The Luxe (15 page)

TRANSATLANTIC CABLE MESSAGE

THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY

TO:
Penelope Hayes

ARRIVED AT
:
New York, NY
1:25 p.m., Tuesday, September 26, 1899

P
ENELOPE HAYES GRIPPED HER BOSTON TERRIER
, Robber, as she read the telegram. She peered across the grand drawing room, with its matching blue-and-white silk-upholstered pieces from the Louis XV period and its polished black walnut floor, to where her mother was sitting with Webster Youngham, the architect. Mother wanted it known that the Hayeses were commissioning him again, this time to build a “cottage” in Newport, the kind that came with fifty-six rooms and marble floors throughout. This was not the sort of news one kept to oneself, so she was going on in marathon-style in the hope that he would be forced to stay and thus seen by as many visitors to the Hayeses’ as possible.

Penelope examined her mother, Evelyn Archer Hayes, who was wearing a dress of a lavender shade that she was really much too old for, and that cinched her girth unpleasantly. Penelope promised herself that she would never get half that big. Then she stood, letting Robber fall and
skitter across the floor, and walked over to one of the floor-to-ceiling ormolu-encrusted mirrors that filled the spaces between Old Master paintings, to look at a more visually appealing subject.

“Penelope, watch that animal on my floor,” her mother called from the sofa where she was lounging.

Penelope rolled her eyes at herself in the mirror, and then puckered her lips to assess their fullness. “You know his nails are clipped,” she replied. Mrs. Hayes had always been annoying, but ever since Penelope had discovered the engagement of her Future Husband and her Former Best Friend, she found every swallow or breath her mother took to be a personal affront to her sensibility. She listened for rotund Mrs. Hayes to go back to her yapping, and then crumpled the telegram and dropped it into a silver vase bursting with yellow roses. She wished her big brother was in New York to defend her, but a reprimanding telegram from abroad made her feel precisely the opposite of protected.

Penelope’s dark hair rose in a dramatic pompadour up from her forehead, and was collected in a small bun at the nape. Grand curlicues and frizzy ringlets were the fashion for girls her age, but Penelope knew perfectly well what suited her already dramatic face. She checked her eyebrows and rubbed the soft skin over her cheekbones so that it took on some color. She was happily examining the sea-foam-blue acres of her
dress when the enormous arched pocket doors were pulled open by one of the maids.

Her mother gestured at the maid as though she knew the visitor was for her, but the maid nodded politely and proceeded to Penelope. Of
course
.

“Miss Holland has just presented her card,” she said.

Penelope exhaled sharply at the sound of that name she hated, and went back to looking at herself in the mirror. She crumpled the card and thought for a moment. She would have liked nothing more than to give Elizabeth the full brunt of her cold shoulder, but that would only result in a rather pedestrian, unfulfilling revenge. Be fierce, she reminded herself.

“Miss Holland can visit with me if she must.”

“Very good,” the maid said as she backed out of the mahogany-framed doorway.

Penelope looked around the room and took great satisfaction in the fact that it was better than the room the Hollands received in, and also in the fact that her mother was there but distracted by the architect. That would prevent her, in any event, from slapping Elizabeth across her stupid blond head. The dress Penelope had on was exceedingly flattering, she reminded herself—the elaborate bodice, the mandarin collar with the keyhole opening at the chest—and it was embellished all over with tiny waves, embroidered in real gold thread. She went over to where Robber was curled, in a gold
trough that was lined with aubergine velvet, scooped him out, and walked moodily across the floor with her small creature snuggled against her chest.

She listened to the housekeeper’s formal announcement of the visitor, which included a loud and grand enunciation of that incredibly distasteful name:
Miss Elizabeth Holland
. It brought the delicate hair at the nape of her neck to standing. Penelope kept her face down, close to Robber’s black head, and listened to Elizabeth walk, on timid little feet, across the Hayeses’ precious polished floor. When Elizabeth was close enough that Penelope could hear her nervous breathing, she looked up and met her eyes.

“Penelope…” Elizabeth’s brow creased and her mouth quivered around the name.

Penelope stared back at Elizabeth, who was wearing a dress of camel-colored silk, for a healthy interval before she even thought about saying anything. “What? You came this far uptown, and you still can’t think of anything to say?”

“No, I…I have so
many
things to say. I feel awful about the other night, and—”

“It’s really pathetic,” Penelope interrupted then, “that you would have to compete with me in this way.” She looked past her former friend and saw that her mother was overjoyed to be greeting Ava Astor, daughter-in-law of the great Mrs. Astor, who was apparently her new best friend.

