The Chosen and the Beautiful

by Nghi Vo

The moment we were alone, she fell into my arms, shaking as if she had a fever. “Daisy?” “Oh God in Heaven, he loves me so much,” she said, hiding her face in her hands. “I don’t think God has anything to do with it,” I muttered, but she shook her head. “There’s just so much, and so deep, and oh Jordan, I don’t think I could reach down to the bottom of it if I drowned.”

“Oh Jordan, he loves me so much. I’ve never felt anything like that. There’s nothing like it in all the world, being loved by someone like Jay Gatsby.” She said his name like some kind of incantation, a god if you could own a god.

“Come on, Jay,” I muttered. “Surely you can dream a bit grander, can’t you?”

“Are you happy?” I asked. “Happiness must come later, don’t you think?” she said in wonder. “When you want something so very much, and then you have it?” I almost asked her if she was talking about herself or Gatsby, but then the door opened and Gatsby and Nick entered.

We turned our heads and felt a little shabby at the fact that Gatsby and Daisy were barely touching at all. Instead, he was simply bent over her, ravishing her, worshiping her, and adoring her with just his eyes. Daisy herself looked like Sleeping Beauty awakened, a delicate flush on her cheeks and her lips slightly parted, if unkissed. It should have felt as if we were intruding, but these two were made for an audience. I could feel that Nick was quite taken with the picture that they made; for my part, I only wondered if I should clap.

Nick tried to laugh, Daisy clapped her hands for the colors, and Gatsby threw them down towards us, grabbing at linen shirts and cotton shirts in a mania, tossing them down to us by the handful. There was something here directed at Nick, but before I could figure it out, the shirts tumbling down towards us spun and stretched out wings, sleeves stretching into long and graceful necks.

Gatsby opened his hands like a stage magician, and Daisy clapped, her eyes filled with strange tears. It struck me that there was something in her that seemed to want to speak, to cry out perhaps in protest or in question, but she only smiled, smiled. “What beautiful shirts they were!” she cried, but for a moment they had been birds.

The thing he had not quite grasped yet, I thought, was that as the master of such a fine and notable place, he wasn’t meant to be impressed with them himself, and of course he was. As he pointed out this frieze or that memorial urn, I could hear a sense of wonder in his voice, as if in showing Daisy, he was showing himself as well. Maybe he hadn’t allowed himself to think that it was real until she was here to admire it.

Gatsby looked up at us. He wasn’t angry or sorry. Instead he was only confused. Wherever he was with Daisy, there were no names for other people. He had no idea who we were any longer.

Nick asked me if I was worried, and I took him dancing at the Preston when I hate dancing at the Preston because I wanted to answer him even less. I told him that the Manchester Act had nothing to do with me, that I couldn’t even remember being from anywhere else, and his response—“Prove it”—made me so angry that I ran off the floor and went home with Jodie Washington. She kept me for a few days until her boyfriend came back from his European tour, and by then, I was ready to make up with Nick, so it mostly worked out.

Nick, charming thing, told me he didn’t worry too much about what we did as long as he was doing it with me. I even mostly believed him, though I was making no further headway on bringing him to the Cendrillon. I wondered if, after Gatsby, he had outgrown that sort of thing, but I doubted it. I had never known of anyone who did, though of ones who said they had, plenty.

“No, no cross here, darling,” I said. “I shall entertain myself with these very entertaining people, and I shall come find you later. Though when I do find you next, I am sure that I will be perfectly demanding and in need of your attention.” Nick smiled with some relief, lifting my hand to his lips in a brief salute. “You’re a doll, Jordan Baker,” he said. “Rather not,” I responded, but he was already gone.

I was a strange combination of bereft and relieved when he was gone. Even after all our time together, I hadn’t quite resigned myself to being a couple yet, half of an equation when the male half could somehow continue as a whole without me. He was gone, I felt more myself, and to celebrate, I downed a surprisingly strong French 75 and took another with me for company as I wandered through the playground Gatsby had made of his home.

