Gatsby's Revenge

By SF Covell

"A little bit o' magic. A little bit of closure. A lot of style and refreshing
writing! We all wanted this story when we read the last page of The Great Gatsby and saw the end credits for the film! Gatsby's Revenge makes for some great reading: exciting memorable characters, stylistic writing with an avant garde new focus; plus Gatsby is back!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Covell
• Release date: Aug 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087958897

Book preview

1

Chapter 1: Ghosts (1939)

[Note: Asterisks * Direct reader to a version of a song in Spotify playlist provided]

                    [Opening musical piece: Bye Bye Blues*]

It was 1928 when I first saw Gatsby again.

Twenty years ago. It’s been twenty years and twenty thousand moments where I’ve pondered over Gatsby and about myself. What I used to be and what I’ve become: a failed business owner, a writer of stock market reports, a divorcee living in a house in the middle of nowhere, a father whose only child passed on at the age of four.

Twenty years ago. I was just a kid then. In those days I thought I had a lot of talent. Now I just seem to have a lot of time.

I wrote a novel about it all back in 1925, which, unfortunately, didn't attract a publisher. But there’s more to the story than I wrote before. Much more occurred after I penned that original work.

So the way I see it now, there are three ghosts in this new story: living ghosts and real ghosts. I’ve grown to think of all of them as a sort of an ensemble, like a Dickens novel—the Ghosts of Gatsby Past. The first such ghost was the gangster Sulla, a living ghost. Then Gatsby, the real ghost. That is, he was dead for sure, but had, ah, well, returned. Finally, and years later, it would be Pamela, very much a living ghost, and by far the most haunting of the three.

1939. Seventeen years after Jay was shot in his pool by a lunatic.

I’d been listening to Billie Holiday’s I’ll Get By* in my house outside St. Paul, when the doorbell rings, and there on the front doorstep is this pretty young lady with a white mesh hand purse clasped in front of her in both gloved hands as if a sort of delicate shield. She smiled and her lips parted nervously, revealing very white teeth. Her eyes, shining, green like tropical waters, alive, like . . . someone’s I once knew, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on whose.

Mr. Carraway? Nick Carraway?

Yes? I took in her trim grey suit, an off-white collar which framed her face. A slender nose, rounded high cheeks, thin but very expressive lips. Her hair, light brown with a touch of corn yellow, curled just barely to her shoulders. But her eyes overwhelmed everything.

Uncle Nick! She actually cried my name out gleefully.

Oh my God, was all I could offer. I was in some sort of shock. And then I figured it out: her eyes were those of my cousin, Daisy Buchanan.

She held out her hand with a beaming smile, and I reached for it, feeling the warm smoothness of the glove.

Pamela?

Yes! She said, very enthusiastic, adjusting her small grey cap with its yellow feather; But my friends call me Pam. It was Daisy Buchanan’s daughter who I hadn’t seen since she was three or so.

I had gotten a letter from Pamela recently but had no idea she had any plans to visit me. Fifteen years I hadn’t seen any of the Buchanans. I last saw Daisy in ‘22. I last saw Tom right before he died in ’29. And there it was: loathing, trepidation, guilt. She was, after all, Tom’s daughter.

Well I’ll be damned! I shut my mouth finally then said with false exuberance, Well, come on in, Pamela, or is it, Pam?

Oh you can call me Pamela—that's fine. Entering the house, she took off her gloves just inside the front doorway, smiling, and then growing suddenly serious burst out, I have to be honest with you, Uncle Nick. I need your help; I need to know if you’ll be honest with me. I’m sorry; I know I shouldn’t be just going off like this right off the bat, but, my mother, Uncle Nick—she’s gotten worse. She shook her head and I could see her deep concern . Her sickness—a type of mental illness—has advanced dramatically over the last five years, she said, looking down at the handbag clutched tightly in her hands.

I did hear something about that . . .

Something very powerful flashed suddenly in her eyes as she glanced back up at me. She said, I was hoping you could tell me about my mother’s past. There was a pause, and then it came out: And . . . about a man named Gatsby.

"Gatsby?!" I almost choked, coughing.

She reached for my hand again, as if to steady me, and gave me this look, with a keen sense of earnest longing that I would come to know so well. "Does that name ring a bell? Jay Gatsby?" she asked.

The bell tolls for thee, Nick Carraway.

