As I fell ever more deeply in love with Jay, I decided I needed to work harder to hide my ecstasy from Tom. He always seemed less suspicious if I was unhappy.
So several mornings I faked swooning about, seemingly uninterested in even getting out of bed, and powdering my face to an ashy pale shade.
But I couldn’t hide everything I was feeling, and just two days after the tea at Nick’s with Pamela and Jay, all the tension of my secret affair, my doubts, and my fears spilled over.
It started with a call from Myrtle. I heard the whole thing. I had picked up the phone just after Tom took the call, and listened in upstairs in my room.
Oh, the cooing from him, the low-class nagging from her, and when he said he might not be able to get away that day, her reply sent an arrow to my heart:
“Oh, Tommy baby, I misses you so much,” she said in a simpering baby voice. “And I have some news to tell you. Babykins hasn’t been feeling so well lately, and I might need to go to the doctor.”
I heard Tom inhale sharply.
I grasped the phone, my fingers turning white from my grip.
“Myrtle, now, you know you have these agues…”
“Oh, it ain’t no ague, sweetheart. Aren’t you excited? I didn’t want to say it on the phone, but you could be a daddy!”
“He was a daddy,” I wanted to shout at the insolent bitch.
“But you said you didn’t go to the doctor yet?” he asked in a desperate voice. “So it might be a false alarm, darling.”
An awful sound came over the line, and I realized she was crying.
“T-t-tom,” she stuttered. “Don’t be so mean to me. Come and see me, please. I don’t know what I’ll do if you don’t come…”
“All right, all right. Let me see what I can do.”
I hung up as soon as I heard his click, and I sat on the edge of the bed, seething.
Tears burned my eyes, but I shook my head and willed them away.
His mistress pregnant with his bastard?
Never! No one would threaten my daughter’s place in his dynasty such as it was.
I was furious even at the possibility. I was a good mother. It was part of who I was now. I was Daisy Faye Buchanan, mother. Not just a lover. My attempt to get Jay to understand that failed. Now the father of my child was conspiring with another woman to displace that child? Never.
Rising, I paced to the window. I felt imprisoned. Earlier, I had hoped he’d go out for the afternoon. Now I didn’t want him to. I wanted him to stay here and suffer, just like me.
I wanted to be the one racing out—over to Jay’s, to tell him of this awful occurrence, and to have him reassure me that he would see to Pammy’s future.
A soft knock at my door.
“Daisy? Are you awake?” Tom said through the door.
“I’m not feeling well,” I said, no longer having to pretend to be upset.
“I’ll be going into town. Business meeting. Don’t hold dinner.”
He sounded so casual, so unconcerned about me. The scoundrel.
Without thinking, I hurried to the door, threw it open, and pummeled my fists on his chest.
He grabbed my wrists and held them still. He cocked his head to one side and peered at me.
“Daisy, what on earth is the matter with you? Are you all right?”
“No, no, I’m not! Where are you going?”
“Just into town. Nothing to concern yourself with,” he said, peering at me again as if searching for signs of illness.
“I want to go into town!” I said. I didn’t, of course, but I was so damned tired of Tom being able to do whatever the hell he wanted while I had to pretend to be sick, and devise plans to fool him, plan to sneak out, even when he was away. I wanted that same freedom. He could drive off by simply announcing he was doing so. “Let me get a wrap,” I said. “We can go together.”
I managed to pull away and step back into my room, where I grabbed a bag as if to leave. While I was turned away, he closed the door. And locked it.
“You’re not well, dear. You need to stay home. I’ll call the doctor for you.”
I stomped to the door, jiggling the knob to no avail. Its lock operated with a key on either side. Mine was gone.
Growling, I picked up the nearest object, my bedside lamp, and threw it at the door.
That loud crash provided me such satisfaction that I decided to replicate it. Destroying the things that showcased our wealth made me shiver with delight. I went round the room and smashed every piece of porcelain or china or glass I could find. Expensive figurines, lamps, a Wedgwood hairpin case.
I threw them at the walls, the mirror, which I also cracked, and then tossed shoes and clothes into my bathtub and lit a match to the pile. I wanted to dispose of it all, these signs of indulgence and luxury. Maybe if I literally burned them all, I would be able to walk away from what they offered me.
“Daisy! What’s burning? Daisy?!” he yelled at last, and then the door opened, and he entered. He said nothing at first, just looked around, his mouth set in fury, his eyes slit. Then he glanced at the dying flames in the nearby bath and called for the maid.
“Bring buckets of water!” he shouted. By then, my little conflagration had nearly extinguished itself on its own, but soon a maid and the housekeeper rushed in and killed the embers with splashes of water.
At that moment, Nanny walked by with Pammy, now back from an outing. When she saw the scene, she started crying, then wailing and screaming, wanting to know what happened.
