Beautiful Little Fools
Jillian Cantor
Once again
to
Gregg
I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.
—DAISY BUCHANAN IN THE GREAT GATSBY
August 1922 WEST EGG, NY
SHE HELD THE GUN THE way a certain kind of careless man held his glass of whiskey. It was illegal, illicit. But, nonetheless, it was hers. She would do with it as she pleased, consequences be damned.
The gun made her hot, restless, wanting. Her heart pounded in her chest, a Nora Bayes song. The one playing that sweltering, innocent night when she saw him, years ago. Get your gun. Get your gun. She had her gun now.
He didn’t see her at first, as he walked out of his house, toward the pool. Tall and slender, his naked flesh so pale it was as if he’d made it through the entire summer without letting even the smallest bit of sunlight touch him. Nothing touched him. Wasn’t that what made Jay Gatsby so great?
He stepped toward the pool, that arrogant walk, that look on his face. That knowing. He had it all; he had everything. He’d taken everything. But then, just before his toe touched the water, he stopped suddenly, looked up, as if sensing her presence. He noticed her standing there, half behind the shrubbery, and he smiled.
“You’ve come,” he said, his voice thick with surprise. His eyes were on her face, not on her hand, not on the gun.
She raised her hand up higher, pointed the gun straight at his chest. And then somehow, from across the pool, he could suddenly feel it, her heat and her anger and her madness. It had been simmering for so long, and now it was boiling over. His face contorted. “What are you doing?” he spoke softly, slowly. He was working it out in his own mind. Why? What? How?
The distance between her gun and his heart was an easy shot. The trigger burned in the heat of the midday sun, as she closed one eye, aimed, squeezed. In an instant, the world exploded, the gun smoked. Her fingers shook and burned.
And then, all at once, his greatness flickered. He fell unevenly into the pool, water cascading into the sky like a choreographed dance of swans. Beautiful, unexpected. The cascade died off into limp waves, and she took a few steps closer. His pale flesh was sinking underwater now, ripped apart.
In front of her, the pool oozed red. And it was only then that she truly understood what she had done. Who she had become. She swallowed back a scream, the taste of bile rising up in her throat.
And then she turned away from the pool, and she ran.
Daisy 1917
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
SOMETIMES I THINK IF I’D met Jay Gatsby later, say, after Daddy’s and Rose’s accident, I wouldn’t have even noticed him at all. I think how everything, how the whole entire course of my life, and his, might have turned out differently.
Jay came into my life at a moment when I still believed that anything was possible. The war—and death—were somewhere so far away, out of my reach, that they might as well have not existed at all. I had everything and it never occurred to me that I could lose it all. Just like that.
It sounds silly to say it now, to remember how I was. To remember that careless, carefree girl. It sounds silly to say that Jay and I lived and died by chance, haphazard timing. That our paths crossed at the right time, in the right place.
Or maybe it was the wrong time, the wrong place.
* * *
“DAISY FAY!” MOTHER called for me up the stairs.
She had only one way of calling for me, whether she was angry, or excited, or simply calling me to supper. No matter the reason, she called for me with my full name, her voice trilling like a snow goose.
This afternoon I knew she was calling because of Rose. I’d promised my younger sister I would go with her to take food to the poor. But it was the hottest hour of the hottest day of August, and after I’d eaten lunch, I’d come up to my room to lie down. It was hard to move off my bed now, much less think about walking ten blocks to the almshouse with Rose’s heavy basket of food.
Unlike me, Rose was thinking about the war, and she’d started growing vegetables in a victory garden in our backyard. Every time she harvested something, she was immediately ready to give it away to help people less fortunate than us. At lunch she’d been going on about her peas.
“Daisy Fay!” Mother’s voice again. The snow goose was louder.
“Coming,” I called back, weakly.
I sighed, got out of bed, and swiped my hairbrush through my hair, setting each side behind my ears and in front of my shoulders. I grabbed my fan, and walked carefully down the steps, trying not to break into a sweat from the exertion.
Just as I’d expected, Rose and Mother sat at the dining table together, co-conspirators, Rose’s heavy wicker basket sitting in front of them. When I entered the room, they both offered me a frown.
“Daise, what took you so long?” Rose exhaled.
“It’s too hot, Rosie,” I protested, fanning myself, causing a swirl of hot air to press against my face, making me flush.
“You promised,” Rose said. She wasn’t pouting exactly. Rose never pouted. Instead she turned her heart-shaped face in such a way that it was clear I’d disappointed her. She expected better from me. Why, I didn’t know, because I was acting the same way I always did. Petulant.
“Mother,” I tried. “Don’t you think it would be better if we go when the weather breaks instead? Next week, perhaps?”
Mother wasn’t a bleeding heart like Rose, and God knows where Rose got it from, because Daddy certainly wasn’t either. But Mother and Daddy adored Rose. Everyone adored Rose. I was the beautiful one, and she was the good one. That’s not to say that Rose wasn’t pretty in her own quiet way, too. But her beauty was her goodness. And the fact was, I loved her for that reason too. But not when it meant I had to suffer in the heat.
“Daisy Fay,” Mother said. “Help your sister with that basket and stop complaining. You’re not going to melt.”
“Aren’t I, though?” But it was too hot to argue. I sighed and picked up the heavy basket, then held my other hand out for my sister. “Come on,” I said, wearily. “There’s a party tonight at the Wrights’ house, and we’re not going to miss it. We’ll have to be back in time to freshen up.”
Rose laughed weakly. She hadn’t attended half the parties I had this summer. She liked to blame it on the polio that had nearly killed her last summer and left her with a slight limp, but we both knew it wasn’t that at all. Rose was well now, thank god. But Rose no more liked parties than I liked going to feed the poor. We balanced each other out that way. The good one and the pretty one. That’s how all of Louisville knew the Fay sisters back then.
* * *