Re: Gatsby: Clementine & Irene
Irene drank in the street as a gasping man reached for the glass. It reminded her of the novelty of Society, the first time she'd been promenaded in a ballroom in flagrant disregard of her place or the first time she'd stood drenched in light upon a stage with a silent expectation ranked in front of her. It was new, and there was little that was new left in the parameters of her world, she knew that, and novelty had always been her weakness. It was luxury, and she unabashedly loved luxury as it never grew old, but circumstance dictated luxury could not be lived in presently.
Irene hadn't been born to anything, beyond a legacy of stained mattresses and brutish men, and that wasn't a legacy at all. It was a promise, a future as thickly barred as iron prison doors. Respectability turned the key in the lock, and Irene? If she'd known of it, she would have approved of Galatea's defiance, of damning expectation back to where it belonged, the preserve of society madams and priests.
She remembered desire from that seat near the back-row, desire and yearning, clear and true in a temple given over to artifice. Clementine's mother sounded a practical woman, and Irene couldn't imagine raising anyone or anything. It was impossible and it was impractical and she couldn't imagine a desire for settling even if she was crammed out of the roles once played, but Clementine desired it as though she had been shuttered out of truth as Irene remembered the walls that kept her out of the pretty, insubstantial world that was rich people who cared little about one another beyond gossip.
"Did you mind it very much?" Knowing, and Irene imagined a small blond urchin who saw the artifice for what it was. Yes, she thought perhaps little Galatea had minded, or had seen it for what it was and that was practically the same thing. It wasn't unadulterated adoration and she thought an actress who thought motherhood a role would want adoration.
"I think of it. I think of who used to stand on the stage, because it wasn't me," she told Galatea, step in step and her boots were wrong from the minute she looked down at all those feet on the sidewalk but the red dress swayed around her ankles, and no one was looking for her within the crowd, for signs she didn't fit. She'd become accustomed to it, to learning how to mimic well enough they couldn't tell the difference and she thought she was attuned to it now, the way looks slid across you and read you like a child's book.
She laughed, a throaty sound that was careless and full and turned heads in ballrooms at home. It was bold and it was masculine and nothing like bells or tinkles that women were doubtless instructed that it was feminine to make. "Darling, I love living in a place run by men. They're stupid enough not to notice when we take their power away from them. If it were run by women, I'd have to compete. It would be open and I'd lose every advantage I have," she said, fingers curling around the warmth of bare arm conspiratorially. "I don't know much of worlds run by women, but I imagine it's just as difficult with none of the expectation that women won't try at all." Her eyes were full of laughter.