Beautiful Little Fools(2)

“Mother,” I tried. “Don’t you think it would be better if we go when the weather breaks instead? Next week, perhaps?”

Mother wasn’t a bleeding heart like Rose, and God knows where Rose got it from, because Daddy certainly wasn’t either. But Mother and Daddy adored Rose. Everyone adored Rose. I was the beautiful one, and she was the good one. That’s not to say that Rose wasn’t pretty in her own quiet way, too. But her beauty was her goodness. And the fact was, I loved her for that reason too. But not when it meant I had to suffer in the heat.

“Daisy Fay,” Mother said. “Help your sister with that basket and stop complaining. You’re not going to melt.”

“Aren’t I, though?” But it was too hot to argue. I sighed and picked up the heavy basket, then held my other hand out for my sister. “Come on,” I said, wearily. “There’s a party tonight at the Wrights’ house, and we’re not going to miss it. We’ll have to be back in time to freshen up.”

Rose laughed weakly. She hadn’t attended half the parties I had this summer. She liked to blame it on the polio that had nearly killed her last summer and left her with a slight limp, but we both knew it wasn’t that at all. Rose was well now, thank god. But Rose no more liked parties than I liked going to feed the poor. We balanced each other out that way. The good one and the pretty one. That’s how all of Louisville knew the Fay sisters back then.



* * *



IT REALLY WAS too hot to walk, and as Rose and I stepped out on the street I wished I could take Daddy’s Roadster. The problem was, Mother didn’t know I knew how to operate it.

If there’s two things I want you to know before you get married, Daddy told me, it’s how to drive an automobile and how to shoot a gun. He’d taught me to do both by the time I was Rose’s age. But it was with the understanding that Mother should never know about either one.

Now Daddy was off in Chicago on business, and his Roadster was sitting idle, parked out front. Rose and I walked past it and made it only two blocks before she looked like she truly was melting. Her limp grew more noticeable when she was tired, and I hated seeing her have so much trouble. Hated remembering the way we worried about her so last summer. What would the pretty one be like without the good one? Vapid and useless. Vain and sour. I hated even the very idea of myself without her.

“Rose, we really could take this food when the heat breaks,” I said gently.

Rose shook her head and kept walking, taking all her effort to go faster, push ahead of me. I had to skip to catch up to her.

“Would you ladies like a ride?” I’d been so focused on Rose and her trouble that I hadn’t noticed a shiny black car had pulled up next to us, that a soldier sat behind the wheel calling out to us.

Camp Taylor had opened in Louisville in June and this summer there’d been soldiers all over town: men in uniforms walking across the Big Four Bridge, driving down Main Street and through our very fashionable neighborhood in the Southern Extension. They’d show up in groups to our Saturday night parties and sometimes they’d ask me to dance. I did not yet see these men as warriors. I did not picture them traveling across the great wide ocean sometime soon to fight, and to die. They were simply handsome men, flirting with me. I had no qualms with that.

“Well? Can I help you out?” the soldier asked again.

My hair was limp against my forehead, and I put Rose’s basket down for a second and made a futile attempt to fluff it with my fingers, before picking the basket back up, turning, and offering the soldier a smile. I knew some of the ladies who had tea with Mother on Thursday afternoons hated that our little Louisville was now being overrun by common men in uniform. But truly, I had yet to find one downfall to it.

“No, thank you,” Rose said just as I said, “Yes, that would be grand.” Rose turned to me and frowned.

“Come on,” I said to her. “It’s hot, and this nice soldier is offering.”

That was enough for him to get out of the car, walk around, and take the basket from my hand. Our fingertips touched, and I looked up at him. He was tall with short blond hair and a pale, clean-shaven face. I had the strangest urge to touch him, to reach up and run my fingers across his silken cheek. But I restrained myself.

“I’m Daisy Fay,” I said, clasping my twitchy fingers together. “And this is my sister, Rose.”

“Jay Gatsby,” he said, holding my gaze for a second before turning to smile at Rose. He had bright green eyes. The kind of eyes that would catch you, even across the room in a crowded party.

“Thank you for stopping, Jay Gatsby,” I said. My voice caught just the slightest bit on his full name, my tongue feeling out the sound of it. It wasn’t a familiar name. It definitely wasn’t a Louisville name. I wondered where he was from, what his daddy did.

“You think I see the prettiest girls in all of Louisville needing a ride and I’m not going to stop?” he was saying now, as he opened the passenger door and motioned for us to get in. Rose didn’t move, so I got in first. She sighed and finally slid in next to me.

“Don’t go kissing him, just because he’s giving us a ride,” Rose whispered, as Jay walked back around to the driver’s seat. She sounded like more of a snow goose than Mother.

“I won’t kiss him because of the ride,” I whispered back. “I’ll do it because he’s handsome. Did you notice his eyes?” Rose shook her head, not because she didn’t notice, but because she found me incorrigible. In an adorable way, of course.