“Why, darling, I am going to get married tomorrow, of course,” she said, her voice slow and slurred. Her hand came over mine, closing tightly around my fingers. I was something she could touch, something she could hang on to. I wasn’t going anywhere.
When the water grew unpleasantly tepid, we dried off and went looking for her mother’s demoniac, kept in a cut-crystal bottle no larger than her hand. I was wary of the stuff, but Daisy took a sip and then a second one. When she caught her breath, she dabbed a few drops on her fingertips and spread them over her eyelids and under her eyes. Almost immediately, her color returned and her swollen eyes went back to normal. She winked at me, first one blue eye and then the other.
“See? That’s a trick that Victoria Powell taught me. Can’t tell that I’ve been crying at all, can you?”
“No, Daisy,” I said. I stuck with the Talisker whiskey her father preferred, getting myself warm and just a little numb, because I had an idea about what was coming next.
The bridal party came back sometime past one, loud, boozy, and happy. They had to roll Mr. Fay to bed, but Mrs. Fay stayed up to get everyone settled, showing the Columbus relatives to their beds and making sure that everyone had the toothbrushes, pajamas, and pillows necessary to maintain a civilized sleep.
“Well, Jordan, I’m sure we’ve kept you too long,” she said, giving me a sharp look. “It really was too bad of Daisy to keep you at the mending.”
“Anything for Daisy,” I said with a slight smile. She could tell that I had been at her husband’s whiskey, but as I had said, anything for Daisy.
I walked down the porch steps and down the sidewalk as if I were running along home, but then I doubled back and slipped into the overgrown yard where Daisy was waiting for me under the dogwoods. As I watched, she stripped off her dress, hanging it from a handy branch and turning to face me in her white silk slip.
“All right,” she said, and I scooped up some pebbles in my hand.
The small stones rattled against Daisy’s window, and a moment later, the lace curtains twitched aside. I got a glimpse of her round face, and her bright smile. Then the curtains closed, and a few moments later, she was tripping across the lawn towards me. I took her hand and led her deeper into the dogwoods.
“How did it go?” I asked, my tongue and throat still slightly numb from the whiskey.
“Good, oh so good!” she bubbled. “Everyone was ever so kind, and we all looked as if we had stepped out of the pages of some beautiful novel. Tom squired me around to speak to all of his people, and Cousin Sandy from Columbus was ever so charmed—”
Her words cut off as Daisy rose behind her, the spade caked with earth swung high in her hands and then down hard against her double’s skull. There was a crack like some great earthenware jug splitting in two, dark wine spilling out, and in the torrent were lost sweet sparkling gems, there and gone again.
Daisy’s double fell to the ground with the first blow. She didn’t cry because her mouth ended up in the sod, and Daisy struck her again and again. There was a smoldering smell, something a little like old blood and a little like freesia perfume, and then dim embers ate up her frock, hungrily devouring her. In all paper was fire, and the whiskey sloshed uneasily in me. I was ready to be sick, but then there would have been no one to watch Daisy, hitting her paper double with the spade and then when the flames would have risen up, digging into the nearby garden patch to throw fresh earth over her.
At some point, I landed on my rear in the bushes. I wasn’t ill, but my eyes felt too dry and too hot. With my arms around me, I could only hear the refrain I shall live with this the rest of my life and God, is that a long time.
Finally, the shovel fell out of Daisy’s hands and the only thing left of the poor paper girl was a smoking pile of earth and ash, something for the Fays’ gardener to fix when he rose the next morning and wondered what in the name of Heaven had happened on his nice lawn.