The Last Girls

by Lee Smith

  THE STOREFRONT ROOM was narrow and high-ceilinged, like a shoe box; at the back, it opened into a smaller version of itself which was mostly used to store cloth and supplies. “Now don’t you even look at my junk room!” her mother would laugh, guiding someone through. Someone . . . who? A man—it was always a man, and Mama was always laughing. A door at the back of the little room led into an alley, where the man had parked his sleek dark car, for reasons of discretion. A black iron stairway, oddly located in the middle of the second room, led up into their living quarters, which Mama called “the apartment.” Actually it was a series of three rooms leading one into the other, right over top of the shop. The girls’ room had twin beds and a three-sided bay window looking out on the street; then came the kitchen, tiny and jumbled yet strangely elegant with its round oak table and hanging Tiffany lamp; then Mama’s room with its own scent—cigarettes and talcum powder and musky perfume and something else, something mysterious. Mama’s room was exotic and beautiful with its big brass bed and rose silk coverlet and piles of soft pillows and clothes strewn all around, its crackly piles of newspapers and magazines. How Harriet and Jill loved to snuggle in the bed with Mama, looking at fashion magazines!

  “Now, what do you girls think of that?” Mama asked, pointing to a long dark cape worn by a skinny disgruntled-looking model.

  “Yuck!” Jill giggled. “Ugly gull!”

  In addition to her other problems, Jill had a slight speech impediment. She couldn’t say her R’s. “Hawwiet,” she called her sister, or just plain “Sissy.” Mama and Harriet collapsed in giggles, paging through Vogue.

  “You know Jill has very good taste,” Mama often said. “I rely totally on her judgment.” Mama was not entirely kidding.

  In some undefinable way, Jill was the moral center, the heart of the little family. Her eyes were unnaturally large, unnaturally blue—“cornflower blue,” Mama said. When she looked at you, it was like she could see deep, deep down into your very soul, and you could never tell her a lie. Jill called forth the best in everybody just by being there, and once she was gone, the best was gone, too, or so it seems to Harriet. Of course, she always knew that they wouldn’t have Jill forever—Mama was clear on that from the beginning—from the “get-go,” as she put it.

  Mama also made it quite clear how she felt about it, too, nearly snapping off Mrs. Ellen Drake’s head the day she ventured to remark, “Well, I must say, Alice, what with no husband and all, this poor crippled child certainly is a cross for you to bear, honey. A cross for you to bear!” Mrs. Ellen Drake always said everything twice.

  “She is not!” Alice Holding snapped, scrambling up from the floor, hands on hips, blond curls quivering. “She is a blessing, Ellen Drake, do you hear me? She is the joy of my heart.” Occasionally Harriet thought disloyally that she’d like to be the joy of her mother’s heart, too, but mostly she was too busy being good, being helpful, to mind. Besides, it was impossible not to love Jill, as it was impossible not to love Mama.

  Mama had the most remarkable sense of style, Harriet can’t imagine where she got it: from the movies, perhaps, or out of magazines, or out of her own head, for she lived on images of glamour and elegance, though she rarely went out. Downstairs in the shop, which was really their living room, Mama’s taste was reflected everywhere—in the curvy lavender love seat with the old mink coat thrown casually across it, like some exotic pet; in the low-hanging crystal chandelier which came, Mama liked to say grandly if somewhat inaccurately, from “Paris, France, Europe,” neglecting to mention the rummage sale where she’d actually found it; in the soft old sofas spread with crazy quilts and velvet throws; in the round Moroccan leather coffee table covered with the most interesting things, eight little boxes that fit inside each other, a silver dagger, a filigree vase full of peacock feathers. And always, swirls of smoke—for many of the ladies who came here did not smoke in public, or even at home—and always, music from Mama’s hi-fi. Though Alice Holding could glance at a dress and reproduce it exactly without a pattern, Harriet was sure that her ladies came to Mama as much for the atmosphere and the conversation as for her considerable dressmaking skills. Surely these ladies had needed a refuge, a little escape from the inexorable demands of their station.

