Chapter 9 #2
Jay reached forward and pulled me closer to the center, his manner intimate, as if we’d been friends for much longer. Cannon
jumped too, but he didn’t make it. He was half hanging on the side of the building when I turned around, and Jay pretended
not to see it.
“Do we help him?” I asked, stopping.
“Not at all,” Jay said calmly. “Cannon’s joining the police force. He should have the training to help himself! Isn’t that
right?”
As we watched Cannon claw and slip on the roof, I wondered if letting him fall to his doom was really worth it. And I decided
it would make me miserable, even if I didn’t like him.
I moved to turn back to help, but just then he finally made it and rolled over on his back. I sighed with relief as I watched
him, thanking the stars he was still alive.
“Dear God,” he said, eyes closed, breath heavy. “I know in my loyal heart that you’ll punish these ridiculous radicals for almost killing me! I release it to you!”
Jay cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed, “You’re a bootlicker, Cannon!” He snickered and pulled me by the arm,
toward the edge of the building.
“One day you and your conman father will pay for your crimes!” Cannon screamed after us, his voice fading.
Jay swung onto the fire escape, his shoes clanging against metal as he vaulted over the railing and slid down the ladder.
I scrambled after him, my pulse hammering, hands gripping cold iron. The wind rushed past us as we leapt onto a narrow platform,
then barreled down two flights of steep stairs, the whole structure rattling under our weight.
At the bottom, a ten-foot gap stretched before us. No time to think. Jay hurled himself forward, landing hard on a trash can
lid. I followed, crashing down, the impact jolting through my bones as we tumbled onto the alley pavement in a tangle of limbs
and breathless laughter.
“Wow!” I screamed as I stood up. My heart was going to explode—I couldn’t catch my breath! I stretched my arms to the sky
before a backdrop of shops that were closing up. The Harlem air tasted so fresh! “I can’t believe I made that jump. Are you
insane, Jay? We could’ve died!”
Jay stood up and pondered it. “But we didn’t die. Which is fantastic news, and the fun of it all!” He waved down a cab. “What do you say we get somewhere safe?”
I simply followed, sliding inside the back seat and rolling down the windows. The night melted around us. The wind raced through
my ears, as the city passed us by in shades of red, blue, and orange.
“Come with me to my home tonight,” Jay said.
I straightened my neck a bit. Surely the wind eclipsed his words, and I heard wrong. “What?”
“I insist,” he said, with a smile, which made me certain he was serious.
“That’s . . . unexpected. All the way to Long Island proper? The Long Island,” I said. “Is it an actual island? Like Coney Island?”
“I live on a lake, so it looks like an island, but you can get to it by car.”
“Okay. Why not?” I went along with it because I lacked motivation to decide what to do next. Plus, the first part of the evening
was fun!
I liked Jay, but as much as I yearned for his friendship, part of my brain couldn’t trust him fully. It whispered that all
the mysteries I wished for Jay to reveal about himself could also hide untold dangers, the very dangers that made Jordan so
wary of the Gatsbys. The only way to know if that part of my brain was irrational was to spend more time with him.
The plot that his home was built on must have been two hundred acres. In fact, you could build four different houses in the
space that was occupied by long, trimmed hedges and walkways.
A gate opened to a long driveway where ground lights led us down a gravel path.
A roundabout circled a fountain, where a statue was also illuminated by tiny lights.
I tried to subdue my wonder to act like I’d been somewhere similar before.
The closest I’d come was the Vanderbilt estate where Isaiah worked, but that home did not have quite as much space on the property, nor did it have as many windows or a long staircase leading up to where the house really was.
Questions popped into my mind as we left the vehicle, like, Who waters the plants and the flowers? And does the fountain never stop? Who could manage all this space?
“So . . . you live here,” I said, unable to hold my awe in as I looked up at the double-door entryway, the ivy which crept
up the cream-colored limestone walls.
He shrugged and jammed his hands into his pockets. “For now, yeah. We’ve got too much space, if you ask me.”
