“I never loved him,” I said; and at that moment I felt free as never before.
Those four simple words were very hard to say. For the latest weeks I had been saying them in my mind all the time. There they did feel right, but did not anymore when I said them aloud.
Tom regarded me with that piercing gaze of his commanding eyes. I knew this gaze; it always got me weak and incapable of making my own decisions. And that both firm and tender intonations in his voice, when he began reminding me of our sacred memories, I knew it too. I always felt weak near him. In fact that might be the reason I married him, as I needed it so
I heard myself like somebody was making a parody of me. The voices of others sounded like they all had left the room, and I was the only one stayed and listened to them speaking behind the door.
I looked at Jay’s face to see if he was satisfied then. How furious I was about him forcing me say what I never meant anymore. He looked at me as if there were no five years between our present and our past. And at that moment I finally understood that actually there were not for him. I felt like I was splitting in two mentally; and there were two of me in that terribly hot room then. That poor little naïve Daisy, who had been living inside of me for all those five years, now was utterly removed. She stepped near Gatsby and looked at me, and I discovered that I was not her anymore. That Daisy was already in my past.
The sun seemed to be focused on our room; the air in it was so still, with no breeze to relieve the heat. I felt like I was losing my mind, so I lit a cigarette to make it clear. Smoking always calmed me down, but nothing was like it had been before with me anymore. I wanted to release myself from everything in the world then, but all I was capable of was to be released from that cigarette in my hand, that I had thrown on the carpet.
The flame burst into millions of tiny fires around me. I knew that it was the product of my imagination, but I swore to myself I sensed the fire washing across my feet almost physically. God, I wanted to scream! But I was sure nobody would hear me.
Thoughts thronged upon me at the speed of light. Everybody wanted something from me, and I knew that I could not stand that anymore.
“Oh, you want too much!” I cried to Jay.
Fire was washing my feet, and the words were spilling out as fast as the fire was spreading upward my body. I did not care about anything I was saying anymore.
But Jay did. He looked at me, and every time he closed and opened his eyes, he looked differently.
“You loved me TOO?” he said aloud, but I felt like he was whispering upon my ear.
I was on fire, but nobody seemed to care about that. None of those two men, who both sworn their love to me. I looked at that other Daisy I removed from myself, and understood completely I should set her free. I was still standing in that luxurious hotel room as the bright and dark pictures of past life were flashing before my eyes. And suddenly I was not on fire anymore. That was me watching Daisy of my past burning in the fire of my present. She was a lot like a beautiful phoenix, but who was fated to never be born again.
References:
- Fitzgerald, Francis Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925. Print.
