The Last Girls

by Lee Smith

  “Just over at Gypsy Park, like you said.” Harriet was indignant.

  Mama leaned forward, peering at her. “Well, it must have been good for you,” she said. “Look at those roses in your cheeks.”

  Harriet pulled back embarrassed.

  “Come on,” Mama said. “Aren’t you cold? I’ve got some hot chocolate for you.”

  “Where’s Dad?” Jeff asked.

  “He’ll be back in a little while,” Mama said. “He just called. He’s still at the hospital board meeting which has lasted longer than he thought.” She ladled out two cups of hot chocolate from the little burner hot pot where she kept her ladies’ coffee going all day long. “Here, honey,” she said, handing one to Jeff. “I guess your daddy’s pretty much of a bigwig, isn’t he?”

  “Bigwig,” Harriet said.

  “Bigwig,” Jeff repeated. He started laughing.

  “Bigwig!” Harriet was laughing so hard that she couldn’t hold her cup. She had to put it down and collapse on the love seat.

  “Bigwig, bigwig,” they chanted, rolling around on the love seat. Jill started laughing, too, while Mama stood there in her silly frilly blouse and watched them with a puzzled hopeful look on her face that could break your heart if you thought about it. “Bigwig! Bigwig!” they screamed.

  This is how Harriet met Jefferson Carr who would fall hopelessly in love with Baby Ballou when she introduced them all those years later on the campus of Mary Scott College, an event that seems to Harriet in retrospect as inevitable as the passing of time itself, preordained from the very moment when Mr. Carr opened the door and came out of the rain and into the sewing shop.

  Mile 736

  Memphis, Tennessee

  Friday 5/7/99

  2210 hours

  COURTNEY HAS INVITED Harriet up to her room after dinner to look at her scrapbooks, the pride of her life, a work of art if she does say so herself. She has brought six of them, an overnight bag full of albums to show her friends on the Belle of Natchez. But wouldn’t they all be amazed if they knew about the decision she faces as they steam down the river? Wouldn’t they all be amazed if they knew that the most important person in her life is not even pictured in these albums? Her husband, Henry (“Hawk”) Ralston, has often teased her by telling everybody that he hasn’t even unpacked from a trip before she’s already had the photos developed and put them into the current album, with appropriate captions. But Courtney doesn’t care if he makes fun of her for being so organized. So what? Somebody has got to be organized. Courtney’s not going to get down on herself about it.

  As a matter of fact, the original raft trip—the only “wild” thing Courtney ever did in her life, until recently—never would have happened without her. She and Suzanne St. John organized it all—got the information, kept the books, got everything lined up. At Mary Scott, Courtney was on the Honor Court and yearbook staff. Now she is on the vestry of Saint Matthews Church right next door to Magnolia Court, Hawk’s family home, circa 1840. “This home has not been restored,” Hawk’s mother told her severely when she turned the keys over to Courtney. “It has been maintained.” Courtney knew she could handle it. She is good at maintaining. She is president of the Dogwood Historic Preservation Society and Friends of the Library.

  See, here she is standing in the historic cemetery at Saint Matthews, next to the Berry monument. Here she is convening the Friends of the Library, with her gavel. And here she is with Charles Frazier, the author of Cold Mountain, whose appearance constituted their most successful event yet, bringing in scads of money. Courtney still means to finish his book. It’s just that it was taking so long, all that walking across the whole state of North Carolina, it was pretty slow. Also, recently and for very good reason, Courtney hasn’t been able to concentrate. Whenever she tries to read, all she can think about is Gene Minor; all she can see is his silly face.

  But here’s the house, as photographed for Southern Living, 1984: exterior, looking up the long hill from Four Corners. It’s a large stone manor house of a type uncommon in Raleigh, a house that would suit a moor except for those columns and the deep veranda which stretches across the front. This house is a testament to Hawk’s Scots heritage, as he likes to say, and to his grandfather’s monumental vanity. Eight huge old magnolias, four on either side of the long central driveway, have determined its name. The driveway runs all the way down the hill to Four Corners; here, the estate is shielded from the busy street by a high stone wall topped by wrought iron spikes. That wall means business. So does Hawk. And if you look closely at this photograph, you can see Hawk himself, in fact, standing by the massive front door, wearing slacks and a tie and a cardigan sweater, studiedly casual, sort of a corporate Mister Rogers. A handsome man, with that sharp nose and silver hair. A powerful man. A man to reckon with.