“I can be a very good friend to you too, just as I am to Nick,” he murmured quietly. “Nick likes me so much. It’s only Tom that doesn’t. Tom and you.” “Maybe,” I said deliberately, “it’s because you like to fuck people who don’t belong to you.” The smile froze on his face, jagged like slips of lake ice. I couldn’t tell where my recklessness had come from, only that the corpse reviver was strong enough that I didn’t regret it yet. “I think you’ll find that I only fuck people who belong to me,” he said. “But think about it, won’t you? I’ve a lot of friends, here and in DC. It could be that in a short while you could use some friends.”

Gatsby drifted a little closer, setting one hand on the stone beside my thigh. “Listen,” he said softly. “They adore you. I want to adore you too.” “There’s nothing stopping you,” I said, shoving down off the stone. It put me closer to him than ever, and this close, it was impossible to ignore my attraction to him, the way he could drink all the light out of the room and present it to you as if it was a special gift, his to give. “You could make it easier for me,” Gatsby said with mock exasperation concealing real exasperation. “I could,” I said. “I might. But you do come off awful strong, you know.” He laughed at that, shaking his head. “That is certainly something I have heard before,” he said. He didn’t touch me as I made my way around him. When I looked back, he was gone.

Nick came for me with a regretful kiss. “Sorry, darling. Gatsby wants me to stay for a word after everyone’s gone. Sounds like he’s had a rotten night.” “And you’re going to make it a little nicer?” Nick scowled at that, and I reached out to stroke his arm. “And why shouldn’t you? You’re sweet as sugar, and you always make things a little nicer for me…”

I usually steered clear of Chinatown. It was a place that made me prickle uneasily, made me feel not poised and light on my feet, but anchored in a strange way by looks that I simultaneously wanted nothing to do with and that I also wanted to recognize me. My few accidental forays into Chinatown always left me irritated and insufferably arrogant for a while after I came out. In truth, I felt less special in Chinatown, and that made me dislike it.

“So Khai invited a girl who doesn’t know anything.” “Well, I know that I don’t know anything,” I said, leaning in. “Maybe you could teach me…” She narrowed her eyes at that, leaning back away from me in a way that made me sit up straighter. Of course this wasn’t the Cendrillon, and it wasn’t Peggy’s either, the tiny little place under the Porter Bowling Alley which was mostly for girls

“Were your parents dead?” “They must have been. Otherwise why would she have taken me?” The answer came back in Eliza’s sweet voice, worn thin and a little ragged from age in my mind. You were my very favorite. Just the very best baby. I could not leave you, I could not bear it.

“The truth is, Jordan, I miss you,” she said, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “Isn’t it just too awful? I really do delightfully and deliriously miss you. I’ve been so very lonely, and it’s been ever so long since you came out.” “Being lonely is not the same as missing me,” I said dryly, though the wind and the water did sound just the faintest bit appealing.

I laughed at that, shaking my head because Daisy was talking faster now. If I let her, she’d start to promise me every star she could pluck down from the sky as if I were a boy whose attention she wanted. I wasn’t, though, and I gave in gracefully.

She was in a slightly better humor, even if she twisted easily away from Tom’s hand when it came to rest on her shoulder. She had a cat-like way of doing it, something that you couldn’t take offense at. Touching Daisy was largely a privilege, even, and sometimes especially, to those closest to her.

“Oh Jordan, may I tell you a secret?” I nodded, and she pressed a little closer, her dark hair settling spider-like over her pale cheek. “I’m leaving with Jay,” she whispered. “We’re going away, far away.”

“Oh, but darling, of course you can’t! And what will happen when Nick meets some pretty little China doll in a Shanghai port and gets his head turned all around?” “Well, I would say if he can’t tell the difference between us then he’s welcome to her.” “Don’t be cross, Jordan, you know that I cannot stand it if you are cross.

“I’d consider it, anyway,” I said, but for the first time, the idea of getting out of New York appealed to me. I was tired of the heat and the summer, I thought, but maybe I was only tired of who I was in the heat.

“Oh very well,” she said, making a face. “If the great Napoleon tells us we must.” “He was only a little man,” Tom said indignantly. “I’m just the opposite.” “Of course you are, dear,” Daisy said with such poisonous sweetness that I thought she must surely have given the game away.

