Beautiful Little Fools(62)

There had been a time before I’d been thrown off the golf tour. Before I’d even joined the golf tour. Before I’d met Mary Margaret. Before Daddy had died. There had been a time once, when I was sixteen years old and the entirety of my happiness had been wrapped up in spending lazy, hot, summer afternoons in Louisville lying around with Daisy, listening to the sound of her voice. There had been a time before Tom had taken her away from me, and now, somehow, years later, I’d driven up from the city, a little broken and a little dead inside, walked inside the Buchanans’ sprawling East Egg mansion, and found that Daisy was still right here. She was still mine. And maybe I wasn’t dead at all.

I felt that for a few hours, a breath of gin and the summer breeze coming in off the water. I felt that way lying on Daisy’s couch, a little drunk, and a little warm, holding Daisy’s hand.

My head tingled as she pushed her diamond hairpin in just above my earlobe, pulling my hair back. “Jordie,” she whispered, her breath hot against my face, “you’re beautiful.”



* * *



DAISY’S COUSIN NICK was a bland-looking midwestern man with an indistinguishable face. He wasn’t disagreeable by any stretch of the imagination, but in spite of Daisy’s machinations, I was never going to fall in love with him. It was my fault that Daisy didn’t understand this, of course. But she didn’t know about the golf tour, either. For whatever reason, I’d heard myself telling her I’d lost a match just before I’d driven up, and that I’d play again tomorrow in Westchester. And it occurred to me that I should tell Daisy the truth, that I should tell her everything. But Daddy’s face still haunted me, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

So there was Daisy, none the wiser about the way my life had crumbled this past year, fluttering around trying to set me up with her cousin. She arranged the supper table so I was directly next to Nick. Her cheeks glowed pink as she introduced us—she was enjoying this. I sipped another G&T slowly, liking the way it made me feel warm and hazy, like I was glowing from the inside out. I reached my hand up to touch the diamond hairpin Daisy had just placed in my hair. And I smiled wanly as she ordered Nick to tell me about the bond business.

Jordan Baker, Nick repeated my name, instead. The golfer? I’ve heard of you.

What he really meant was, he’d heard about my scandal. No one remembered a lady golfer’s name otherwise. But to Nick’s credit, he was kind enough not to mention that part out loud.

Dinner was served, and Tom droned on about some insufferable book he was reading. Then, the telephone jingled in the distance, and Tom stopped speaking midsentence. Daisy suddenly slapped her hands on the table, stood, and stormed out. Tom quickly followed after her.

Daisy’s voice rose in the distance, and Nick started babbling on about something but I shushed him, trying to make out the angry words Daisy and Tom were saying to each other in the other room. I could only hear the tenor of their voices but not the words themselves.

“What’s going on?” Nick asked, finally catching on that something was, indeed, going on.

I shook my head, but I was thinking it through.

The telephone hang-up earlier. Daisy’s anger now. I thought of Tom, that night in France, his head inside the baby nurse’s skirt. Daisy’s mention of an indiscretion in Santa Barbara. Something in Lake Forest, too, that had brought them here.

And even through my drunken haze, I suddenly understood. “Tom has got another woman,” I said, matter-of-factly. Maybe I shouldn’t have said those words out loud to Daisy’s milquetoast cousin. But that’s what happened when I had too much liquor. I was prone to a new level of verbosity, even for me.

Nick frowned. “I didn’t know,” he said.

“But you’re not surprised?”

Nick opened his mouth, hesitated for a moment, but then before he could answer, Tom and Daisy rushed back in and took their seats at the table. “Sorry,” Daisy apologized, still frowning. “It couldn’t be helped.”

I glared at Tom, but he didn’t notice my gaze, or he pretended not to. Nick tried to break the tension by talking about his neighbor in West Egg, a man named Gatsby. I heard his name, and my skin suddenly grew cold, remembering how I’d told Jay a few months ago about Daisy’s move here. Had he moved out here, because of what I’d told him?

I turned to look at Daisy to see if she had heard what Nick said, but all at once, the telephone rang again in the distance. She stood quickly, her face flaming. But this time instead of running out of the room, she went straight for the gin, poured herself a tall glass, and topped it off with only a little bit of soda water. Daisy never drank. She didn’t like the way it made her feel out of control.

“Daise?” I questioned.

She shot me a terse smile in response, raised her glass in the air as if to toast, and then took a large gulp.



* * *



I’D ONLY EVER seen Daisy drunk one time, just before her wedding to Tom, when she was suddenly filled with a wayward sort of doubt her mother assured her all new brides have. But in hindsight now, I had to wonder if she’d known. If she’d always known deep down that Tom would never be faithful to her. If I’d ever married a man like Tom, I think I would’ve been drunk every single day of my marriage. Daisy had, up until now, shown remarkable restraint.