Beautiful Little Fools(47)

When I finished talking, I was crying, which I only realized when Jay’s fingers moved from my hair to my cheeks. His thumb brushed away the wetness, then trailed down to my lips. “Poor Cath,” he said softly. “Let me help.”

“I don’t know how you can,” I said petulantly. In fact, now I wasn’t even sure why I’d told him. Saying it all out loud hadn’t made me feel better at all. I felt decidedly worse.

“I’ve been making a good amount of money working,” Jay said. I knew that he’d gotten a new job a few months ago doing something with drugstores, and that he was making good enough money now that he insisted on buying me drinks on the rare occasion we left one of our beds and actually went out. But I didn’t exactly know what he did or how much he made, and his apartment in the Village was a little roomier than mine but nothing special. “I’m growing a nest egg,” he said now. “Maybe in a few months, I could help your sister. Give her enough money to make a fresh start.”

I rolled over and propped myself up on my elbow. I stared at his face. His eyes were a startling green. His blond hair had grown longer since the end of the war, since he no longer had his soldier’s cut, and now it was messy. Almost shaggy, falling across his forehead. I reached over and brushed a strand out of his eyes. “Why would you do that?” I asked him. “We’re not…” I let my voice trail off, not exactly sure what we were or weren’t any longer. We were lovers. But we had no obligations to each other; we made no promises. Myrtle would never be Jay’s family, Jay’s responsibility. “Why give your money to my sister?” I finally said.

Jay closed his eyes and sighed. “I thought… I thought…”

“What?” I whispered, feeling my heartbeat speed up.

“If I had money. If I made enough money, I thought I could make her love me again.”

Her. Daisy. Something washed over me, but was it relief or… disappointment? Or annoyance? It was hard to tell the difference in that moment.

“But she’s gone forever now, isn’t she, Cath?” He was still talking. “He took her to France and now I hear they’re the toast of Chicago.” He frowned.

This girl. This stupid, vapid girl who’d broken his heart before the war and who still haunted him. Sometimes, when we were together, when we were naked and senseless and nearly numb with pleasure, he called out her name, Daisy. Whether he realized what he’d done or even remembered afterward, I wasn’t sure, because I never said anything about it to him. Inwardly, I hated her. Not because he clearly still loved her, and he would never love me. I didn’t even want him to love me! No, I hated her because Jay was a good man, a kind man, and years ago, she’d broken him. She left him broken still. I worried that one day she might ruin him.

“You deserve better,” I said to him now, echoing the words I’d said to Myrtle just a few hours ago in her kitchen. Why was it so easy for me to see this and so hard for both of them to understand it?

Jay sighed and leaned back against his pillow, closed his eyes. He was picturing her now, behind his lidded eyes. I knew he was. Wishing Daisy were lying next to him, not me. I had this strange feeling, like I was outside myself, hovering, watching. Catherine but not Catherine at all. I was just a shell of a girl, who brought Jay this strange and twisted kind of comfort. I had the thought that I should get up. I should get dressed and leave and not see him anymore. There were other men in the great big city of New York. Plenty of them who weren’t wishing I were another girl every time they were with me. But even as I thought all this, I didn’t move a muscle. There was an odd comfort in being here, lying with a man I knew would never love me. Who would never expect too much from me.

Finally Jay opened his eyes, looked at me, gave me an apologetic half smile. His eyes were clear, compassionate. Daisy had left him once again, and he remembered me, Catherine, lying here next to him. “The point is,” he said, “I’ve been saving up money for something—for someone—who will never come back. So let me use it to help your sister, Cath.” He paused for a minute. Then he added, “Give me a few more months and I’ll have enough money to help her.”





Daisy 1921

CHICAGO




THERE WAS A STORM COMING.

The sky above our estate in Lake Forest grew dark and pearly gray, the wind cut through the oak trees, snapping branches, and I stood out on the veranda, watching lightning tear across the silver sky, feeling vastly unsettled. I’d been feeling this way for a few weeks now, since we’d moved here from France. Weary and restless at the same time. It was hard to breathe and even harder to remember to smile. I fell asleep each night just after supper, exhausted, then woke at midnight and roamed the grounds, jittery. Sometimes, when I awoke, Tom was lying in our bed, snoring. Sometimes, he was just… gone. I roamed and roamed and there was no sign of him, anywhere.

That’s what unsettled me. Where was Tom exactly, in the middle of the night? But it was more than that too. Where was I? Or perhaps, more importantly, who was I?

I’d spent the first twenty years of my life in one city, one house. Every corner of every street in Louisville was familiar and had a memory attached. The woods where Daddy taught me to shoot a gun, and the abandoned road by the river where he’d taught me to drive the Roadster. The five blocks that led to Jordan’s house from mine that I could practically skip in my sleep because my feet knew the way and the number of steps it took to get there. And even the sound of Mother’s snow goose voice, trilling my full name up the long winding staircase. All that was home. Since my wedding, two years earlier, I’d become unmoored. The South Seas, Santa Barbara, Boston, Louisville, and France. Now, Chicago. All that moving around, it was enough to give any girl whiplash.