We decided on matching white. Daisy thought of brides, I thought of Iphigenia, the virgin sacrifice on the shores of Aulis, and then was roundly mocked for it.

“Wear this for good luck,” she said warmly. “It’s what you were wearing when you met Nick for the first time.” I let her smooth the color over my lips, but it didn’t feel like good luck. It felt like a bookend, in that we had started something that day in June and today we were capping it off. I shook the thought off. It was far too Protestant for words, and I was an irreligious modern girl after all. No gods or idols for me.

Gatsby was looking around with such curiosity you had to assume he had come through the whole house that way. I could almost hear things being dropped on the great scales that served for his mind, the house Daisy shared with Tom against the one she would share with him, the windows against his windows, the finery of Tom’s servants versus his own.

Daisy had gotten a hold of his hand, however, and was hanging on. Indiscreet, perhaps, careless definitely, but she did like to keep what was hers close by.

“Oh how I do love you,” Daisy purred, sliding her fingers through his short hair before she kissed him. I had never seen her kiss anyone like that before. It was languid, entirely for her, and as pretty as it was, as much as I liked Gatsby’s shock at her aggression, I liked my own shock a little less. I was meant to be Daisy’s best friend, and I didn’t know this version of her. This version of her felt like a gun primed to fire.

“Vulgar,” I said, affecting both disinterest and disdain, and Nick squeezed my hand a little, mouthing thank you at me when Daisy returned to Gatsby’s mouth. He had a horror of performance and was typically at his best when he thought no one looked or cared.

“Here’s my darling, my darling, my love and my life,” Daisy said, taking Pammy’s hand and encouraging her in a bashful pirouette. Pammy’s eyes were full of Daisy, but when her mother pushed her towards us, she went easily enough. She called me Aunt Jordan and kissed me dutifully on the cheek, and she curtsied prettily for Nick and for Gatsby. Nick treated her with the grave courtesy that makes some adults so very popular with children, and Gatsby seemed oddly shy of her, darting glances between her small face and Daisy’s almost askance.

“Me and Jay. You and Nick. It will be fine, I promise.” She leaned to kiss me, I guessed, on the cheek, but instead she slipped or I did, because she was kissing me on the lips. We both tasted of gin and lime, and my lipstick was fainter, ghostly on her mouth. The kiss sent a shock through me because it didn’t seem to shock her at all. She winked at me, pressing her thumb against my lower lip as if to wipe the kiss away. “Shh, it’ll be fine.”

Daisy, seated between Tom and Gatsby, seemed to turn thinner and tighter, and when she jumped up, it was like a steel guitar string had been plucked too hard. “Well, what in the world are we going to do with ourselves this afternoon?” she cried. “What are we going to do with ourselves tomorrow, and then for the next thirty years?” “You’re being morbid,” I said, because I mistrusted that look in her eye. “We don’t have to do anything. We can just wait for fall. Life starts over again in fall.”

I had always thought that Daisy was like the rest of us Louisville girls, liars every one for the right cause, though of course you would never convince any of us of what one right cause that should be. Now I could see that she was no kind of liar at all, as her hand came out to touch Gatsby’s face right in front of her husband. “Oh,” she said in faltering tones. “Oh but you look so cool…” At the last moment, she pulled back. That feeling of disaster that had hung over us all day finally disappeared, because the disaster had come.

And Gatsby, who turned out to be nothing more than the son of a dirt farmer and his half-Chippewa wife, who had constructed a palace so profoundly beautiful that we need never look for the truth, simply forgot to lie with any part of his body in that moment. In that moment, they were alone together in the dining room, in the mansion, in the state, in the country, in the world, and the rest of us were left to beat our fists on the wall outside. “You always look so cool,” she said, and then the spell was broken.

Daisy, make a decision. You can’t have them both, you know. You can’t live in East Egg for Tom and your parents, and row across the Sound to Gatsby’s as soon as the sun sets.” “But of course I can,” she said as if scandalized. “You just don’t know, Jordan. It’s not just double lives. It’s triple, quads and quints…” She wasn’t drunk. That was the horror of it.