  Stories floated back and forth through the magic air of the sewing shop like the dissolving ribbons of smoke, weaving in and out of themselves, until it was almost impossible to distinguish one from another. Oh, he did not! Oh, she did not! Well, what in the world did you do then, honey? Harriet loved to fall asleep wrapped in the mink coat on the love seat with the soft murmur of stories in her ear. She loved to sit on the Oriental rug in the corner playing Old Maid with Jill or reading to her from the Nancy Drew books they both adored. Harriet loved Nancy’s friends—boyish George Fayne, prissy Bess Marvin—and most of all Nancy herself, energetic and brash and smart, able to solve any mystery.

  For they lived with mystery there in the sewing shop—didn’t they have any grandparents, for instance? Children in books always had doting grandparents. “Oh, please,” Alice said when Harriet badgered her about it. And who was Harriet’s father anyway? Alice was maddeningly mum on this subject, too, though she once said under duress that he was a Yankee sailor she’d met at Virginia Beach. And where was he now? “Gone with the wind,” Alice said. “Ha!” Another time she called Harriet a “love child.” Harriet liked this phrase as much as “joy of my heart” and said it over and over in her mind: love child love child love child. I am a love child. Though, judging by the mirror, it did not seem likely. Could a love child be so thin and pale and earnest? Rose Red, for instance, in the Snow White and Rose Red book, looked more like a love child than Snow White.

  In contrast to Harriet, everybody knew who her sister Jill’s father was, for he had actually married Alice. Hal Ramsey blew into the sewing shop like a big wind, stirring things up, turning their lives upside down. Harriet adored him. Hal Ramsey was a rangy man with a gap-toothed grin and an engaging way of cocking his head when he was talking to you, listening hard, as if what you had to say was terribly important. Harriet was five years old when he first showed up to service Alice’s sewing machine. He knocked on the door in early September and didn’t leave until right before Christmas. That Christmas, Alice cried and cried and didn’t buy Harriet any presents, so some of her ladies pitched in and gave Harriet a drawing kit, a stationery set, some ugly new oxfords, and a beautiful Barbie bride doll.

  They brought Alice some nerve pills.

  Then in February, Hal Ramsey showed up in a brand-new red car, announcing to one and all that he’d come back to marry Mama. Two days later, it was done. Alice’s ladies threw a big party for them at the country club. “Now,” they said, “she’ll settle down and that poor little girl will have a daddy.”

  This was the best part of Harriet’s early childhood, when her mama and Hal were married and he was not on the road. His route covered sixteen counties, but when he was home, Alice cooked pot roasts and Hal Ramsey played his guitar in the kitchen and they drank something called Long Island iced tea and laughed a lot. When he was gone, Alice stood looking out the shop door and smoking a cigarette, tapping her foot. Hal Ramsey took Harriet fishing once at the beginning of trout season to a stream in the mountains outside town. “You got it! You got it!” he shouted, helping her reel in a big rainbow-colored fish that twisted in the sunlight, throwing diamond drops of water all over them both.

  It seemed like no time at all had passed before Alice was pregnant, then Jill was born, then Hal was gone like a shot.

  “Son of a bitch!” Alice said, stomping around the shop in her pink peignoir, a gift from Hal, smoking cigarettes and telling everybody who came in how he had acted like everything was just fine right up until the minute he left, so she didn’t suspect a thing. Not a thing! Nothing at all! Son of a bitch! Her ladies “oohed” and “ahhed” and “tsk-tsked,” bringing casseroles.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” she said to Harriet. “If a man leaves hi
s wife for you, then he’ll sure enough leave you for another woman. You can mark it down.”

  Harriet registered this, though she knew even then that Mama’s words would never apply to her, and she was nice to Mama’s men friends who started coming by again after Hal Ramsey’s departure. Harriet spent most of the time she was not in school taking care of Jill. Sometimes she thought about that fishing trip, though—the only one she’s ever been on—and she remembered how the sun looked, coming up, and how the fish looked coming out of the water, and how it had turned from every color in the rainbow to dull, dull gray while she held it in her hands.

  Years passed. A special lady came to the apartment to teach Jill her lessons while Mama sewed. Harriet made straight A’s in school where she did not distinguish herself in any other way; somehow, she felt, she could not, since Jill never would.

