Jordan sat across from me at L’Aiglon on Fifty-Fifth Street, puffing on a cigarette as she perused the menu. I had set up this luncheon, suggesting we go shopping in the morning, then have a nice meal. We’d spent an enjoyable hour wandering Fifth Avenue shops but saw nothing except some new hats that suited our fancy. Those were to be delivered the next day, and I felt a sense of accomplishment for finding something to buy when the purpose of this meeting wasn’t to acquire things but to seek advice on discarding men. Or at least one man.
We placed our orders for lamb chops and asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, then Jordan sat back, peered at me, and breathed out a plume of smoke.
“Speak,” she said, and I smiled.
“I want to leave Tom,” I said.
At that, she nodded, and her lack of surprise buoyed me. “Jay wants to move to Europe. He thinks we’ll feel more free there.”
Again, she nodded, but this time it annoyed me because it felt as if she had known I should do this all along but hadn’t bothered to let me in on her secret plan for me. I paused, and she finally spoke. “You don’t want to go?”
“Oh, yes, I do. I would love to go. The problem is, Tom wants to go, too.”
At that, she chuckled, then stubbed out her cigarette as she leaned into the table. “With you and Jay, I assume.”
I giggled and gave a fake shudder. “No, thank God. One man is enough.” Then I frowned, realizing my problem. One man was enough, and, at the moment, I had two.
“So Tom wants to go to Europe—another Tour? Didn’t you just get back from one?” she pressed.
I nodded. “Last year. It was lovely. I think Tom felt cheated, though, with everything still being a bit awful after the war. He says things are better now, more cleaned up.”
Jordan smirked. “How clever of those French to tidy everything up for him.”
I ignored her sarcasm. “I’d love to go. To get away. I wasn’t really keen on moving East, you know. Tom had told me we’d move back to Louisville at some point, and then he bought the house in East Egg without even telling me.” I didn’t go on about the reasons. I was sure Jordan already knew the sordid tale of the mobster’s sister. Tom seemed to like playing in that world, and I wondered if the risk of it thrilled him. Maybe he’d mistaken Myrtle for a gangster’s moll, and that’s what had attracted him to her.
“You never seemed like a New York girl to me,” she said, “but I love the city. I might get a permanent place here.”
“Oh, but I do love New York. I think I’d prefer being in the city. Sometimes I feel so cut off from everything. Tom didn’t consult me before we moved here, and I thought, if we did move, it would be back home.”
“Home,” she repeated, her mouth twitching up at the corner. I wondered if she considered any place home. “Do go on, though,” she continued. “About wanting to get away.”
“From Tom,” I amended.
“You do that already, though, don’t you? Get away from Tom? I thought you were enjoying all that mightily. He’s not on to you, is he?”
For Jordan, it was as simple as that. I had a good thing going. Keep it going. If she saw nothing wrong in what Tom did, she would not judge me, either.
I chewed at my lip, wondering if I was the one in the wrong. I wanted only one man, and I didn’t want to have him only on the sly.
“I don’t want to keep doing this,” I said softly. “I’m not like Tom. I can’t keep…pretending.”
“Are you pretending, though? You have a perfectly sweet life with Tom and Pamela, and an equally exquisite one with Jay. There’s no pretense in that, dear.”
I frowned. Sometimes Jordan’s frankness could be maddening. “I can’t be like Tom,” I repeated. “I won’t.”
She accepted that, even if she didn’t agree with my rationale. “So you need to choose between them? If that’s it, let’s draw up some cards, score each man according to value and skills. Where shall we start?” Her voice gained enthusiasm as she talked, and she pulled up her handbag and withdrew from it an old golf card, on the back of which she began to write with a stub of a pencil. “Amorous abilities?” she suggested with a mischievousness lopsided grin.
I smiled. “Oh, Jordan, you are exactly what I need right now. It’s a serious problem, but it weighs me down. I need to be lifted up.”
“You need a cocktail, and so do I, but that will have to wait.” She leaned in again. “Let’s do get serious, though. I have no preferences on who you should be with. I see both men’s flaws and both men’s virtues. Or rather, their values. Tom is good-looking, from a great family, has money. Jay is good-looking, a man of the times, has money. They both love you—”
“Tom?” I interrupted with a cynical laugh.
“You equate fidelity with love. He doesn’t. Now, close your eyes and tell me, who do you see yourself with, years from now? Old and withered, gray hair, sagging skin, raspy voice?”
I did as she said, closing my eyes with a smile on my face. “Do I need to sway? Perhaps chant something? Is this like a séance?”
