Beautiful Little Fools(18)

There were eight of us women golfers in the Charleston league, and we did everything together. Much to my disappointment, Mary Margaret hadn’t made the tour, and the other women here weren’t even half as agreeable as she’d been. And then there was our chaperone, Mrs. Pearce, a stout older widow who always seemed annoyed she was being paid to watch us. I found her highly detestable, as I didn’t need watching, and she was practically being paid to sit around and do nothing all day. I couldn’t imagine too many easier jobs—why did she have to look so sour?

By the summer, I was miserable. My loneliness settled as a continual ache in my stomach, a homesickness. I missed Daddy and Daisy and Louisville desperately, and I lay in bed at night plotting my escape back to them. I worried for Daisy, whose letters were drowning in infatuated stories of Tom Buchanan. Without me there, who would make sure she didn’t rush into anything? And Daddy reported he was feeling well but admitted he was mostly confined to his bed. I was worried sick about his health, living in that big house all alone. That would be reason enough to leave the tour, wouldn’t it?

But when I finally got up the gumption to suggest to Daddy in a letter that I may quit, return to Louisville to help him, he ordered me not to, under any circumstance. When would I ever get this chance again?

Jordan, don’t squander this! he commanded me. In his exclamation point I could hear the rattle of his yell emanating from his chest, and I missed that sound so much even the very thought of it made me cry.

Deep down, though, I also knew he was right. Miserable as I was in Charleston, if I left now Daddy would see me as a failure. I would see myself as a failure. And I had no idea what I’d even do for the rest of my life if I didn’t have golf.



* * *



MY DORMITORY ROOMMATE, Lena, was a tall gangly girl with long brown curls, and though her face was strikingly beautiful, she was also, fretfully, a bore. All she wanted to talk about was her fellow back in Tallahassee. Every night we got into our beds, and she’d want to talk endlessly about him, often just repeating what she had already told me the night before. Danny this and Danny that, and I yawned and closed my eyes and tried to tune her out.

In August, he made it home from the war, and he wrote her, begging her to leave the tour, come home, and marry him. “Do you think I should, Jordan?” she asked me one night, as we lay in the dark in our bunk beds. I slept on the bottom, she was above me, and her question came to me as I was halfway to sleep, a disembodied voice.

“Leave the tour?” I repeated. I was surprised by her question, because in the past few months we hadn’t really become friends. We didn’t give each other advice or ask each other personal questions. I’d never mentioned to her my own ache of homesickness, my own thoughts about leaving. I thought about what Daddy had written me. It would be a shame to squander this opportunity. And I knew I should tell her that, but instead my voice caught in my throat and I didn’t say anything for a moment. “Are you happy here, Lena?” I finally asked instead.

“Not really,” Lena admitted. “Are you, Jordan?” Her voice was soft and ethereal, floating above me.

“No,” I whispered into the darkness. It was the most honest thing I’d said to her in three whole months.

I heard her sigh a little, and I thought she was about to say something else, but then, a few moments passed, and I heard the soft whistle of her snore. It was a strangely familiar sound now, so much so that it almost brought me comfort. Part of the predictable rhythm of my life here in Charleston.



* * *



THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up and Lena was gone.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was. I wandered around our tiny room out of sorts, in a daze, looking for her. But her half of the closet was empty and her suitcase was missing too. She’d made her bed and left me a note on top that simply said: Jordan, Danny makes me happy. Birdie for me. Kisses, Lena.

I brought her note with me to breakfast, and though I supposed it was meant to be private, after I finished eating half a grapefruit, I handed it off to Mrs. Pearce like a slip of evidence. Better to let her read the note than to have to try and explain any part I might have had in this by daring to ask Lena if she was happy. “Lena’s gone,” I simply told Mrs. Pearce matter-of-factly, as I pressed the paper into her hand.

“Gone?” Mrs. Pearce pulled her glasses down the bridge of her nose, read the note herself. “Danny?” she said, frowning.

“Her fellow. Just got back from the war.” It occurred to me as I spoke that I no longer had a roommate. But now I wasn’t sure whether it was reassuring that I would be without Lena’s nightly snores, or not.

Mrs. Pearce’s face turned red, and she frowned deeply. “I’ll need to speak to Mr. Hennessey about this. Not a word to the other girls, Jordan.” I nodded. But for some reason she decided I wasn’t taking her seriously. “I mean it.”

What was she so afraid of? Most of the girls had fellows back home. Did she think they—we—were all so tired and sore and unhappy here that we’d follow Lena’s lead and run back home, too? That the whole women’s tour might fall apart, just like that, if they knew how and why Lena had left us? “Jordan,” she said my name again, sharply.

“I know,” I said. “I won’t say anything. I promise.”

She narrowed her eyes and stared at me for another minute before she said, “Go get your clubs and join the others on the driving range. You don’t want to be late to practice.”