Anna Godbersen - Envy

The air was fresh and cool near the water, and Diana inhaled the salt spray and tried not to be unnerved by the image of Penelope and Henry together. She was trying to decide whether she should approach their chairs or quietly disappear, when she heard someone calling out her name from behind. She turned, placing a flattened palm over her brow to shield her eyes, and saw Grayson Hayes approaching.

“Tried to give me the slip this morning, did you?” He grinned at her, but Diana — taken aback by the familial resemblance, which was so striking in the clean, midday light — just stammered. “I would have liked to escort you to the beach, but here we are now.”

Until that moment she hadn’t thought much of Grayson’s attentions, which had begun on the train and only increased upon their arrival. Though she was unabashed about her own charm and appeal, it suddenly seemed too convenient that he would be there, at just that moment, in the exact same kind of black swimsuit that Henry wore, gazing at her appreciatively. The Hayes siblings were up to something, she realized — but then, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be convenient to her, too. That was how the heroine of a book would play it, and Diana was still writing her own story; the best heroines, she’d always believed, took their fate into their own hands.

“Here we are,” she said. She let her lips part in a slow, inviting smile.

Then they both turned round, and saw Henry rushing back with a boy who could not have been older than eight or nine. Henry carried the base of the umbrella in the crook of his arm and the boy held the red-and-white-striped shade over his shoulder. When they reached Penelope, the boy immediately began assembling them while Henry stood uselessly looking on. Penelope smiled magnanimously at Henry and at the boy, who wore what looked like a stifling outfit of slacks and waistcoat over a white dress shirt.

“Thank you, Henry,” Penelope said when it was all done and her almost iridescent paleness was obscured by an arc of shadow. Then she twisted herself toward where Diana and Grayson were standing, and waved. “Why, hello,” she said, without even the pretense of surprise. “Look, it’s my brother and Miss Holland.”

Henry had just finished tipping the boy, but he looked up as though he had been caught drinking from a flask in church.

Diana was suddenly, acutely aware of all the things that were amiss in her appearance. For she was far shorter than Penelope, and her hair was always in a state, and the bathing costume she wore, which was navy with white edging and anchors embroidered on the wide, sailor collar, was not even a little bit smart. She had been so thankful and appreciative when Claire had remade it from her old suit, which had been purchased for her a long time ago, it seemed — certainly before her father died. Her body had changed since then, and she knew that even the remade version looked like the getup of a little girl. Even so, she managed to wave in return.

“What a nice little colony you have here,” Diana said flatly as she and Grayson approached. She wasn’t sure if she had meant to load her voice with false enthusiasm or subtle irony, but in any event the words came out as dull as the thudding of her heart. She didn’t know, either, what Henry intended with that face he was giving her, but she was quite confident that the sparkly scene she had stumbled upon was not the one that he had lured her to Florida with. “A colony of two,” she added, and this time the bitterness was perfectly clear.

“Now a colony of four!” Penelope pushed herself up on her long, white whips of arms and beamed a terrible smile in the direction of Diana and her brother. The skin below her ruffled black sleeves was shockingly visible. The narrow femininity of her whole body, Diana noted with a twang of pain, was on display in her embroidered and pin-tucked black swimming costume.

“There are but two chairs and one umbrella.” Diana was speaking to Penelope but staring at Henry, whose features were still assembled in a somewhat sheepish but largely un-readable expression.

“Oh, yes. Henry rented them for us. Henry knows how quickly I burn and he could not have that.” Penelope tossed her head and laughed and then pressed her face into her shoulder girlishly. “Of course, your complexion is much hardier, Di. Surely you don’t need as much protection from the elements.”

“In fact, I am quite sensitive to all the brutal parts of nature.”

Ordinarily, Diana would never have compared herself to the former Miss Hayes, but she was suddenly struck by the conviction that whatever the older girl required she should have as well. She turned to Grayson, whom she was growing truly pleased to have by her side.

“Mr. Hayes, would you be so kind as to rent me a chair and an umbrella? Just like that one, with the red and white stripes.”

“Of course, Miss Di,” he replied with familiarity that an hour ago would have irked her but which she now found very useful indeed. At that moment, with the gnawing, desperate feeling that the Henry Schoonmakers gave her, she would have accepted even the company of Percival Coddington, a truly awful bachelor whose inherited wealth had made him seem a possible match for both Holland girls at one point or another — at least in their mother’s estimation — and whose presence in the hotel was rumored.

A breeze picked up, rearranging the curls around her heart-shaped face. For a moment she was distracted and felt almost at ease in the warmth and ocean air, with the pillowlike sand underfoot. But then she let her gaze return to the Henry Schoonmakers and noticed that Henry was mouthing something. There was that same broad, golden-hued handsomeness to him as always, the flat cheeks and narrow patrician lips that routinely left her a little dazed. Then her eyebrows drew together quizzically. Penelope, noting the change in her face, snapped her head around so that he was forced to smile blandly at both of them.

