In August, he made it home from the war, and he wrote her, begging her to leave the tour, come home, and marry him. “Do you think I should, Jordan?” she asked me one night, as we lay in the dark in our bunk beds. I slept on the bottom, she was above me, and her question came to me as I was halfway to sleep, a disembodied voice.
“Leave the tour?” I repeated. I was surprised by her question, because in the past few months we hadn’t really become friends. We didn’t give each other advice or ask each other personal questions. I’d never mentioned to her my own ache of homesickness, my own thoughts about leaving. I thought about what Daddy had written me. It would be a shame to squander this opportunity. And I knew I should tell her that, but instead my voice caught in my throat and I didn’t say anything for a moment. “Are you happy here, Lena?” I finally asked instead.
“Not really,” Lena admitted. “Are you, Jordan?” Her voice was soft and ethereal, floating above me.
“No,” I whispered into the darkness. It was the most honest thing I’d said to her in three whole months.
I heard her sigh a little, and I thought she was about to say something else, but then, a few moments passed, and I heard the soft whistle of her snore. It was a strangely familiar sound now, so much so that it almost brought me comfort. Part of the predictable rhythm of my life here in Charleston.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up and Lena was gone.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was. I wandered around our tiny room out of sorts, in a daze, looking for her. But her half of the closet was empty and her suitcase was missing too. She’d made her bed and left me a note on top that simply said: Jordan, Danny makes me happy. Birdie for me. Kisses, Lena.
I brought her note with me to breakfast, and though I supposed it was meant to be private, after I finished eating half a grapefruit, I handed it off to Mrs. Pearce like a slip of evidence. Better to let her read the note than to have to try and explain any part I might have had in this by daring to ask Lena if she was happy. “Lena’s gone,” I simply told Mrs. Pearce matter-of-factly, as I pressed the paper into her hand.
“Gone?” Mrs. Pearce pulled her glasses down the bridge of her nose, read the note herself. “Danny?” she said, frowning.
“Her fellow. Just got back from the war.” It occurred to me as I spoke that I no longer had a roommate. But now I wasn’t sure whether it was reassuring that I would be without Lena’s nightly snores, or not.
Mrs. Pearce’s face turned red, and she frowned deeply. “I’ll need to speak to Mr. Hennessey about this. Not a word to the other girls, Jordan.” I nodded. But for some reason she decided I wasn’t taking her seriously. “I mean it.”
What was she so afraid of? Most of the girls had fellows back home. Did she think they—we—were all so tired and sore and unhappy here that we’d follow Lena’s lead and run back home, too? That the whole women’s tour might fall apart, just like that, if they knew how and why Lena had left us? “Jordan,” she said my name again, sharply.
“I know,” I said. “I won’t say anything. I promise.”
She narrowed her eyes and stared at me for another minute before she said, “Go get your clubs and join the others on the driving range. You don’t want to be late to practice.”
* * *
I HIT THE balls, harder, faster. My arms ached as they sliced balls through the air one after another, after another. I thought about Lena, halfway to Tallahassee on the train right now, and I imagined the weightlessness she must feel watching the sky roll by, Danny waiting for her on the other side of the line. I sliced the balls. Harder and harder. I was so used to my arms being sore by now that I barely even registered the pain. But today I hit hard enough that I did. My arms groaned, but I kept on hitting balls.
“Jordan, where’s Lena?” Jerralyn Westport piped up with the question, interrupting my driving. She was a tiny raven-haired wisp of a thing who looked like she wouldn’t have an ounce of power, but really, she had a mighty swing that seemed to come out of nowhere. I stopped hitting balls, and I was breathing hard, sweating. I wiped my brow with my forearm and hesitated for a moment, thinking about Mrs. Pearce commanding me to stay quiet. But what if I did tell Jerralyn the truth? What if all the women left and ran back home to their fellows and the tour was over due to lack of participants? That pit of longing, of homesickness, that grew and grew in my stomach each day could shrink again. No one could blame me for going back to Louisville if there was no tour at all.
I rested my club back in my bag and turned to face Jerralyn. She had her arms crossed in front of her chest and she frowned at me, like whatever had happened was all my fault. Like I’d done something to Lena. “She left to go home and be with Danny,” I said. Then I quickly added, “But you didn’t hear it from me. Mrs. Pearce made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
Jerralyn rolled her eyes, and I wasn’t sure whether she was reacting to Mrs. Pearce or what Lena had done. Jerralyn was from Santa Barbara and she always acted like being from California made her better than the rest of us, more worldly or something like that. “Lena wasn’t even that good,” Jerralyn finally said, surprising me.
“That’s not fair,” I said. Because actually Lena was very good. She’d come in second in our practice round robin in Savannah last month. And now that she was gone, and I’d probably never see her again, I felt oddly protective of this girl I didn’t like all that much simply because she’d snored above me for three whole months.
“Women don’t always get a chance like this, Jordan. You know that. You’d have to be a simp to give it up. Lena is an honest-to-god simp.”
I nodded finally, so Jerralyn would leave me alone and I could go back to driving balls. But it made me wonder what she’d say about me, what they’d all say about me, if I ever just up and left one morning too.
* * *
THREE DAYS LATER, I woke up before the breakfast bell to the sound of someone knocking on my door. The rhythm of the day had been broken before it had even begun, and I got out of my bed, disoriented. Maybe Jerralyn had told Mrs. Pearce what I’d said, and now she was here to yell at me, away from the others. Or maybe Lena had changed her mind, come back. I swallowed hard, before I opened the door.
“Oh my! They didn’t tell me I was rooming with the Jordan Baker from Louisville.” I blinked for a moment before I realized who was standing there speaking to me: Mary Margaret. She appeared bright eyed and wide awake, even though it was not quite light outside yet. Her acorn hair cascaded down in front of her shoulders, and she reached up and tossed it behind her before stretching out her arms to grab me in a fierce hug.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. I barely knew Mary Margaret, but I felt this flood of relief course through my body at the sight of her, almost as good as if I’d opened the door and Daddy or Daisy had been standing there. Almost.