  Interior. Hawk and Courtney stand in the library before the big stone hearth made by Moravian masons on their way west to build the Biltmore Mansion outside Asheville. You can tell that Hawk belongs in this house by the way he smiles so confidently into the camera, chin up, one arm outstretched on the mantel which holds an antique clock flanked by silver candlesticks and a militant army of family photographs going back a hundred years. This is Hawk’s greatgrandfather, Henry Giles Ralston, C.S.A.: this is Hawk’s father in his naval uniform, World War II. The old sleigh bed in the master bedroom suite right upstairs is the bed where Hawk was born but scarcely ever sleeps in now. Courtney is used to it. She has been used to it for years, though at first her heart was broken again and again—right after the honeymoon, for instance, when he went to Charlotte on business and a girl’s voice answered when she called the number he had left. Courtney had hung up without speaking. She cried all night long. The next day she’d attended her first Junior League meeting, at Buffy Sandover’s house. In the afternoon, she took a tennis lesson. Two nights later, when he walked in the kitchen door, she turned from the sink and threw one of the new wineglasses at him. The wineglass hit the doorjamb just beside Hawk’s head and shattered. He didn’t even flinch. Just stood there looking at her, one dark eyebrow raised in a question.

  “Who is she?” Courtney’s voice was shaking.

  “Where’s Mama?” Hawk asked. “Where’s Walter?”

  “Your mother is out in her apartment. Why? Because you think I’m making a scene? Well, I am making a scene, by God. I don’t care who hears me either. We just get back from Jamaica, and you’re gone for two days. I asked you who she is!” Courtney threw another wineglass, not exactly at Hawk. It hit the edge of the sink, raining crystal down on the floor. Hawk shook his head, as if Courtney were an obstinate child. But at least he didn’t lie.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “She doesn’t matter. Let’s get that straight right now, Courtney. You are my wife. This doesn’t concern you at all.”

  “It does concern me!” Courtney was crying almost too hard to stop.

  “No. You are mistaken,” Hawk had said gently. He moved toward her across the kitchen floor, crunching glass. He caught her by the shoulders and spun her around.

  “No—” Courtney twisted her head to the side. He took her chin in his hand and turned her face toward him and kissed her, slowly and gravely, for a long time. He was good at this. Then he took her out to dinner at the country club. By Christmas, she was pregnant.

  She’d left him only once, when Scott was eighteen months old and Jeremy was a colicky newborn.

  One April night, she’d been up with Jeremy for hours, her nerves on edge, when she heard a car coming slowly up the gravel driveway and looked out the window to note that its lights were off. It pulled right in front of the steps and stopped under the coach light. It was a red Cherokee which Courtney didn’t recognize. Hawk got out, carrying his jacket over one shoulder and his bag in his other hand. He took a few steps toward the house and then turned and walked around the front of the car and leaned his head into the window on the driver’s side for a long time, five or ten minutes, then turned and walked back around th
e car and stood to watch it pull away. He stood there until the car passed all the magnolias and reached the end of the driveway, red taillights winking away in the night. At the dark upstairs window, Courtney watched all this as if it were a movie. It was just starting to get light, pink sky above the horizon. Hawk reached out and broke a dogwood blossom off the tree by the steps and stood looking at it for a minute, then let it drop onto the grass. He turned and disappeared from view below and soon Courtney heard his step on the stairs, and then he opened the door.

  He did not seem surprised to see her sitting by the window with Jeremy on a pillow in her lap. He walked over and kissed the top of her head. “I got a ride from the airport,” he said. “I guess you’ve had a hard night.” Hawk stripped and lay down on the bed and was instantly, soundly asleep. Courtney could always tell by his breathing. Finally she put Jeremy down and then she got in bed, too, pressing herself against Hawk’s back. The bones of his legs were so long from knee to hip; he was a big man. She ran her fingers along his collarbone and his jaw and through the hair on his chest and then traced his nipples and his ribs one by one. Morning came slowly in the window until everything soft and dark grew hard and visible.

