It was George Wilson who shot him, of course, and Tom at the bottom of it, though I didn’t know it for some while. It was Tom who told him who must have been driving the car that night, Tom who directed him to Gatsby’s home where the smashed-up Rolls was all the proof Wilson needed.
I wanted to make Tom a lowering presence, the hand holding the gun that was Wilson, but I couldn’t give him that much. Tom was only shoveling the blame away from himself, and the scales tipped over, this time against Gatsby and all of his promise and all of his potential.
George Wilson came to the mansion in East Egg, and the iron gates did not stop him, and the paths of the gardens did not confuse him. He found Gatsby in the pool where I had once watched people turn into gorgeous ornamental carp as they slipped into the water, and as the newspaper said the next morning, he shot Gatsby twice in the head before moving off to shoot himself behind the boxwood bushes.
Before I knew all of that, I saw the gleeful headline that the Manchester Act had passed, sitting alone at the breakfast table because Aunt Justine was sleeping almost fifteen hours out of every twenty-four. I ate my toast, I read the article carefully, and then I called Nick.
“I want to see you,” I said immediately, and I heard him go still on the other end of the line.
“I’m at work,” he said, the most Middle Western of excuses, and I decided to forgive it.
“I was thinking of doing some traveling,” I said, my voice falsely gay. “I was thinking, oh, wouldn’t it be fine to go somewhere now that the weather’s not so horrid?”
“Traveling?”
“Yes,” I said eagerly. “Montreal or Buenos Aires, or maybe even Paris … or Shanghai. You could show me around Paris, couldn’t you, darling?”
“Great God, Jordan!” Nick exclaimed and my cheeks went hot red.
I imagined both of us touching the broken edges of our relationship, trying to decide what could be mended and what might need to be jettisoned entire.
“You know, you weren’t so very nice to me last night,” I said finally.
Nick snorted.
“Because that’s what the world is about. People being nice to you.”
I gritted my teeth until I thought they would crack. He was obviously new at this sort of thing, because otherwise he would have hung up on that.
“It’s better than a world where they’re cruel and you stay anyway,” I said. “Keeping the line open for him, are you?”
I hung up, and because it was all rather too much, I went back to bed.
Two eyes, T. J. Eckleburg had told me, and in my shallow dreams, they opened and shut for me.
I had a busy week. Aunt Justine had another setback, and ridiculously enough, I had a match in Hempstead, where I performed abysmally. Nan Harper came back from Greece, and I had to break up with her, and then Aunt Justine wanted to speak to me about Shanghai.
“It’ll be an adventure for you,” she said from the bed at Bellevue, and I scowled.
“I don’t care for the idea of running away.”
“My dear one, you are rich. You don’t run away. You go on retreat. You holiday. You take the waters, and when things are better, you return if you wish to do so.”
When she tired, which never took long, I kissed her on the cheek to say goodbye and returned to the Park Avenue apartment to pick up Daisy’s car.
The drive out to East Egg had never taken longer. I held my breath passing the ash yard, and I noticed that T. J. Eckleburg’s billboard was worn quite away, great flaps of paper hanging almost down to the ground like broken wings.
As I drove east, I could tell that summer’s back was broken. That terrible day at the Plaza snapped to yield autumn, and though there was no hint of gold or crimson in the leaves, the air seemed clearer and colder, the sky hinting towards gray and the white that would come after.
I couldn’t see Gatsby’s mansion from the road of course, but it was too easy to imagine it as I passed West Egg. Would it be worse to find it pristine as if nothing had happened or to see it falling down into a ruin? I couldn’t say for sure, and I debated it with myself all the way to Daisy’s door.
I found the house in a turmoil of servants and groundsmen, people in uniform rustling back and forth with tarps and with boxes and crates large enough to ship me all the way over the sea. Most of the furniture had been covered up with white sheets, and instead of looking ghostly, it gave everything a strange air of anticipation, as if the whole place was just waiting for some lucky new owner to whip it all back in delight at her good fortune.