As if in response, Penelope drew a hand across her outstretched leg, unclasped her garters, and began to fold her stockings down so that a narrow patch of the skin of her thigh was exposed. That exquisite area of a woman’s leg was well liked by Henry — a fact, Diana realized, that she and Penelope were perhaps equally aware of.

“There!” Grayson declared as he returned with the sun-bathing furniture. Diana smiled wanly at him — she wasn’t sure if she was capable of something more appreciative right then, but the brother of her rival certainly could not have inspired it. She threw herself gracelessly into the chair, but she couldn’t keep from glancing once more at that pale, perfectly formed thigh exposed in the chair to her left.

Apparently she was not the only one who noticed, because the next thing she heard was the pointed tone of the beach censor. “Ladies!” he cried, and they all squinted up into the sunlight at a spindly, prematurely aged man with a cap perched high back on his head. Though he might have been referring to both girls, Diana saw clearly that he was looking at Penelope. “Rules is rules!”

“What?” Penelope whispered as though she were a lamb who, in confusion, had strayed too far from her shepherd. Even in the hot sun, however, she could not force a blush.

“All stockings must meet the swimming suit without flesh visible!” the censor went on truculently, as though he were quoting hotel rules from memory.

Penelope shot Henry a dismayed look, and there followed several seconds during which Diana believed he might tell his wife that she looked like the common tramp she was and that his heart lay elsewhere. But he only leaned forward and passed the censor a folded bill.

“That’s my wife,” he said, and though it sounded nothing at all like his voice, Diana could not help but acknowledge that they were his words and that they had come from his mouth.

“Then tell her to cover up!” the censor muttered before taking Henry’s bribe.

Diana could see which way this was going and, not being one to fall behind, bent forward and unhooked her garters so that her stockings rolled down and revealed a bit of her slightly rounder and decidedly pinker thighs. The censor’s eyes widened in excitement and horror and he moved as though he were going to issue her a warning too, but Diana flashed a look in Grayson’s direction. Before anything more could be said, money had exchanged hands and the censor was on his way down the beach.

“I’m so thirsty all of a sudden.” Penelope reclined backward so that her arms folded up like a pillow and she closed her eyes. “Isn’t there someone selling lemonade over there, Mr. Schoonmaker?”

“Yes, I think I see—”

Penelope let one of her arms rise and extend so that her hand rested on Henry’s forearm, quieting him. “Get me one, would you?”

Diana’s full bottom lip fell involuntarily when she saw how quickly the only man she had ever loved, physically or otherwise, followed his wife’s command. In the next minute she had gestured to Grayson. “I find I’m very thirsty too.”

When the men were gone, Penelope turned an unsettling gaze on her rival and held it for so long that Diana began to recoil into her lounge chair. She found herself longing for home — not just for the hotel, but for New York and all the real novels that she could lose herself in there. It felt like whole hours before the men returned, and then both girls were left to sip their lemonade angrily and stare out at the surf, which was full of dark swimsuits.

“Henry, I’m ready to swim,” Penelope said, once she had finished her lemonade. Her voice was light, but the look she gave Diana betrayed a growing wrath.

Everything about her posture indicated that she believed Diana would mimic this move, too, but Diana disappointed her by putting on a nonchalant smile and relaxing back into her chaise. “I think I’m going to warm up a little more.”

A silence followed, filled by the sounds of shrieking bathers and rolling surf. Ladies who would not ordinarily have let their faces betray anything more dramatic than faint distaste for those less well-dressed than themselves were now hanging on to the rope that stretched out into the ocean and squealing as the waves crashed over them. Penelope struck a pose, but Diana was at an advantage, for though she felt nervous around Mrs. Schoonmaker, and less well dressed, and less thin, she was now lying on the wicker seat and had surprised her rival by simply staying put.

“Come, Mr. Schoonmaker.” Penelope turned impatiently and began striding toward the surf. If Henry looked reluctant in the seconds before he stood to follow her, that was no longer something Diana could see. His motivations were a mystery to her. What had he intended by dragging her all this distance, anyway? She watched as the Henry Schoonmakers approached the water and then began stepping tentatively into the waves.

She pushed herself up on the chair and assumed the tone of a marriage-obsessed debutante. “They seem so happy,” she trilled.

“What, them?” Grayson, who had been lying in the chaise next to her, sat up suddenly and removed the newspaper, which he had been using to protect his eyes, from his face.

“Don’t you think?” Diana drew her knees to her chest coquettishly and wrapped her arms around her legs.

Grayson shrugged. She could see that the question had never occurred to him, and also that whatever he had done the night before had left him very tired. “I suppose,” he said, furrowing his brow. “Although I think she fears what the servants think, and you had better believe I wouldn’t be along on this trip if she felt confident of his loving her.”