“I actually know a man out in West Egg.” I kept my voice light, nonchalant. “Jay Gatsby, you know him?”
Nick’s brown irises swam around, his pupils already glassy. “I do. He’s my next-door neighbor,” he slurred. Then he laughed a little and spit out a more sober sentence: “I mean, if anyone really knows Gatsby.”
I did. There were so many things I could tell Nick right now about Jay: the way the skin on his stomach felt soft against my fingers, like a baby’s, or the way he kissed me hungrily, like he was always searching for something I could never give him. Or perhaps, most notably, that he had an unhealthy fixation on Tom Buchanan’s wife. But with that thought, I bit my lip.
“You’ve been out to one of his parties?” Nick was saying now.
Parties? That’s what Jay was doing this summer now in West Egg, throwing parties?
“Sure,” I lied, not wanting Nick to ask any other questions about how I knew Jay.
Myrtle had finished kissing Tom, and she suddenly stumbled across the room and plopped drunkenly on my lap. She told Nick the same story she’d told me, about meeting Tom on the train. But she left out the part about anyone sending her there. She had rewritten it all in her mind, a truly, lovely romance, bounded by fate and destiny.
“Daisy’s Catholic, and she doesn’t want to give him a divorce,” Myrtle was saying to Nick now, her words stringing together in one drunken loop. “But she will and then we’ll go out west for a while until everything settles down.”
Out west? That was news to me, and it sank in my stomach, a cold, hard lump.
Myrtle and Nick were still talking, but I looked around the room. Voices rose and fell, drunken and strung together and tangled with laughter. I had the strangest, dizzying feeling that the entire room was upside down, swirling and drunk and smoky. I was the only one sitting still, right side up, the only one sober. The only one who would remember any of this tomorrow.
Myrtle kissed my cheek and then sashayed across the room to talk to Tom. She said something to him, and his face instantly reddened. “I don’t want you to say her name,” Tom yelled, his voice cutting above the din.
“I’ll say it if I want to,” Myrtle yelled back, drunkenly obstinate. “Daisy,” she shouted loud enough now that the rest of the room stopped talking. It got so quiet I could practically hear the rage simmering up inside of Tom. It was red hot on his face, and he arched his hulking shoulders, standing like a linebacker. “Daisy, Daisy, Daisy!” Myrtle shouted in his face.
What happened next came so fast that the motions were blurry through the haze of smoke. Suddenly Myrtle’s nose was gushing blood, and Tom stood there, his hand covered in it. And that’s when I realized he’d punched her in the face. He’d punched her in the face. He’d broken her nose.
This arrogant, rich, swine of a man had just broken my sister’s nose.
The room continued to be still, and the whiskey had made everyone slow, but me. I jumped up and ran to Myrtle, tilting her head back. “Jesus, what have you done?” I shouted at Tom.
“I didn’t… I didn’t… mean to…” Tom stuttered, staring at Myrtle’s blood all over his fingers, seemingly in disbelief that he had made her bleed. “Myrtle.” He reached out for her with his clean hand, but I slapped his hand away. She was sobbing now, and I pulled her to my chest, shushing her, rubbing her back, and trying to keep her head tilted back.
“Get me a towel,” I said to Tom. He didn’t move. No one did. “Get me a goddamned towel, Tom!”
That seemed to wake him up, finally, and he ran into the bathroom. I grabbed a copy of Town Tattle to catch the blood in the meanwhile, until Tom returned a few moments later with a small stack of towels. “Now get out,” I said to him. He shook his head and didn’t move. “Everyone out!” I shouted.
Nick and the neighbor couple listened and filed out, but Tom stood there, staring, as I lifted Myrtle’s head back again, told her to squeeze the bridge of her nose to try and stop the bleeding, and held a towel against her lips to catch the blood. “Tom,” I said, firmly. “You, too. Get out.”
I placed the towel in Myrtle’s hand, told her to hold it there. I glared at Tom, until he finally looked away, walked to the door. I followed behind him. “Tell her I’m sorry,” he said, somewhat contritely. I shook my head. “You know I didn’t mean to hurt you, Myrtle,” he called out over me, but it was hard to hear much but the sound of Myrtle’s continued cries now.
“I want you to leave my sister alone,” I told him firmly. “You have a wife. Go home to East Egg to her.” He shook his head. “I mean it,” I said firmly. “Leave Myrtle alone.”
“Or what?” He snickered a little, his voice thick with whiskey and condescension.
I leaned in closer, lowered my voice. “If you hurt my sister again, I don’t care who you are, Tom Buchanan. I’ll kill you.” I meant it. I really and truly did. But maybe it was hard to tell because my voice came out so shaky.
Tom’s mouth bent into a half smile, like I amused him. My hands shook with anger. But then he finally spun on his heel and left.
The apartment was totally quiet now, except for the soft sound of Myrtle’s continued sobs. I went back to the couch, and held her, rocking her back and forth.
“What’ll I tell George?” she whispered to me, once the bleeding had finally stopped. Her nose was already a peculiar shade of purple, her upper lip crusted with blood. Her eyes were wide, frightened.
She was afraid to tell her husband, who had hurt her for so long, that another man had done the same. Oh, Myrtle. Tom wasn’t ever going to save her from George. Tom was George, only with more money, more arrogance.
“You’re going to tell George that you walked into a pole on Fifth Avenue. I’ll come back with you. I’ll tell him myself. We can say it was my fault. I was drunk and I wasn’t watching, and I tripped, and… and… you saved me.”
Myrtle nodded slowly, squeezed my hand. “Thanks, Cath,” she whispered.
“You shouldn’t see him anymore, Myrt,” I said. “Tom’s no good for you.”
“But I love him,” she cried out. “And he’s going to leave Daisy and we’ll go together out west and we’ll be so happy.” The fantasy cracked in her voice as she repeated it now, and maybe, no matter how much she claimed to believe it, deep down she, too, knew it was broken, haphazard, unlikely. “Everything will be different soon,” she said, unconvincingly. “You’ll see, Cath.”
I stared at Myrtle’s purple swollen nose, and I shook my head. All I could think was that Jay was to blame. He’d brought Tom into her life. He had done it for his own selfish, stupid reasons, and now Myrtle sat before me bruised and bleeding. Anger boiled up inside of me. A fast-brewing, uncontrollable sort of rage. This was all Jay’s fault.
Daisy July 1922
WEST EGG