Free Envy by Anna Godbersen

rest on the white tablecloth. “We can swim in the ocean and walk by the seashore, and we will be very far away from all the gossip and silliness.”
    The idea of sunshine and palm trees and parasols and bathing costumes made Elizabeth’s stomach turn. Already all the women they knew, and everyone at that table, were professionally frivolous. The idea of traveling a long distance at great expense to do all the same things with better lighting was repugnant to her. But before she could communicate this, her mother cut in:
    “How generous of you, Penelope.” Elizabeth looked across the table, with its piles of brown bread and its little china butter dish and all the other dainty china pieces that a midday luncheon was an excuse to display. One could detect, in every slight twitch of the older lady’s face, a sternness that could not be denied. “Of course Elizabeth would love to go.”
    Elizabeth’s eyes grew round with bewilderment. She couldn’t go—all of her insides were in revolt at the very idea. He mother’s small obsidian eyes were settled on her daughter, her crow’s feet spreading confidently as she waited for Elizabeth to enunciate the appropriate response. Penelope’s smile,meanwhile, had transformed to a smirk. Elizabeth turned her fair head just slightly and glanced at her sister for help.
    Diana was sitting at the adjacent table, and she propped her left elbow on the wooden back of her chair and leaned over when she realized she was being silently called upon. Her large, soft brown eyes blinked once, and for a moment Elizabeth believed her sister might come to the rescue. Then Diana called, over the voices of the Misses Wetmore, “Florida? That would be such a very good time!”
    Elizabeth’s gaze darted back to her mother, and she realized that Diana’s comment had elicited an uncharacteristic smile in the old lady. “But it’s so far away,” she mumbled.
    “I will go with you, if you fear the distance.” Diana’s tone was jovial, and in another moment Elizabeth realized what she was about. “I am hardier than you and would see that you were comfortable.”
    Penelope removed her elbow from the table, as though she were confused, and rearranged the shiny black pleats on her lap. When she had regained her smile she turned to Elizabeth. “How wonderful. It will be a party!”
    Elizabeth opened her eyes and looked from her insistent mother to that supremely false face, realizing as she did that her instinct to stay far away from Penelope was based not only on the new Mrs. Schoonmaker’s past deeds, but what she was capable of in the future. Penelope’s ambitions no longer madeany sense to Elizabeth, but it began to dawn on her, as she observed that painfully ingratiating expression, that hiding was a useless and futile way to spend her time, and that it wouldn’t keep any of them safe in the least.
    “You’re sure you have room for Diana too?” Elizabeth noted, in the far corner of her vision, that Diana’s breathing had grown a little dramatic and that she was following everything at the table closest to the fire with vigilant eyes. Her face was nakedly hopeful. “It’s only that I’m not quite myself again, and I would need the company of my sister to feel at ease on so long a trip.”
    “Of course!” gushed Penelope. “Although,” she went on a little more loudly, so that all the nearby tables might hear, “I think of you as a sister and believe we could comfort each other very well. But your sister is my sister”—here she paused to flash her eyes at Diana—“and haven’t I always said the more the merrier?”
    “It will be very lovely for both my girls,” Mrs. Holland said with uncharacteristic deference. “Thank you, Mrs. Schoonmaker.”
    “What fun we’ll have,” Penelope concluded with terrible emphasis.
    As a slightly younger debutante, Elizabeth had been an expert practitioner of small equivocations and white lies—always in the service of propriety and