“Sh!” was the sound Miss Jordan threw at me, yet I hadn’t the slightest idea as to why. When I made to speak again she shushed me a second time, and this time I listened. There was a murmuring coming from the other room where Tom and Daisy had disappeared off to when the phone rang out, the rising and lowering of their voices was all that I could make out. Yet despite this, the owners of the voices were clearly identifiable, Tom’s voice with its husky tenor and Daisy’s light melody stinging together in impassioned notes together.

“Is something happening?” I asked innocently, for something was definitely happening that I did not know of.

“You mean to tell me you don’t know?” said Jordan in honest surprise. “I thought everyone knew already, especially you. You are her cousin.”

That last remark gave me a pause. Was knowing the goings on of your cousin’s life a common occurrence in the inner circles of the extravagant?

I said “no” and Jordan enlightened me to a piece of information I wasn’t aware of.

“Tom’s got some woman in New York,” she said.

It was intriguing news, yet I was somehow not surprised. Ever since leaving New Haven, Tom’s life seems to have developed a void that seems to have led him to seek out a means to fill it.

Before I could answer, Daisy came in through the entrance.

“It couldn’t be helped!” she claimed tensely, an off note in her voice.

Jordan and I shared a look and mentioned nothing. Tom came marching in a second later. His eyes were alert and suspicious, darting to and fro for as if he expected there to be someone hiding somewhere in the room. Daisy gave a thin smile. Tom halted at the table and clapped his hands together in an official manner.

“Now that that’s over with let’s—,” the sharp ringing of the phone pierced the air. I was absolutely sure that, for a second, ice encased the world and froze everything and all that is and ever was, with only the ringing of a lone phone to echo clamorously in the silence. Nobody moved. In my distraction, I found myself wholly unprepared for the events that would soon unfold. For when the third ring clamored out, a change came over Daisy. Whatever laid-back facade she was so desperately clinging seemed to be suddenly ripped from her white-knuckled hands. Before anyone could say anything, Daisy bolted out of the room and into the next.

   Tom startled, “Daisy— Daisy, wait!” he ran in after her.

   Miss Jordan, with a crease of worry on her brow, and I shared another quick look before we followed in as well. Daisy’s voice was a shrill knife forged from a long-held hurt born from a history that only I seemed to be unaware of. I’d be lying if I said I was not frightened, because in all my years of life I had never, not once, seen Daisy express anger in any other form other than a vague annoyance. A glance at Jordan proved to me that I was at least partially right. She was standing beside me, eyes wide with alarm and interest, yet not knowing how to interrupt such an unfamiliar scene.

Meanwhile, Tom was seemingly trying to get Daisy away from the phone, but Daisy’s fury appeared to have taken it’s strangling hold on him, too. He was trying to calm her down with little effect.

   “Daisy! Put the phone down! Daisy! Listen to me!”

   He was hovering around her trying to remove the phone from her hands without breaking the cord, but she kept dodging out of his way.

   “Get away from me! I hate you!” she cried.

   “You’re being unreasonable!” retorted Tom, becoming increasingly frustrated with Daisy’s continual disobedience.

   Daisy, however, wasn’t done. She slammed the phone back onto its body, “Even after that maid woman! Now another?” She bemoaned. “I hate you! I hate you! I wish I never MARRIED YOU! DID YOU THINK I WAS  STUPID!” screeched Daisy, her fair face now the violent red of an all-consuming fire.

   Tom was fighting a losing battle, yet he clung desperately to whatever control he still had left over Daisy. Now he, too, looked about an inch away from his wit’s end. At Daisy’s verbal explosion, Jordan beside me seemed to have lost the nerve she was building to interfere. This was now a battle between a vengeful wife and her unfaithful husband. Anyone who dared come between the two will be shown little mercy, regardless of how familiar they are.

   Tom made to grasp his wife, once more trying to use physical means to bring her down to reason.

“Daisy–!” but any and all final chances of redemption were robbed of him when the phone gave one more, damning ring.

“BE!” Daisy lunged and seized the telephone off the table, “QUIET!” and the phone was no more.

The shouting had stopped, only Daisy’s haggard pants were heard. All those present could do nothing else but look down at the victim on the floor, its thin frame now in three uneven pieces on the polished floor. Looking further down, at my feet, I saw my slightly trembling reflection glance right back at me from between the new shoes that I bought last week. They, too, needed a little polish.

In the time it took me to calm my heartbeat, Daisy had charged past Tom and up the stairs in the main hall, possibly to her room. Jordan left her perch beside me to follow, marching grim-faced toward her own possible battle. What surprised me was that Tom didn’t make a move to follow. After everything he tried to do to get Daisy back in his grasp, he merely stood there gazing in the direction she ran off to. It remained that way for a few moments before either of us said anything.

Tom was the first to speak, “Nick, what just happened?” he said, disbelieving. As if what had just transpired wasn’t something he had ever thought to be at all possible.

I was not entirely sure myself, but I didn’t wish to speak with him anymore, or anyone for that matter. Frankly, I was feeling rather irritated with the day’s events and wished nothing more than to go home.

I gave a heavy sigh, “I don’t know, Tom. You tell me.”

He didn’t respond, now looking at the polished floor as if it held the answers to the world.

Seeing that Tom wasn’t going to talk anytime soon, I silently made my way to the front door and left, truly and utterly exhausted.