The Last Girls

  “I don’t think you heard me,” he says. “It’s my way or the highway, take it or leave it, angel buns.” He sounds like her old sweet Gene but he’s not, something is really different now.

  “Gene, you know you don’t mean that! I know you don’t mean it!” Courtney affects a laugh. “I’m sorry I bothered you at work, I know you’re just tired, I can tell you’re not really yourself. I’ll call you tomorrow night, darling. I love you and I can’t wait to see you this weekend. Bye-bye!” she places the receiver down firmly on the phone before he has a chance to say another silly word. He’ll come to his senses, she’s sure of it. But she’d better hurry, now she has to redo all her makeup from scratch, thanks to Gene for making her cry like that. Honestly! Who does he think he is?

  Mile 585

  Rosedale Bend

  Sunday 5/9/99

  1700 hours

  HARRIET FEELS LIKE “country cousin come to town,” as Alice used to say, entering the Grand Saloon in Anna and Courtney’s wake for the Captain’s Champagne Reception. Courtney’s long black sheath is slit up the side. Anna wears a flowing cape and those enormous dark glasses that cover half her face. Heads turn as she makes her way grandly through the crowd. “Who is she?” Someone puts a hand on Harriet’s arm. Harriet shakes her head, smiles, pulls away. This trip isn’t exactly what she expected, with all these silly events happening every few minutes. But then the first trip wasn’t what they’d expected either. Too many mosquitoes, too much rain, too much hard work, too many people both on the raft and on shore to have it be anything like a real Mark Twain experience. But it was an experience, all the same. Harriet remembers Mr. Gaines saying, “There are only two plots in literature. The first one is, somebody takes a trip; and the second one is, a stranger comes to town.” He was right, Harriet realizes now, holding on to the back of Courtney’s dress. Everything she can think of fits into one of those categories. The Odyssey; Absalom, Absalom . . . “Where’s the captain?” she asks.

  “Oh my God.” Courtney stops so abruptly that Harriet runs into her. “I guess that’s him in that sort of wishing well thing.” Flashbulbs are popping somewhere ahead of them.

  “It’s an arbor,” Anna turns back to say sternly. “But what a gorgeous man! What a hunk!”

  “Straight out of central casting.” Harriet grabs a flute of champagne from a waiter gliding past with a giant silver tray.

  “Oh, look, everybody’s having their picture made with him,” Courtney says. “Let’s do it, too. Here, get in line.”

  “Wouldn’t all this be awkward if the captain was really ugly? Say he had a harelip—,” Harriet wonders.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Anna says. “The captain couldn’t possibly be ugly.”

  “But how do you know? I mean, is that one of the criteria?”

  “Of course it is! He’s got to look like this. Anybody can run a boat, and besides—” But Anna’s words are lost in a groundswell, a surge that carries them forward right up to the area around the arbor, roped off with a silken cord. “Names, please?” asks an efficient girl with a clipboard, who looks familiar, too . . . Oh yes, it’s the girl who runs the gift shop, the Steamboutique, Harriet realizes. Now she’s the photographer’s assistant, and the photographer is one of the Steamboat Syncopators, Harriet can’t remember his name. Or maybe he just looks like one of the Steamboat Syncopators, they all have these little beards . . . Harriet puts her empty flute down on a white-draped serving table and grabs another one. Courtney’s pulling her sleeve, spelling out their names for the picture girl. “Come on,” she says.

  Harriet will treasure this picture in which they all look so happy, Anna smiling enigmatically on one side of the glamorous captain; Courtney on the other, with a bright, startled expression; Harriet sort of squinched in between, up against the captain’s prickly shoulder with the braided gold epaulets and all the medals. Close up, the captain’s curly hair glistens with oil. His eyes are large, dark, and liquid in the manner of Omar Sharif. He smells of breath mints and something else so male that Harriet nearly swoons. What is she doing here? The captain says something and presses their hands. Then before they know it, they’ve been whisked off the stage, out of the little arbor or the wishing well or whatever the hell it is. More champagne arrives. The band whips up their tinkly background jazz and the drummer goes into a prolonged drumroll.

  The captain steps forward and raises both arms. “Welcome to my world,” he sings in a big hearty baritone.