I mean, my mother talks about him a lot, or, at least mentions his name, she continued, then paused as if studying me. She is a very sick person, Uncle Nick; I just need to know some things, I mean, if I’m going to help her.

Pamela reached in the small handbag. "In any event, I was hoping you could help me. She pulled out a small enameled cigarette case, and bringing out a black cigarette, lit it with a small lighter. Drawing in the smoke nervously, she let it out and the words again came in a rush as did the smell of cloves about the room. I’m sorry, I know this is terribly sudden and awkward, and, I know, well, this is going to sound like a cliché, but you are the only one left who can help me. My grandparents have both passed on, as you no doubt know. I saw Jordan Baker and she won’t tell me anything, and I have seen my mother, oh yes—lost in her own private hell, and she won’t, or can’t help me, other than to blurt out vague names and places as if they conveyed the deepest meaning and the key to her hurting in the middle of her crazy ramblings. She laughed nervously. I know I’m rambling now too, but I’ve simply got to get a better understanding of what happened so I know, finally, and maybe I can even help find a cure—if there is one. Or some way to get through to her, at least. Or at least understand her. And what happened to her in the past." She had been addressing the room in general up to this point, but now, taking a deep breath, she turned back to me.

So were my mother and this fellow Jay Gatsby lovers, Uncle Nick?

Okay, okay, I said, laughing, and shaking my head a bit. Oh Christ, this wasn’t in the letter. I swallowed hard. Then I said with a faint stab at levity, And here I thought you just wanted to see me to say hello. That got a relieved smile from her.

Well, have a nice cushy seat over here, niece Pamela. I gestured to my most comfortable chair, though a touch worn, the green backless divan. Let me get you a drink and get you comfortable and then we’ll talk. I promise, I continued as she started to interrupt, I promise I’ll tell you what I can.

Right. What the hell was I going to tell her? And what should I not tell her? Everything? Anything? About her mother and Gatsby?

I escorted Pam to the divan, and took her short coat from her. She sat down and drew the ashtray on the end table closer to her. She was five feet six maybe, taller than her mother, though much less blonde than Daisy. As pretty as her mother for sure. "I’m sorry to hear about your mother, by the way. I didn’t know she was, ah well, this bad."

I went over to the foyer to hang up her coat as she sat quietly smoking and, for a moment, I gazed at myself in the hall mirror. What would she see? The legendary Uncle Nick Carraway in the flesh. A tall thickening middle-aged man, slightly balding but at 47 only a few grey hairs mixed in with the short brown, the long narrow nose, the unsteady mouth, and the thin brown mustache. The green eyes behind brown framed glasses. The old blue Oxford shirt. Old Uncle Nick. No, not old: seasoned, as my former boss used to say. Would she find any consolation in this man, this distant solitary uncle she had never seen. And what should I say to her? What do you say? Your mother had an affair! And if I go there, where do I begin? And even worse, where do I end? I thought again about her father, Tom, with a sick feeling in my stomach. I mean, is there an end to this story that I could feel good about telling this girl? This lovely niece, this apparition, this 20ish seemingly-innocent young lady sitting there unobtrusively smoking her little thin black clove cigarettes, her legs folded, the fingers on one hand loosely engaged with her cigarette, the fingers of the other hand absent-mindedly toying with her hair, her wide green eyes turning back to me with a sense of, well, hope, again. And sincerity and trust, or at least the passion to trust, if someone to trust can be discovered. Was I that person?

Well. What’ll it be? Ginger ale, water, a more serious drink? You’re how old? I tried to laugh.

Oh, ginger ale would be aces, she said. "And I 'm old enough to drink, by the by. She laughed, a sparkly, light, merry sort of outburst. Where did she come from? Chicago? Louisville? Daisy and . . . Tom . . . ?

In any event I ran for the soda in the bar cabinet next to my beloved ’36 Victrola. You are just as lovely as your mother, I said over my shoulder. I suppose I was stalling, and poured myself another shot—time to put the excellent Fitzgerald Irish malt whiskey to work. In Pam, you could see why Gatsby fell for her mother.

Thank you, she replied.

Of course I haven’t seen your mom or really heard from her since, well, in ages. I looked up at the hall wall towards my favorite photograph of young sailor Gatsby. I stared at him there in that iconic picture. You just never go away, do you, old sport? It was one of the pictures his father had left in the house. The house that Gatsby built. Well, this was the house and farmland that Mr. Gatz had wanted. His son bought it for him shortly before his death.

Now it was mine.

