“Love?” His voice rose in surprise, and then he let out a boisterous bellowing laugh. “Well, that’s a very good development indeed.”
I frowned; his excitement turned my stomach. A good development? “He punched her in the nose a few weeks ago. But she still believes he’s going to take her out west. Her husband is getting suspicious now and god only knows what he’ll do to her if he finds out she’s been with Tom. I really need your help to get Myrtle away from both of them. You said once you’d help her. And now you’ve gone and made things worse. You owe me.”
Jay opened his mouth, then closed it again. He broke into an almost diabolical grin. “Take her out west, you say? Well, I like the sound of that.”
I took a step back, away from him, shook my head. “He’s a horrible man. I’ll never let him take my sister away.” My voice trembled as I spoke, because I realized even as I said the words that they weren’t true. I hadn’t been able to stop George from hurting her in all these years, and I couldn’t stop Tom from doing whatever he pleased either.
“Jay,” I tried again. “If I ever meant anything to you… please. I’m begging you, you have to help Myrtle.”
Jay cocked his head to the side, and I could see the green of his eyes catching a hint of summer sunlight. They sparkled, emeralds, like the grass of the lawn behind him. “The thing is, Cath,” he said, matter-of-factly, coldly, “you never really did mean anything to me.”
Jordan August 1922
WEST EGG
AFTER I DROPPED DAISY AT Jay’s house, I drove around west Egg for a while. There was a golf course a few miles down the road, and the car eventually took me there without me really thinking about it. It was a piping hot Saturday, but a summer Saturday nonetheless, and the course was swarming with men in pink pants and white golf polos. I parked my car and walked down as far as I could to the course without actually stepping on it. And then I just stared at those men, feeling something swell in my chest that I hadn’t felt for so long: desire. Not for another person at all, but for a game. Oh, sweet, beautiful golf! I missed the way my arms felt when they were slicing balls through the air, the way my mind felt when I was calculating the distance to the hole, the precise amount of spin to add to my swing. I missed the smell of the green, the solid feel of the trim grass beneath my feet.
“Looking for your husband, miss?” A man’s voice broke into my thoughts. I turned and an unfamiliar man stood behind me, his clubs strapped to his back. “Are you looking for your husband, out on the course?”
I frowned. Of course he would think the only thing I might be doing here, watching, would be looking for my husband. I had half a mind to take his nine iron from his bag and beat him silly with it. “I’m just a fan of the game,” I huffed. “Just watching, that’s all.”
“Lady,” he said, laughing at me as he shook his head, “this is a private club. Get out of here.”
Before I could think of an appropriate insult to say back to him (and later, I would think of several), he walked off. He disappeared onto the course and blended in with all the others. They were terrible golfers—I could see from here. Money might’ve offered them access to the nouveau riche club of West Egg, but it certainly didn’t buy them any talent. That thought raged endlessly in my head, sounding stupidly snobbish like Tom. Tom. Daisy. I’d forgotten about Daisy!
Nearly two hours had passed since I’d left her, and I sped the whole way back to Jay’s. But when I hurtled down his drive, I caught no sight of her at all. Jay was standing outside on his porch, all alone, shoeless, looking downtrodden and forlorn.
“Where is she?” I asked, upon pulling the brake and hopping out.
He shrugged. And he looked so out of sorts that I had this terrible feeling that something had happened to her.
“What did you do to her, Jay?”
His eyes shot cool, green daggers at me before he sat down on the stoop, put his head in his hands, and sighed heavily. “She’s fine, Jordan. She left a while ago. I suppose she went to Nick’s.”
I took a deep breath and I could still feel the sharp, cool smell of newly cut grass from the course lingering in my nose. “All right. Well, I did what you asked.” I swallowed hard, pushing back the guilt I felt about having left Daisy here earlier and then forgotten her, too. “I brought Daisy here today. And you promised you’d help me, with golf.”
He ran his hands through his hair, agitated, messing it up, making him look a little wild. I pictured him again as that soldier the first night I met him, sweeping into a summer party in Louisville and whisking Daisy away, holding her too desperately close, a possession. “No, no, you have to help me get Daisy back first,” he said now, sounding petulant, like a child.
It occurred to me that we were playing this dangerous game, Jay and I, and neither one of us was likely to win in any way we found satisfying. Jay would never have Daisy. I could pretend to help him, set up more meetings, but I’d sabotage them all the same. Wasn’t that what I’d done today by letting Tom know of this little endeavor? And the more we went round and round in this precarious circle, the more I’d want golf, and the further it would be from my reach. That thought made me so angry, I could barely breathe.
“Did you know Tom has another woman on the side?” Jay was saying now.
“Of course.” I sighed, exhaling and letting the anger out. “Everyone knows that, Jay. Daisy even knows that.”
“Yes, but did you know she wants to run away with him? Wants him to take her out west?”
A laugh bubbled up from deep inside my chest. But it came out sounding more like a dying bird. This woman who’d taunted Daisy all summer with her endless telephone calls thought she could get Tom to take her out west just like that. Then I had a more sobering thought: Could she?
“Tom needs to leave with Myrtle,” Jay was saying. “That will fix everything.”
Myrtle? It felt funny to know she had a name, that she was a real, living breathing woman who desired something unattainable too. Just like the rest of us. Golf. Daisy. Tom and the west.
“You’ll convince Tom to take her far away, Jordan. California,” he added.
“Me?” Now I did laugh. “How am I supposed to convince Tom?” Tom didn’t even listen to me about the simplest things, like what we should eat for supper. Tom only tolerated my presence because Daisy made him. And even that, it always felt like I was some sort of penance for him.
“Easy. I want you to tell him Daisy is in love with me. Convince him Daisy wants him to go, that she wants to erase the last three years with him. That his only chance at happiness is going west with Myrtle.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. For one thing, Tom wouldn’t listen to me, and for another, it would break Daisy’s heart. I stared at the tops of my white shoes. They’d gotten a bit muddy at the edge of the golf course, and I swiped at them with my hands now, crumbling brown streaks of dirt across Jay’s beautiful, clean white porch.
“You can, and you will.” His voice was dark, quiet, serious.