I finally found Daisy seated on the wicker swing on the veranda, where, to my surprise, she was dandling Pammy in her arms. The tiny girl looked exalted to be so close to Daisy, a terrified look on her face as if she was afraid she might ruin it. Behind them both was Pammy’s nurse, watching warily, eyes flickering from her charge to Daisy and back again.
“I’ve brought your car back,” I said by way of greeting.
“Oh, have you? Thanks so, darling.”
She handed Pammy to her relieved nurse, and when the two of them were gone, Daisy nodded after them.
“They tied me down so tight to deliver her,” she said flatly. “I didn’t know why my wrists and legs were so bruised until I started having the dreams.”
I dropped the keys onto the small table that held an untouched glass of lemonade and a small enamel box for pills.
“You told me that before,” I said. “Daisy, what happened?”
She looked at me so blankly that for a moment, I thought that she must be drugged. There was a perfect lack of understanding on her face as if she needed to sort out the events from the previous week from what she had had for breakfast, what parties she had been to, and whether the gardener had taken care of the roses.
Daisy shook her head, standing to walk down the stairs to the lawn.
“Oh Jordan, don’t bother me with that, not today when I have such a headache.”
I followed her down the steps, feeling an unaccustomed anger rise up in me. Above us, as if responding to my anger, the sky went a growling gray and the water reflected it back sullenly.
“I rather think we’ve been friends long enough that you can spare me some time even if your head does ache!” I said. “Daisy, what happened?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it? Of course it doesn’t, it’s all in the past, and Tom says—”
“You don’t care what Tom says, and I will know you for the worst kind of liar if you start saying you do now,” I said. “Tell me.”
She shook her head, not as if she wanted to say no to me, but more as if she was trying to clear the cobwebs that had fogged up her memories of that night. In front of us, the Sound rose up in delicate white foam blooms, the water choppier than it had been.
“Oh, darling, why are you being so cruel to me? It was an accident, of course it was an accident.”
“Yours,” I said, and she shook my hand off to stalk down towards the water.
“Of course mine,” she said, staring out over the water towards Gatsby’s mansion. Even from this distance, there was something hollow about it, something defeated and caved in. “It’s always mine, isn’t it?”
Two eyes, T. J. Eckleburg had said, and then it had seen no more. Daisy couldn’t do that kind of thing, but I had a feeling that Gatsby could have.
“What else?” I asked, and Daisy wrung her hands.
“Jordan, you must stop this at once, I cannot bear this kind of questioning, not now…”
I saw the tears in her eyes, real as they always were, but I didn’t care about them today. I clenched my fists, shuddering as a cold wind cut both of us from the east.
“Daisy,” I said sharply. “Stop looking at that damned haunted house, and talk to me.”
“Oh, why should I!” she said with a flash of temper, turning to look at me. “What does it matter now? Jay’s dead and gone, it’s over, why can’t you just let it be over?”
“It’s not over to me yet. Daisy, just tell me.”
She glared at me, and I cast around for more than just orders.
“No one’s going to believe anything I say even if I did say anything,” I said finally. “Aunt Justine’s probably sending me off to Shanghai to see the sights. Come on, Daisy.”
She turned from me, stumbling to sit on the lawn facing the mansion again, her thin legs cast like pick-up sticks in front of her. She shook her head, and then she nodded. The sky went a flat aluminum gray with sullen purple highlights, a warning of danger.
“She ran out so fast,” she said, her voice soft and dull. The sky rumbled thunder after her words. “She seemed certain we would stop. She shook the whole car when it hit her. I felt it all the way through my arms. The only reason I didn’t hit the steering wheel is because Jay threw his arm across and stopped me.”
“She flew,” I said, remembering what I had been told.
“Yes. Straight forward. In our headlights like a showgirl doing a tumble.”
I swallowed, stopping myself from stopping her. Why did I think I wanted to hear this? What in the world did I think would be improved?
“And then what happened?”
“Oh Jordan, you won’t like me if I keep going.”
