Beautiful Little Fools(80)

I never knew the details around when her daddy died, only that he had while we were on our honeymoon. When I was still blissful and stupid in the South Seas.

“He gave me an aluminum putter,” Jordan added. “I still use it to this day.”

Tom didn’t seem to notice Jordan was still talking, or her sad, scrunched-up face. He was telling Nick about Biloxi, and then he started going back at Jay, something about Oxford.

I stood and walked to the couch where Jordan was already sitting. I sat down next to her and smothered her with a hot, full-bodied hug. “I’m sorry,” I whispered into her neck. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. The last days you had with your daddy you were picking up the pieces of some stupid box salesman from my stupid wedding. And I never even knew until now.”

“You’re drunk, Daise.” Her words tumbled hot into my hair.

“I know I’m not as popular as you,” Tom was shouting, shouting, at Jay now.

“Why don’t you calm down, old sport. There’s something I need to tell you,” Jay said.

“Tom’s so jealous, isn’t he?” Jordan whispered, sounding annoyed.

I looked at him again, and his face was red, bursting with anger and a sense of entitlement, a sense of possession. He looked like Pammy when you took away her favorite toy. Jay was angry now, too, his pupils flaring from the whiskey, his voice rising. The two of them, they both looked like a pair of drunken goddamned fools.

“I always thought it was us women who were the fools,” I whispered. “But I was wrong, it’s been the men all along, hasn’t it?”

Jordan giggled a little and clung to me, planting a sloppy, drunken kiss on my cheek. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. My daddy always used to say that.”

“Maybe we should all go back home,” Mr. Agreeable Nick interjected from across the room. He was eyeing me and Jordan with trepidation, while trying to calm the other two men down.

Tom glared at Nick. “I want to hear what Mr. Gatsby has to tell me,” Tom flamed, daring Jay, his voice even more agitated.

“Daisy never loved you!” Jay shouted at him.

I heard my name, and I leaned back against Jordan and closed my eyes. She wrapped her arms around me and held on tight. Sometimes, I felt like a prop in my own life. Like a marionette who everyone assumed didn’t know how to move without a man pulling her strings. That wasn’t true. That wasn’t right. Only I didn’t have the strength to make them believe it. Didn’t they know it was too hot?

“She’s never loved you,” Jay was saying now. “She loves me.”

“You must be crazy!” Tom shouted back.

“She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake.”

They shouted, on and on. I knew they were yelling about me, and I heard them saying something about Jordan, too. But their voices, their nonsensical ramblings about love, hovered somewhere above me in the thick, hot, drunken air. Their words were stupid, meaningless. Foolish. Untrue.

I opened my eyes again. And their anger was so palpable I could almost feel it burning up my skin, almost see the heat of the late afternoon and their voices rising in the air in visible swirling waves. I had the sensation that my life was exploding all around me, and I couldn’t stop it. But maybe I didn’t want to stop it? Maybe I wanted my life to explode.

I looked at Tom, his face even redder. “Once in a while I go off on a little spree, but I always love Daisy. In my heart I love her all the time,” Tom insisted to Jay.

He loves me, in his heart?

I thought of Rebecca Buckley’s plump pink child cheeks. Her small breasts illuminated in the midnight lamplight in the stables. Was he loving me in his heart then?

“You’re revolting,” I said to Tom, suddenly finding my voice. It was surprisingly loud and strangely sober. Nick looked at me, his mouth wide open. “Do you know why we left Chicago, Nick?” I said to him. “I’m surprised Tom didn’t treat you to the story of that little spree.”

Jay walked over and stood next to me. “Daisy,” he said softly. “None of that matters now.” Yes, it did. It mattered to me. “Just tell him that truth—that you never loved him.” Who was Jay to think he knew the truth about me?

“She loves me!” Tom spat at Jay, indignant.

“How could I possibly love you?” I snapped back at Tom. My words practically sizzled in the air, but they felt like the truest words I’d spoken in some time.

Jay smirked, satisfied by my outburst. But I didn’t love him, either. I’d felt something for him, once, years ago. Maybe it was love or maybe it was the stupidity of a youthful flirtation. Now, I felt nothing. And that was the truth, the hard, hot truth. I felt nothing. I loved no one. Except my daughter.

“You never loved Tom,” Jay was saying now. “Tell him, Daisy.”

Tom’s eyes met my eyes, and they were suddenly soft and vulnerable and a little hurt. It felt like the most honest look we’d given each other since the South Seas. “Not even in Kapiolani?” he said softly.

Kapiolani. I remembered that morning, the intoxicating scent of the Pacific and the morning dew on the grass that soaked through my dress to my knees. I remembered the inebriating power I’d felt, giving Tom pleasure, just like that, so fearlessly, out in the open. And the truth was maybe I had loved him then. Before he’d ruined it only weeks later, in Santa Barbara. Before he’d ruined me, years later in Lake Forest. And again here, this summer, in New York.