The Last Girls (37 page)

This is where they found Robert, a decorator: in the Key West yellow pages. Robert had spiky peroxide-blond hair and beautiful manners; he was a Southern boy, from Charleston. He took care of their houses while becoming a massage therapist on the side. He was very gifted. Lou handled the money while Anna wrote the books and made personal appearances. She hired an assistant (Della Rosen, with tortoiseshell glasses) to make reservations, shop, answer the phone, and deal with the mail. Della saw to it that every fan heard from Anna personally. Depending on the tone and the degree of intimacy claimed in the initial letter, Della sent Response A, B, or C, beginning, respectively, “Of course I remember you”; “The life of any writer is such a lonely one, how heartwarming it is to hear from a reader like yourself, and to know …”; or “Alas, we may not meet!” Anna endorsed a line of cosmetics, then scarves.

After a while, Lou hired a financial manager named Martin Dean Marquette who had come to Key West for a Merrill Lynch convention and never left. Martin Dean Marquette took care of all their business for them, wearing a jeans skirt. Lou took up art. He specialized in wacky copies of famous paintings by modern masters, changing their signatures accordingly: Loutrillo, Loucasso, Loutrecht, Loualt … Above each signature he put his trademark black moustache, two quick strokes of the brush. Soon these paintings became collectible; then they were all the rage. Lou opened his own gallery on Duval. They bought the house next to theirs on Margaret Street, erecting a tall bougainvillea-covered pink picket fence around the entire compound which eventually housed not only Anna and Lou but also
Robert, Della, Martin Dean Marquette, Miss Bette and her private nurse, and one of Lou's daughters with her illegitimate child, Susannah, whom they adored. Guides on the conch train pointed out the “House of Romance,” as they called it, on sightseeing tours. If Anna happened to be working when they came by, she'd trail a pink chiffon scarf at them from the window of her tower study.

But Anna got Lou for only twelve years. Since his heart attack, she has never had another man although she has imagined a slew of them, romantic hero after hero, as she must, to support her entourage. She was with Lou on the satin sheets in their big round bed beneath the turning ceiling fan on the day he died—too young, at sixty-four—while making what passed for love.

Mile 265.5
St. Francisville, Louisiana
Thursday 5/13/99
0842 hours

C
OURTNEY SLIPS INTO A
denim sundress with a smocked bodice, then snaps a denim band over the crown of her straw hat. There. She applies clear red lipstick which is always so cheering. She straightens her shoulders, adjusts her hat. She has been looking forward to St. Francisville, where she has signed up to tour the antebellum plantations Oakley and Catalpa. The rest of the town is supposed to be very pretty as well; there'll be a lot to photograph. John James Audubon lived here in the 1820s, tutoring children at Feliciana plantation; here he made more than eighty paintings of birds and wildlife. It still looks wild out there even now, jungly and snaky. And it's hotter today than expected—already eighty-five degrees and it's not even 9
A.M
. How did they ever do it, all those plantation ladies in the hoop skirts and the crinolines with their waists pinched in until they looked like wasps, like hourglasses—hourglasses marking time, counting the silver, waiting to die. Oh dear. Whatever is
wrong
with her this morning? Gene Minor has no business talking to her like that.

But she really must call Hawk this very minute before she does one more thing; she really cannot evade her responsibilities any longer.
For once, she gets the outside line on the first try. Far away at Magnolia Court, somebody picks up the ringing phone, but says nothing. “Hello?” Courtney asks. She can't tell if anybody is there or not.

“Courtney?” Oh God, it's Hawk after all, the one person she hasn't talked to since this trip started, actually. The center of the action, the still point of the storm. “Courtney?” he says again. His firm voice sounds exactly the same. He sounds
fine
.

“Hi, darling,” she says. “I'm so glad I caught you. We're docking at St. Francisville right now, so I'm off for a morning of photography. It's getting hot, though. There's a big difference between North Carolina and Louisiana weather, let me tell you. It's a lot more humid down here.”

“So are you having a good time? Enjoying it?” It's unlike Hawk to be so solicitous.

“Oh yes, it's wonderful, but you would have hated it, you're too type A. It would have been too slow for you. Though there is a fitness center and there are a few people jogging around the deck every morning including Russell Hurt, you'd like him anyway.”

“Who?”

