Beautiful Little Fools(70)

“I couldn’t sleep,” I finally said, which explained nothing.

She didn’t press me, and instead stepped farther into Tom’s study, walked to the window to look out. “That man has a party every night, doesn’t he?” she said, commenting on the lights at Jay’s, sounding quite churlish about it.

“I saw him today,” I said softly. “He thinks he loves me still. He wants to be with me.” I laughed a little, but it caught in my chest, and came out sounding more like a sob.

Jordan turned back to face me, put her hand on her hip. “And do you want to be with him, Daise?” The green light shone on outside the window behind her, and it illuminated the curves of her body, turning her white, gauzy nightdress sheer.

I didn’t know what I wanted. I thought about Pammy sleeping so peacefully up in her bed. And I suddenly felt silly for coming down here, for pulling out Tom’s gun. I briefly wondered what I would have done with it if Tom had come home first, if Jordan hadn’t come down when she did, and the thought flickered inside of me, embarrassing me with its recklessness.

“Do you want him?” Jordan repeated her question.

“I don’t know what I want,” I said softly. And that might have been the truest thing I’d spoken out loud all summer.





Jordan July 1922

NEW YORK




THE SUMMER STARTED OFF WITH one tiny little white lie to Daisy about the golf tour. And then it spiraled out from there, on and on, until I began to realize more lies came out of my mouth than truths. I lied to Daisy about the things Jay Gatsby had said to me when I saw him one night at his party. I lied to Daisy about how I felt about Nick. I lied to Nick about myself. Sometimes, by the end of July, it was even hard for me to tell the difference any longer between what was true and what wasn’t.

It was easier to lie when I drank, and drink I did. Somehow Tom had an endless supply, gin and whiskey flowing each night before supper, during supper, after supper. He and Daisy bickered, or, depending on the night, they stared at each other quietly, angrily. And either way, I sipped my G&Ts until their faces blurred and their voices dimmed. I loved Daisy and I hated Tom, and I drank to soften their edges. To soften my own edges. I drank to forget what was true and what wasn’t.

Some nights Daisy would tiptoe into my room very late, lie down in my bed with me, and fall asleep. I’d still be a little drunk, even then, and I’d close my eyes and reach for her hand.

“It’s all right,” I’d whisper-lie to her. “Everything will be all right, Daise. You’ll see.”

And then I’d even start to believe that lie a little myself. I’d fall asleep remembering what it was like to be young and hopeful and free and have our whole entire futures ahead of us again.



* * *



IN LATE JULY, I went into the city one afternoon and stopped at Aunt Sigourney’s. I was supposed to meet Nick at the Plaza later for dinner. A date—and one of several we’d had this month, much to Daisy’s delight. A few weeks earlier, we’d been to the Plaza for tea, a party at Jay Gatsby’s, and even another tea in West Egg at Nick’s house.

I stopped at Aunt Sigourney’s first to say hello to the old bird, which she insisted on as a condition of releasing my pitiful monthly allowance. When I walked in, she handed me a pile of mail, and there, right on the top, was a thick cream-colored envelope with a Nashville postmark.

“When did this come?” I asked Aunt Sigourney, feeling around the plump edges of the envelope with my thumb.

She shrugged. “The other day. No… last week.”

It was thick, heavy. My name had been scripted in unfamiliar handwriting. And still my heart rose and fell in my chest. Mary Margaret. It had to be. I didn’t know a single other living soul in Nashville.

I tore the envelope open quickly, pulled out the thick cream card from inside:

Dr. and Mrs. Harold T. Smith request the honor of your presence

at the wedding of their daughter, Mary Margaret to Whitaker Witherspoon III

on Saturday, the twenty-sixth of August, nineteen hundred twenty-two…

I put the card down on Aunt Sigourney’s parlor table, unable to read the rest. My hands shook, and I suddenly felt like I was about to throw up.

Mary Margaret was getting married? And to a man called Whitaker Witherspoon, the third? What sort of ridiculous name was that?

No more ridiculous than Jordan Baker is for a lady, I could hear Mary Margaret’s response in my head, her voice rich with laughter. I closed my eyes.

“Jordan?” Aunt Sigourney questioned, bringing me back to her apartment. “You’re pale as a ghost. Was it bad news, dear?”

“An old friend,” I said slowly, trying to swallow back the bile that rose in my throat. “She’s getting married. To a man she doesn’t love.”

Aunt Sigourney laughed a little. “Well, she wouldn’t be the first, and she certainly won’t be the last. A woman who marries for love is a foolish woman, Jordan.”

“And what about a woman who never marries at all?” I shot back.

Aunt Sigourney grimaced. She’d been a widow since I was a baby, but at least she’d been in a respectable marriage once. I’d dared to speak aloud her greatest fear for me. “So you plan to spend the rest of your life sleeping at the Buchanans and golfing, do you, Jordan?” The way she said golfing she might as well have said robbing banks. And if only she knew the truth, that I wasn’t even golfing at all anymore, only lying about it. I’d told her that little white lie that I’d rejoined the tour in the beginning of the summer, too. The truth, the desperate, terrible truth, was that I wasn’t sure they’d ever have me back. But that truth was so terrifying, I barely ever allowed myself to think about it.