  “Oh my God!” Anna exclaims.

  “I guess you actually have to audition to be the captain,” Harriet whispers.

  “Hush. I can’t hear.” Anna is rapt.

  Harriet has the sudden awful premonition that Anna is going to climb back up in the arbor to join him and that then they will belt out a duet. Harriet has always hated musicals, the way people dance with lampposts and burst into song whenever they feel like it; it’s just so embarrassing. The captain switches into “Shrimpboats Are a-Comin’.” Flashbulbs pop everywhere. He ends with “Ol’ Man River.”

  “I could just eat him up,” Anna whispers.

  The captain stretches his arms wide and holds the last note forever. The crowd goes crazy. It’s over. Courtney leads Harriet and Anna out to three rocking chairs on the deck facing the open river where an endless barge slips past, followed by another. Even though they’re on the shady side of the Belle, it’s hot out here. It would be very hot without this breeze.

  Anna lights one of her nasty little cigars and turns to the others. “Well, that was quite an experience,” she says. “I wonder where Catherine and Russell are. It’s a shame they missed that performance.”

  “I think it’s just as well,” Harriet says. “Russell is so ironic, I’ll bet he just hates things like that.”

  “In that case, we probably ought to sign them up for the Renewal of Wedding Vows Ceremony.” Anna smiles behind her glasses.

  “Oh, let’s!” Harriet says.

  “I’ll do it tomorrow,” Courtney makes a note. “Of course they’ll never actually go through with it—”

  “No, but think how embarrassed Russell will be when the list comes out in the Steamboatin’ News.” Anna taps ashes over the railing. They rock while the boat steams around an island with a sandy beach. “So,” Anna says into the silence. “Baby’s husband called us all, I take it? I’m still wondering how he got my number.”

  “Charlie Mahan.” Harriet nods. “I have no idea. He’s a very wealthy man. I guess he has the means to get whatever information he wants.”

  “But didn’t he call any of the others on the raft? Suzanne or Jane or Bowen, for instance?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Just us suitemates—and then, of course, Catherine was her roommate senior year. I don’t think Baby kept up with anybody, really—I mean, we always exchanged letters at Christmas, but that’s about all. I haven’t seen her for years. Catherine says she hasn’t either. I know she never went to any of our reunions.” Like me, Harriet doesn’t say, for she has had no excuses—no husband, no kids, no reason not to go. And she lives so nearby.

  Anna snorts. “Nor have I, obviously.”

  “Oh, you should both come, they’re fun!” Courtney has been to all of them, even though she didn’t graduate. “We should all go next time.”

  “Probably not.” Anna smiles, but you can’t see her eyes.

  “I believe I’ve been scared to come.” Harriet suddenly leans forward into the hot breeze. “I’ve been . . . oh, so busy, I guess, for so long, and then I guess I just didn’t want . . . well, I didn’t want to have to stop and really think about anything, you know? Or remember anything . . .” She pauses, rocking. They both turn to look at her, Anna exhaling slowly. “I think a reunion would be like—well, like this trip, in a way. Like the Belle of Natchez. It’s all fake, isn’t it?”

  HARRIET HAS A VISION of herself the way she must have looked on the first day of college, sitting primly upright on the wide immaculate front seat of Miss Padgett
Parsons’s big Oldsmobile as it crept through the old brick gates of Mary Scott College while Miss Parsons, who had sponsored Harriet for the alumnae scholarship, talked a mile a minute about her own college experiences, about the Classics Club, the Honor Club, and Freya, the secret organization with the secret handshake, blah, blah, blah. Miss Padgett Parsons’s hair was lavender. She had been Harriet’s Latin teacher as well as sponsor of Inklings, the high school literary magazine Harriet had edited. In high school, Harriet had loved Miss Parsons. But that day, everything Miss Parsons did got on Harriet’s nerves—the way she pursed her lips, unconsciously, like an old cow chewing its cud, the way she smoothed her blouse over her ample bosom for no reason at all.

