“You can usually scare a certain amount of brains into a woman, but usually, you can’t make them stick.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

Prologue.

It’s funny, the things you remember. Throughout our lives, we are presented with a multitude of images and interactions, personal connections and preferences. Yet somehow, for some reason, some of them stay firmly planted in your mind; permanent willow tree roots that wrap around your memory. You end up with them buried in every single last part of You. Forever, it makes it more difficult to look out at anything else objectively, because they are now muddled and shaded by looking through the fringes of those roots.

Anyway. That’s how it was with me. So in a way, I can’t help being anything but myself. These are the memories through which I must look to see the entirety of my life. I was always accused of seeing life through rose-colored glasses.  That makes me laugh for two reasons. One, I despise the color pink in any form, and two, how could I look through rose-colored glasses when really, the particular lens through which I look is already filled with me?

………………………….

My mother’s second cousin twice removed came to pay a visit to commemorate my birth.  Never mind, by the time she was able to make such a visit, I was already three years old. Apparently, my mother was not particularly fond of said cousin, or vice versa. That part of the memory was never important. It had nothing to do with me. I do remember her though, a bosom with a feathery hat and little wisps of baby powder puffing off of her like someone plopped down on her couch of a lap, making dust plumes in the sunlight. She bent down and came right up into my face and she took my cheeks in her hands.

“My word, but this child is cursed!” She said it to my mother, but she was looking into my face like she could read my soul. 

“What kind of a thing is that to say to a child?” My mother snapped back at her with such a snarl that I could feel the bite as the words whizzed over my head.

“She’s too beautiful,” she began, “I think it’s dangerous for a girl to go through life being too beautiful.”

“How would YOU ever know such a thing? To be born beautiful is a gift. From the gods, or the fairies. Certainly not a curse.” My mother fanned herself as she tilted her head waiting for a response.

“All I’m saying is, the good Lord says that, ‘charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting,’ and this here child will need to know that.” She rocked back onto her knees somehow, her large skirts making her look like she was perched on a mushroom. She folded her arms, watching my mother, as she seemed to signal that she was drawing her line in the sand.

“Still,” Mama shrugged at her in a way that made me know I should lean in close and listen, “The best thing in life a girl can be is beautiful. A beautiful little fool.” 

The two of them stood up; one from her mushroom and one from her ladder-back rocker. They stood, one on either side of me, eyeing the other. My goodness, but their thoughts were good and loud. Sometimes, saying nothing says everything.

I felt as if somehow I was making a decision right there and then; I took my mama’s hand. Then the three of us walked to the veranda where Cook had left the lemonade. 

 I never saw my mother’s second cousin twice removed again.

Chapter 1.

“You look to me like a very ordinary three piece suit.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

1.

The party was supposed to be scandalous. What a disappointment! There was talk of girls in dresses up over their knees and a punchbowl laden with a bourbon that someone’s grandfather had made all by himself in a big old barn. What about any of that is scandalous? I asked myself as I swung my legs from my childhood treehouse, looking down at my lace stockings that sparkled when the moonlight came between the leaves. I laughed as I showed the sliver of the moon a sliver of my upper thigh. I had my own flask of whiskey that was NOT intermingled with that awful blood orange and peach concoction all the debutantes’ mamas thought was so exotic. I prided myself on never taking a drop. It seemed more alluring to carry it and NOT drink it. Although, I admit, I could be persuaded to imbibe when the mood struck my funny bone.

I had had quite enough of the parties. They were invariably the same; I would steal two dance cards off the tables and like clockwork, some wallflower was left in tears reporting me to whomever of the old ladies was happy to listen and shoot darting glares in my direction. It always feels like a birdcage at those parties. Our brightly colored dresses with our baubles and beads and feathers remind me of a flock of birds, especially in the way that we also cock our heads at one another, nipping and chasing one another away with nary a care. I know myself, I’ve taken my talons out on occasions. It’s a rite of passage for a debutante. Everybody knows, we can’t share.

All the men-children were the same; eager, obvious and banal. Usually, I would find the band leader more attractive, so I would dance every dance for him and spin with extra weight so my skirts would cast an extra sly glance at him. I would never, though, actually speak to the band leader. Let’s face it. They are The Help. Daisy Fay is way out of their league. Still, it passes the time when you’re dancing with Mr. Mumble who can’t take his eyes off of your décolletage. 

The night was especially beautiful. Evening is a grand dame who wears a gown of black taffeta, peppered with rhinestones and she and I are like a kindred spirit; we are everywhere, but no one can quite pin us down. 

Correction. Jordan Baker can. Jordan, with whom I was never granted a proper introduction. We were just dropped together in baby prams and on picnic blankets. From there began a friendship that was shaded with sisterhood; little bits of jealousy and rivalry, but in the end, we loved one another. I knew when I snuck out that Jordan missed nothing. She is much like a younger sister to me in that regard as well; she’s only as brave and as confident as long as her older “sister” is still within her line of vision. She’s been toddling after me for all these years, and tonight was no different.