I suppose I should quickly mention here how I came to live in the Gatz house. Brevity is the soul of sudden expository backstories. You see, years before I had only meant to pick up something of Jay’s that his father had wanted to give me, and the next thing I knew I was the owner of the house.

It was 1927—five years removed from Gatsby’s murder and the disastrous experiences in the East; three months from the even more horrendous ending of my brief marriage and four months from the loss of my daughter—when I got a call from Gatsby’s old dad. I had last seen him back in ’22 as the lone participant at his son’s funeral. But now Mr. Gatz had something for me, as I said. So I trundled out the old Buick and made the 250 mile drive to the Gatz house 100 miles northwest of St. Paul, and 20 miles from St. Cloud.

 It was a small house in the midst of vast unfarmed farmland. It still is. There was a single ancient oak tree, a stone well, a worn-out windmill still in the airless heat, the remnants of a dirt driveway, and a Ford truck, now gone.

Mr. Gatz was happy to see me and invited me inside. He wore no suit this time, of course, looking even more haggard–that deathly fading Wilson look I call it. (That would be George Wilson). But somehow he looked more normal now—normal clothes, at least. He ushered me inside to see the small quiet grey rooms, the stillness, the tidy woman-less emptiness.

 A front foyer and its tall mirror, a kitchen, a living room, a dining room, three bedrooms and one bathroom. There were some expensive-looking pieces of furniture in the living room. On a bureau I noticed a photograph of a family standing outside a tiny terribly-decrepit shack surrounded by dead brush and dirt. The house appeared to be one step away from collapsing. The mother was small, stout and plain. The father was tall, thin and plain. The son was just a kid but almost as tall as his father and smiling, of course. That was our old place that Jay grew up in, in North Dakota, whispered his father to me. I stared at that ancient photo for some time. No wonder his son dreamed of better things. No wonder he ran away and never came back. No wonder he wouldn’t mention these humble things, these somber deathly rural beginnings.

One room he had set up like it was still Jay’s childhood room, replete with Jay’s childhood mementos. My son’s room is all together . . . his things . . . He pointed with a slight waving gesture towards the scattered bric-a-brac, the Minnesota college pennant, the Black Sox team picture, small trophies in neat rows, pictures in frames on the shelves and on the walls. Young Jay at school, younger Jay ice-skating, Jay and his parents by a Christmas tree. Then he handed me a framed shot he pulled down from the wall which showed a teenage Jay standing by a small boat at the edge of some vast body of water, with his shirt off and wearing only white dungarees. Like all the pictures on his walls, this young Gatsby is smiling boyishly. But this one is somehow different. The sun beaming off his tanned brow, and reflecting off the still gray water behind him, he appeared, well, eternal—the handsome icon of youth and a sort of reckless potentiality.

His father asked me to stay. I stayed. In Jay’s room. I lay in the bed on my back and I have to say I was overwhelmed. It smelled like Gatsby.

Next day he showed me around a little bit. There ain’t a heck of a lot to it, he said, but what there is, is what I wanted, and he got it for me. He was a good boy. He made it, you know, he really made it. Before he was— He couldn’t go on. I turned away, and stared out a cobwebbed window to the land outside.

There wasn’t much else to see there: the small barn shack in the back with the paint faded nearly completely, a big stone well which looked like it hadn’t been used for years, the neighbors to the east—the Johnsons—and the old gaunt and looming oak by the house with just a few major limbs still remaining. He said there were a lot of birds in the area, though the place seemed dead. Desolate. Denuded. But no, there were hawks, starlings, sparrows. Big crows loitered blackly in the oak and mewed.

We talked of his son’s life, the only subject of any interest to him. The old man was still grieving for his son, grieving for his life. Knowing that he at least had had the son, who was golden—golden to him—and that was enough.

But not enough anymore. He was only in his mid-sixties, but he had become a rail-thin, red-eyed human storage tank, empty but for the memory of his golden one, and his moment in the sun. Yea, Jay Gatsby had had his moment.

Shortly before I was to leave, Mr. Gatz suddenly fell sick. He lay in his bed holding my hand, looking up into my eyes, his own watery and red and fading. You knew him . . . you knew . . .

Laying there in the double bed in his room, I thought he was like an old museum caretaker, and having dispensed the duties of the job to the new caretaker, he could move on to dispense with himself.

He insisted on giving me the deed before he passed. That was really what he wanted to give me of Jay’s. And I had only been there four days.

