Beautiful Little Fools(4)

“I doubt that,” I said.

We were almost at the river, and we stopped walking and turned to face each other at that spot right by the banks where Rose and I used to chase fireflies at dusk when we were little girls. A flash of lightning illuminated the sky now, and for a second, I could see Jay’s face brightly, clearly. There was an intensity in his eyes, his expression, that told a different story: he’d seen and experienced things I couldn’t even begin to fathom. It wasn’t only that he was older than me, but also that he had already lived a whole entire lifetime outside of Louisville.

“Come on,” I said. “Tell me something. One thing.”

“I love the water,” he finally said. “I had a friend who used to take me sailing on Lake Superior. Being out there, it makes you realize how great the whole wide world is. And I’d feel like I could do anything when I was out there. Be anyone. I’m always searching for that feeling on land… But I can never quite get back there.”

I thought about Jay, lying out on a boat in a great big expanse of blue, in a place where the water meets the sky, and I smiled at him. The first slow drop of rain hit my cheek, and Jay rested his hand on my face. I leaned closer to him. The rain came harder, but I didn’t move.

“The thing is,” he said, softly. “The way I feel out on the water? I’m feeling that right now. Here with you.”

“Oh, Jay.” My voice broke a little on his name. “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“I don’t have anything to offer you, Daisy,” he said, his lips inches from my own, the rain falling harder, pounding in my ears.

So he didn’t have money, or a family name we recognized. But I wasn’t Daddy. That didn’t mean anything to me. I was eighteen, and I wanted for nothing. “I don’t care about that,” I said.

“You should turn and walk away from me,” he murmured. “Don’t look back.”

I stood so close to him that when I spoke again, my words tumbled into his mouth: “Stop talking, Jay Gatsby, and kiss me.”





Jordan 1917

LOUISVILLE




IT WAS A BONA FIDE fact that Daisy fay had the shiniest hair on this side of the Ohio River. I asked her once how she managed it. How, even on the hottest day of summer her acorn hair shone so bright I swear to god it shimmered like starlight. “Oh, Jordie.” She’d laughed and waved me away with a faux modest flick of her wrist. Then she’d leaned in, conspiratorially, and whispered, “Egg yolks.”

“Egg yolks?”

“Once a week,” she’d whispered. “I soak my hair in six egg yolks, for a full hour.”

And that was why at the tender age of thirteen, I’d snuck into Mr. Barnaby’s chicken coop next door one morning, when Daddy was in court. I was in desperate want of extra egg yolks to make my hair as shiny as Daisy’s. And I knew Daddy, who couldn’t stand to waste food, would never approve.

But Mr. Barnaby was blind as a bat and dumber than a wild turkey, and he mistakenly thought I was an intruder. He shot first, and figured out it was me, later. He killed six of his chickens, but luckily, I was unscathed. That is, until Daddy found out. Once he got the whole story out of me about why I wanted the eggs in the first place, he cut my hair off with a pair of pruning shears. “Vanity is for the weak, Jordan,” he told me.

I lay in my bed and cried for my hair that whole night. Not only would it never be shiny, but now it would be ugly, too. I would be ugly.

But then the next morning, I got up, and I saw my reflection for the first time. I ran my fingers through the short streaks of chestnut hair around my ears. I was a different Jordan with short hair, a better Jordan. A tougher Jordan. And maybe, tough was pretty.

Daddy’s punishment wasn’t really a punishment at all, I decided. But a blessing. I’d worn my hair short ever since.



* * *



IN THE FALL of 1917, I was sixteen years old, and Daisy Fay was still my best friend and, as Daddy always said ever since the chicken incident, my worst influence. Her younger sister, Rose, was my age, and Daddy always wondered why she wasn’t the one I spent time with instead. Rose was fine; I had nothing against Rose. But she wasn’t Daisy.

“I don’t like the way Daisy runs around with all those soldiers,” he said to me over breakfast one morning that fall. Daddy and I had taken a walk through Belgravia Court last night after supper, and on the way home, we’d seen Daisy driving by in a car with a soldier. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last, either. Daisy loved to play, to flirt. Daisy loved to be admired. “You know better than that, Jordan,” Daddy was saying now. “I hope you’re not off doing that with her.”

“Oh, Daddy, she’s just having a little fun,” I told him. “And I have no interest in those soldiers. They’re all so… old.” It was true. Most of them were in their late twenties or early thirties, and I, at sixteen, did not find them appealing whatsoever.

Daddy nodded approvingly, turned his attention back to his newspaper, and told me to go to the club to work on my swing. I finished the last bite of my breakfast, stood, and kissed him on the top of his round, bald head.

Daddy started teaching me golf when I was five, just after Mama died. He said he couldn’t bear to leave me, so he would take me with him to the club on Saturdays. To his surprise, I picked up how to swing. And now, what would you know? Eleven years later, and I was a better shot than him, a better player than any other man in Louisville for that matter. Which was something he would remark on with pride to whomever he could, whenever he got the chance. Now Daddy was always after me to practice.