  “There’s the chapel,” Miss Parsons was saying as they inched their way along in the stream of traffic. “And there’s the Little Theater, I do hope you will try some acting courses while you’re here, dear, I believe it would bring you out some.” Harriet nods; she would rather die. All her life, people have been trying to bring her out. “Now that’s the post office,” Miss Parsons went on, “and that lovely octagonal building is the dining hall, isn’t it pretty? We had to dress for dinner in my day, with gloves.”

  The campus really was beautiful, but Harriet already had it memorized from the map in the orientation guidebook because she was so afraid she’d get lost and be late for classes. Traffic was stopped dead as cars pulled in and out of the dorm lots, unloading, while returning girls ran toward each other for big hugs, all of them screaming, screaming. Harriet was perfectly sure that nobody would ever be that glad to see her. Nobody would ever scream.

  Her last vision of the sewing shop rose up in her mind’s eye as still and quiet and perfectly framed as an old daguerreotype: Mama and Jill standing in the open door as she and Miss Parsons drove away. Their arms were entwined about each other’s waists, their faces white and sweet. They blinked in the sun as if they had ventured forth into a bright new world not wholly their own. Their little hands fluttered like moths as they waved good-bye. Harriet fought back tears. There was certainly nothing insubstantial about any of these screaming, hugging girls at Mary Scott, dauntingly healthy with their shiny hair and muscular legs and summer tans. Finally, after being stuck for twenty-five minutes in the campus traffic, Miss Parsons was able to park behind Old South, Harriet’s assigned dormitory. Harriet’s hands were shaking as she pulled her largest suitcase from the trunk. Her luggage was as nice as anybody’s, paid for by Mr. Carr, taking care of them in death as well as life. Followed by Miss Parsons, who insisted on struggling along with both the smaller bags (“for balance,” she maintained), Harriet started up the little hill on the brick walkway.

  But the lattice gate at the top was blocked by a boy and a girl who were kissing passionately. He had pushed her back against the wooden arch, among the blooming roses; she had one knee raised, showing a lot of leg as her wrinkled skirt rode up her lanky thigh. Her feet were bare and dirty; her toes curled up as he kissed her. The boy wore a white shirt. You couldn’t see his face, though, nor tell his dark hair apart from hers, which cascaded all down her back. They did not stop kissing as she and Miss Parsons approached. Harriet set down her heavy suitcase. The boy was putting his hands all over the girl’s back.

  “A-hem!” Miss Parsons said loudly. The kissing intensified.

  Harriet picked up her bag and walked around the arch, that’s all you had to do, really.

  “The proper authorities will hear about this, you can mark my word,” Miss Parsons said as she marched past. The girl giggled. Miss Parsons had said “mark my word” all the time in class; Harriet was sick of it. She was sick of Miss Parsons, sick of Mama and Jill, sick of herself, and in fact she wished she could die right here on the spot, instead of checking into her dormitory, which is what she had to do next.

  “Let me tell you,” Miss Parsons said, charging up to the desk like an old nightmare, “one of your students is making the most disgusting spectacle of herself not twenty yards from this building.” After that, Harriet was so embarrassed that her mind left her body and went way up to the stained glass skylight at the top of the curving Gone with the Wind staircase. From this distance Harriet could just barely hear the dorm mother as she welcomed her to Old South, and she could just barely see Miss Parsons as she smoothed her blouse again and again and pursed her lips and finally charged away to disappear, Harriet hoped, forever.

  “You lucky girl!” Mrs. Malcolm, the nice, plump dorm mother, handed her a key. “Everybody always wants to be in the Tower Suite.”

  “How did I get in, then?” Harriet asked. “Being a freshman.”

  “Luck of the draw, that’s all. This year, it’s a freshman suite.” Mrs. Malcolm patted Harriet on the shoulder, immediately acting more maternal than Alice ever had. “Go on up, dear. Your suitemates have already arrived. There’s an orientation meeting at four-thirty, then dinner at six. See you later.” Sweetness oozed from Mrs. Malcolm’s every pore.