  As soon as Hawk went to the bank, Courtney called and canceled a pediatrician’s appointment for Jeremy and a “Mother’s Morning Out” for Scotty, then packed them up and drove over to her twin sister’s. She left a note for Hawk. It was not a very good place to go, but she couldn’t think of another. Their mother had died years before.

  “I think you’re crazy,” Jean said when she got home from work and heard the whole story. “Maybe he did get a ride home from the airport. How do you know he wasn’t telling the truth?” Jean was a shorter, sturdier version of Courtney. Once they’d been inseparable, Burton High cheerleaders together. But then Jean had enrolled at NC State and met Buzzy while Courtney had gotten the scholarship to Mary Scott. Their lives were different now.

  “Oh, come on.” Despite her lack of sleep, Courtney felt more clearheaded than she’d ever been before in her life. “No plane comes in at four o’clock in the morning. No friend gives you a ride at five. Besides, he wouldn’t have stuck his head in the window like that, if it was a guy. You don’t do that with a guy.”

  “I guess you’re right.” Jean lit a cigarette and tapped it nervously on her ashtray. The ashtray said Kings Dominion. Under it were coupons Jean had clipped.

  “I’ve had it,” Courtney said. She sat on Jean’s couch and looked out Jean’s picture window at the neat yards and the neighbors’ look alike houses. Why couldn’t she live in a nice little brick house like this one, like Jean and Buzzy, and get a job? Why hadn’t she ever thought of working anyway? She’d had two years of college. But all she’d ever done was get married. A cement mixer rolled slowly down the street and it occurred to Courtney that her life had been like that, once she met Hawk it was just like that, a big machine set in motion and she was on it, by God, and it was going and going and there was no getting off. Courtney felt as brittle and clear as glass that day in her sister’s living room, smoking her sister’s Newports. They drank some wine and then took a walk in the arboretum, Jean pushing the stroller while Courtney carried Jeremy in a Snugli. Jean loved these kids—she and Buzzy were still trying, no luck so far. Courtney had always had all the luck.

  When they got back to the house, Buzzy was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a beer.

  “Courtney just came by for a little visit,” Jean said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s good, because you might have forgot but tonight’s my poker night, the guys are coming over, we gotta get ready, babe. You haven’t been to the store yet?”

  “I mean, Courtney needs a place to stay for a little while,” Jean said.

  Buzzy turned and looked at Courtney. His jaw dropped open. “Yeah?” he said. “You sure, little sister?”

  Courtney nodded. Scotty was running a toy car along the kitchen table, then up and over Buzzy’s hands. Buzzy picked him up and hugged him.

  “Okey-doke,” he said. “Why don’t you take the kids upstairs and get them settled down? Just pull out that couch in the spare room, you know, my office, and make up a pallet for the kids on the floor. You want to go with me, Jean? We can pick up some pizza along with the beer. You know anybody that likes pizza?” he asked Scotty, who bobbed his head up and down so vigorously that everybody started laughing.

  “Buy some milk, too,” Courtney said.

  But while they were gone, the doorbell rang, and when Courtney ran down the stairs to open it, she found Miss Evangeline there on the stoop with her new gray Cadillac (big fins; it looked like a shark) waiting at the curb behind her. Walter was driving. He waved. Courtney waved back.

  “Gramma, Gramma, Gramma,” Scotty came bounding down the stairs.

  “Oh my! Oh, my darling!” Miss Evangeline acted like they’d been missing for years, like they’d been kidnapped. She grabbed Scotty up though she was too frail for it, really, kissing his round little face again and again as he started playing with the pearls at her throat. Since Stephen had died in Vietnam, Hawk was her only child, these her only grandchildren.

  Miss Evangeline didn’t weigh ninety pounds dripping wet. Her yellow-gray hair was piled haphazardly up on her head; her filmy blue eyes had tears in them. “Come along now, dear,” she said to Courtney. “Come along home.” Then Miss Evangeline must have given some kind of signal to Walter because he got out of the car, tipped his hat to the curious neighbors who had gathered in their own yards to see what was going on, and came right into the house and went upstairs to get their things. Jeremy slept through it all.

