Beautiful Little Fools(59)

A destiny orchestrated by Jay. But why?

“Did I tell you he’s a polo player?” Myrtle was saying as we walked into her new building now. It was one of those nice apartment buildings with a doorman and everything. My sister’s demeanor changed as she walked inside; she stood up straighter, held her head higher, and got a sly, entitled smile on her face I’d never quite seen before. It was almost an arrogant smile. “Did I, Cath?”

I shook my head and didn’t admit I wasn’t even exactly sure what polo was. Something with horses, a game rich people played, and I had never concerned myself with any more detail than that.

“Yes, in fact, Tom Buchanan is one of the best polo players on the whole Eastern Seaboard,” Myrtle bragged with pride now, like she’d invented both the man and the game herself. It was the first time she mentioned his full name and it rang a little funny in my ears.

Buchanan. Buchanan. Where had I heard that name before?

“Myrtle,” I interrupted her, as she was still going on about polo. “What did you say his wife’s name was?”

“I didn’t,” she huffed. “And why do you have to bring her up, Cath? He doesn’t even love her.” She pouted.

But suddenly it all made sense, and the reality of it swelled in my chest, the gin threatening to come back up right there in the beautiful marble lobby of Myrtle’s new building.

“Daisy,” I said softly. “Daisy Buchanan.”





Daisy June 1922

EAST EGG, NY




OUR HOUSE IN EAST EGG was lavishly grand, a four-story redbrick Georgian colonial. It felt excessively large, the same way the chateau in Cannes and the mansion in Lake Forest had. And I supposed wherever it was we Buchanans moved, an embarrassingly opulent house awaited us.

Like Cannes, in East Egg our yard backed straight up to the water. Only here, instead of the Mediterranean, it was the Long Island Sound. And instead of warm blue water and blue horizon as far as my eye could see, it was cool, gray-blue water that stretched only as far as the tip of West Egg on the other side. There, across the sound, I could see the small speck of dock, meandering out from a West Egg mansion. Sometimes, when we first moved in at the end of March, before I knew who lived there, I would sit out underneath the green light on our own dock and wonder. Was there a family in that house, just across the sound? It was always lit up and bustling and alive.

West Egg, Tom droned on over supper one night, was for the nouveau riche. The real wealth, he told me, arrogantly, was in East Egg.

And still, I wondered who lived there. If there was a family across the sound from me, were they happy? Did they love each other? Perhaps new money felt a little less like a weight upon the woman’s chest than old money. Of course, this was a silly line of thinking. The weight in my chest wasn’t from money at all, new or old. The weight was Tom. After that little spree of his in Chicago, I could barely even look him in the eyes without remembering the plump childlike glow of Rebecca Buckley’s face that night in his stables.

He’d brought his goddamned ponies to East Egg, too. We, of course, had a stable on our property, about a quarter of a mile down the road from the main house. But I never walked far enough in that direction myself to visit it.

You promised, I reminded him, the week after we moved in, when he first put on his riding gear, to go out to the stable and unload the ponies or whatever it was he did with them upon each one of our moves. You promised. This is a permanent move, Tom. I need a real home. Pammy needs a real home!

He kissed me on the top of my head. His kiss was chaste, his lips cool. It was already clear to both of us, perhaps, that his impropriety would find a new way to rear its ugly head no matter where we went, no matter what city we lived in. No matter how grand our house was. It was only a matter of time.

And yet, still somewhere deep inside of me, I believed, however foolish it was, if I demanded that this would be our permanent home, and not just for me but for our daughter, Tom might actually have it in him to behave himself.



* * *



TWO AND A half months after we moved in, a car sputtered in wildly through our gates before spinning to a stop at the top of the drive. It was midafternoon, two weeks before the longest day of the year, and I watched through the parlor window, feeling a sudden rush of joy at the sight of that swerving, reckless car. My Jordie was here! No one else we knew would dare drive that haphazardly.

I told her as much when she walked in the door, carrying a suitcase.

“Oh, Daise,” she admonished, before putting her suitcase down and kissing me on both cheeks. “It takes two to make an accident. And I was the only one driving up the drive.”

It was so good to see her again, I laughed, grabbed her tightly, held on to her. She felt skinnier than she used to, too thin. And when I pulled back and took a good look at her, I noticed the lines of her face looked a little different too. Her cheeks were hollower; there was a sadness about her now that she hadn’t had as a girl in Louisville or even when I’d seen her last in Cannes. But she still looked beautiful nonetheless, draped in a white gauzy dress nearly identical to mine. Just this morning the Times had proclaimed white the “smartest summer color,” and here Jordie and I were, still fashionable, even after everything life had thrown at us.

I pointed to the suitcase resting on the white marble floor. “I hope this means you’re staying for a while, Jordie?”