So Gatsby’s house became mine. I sat there in the house alone staring at the deed. Then I decided, the hell with it, and moved away from my less-than-beloved home in St. Paul. My writing—such as it is—my novel, which no one would publish—moved with me, and St. Paul, and what was left of my family with both parents gone, didn’t miss me. I left Jay’s room alone and took the father’s. In no time at all, the little house filled with the detritus and eclectic clutter of the young bachelor, the failed New York bonds trader, the failed writer, the failed husband and father, the failed friend, and now, what? A sometime accountant and stock market fish-wrap writer, Nick Carraway.

Sometimes I would lie in Jay’s old twin bed and stare up at the photo collection. The picture of young Gatz as a sailor—the smile, the eyes, the blonde hair, all the youth and promise. All the photos becoming strange, like a drunken visualization of reality. Why didn’t I do more? Why didn’t I help him? Why didn't I—

That was where Pam found me in 1939. I put a 78 disk on the Victrola, Duke Ellington’s Solitude (my favorite recording from the previous year), returned with her soda and asked Pam, By the way, did you drive all the way here from Chicago?

No, I stayed at the hotel in St. Paul last night. She took the drink from me with a courteous Thank you.

So you live in Chicago now, not Louisville?

"Actually, I haven’t lived in Louisville very much—I was just visiting. You probably don’t know but I was mainly raised by my aunt in Chicago. She and her husband—my Uncle Bill—died several years ago. She pretty much raised me, particularly after my parent's divorce in 1925. I mean, I did travel around with my parents some when I was very young, but I think I was too much of a bother for them . . . interfering with their lives. Nice parents, huh? She continued by telling me about her own life with her aunt, her four years in a boarding school in the suburbs of Chicago, her current job in a bookstore and a dance studio, the aborted semester at a small local two-year college for women, and her visits to see her mother. She wasn’t so bad at first, of course; just very self-absorbed and sort of trying to catch a new husband, I guess you could say. She still had her looks, from what I remember. But now . . . She shook her head. She probably should be incarcerated. But no one is in agreement about that yet, allowing her to dwell like Rochester’s mad wife up in the attic, where she is possibly safer and better cared for—I don’t know. My lovely psychotic mother. She’s kept to her room in the new house, allowed to go into the garden, given time in her bathroom and its great tub where she likes to lie in the warm water and drink and reminisce in her own way, in her own mind, though of course we can’t understand much of what she says. I spend time—in fact I was just there–listening to her and trying to decipher her remarks: ‘Gatsby!’ she practically shrieks sometimes, and murmurs almost at a whisper things like, 'I killed her,’ or, 'No, he killed her,’ and the like. Somebody killed somebody, is all I know. It’s very scary, and, frustrating." She caught my eyes, expectant.

I just nodded grimly. I felt horrible in a number of ways. I was still haunted by what Daisy did. Daisy was certainly haunted by her own ghosts of the past. I am so sorry about what happened, Pamela. (She said what in the bathtub?) "She was quite a lady in her time . . . And the doctors? What do they think? (Daisy said, I killed her?")

Nothing. They say maybe if the issues she’s buried away or lodged deep inside could be brought to light, that might help; but, no one knows for sure. She stubbed out the cigarette, and turned to me. So? Pam gave me a glance with that yearning look of hers again. Can you tell me what happened, Nick, with this Gatsby, or anything?

Alright. I threw my hands up. I gave in. She simply couldn’t be refused. And I couldn’t resist her need. Or maybe I just couldn’t resist my own need, to tell someone. But in no way would I tell her everything. I couldn’t do that, could I? No, not everything. I got up, went over to the Victrola, lifted up the circular metal-etched cartridge on the arm, and replaced the first Duke recording with another, the soft and eloquent Prelude to a Kiss.*

I put down the arm again carefully, the needle on the ornate cartridge finding the groves after a scratchy beginning.

I stood for a moment by the player, engaged with the mellow tempered strains of the music. So you want to know about your mother and Jay Gatsby. I sat back down. I looked at Pam for a moment and of course one glance at her easily renewed my purpose. I filled my pipe and lit it, puffing for a moment, and feeling the good Danish in my lungs and brain. That and the whiskey seemed to help give me motivation, if not direction. Ok, I will tell you about them but I’m not making any promises. I wasn’t sure which promises I meant, but some things are better left . . . just better left behind.

I got up, went down the hall, and pulled the picture of young Gatsby off the wall.

