Beautiful Little Fools(61)

“I’d say this cousin, Nick, already knows you married a pony,” Jordan said, snorting a little, amusing herself. And then Tom just shook his head and walked off upstairs.

Jordan opened her eyes, turned back to me. “Who is this cousin of yours, Daise?” she asked. “And how come I’ve never heard of him before?”

I told her: Nick Carraway was a second cousin, once removed, Daddy’s cousin’s son. He was a few years older than us, and I’d never known him very well. He’d been raised in Minnesota and we’d only met once as children, in Chicago. Later, he was at Yale with Tom and then in the war without him. He hadn’t ever been to visit us in Louisville and hadn’t been able to make it to my wedding, either. I couldn’t even remember why now. Other than the two pleasant enough days he’d visited us in Lake Forest, I truly didn’t know much of Nick at all.

It was Mother who’d told me Nick had moved to West Egg just after I’d moved to East Egg, and then I’d wondered to her if maybe it was his house, right across the sound from mine. What a coincidence that would be, east and west cousins, staring across the great wide sound at each other. But Mother had laughed and said Nick certainly didn’t have the money to stay in a house like that, even just for the summer.

“I can’t believe I never mentioned Nick,” I said, glancing at Jordan now. Her face looked far away, a little sleepy. Really, I could believe it. Nick had been of little consequence in my life, and I’d forgotten all about this dinner I’d scheduled weeks ago, too, until Tom had just brought it up.

But Nick was unattached—Mother had told me this much, repeating Cousin Marianne’s lament that her son was almost thirty and in no great hurry to marry. And Jordan was single, as far as I knew. If I could get Jordan interested in Nick, maybe that would keep her here for the entire summer, with me, too. I already felt so much better, so much happier, since she’d sped up the drive earlier this afternoon. This new plan hatched in my head, and excitement over it bubbled up in my chest, replacing the anger I’d just felt for Tom. “Actually, I think you might really like him, Jordie,” I added, nudging her with my elbow.

“Hmmm.” Jordan swallowed down the rest of her gin and rested the sweating glass on the end table. “I don’t know, Daise.”

Jordan had never had a beau. At least not one she’d told me about. Of course, she had her golf game to worry about, but she was twenty-one now! Her daddy was gone and her aunt Sigourney was, by all accounts, dreadful. It was time for her to start thinking about marriage. It was well past time. “Well, I know you have impossibly high standards, Jordie,” I said now. “But just give him a chance at dinner. You might really feel sweet on him. Even though they were at Yale together, he’s nothing at all like Tom, I swear it.”

“Well, thank goodness for that,” Jordan cackled. “The world couldn’t handle two Tom Buchanans, now could it, Daise?” Her tone was light, but we both knew she was only half joking.

She squeezed my hand again, closed her eyes, and leaned back against the couch. I did the same, slinking down until I rested my head on her shoulder. She reached up and twirled a lock of my hair around her finger the way she always had when we were girls, but now her finger caught on one of my diamond hairpins.

“I’m surprised to see you wearing your hairpins still,” she said softly. Though I hadn’t explicitly told her the details of Tom’s little spree in Lake Forest, it felt like she somehow knew, like she could sense it. Like she saw Rebecca Buckley’s plump pink cheeks when she closed her eyes at night too.

“I only wear them knowing you picked them out,” I told her, and that was the honest truth. The hairpins might have been paid for by Tom, but they were chosen by Jordan, and that made them more her gift than his.

“I always loved those pins,” Jordan said, touching one again, rolling her finger across it. “Just a little row of diamonds in your hair. Elegant and simple all at the same time, just like you, Daise.”

Elegant and simple. Inside I felt like neither one of those things. My life, instead, felt like one great big, complicated, devastating storm. I reached up and pulled one of the pins out of my hair. Then I gently leaned over and pushed it into Jordan’s hair. “Actually, Jordie, I think it suits you much better, what with your cute little pixie cut.”

She smiled at me, then reached up and ran her fingers across the pin in her own hair. “But Daise,” she protested softly. “It’s yours. It belongs to you.”

“You wear one for the summer. For as long you like,” I told her. What I really meant was, Stay here, stay with me for the summer. Don’t leave me again.

“I’ve got a nice place here.” I suddenly heard Tom’s voice coming in through the front door, booming. Bragging.

Then my cousin Nick’s softer, more even tones, replying that yes, the house was very, very nice indeed. I heard their footsteps as they walked into the room, and a breeze erupted, swirling all the curtains about. Tom slammed the French doors shut.

“Just give Nick a chance,” I whispered in Jordan’s hair, my breath landing just below the diamonds of the hairpin.





Jordan June 1922

EAST EGG




IT FELT AS IF I had been asleep for a very, very long time. And then suddenly Daisy swept me up into a hug, handed me a ham sandwich and a G&T, and all at once I was awake again. I was alive again.