Beautiful Little Fools(60)

I’d telephoned her at her aunt Sigourney’s upon our arrival in East Egg and had invited her to come stay with us for the whole summer. For as long she liked, really. She said she’d think about it. But after she’d spent most of the last year ignoring my letters, I hadn’t been sure what to expect, or whether she would show up in East Egg at all. Now that she was here, I didn’t know if I could stand to lose her again.

“We’ll see,” she murmured after a few moments, considering it. Then she added, her words tumbling out in rush, “I’ve just come from a match and I lost and I’m famished. What do you have to eat?”

“Whatever you want,” I said. And wasn’t that the truth about my life as a Buchanan? All the excess. Whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it, more than I could ever want or need. And as a young girl back in Louisville I couldn’t have ever dreamed that I would have all this and still somehow feel vastly empty.

“Oh, Daise,” Jordan interrupted my thoughts and gave me another quick hug. “It’s so good to see you again.”

I felt the same, and I suddenly wondered if Jordie was that something else. East Egg would be our permanent home, and if I could get Jordie to stay, too, maybe I would remember how to feel happy again. I hugged her again. “Come on into the dining room. I’ll have the chef fix you something.”



* * *



AN HOUR, AND two ham sandwiches later, Jordan and I stretched out on the parlor couch together. Jordan sipped a gin and tonic and put one hand across her stomach and sighed. I reached for her other hand and squeezed it and leaned back and closed my eyes. The French doors were open, and the wind blew in off the sound, bringing in a warm, sticky, restless breeze, swirling the white gauzy bottoms of our dresses up, like fans.

It was a moment, just one simple moment when I suddenly felt at peace. Jordan and I, we could lie like this, forever and forever, holding hands and feeling the warm breeze on our faces.

Then I heard the telephone ringing in the distance, interrupting my fantasy. I sighed and let go of Jordan. “Can’t your butler answer that?” she intoned sleepily.

I shook my head. “It’s probably Mother.” It had been a few days since she’d called and the snow goose loved to check in at the most inopportune times.

I rose and answered the telephone still feeling warm: “Buchanan residence,” my voice tumbled out lazily.

I heard breathing on the other end of the line.

“Hello,” I said more sharply. “Anyone there?” I heard the abrupt click, but I still said hello one more time into the dead space. Then I pulled the phone away from my ear, held it in my hand for a second, and just stared at it. “Dammit,” I said softly.

“Daise, my goodness. You sound like a sailor.” Jordan laughed. She’d drunk down her gin, and her eyes were still closed. “Who was on the line?”

“Wrong number,” I said, and I went back and sat down next to her.

She picked up my hand again and squeezed it. “Damn all those wrong numbers to hell.” She giggled a little.

I opened my mouth, poised to tell her the truth, but then I couldn’t make the words come out. It was as if saying it out loud would make it undeniably true. And I wanted so badly to believe still that everything would be different here than it was in Lake Forest. That East Egg truly could be our permanent home.



* * *



A LITTLE WHILE later, Tom walked back into the house from the stables, and Jordan and I still hadn’t moved a muscle from the couch. The breathing on the other end of the line had magnified in my head, become something bellowing in the hour or two since it had happened. Tom leaned down and kissed my cheek. He reeked of sweat and whiskey, and I flinched. He acknowledged Jordan by patting her on the head, like a dog.

“There was a telephone call for you,” I said, sitting up to glare at him, not able to keep the anger from burning up my voice.

“A wrong number,” Jordan slurred, tracing her finger around her sweaty glass.

“Yes, very, very wrong.” I shot Tom a withering look.

He shrugged, pretending he didn’t understand the implication, that the breather on the other end of the line was a woman, calling for him. Two and a half months. We had only been here two and a half months!

“Daisy,” he said, changing the subject altogether. “Your cousin’s coming for dinner in an hour. Shouldn’t you get ready?”

“Ready?” I laughed. “I’m ready enough right here.” Sure, I was in a day dress, not an evening dress, and I was lying on the couch holding on desperately to my dear, sweet, slightly drunken Jordie. But I wasn’t going to let Tom decide what I did at the moment.

“All right.” He frowned, then shrugged. It would be hard for him to care less about me if he tried.

“Dinner with your cousin?” Jordan’s voice slurred a little. Her eyes were still closed and she’d missed the bitter dynamic between me and Tom altogether. “But we just ate lunch,” she exclaimed.

“It’s four o’clock in the afternoon,” Tom said, sounding disgusted, and I didn’t at all like his tone.

“You stink,” I said to him. “Go wash yourself up. Or else Nick might think I’ve married a polo pony not a polo player.”

Tom shot me another look. And then he clarified to Jordan that he’d known Nick in college, that Nick had stayed with us for two nights once in Lake Forest.