The whites grew around Elizabeth’s hazel eyes. “No, no, it’s not like that at all. I had no idea that you were so in love with Henry Schoonmaker. You never told me. Penelope, you’ve got to believe me, I am so,
so
sorry about everything.”

Penelope snorted and pretended to look everywhere but at Elizabeth. She could not help a few good sideways glances at the enormous diamond on her left hand. “You don’t know him like I do. Believe me, it’s not going to be all lovey-dovey for you.”

“Penelope.” Elizabeth reached for a hand that her friend quickly snatched away. “I can’t explain right now, but you have to believe me that I didn’t pursue Henry, and that when he proposed to me—I swear, someday I will explain
everything
—I had to accept.”

Penelope examined her friend’s pleading face, her eyes welling to the brink of tears, and realized that Elizabeth didn’t even
want
to marry Henry Schoonmaker. It didn’t make any real sense to Penelope, as she herself had been physically ill for five days now with the thought of losing him. But it was perfectly clear that Elizabeth had not the tiniest inclination to gloat. She seemed, in fact, to be unhappy. And she was definitely sleep-deprived and not looking her best. These were consolations of a kind.

Penelope gave Elizabeth a softer look and began to walk slowly along the edge of the room so that her friend had to
scurry along behind. “You humiliated me,” she said in a low, hurt tone.

“I know, Penny, but I didn’t
mean
to.”

“They were all laughing at me, you know.” She sniffed as though she were more hurt than she was angry. “It was the severity of the shock.
Such
a shock you gave me!”

“I know. I cannot even begin to tell you how sorry—”

“And you just said
nothing
. You just
stood
there. You listened to my story, and you might have warned me, but you said absolutely nothing.”

Elizabeth began to fidget with the embroidered edge of her camel-colored bolero. “I was speechless, Penelope, really or I would have—” She broke off, which was a happy thing for Penelope, as her voice had reached an almost whining pitch.

“Can you imagine what that silence must have felt like?” Penelope tried to look more wounded than exasperated.

Elizabeth looked down again and bit her lip. “No, I cannot.” Her eyes shifted, and she seemed to realize that all her fidgeting might soon damage her jacket. She clasped her hands together and went on, attempting brightness: “But just think,
you
will be able to meet and flirt with so many different men, while I will be married young and then for forever. You can still change your mind in love, again and again and again!”

“True,” Penelope said guardedly. She let her elbow float up and waited for Elizabeth to take it. They walked slowly past the great canvases and into the smaller adjoining navy-and-white toile-wallpapered sitting room, where Mother and Mr. Youngham and Ava Astor would not be able to watch them. Penelope took a breath and tried to ease into some kind of niceness. “Anyway, Liz, I couldn’t be mad at you for long. I’m just glad that you’ll be the one who gets him and not one of those other stupid girls.”

Elizabeth seemed momentarily taken aback by the mean sentiment, but then recovered her voice. “Thank you for being understanding. Thank you so very, very much.”

Penelope tried to return Elizabeth’s gratitude with a smile that might conceivably be read as warm. A little color was coming back into Elizabeth’s cheeks, and indeed she looked enormously relieved. But her guilt was still fluttering inside her—Penelope could see it, and she was ready to take full advantage. They took a seat on a little cranberry-colored velvet settee, with Robber squeezed between them.

“I’ve been so miserable thinking I might have hurt your feelings. It would be terrible if, now that one of us is engaged, we wouldn’t be able to make good on our promise to be each other’s maid of honor.” Elizabeth smiled, almost shyly now, her eyes moving slowly up from the dog’s black eyes to his owner’s blue ones.

Penelope smiled back, widely and unabashed. She forced herself to take Elizabeth’s hand—looking again at the ring as she did—and gave it a little pressure. There wasn’t going to be any wedding, of course, not if Penelope got her way. And she was beginning to see that the closer she kept Elizabeth, the easier it was going to be to muck everything up.

“You really still want me to be your maid of honor?” she almost whispered.

“Of course, who else could I possibly—?”

“Diana? I mean, she’s your sister; won’t she be hurt?”

Elizabeth looked pained by the mention of her sister, and Penelope had the happy realization that Elizabeth was sacrificing Diana in favor of her. She couldn’t help but laugh at a thought, and had to sputter out the name that went with it: “Agnes Jones?”

