A laugh bubbled up from deep inside my chest. But it came out sounding more like a dying bird. This woman who’d taunted Daisy all summer with her endless telephone calls thought she could get Tom to take her out west just like that. Then I had a more sobering thought: Could she?
“Tom needs to leave with Myrtle,” Jay was saying. “That will fix everything.”
Myrtle? It felt funny to know she had a name, that she was a real, living breathing woman who desired something unattainable too. Just like the rest of us. Golf. Daisy. Tom and the west.
“You’ll convince Tom to take her far away, Jordan. California,” he added.
“Me?” Now I did laugh. “How am I supposed to convince Tom?” Tom didn’t even listen to me about the simplest things, like what we should eat for supper. Tom only tolerated my presence because Daisy made him. And even that, it always felt like I was some sort of penance for him.
“Easy. I want you to tell him Daisy is in love with me. Convince him Daisy wants him to go, that she wants to erase the last three years with him. That his only chance at happiness is going west with Myrtle.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. For one thing, Tom wouldn’t listen to me, and for another, it would break Daisy’s heart. I stared at the tops of my white shoes. They’d gotten a bit muddy at the edge of the golf course, and I swiped at them with my hands now, crumbling brown streaks of dirt across Jay’s beautiful, clean white porch.
“You can, and you will.” His voice was dark, quiet, serious.
I shook my head.
“Jordan,” Jay said my name softly now, as if to disguise the threat that simmered just beneath. “Jordan, Jordan. We have to help each other, you and I. It’s the only way we’ll both get what we want.”
He sounded crazed, and I bit my lip and stared at the ground, afraid to say anything at all.
He walked over and put his hand on my arm, like he was about to give me hug. But then instead he looked me straight in the eye and smiled a little. “I really could destroy you.”
* * *
LATER THAT NIGHT, I was already three G&Ts deep by supper. The phone rang on in the distance, but it sounded muted to me now, far away. Daisy’s and Tom’s faces were fuzzy but somehow clear enough that I understood Tom was already drinking too much, too; his face was flushed. Maybe from too much sun playing polo today, or maybe from the whiskey, or maybe it was anger over finding my little note. It was hard to tell.
The telephone jangled again, and Daisy glared at Tom across the table. He scraped back his chair, then rushed off and answered the call. He spoke in the other room in hushed tones. Daisy buried her face in her hands. It was hard to believe he’d ever really leave Daisy. Go westward with Myrtle. But if I didn’t try to do what Jay asked, would he really destroy me? He had money and power and Mr. Hennessey’s talk about me, and maybe it wouldn’t even be all that hard.
Tom suddenly slapped the table, and I jumped. He’d come back from the telephone, his face even redder than before. “You think it’s all right for him to call you during supper, Daisy?” Tom sounded indignant.
Him?
“Who?” Daisy asked, but then the realization dawned on her, dawned on both of us. She opened her mouth, let out a sigh that sounded a little like a kitten mewing.
“Well, I’ve invited your lover to lunch here on Monday. We may as well all get to know each other better.” Tom’s voice was dripping with anger and sarcasm and maybe even a hint of sadistic delight.
Daisy frowned and her face turned pale, and Tom snickered and stood to pour more whiskey.
“Jordan, call Nick and invite him, too. We may as well make it a party,” Tom slurred, making his way back to the table.
“It’s too hot for a party,” I said, downing the rest of my drink, then standing up to make another. And I had no desire to see any more of Nick.
“Never mind,” Tom spoke roughly. “Daisy, you do it,” he commanded. “He’s your cousin.”
Daisy August 1922
NEW YORK
AND THEN THERE WE WERE: The hottest hour of the hottest day of August.
I felt a strange sort of déjà vu, for that other too-hot August day in Louisville, five years earlier. That day Rose dragged me to the almshouse and Jay pulled up alongside us, offering us a ride. I should’ve said no then, I thought now. I should’ve listened to Rose and turned down Jay’s ride. Nothing good came of the decisions I made when it was this hot. Nothing good would come from this lunch with Tom and Jay and Nick and Jordan. I knew it, and still, I let it happen. I’d even called up Nick like Tom had asked and invited him. Of course, Nick agreed. Nick agreed to everything that summer. If you looked up agreeable in Merriam-Webster’s I was pretty sure you’d see Nick’s photograph.