Everything that happened afterward wasn’t worth it to see the look on Tom’s face, but everything that had happened up until that point definitely was. His jaw dropped, he turned even redder, and if he had had a cigar, I was sure he would have bitten it right in half.

There was no wind to blow the ash around, but the ash heaps loomed ominously, threatening to bury us all if we so much as took a step out of place.

We passed under the eyes of the same hideous billboard advertising some defunct optometrist’s office, a pair of eyes that gazed at us with avuncular malice as we left the ashes behind. I always felt an obscure kind of relief when Nick and I passed under its gaze, as if we had escaped some kind of calamity or other in Queens, and I was happy to leave the gas station and the madwoman in the attic behind us.

“Let’s talk about something else, then,” Nick said suddenly, reminding us all that he was there. It was his peculiar gift again, that he could fall flat out of existence when he was quiet and watching, because he was always watching.

Tom grudgingly turned away from Gatsby, denied his proper prey, I thought, but as he spoke on the phone, I saw his face in profile. He looked confused and devastated, like the old bear whose kingdom has been taken over by a bunch of democratic sparrows. He does love her, I thought in surprise, and at that point, I suppose I thought that it counted for something even when it stood up alone, without kindness or consideration or mercy or intelligence to back it up.

“All right then, Jay and Nick, it’s your turn,” I cried, ignoring Daisy’s hurt gaze. To make sure I wasn’t misunderstood, I gave Gatsby my roses and wound Nick’s arm through his. “But it’s—it’s bigamy,” Nick said, taking a stab at humor despite the startled fear in his eyes. “Don’t worry, I shan’t tell if you make sure to keep me in mink and diamonds.” “I’ll take care of that,” Gatsby said playfully. “You won’t want for anything so long as we can share, Mrs. Carraway.” Actually, it turned out I hated the sound of Mrs. Carraway, but I was more than happy to keep Tom only fuming rather than explosive. I married Gatsby and Nick with great pomp and circumstance, and while Nick refused to kiss, he took the phone book from my hands, and pushed me towards Daisy. “Now, you two!” That was awkward, but Daisy had picked up one of the tumblers of whiskey, and sipping steadily, she gave in to the fun, forgetting the idea of trying to marry Gatsby in front of her actual husband. When Nick pronounced us wife and wife, she leaned over, splashing a few teaspoons of whiskey on my dress, and bent me back in a showy Broadway kiss. She bent me so far back that we lost our balance. We would have gone down in a tangle of limbs and laughter if Gatsby hadn’t been there in a flash, getting us both back on our feet. He would never have bothered with me if it was not for Daisy, but he did it all the same, and I thought maybe I could grow to like him a little more, that he was not such a terrible pers...

Tom spoke again, glancing at Gatsby out of the corner of his eye. “What is it with you and with Nick, anyway?” he asked meaningfully.

“We?” Gatsby asked, and Tom gave him a startled look, as if not expecting him to admit to his own perversity so quickly. Tom hadn’t yet twigged to the fact that there were in fact several kinds of institutions attacking his precious country stretched out in the suite. “Tom, stop,” Daisy said. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Tom shot back. “You think you can get away with so much more just because you’re a woman? You and your little China doll…”

Nick’s hand tightened on mine, his face pale. In that, he matched Daisy, whose face peeking over her shoulder was as colorless as a mourning lily. They never looked more alike than when they were afraid, and I wanted to scold them both for paying Tom any heed.

“Oh we’re all being so very silly,” Daisy said mechanically. “Do let’s go home, won’t we?” “No,” Gatsby said, in the manner of a man who has not been listened to enough in the last quarter hour. “No, Tom. Daisy’s not going home with you. She loves me, only me.” His mistake, I thought in a distant kind of way, was watching Tom in that moment and not Daisy. Daisy looked untethered to the world, as if she might suddenly take a step and go flying, tumbling through the air like a piece of dandelion fluff. She gazed between Gatsby and Tom, and she looked unsure, her footing wrong.

“Oh yes?” Tom said, scanning Gatsby from top to bottom. “And why don’t you tell me where you’ll take her to live? Do you have rooms at that damned perverts’ club, or is it a little pied-à-terre in Hell? What about a tipi in—”