Daisy Buchanan's Daughter Book 1: Cadwaller's Gun by Tom Carson

years, the one with hips to put hands to, the one who drawls “fucking” the way Pepys writes “But I digress,” the one who knew my mother was addicted to morphine—that Pam was a long way from existing.
    “I’m sorry,” I said instead in panic. Couldn’t wait to learn what I’d apologized for (it’s all information at that age). Though it was August, forgive me for remembering I was shivering.
    “Can’t let it get wet! That’s death.”
    I cringed for two reasons. One was that “death” as an all-purpose comparison was an L.E.-ism and I’d thought we were shut of her. The other was that, as she tugged a ruffled and honey-colored bathing cap down over naked, hopping Pam’s head, my mother—and until you follow this logic, you’ll never understand Daisy Buchanan—said, “My! You are a bit roly-poly, aren’t you?”
    “But what about your hair, Mommie?” (Oh, please! Can I get in the tub now?)
    “Oh, what I do I care?” she said. “What does anyone?”
    After all that, the actual bath was a relief. Water was better to wear than nothing, and our tub, of course, was huge. Before the polo horse did its bit, Daddy’d been pretty doggone wealthy, and we were two years away from the Crash.
    As for what Daisy Buchanan looked like when she slipped off her silk bath wrap and slid into the far end of the tub, I’m sorry. She was my mother and I’m not a pornographer. She had Those Things (had I suckled them? No information, but I must’ve drained both). She had That Thing,which I thought was too pretty and small for me to’ve come out of it. Briefly and discreetly, she’d had its hind twin’s scything when she joined me in the tub.
    She still had the smile that had made the Fay house in Louisville swarm with khaki and officer’s buttons. She had Rorschach-blotty purple and yellow splashes of bruises from shooting up morphine all over her arms and legs.
    She pushed a duck at me and giggled. She let me take off the honey-colored bathing cap and soak my head when I complained for the third time about how gunky it felt. She asked her daughter to look away when she stood up with water cascading and reached for her robe, and I did even though I regret it.
    She called me “Pammie,” not “darling,” during most of the bath.
    She never mentioned the Lotus Eater. She never touched me, not once, not even when we were both toweled. I’d never done towel turban before. She helped. That was as close as she came.
    Not once. Other than that, for once I don’t care about history. You bastards! Do you expect me to tell you what her snatch looked like? She was my mother.
    Posted by: Pam
    Foreshortened into troglodytism by the downcast view from my third-floor playroom, the Lotus Eater got out from behind the wheel of her Dreiser, and that was that. Intermission accomplished. She looked as ratty in her white dress of surrender as a Popsicle wrapper glued back onto the stick after the Popsicle’s gone, but that couldn’t have mattered less to my mother. Going by the murmurs that rose once I’d crept down to the second-floor landing—my mother’s bright “All you want, darling! Whatever you want,” the L.E.’s forlornly merry “ Quid pro quo vadis , Daisy. Isn’t that in Dante somewhere?”—I gathered all was forgiven. By whom and for what, I’ll never know.
    The L.E. drove away only an hour or two later, after a reconciled parting at the front door I’m sure Pam didn’t witness. I have a vivid memory of toycotting it instead in the playroom, mauling two of my dollies’ heads together as if I were trying to force them to swap faces and making disgusting “Shmek, shmek” noises which I must’ve been mimicking from the Scandinavian’s mutters when at some point she shoved a third doll into the room. A stupid one I’d always hated, too close to me in size to be good for much; that was why I’d abandoned it on our pointlessly boatless wharf.
    My memories of that night and the next morning are more