“Yes. But don’t be too loud. We are in a public place, and I’m quite hungry and would like to eat before we’re kicked out.”
Still smiling, I said, “Okay. I see myself with…Jay. No, Tom. No, Jay. No…” I sighed, opened my eyes, and said, “Pamela.”
“There’s a story,” she said. “Tell it.” But then our meals arrived. We both paused as the steaming plates were set in front of us.
“Jay never asks about her,” I said. “I sometimes think he forgets I have a daughter. He’s so eager to have us be who we were years ago, before my marriage, before Pamela.”
“Do you talk about her?” she asked after taking a bite of lamb.
“Rarely. I guess I don’t because he seems so disinterested, and I don’t want to spoil the mood.”
“So you don’t think his European plan includes her? Is that what you’re saying?” She took a drink of water and I took the time to eat, though my appetite wasn’t keen.
Avoiding a direct answer, I went on, “Tom, on the other hand, would probably fight tooth and nail to keep her. Not because she means as much to him—though I know he adores her—but because it would be a way of punishing me.”
Jordan frowned, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin. “Tom, he’s never physically hurt you, has he?”
“Oh, no, no!” I said. “I did hear the most delicious story of him hitting that Wilson witch, though. I have to admit it made me happy. Felt like I was the one throwing the punch.”
She put down her fork and stretched her tan arm toward mine, placing her hand on my wrist. “Listen to you,” she said seriously. “You like the idea of smacking around his mistress. Is it because you still love him?”
Now it was my turn to frown. “No! I mean, not enough. I just don’t like him betraying me.”
“You are kind of doing the same thing, though. I’m not judging you, just pointing out the truth. I think it’s fine you’ve been seeing Jay. You’re happy again.”
“But Tom…” Started it, I’d been about to say, to justify my own infidelity. I pushed at the food on my plate, sighed again, and sat back. “I don’t know what to do. This summer, it’s been like magic. It’s reawakened me. I feel part of life again. I want things. I hope for things. I’m ready to…to change.”
Jordan cocked her head to one side, holding her fork in midair. “How so?”
“I just know I’m tired of things the way they are, and I’m not going to keep living a life I don’t much like.” It had been the life I’d aspired to, but as I looked back to my pre-marital days, I realized now that I’d made false assumptions. I assumed that life would take on more meaning once I was married, and then, once I had a child, an even deeper meaning. I married and had a child, and yet meaning remained elusive, and while that wouldn’t have bothered me so much just a couple years ago, it began to erode any happiness I did happen to experience. It colored everything. It raised questions: So what? To what end?
“That sounds rather drastic, dear, talking of melancholy when you’re something of a pampered princess.” She ate for a few moments, then said, “I apologize. I shouldn’t make light of it. I know you’ve been unhappy. Tom can be an absolute boor at times, and Gatsby—well, I think there are a thousand women who’d swoon at the possibility of being the object of his attention. So I do understand, really. I suppose what might help is if you start thinking of technicalities. Not being on the eighteenth hole but plotting how you get to the eighteenth hole, shot by shot.”
“Is that what you do?” I asked her.
“Yes. Until I reach the point where a little slip of my toe might help nudge things in the right direction.” She smirked again. Jordan had been accused of cheating on the links, but it had never been proven. To that day, I didn’t know if she was innocent or not. If guilty, she probably didn’t think of it as cheating but just another way to play the game. Then again, she might have enjoyed the thought that some people assumed she had cheated even if she hadn’t. It made them fear her.
Nevertheless, Jordan was right. It was time to stop dreaming and start planning. And the first hole would have to be Jay’s acceptance of Pamela. I would have to risk spoiling the mood to rid myself of anxiety. It would take courage, something I was beginning to realize I had little of. It had been the reason I’d married Tom. The reason I stayed with him. The reason I hated thinking of sacrificing a scintilla of happiness by forcing Jay to accept me as a mother of a beautiful girl, not just as a lover.
We finished our meals and went to the car: Tom’s little coupe, which he’d let me take for our excursion into the city. It had been glorious fun driving it. I was a good driver, just as I was a good sailor.
As I pushed the car into gear and began our journey home, Jordan asked, “Do you still have it? The letter?”
I knew what she was talking about, the crumpled bit of paper Jay had sent me and I received on the eve of my wedding. The one he’d asked about the night we’d made love, at Nick’s house when I’d pretended I’d gotten it but not read it.
“Yes,” I said, my eyes on the road ahead.