The day after meeting Jay at Nick’s, a drenching, cleansing downpour cooled off the earth and sent the Sound into a tempest. It was exhilarating, and part of me wished I had the courage to venture out.
But I didn’t. I saw the rain as a directive not to go sailing with Jay, to be careful, which was probably for the best. I didn’t even send a note of regret, figuring he’d see the weather and understand.
Still, I could think of little else but him. A calmness descended over me with this glorious secret: I’d found Jay again. Eventually, I pieced together the how and why of it.
Jordan had been to one of Jay’s parties, it turned out. He already knew of her connection to me—he had met her once during our Louisville days. She’d told him my cousin lived next door. He had asked her if she could set up a tea for us at Nick’s, something for “two old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time.”
But Jordan had known it was more than that. She had seen it in his eyes, in the little trembling in his voice, she said. She had figured out that he’d even moved to West Egg, across from us, precisely so this reunion could eventually come to pass.
So she’d happily talked to Nick about setting up the tea.
Jay occupied all my thoughts after that tea. I had even begged off dinner that night, claiming another headache. In my sitting room alone, I dined on some cold ham and salad, staring out at the water, watching the light bid the day farewell. On my face, a gentle smile appeared, one I couldn’t discard.
All these years later. He’d not only remembered me, but longed for me. Even through the war, he had kept a picture of me, he said, in his breast pocket and always looked at it before “going over the top.”
Yesterday, he’d pulled out the photograph, an awful thing of me standing rigid and staring at the camera. To this day, he still had it. A tear came to my eye.
Just at a time in my life when I needed to believe in that kind of love, in love at all, he arrived.
He had personally arranged the flowers, the linens, the food, for our little tea. He didn’t need to tell me all the details, but he’d extravagantly poured them out. Now I tried hard to remember the precise rose and gold pattern on the cups because it seemed so precious, so tender that he had wanted so earnestly to impress me.
I’d not realized then how assiduously I had been playing a role—that of the sophisticated modern woman—because that’s what women did then, after the war, after the plague of the Spanish flu, after death and loss incomprehensible. We all acted on a stage, a comedy with tragic overtones where the jester garners all your sympathy right before his death scene.
I’d been part of that play, trying so hard to grab from the spotlight a sense of life again, of hope, of striving for something better. For meaning.
That’s what wanted. Meaning. A reason to be happy and not hurt anymore. I’d not realized how hurt I’d felt, seeing the world I knew disappearing, and seeing the man I married regularly taunting me with words and actions. I covered my pain with a stilted sophistication, as if I was too important to experience sorrow.
I absolutely ached with it, and Jay was like a balm.
Confused, torn between wanting nothing to change and wanting to step into the unknown of this new possibility, I spent the afternoon on the nursery floor, throwing a ball back and forth with Pamela, helping her dress up in my discarded gowns and jewelry, rocking her to sleep for her nap.
Oh, I know I had told Nick I hoped she’d be a little fool, but that was another story meant to startle and then charm, and, as with all stories, it was based on both truth and lies.
The truth was I adored my little girl, and I would do everything in my power to make sure she was no fool, even though I knew the world preferred foolish-seeming women, pliable and empty-headed.
After she was born, Tom had difficulty being with me. My new role as mother must have changed his view of the woman he’d married, and though I regained my svelte figure within several short months, I could tell his attraction to me had waned considerably, and he often had to be drunk to consider lovemaking—with me, that was. He found no such hesitation with other women.
Instead, he treated me either as a fragile goddess he shouldn’t provoke or, when liquor peeled off his inhibitions, a woman to punish with a quick and rough bedding.
Although I preferred to keep myself in the former category with Tom, I now wondered, especially after Jordan’s urging in this regard, if I could cross the lines that Tom had so easily stepped over, finding warmth and affection elsewhere.
After Pamela’s birth, the doctors told me I likely would be unable to bear any more children, so I sometimes wondered if this also accounted for Tom’s reticence, knowing he wouldn’t be producing any more progeny with me. I dreaded the possibility that he’d foist an unwanted secret son on me some day, born of a mistress I didn’t want to know about.
After Pammy fell asleep, the skies calmed, and I pulled on a sweater and walked to the promontory, looking across the Sound to Jay’s dock. The boat wasn’t there. So he’d gone out despite the rain. With a sigh, I realized I wish I had met him after all. How exciting it would have been for the two of us to battle a storm while sailing his cutter.
Now I’d have to devise a pretext to see him, or hope for an invitation.
I stayed awhile, waiting to see him and his boat return, and at length, I could make out the fine tall shape of his masts and knew he was all right and headed for home. I left before he could see me watching, hurrying around the path and eventually up the walkway to see Tom standing in the door, a note in his hand. I thought he’d been at his club.