Elizabeth looked almost shocked by this suggestion, and then her face broke and she, too, was laughing at the hilarity of the idea. The tension between them seemed to evaporate. “That would be such a disaster,” Elizabeth managed, wiping away a giddy tear.

“Or Prudie? I mean—”

“Penelope, you’re the only one I can count on.”

“All right. Fine.” She batted an eyelash and took both of Elizabeth’s hands. “It’s done.”

“And there’s an event—on Friday night—the one for Admiral Dewey at the Waldorf-Astoria. That’s the first public event that Henry and I will attend, as a couple. Will you be there with me, as my maid of honor?”

“Of course.” Penelope tried not to smile too broadly. Already, she was being let in where she could do the most harm.

“I need a new dress for the occasion, of course, and I’m going to my final fitting at Lord and Taylor’s on Thursday.” Elizabeth’s cheeks were flushed with the relief of making plans now. “Come with me, and we can get something for you, too.”

“All right. But really, that’s not the dress you should be focusing on. You’ll wear white to the wedding, of course. But who will make your wedding dress? It will have to have quite a long train, and—”

“Oh yes,” Elizabeth interrupted, and before she knew what was happening, Penelope was listening to her friend go on about ivory versus ecru, and all the varieties of pink flowers, about whom she should ask to be the other bridesmaids, and what Penelope really thought of the ring, anyway.

Grayson Hayes’s little sister did not vomit in public again, though she did feel like it. Watching the bright eyes of Elizabeth Holland as she imagined out loud the garments of a very large, very rich wedding party brought Penelope’s anger
back acutely. But despite the gales of bitterness that would have ruined the complexion of a weaker-willed girl, Penelope Hayes kept on smiling. A smiling friend was a true friend, she reminded herself, and that was how she had to appear—for now, anyway.

“C
OME ON, RINGMASTER!” CRIED TEDDY CUTTING,
shaking his fist in the air.

“Move, you old nag!” Henry added in a somewhat less generous tone. He was sitting beside his friend in the steep and rickety wooden grandstand seats at Morris Park, drinking Pabst from bottles with blue ribbons on them, eating salted peanuts, and generally acting like a man several notches down in class. The racetrack in the Bronx was much prettier from his family’s box, but on this particular day Henry was avoiding the judgmental specter of his father, and the Schoonmaker box was a show of opulence intended to make its visitors ever-mindful of its owner’s worldly accomplishments. Henry’s worldly goal at the moment was drinking enough beer to be happy and forgetful. “Mooooove!” he cried, in the direction of a mahogany blur of thoroughbred.

Teddy tipped his brown derby back on his head, so that tufts of blond hair emerged from under his hat, and clapped his hands together rowdily as their horse approached the fin
ish line. Ringmaster, with the little red-and-white-clothed jockey on his back, was in second, but as he approached the finish line, he was overtaken. Teddy clapped his hands once in frustration when he saw that his horse had come in fourth. “Well, there goes another twenty bucks,” he said, tossing his racing card under their seats.

“Oh, come on,” Henry replied, moving his black straw boater to a jauntier angle and leaning his elbows on the seat behind him. “It’s not all about money.”

“Says you.” Teddy smiled good-naturedly. “So who’s our money on next? La Infanta?”

“Why don’t we just bet on all the horses next time, and then we won’t have to worry about losing. I for one am just glad that we’re out of the city, and away from all that madness.”

Teddy raised both of his fair eyebrows in Henry’s direction and took a long sip of his beer. Henry ignored the skeptical look and turned up the collar of his tweed jacket. Morris Park, where the Belmont Stakes were run, was situated in a far corner of the Bronx, a borough that still did not feel like part of New York City. It had been annexed on January 1 of that year, along with Brooklyn and Queens, but it still looked sleepy and rural and felt very far away from the rumbling grid of Manhattan, which was currently being taken over by revelers and patriots. The city was busy prepar
ing the fireworks and streams of confetti to welcome home those who had triumphed in battle.

“I meant the celebration,” Henry said, trying to dispel his friend’s accusatory look with a serious expression. “Our yacht is going to be in the water parade, of course.”

“Ah, yes.” Teddy did not appear convinced. Nor did he appear particularly troubled by the lie either. He looked into his beer. “The hero of the South Pacific.”

“The Philippines,” Henry went on in a far-off voice. He had been reading the papers carefully, ever since the Hollands’ coachman had accused him of being ignorant. “What a lot of trouble for such a distant country. The war in Cuba—
that
was a war I might have gotten behind.”

