The Chosen and the Beautiful Page 14

  “She needs some sympathy,” he said, making a face. “I’m apparently being brutish again.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  He frowned when I didn’t immediately defend him to himself.

  “Talk to her, make her see sense,” he said, a begging note in his voice. “You know how she gets.”

  “Of course I do, Tom,” I said, sidestepping him. “Will you be back for breakfast?”

  “No, some business is keeping me in the city,” he said. “Thank you, Jordan. You’re a star.”

  I was, even if he had no reason at all to thank me. He went downstairs, and I went up, tired enough that I just wanted to strip out of my clothes and climb between my borrowed sheets.

  Not so different from Louisville after all, I mused, and instead of going to bed, I continued on to Daisy’s suite, where I could see her shadow moving back and forth through the light from under the door. I tapped lightly on the door, and I was answered by a low wail.

  “Oh do go away, I don’t want to see you,” she cried.

  “I think you might,” I said, and she opened the door almost immediately, flying into my arms with a flutter of silk sleeves. In her hand-painted robe, she looked a bit like a magpie, the long bars of blue, black, and white calling to mind a rustle of feathers and the fan-spread of an elegant tail.

  I let her hang on to me for a few moments, and then I pushed her back, bringing her back towards the light and turning her face this way and that by her chin.

  “Do I just look too awful?” she asked, hiccupping slightly and offering me a nervous smile through her tears. “It’s not so bad, is it?”

  I made a show of peering at her face, and then her throat and her shoulders. She was half out of her robe like a snowdrop unsheathed after the winter, fragile and more than a little raw. There was a small drinks cart where a small bottle of demoniac perched, and I shook a few drops onto my fingers, spreading them neatly over her eyelids and under her eyes. She freshened up right away, and I licked the demoniac from my fingers before I nodded.

  “You look just fine, darling, just beautiful, I promise. And I saw that Tom is on his way out, so that will suit us very well.”

  “Oh! Have you had word yet?”

  I grinned, letting her take my hands in a surprisingly tight grip.

  “I met with Nick today, the dear thing. He says that he will call to invite you to his place soon, and you can happen to meet Gatsby there.”

  “Oh but why?” she asked. “I could fly into his arms. I could do it right now, just get up on the widow’s walk and take wing, float to him across the Sound…”

  I took a firm hold on her arm, because after all, there was a chance that she might have tried it. She had that edge to her that was revealed sometimes, when things got strange or hard.

  There was a part of me that wanted to let her go. After all, it would all have been the same in the end. Even if I refused to let her fly, we could take her roadster south in East Egg, north in West Egg, and then we would be there. Outside, the rain pattered gently onto the concrete, onto the grass and the earth. I imagined her dashing from the roadster, the wings of her robe flaring behind her as her hair took on the raindrops like dew. She would ring the doorbell, and for some reason, he would answer it. They would look at each other, reach for each other, crashing together in a way that could have set the entire world deaf if they could only hear it.

  I remembered Jay Gatsby’s request at the Cendrillon, however. I remembered the intent look in his eyes, his refusal to take any kind of shortcut, to act in any way like a sensible man, and I took a firmer hold on Daisy.

  “He won’t want that,” I said with a helpless shrug, and the laugh she gave me was brittle with humor.

  “I can’t be expected to wait,” she said. “Why dear, how deadly dull and proper!”

  She was worn out after her fight with Tom, however, and I convinced her to come with me to her solar for a glass of champagne. We sent back down to the drowsy kitchen for a plate of crackers and cold salmon smothered with cream and dill, and we dragged the sofa to the windows, where the thunder had come to join the rain. One particularly powerful stroke lit up the world from Daisy’s lawn to West Egg and to the city beyond it. In that flash of brighter than bright light, I saw Gatsby’s mansion across the Sound, still lit up boldly against the summer darkness that draped down on top of us.

  I thought of how the party-goers must be shrieking in the rain, how the gentlemen’s fine suits would be ruined, how the sleeting water would plaster silk dresses to their wearers’ bodies. Then it came to me that, no, there was no party at Gatsby’s tonight. The place buzzed with light, but that light wasn’t shining for anyone besides Gatsby, if he cared at all. It burned without illuminating or warming, and all of that emptiness made me a little ill, a little dizzy.

