Today's Reading
Bill installed himself in the front seat and the Phantom purred to life. They chugged out of the station onto a road busy with automobiles and bicycles, men in golf caps or trilbies, women carrying baskets...but soon the narrow streets with shops and houses gave way to roads with trees and ditches, and sun coming through a canopy of leaves overhead.
"Are you a fast driver, Bill?" Greta called from the back. "You rather look as though you might be."
He didn't seem to mind the goading. "If you're eager to be home, Miss Gatsby, I'll endeavor to oblige."
He was as good as his word, and as he fearlessly took the corners on the country road, Greta put her head out the window, and let the wind rush through her newly shorn hair and tickle her scalp. They passed a brick schoolhouse, a white-painted church, a corner where a small boy chased a dog. Greta thought she could already feel that fresh, bright air of Manhasset Bay, the glory of West Egg. She pictured it now: the long lawns that led down to the water and to the Gatsbys' private dock where their boat, the Marguerite, bobbed gently in the waves. The summer nights when fireflies would congregate and the green light from the Buchanans' dock winked at them from across Manhasset Bay. The window seat in the living room where she'd passed many summer hours ensconced, deep in one of her mystery novels. She'd ordered that new Agatha Christie book only last week from Dauber & Pine, that lovely little place just off Manhattan's Book Row; perhaps it would have arrived by now.
And perhaps this summer might give her an opportunity to spend some real time with Jay. Maybe it was the gap in years between them that made him seem so...distant, sometimes. Or perhaps the rupture he'd made with their past? He was always so immersed in his world of parties and friends, being the man they had come to know instead of the boy Greta remembered him being. He was as kind as ever, as generous as ever, but he was so determined not to look backward...and sometimes Greta wondered if she, too, might be part of that backward.
Bill tooted the horn, rounded the bend, and there were the tall black gates rising up in front of them. Bill unlocked them, then got back in and coaxed the Phantom gently up the incline. One more corner, and the Gatsby mansion emerged out of the trees. Excess reigned in every room of that house, but nothing could spoil its stately simplicity as it rose up before her now, the glorious white stone bathed in the afternoon light, the leaded windows reflecting fiery gold. Greta felt a small bubble of joy rise up in her chest.
Home.
* * *
The door was opened by a woman with steely hair gathered into a bun, who looked at Greta with a faint air of suspicion.
"Miss Gatsby—you're here! Your train was quite delayed, you know."
Mrs. Dantry had a particular skill for inflecting almost everything she said with an air of reproach; it was really a considerable talent. Greta smiled demurely at the housekeeper.
"Alas, Mrs. Dantry, my eagerness to be home bore little weight with the train driver."
Dantry turned her humorless stare on Greta, who had shrugged off her light travel cloak, and was now divesting herself of the green cloche. At the sight of what lay beneath, Dantry emitted a faint, strangled sound.
"Miss Gatsby—your hair..."
"Yes, it's all the rage now." Greta patted the blunt cut at the back. "Do you like it?"
The housekeeper managed a choked sort of hmph, but beyond that seemed quite lost for words. She blinked, then recovered herself sufficiently to address the chauffeur: "Take Miss Gatsby's valise around the back, Bill, and Molly will bring it up. No need to dawdle."
Greta stepped into the hall, relishing the familiar surroundings: those double-height ceilings and the enormous French Empire chandelier, designed to awe visitors on sight, as was the gilded wood staircase at the end of the hall whose dual branches curved magnificently up to the second floor. But Dantry's words echoed, distracting, and Greta brought her gaze back to the housekeeper.
"Who is Molly?" Surely Jay hadn't hired a third housemaid? That would be rather profligate, even for him.
Mrs. Dantry frowned.
"Why, Molly—the new maid. Nora Sweeney's replacement. Didn't Mr. Gatsby write you?"
Replacement! Greta felt momentarily crestfallen. Nora had been only a few years older than Greta, and had worked at the Gatsby house in one capacity or another since Greta was sixteen. Friends was hardly the right word for it, but they'd been something like friends. At least, Greta thought they had been. And now she'd left—and Greta had heard nothing of it until this moment.
...