A Mistake of a Marriage

“I almost made a mistake, too,” she declared vigorously.

“I almost married a little kyke who’d been after me for years.

I knew he was below me.

Everybody kept saying to me:

‘Lucille, that man’s ‘way below you!’

But if I hadn’t met Chester, he’d of got me sure.”

“Yes, but listen,” said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down,

“at least you didn’t marry him.”

“I know I didn’t.”

“Well, I married him,” said Myrtle, ambiguously.

“And that’s the difference between your case and mine.”

“Why did you, Myrtle?” demanded Catherine.

“Nobody forced you to.”

Myrtle considered.

“I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,” she said finally.

“I thought he knew something about breeding,

but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.”

“You were crazy about him for a while,” said Catherine.

“Crazy about him!” cried Myrtle incredulously.

“Who said I was crazy about him?

I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.”

She pointed suddenly at me,

and every one looked at me accusingly.

I tried to show by my expression that I had played no part in her  past.

“The only crazy I was was when I married him.

I knew right away I made a mistake.

He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in,

and never even told me about it,

and the man came after it one day when he was out.

‘oh, is that your suit?’ I said.

‘this is the first I ever heard about it.’

But I gave it to him

and then I lay down

and cried to beat the band all afternoon.”

Fitzgerald 38, 39