  Daisy stared into the rain, crushing a cracker into crumbs. After a moment, she picked up a strip of fleshy pink salmon with her fingertips, rolling it into a tight little bundle before setting it on a cracker and giving it to me. The salty richness of the fish and the buttery crispness of the cracker grounded me a little, and so I made one for her.

  Sometime after one, we both heard a thin wailing echo through the house behind us.

  “A ghost,” Daisy said without interest.

  “No,” I said, tilting my head. “That’s Pammy. Listen, you can hear her nurse singing to her.”

  “I never wanted her. Tom may keep her after this. He gave me a diamond bracelet for her when the doctors told us she would live. I’ll give it back to him, and her as well.”

  This was all uttered without rancor, but also without the thoughtlessness that accompanied so many of Daisy’s pronouncements. She said things, they lit up gold in the air, and then they fell to nothing like so much cigarette ash. This wasn’t something that floated around inside her head and then out her mouth. This was something she had put away somewhere dark, where the light wouldn’t fade it, where no one could talk her out of it.

  I didn’t say anything, taking her hand in mine, and we watched the storm roll over the Sound.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Nick, good boy, called the next morning, and Daisy took his call on the ivory-white phone in her bedroom, half-dressed and me with my chin on her shoulder listening close. He didn’t seem to notice how high and tight her voice was when she greeted him with her customary gaiety, passing a few easy words until he got to business.

  “Listen, Daisy, I was thinking you might come over to my place this Saturday, around about three for tea.”

  “Oh three for tea, that sounds splendid to me,” she caroled, the telephone cord wound strangling tight around her fingers. “How wonderful. Of course I will cancel my brunch with the Boston Prestons to be there. It shall be the very delight of my summer season!”

  Nick laughed dutifully at that.

  “Don’t bring Tom,” he said, his voice a little different.

  “What?”

  “Don’t bring Tom,” he repeated. “That is, it would be rather…”

  “Who is ‘Tom’?” she asked, letting him off the hook.

  She hung up and turned to me with a rather pitying glance.

  “He’s not very good at this, is he?”

  “I don’t know that I want him to be,” I retorted, and she reached out to pinch my cheek lightly.

  “So you want to be the one to do all the sneaking about? How selfish, my dear!”

  It rained for the rest of the week, giving us what felt like a delivery of fall in the heat of the summer. In Daisy’s mansion in East Egg, we had somehow become unmoored from the mainland. Tom, in a high sulk, was still off in the city, likely with his girl from Willets Point or one from some other such exotic place. We were all alone in the house, the servants coming and going with a dignified hush that was more pointed than silence could be.

  We smoked on the porch, we ate dinner at midnight, and we went through Daisy’s yearbook from Louisville, guessing where everyone else had ended up. The a
nswer was largely Louisville, and looking at the blur of black-and-white faces in the yearbook pages, I felt a kind of pride in how far away I had gotten, even if it was through no special effort of my own.

  When Saturday rolled around, I woke up at a thundering and rainy dawn to find that Daisy had not slept at all. Her suite looked as if a modiste’s shop had grown too full and simply split apart at the seams, throwing vast drifts of silk and cotton and beads and lace on every spare surface. Still in my robe, I dodged Valerie, Daisy’s maid, as she ran out in tears, a bright red handprint on her face.

  “A little early to be beating the help, isn’t it?” I asked, and Daisy spun towards me, her eyes red and her pearly white teeth bared.

  “It won’t do, Jordan,” she insisted. “It won’t. I haven’t a single thing to wear here. I shall have to go to New York to find something new, and there simply isn’t the time for that, but I can’t be seen in this last season tat…”

  I took the gray silk frock out of her hands before she could ruin it, and then I made her sit down at her dressing table. When Valerie, cringing but dry-eyed, returned, I sent her for a little bit of beef glanced at the skillet, and a glass of orange juice.

