YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUIRED
AT THE WALDORF-ASTORIA
WHERE THE FAMILY PROGRESS PARTY
WILL BE CELEBRATING ITS
CANDIDATE FOR MAYOR
WILLIAM S. SCHOONMAKER
ON THE EVENING OF FRIDAY
THE THIRTEENTH OF JULY
NINE O’CLOCK
A HAZE OF CIGAR SMOKE HUNG OVER THE GILDED ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, where men in tails and ladies in brightly colored lawn crammed themselves against long banquet tables and danced under chandelier light. Pretty girls and drink were both aplenty, which would have pleased Henry at another point in his life, but he had just returned from a long journey that had left him forever changed. There was no pleasure for him in being on display at the raised table at the back of the room, and he had been bullied into continuing to wear his uniform, even though he wasn’t even sure he was technically a soldier anymore. His father kept calling him a war hero; he felt like a clown.
The greasy remains and scattered crumbs of their feast lay across the satin banner of the Family Progress Party, which covered their table and hung down in front of it so that everybody in the room would be reminded who they were supposed to vote for come election time. The kind of families the party was supposed to make progress for were not on very great display that night — not even a token tenement dweller could be found. Henry’s single moment of levity that evening was when he’d observed to himself that someone in that room had made a harsh and ironic political calculation, choosing a Schoonmaker to lead this particular party, and that it had proved a rather dark joke. To the right of him sat his father, voluble and imposing, and to his left was Penelope, who appeared dolled up and bored in equally extreme measure.
She was wearing peacock blue, the low square décolletage of her dress edged in gold, and her lips were a bloody shade of red. The bony points of her white elbows pinned down the tablecloth, and she wouldn’t meet Henry’s eyes. Or he wouldn’t meet hers. It wasn’t clear anymore. He did feel a little bad for Penelope — she was so proud, and the current circumstances had to sting. But then he remembered how ruthless she had been in mucking up the one pure and lovely thing in his life, and that thought made it impossible for him to even utter her name out loud. He was almost a touch jealous of Diana — for though it wasn’t easy for either of them to be parted, she at least did not have to appear in public beside their victimizer.
“Henry Schoonmaker, how does it feel to be home in New York?”
Henry looked wearily up from the remains of his dinner at a slender man in an ill-fitting suit. He recognized him vaguely as a reporter from the World with whom the elder Schoonmaker was friendly, and guessed that he was at least partially responsible for the erroneous impression of the younger Schoonmaker’s bravery, currently held in the public imagination.
“It must have been awfully fine, coming home to such a pretty Mrs….”
The unruly noise from the dance floor quieted briefly, and it was possible to hear the ruffle of his wife’s skirt as she fussed in her chair. She was listening, agitated, for his answer. Henry thought of Diana, and how unbearable it was not to know what she was doing after having spent so many continuous hours in her company. The Hollands should have been invited that evening, but he had looked in vain for her and concluded in the end that her mother would not have sanctioned her presence anywhere public. “How can I answer a question like that?” he replied impatiently.
“No, how could he possibly?” Penelope gasped. She had never been a girl with a surfeit of sweetness, but the sarcasm in her voice now could have severed limbs. “You see how tan he got from all the yachting he did out there, and wouldn’t that be awful for any man to give up.”
“The — yachting?” The reporter averted his gaze as though even he were embarrassed by the notion, and hoped no one else would be likewise discomfited. It was not the story he’d wanted to hear.
“Henry is just the slightest bit on edge after his months of service,” the elder Schoonmaker interjected in a calm, commanding tone. “They both are.”
The reporter nodded deferentially and scurried off.
The older man, leaning in to his son’s ear, hissed: “Ask your wife to dance.”
“But she just—” Henry protested.
“She’s being sullen,” William advised, sotto voce. “That’s what women do. Now ask her to dance — she’ll forget all about whatever it is you are squabbling over soon enough.”
Henry closed his eyes and regretted ever having left Cuba. They could have run away, he now saw, they had still been free then. It had been an error, a colossal one, to let the colonel send them back. There had been so many missteps, great and small: He should have tried to like the colonel more, he might have been better at persuading him not to send the two lovers home. He shouldn’t have let Diana out of his sight, he shouldn’t have returned to the Schoonmaker mansion, like a cowardly dog, always returning to a stern master when he didn’t know where else to go. Now here he was halfheartedly playing the role in which his father and Penelope had cast him.
“Go on,” his father continued, in a tone not so much encouraging as insistent.
Henry tried to remind himself that making Penelope angry, tempting as it was, served no purpose, and that as long as he was by her side and not Diana’s, he should do the thing that would protect his beloved, and make no waves.
“Penny—” he began, rising to offer her his hand, but she was quick and apparently operating with no small store of vindictiveness. Her foot jutted forward, tripping him, so that he lurched awkwardly. Had he not been able to get hold of the back of her chair, he surely would have fallen flat on his face. Henry grimaced in his father’s direction, as though the old man might suddenly see the pathetic situation for what it was, but the expression his father returned indicated there would be no letting up now.
Henry drew his hand over his pomaded hair, smoothing his appearance, as though somehow this reference to his dashing exterior might make all the unpleasantness of the scene fade. He tried to recall how successful he had once been in making Penelope chase after him. “Mrs. Schoonmaker,” he began again, though his teeth were gritted, and even he was a little surprised by the animosity remaining in his voice. “Won’t you dance?”
She drew away from him, propping her chin against her palm, gazing out at the ballroom, pretending not to hear.
Henry leaned over her and said quietly, but — he hoped — forcefully: “I am your husband. I would like to dance with you.”
She twisted hatefully in his direction. “You’ve never acted like it once,” she spit.
“Well,” he replied. The anger was scorching his throat and it was all he could do to keep his words from becoming ragged with it. “It was never a role I coveted.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps not, but you promised just the same.”
“You were in such a hurry corralling me to the altar that you barely noticed I didn’t speak half the promises you assume I did.”
Penelope slapped a hand against the table. “Why did you come back then? Just to humiliate me? Or do you think I am too dim-witted to notice that you returned to New York on the very same day as your little Di—”
“Stop,” Henry interrupted just in time. Hearing Diana’s name on such a vicious tongue aroused all of his protective instincts, which had become ragingly acute since their reunion in Cuba. The idea of what Penelope might have said infuriated him, and he fixed his teeth together so that she could see them. “Dance with me,” he commanded.
Penelope lifted her face toward him. An arid smile lingered there. The sounds of the band, the low murmur of deal making amongst the political classes, the silent aggravation of his father, sucked up all the air in the room. A light passed across his wife’s glacial pupils, and then she extended her gloved hand in his direction.
“Oh…all right” Her tone had grown girly, almost flir tatious, but he knew her well enough to know that it was for the benefit of his father, who was after all the man who signed the bills for her new baubles, and that she was in fact speaking words of war. “But I won’t like it.”
Then she rose, and allowed him to escort her down past the other guests at the mayoral candidate’s honored table, and onto the dance floor of the Waldorf-Astoria, where they had danced once or twice in simpler times, back when they still liked one another. Henry, in tails, bowed to his wife, and Penelope sank into a deep curtsy, after which they moved together. There were a few gasps from the crowd around them, and then the music swelled, and the crowd began to clap. For a brief moment, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Schoonmaker had created the illusion of a gorgeous young couple in love.