The Last Girls

by Lee Smith

  “Afternoon,” the old guy says. His nose is red and bulbous, spread out on his face like some kind of growth, or maybe it is a growth. Russell can’t stand to look at it.

  “How about switching over to the Weather Channel?” Russell asks the bartender, who nods and says, “Just a minute,” snapping his towel in the air. Actually these are not ideal conditions for watching TV, you have to lean way back in your chair which is really a stool with a back on it, the kind of chair that could tip right over, exactly the kind of stupid accident that could happen if you’re not careful. The world is full of these accidents just waiting to happen. And then where would you be? Miles from a hospital, out here in the middle of this muddy river—but then Russell remembers the forty ENT doctors from Indianapolis, and calms down. He sips his drink.

  “You watching the game?” he asks the old guy who says, “Hell no,” as if the whole idea is ridiculous. He’s got some kind of stuff in his hair, it’s all matted down on one side. Russell is not even going to imagine what that could be. And yet the old guy looks familiar. A former client? Hell, could be anybody. “Hey, buddy,” he says to him, “where you from?”

  “What the hell business is it of yours?” The old guy draws himself up with some dignity to stare at Russell. His eyes are filmed, rheumy, yellow. Might be age, might even have hepatitis and not know it. Hepatitis B.

  “Aw, don’t pay any attention to Mr. Stone.” The bartender flashes a healthy white grin at Russell. “He’s been drinking ever since we left Memphis. He doesn’t mean any harm. The only thing worries me is, I don’t think he’s eating much of anything either. I went and got him a hot dog for lunch today but he only ate two bites, that’s all I’ve ever seen him eat. His wife comes by and checks on him every now and then.”

  “He’s got a wife? On this boat?”

  “Yes sir. She’s playing bridge on the Texas Deck, most likely. That’s what she does all day, while he’s drinking.” The bartender finally points the TV gun at the TV and clicks the channels, Russell would give anything to do it himself. “We can’t pick up as many channels out here, even with our satellite dish,” the bartender says. “Let’s see—”

  But here it is, and here’s the weather girl, Susan Abernathy, one of Russell’s favorites, in a bright green suit, predicting rain. She has wound her hair up into a severe knot on top of her head, as befits a meteorologist. Sometimes Russell wonders if any of these girls are really meteorologists. Once when he was in law school in Chapel Hill, he met a weather girl in a bar who confessed that she didn’t know a damn thing about the weather, all she did was turn on the Greensboro station and then repeat whatever that weather girl had said one hour earlier. Weather moves west to east, she had informed him, something Russell hadn’t known back then, in the prime of his youth. He thinks he fucked her, too, but maybe not.

  “I said, how’s that, sir?” the bartender says in his ear.

  “Oh. Fine,” Russell says. “Thanks. And I’ll just have another one of these, while you’re at it.” The bartender’s sparkling white dress shirt is too tight across his chest. Russell used to be young once, too, and strong. Strong as an ox. He could walk all day long which he did on his first honeymoon, with Iphigenia in Scotland, striding across the moors. He married her because she was named Iphigenia as much as anything, though he loved her wild curly golden hair and her thick glasses and shyness and her devotion to literature. Russell in those days was devoted to the idea of literature while being actually more drawn to pussy, a shame and a failing. He used to quote Yeats to Iphigenia: “Only God, my dear/Could love you for yourself alone/And not your yellow hair.” Finally he was too much for her, wore her out. Now she is a poet, he saw one of her books the other day in the bookstore: The Moons of Jupiter.

  Actually Iphigenia reminded him of his mother, another shy retiring woman he loved to shock, he just couldn’t help himself. His very birth had been a surprise to his parents, quiet people long told they could never have children. They taught at a communal school in New Hampshire where they raised their own food, organically. As a child, Russell mixed the granola. In adolescence he came to hate this life, the same way he hated his pasty-face father’s calm voice saying “Son” which was what he always called him, never “Russell.” He hated his mother’s blue-veined hands and her long thin braids and all the quivering hope in her face.