  “With champagne, of course?” she asked hopefully, and I nodded. She wouldn’t get through this drunk, but I doubted she would get through this entirely sober either.

  When Daisy had gotten some barely singed beef in her and had a refreshing drink, we sifted through the ruins of her closet to find a rather unassuming little Worth number, a pale violet decorated with the softest, dreamiest cream fringe. It made her blue eyes even bluer, and when matched with a pair of satin shoes with elegant wooden heels stained to match, she calmed enough to let Valerie set her hair.

  “My darling, what are you wearing?”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “I hadn’t thought I was coming.”

  “Well, of course you are, if only to make sure that poor Nick doesn’t feel like a third wheel.”

  “So you’ll have a pair of them.”

  In truth, I didn’t mind. Like a cat with that fatal old flaw, I wanted to see how this all turned out. In addition to that, I hadn’t seen Nick all week. I wasn’t sure he even knew I was in East Egg, and I suddenly wanted to see him again, his game smile, the easy way he held his body after a few drinks.

  My clothes had caught up with me by then, and I had a dusky absinthe-colored dress that orbited low on my hips and bloomed with an embroidery of vines around my throat and my hems. I borrowed from Daisy a pair of gold satin shoes and a flower pin wrought in gold for my hair, and after that we were late. Daisy was too nervous to drive, so we roused Ferdie, the chauffeur, and a little while later, we were zipping along the road to West Egg.

  The day when Daisy met Jay Gatsby again should have been beautiful, the same kind of day on which she had been married, or at least a crisp and dying summer day like the one where she had met the handsome young soldier. Instead silvery clouds hung overhead like wet rags out to dry, and when we stepped out of the car in front of Nick’s humble little place, we could both smell the rain, paused for the moment, but by no means gone. Back in Louisville, that high wet smell coupled with the uncomfortable prickling heat meant that a twister was on the way, crossing the flat cropland with a destructive fury that was out to ruin lives. We were in the East, however, and we had other ways to ruin our lives.

  Nick’s house was a strange thing, little more than a gardener’s cottage on a sliver of lawn that had nevertheless been neatly mowed. To one side was the house of a steel magnate, currently on holiday in France until certain scandals died away, and beyond Nick’s place on the other side was the looming estate of Jay Gatsby. There was something diminished about it during the day, I thought, as if even magic must sleep sometime.

  We came out of the car to see Nick crossing the lawn to greet us. He was well turned out in a lovely gray suit, but there was a slightly harassed and hunted air about him, something papered over with relief when he saw us. He greeted us both with hugs, and Daisy hung on for a moment longer than was proper, ticking her fingers along his buttons.

  “Why, dear Nick, are you in love with me, and that was why I needed to come alone?”

  I had almost forgotten that Daisy was meant to be the unknowing lamb in this scene. She grinned flirtatiously up at Nick, who tactfully pried her off of him, trading a glance with me. I suddenly couldn’t tell if I was meant to be in a conspiracy with him or with her, but I was rather grateful when he walked ahead of us to show us into his home. I never knew I was the jealous type before. Usually, things ended before I ever got to that point.

  I had been to Nick’s house a time or two. It was dark and narrow, but his maid kept it as trim as a Navy ship berth, the floors scrubbed within an inch of their lives, the doorknobs and windows gleaming. I caught a glimpse of her narrow and nervous face peeping at us from down the hall. I imagined we must be the strangest creatures to her, moving so lightly through the house that she must consider in some way her own.

  We came to the small living room, where I was briefly stunned with the profusion of flowers set on nearly every flat surface. Even Daisy, who had something of a mania for sunflowers, looked around in surprise. It was as if someone had emptied out a greenhouse and jammed it into Nick’s small parlor. The air was hung with the heavy scents of jacaranda and jasmine, so thickly dizzying that I thought there must be some magic keeping them young and fresh.

  What a ridiculous thing, I thought, a little light-headed. Nick doesn’t have the money for this …

  I saw Nick open his mouth and then close it again. He looked around, as if it might be possible for someone to hide under the divan or among the blossoms.

  “Well, that’s funny,” he muttered.