“What is it?” I asked, fearing a telegram with bad news.
“Where have you been?” he responded. “Another storm’s coming!” He nodded toward the bay, where a thunderhead darkened the horizon.
“I outran it!” I said gaily, unknotting the scarf tied around my hair. “What’s that?” I pointed to the envelope in his hand.
“Nothing. An invitation to one of those circuses across the way.”
My heart sped up. Jay. I hadn’t gone sailing with him, so he’d sent over an invitation. I’d longed for one, and it had appeared, as if by magic.
Tom’s attitude, though, seemed to indicate he wasn’t about to lower himself to attend.
“Really?” I said, pulling the note from his hands and glancing at the languid script. “What fun! We should go.” I tried to sound light, but then I was bold. “Or you can stay here, and I’ll report on it for you!”
That tipped him off, and he squinted at me. “I’ve heard stories of what goes on over there. Not fit for a woman on her own. I’ll go, too.”
Thus assured of his role as chivalrous protector, he walked back into the house.
The invitation was for two nights from now, and all the next day I chose and discarded dress after dress, wishing I had thought of shopping for something new. And then I realized I did have a new frock, one I’d never worn because Tom had declared it scandalous at dinner with friends in Chicago right before we’d moved.
I found it in the back of my closet and fingered its soft chiffon overlaid with intricate gold embroidery, then quickly donned it.
It was scandalous. Pale gauzy chiffon, almost flesh-colored, with a draped neckline that could show hints of real flesh men liked to see. Its embroidery swirled and curved so that it drew attention to breasts and hips before dropping into a cascade of scarf-like layers just below the knees. When I walked, it made me feel like a graceful swan, and I remembered buying it because the gold thread had reminded me of my debutante gown.
I’d had it altered to fit perfectly, thinking Tom would be proud to escort such a unique and tantalizing creature anywhere. Instead, he’d been mildly embarrassed, telling me it made me look as though I wasn’t wearing anything at all, and he wasn’t going to take a tart to a dinner with important friends.
This time, I would wear no jewelry except a gold bracelet I’d had as a girl, and peacock-colored shoes with tiny heels. Tom would probably object, but I’d tell him I was sure I would look as demure as a nun compared to everyone else at that party.
Nick came by that evening for dinner. The three of us dined on the veranda on vichyssoise, sole meunière, and pommes Lyonnaise, a French meal I’d had Cook prepare to make me think of Jay in France keeping my picture in his pocket everywhere he went. We ate in the blue twilight. When I told Nick we’d received an invitation to a Gatsby party, he nodded.
“They’re quite the circus,” he said.
“Then maybe we should just go to a circus,” Tom said sourly.
“Jordan’s gone to one,” Nick hastily added, as if this would provide the imprimatur Tom needed. “One of Gatsby’s parties. I saw her at one last week. She had a perfectly lovely time, she said.”
Last week. Was that when they’d hatched their plan to get me to Nick’s cottage to see Jay? I noticed Nick said he’d seen her there, not taken her. As I said, their romance never became a romance, although I knew they’d happily make a couple for any event I chose to hold.
“Two bands, performers, two dinner servings, liquor of every kind,” Nick went on, waving his fork as he talked. He seemed excited to share stories of the event to boost Tom’s enthusiasm. “So many people, you need to be careful not to accidentally open a door or you might walk in on someone inamorata.”
Tom leaned back, finished with his meal, and lit a cigarette. “This is supposed to make me want to go?” he asked.
“Oh, Tom, I told you it was all right if you didn’t want to. I will be your own personal correspondent and give you a full story on the absurdities of the night. Why, I’m already writing the tale in my head.”
“I bet you are,” Tom mumbled.
As the maid cleared the plates and brought dessert, the phone rang, and I knew, even before the butler came for Tom, that it would be the Wilson woman. I looked at my husband, smiled, and said sweetly, “Go on. You know it’s for you. I don’t mind, as long as you’re keeping business humming. I’ll just talk to Nick about bonds. Bonds fascinate me, you know. Utterly fascinate me.”
Actually, there was some truth to that. I wanted to probe Nick about how one bought stocks and bonds. Jordan was doing it through Nick, and it sounded exciting and useful.
He nodded, looked down, and left, and my smile immediately dropped. Nick and I ate our dessert in silence while Tom’s hushed voice traveled onto the veranda. Occasionally a clear word would drift out, and I became embarrassed that we might overhear something that could humiliate me even more than this awkward silence, both Nick and I knowing my husband was on the phone with his lover.
I finished, got up, and went to the balustrade around the veranda, smoking and staring into the shimmering gloaming. Nick joined me.