  At fourteen Russell rebelled and went to public school where he played football and turned into a jock. His parents sat in the bleachers at every game but did not cheer. Russell had it on good authority that his mother covered her eyes when he carried the ball. Russell wrecked two cars and got a girl pregnant while still in high school, things his father took care of without getting too upset either, it must be said. In fact, he seemed almost proud of this huge bad boy they had raised up to be so different from themselves. When Russell went off to college, it was an immense relief to them all. After college Russell taught at a prep school for a couple of years to avoid the draft (here he met Iphigenia), and then entered law school when the marriage ended.

  Sometimes we fall into situations we are made for, as was the case with Russell and the law. He could twist it, he could turn it, he could dodge to the side, he could feint left and go right, he could surprise everybody with a power surge straight up the middle, just as he had carried the ball in high school. He graduated sixth in his class, edited the law review, then clerked for a famous judge. He joined a prestigious firm in Washington, right on Connecticut Avenue. But here his cock got in the way, as it so often has since.

  Women have been Russell’s undoing all along. At the law firm, he fell hopelessly in love with one of the secretaries, Shannon Steele, she of the enormous tits and the big happy grin. Before he knew what hit him, they were doing it in the coatroom, and he was taking her on sandy, passionate weekend trips to the Eastern Shore. When she left her husband (Dusty, an electrician) to marry him, Russell was the happiest of men. He loved Shannon beyond imagining, his parents never could see why. At least Iphigenia had made sense to them. But Shannon had not gone to college. She did not read; she did not care a thing about politics. She did not see the big picture. But she proved to be a genius of the everyday, a connoisseur of the moment, of the right tie and the best coffee and the matching fabric. She loved things, and Russell was well on his way to providing her with a lot of them. Best of all, she was naturally content, glad to be pregnant, glad to stay home with the children. Lauren was an easy baby, followed by Russ, who was not. Looking back on it all from this great distance, Russell remembers these as the happiest days of his life, Shannon and the babies at home, himself shooting up the ladder in his firm.

  He was amazed when, twelve years into the marriage, Shannon proclaimed her boredom, then her depression. She took a job as office manager for a group of accountants. Then she fell in love with one of them, exactly as she had fallen in love with Russell, and left Russell for him. Once this happened, it seemed inevitable to Russell, who felt he should have seen it coming a mile away. He guessed it served him right. He entered a hazy and prolonged period of joint custody and serial women, one of whom—Diane—actually married him, over his not-so-strenuous objections. The truth is, he had a moment of weakness. He was exhausted. He wanted to be taken care of, and Diane seemed the girl for the job. She believed she could change him, shut him up and shape him up, and turn him back into a model middle-class husband, which was foolish, of course. He had been through things. He took a dark view. Plus, nobody can ever change anybody else, something Russell’s spidery little mother remarked shortly before her death, which was soon followed by Russell’s father’s death, both of them dying quickly and neatly and causing him virtually no trouble at all, leaving him a pile of Coca-Cola stock he had never known about.

  Too late, too late, Russell mourned them. Now he was alone in the world, nobody to stand between him and the abyss. Nobody, nothing. Russell teetered on the edge of a black hole larger than the Grand Canyon, filled with despair. Diane left him. “I have l
oved you, Russell,” she said from the door, “but you bring me down.” Russell had heard this before. Diane came and went with such speed that she scarcely affected happy-go-lucky Lauren or Russ, a go-getter all the way. They stayed in Chevy Chase with their mother to finish high school when Russell moved to Tuscaloosa to join his old mentor, Judge Hancock. He had been there through several years and several unsuitable women when he met Catherine, the love of his life.

  Sometimes Russell can’t believe he met her so late, mourning the years they have already lost. Other times he can’t believe he met her at all, wanting only to be with her constantly. He’ll do anything she wants to do, such as come on this stupid boat trip, which is turning out to be kind of a kick, actually, though Catherine has turned weird on him and it’s not really Russell’s cup of tea anyway. Russell likes ruins, which turn him on, as opposed to dolled-up plantation houses, which do not. He likes picnics. Last summer he took Catherine to Tuscany where they found enough ruins and picnics to satisfy even him, though all those cobblestones in the hill towns hurt his feet and he was having trouble with his digestion then, too. Reflux, which can lead to esophageal cancer.