  Soon afterward, Courtney got a new car, a Volvo station wagon, and Buzzy got the electric contract for Hawk’s new downtown financial center. Little Evangeline was born, then Lydia. Without ever discussing it, Hawk and Courtney worked things out. Courtney ran the house and supervised the children, though Hawk was a good father, both strict and generous. He attended ball games, graduations, and recitals. He and Courtney chaired the Greater Raleigh United Way Campaign together. They were a team.

  When Miss Evangeline finally died, they established a music scholarship in her honor at Meredith College, where she had gone to school. Hawk bought banks in South Carolina, banks in Tennessee. Following an antiques tour of England with several friends, Courtney renovated Magnolia Court. She became a famous hostess. Here in front of the hearth, she is poised, serene, beautiful. Those are the candlesticks she brought back from England, eighteenth-century coin silver. Courtney’s hair is held back by a velvet band; she wears a close-fitting black velvet jacket and a floor-length red plaid skirt. Courtney and Hawk make a handsome couple as they stand before this glowing fire, which is not really a fire at all, though these new gas logs they make now are so realistic you just can’t tell the difference. Courtney’s bright red smile stretches all the way across her face. She holds a silver tray of hors d’oeuvres, one of her favorites—shrimp tarts, Miss Evangeline’s recipe.

  Oddly, the same hors d’oeuvres are visible on the table in this photograph, too, in the scrapbook devoted to Little Evangeline’s wedding which Courtney held at home. Vangie wouldn’t get married at Saint Matthews because she didn’t believe in God, she said, and neither did Nate, her fiancé as Courtney kept referring to him, hopefully, as if this designation would somehow make him shape up and act like one—like a fiancé, like a husband, instead of like a bass guitar player, which he is.

  In the photograph, Nate and Vangie are laughing hysterically and feeding each other bites of cake which is falling all over the seed pearl bodice of Vangie’s wedding dress. It cost twenty-two hundred dollars. Vangie has taken out her nose ring for the occasion. The long lace sleeves nearly hide the vine tattoo on her upper arm, and of course nobody can see the butterfly on her thigh and who even knows what other tattoos or piercings she might have or where she might have them? Courtney shudders to think. Vangie has never told her mother much about her life, which is just as well. As with H
awk, she’d rather not know. The things Courtney does know about her daughter, the public things, are disturbing enough, such as the name of Vangie’s band, the Friends of the Library. But at least Courtney has the satisfaction of knowing that she has done her duty, by all of them, her entire difficult family. This wedding alone took a full year of work.

  She could never have done it without Gene Minor, that sweet thing. His presence is everywhere in this wedding album—everywhere and nowhere, for of course he is not pictured. His company, Florenza, handled everything. Gene Minor convinced her to be more, well, theatrical than she’d ever considered. “If it’s not fun, don’t do it” is Gene’s motto, and since Vangie didn’t care one way or the other—she was on a West Coast tour and hadn’t wanted such a big wedding in the first place—Courtney did it all. She did everything Gene Minor suggested, and it was brilliant. People are still talking about it.

  Gene was the one who held out for an evening wedding, the one who convinced her to go with the red roses for all the bouquets, Vangie’s too, the one who ordered the tent and supervised its erection in the back garden and had it all rigged up with those thousands of tiny white twinkling lights and wound the tent poles round and round with garlands of baby’s breath. Gene Minor personally created the spectacular soaring silver and red arrangements on each table (“Hey, baby, you gotta think vertical!”). He wove roses and silver sprays through the ivy of the old arched trellis where Vangie and Nate would say their vows, a project that could not be accomplished until the afternoon of the wedding itself. While Gene Minor was out in her backyard doing this, Courtney hovered between house and garden like a butterfly, too nervous to light down anyplace, though once she dared to tiptoe up behind him and actually touch his sweaty T-shirt. Gene Minor jumped as if shot, then toppled off his little ladder onto his back like a giant turtle, arms and legs waving helplessly in the summer air. “Why, Mrs. Ralston!” he exclaimed in that high squeaky voice. “Oh my, Mrs. Ralston, oh oh!” Courtney got so tickled she had to sit down right there on the grass, too, holding her sides in laughter. “Mom! What are you doing?” Vangie cried out the window. But Courtney couldn’t quit laughing for the longest time—in all her life, nobody has ever made her laugh so hard as Gene Minor. He is such a nut!