But you’ll wait for me? Jay wrote me a letter back. After the war we’ll be together, get married. I’ll love you forever, Daisy. I’ll wait for you forever…
I’d folded his letter up and tucked it away in my jewelry box on my bureau. It had sat there ever since, a secret, a faraway promise. But I could not bring myself to write Jay back, to answer his question.
Sometimes in the weeks after the accident, I’d lie in bed at night and close my eyes, trying to remember the feel of Jay’s hands upon my bare skin, trying to remember how I felt so much that I’d cared so little about my family.
Every time I tried to conjure Jay, all I could think about instead was my dear sweet Rosie, forcing me to walk with her to the almshouse in the depths of August. Me complaining about the heat. Why had I always complained so much? Why couldn’t I have just happily done what she wanted?
Night after night I tried to conjure Jay, but instead, I heard her voice again and again: Don’t go kissing him, just because he’s giving us a ride.
I’d thought Jay was my heart, but maybe Rose was my heart. Without my sister, I was pale skin and marrowless bones, walking around Louisville like a ghost.
Be good, Rose had implored me, more than once. I know you have it in you, Daise.
But what if she was wrong?
By January, all her lettuce was dead. Her victory garden now a useless patch of dirt in the backyard. I’d done that. I’d forgotten to keep on watering it.
* * *
“WE’RE GOING TO have to sell the house,” Mother announced out of nowhere one morning in March. She’d finally left her room, come down to the dining room for breakfast at the table, rather than having Fredda bring her up a tray, as she had for months. Since I’d just gotten over the shock of seeing her sitting here, dressed and real and breathing beside me, I could not immediately completely absorb her words.
Our house was a two-story brick Victorian in the most fashionable section of Louisville, the Southern Extension. Daddy had bought the house for Mother as a wedding present, and I’d lived here my whole entire life. “Why would we ever sell it?” I said. “And where would we live?”
“Daisy Fay, your daddy had some debts I didn’t know about.” Mother’s voice was matter-of-fact, her affect strangely flat. She pushed her plate of eggs away, as if suddenly the food turned her stomach. “A lot of debts,” she added.
“Debts?” I repeated the word now, still not understanding.
A lawyer I’d never seen before had come to speak with Mother last night, and they’d gone on for over an hour in hushed tones in Daddy’s study. But I’d assumed it was in regard to Daddy’s will or some legal paperwork from the railroad company that didn’t involve me. Daddy had been a businessman, from a long line of Fay businessmen. Grandaddy had lived comfortably before he died, but to hear Daddy tell it, Grandaddy hadn’t made half the money he had. “But Daddy said business was so good,” I said to Mother now, sure she was confused. Her haze of grief made everything obscure and cloudy, and maybe I should be the one talking to the lawyers when they came back.
“Business was good,” Mother clarified, her voice hardening. She spoke words but they were devoid of meaning. “But your father had formed… quite a habit with the horses apparently.”
“Horses?” Daddy always loved the Kentucky Derby, but who in Louisville didn’t? “What do horses have to do with anything?”
“He lost everything,” Mother said quietly. “Betting on horses. You and I have almost nothing but this house, Daisy Fay. We’re penniless.”
* * *
I LAY IN bed later that night, holding Jay’s letter in my hand, tracing over his neat script with my forefinger. Wait for me, Daisy… I love you, Daisy.
It was chilly tonight, and Fredda had lit a fire in my bedroom. I walked over there now, held Jay’s letter out, and dropped it into the flames. I watched the edges of the paper turn yellow and blue, Jay’s words hot with fire. Then they were gone.
I could not let Mother sell the house. I tried to imagine where we might go and what might become of us, penniless, homeless. To Mother’s old aunt in Jeffersonville? Her house was abysmal, small, ugly, and run-down. Though she was just across the river from us—she was a world away from Louisville society, our tree-lined streets and Victorian mansions, my parties and Mother’s afternoon teas.
I was the pretty Fay, and who was I without the good Fay? Rose had told me so many times I should be good, but what if all I needed was to be pretty? I could use my looks to help Mother, to help myself. If Adelaide Cummings had married a multimillionaire from Chicago—why couldn’t I?
I knew what I had to do. I knew how I would fix everything.
Jordan 1918
THE TRAIN RIDE TO CHARLESTON felt long, and I chewed my fingernails down to the quick. Daisy would chastise me, if she could see my stubby, nearly nail-less fingers now. But she wouldn’t see them for at least a week. In fact, maybe they’d grow back enough that she’d never even know.
The whole entire train ride, I kept on thinking about what had happened to Rose and Mr. Fay on a train, and maybe that’s why the ride felt so long. My stomach turned, considering how Daddy would feel if I returned to him a mangle of body parts in a box, not a golf champion.
And then that was the other thing that kept me biting—golf.
Daddy had paid to get me this spot in a women’s golf tournament in Charleston. If I played well, then I might be invited to join the newly established women’s amateur tour. But what if I really wasn’t good enough? Daddy swore I was, that this money (how much money, he wouldn’t tell me) was the best money he’d ever spent. I was just seventeen, but golf was the only thing I truly loved. The only thing I wanted. What if it didn’t want me in return?
It was hard to think all these thoughts on the long lonely ride, and as I chewed on my thumbnail I wished Daddy were sitting next to me to ease my nerves, or give me a stern warning to calm myself down. He was supposed to be here. But his sciatica started acting up this past week and I’d left him back in Louisville, in bed.
I can’t go without you, Daddy! I’d insisted yesterday.
To which Daddy had said, “Jordan Baker, I am ordering you, as your father, get on that train.” Then he added. “And bring home a trophy.”
Well, that shouldn’t be hard at all, should it?
“Try not to worry,” Daisy had said to me earlier this morning, as we walked toward the station together. She’d helped me carry my bags. “I’ll look after your daddy while you’re gone, Jordie.”