“Tom’s business going well?” he asked.
I laughed. “Oh, stop. We both know he doesn’t do any business, and we both know who is on the phone. That Wilson witch.” Then I turned to him. “Is she beautiful, Nick? Even in a…a cheap way?”
He grimaced but shook his head. After a pause, he said, looking away from me, “She’s not a beauty. She’s kind of, well, stout. You have nothing to worry about. Tom loves you. He even roughed her up.”
My eyes widened. That Nick had met her was, as I’ve said, a betrayal. Despite my question, I hadn’t expected him to so readily admit it, and for a moment I felt angry that he’d seen her and not immediately insisted they both end their liaisons, or at least come and tell me the whole sordid tale. I also felt betrayed anew by Tom that he had not chosen a beauty, even a cheap one, but instead had settled for someone Nick deemed fat. I didn’t think he was lying to me. I think he would have told me the truth. I knew I was pretty. I liked pretty things. I filled our home with them. I thought Tom liked them, too.
“Roughed her up?” I repeated.
Now he did meet my gaze. “Yes. She was saying your name, and Tom didn’t want her so much as breathing it. He told her to stop it, but she kept saying it over and over, just to taunt him. Finally, he pulled back and punched her. Well, slapped her is more like it. But it caused an awful ruckus and lots of blood.”
Imagining the scene, I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. Good for Tom, defending his bride. Too bad that defense didn’t include fighting off his own bad impulses. I had no illusions about what probably followed his burst of violence.
At least I could be grateful for that, I supposed. Except for the occasional too-tight squeeze, Tom had never laid a finger on me. If he did, I’d leave him for sure.
“Why does he…oh, never mind,” I said. I really had no interest in exploring the depths of Tom’s melancholia, the reasons he needed to prove over and over what a man he was by building a harem wherever we went. Perhaps I should just let him go on more about the white man’s burden. Maybe that would feed his masculine pride.
Nick moved closer and said on a whisper: “You should ask him to stop. I bet he would.”
At that, I laughed. Poor, naïve Nick.
“Oh, darling, I’m so glad we’ve reunited. I need to hear this kind of talk. It reminds me how I used to feel before I became so damned sophisticated.”
That was another line I used to charm people, and Nick was appropriately entranced, his eyes shining with sympathy.
This particular line contained more truth than fiction, though. As I moved from girlhood to womanhood, from debutante to wife to mother, I learned the world was cruel, that it injured and killed, that unkindness could be masked by a smile, meanness by good intentions and religious fervor.
We went back to staring out in silence over the darkness, and I became mesmerized by the little green light at the end of our dock, the one Jay told me he looked at, thinking of me.
It shed its glimmer on the ripples of water, and I thought of those ripples making their way across the Sound to him. I wondered at that very moment if he was looking out at that fairy light and seeing me, the true love he had never forgotten. I wanted to measure up to that devotion. I wished I could dive off the promontory and swim to him.
“I think what bothers me most,” I said, almost to myself, “is that he can’t seem to shake the habit. You know, of seducing women. It seems…dirty in a way that just a long, satisfying affair wouldn’t.”
“You’d rather he have a lifelong mistress?” Nick asked. I heard the surprise in his voice.
I sighed. “I’d rather he choose…” Me? No, I couldn’t say it, not now when I was unsure if it mattered. In fact, it didn’t matter. What I wanted wasn’t for him to choose. It was for me to choose. With a profound sadness, I realized I wanted to choose to go back, to correct my errors, and marrying Tom seemed like one of them. This was a chasm I couldn’t afford to peer into, so I shook those thoughts from my head.
“I’d rather he choose some other scandalous behavior.” I laughed. “Perhaps acrobatics or fire juggling or maybe even walking on a tightrope over Niagara Falls! Has anyone done that lately? Maybe we should suggest it!”
Nick laughed softly, then said, “You might see some acrobats at Gatsby’s party. Jugglers, too.”
“Oh, I hope so. Armies of them! That would be wonderful, if they are very tall and swarthy, with thick black moustaches, and march and juggle at the same time.”
“To music, of course!” Nick said, joining in.
“Of course! I can hear it. A snake-charming tune where the dancers have to do complicated steps as they stride through the guests, and we all gasp as they try not to set some poor woman’s hair on fire, while we’re secretly hoping to see such a disaster.”
“You’re impossible,” Nick said, laughing harder now.
“Am I? Why, thank you, Nick. A high compliment coming from you.”
As I watched the dock light flicker, I wished I were the most impossible of beings and could be the sparkling green fairy in that lamp, sprinkling magic on everyone around me so I would get what I wanted… after I figured out what that was.