Anna Godbersen - Envy

Edith, who had still not fully recovered from the debauchery at the Hayeses’, had glanced at the letter before dinner, but she apparently lacked the energy to pry. “Oh, to be young as you,” was all she’d said, before going to bed early.

Still, some hours passed, and the sky began to turn purple, before Diana found the courage to break the seal. That act gave her little tremors, and so she put the letter down for another while. She gave herself a speech, and decided that she was nothing if she didn’t face the consequences of her actions. So she picked up the letter for good and went over to the white bearskin rug and folded her legs, and her skirts, up under her. She took a breath and then began the heartbreak. By the time she set it down she felt quite different again.

My dearest Di,

I’ve really mucked things up. It would probably look comical from the outside peering in, and I might indeed laugh if it were n’t me, and especially if it were n’t you. But it is you, and nothing could be more tragic to me.

It is probably difficult, given the outrageousness of my missteps, for you to believe that I was always only trying to protect you. But that was my intention, however poorly borne out. That was my intention when I married Penelope, and even during all the blunders that followed. It was my hope that I could keep you safe from censure. Now I’ve seen how stupid and futile all that was. My act ions have caused you great suffering, and I have put myself in the permanent agony of seeing you courted by others. It is no doubt a great failing on my part, but that is what I find I cannot stand.

In fact, I feel I would sooner die than see you as the beloved of another — some part of me died already when I saw you with Grayson at the Hayes mansion. It is for this reason, as well as for a need to atone for all the things I have done wrong, that I am leaving the city and enlisting in the army. I am going to fight for our great nation in the Pacific. I know that I might die, but that seems a happier end than being without you, and anyway it seems to me that looking in the face of hard things and still being able to move forward, even when the end includes grave danger and the possibility of death, is the mark of a man. After all I have done, I could certainly do worse than to try to prove I am still a man.

I have gone on too long, and you are probably tired of me by now. But I wanted to tell you before I left how completely, abjectly sorry I am for all the pain I have caused you, and that if I die, you were the one true love of my life. By the time you read this I will be gone, but please know, I am still always at your side….

Yours forever,

Henry William Schoonmaker

Diana read the letter three times and pressed the back of her hand into her face and tried not to cry. She blinked furiously, but it was no use. She cried in front of the fire and then she moved to the bed to cry some more. She cried over her willful actions, and all the stupid misunderstandings that had passed between her and the only man she had ever loved, and most of all for the distance that now separated them. It had yawned to a great expanse and was now too wide to bridge. The worst of it was that so many betrayals seemed to have grown from lack of faith on both their parts, and not because of any bad intentions.

She went to her window and looked out at all the twinkling windows and above them all the faint stars. How many false impressions lived out there? she wondered. How many hearts broken through carelessness and failures of nerve? How many decades-old mistakes festered behind fine window dressings? Then she cried a little more, until her small body felt dry and spent. There was no use, she knew, crying anymore.

She went over to her vanity — it was an elaborate piece of dark wood furniture, ornamented with carved flowers and angels, and it had offered up her reflection on so many nights when she had still been full of girlish wonder. She looked older now, she knew. The skin under her eyes appeared trampled on, and her features stood out more starkly from her face. Still, she suspected that she was young enough that a few real kisses and a good night’s sleep would be enough to make her look fresh again.

She rested her elbows on the table and cupped her forehead with her palms. She pushed her fingers up into her hair and clutched it in fists. “Oh me, oh me,” she whispered to herself as she began to agitatedly draw the pins out of her hair.

When she had finally pulled them all out, and her rich brown curls stood out around her head like wildfire in the brush, she knew that the sleep could wait, but she had to get those real kisses. Her hands fumbled across the table until they took hold of a pair of scissors. For a moment she clutched their gold-plated handles and wondered if she hadn’t gone a little mad. But there was a pure, reflective quality to her eyes that had been missing over the past week, and she knew that what she was about to do was the only thing that made any sense at all.

She began to cut. As she made slow and exacting movements, the hair began to fall away. It collected in tufted hills at her feet, but she kept steady and focused on the mirror in front of her, until her head was crowned by nothing more than a boy’s short wisps. She had such a soft and feminine face, it was difficult to imagine that she could pass for anything but a girl, but her conviction had grown all the while, and now a niggling thing like that couldn’t stop her. She was going to follow Henry, even if it meant joining the army, even if it meant living as a man. Anyway, there was that new, aged quality to her features — maybe that was all she needed to complete the illusion.

It was very late when she turned her chin a final time, and examined the newly bare nape of her neck in the old vanity. She felt a hundred pounds lighter, and when she stood up, she knew she was carrying only the most crucial things. She packed a small case and tucked Henry’s letter inside it. Then she put out the lights and slipped down the stairs.

Diana wore a men’s bowler with the initials H. W. S. sewn into the lining and an old French army coat. She looked at No. 17 for a long moment, before she at last began walking toward the river. The rain had stopped, and the air was clean and just chilly enough to make one feel alive, the way all promising beginnings do.

I am tremendously grateful to everyone who has worked so hard on this series. Many big thank-yous to Sara Shandler, Farrin Jacobs, Josh Bank, Les Morgenstein, Andrea C. Uva, Nora Pelizzari, Lanie Davis, Kristin Marang, Allison Heiny, Cristina Gilbert, Melissa Dittmar, Kari Sutherland, Barb Fitzsimmons, Alison Donalty, Ray Shappell, Elise Howard, Susan Katz, and Kate Jackson.

ANNA GODBERSEN was born in Berkeley, California, and educated at Barnard College. She currently lives in Brooklyn.

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