The Last Girls

by Lee Smith

  “Oh, my darling, we’ve not much time left then, have we?” Francesca’s husky voice seems to swell up from the very night.

  “No ma’am, but thanks for everything!” Huckleberry tries to be brave, though his freckles are slick with tears. “Only, only—I know it’s not cool, but the problem is that I really love you, ma’am. I really do. I don’t think I can live without you.”

  “Oh, my little darling.” Francesca strokes his wet cheek and smooths his wrinkled brow. “Of course it seems this way to you now. But you are young, and life goes on. You’ll see. You will love many women, and one day there will come that special woman, who will walk with you hand in hand through the rest of your life.”

  “But I want her to be you!” Huckleberry wails. “I can’t live without you!”

  “Now, now. It cannot be,” Francesca utters throatily. “But get up now, and come to the window with me, and look as we enter the city. It is your city, my young friend, it is your world, yours for the taking.” They stand together and watch as the ship maneuvers her way toward the dock.

  “And you?” Huckleberry cries out suddenly. “Where will you be?” But when he turns to find Francesca, she is gone. She has slipped away into the night, into the past, leaving him even in his heartbreak a wiser young man. And though he will search for her through all the streets of all the cities in the world for the rest of his life, and though he will remember her forever, he will never, ever, see her again.

  Anna leans back against the rail as the music changes to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising”: “Don’t go around tonight, Well it’s bound to take your life, There’s a bad moon on the rise.” Without missing a beat, Russell and Catherine swing apart and start to jitterbug. They are very, very good at this. Click. Courtney snaps their picture, then takes one of Anna at the rail, which ought to be interesting if it turns out right, somber Anna silhouetted against the brilliant good-time skyline. Click. Leonard and Bridget are doing the electric slide which they have learned in dance class. The couple from Tennessee are dancing, too, but soon stop, as he suffers terribly from gout.

  “Gets you in the toe!” the Toastmaster shouts to Pete over the music.

  “What?” Pete shouts back.

  “Gout!” the Toastmaster yells.

  “You may be right!” cries Russell, spinning his wife around.

  “Harriet?” Pete calls over them all. “Harriet?”

  But Harriet seems not to hear him or anyone else, leaning over the railing just at the point of the bow like a figurehead, facing into the breeze. Courtney snaps a picture of her like that, in profile, with her hair streaming back from her face, and one of Pete, a step or two above the rest of the group, hanging on to the Pilot House ladder. “Harriet,” he calls.

  But Harriet hovers just above the deck, hating herself. For now she has changed her mind, and she wonders how she could ever have been so egotistical as to presume, even for one minute, that her own actions were of such importance in lives where her presence had been only incidental. Baby grew up, that’s all—while she, Harriet, did not. And now she must rethink her whole opinion of Charlie, seeing him as passionate and articulate, seeing Baby’s marriage as a good choice instead of a cop-out. Though on the other hand, Harriet can still imagine Baby’s death as a choice, too . . . but who knows? Who can ever know which story is true? Maybe they’re both true. Harriet feels an utter fool for torturing herself all these years, for blaming herself, punishing herself for Jeff’s death and the wreckage of Baby’s life when maybe it wasn’t even wrecked. According to Charlie Mahan, it was happy and filled with love. Baby is dead now, but at least she lived . . .

  Maybe Harriet’s own life could have been full and happy, too, if she hadn’t felt so guilty. But this is such a scary thought that it sends Harriet shooting up even higher, many feet above the Sun Deck of the Belle of Natchez and even above the smokestacks, so that she can look down and see her friends and Pete as tiny toy figures, windup toys, moving round and round in their little dance. She sees the busy port and the lighted city and the wide dark river beyond, going all the way down the Mississippi Delta and into the sea. From this distance it is also possible for Harriet to see that she was sort of in love with Baby herself, as well as with Jeff, and that Jeff’s death was, in a sense, her own.

  I was once as you are

  and as I am now

  You also shall be.

