OUR HOUSE IN EAST EGG was lavishly grand, a four-story redbrick Georgian colonial. It felt excessively large, the same way the chateau in Cannes and the mansion in Lake Forest had. And I supposed wherever it was we Buchanans moved, an embarrassingly opulent house awaited us.
Like Cannes, in East Egg our yard backed straight up to the water. Only here, instead of the Mediterranean, it was the Long Island Sound. And instead of warm blue water and blue horizon as far as my eye could see, it was cool, gray-blue water that stretched only as far as the tip of West Egg on the other side. There, across the sound, I could see the small speck of dock, meandering out from a West Egg mansion. Sometimes, when we first moved in at the end of March, before I knew who lived there, I would sit out underneath the green light on our own dock and wonder. Was there a family in that house, just across the sound? It was always lit up and bustling and alive.
West Egg, Tom droned on over supper one night, was for the nouveau riche. The real wealth, he told me, arrogantly, was in East Egg.
And still, I wondered who lived there. If there was a family across the sound from me, were they happy? Did they love each other? Perhaps new money felt a little less like a weight upon the woman’s chest than old money. Of course, this was a silly line of thinking. The weight in my chest wasn’t from money at all, new or old. The weight was Tom. After that little spree of his in Chicago, I could barely even look him in the eyes without remembering the plump childlike glow of Rebecca Buckley’s face that night in his stables.
He’d brought his goddamned ponies to East Egg, too. We, of course, had a stable on our property, about a quarter of a mile down the road from the main house. But I never walked far enough in that direction myself to visit it.
You promised, I reminded him, the week after we moved in, when he first put on his riding gear, to go out to the stable and unload the ponies or whatever it was he did with them upon each one of our moves. You promised. This is a permanent move, Tom. I need a real home. Pammy needs a real home!
He kissed me on the top of my head. His kiss was chaste, his lips cool. It was already clear to both of us, perhaps, that his impropriety would find a new way to rear its ugly head no matter where we went, no matter what city we lived in. No matter how grand our house was. It was only a matter of time.
And yet, still somewhere deep inside of me, I believed, however foolish it was, if I demanded that this would be our permanent home, and not just for me but for our daughter, Tom might actually have it in him to behave himself.
* * *
TWO AND A half months after we moved in, a car sputtered in wildly through our gates before spinning to a stop at the top of the drive. It was midafternoon, two weeks before the longest day of the year, and I watched through the parlor window, feeling a sudden rush of joy at the sight of that swerving, reckless car. My Jordie was here! No one else we knew would dare drive that haphazardly.
I told her as much when she walked in the door, carrying a suitcase.
“Oh, Daise,” she admonished, before putting her suitcase down and kissing me on both cheeks. “It takes two to make an accident. And I was the only one driving up the drive.”
It was so good to see her again, I laughed, grabbed her tightly, held on to her. She felt skinnier than she used to, too thin. And when I pulled back and took a good look at her, I noticed the lines of her face looked a little different too. Her cheeks were hollower; there was a sadness about her now that she hadn’t had as a girl in Louisville or even when I’d seen her last in Cannes. But she still looked beautiful nonetheless, draped in a white gauzy dress nearly identical to mine. Just this morning the Times had proclaimed white the “smartest summer color,” and here Jordie and I were, still fashionable, even after everything life had thrown at us.
I pointed to the suitcase resting on the white marble floor. “I hope this means you’re staying for a while, Jordie?”
I’d telephoned her at her aunt Sigourney’s upon our arrival in East Egg and had invited her to come stay with us for the whole summer. For as long she liked, really. She said she’d think about it. But after she’d spent most of the last year ignoring my letters, I hadn’t been sure what to expect, or whether she would show up in East Egg at all. Now that she was here, I didn’t know if I could stand to lose her again.
“We’ll see,” she murmured after a few moments, considering it. Then she added, her words tumbling out in rush, “I’ve just come from a match and I lost and I’m famished. What do you have to eat?”
“Whatever you want,” I said. And wasn’t that the truth about my life as a Buchanan? All the excess. Whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it, more than I could ever want or need. And as a young girl back in Louisville I couldn’t have ever dreamed that I would have all this and still somehow feel vastly empty.
“Oh, Daise,” Jordan interrupted my thoughts and gave me another quick hug. “It’s so good to see you again.”
I felt the same, and I suddenly wondered if Jordie was that something else. East Egg would be our permanent home, and if I could get Jordie to stay, too, maybe I would remember how to feel happy again. I hugged her again. “Come on into the dining room. I’ll have the chef fix you something.”
* * *
AN HOUR, AND two ham sandwiches later, Jordan and I stretched out on the parlor couch together. Jordan sipped a gin and tonic and put one hand across her stomach and sighed. I reached for her other hand and squeezed it and leaned back and closed my eyes. The French doors were open, and the wind blew in off the sound, bringing in a warm, sticky, restless breeze, swirling the white gauzy bottoms of our dresses up, like fans.
It was a moment, just one simple moment when I suddenly felt at peace. Jordan and I, we could lie like this, forever and forever, holding hands and feeling the warm breeze on our faces.
Then I heard the telephone ringing in the distance, interrupting my fantasy. I sighed and let go of Jordan. “Can’t your butler answer that?” she intoned sleepily.
I shook my head. “It’s probably Mother.” It had been a few days since she’d called and the snow goose loved to check in at the most inopportune times.
I rose and answered the telephone still feeling warm: “Buchanan residence,” my voice tumbled out lazily.
I heard breathing on the other end of the line.
“Hello,” I said more sharply. “Anyone there?” I heard the abrupt click, but I still said hello one more time into the dead space. Then I pulled the phone away from my ear, held it in my hand for a second, and just stared at it. “Dammit,” I said softly.
“Daise, my goodness. You sound like a sailor.” Jordan laughed. She’d drunk down her gin, and her eyes were still closed. “Who was on the line?”
“Wrong number,” I said, and I went back and sat down next to her.