  The minute Harriet started up the stairway, the girl named Courtney came rushing down to help. She was as blond, crisp, and efficient as a girl in a commercial. In ten minutes’ time, she had introduced herself, stowed all Harriet’s bags in her room, and found out absolutely everything there was to know about her, which was clearly not much. Harriet sat down on her single bed, exhausted. Courtney stood poised on the balls of her feet, arms akimbo, smiling her wide red smile, still radiating energy. Not a shadow crossed her pretty face, nor hid in her big brown eyes. “I’m going out to see where my friends’ rooms are, there’s a bunch of us up here from North Carolina. My roommate, Anna, went over to the bookstore or something, but she ought to be back pretty soon, so you look out for her, okay? She’s got red hair. A lot of red hair.”

  Harriet nodded dumbly, not sure what “look out for her” meant.

  “Tell Anna I said let’s all sit together at dinner, okay? And I’ll see y’all at the orientation meeting.” Courtney checked her watch, then bounced off down the stairs. Harriet started putting underwear in a dresser drawer, stepping over and around piles of clothes, record albums, Mardi Gras masks, shoes and books. Margaret Burns Ballou, whoever she was, had come in here like a hurricane and left the same way. At least the books were reassuring. Harriet hadn’t thought to bring any books from home except her new dictionary, a graduation gift from Miss Parsons. Margaret Burns Ballou had about ten times as much stuff as Harriet, who was through unpacking in a depressingly short time. She went over to the window and stood looking out at the duck pond with its rose garden over to the side, its weeping willows, its stone benches and that naked statue of somebody mythological, turning into a tree.

  “It looks just like a fairy tale, doesn’t it?” the voice could have come from inside her own mind. “I’m Anna.”

  Harriet turned to see the girl standing right behind her. “I’m Harriet Holding. From Staunton, just up Route 81. Where are you from?”

  The girl bit her lip, hesitating. “Where would you reckon?” Anna asked.

  Harriet considered the question. With her milky white skin and the cloud of frizzy red hair, Anna did not look like any of the Mary Scott girls Harriet had seen so far. Her luminous gray eyes were set far apart beneath the high white forehead, the pale arched brows. She was oddly dressed in a long full skirt and a white peasant blouse.

  “Europe?” Harriet was sort of kidding and sort of not kidding.

  “Nope. It’s West Virginia,” Anna said in a mock whisper, “but don’t you tell a soul. I’m hoping to get beyond it.” Then she giggled, as somewhere a bell began to ring. “Oh no, I guess we’ve got to go to that meeting now. You know what? Right now I wish I’d gone to the Cornerstone Baptist College in Wartsburg, West Virginia. I really do. I’m just scared to death.”

  For the first time that afternoon, Harriet felt herself beginning to relax. “Me too,” she said. “Me too.”

  “WELL, WHERE IN THE WORLD could she be?” Anna asked the others, gathered in Harriet’s room. It was a good question.
Since freshmen were not allowed to have cars, the choices were limited. But Margaret Ballou had failed to appear at both the orientation meeting and dinner. “Clearly she’s here somewhere, or at least she’s been here . . .” They all looked over at Margaret’s chaotic side of the room. Though it was past nine o’clock already, it was just getting dark outside. Fireflies rose from the garden below.

  Courtney leaned forward and snapped on a desk light. “We have no choice. Something must have happened to her. We’ll have to notify Mrs. Malcolm right now.”

  “Hey, don’t do that.” The same girl Harriet had seen earlier, the girl who had been in the trellised arch kissing the boy, came stumbling in through the doorway, grinning from ear to ear. Her tangled black hair fell into her eyes and down her back, curling around her thin shoulders, her yellow linen skirt as wrinkled as a skirt can be. A little line of dried blood ran down her face from a cut high on one cheekbone: The roses, Harriet knew immediately. That’s from a thorn in the roses. She watched as the girl floated across the room to drop on the end of her bed and curl up like a cat. Without even thinking about what she was doing, Harriet got up and went over and closed the door and locked it behind her.

  “Thanks, honey.” The girl had smiled at them all then, each in turn, that slow but reckless toothy grin that no one could ever resist. They smiled back—first Harriet, then Anna, then Courtney, too, though tightly, gritting her teeth. The girl dumped the contents of her purse on the bed, then rummaged through the pile, coming up with two Nestlé Crunch bars which she proceeded to unwrap and divide into their tiny little squares with surprising precision. She put them all on a Beatles album cover, then held it out like a tray.