  Harriet looks down on the city’s twinkling lights until she can almost see patterns like all those constellations so long ago—Courtney’s heart-shaped corsage, Catherine’s Civil War dog, Anna’s little finger bones—and there, yes, it’s his constellation, it’s Jeff blazing out in the night. He’s burning to death. Every inch of him is blazing, his mouth that huge black O that Harriet is pulled toward inexorably, it’s where she’s been headed of course all along, it’s what she wants. “Harriet!” Pete yells again and with a sudden cry she turns on her heel and runs back down the starry sky almost colliding with the ghost of Baby who sits on a little star swinging her long bare legs, dangling her loafers, wearing her old cutoff jeans.

  “Don’t be a fool, Harriet.” Baby’s laughing, smoking a Salem, as in life. “How many English majors ever got a chance to fuck Mark Twain? You better go for it, girl—”

  “Oh, I’d never do that,” Harriet says immediately, but then all the stars are moving, they’re dancing like the snowflakes in Jill’s paperweights so long ago, and Baby’s star explodes before her eyes. Click. “Got it!” says Courtney. Pete puts his arm around Harriet’s waist. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.” I hear hurricanes ablowing, I know the end is coming soon. The Robin Street Wharf lies right ahead, the black river slides under the Belle. They’re almost there. Funny how it seems like practically no time at all has passed since they first left, since they went running up that hill, since they set out upon the water like a dream.

  In all ways remarkable, the rest of the girls—

  “I’ve carried more tonnage, but never a more valuable cargo.”

  Capt. Gordon S. Cartwright

  June 10, 1965

  Jane Gillespie Reed has just moved into her mother’s house on Three Chopt Road in Richmond’s West End, only two blocks away from the private girls’ school they all attended: her mother, herself, her three daughters. Jane married her childhood sweetheart, Royster Reed. Their daughters are perfectly healthy, though none has turned out exactly as expected, best not to dwell on this too much. Best to go about her day exactly as she always has, as her mother went about hers in this very same house until her sudden death. Mama had been sitting by the fire, with Jane across from her in the matching wing-back chair, when suddenly she twitched violently, upsetting the glass of water on the little table. “Oh!” she cried, her hand flying up to her mouth, and she died with her eyes wide open. Whatever Mama saw on the other side seemed to surprise her. This worries Jane. Mama’s death was a year ago, but Jane has felt unsettled ever since. Royster is no help; he thinks she’s just going through the Change. The girls are no help either, involved with their own busy lives.

  Today Jane thinks of driving downtown for lunch so she can catch at least a glimpse of Fontaine, their youngest, her favorite. Fontaine and her Japanese husband, Tommy Chiba, own a popular sushi bar down at the Shockoe Slip. Three months pregnant, Fontaine runs the cash register, wearing a kimono. Tommy Chiba cuts the fish. Fontaine has told Jane that each chef has his own sushi knife, which no one else is ever allowed to touch. Jane imagines Tommy Chiba’s sharp knife slicing into tuna. She shivers. Best to stay home, make herself a tuna salad sandwich, unpack another box of china as the afternoon light moves across her mother’s lovely Oriental rugs.

  Busy Suzanne St. John alternates between her condominium at River Road Plantation and the lovely apartment on Chartres Street in New Orleans where she has lived alone ever since David Maynard, her husband of sixteen years, left her for his personal trainer. An estate attorney, David is a dry and predictable man who never showed a single
sign of leaving her before he just up and did it. He never showed a sign of getting a personal trainer either; he imported wine by the case, and loved his étoufée. Now Suzanne can see him any morning she chooses to look through the plate glass window of Gold’s Gym across from her parking building. He’s running on a treadmill, watching a television suspended from the wall above him, eyes raised as if in prayer. This suggestion—that he has found some meaning in it all—infuriates Suzanne. She feels very much alone. Suzanne and David never had children, as he already had three, from his first marriage, when she met him. These children visited in the summers and at holidays, but Suzanne is not in touch with them now. Nor does she have close friends. And as the head of River Road Corporation, she cannot confide in any of her employees. She doesn’t have time to go on trips, join clubs, or take a course in order to meet new people. But she doesn’t see any reason why she should feel so alone at this stage of her life. So something else has come into her mind. In secret, in her office during the day, or late at night, at home, she has found herself clicking onto those personals sites. Why not? What’s wrong with that? Soon she will answer an ad, and then something will happen to her.