  When Harriet was in seventh grade, Alice hit on the idea of teaching her how to dance, hoping that this would make Harriet more confident, at least, even if she’d never be popular. These lessons took place in the shop whenever Alice wasn’t busy or when the door closed behind the last lady of the day. Mama would look up and grin at Jill and Harriet. “Party time?” she’d ask. “Sure, I guess,” Harriet said as shyly as if her mama really were one of that mysterious race, boys, while Jill clapped wildly and bounced in her special chair. Jill’s favorite record was “Hernando’s Hideaway” which Harriet enjoyed, too, especially the part where she and Mama stomped one foot and threw up their hands on “Olé!” but her own favorite was the dramatic “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.”

  Harriet and Mama were sweeping theatrically around the apartment to its exalted strains when Mr. Dabney Carr made his first appearance. The doorbell tinkled and in he popped like a man in a clock, dressed in the nicest dark suit, carrying a coat and an umbrella. Harriet had forgotten that it was raining outside.

  “Oh.” Mama came to a quivering, embarrassed stop.

  “But please continue,” the man said, “I enjoy a waltz myself.” Harriet found this hard to believe, as he was a man who looked like he was all business, a man who didn’t enjoy anything.

  Mama crinkled up her eyes at him. “Do you?” she said. “Well, then.” She crossed the shop in her stocking feet and put the record on again. She wore her pink angora sweater and a long, full skirt.

  The man put down his things and followed her. “May I?” he asked, and then off they went, round and round, Mama’s skirt swishing out on the turns. Harriet sat on the arm of Jill’s chair and watched them, understanding very well that something momentous had occurred. Though it was not, as one of Mama’s ladies said pointedly to her afterward, anything that would ever do her any good in the long run. The ladies’ general opinion seemed to be that Mama was “too sweet” and “incapable of looking out for herself.” In this way, they were wrong. Mr. Carr would look out for Mama for the rest of his life, though he would never marry her, because his own wife was still very much alive in the famous old asylum on the hill. She had been there for two years when he ducked into the shop that day, on impulse, to get a button sewed onto his raincoat. Mama did that, too, biting off the thread with her full red bottom lip stuck out. When she was finished, Mr. Carr put on the raincoat, thanked her formally, and almost bowed as he pressed her hand. He also shook hands with Jill and Harriet. Good-bye, good-bye.

  Mama stood in the middle of the floor hugging herself after he left. “Now girls,” she said, turning to smile at them, “that was a gentleman!”

  Mr. Carr lived in Richmond, Virginia; he visited them once a week. During his tenure, things got spruced up: a dishwasher appeared in the tiny kitchen, Jill was given a TV, and the whole upstairs got a fresh coat of paint.

  One day about six months after Mr. Carr’s first appearance, Mama pulled Harriet over and hugged her. “Mr. Carr will be bringing his son along with him tomorrow,” she said. “They will be staying at the Willetts Hotel.” Usually Mr. Carr stayed at the apartment. “He’s about your age,” Mama said. “So be nice.”

  Be nice! In her whole life, had Harriet ever been anything other than nice? Was she even capable of being anything else? A boy. She felt sick. “What’s his name?” she asked. “Jefferson Carr,” Mama said, “but he goes by Jeff. He’ll go to see his mother when they get here on Saturday, but then he will probably stay with us while Mr. Carr goes up there on Sunday afternoon. It’ll be a long visit, as he has a hospital board meeting to attend, too. So I thought you and Jeff might go to the movies, or maybe you could go over to Gypsy Park.”

  “Mama, I . . .” Harriet said. She was twelve years old and very, very shy. She had just gotten so that she could shake hands with Mr. Carr without blushing.

  Mama touched Harriet’s lips lightly with one finger. “Thanks,” she said.

  It was even harder than Harriet thought it would be. Jeff Carr looked like Rock Hudson. And he was furious at his father for having a girlfriend, furious at being left with them for the afternoon, furious at his mother for being sick. He kicked rocks all the way to the park and didn’t look at her. He wore a navy blue windbreaker with the collar turned up.

  “Wanna smoke?” he asked when they got there. It was a cloudy, blowing spring day. He still didn’t look at her.