“Yes, we all would have enlisted, if only we’d had the time.”

“Are you making fun?”

Teddy shrugged. “If you don’t want to admit what you’re running away from, I’m certainly not going to force you.”

Henry sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. Teddy lit a cigarette, which filled the air around them with sweet-smelling smoke. “I live for days like these,” Henry said, casting his eyes at the handsome horses, shiny and groomed, being led out to the track.

“Yes, I know, and it’s so awful when we’re all dressed up and the ladies are fawning on you and the champagne comes in magnums and the plate is made of gold. You just
hate
that.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well?” Teddy exhaled in exasperation. “What seems to be the problem?”

Henry looked at his friend warily, pausing a few moments to find the words. “I’m just not sure about this engagement. Now that actual wedding clothes are being discussed, I’m getting sort of skittish. Details like that make the whole thing feel, I don’t know,
real
somehow. I mean, imagine hosting lunches with the Mrs. on a day like today, instead of taking in the horses with you. Instead of doing whatever I pleased.”

“But will you think of that, when you have such a pretty Mrs.?”

Henry tried not to frown, but failed. He tried to think of his fiancée as a woman he was attracted to, but the same stiff girl kept souring his thoughts, the one who, on their carriage ride through Central Park, had flinched at his every word. She’d been barely able to look at him, and seemed, especially next to the exuberant sister, with her pink cheeks and carelessness, like a cold fish. “Everyone says she is very pretty,” Henry agreed bitterly.

“
I
say she is very pretty. In fact, I’d say that was under-stating the situation.”

“Then
you
marry her,” Henry replied.

“I would.” Teddy laughed. “But she is already engaged,
I’m afraid. Now, would you care to bet her hand in marriage on the next race?”

“What a scandal that would be. ‘Society Boys Horse Trade with Their Brides.’ And you know how the papers recount every blow of my nose.”

“I wasn’t serious, man.” Teddy clapped his hand on Henry’s shoulder and gave it a little shake.

“I know.” Henry looked at his hands, with their long, unblemished fingers. They were hands that had never seen a day of work. “I’m just not sure she’s right. I mean, Elizabeth is so shy and polite, and you know very well that I am neither.”

“Well,” Teddy said, draining his beer and tossing the bottle under the seats, “she is definitely not the lady version of you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No, she is not.”

“But she has taste and manners.”

Henry rolled his eyes.

“And she will be impeccable in all the areas one marries for. She will host good entertainments, oversee a perfect household, she will give you handsome children, and she will not complain about any of it. You, meanwhile, will sit back and enjoy, and nobody will think twice about you discreetly living your private life on the side, with the same friendships with the same girls and new ones, too. None of your passions last, no matter who it is. So really, Elizabeth is just as good, and
probably much better, than anyone you’d likely exchange vows with at any other time.” Teddy seemed to think he had put an end to the discussion and he motioned for a passing boy, with a wooden ice chest full of Pabst, to stop by. When Teddy had paid for both of their beers, he handed one to Henry and knocked it gently with his own. “Cheers, my friend. I think you have made an excellent choice.”

Henry drank, but continued to look dourly out at the race. It had begun sometime during their discussion, and was now swiftly and loudly reaching its denouement. “Maybe marriage just isn’t what I want,” he said finally.

Teddy gave a wan smile to that and looked out at the horses, who were coming breakneck around the bend. The men in the crowd were on their feet and whooping, hoping with their whole bodies that the speed of one filly would change their lives. “Well, then, what
do
you want?” Teddy asked, exasperation breaking through his tone.

The horses crossed the finish line, and Henry realized that it had been the last race of the day. Most of the crowd were ripping up their cards or cursing or shuffling away, gazes focused on their feet as they headed back to their dingy little lives. One ruddy-faced man, however, was jumping up and down and pumping his fists in the air. “I’m made!” he cried. “I’m made!”

Henry turned away from the gauche display. His friend
was looking at him as though he might not have heard properly. But Henry had heard, and the question—what
did
he want?—was marching around in his head.

But when he closed his eyes, all he could see was Diana Holland running across the grass, pulling her skirt back to reveal her lovely white calves and yelling at him. Her voice was full of heat and mischief, telling him that he had better not let the ribbon of her hat escape, or her mother would have his neck for letting her get so freckled in the sun.

Henry knew exactly what he wanted; it was just that he had no earthly idea how to get it.