I turned away from the lights and sat down in Tom’s tall chair behind his desk, closed my eyes, and inhaled the familiar scents of him ingrained in the leather, cigarettes and whiskey. I ran my hand across the smooth wood of the desk, and then, I opened up his top drawer and pulled out his pistol.
I laid his gun on the desk and ran my fingers across it. Tom had kept his gun here, in the same place, in the same desk in Lake Forest, in Cannes, too. I knew it was here; I’d seen him take it out to clean it. But I’d never before come into his study just to touch it, just to run my fingers across it and feel the wicked thrill of the metal. I never invaded Tom’s space or touched his things, not his ponies, not his pistol. But touching the cool metal of the gun now, I felt a sheer wicked delight in holding something so dangerous that wasn’t mine. It coursed through me like a fire in my blood.
Daddy had taught me to shoot a gun when I was twelve years old. For protection, he’d said, but really I always thought it was because he was sad he didn’t have a boy, and there were just some things he couldn’t stand not teaching a child of his. He’d made me swear I’d never tell the old snow goose, who didn’t believe such a thing was ladylike.
I remembered now aiming at the bull’s-eye he’d hung on the old oak tree, pulling the trigger, hearing the snap and feeling it pulse through my veins, giving me a heady feeling of power. Pulling that trigger at twelve would make me feel that same way I did pulling Jay into my bedroom at eighteen. And there was a power now in simply touching Tom’s gun, too. In knowing I could pick it up, wait for Tom to return home from wherever he was, and just hold it up, aim, pull the trigger. His betrayals, his power over me, would end, just like that.
“Daise, what are you doing?” Jordan’s voice cut through the darkness, and I jumped, wrapped my hand around the pistol, and quickly shoved it back into Tom’s desk drawer, hoping Jordan hadn’t seen it. I wasn’t exactly sure how to explain to her what I was doing, what I was thinking, how the woman in the photographs had pulled me into this dark moment.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I finally said, which explained nothing.
She didn’t press me, and instead stepped farther into Tom’s study, walked to the window to look out. “That man has a party every night, doesn’t he?” she said, commenting on the lights at Jay’s, sounding quite churlish about it.
“I saw him today,” I said softly. “He thinks he loves me still. He wants to be with me.” I laughed a little, but it caught in my chest, and came out sounding more like a sob.
Jordan turned back to face me, put her hand on her hip. “And do you want to be with him, Daise?” The green light shone on outside the window behind her, and it illuminated the curves of her body, turning her white, gauzy nightdress sheer.
I didn’t know what I wanted. I thought about Pammy sleeping so peacefully up in her bed. And I suddenly felt silly for coming down here, for pulling out Tom’s gun. I briefly wondered what I would have done with it if Tom had come home first, if Jordan hadn’t come down when she did, and the thought flickered inside of me, embarrassing me with its recklessness.
“Do you want him?” Jordan repeated her question.
“I don’t know what I want,” I said softly. And that might have been the truest thing I’d spoken out loud all summer.
Jordan July 1922
NEW YORK
THE SUMMER STARTED OFF WITH one tiny little white lie to Daisy about the golf tour. And then it spiraled out from there, on and on, until I began to realize more lies came out of my mouth than truths. I lied to Daisy about the things Jay Gatsby had said to me when I saw him one night at his party. I lied to Daisy about how I felt about Nick. I lied to Nick about myself. Sometimes, by the end of July, it was even hard for me to tell the difference any longer between what was true and what wasn’t.
It was easier to lie when I drank, and drink I did. Somehow Tom had an endless supply, gin and whiskey flowing each night before supper, during supper, after supper. He and Daisy bickered, or, depending on the night, they stared at each other quietly, angrily. And either way, I sipped my G&Ts until their faces blurred and their voices dimmed. I loved Daisy and I hated Tom, and I drank to soften their edges. To soften my own edges. I drank to forget what was true and what wasn’t.
Some nights Daisy would tiptoe into my room very late, lie down in my bed with me, and fall asleep. I’d still be a little drunk, even then, and I’d close my eyes and reach for her hand.