  “Sure,” Harriet heard herself say.

  Jeff Carr produced two cigarettes from someplace inside the wind-breaker, put them both in his mouth at the same time to light them, then took a deep drag and handed one to Harriet. When she put the cigarette in her own mouth, the end of it was wet with Jeff Carr’s spit. Suddenly he was grinning at her. “Take a drag,” he said. “Quick. Or it’ll go out.”

  “What?” Harriet felt like an ignoramus, one of Mama’s favorite words.

  “Like this.” Jeff demonstrated for her. He sucked the smoke deep into his lungs and blew it out in a cloud where the March wind blew it away.

  “Oh, sure.” Harriet tried to sound blasé. She did it, then burst out coughing.

  Jeff doubled over in laughter. “Oh, man,” he said. “Oh, wow. Far out. You’re really a big smoker, huh?”

  “Well,” Harriet said when she could speak. “Actually I’ve never smoked before.”

  “No shit,” Jeff said.

  “But I just love it!” Harriet added.

  “Sure.” Like every boy his age, Jeff was a master of sarcasm.

  “Can I have another one?” Harriet dropped her cigarette butt on the gravel walk and ground it out.

  “Okay,” Jeff said. This time, she put it between her own lips and he lit it for her, which went surprisingly well. “Where do you go to school?” he asked.

  “Why, here,” Harriet said. She didn’t know there was any other choice, but Jeff said he was going to a boarding school in Massachusetts next year, that he was looking forward to it.

  “You are?” Harriet could not imagine this. “Why?”

  “Man, it’s so depressing at home, you can’t even imagine.” He described their big old historic house full of antiques, with a pool in back. He said it felt even bigger these days with his two older sisters grown and gone and his mother in the loony bin. Once she’d tried to drown herself in the pool, he said, but had been rescued by the gardener. He wasn’t even sure she really meant to do it, since she was in the shallow end. Hard to tell. Anyway, she was drunk and she’d swallowed a lot of water and the rescue guys came.

  “That’s awful,” Harriet said sincerely. She was starting to feel lightheaded from so much smoke. Jeff shrugged. The wind came up and they stood shivering in the bowl of Gypsy Park, surrounded by the wooded hill on one side and the highway fence on the other. Nobody else was there. Suddenly Jeff leaned forward and slapped her hard on the shoulder, then hopped backward. “Can’t catch me!” he called and then he was zigzagging through the play equipment and Harriet was after him, right on his tail. Though she’d never tried out for any teams and was judged to be “not athletic,” she could run like the wind. “Gotcha!” she cried finally, slapping him across the butt, and then she took
off with him chasing her in and out of trees on the hill until he cornered her between a pine and the fence, and they dashed back and forth around the tree until she slipped in the pine needles and fell and then he threw himself down flat beside her. Harriet was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe, and so was Jeff. “Hey!” he said in a minute, sitting up. “Hey, guess what she said yesterday?”

  “Who?” Harriet could not quit laughing.

  “Mama,” Jeff said.

  “What?”

  “When I went into the dayroom, she came over and grabbed me and took me up to everybody she knew and said, ‘I don’t think you’ve met my son, Dwight Eisenhower.’”

  “No shit.” It was the first time Harriet ever said that word.

  “Yep,” Jeff said. “I swear to God. She’s in la-la land.”

  They walked down the hill and got on the kiddie play equipment for some reason. Harriet held on for dear life while Jeff pushed the little merry-go-round faster and faster and faster. Then they got on the swings and swung so high they went up even with the bars every time, up into the gray cloudy sky which was beginning to darken now. Every time she pumped, every time the swing rose forward on its perilous arc, Harriet’s heart leapt into her throat and she thought, Now. Yes. Now, closing her eyes and leaning back and feeling her hair stream out behind her. She thought, Yes. I will die now, in a kind of rapture at the very top of the arc, but then she didn’t, and finally when Jeff yelled, “I guess we’d better go,” she stopped pumping and started dragging her feet every time she came down. It was a long dark walk home.

  Just as they turned the doorknob, Mama threw open the door and cried, “Why, wherever have you been? I was so worried!”