Jay’s house seemed even bigger inside—so big I couldn’t imagine it only belonged to one family. But it did. In the lobby,
a long staircase led to an upstairs balcony that could be seen from the front door. The entire house was like a breath of
fresh air.
“Must be nice to have the whole place to yourself,” I said as I followed him up the stairs.
“Is it nice if all you hear day in and day out are empty echoes? My father is off purchasing land in Canada, so he’s not here
much lately. I spend most of my time alone, listening to the fountains and playing with my little cat, Meowy.”
Once we reached upstairs, said little cat appeared from around the corner and nuzzled up to his leg. Jay gave Meowy an affectionate pat on the head and started speaking in a baby voice. His humor made me smile, though what he was saying was impossible to understand.
The upstairs was a vast expanse, so open that several rooms came into view at once—the entryway and two lavish rooms on opposite
sides of the hall. The hallway stretched like a regal boulevard, its polished marble floor and intricate moldings seeming
allergic to dirt.
Mid-hallway, nestled into the wall like a secret alcove, was a narrow passage leading to a miniature hallway—a curious space
that added depth to the otherwise airy place.
We paused near a sliding ladder, perched at the edge of a mahogany bookshelf that stretched up to five levels. At the foot
of the ladder stood a table. Small magazines lay atop it, alongside classics of literature, political theory, and a literary
magazine.
I picked up the magazine, impressed by the array of genres found here, and began reading a poem. “I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young—”
“I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep,” Jay finished, focusing on me. “That’s a beautiful poem you were mumbling.”
“Langston Hughes.”
“Promising new talent. He lives here in New York. I try to read as many Negro writers as I can. Not out of any guiding principle
but because . . . what else is there to do?”
That was true—what else was there to do? Life was boring.
“I’m surprised,” I said. “I just thought you’d study the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Sigmund Freud.” White writers was the postscript I didn’t add. Not the Negro poets.
“I understand why you’d make that assumption.” He looked at me with concealed offense, but tensely added, “It must be hard
for you to come from the South and trust anyone with white in their blood.” Jay left the study and guided us to his bedroom
as he spoke. “I do care though, about Negro culture and politics. It’s why I convinced Father to start West Egg in the first
place.”
Jay’s bedroom was softened with a Persian rug. He had a grand four-poster bed with a carved wooden frame, a red sofa, and
a desk cluttered with papers, an inkwell, and a few sketches. I spotted a hand plane, chisels, and measuring tapes stored
in a leather tool roll. There was a big unfinished wooden sculpture—like a canoe—in the corner. It looked like a hobby project.
I waited at the entrance as Jay opened the doors to a connected balcony, which overlooked the back lawn and a lake.
“Come outside!” he called.
So I joined him there. On the other side of the water was an enormous white mansion whose splendor took my breath away!
“Who lives there?” I asked.
“Tom Buchanan—Charlie’s father, as you know.” Jay tilted his head at the view. “But so different from my father that I find
it strange they work together. My father respects him, so I guess I have to as well, but Tom’s got this cold way about him.
I think he’s trying to take over Harlem and make sure regular people can’t afford to live there anymore.”
I silently nodded without surprise. Buchanan seemed awful by the way Daisy reacted to his name.
“My father does it differently,” Jay said, a little spark in his eyes. “He’s buying up more properties to rent to Colored folks because he believes we should all be able to share this city. But, sometimes you have to work with people you don’t exactly like to get things done.”
“Is that so?” I squinted at him. “Couldn’t your dad find someone else to work with besides the guy who doesn’t want Negroes
living in Harlem?”
Jay refused eye contact with me. “I can’t answer for him,” he said quietly. “He does things the way he wants to do them. But
it’s important to note the Gatsbys laid the groundwork.”
“Hello?” called a voice from downstairs, which made me jump.
Jay barely acknowledged it. He seemed to need a moment to release tension from his system. Then he called, “Coming!” in response
to the voice.
He walked back down the hallway, and to the balcony that overlooked the entry way. Standing on the plush rug was a tall, strapping
white man in a vest, observing himself in a mirror.
“Mr. Buchanan!” Jay said with fake enthusiasm. “Nice to see you.”