Are you sure you want to know about all this?

Oh yes . . . please?

Oh good . . . I would defy any decent human being on the planet to say no to this young woman. Yet I knew I was confronting horribly dangerous waters. The hell with it—I dove in.

Here he is at 14. Jay Gatsby—actually, it was Jay Gatz back then—he changed his name.

Oh! She uttered, snatching the picture from my hand. "He’s so bright and blonde, and, beamy, or beaming or something! So handsome. What a glorious smile!"

Yes. Always that smile . . . His smile just overwhelmed you.

She waved the picture a bit in the air smiling.

That shot was taken years before he met Daisy. I sat down in my arm chair across from her and puffed anxiously on my pipe. Ok, so let me set the table for you. More puffing. 1917; he was 27 and Daisy was 18. And by the way, I got most of what I am about to tell you from Daisy’s friend Jordan, and some from Gatsby himself. I told Pam how he and I were actually in the same division in the war, the 3rd. He was stationed at Camp Zachary Taylor outside of Louisville, while I was at Camp Dix in New Jersey. So while he was there he attended some of the same events as her mother did. In fact, I think they met at a dance, I told her. I had Pam’s undivided attention for this most unusual historical dissertation. I described how at that time, most young men were in some branch of the armed services and would show up at events replete in their beautifully starched and tailored uniforms—we all looked very handsome. You know what they say: girls love a man in a uniform. So Daisy saw this handsome young officer parading about in his service greens, but she saw more than the uniform, of course: she saw a handsome blonde gentleman with a marvelous grin and a great personality who was gorgeous to dance with; but what she didn’t see—was that this debonair dancer from our distinguished division didn’t have a penny to his name.

Oh my . . . She was on the edge of her seat and remained so. It kind of made me nervous; she was so fired up about it all, virtually leaping at my every word. It was damn hard to concentrate.

"Yes. They say love conquers all, and they were in love, but they still couldn’t conquer the line between the haves and have-nots, among other lines love cannot conquer. Your mother was from the haves, as you know; Gatsby from the have-nots. Of course, your mother had many beaus, as they say, she had her pick of the men—many were quite wealthy."

I’ve seen some pictures. She used the ashtray, her fingers gracefully spinning her cigarette about. But was she really that beautiful, Nick?

I shook my head. No, it’s not that. She was very pretty, but, there was this vitality about her, you know. This sort of . . . vibrancy. I pointed at Pam, You’ve got it too, niece, and I shrugged. But it was her voice too. It . . . well . . . she could be very dramatic in the way she talked, very enthralling, throaty, thrilling; something about her—and her voice—could sort of weave a spell around you. It was like this: (and here I attempted an imitation, using my fingers on my throat to get it to warble) ‘O-h-h-h, N-i-i-i-c-ky, d-a-a-ahr-ling . . .'

Pam laughed, and I asked, Does she still . . . ?

Yes she does, she said, with a big smile, her green eyes alight. But that was a terrible imitation.

Well there you go, I said. In any event, Daisy—your mom—weaved this spell around Gatsby; he fell for the whole thing, really.

The whole thing?

Yes. The whole . . . I shook my head. I mean, she was rich—very rich. Your mother’s family hasn’t been the same really since your granddad passed on and your father, ah—left your mother. I was referring to Tom Buchanan, of course.

I hated my father. She abruptly squashed her cigarette in the ashtray and took a quick gulp of the soda. There were so many times I wished him dead. She looked up. Sorry, was he a friend of yours?

Oh, no— I could have kissed her right there. I am truly sorry about all that, but . . .

I began again. "Anyway, your family was very well-to-do at that time, and I think, well, actually, I know that young Lt. Gatsby was deeply impressed and taken by the entire spectacle: the giant white mansion, the massive front Doric columns, the wisteria, the gleaming silver, the ornate cars and that elaborate Southern aristocratic thing, you know?—all of it. As he told me once, it sort of enveloped him, he said, like a magical kingdom, and Daisy was a gorgeous high priestess emerging from her throne room to enfold him in her soft priestess embrace—or something like that. You see, he saw things in a very romantic manner when it came to Daisy."

Yes, he sure did. She smiled, dreamily, after lighting another cigarette. But then she turned more serious at a dawning memory: My Grandmother sold that house years ago.

Yes, well, in any event, they fell deeply in love.

Pam waved her black cigarette in a sort of triumphant flourish and stood up energetically,