, and placed her hands demurely in her lap. “Or they, rather. So do I, especially since my brother told me some very interesting information just before we came into dinner. He told me he loves her.”

“Stop it!” Henry wanted to shout — to his wife, to everyone in the room. But he did not. He recalled all the things Grayson had said in the casino about Diana, and what a wild, desperate sort of man he was. Maybe he believed he loved her, and Diana was probably in such a state right now that she might actually believe he did too.

“Excuse me,” Henry said.

His body felt dull, and it moved too slowly through the halls of his family-in-law’s home. He used to know his way around there, for reasons he no longer liked to acknowledge. His heart beat and his feet carried him forward without any conscious control. All he knew was that he had to find Diana, which he did, eventually, but then he saw that it was too late.

He put his hand against the doorframe of that darkened room and witnessed for several horrific seconds the way Diana’s body was entangled with Grayson’s. He might have cried out, but he had no breath. It was he who had brought both of them here, to a point from which there was no returning, and it would only be foolish noise if he yelled at anyone but himself. There was nothing for him to do but stumble away with the full knowledge that all his planning and heroics were no more than half-formed thoughts dying in the mind.

There is in this city, behind a brownstone façade like any other, a mistress of abominations who deals in powders for immoral girls, and who gives operations when those powders fail….

— REVEREND NEEDLE HOUSE, SERMONS FOR OUR TIMES

ELIZABETH WENT LATE AT NIGHT, AS HER MOTHER had told her to do. She had memorized the address — respectable, off Washington Square, a town house like its neighbors, although the light over the high stoop burned somewhat brighter than at the buildings on either side. The rain had died down and she wore a dark, hooded cloak that covered her face, and she was careful not to be noticed on the street. It was for that reason that she paused so long in the shadows and, when she was sure there was no one peeking from a window or loitering on the corner, went quickly up the stairs. She carried with her the last of the money that Snowden had given her family, from their father’s gold rush interest, and her mother’s final words before she left the house.

“I always thought better of you,” Mrs. Holland had said, before announcing that she was going to bed. Edith had already left to chaperone Diana, and so there was no one to see Elizabeth into the bracing night. She had been told to take a hansom cab, but she could not bear for even one person to be complicit in what she was going to do.

She was sick of the nervous fatigue, but still it took her too long to pound the knocker against the door. She closed her eyes and hesitated and then finally raised her slim wrist. After that it all happened very quickly. She was ushered into a second-floor parlor, lit with antique lamps and furnished with soft fabrics and animal skins. The richly dressed woman who had let her in disappeared behind a Japanese screen that obscured an entryway. It was just like any other parlor, except finer than many, went Elizabeth’s thoughts as she waited.

There was the sound of feminine voices, very faint, from adjoining rooms. Elizabeth clutched her hands together, loosened them, and then tightened her grip. It was so strange that she should have ended up here — she who had been so admired for her dress and manner, and then later on, during nights she would have given anything to live again, so well loved. She didn’t know what to make of it, of all the turns of fate, or the room she was sitting in, with its offensive finery and false air of normalcy. It would have been difficult for her to say with certainty who she was anymore.