I realized I didn’t like her now. Maybe I hadn’t for a while. The love might take a little longer to die out, but I could work on that. I waited. Daisy abhorred a silence.
“Jay.… did something. Made sure that no one saw. He stood up in the car, closed his eyes, and the world went quiet around us. It was frightening. I never saw him do anything like that before, never saw anyone do anything like that.”
I thought then that it must have been his infernal powers coming into play. Later, when I learned about his half-Chippewa mother, and when I learned that her other half was Black and not white, I came to a different conclusion. The native nations had taken in plenty of escaped slaves after the Civil War, and the old spells to help the hunters helped them now even when they were the hunted. Two eyes, closed.
“And you, Daisy?”
“Oh Jordan, she was right in the road in front of us. Jay was chanting, and doing that crazy stuff, and I knew…”
“You knew, Daisy…”
She shook her head, and the wind caught at the trees, making them sway back and forth like an overly dramatic Greek chorus.
“What was I supposed to do, Jordan? We couldn’t drive around her! So I pulled her off the road, that’s all.”
She must have flown like a bird, I heard in my head. Something deep and dark yawned open in me; I was sick.
“Daisy…”
“She was making the most terrible noises,” Daisy said, shaking her head so that her hair fluffed out like a chick’s feathers. “She was saying something, or at least, she was trying to say something. Jordan, she sounded like she was trying to curse me, and the blood…”
My heart was beating too fast, I had broken into a cold sweat. She flew. She landed. She cried out. She cursed. When had she died? I knew now it wasn’t on the road.
“Her mouth was moving, open and shut, open and shut … it was frightful,” Daisy said, covering her face. “I still see it sometimes when I close my eyes.”
“Good!” I exploded. “Good! I’m glad!”
She was on her feet, slapping me hard on the face just as a crack of lightning struck off the headland. We stared at each other, in shock, and as the sky opened up to drop a torrent of cold autumn rain on our heads, I reached up to touch the ringing flesh. It felt oddly good, real in a way that nothing had been since we’d gone to the city for the day.
“Oh darling, I’m so sorry,” she said, her fingers brushing over mine as she touched my cheek. The rain slicked her hair straight to her head, dripped off the delicate point of her chin. “I’m so sorry. This has been terrible for you, hasn’t it?”
It had, and for a moment, I swayed towards her.
“Come with us,” she said, her voice warm in spite of the rain. “Come with us. Why go to dirty old Shanghai when you can come to Barcelona with me and Tom? Barcelona’s a delight, and we can come back in October, just in time for the best part of fall, won’t that be grand?”
I jerked back from her soft touch, my heart pounding, because there had been a chance, not a large one, maybe, but one nonetheless, where I might have gone with her, if only she hadn’t forgotten that I might not get to come back.
“Stop,” I choked. “Stop, stop, I’m not in love with you, you can’t treat me like this.”
She looked at me stunned.
“Of course you are,” she said, and the thread between us snapped, stinging me hard as I stared at her. The rain flowing down my face suddenly felt warmer, almost like blood.
Of course I am, I thought, but I wasn’t Jay Gatsby. Love wasn’t enough for me, and Daisy had proved it would never be enough for her.
I turned on my heel and ran for the house.
She called my name twice, faltering, and then she stopped.
I walked through the house, trailing water over the parquet floors, out the front door, and then I kept walking. I had picked wretched shoes for this, dark forest green suede to match my green dress, so I took them off and let them swing from my hooked fingers.
I sloshed through the soft grass by the side of the road, and every time a car came up from behind me, I thought it might be Daisy sending for me, or even Daisy herself in her blue roadster.
If she stops me before I make it to the main road, I might forgive her, I thought, and it horrified me.
She didn’t, however, and instead the car that stopped for me came from the opposite direction.
It was Nick, dressed in a good suit I hadn’t seen before, his eyes red and hollow.
“Oh it’s you,” I said as he pulled up in front of me.
“Come on,” Nick said, and when I got a stubborn look on my face, “please. Please, Jordan.”
He opened the door for me, and we drove back to West Egg as I slipped my shoes back on.