  “What is?” asked Daisy, batting her eyes.

  Before he could answer, there was a rap at the door, and Nick excused himself to see to it.

  Daisy gave me a baffled look, and all I could do was shrug.

  Then there was a step in the hallway, and when Jay Gatsby actually appeared, we both gave him an appalled look.

  I don’t know what Daisy had built up in her head, but I know that the picture I had come up with was beautiful. It was probably wrong, and like the wallpaper that had gassed all those people in London, probably poisonous, but it was beautiful.

  Gatsby was sodden from the light rain that had started to fall again, the dark spots showing clearly on his pale suit. He looked, I thought, like nothing so much as a cat who had endured a wetting in the garden, and now only cared about getting inside.

  Daisy sat stock still, her hands twitching as he stalked by her to take a patently false pose at the mantel.

  Seated with my feet together in the spindly needlepoint chair by the window, I didn’t dare move or make a sound, but Daisy trilled an unsteady laugh.

  “I certainly am awfully glad to see you again,” she said, her words knocking against each other like marbles. She kept looking between me and Gatsby, as if hoping that I could at least somehow start to explain this disaster, or perhaps thinking that this was some kind of terrible joke I was playing on her.

  Nick entered just as Gatsby uttered a diffident “We’ve met before,” making Daisy’s hands flutter a little in dismay. Nick and I exchanged a glance and tiny bewildered shrugs. This was why I preferred large parties to small ones. You couldn’t get away with being this unbearably odd at a large party, or if you did, no one would ever have cared. Now we were all trapped by the gravity of Jay Gatsby, locked in with fervent blooms of white flowers as if we were in some kind of fond memory box.

  There was a restless quality about him, and suddenly I felt as if I were in a cage with something large, afraid, and hungry. I sat very still and straight in my chair as his eyes passed over me, my hands folded nicely in my lap. He looked at me more than he looked at Daisy; every time his eyes came to her, they seemed to skip, as if after years of not seeing her, he had to become accustomed to her brightness again. Daisy kept tr
ying to meet his eyes, but I could see that her hands were fisted on her knees. She had no idea how to move things forward. Neither did Nick or I.

  Some of Gatsby’s restless fidgeting sent the small clock on Nick’s mantelplace plummeting towards the floor. I cringed, anticipating the crash, but Gatsby caught it again, an indolent show of athleticism that another man would have taken care to point out. Instead he held the clock in his hands for a moment, muttering an apology.

  Nick, acting out of instinct, I think, put his hand on Gatsby’s shoulder.

  “It’s only an old clock,” he started, but Gatsby shook him off with a furious look and left the room entirely.

  I caught the stricken expression on Nick’s face, and he trailed after Gatsby, dodging his servant as she came in with the tea. Something about her utterly impassive air struck me as hilarious, and I laughed, shaking my head. When the door shut behind her as well, I crossed over to Daisy, who was sitting as still as a statue, pale under her powder, not even laughing in that helpless way she had.

  “All right, Daisy, do you want to leave?” I asked, but she shook her head.

  “Of course not. That’s Jay Gatsby. That’s really him.”

  “At least it used to be,” I said. “I don’t know what he is now.”

  Daisy looked up at me, a calm in her eyes that didn’t reach the slightly manic smile on her lips. She had used a shade of lipstick to match her violet dress, tender and delicate and bruised. It looked unlucky to me, and when she smiled up at me, she looked ever so slightly monstrous.

  “I want to find out,” she insisted, and then we both heard a step at the door. I hurried back to my seat, but I needn’t have worried.

  Gatsby blew in like a barley seed on a storm wind, his hair rumpled, his eyes wide but sure. I saw that he had his left hand clasped loosely in a fist so that the black nail didn’t show. This time, he didn’t spare me a glimpse as he came in, going down on both knees at Daisy’s side, setting his free hand on her waist.

  Daisy shrank back a bit at this sudden close contact. She was used to being courted from a distance. He started to talk to her, his voice low and urgent. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but Daisy’s face softened, her lips parted, and her hand came up, faltering and then stronger to touch Gatsby’s short dark hair.