  Whoever thought a nomadic, urban creature like Ruth d’Agostino could ever settle down so happily on this ramshackle Florida farm out here in the middle of nowhere? Up before dawn, walking down the sandy road to feed the Charolais cattle, three dogs romping around her feet, Ruth whistles a little tune through her teeth as the sky grows light. She has been astonished to find this rolling, grassy plain in central Florida, with occasional trees that rise up like billowing smoke. It’s like another country here.

  A former bond trader, Ruth has never married. She buried her longtime lover (colon cancer) four years ago in New York. Then she almost ran Lane down while rollerblading in Central Park, occasioning coffee. Lane was only in the city overnight, for an art opening. Ruth took a little, much-needed vacation. Three months later she returned to pack and move to Miami, where Lane held a faculty position. When Lane’s father died, they took over the family farm, against all advice. But Lane is painting better than ever, and Ruth can manage all their business on the Internet. She could live anywhere, really. Now she leans against the split-rail fence and watches the sun come up red as a blood orange. Rain later, this afternoon. She calls the dogs, heads for the barn, gathers the eggs.

  When Ruth gets back to the low, tin-roofed house, the smell of coffee fills the kitchen. Ruth leaves her clogs at the door and walks barefoot across the smooth terra-cotta tiles to the sink where Lane is running water.

  “Tim called,” Lane says. “Lucy’s gone into labor.”

  “When?”

  “Last night. They’re on their way to the hospital right now. He’ll call later, of course.”

  Ruth squeezes her shoulder. Tim, Lane’s youngest, lives in Louisville. Ruth puts the enamel pan of eggs on the counter and pours herself a cup of coffee. She has just sat down at the kitchen table and opened the paper when Lane says, “Oh, Ruthie!” with a certain tone in her voice. Lane turns from the window and holds the blue bowl out so that Ruthie can see it, too: a double-yolk egg, its yolks shot through with red like the sun, each of them perfectly round, tightly and perfectly joined. “Just look,” says Lane. The sun is in her hair.

  Dr. Mimi West Worthington, 49, of 11 Hobbyhorse Circle, Winston-Salem, N.C., died Wednesday, March 12, 1995, at Baptist Memorial Hospital following a brief illness. She was born April 5, 1945, in Silver Spring, Md., to the late Frank and Elizabeth West. She graduated from Mary Scott College in 1966, and from dental school at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1971. Following a postdoctoral fellowship, also at UNC, she moved to Winston-Salem where she entered private practice at Forsythe Dental Care, remaining active there until her sudden death. She was a member of Grace Street Methodist Church, serving in many capacities including Sunday School teacher and Mehtodist Youth Fellowship leader. She was elected to membership in the Xi Psi Phi Dental Fraternity and the Academy of General Dentistry. She served as head of the Winston-Salem Dental League. One of her joys was providing dental care to needy children at the Forsythe Saturday Clinic, which she started. A devoted mother, she is survived by two sons, Patrick West Worthington, a student at the University of Colorado in Boulder; and James Justin Worthington of Boone, N.C.; a sister, Mrs. Laura Miller of Baltimore, Md.; a good friend, Michael Ridge; and a multitude of devoted friends and patients. Funeral services will be conducted at Grace Street Methodist Church on Saturday, March 15, at 2 p.m., followed by burial in Evergreen Cemetery. Memorial contributions may be made to the Forsyth Saturday Clinic, the American Cancer Society, or the Grace Street Methodist Church.

  (But what of her ex, not mentioned in this yellowed clipping? or her older son’s diabetes? What of the men she loved, the books she read, or her famous beef carbonnade? What about how she swam at the Y on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and played tennis with the same three women for fifteen years? What of that time when she and Michael were hiking in Arizona and the sun came up and all the earth turned red?)