“Take her to her room,” Tom instructed, waving his hand to indicate Pamela should be pulled away.
“Call Doctor Prinz,” Tom told the housekeeper. He gave me a look of utter disgust but still left. My fit did nothing to keep him from going to his mistress. It just meant I couldn’t go to my lover.
While unsuccessful in getting Tom to stay home, I did manage to get a syringe of some sort of sedative pumped into me within the hour, and it set me free in an odd way. Dr. Prinz, a middle-aged physician who prided himself on staying up to date with all the latest treatments, informed me that he would speak to my husband about “next steps.” That sounded ominous.
Whatever he gave me had me floating over to Jay’s through the clouds, and I fell into a dreamy sleep, where I imagined Jay making love to me throughout the night.
I must have been quite vocal during this hallucinatory love-making because the next morning, I heard Tom and Dr. Prinz outside my bedroom, after he had checked on me, talking about my “hypersexualized fantasies.”
This had an undesirable effect.
Whatever Tom’s situation with Myrtle, he must have decided that I was no longer a goddess if I could have such carnal thoughts, and he didn’t try to beckon me to his bed. He came to mine three nights in a row.
No matter how many times I told him I wasn’t in the mood for anything, he ignored me. I could lie there like a corpse, and that just seemed to fuel his passion.
These sessions left me truly ill and haggard each morning. I couldn’t imagine going to Jay’s because I felt I’d betrayed him and he would see it in my face, seen I had not been able to fend Tom off.
So now I became miserable. There was no need for pretense.
I didn’t care if Myrtle was pregnant. At that point, I wanted Tom to go to her and promise her his undying love, as long as it would keep him away from me.
At last, after five days of imprisonment, I was set free.
Tom went into town and announced he’d not be back until the next day.
I bathed. I dressed in one of the new outfits he delivered to replace my burnt ones, and I drove to Jay’s.
I’d reclaim myself, even if now the pretense was acting sane, not mad.
“I’ll kill him,” Jay said in a low, angry voice I’d never heard him use. His fists clenched by my side as we lay in his bed together.
I’d wanted Jay’s lovemaking to purify me in some way. His gentle and sweet kisses healed me.
But my bruises remained, and when he asked me how I’d gotten the ones visible on my wrists and arms, I told him simply that Tom had held me down.
“Down for what?” he asked.
I looked away and didn’t answer.
He rose from the bed, grabbed a cigarette and robe, and went to the window to look at the Sound, or perhaps at our house across the way.
After smoking for a moment, he said, without looking at me. “You know Tom double-crossed Anthony.”
“Anthony?” I sat up and reached for a cigarette for myself.
When he heard me stir, Jay came to the bed and lit the smoke for me.
“Delacorte. The man you met at one of my parties, who helped me get new staff here.” He waved his smoke in the direction of the door.
Ah, the gangster.
“How’d he do that? Double cross him, I mean,” I asked. I couldn’t imagine Tom even knowing how to do such a thing.
“He promised he’d buy a truckload of liquor and then reneged on the deal. Tony told him he had to pay up, but then just as he thought he might have to cut his losses and sell it elsewhere, his driver was arrested and the whole shipment tossed. Somebody must have tipped off the cops. Tony thinks it was Tom, not wanting to pay.” Jay blew a plume of smoke into the air. “I calmed him down.”
“You did?”
He nodded and sat next to me on the bed, stroking my arm. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
For a long moment, I held my breath. I wondered what gangsters did when they were double-crossed. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to know. I think I already knew.
So all I did was offer a small nod.
“All right then,” Jay said, as if we’d decided something. “I’ll tell Tony I was wrong.”
I managed to convince Dr. Prinz to tell Tom to leave me alone.
During his next check on me the following morning, I had the chance to talk to him privately. Tom was still out.
I played the demure wife, a woman whose knowledge of worldly things is limited. I looked down bashfully, picking at my robe when I talked, and signaling my embarrassment.
And I told him my husband made me do things I didn’t want to do.
I broke down crying, and before long, the tears were real, and I was having a very genuine attack of hysteria.
Dr. Prinz was convinced. He wanted to give me another sedative, but I recovered by then and said no; I wanted to regain my strength, to become capable again, especially to be a good mother once more.
Having heard intimate details he didn’t want to hear, he stood, red-faced, and told me he would talk to Mr. Buchanan about how much I needed rest. Complete rest.
Tom not only left me alone after that, he went into town more frequently, so this strategy turned out to be doubly beneficial.
By now I was committed to leaving him and no longer had any doubts. I merely had to construct the plan that Jordan had strongly recommended. As I saw it, part of the plan was to ensure Jay’s devotion to Pamela and to making sure I’d be able to keep her with me when I left my brute of a husband.