  But he remembers one magic afternoon—it was almost exactly a year ago—when they picnicked in the vast sunny ruin of the unfinished cathedral San Galgano, how the light looked falling on the thick wild grass through the high round rose window; and the low, musical thrumming sound of the pigeons, oddly familiar, like a sound you think you’ve heard before somewhere, only you can’t remember where. At that moment Russell would have given anything to be twenty-eight again, to come here at dusk with a girl and a blanket and a bottle of wine, to be here when the light goes and the stars come out and you could look up at them through all these arches … San Galgano was real.

  This is not real, these idiot white women in the columned mansions or these idiot black women selling pralines and boiled peanuts down by the boat landings, calling out “Please missah, please missah, please missah” exactly as if the Civil War and the civil rights movement had never happened. No wonder the South is so stereotyped. Southerners—black and white—insist on stereotyping themselves. They were selling Rebel flags and “Forget, hell!” bath towels and black mammy salt-and-pepper shakers at the battlefield shop in Vicksburg. Why, a Northern person on this boat, or a Californian—and there are plenty—could travel down the entire Mississippi River and go back home without ever having seen anything of the real South where people live and die and play out their personal dramas just as they do everywhere.

  Trips are good, though. Russell likes to get Catherine away from home, her friends, her work. Russell sees each of their days together as pearls on a string, shiny and round and precious, though he has never told her this. Maybe he will. Maybe he’ll buy her some pearls in New Orleans and tell her then.

  “Fill ’er up?” the bartender asks.

  “Sure.” Russell glances over at Mr. Stone who has fallen asleep on the bar now, face turned toward him, cheek smashed flat, mouth open with a little drool and a little ratty snore coming out occasionally. Russell shudders. It won’t be long. Russell’s got a place on his forehead that he forgot to show the dermatologist, and it’s almost time for another colonoscopy. You can’t be too careful with this stuff.

  “Here you go, sir.” Actually the bartender reminds Russell of his son, Russ, an uncomplicated hustling kind of a boy now getting his M.B.A. at Duke. Plans to go into Internet sales. Has got lots of plans, in fact, big plans. Russ has rebelled against Russell by becoming a salesman and a Republican, two things Russell hates above all others, except for maybe computers and corporations. Russell prides himself on being a throwback, a Luddite, a Don Quixote. Over the years he has become known for taking on the impossible cases, the cases nobody else wants: the death penalty cases, the civil rights cases, the sexual harassment cases, the little guy against the big company cases. Helping people set up charitable nonprofit corporations is his sideline specialty, pro bono. Russell believes in what he has done, yet he is not proud of himself. He has changed nothing. The harder you work, the more things go to hell, the farther the culture slips down the tubes. And deep inside himself Russell fears that maybe Russ was right in their last “discussion”—fight is more like it—when Russ told him he’d never have done any of this stuff if he had really had to make a living. That pissed Russell off royally, but it may be true.

  Russell read in the paper the other day that the most useful phrase in the English language is “You may be right.” Which is not a total capitulation, actually, when you think about it. So maybe he’ll start saying it all the time, and kick back some, and quit pissing everybody off so much. He needs to act better and quit embarrassing Catherine. Other guys get old and calm down, don’t they? Attain a sense of equilibrium? Retire. Grow roses. But not golf. Russell will never play golf, which symbolizes most of what is worst about America in his opinion, despite Tiger Woods; just look at how they’re fucking up the deserts in Arizona right now so they can grow grass on them, so they can make more golf courses, so people can play more golf. Jesus Fucking H. Christ!