“Daisy?” Jordan was already scrambling across the lawn, her dance slippers slung over her shoulder like a nine iron. Her dress was heavily weighted with pale green beads. The crystals were hanging on for dear life as she jogged across the lawn in her bare feet. She was wearing a headband that had chandelier beads down either side in different greens and pale blues. I would say she resembled a mermaid, but she made too much noise. I sighed and took a long stretch with my arms above my head. I knew she was looking for my whiskey. She always wanted to empty it at the end of the evening. She thought it was good luck. I started to move over before she popped her head through the planks of the floor.

“I knew you came here!! Everyone said you had a headache, but I knew! It’s a good thing I can keep your secrets, otherwise you would have the entire Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion swiping at you up here like a piñata.” She grunted as she swung her leg over the last broken step of the tree house and shimmied herself closer to me, our sequined skirts embraced one another like old friends. Her bare feet were already wet from the evening dew and they smelled faintly of floor polish and grass.

“I was bored. They’re all boys. Boring. Pathetic. Shoving off on the next tide, desperate. Boys.” I reached out my hand and gave her the flask that I knew she wanted.

“Still. Ms. Donnelly-Keeney was fit to be tied. You left without any proper sense to say goodbye to your host. Your mama will pull your hair if she finds out. Ms. Donnelly-Keeney is still angry at you for sticking your finger in her angel food cake at the church picnic.” 

“I wasn’t sticking my finger in the cake, I was decorating it. I put a Daisy in it.” 

“Ha ha. Still, Mrs. Fay will whoop you good.”

“She has to catch me first.”

“Daisy. None of those boys caught your eye? I was positively spinning at the sight of all those uniforms. I was afraid to talk to any of them. I kept telling myself that it takes two to make an accident. So I just locked my lip up and watched.” Jordan whispered a belch into the night and took another swallow.

Of course none of those boys caught my eye. I knew that I caught theirs, though. In the same way I know the sun rises in the east. It’s just too easy. That’s why the other girls never liked me. They’re jealous. What’s that old French proverb? They only throw stones at the tree loaded with fruit or some other such maxim. It’s true though. I am not there for the taking.

Stolen goods, however, I believe are a matter of contention. The other girls used to accuse me of stealing their beaux, but my thinking was that you can’t steal something that doesn’t want to be taken. Maybe if I was blamed for sneaking up the kitchen stairs and taking someone’s great aunt’s ruby brooch, that might be a different story. 

But men? Of course not. I can always tell by the way they angle themselves by the cake table where their true interests lie. When they’re peering at me as they balance a china plate of frosted coffee cake, they are there for the taking. Sometimes, I will admit, I take things I don’t even want. I understand the mockingbird’s need to scurry shiny things back to a nest. I suppose it makes me some kind of superficial hoarder. Or perhaps I am just a collector. As I sat pondering this, Jordan belched again.

“You’re something else.” I scolded her, “Present yourself as a lady and here I am breathing your whiskey breath and smelling your wet feet.  Sometimes, I wonder at your genuineness.” I pulled myself up to sit a little straighter. I always liked to pull rank with Jordan, even if it was only because I was two years older.

“I would never do anything that wasn’t all right,” Jordan glanced at me sideways and something about her expression already revealed itself to me to be a lie. 

“Should we head back in? I’m starting to get tired and I’m a little chilly,” I admitted, “I lost my wrap somewhere; adding to the fear of Mama for the morning.”

“I’m right as rain now. I can float on home and sleep in my dress. Daddy and Old Auntie should be asleep by now, so I can sneak in the backdoor and no one but you will have smelled my whiskey breath — and my feet.” Jordan stuck her tongue out at me and turned her backside to begin the descent when a piece of her dress ripped on a stray old nail.

“How are you going to explain THAT?” I asked her, shaking my head. She could be so…boyish and undignified.  

“I’ll blame someone else, of course. I’ll create an entire fallacy about a wild man who tried to corner me at the dance. I had to rip my precious frock to free myself from his groping hands and ill intentions. Old Auntie will be swooning so that she will forget about the fabric and be worried for my virtue. Daddy may have to get his shotgun,” Jordan smiled at her lie.

“You should be worried about your virtue. People around here are going to come to know you for your insincerity. Louisville gets smaller every day. I want to get out of here and begin again where no one knows who or what my great-great-grand daddy did a hundred years ago. I want to be anonymous.”

“No, you don’t. You love the attention,” Jordan mocked me.

“I would love to be able to go somewhere, do what I want and still have a drape of security around me. Have it both ways. That would be perfect.” 

I looked up at the moon, and she looked down at me, and we smiled at one another. She understood my plight. Everyone knows the moon, she has control on the planet, but no one can find her in broad daylight.  

It must be nice to be a force of nature.