  Her years at Mary Scott were the exception in Lauren DuPree’s quiet life; now, she marvels at them, as if they had happened to somebody else. A shy child who stayed mostly at home with her frail, bookish parents, she returned to Mobile after college and has lived here ever since, taking care of them and of her blind uncle Bernard who lived in the garden house now completely covered in wisteria, as well as her alcoholic sister from time to time and her sister’s children (beloved nephews!) at various points in their lives. It may not seem that such a sheltered life could be interesting. But au contraire it has been filled with joy and, yes, love; Lauren feels we are here for a purpose, to seek God’s plan for our lives. In the poorer quarters of the city where she has long worked as a public health nurse, Lauren is considered a saint.

  Oh, but she’s not a saint, for she once loved a man with all her incandescent heart; however, he went away to England for graduate school, returning only to break the engagement. That man’s daughter, now a young matron, came up to Lauren on the street long after his death and said, “He always loved you, you know,” which filled her with wild sorrow rather than the pleasure she’s sure the daughter intended. Well, never mind. She has her work, she has her little dog. And God’s purpose has been further revealed since her parents’ deaths.

  They were very rich; she’s giving it all away. To charities and to individual persons she knows who are in need, and to strangers who show up on her doorstep looking for money. She gives it to them in spite of her nephews’ injunction. There are so many good causes and needy people in the world, and not enough money to go around. The more she gives away, the lighter and smaller she feels. She is finalizing plans to give this house to Pansy’s church; Pansy was her parents’ housekeeper. It will be used as a shelter for women and children. Lauren loves the idea of children running through this courtyard, up and down the stairs, along the iron balconies. She will hear them. She will live here, too, in the garden house with Smoky, her little dog, taking up less and less room.

  My name is Bowen Montague and I am an alcoholic. I grew up in the Belle Meade section of Nashville, Tennessee. My father was a Fugitive poet and my mother was a dissatisfied aristocrat with impossible expectations who drove everybody crazy, so that we children all left home as soon as possible, for prep school and then for college. But yet I repeated her life, returning to marry well, open a gift shop, and finally have a daughter, a life that might have sufficed well enough if our daughter had not been murdered at age twenty, the summer after her sophomore year in college. Murdered! Missing for weeks, then found raped, strangled, in the woods near Percy Priest Lake. Never solved, though in the investigation it became clear that drugs were involved and that she had led another life with people of whom we had had no knowledge. Or had we? How much did we know and not know? This tormented me. I felt I must know more than I thought, that at some point I would remember something, and things would click into place. I dr
ove the streets looking into the faces I encountered, wondering, him? Is he the one? I kept her room exactly as she had left it, though the things said about her during the investigation bore no relation to this room, our life. They said terrible things. My husband wanted to move away, but I could not, and so he moved without me; and I started drinking sherry and then switched to vodka, and sold the shop. Soon I rarely left the house. I rarely ate. Finally my parents and my brother did an intervention, putting me into rehab. By then I was almost dead, skin and bones. I hated everybody. It took me a long time to come around.

  But here I met Jerry Rusher, a musician, twelve years younger than I am. Jerry has a big smile and a long ponytail and a way of grinning at you with his eyes. The first time this happened I thought, Well I know him! which turned out to be true, even though our backgrounds could not be more different. Jerry grew up dirt poor. He was a heroin addict for seven years, in prison for five. Now we live in a mobile home on his sister’s land, out near Columbia. He and his sister are getting a band together with some young boys. They all want to play with Jerry because he’s a legend. Sometimes I sing high harmony with them. But mostly I cook and take care of his sister’s kids, twin boys with dimples, age ten. They’re a handful. My parents and my brother will have nothing to do with me. They drove all the way out here to say this, and would not even get out of the car or speak to Jerry. They’re waiting for me to “come to my senses” and “come back home.” Don’t hold your breath! I say. I say, I am the fugitive now.

  I have a garden out here by the road where it gets lots of sun. I’m growing lettuce, beans, tomatoes, yellow squash, and zucchini. These zucchini are taking over! I’m going to make zucchini bread later today, I cut the recipe out of the Tennessean.