The man turned to smile, and his presence made me shrink back even from so far up. His hair was dark and his eyes piercing
blue. His sharp jaw framed a face that could charm anyone, despite the person behind it.
“Good evening, Jay,” Tom said. “I was hoping your father might be back by now. The property investment group delivered his
letter to my place by mistake.”
“He returns on Wednesday,” Jay said. “But if you leave it on the table, I’ll be sure he gets it.”
Buchanan looked at me suddenly like my presence had fished him out of the conversation.
“Oh, this is my friend, Nick Carrington,” Jay said.
“How do you do, Nick?” Buchanan said, stiffly. He gave me a look that made me shiver, though it was not technically friendly
or hostile. It was as if he was observing a creature in the wild.
“Fine, thank you.”
He walked farther into the entryway, as if he were used to being here, his polished shoes clicking on the marble floor. A
golden pocket watch chain hung from his vest, a testament to his wealth.
“Does your father know you have boys over when he’s away?” he asked Jay, voice low and disciplinary, with a subtle accent
from somewhere in New York.
There was an uncomfortable silence, as Buchanan watched Jay with suspicion, as if he’d been appointed as a nanny in his father’s
absence.
“My father lets me make my own choices,” Jay said in a guarded way.
Buchanan raised his eyebrows. “He takes an interesting approach to fathering. We never could get on the same page with that,
could we?”
Jay didn’t say anything, but I could tell he wanted to. The man had thrown him off-kilter.
And Buchanan seemed satisfied by his shakiness, and it made him smile wider. “Good evening to you, Jay,” he said abruptly and left without looking at me.
When Buchanan disappeared from view, Jay snapped back from his temporary haze and smiled gently at me. “Shall we?” And he
nodded back to his room.
I followed him and asked quietly, “Does your father allow anyone to walk in like that?” Buchanan was not here, but his presence
lingered.
“Oh, we’re very familiar,” Jay said, still looking disturbed. “Buchanan has lived across the lake ever since we’ve lived in
New York, although I’ve never much liked him.”
The niceties of the rich felt very fraudulent, but I didn’t want to insult Jay’s father to his face.
“I never felt like I got to say thank you to you,” I said, in an effort to lighten the mood. “Most white boys—I mean, White
House boys—wouldn’t even make an attempt to stand up for a Blue boy getting bullied.”
“You said white,” Jay said, looking at me intensely. “Do you see me as white?”
What do the white people see? I almost asked—that’s what mattered most. I knew he was a Negro. If it weren’t for his mild brown skin tone, I’d spot the
giveaway in his full lips, or his hair, obviously thicker than a white person’s. And because of those features, I didn’t feel
the need to be on my toes with him.
Still, I could see how they might not know.
In the right suit, with gelled hair, in a club with low lights, he could pass for Italian.
Especially with the way he stood—straight-backed—and given his speech patterns, which were clean and polished.
He had no Southern drawl, no slouch in his vowels.
He spoke like the radio announcers and politicians.
I wasn’t sure how he’d take my observations, so I kept them to myself. “I can tell that you’re not white,” I said, measuredly.
Jay looked away, his mouth hardening some, a muscle jumping in his cheek. “People see what they want. One look at a Mulatto
makes people on both sides want to start a war, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Of course. You represent where this country is going, if we can put down the pitchforks.”
“Do you think they ever will?” he asked, a tinge of optimism in his voice.
I shrugged. “One can only hope.”
“The divide is everywhere. In my friendships and my family. My parents divorcing.”
I could tell just the thought of that bothered him, but I didn’t want to pry. And I didn’t want to talk about my own parents
either lest I start crying in the middle of a regular conversation.
I uncovered another piece of Jay. But I didn’t know his father, not truly. If my relationship with my own father was any indication,
sons and fathers could see things very differently.
How independent was Jay? Did he deserve my full trust?
Greenwood’s fate had taught me that anything horrible could come along and shock me at any given moment. But I knew that for
the moment at least, his presence was a gift that made New York a worthwhile destination to start my life anew.