  Russell takes some deep slow deliberate breaths. He turns his attention back up to the TV where—damn!—he sees Susi Sergi, his favorite weather girl of all time, with her black cascading curls and the little dimples at the corners of her full red mouth and the big breasts which she doesn’t try to hide though she doesn’t try to display them either, as would not be seemly in a meteorologist, and Susi’s the best. She’s a professional, specializing in thunderstorms. Russell hated it when Susi took that maternity leave a couple of years ago, it lasted so long, hell, she should have come back to work and let the husband take care of the kid. Damn! Susi Sergi looks hot today. Dynamite red dress with a matching red jacket, an expensive-looking gold necklace. Maybe Catherine would like a gold necklace like Susi Sergi’s. Russell is sure Susi Sergi grows out her armpits, it’s an ethnic thing. He loves the way she holds her pointer, like a majorette with a baton, pointing at the concentric circles of a low pressure system.

  “Yes, we’re having a wet time today in the Southeast,” she announces cheerily, “with severe thunderstorms bringing three-quarter-inch hail in some cases. Central Texas, it’s heavy rain for you, with an accumulation of three to five inches, ending your drought watch. And Montgomery, you’ve seen less than a quarter inch of rainfall this summer, so it’s good news for you. You’re still working on a two-year rainfall deficit—and you’re also enjoying some wet weather today. Las Vegas, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? You’re presently at 103; Phoenix, you’re at 101 and rising …” Russell admires the bossy, familiar way Susi Sergi addresses the cities and regions of the whole United States directly. He wishes he could fuck her, to feel, even for an instant, that assurance. But right then an underling hands her a piece of paper, breaking news. “Take cover immediately, everybody in Charles County, Maryland!” Susi announces dramatically. “Two funnel clouds have been reported in your area. A tornado warning has been issued until 3 P.M. Everybody in Charles County, Maryland, take cover immediately.”

  One reason Russell feels so close to Susi Sergi is that she’s the one who announced the severe weather warning for Alabama when he and Catherine had just moved out into the country, soon after their marriage. Russell had never paid too much attention to houses before, but he loved the huge old trees out there, hickories and pecans and oaks and pines, and Catherine needed more space for her work.

  “Now, exactly what are you looking for?” the real estate lady had asked them pertly.

  “An old farmhouse,” Catherine said. “With a big barn.”

  “I want a house I can die in,” added Russell, helpfully he thought, though the real estate lady had swiveled her pixie head on her skinny neck to stare at him. Later, in the garden of that very house, Catherine was “oohing” and “ahhing” about the big swooping limb of some tree. “We could put a swing here for the grandchildren,” she cooed.

  “Or I could hang myself,” Russell said, offe
nding the upbeat real estate lady so much that she went to sit in her car, while Catherine collapsed on a garden bench in laughter.

  They hadn’t been in the house two months when Susi Sergi came on with her dire news. “A supercell thunderstorm warning has just been issued for Tuscaloosa, Alabama.”

  “Catherine!” Russell yelled, “Catherine!” still hanging on Susi’s every word. In some crazy way, it even made sense to him, that once he was finally living in a house he owned with a woman he loved, the weather would do this to him. No matter how much you watch it, it doesn’t care. Okay, you sorry bastard, it’s thinking. You got complacent, didn’t you? Well, how do you like this? And this? Thunder rolled as the sunshine dimmed. “Catherine!”

  “Honey, what are you yelling about now?” Catherine had stretched luxuriously, looking up from the crossword puzzle on her lap. Because she is a woman, she views the Weather Channel as mere background noise.

  “We’ve got a severe thunderstorm warning in effect right now, that’s what! With the possibility of tornadoes—,” which punch out from the top of the anvil-shaped thundercloud, Russell knew this cold.

  “I repeat, Tuscaloosa, Northport, and the surrounding area, take cover immediately. Make sure all pets are inside. Go to the safest part of the house, often a bathroom floor or a stairwell, and stay there until the thunderstorm has passed. Do not, under any circumstances, go outside. If you are in your car on a highway, pull over to the side of the road. Do not leave your vehicle.” Susi Sergi was dead serious. It was her shining moment, her big chance to prove herself more than a pretty face, more than a bimbo. Russell rushed over and threw open the French doors. “High winds and flash flooding will be associated—,” Susi continued before dissolving into an electronic crackle on the screen. The TV went dead. The lights went out.

  “Oh, honey!” Catherine dropped her puzzle on the floor and came over to Russell.