“Russell Hurt. He's married to Catherine Wilson, don't you remember her? He's the only man in our group, actually. I think he's enjoying it, though—well,
they're
enjoying it—”
A lady never lets a silence fall
. Miss Evangeline's motto rings out in her head like a bell.

“I remember Catherine Wilson,” Hawk says when she finally lets him speak. “Pretty girl from Birmingham. Got married the summer after we did, left the church in a horse and buggy.” Hawk chuckles. Obviously, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with him, if he can remember all this. Maybe Ellen Henley is just as prone to exaggeration as Vangie.

“That was her first wedding,” Courtney says. “Hawk, how are the tests going? Has the doctor said anything?”

“Hell, you know, they never say anything. It's a power trip, basically.
They take off all your clothes and strip you of all your dignity and then they ask you a lot of stupid questions and insult you and you pay thousands of dollars for the privilege, thank you very much. That's the way it works.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Oh, stuff like what is your mother's maiden name, or who is the governor of this state? What is today's date? What is your birthday? You wouldn't believe these questions, what a waste of a man's time.”

“But what kind of tests, Hawk?”

“You name it, I'm taking it,” Hawk says. “EKG, MRI, CAT scan, PETT scan, pee in the cup, blood tests up the wazoo. Close your eyes and touch your face. Jesus Christ.”

“Well, you certainly sound like your old self, at any rate. But they must have said something . . .”

“So far it's inconclusive, that's what the guy said, Dr. Famous Fucking Levinson. A lot of the tests haven't even come back yet, of course, but so far, based on the best of his famous fucking expertise, it's inconclusive.”

“But what does that
mean?
” Out her window, Courtney sees people streaming onto the landing and into the two waiting buses. Oh well. There's no help for it now. Courtney sits down on her bed. “What did Dr. Levinson actually say, Hawk? Doesn't he have any idea what's going on?”

“Oh, sure. The guy's full of ideas. Maybe head injury, maybe stroke, maybe frontal lobe disorder, maybe thyroid, maybe meningitis, maybe depression . . .”

“Depression! Oh, surely not.” Hawk is the least depressed person Courtney has ever known.

“Don't be too sure,” Hawk says somewhat mysteriously. “Guys like me, we're falling like trees all over America, but nobody's there to hear us yell when we go down.”

Courtney can't quite make the connection.

“Just read the statistics,” Hawk goes on. “Who do you think is eating all this Prozac?”

“Dr. Levinson didn't put you on Prozac, did he?” Courtney has never heard of anything so ridiculous.

“Sure, Prozac and a bunch of other pills. One day you're a man, the next day you're a laboratory,” Hawk says. “But he really won't know much until next week. I've got an appointment on Thursday afternoon.”

Thank God, she'll be home. “I'll go with you,” Courtney says, feeling better immediately, though she doubts that he'll actually let her do it.

“Great,” Hawk surprises her by saying. “That'd be just great. And when are you coming home?”

God
. What is
wrong
with everybody? The schedule has been up on the refrigerator for weeks. “Monday night,” Courtney says for what seems about the tenth time.

“And when does your plane get in?”

Look at the
schedule,
she thinks. “Seven-forty,” she says.

“I'll tell you what. Why don't I pick you up at the airport and take you out to dinner? What do you say? Just the two of us. No reason to rush right home, am I right? I'll see if Tom can give us a table at the Starfish Grille. You can tell me all about the trip.”

Just the two of us? Years before, Courtney used to dream of Hawk saying something like this to her, but then she stopped dreaming of it, and now, it's funny, but this is the last thing she wants to hear, the very last. Her heart starts beating too fast.

“Baby? Have we got a date on Monday night?” Hawk pauses, clears his throat. “This thing has got my attention,” he says.

“I'll be looking forward to it,” Courtney sings, “and you take it easy in the meantime, you hear? I hope Mary Bell is taking good care of you.”

“Mary Bell is driving me fucking crazy.”

Courtney laughs. She puts the receiver down and gathers her things; her heart is still beating too fast.

C
OURTNEY KEEPS UP A
lively pace in spite of the heat and the road's steep grade into town. What was it Miss Evangeline used to say? Horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies
glow
. Well, she's surely glowing today!

Theatrically beautiful lilies bloom in the swamp down the hill to her left; she stops to take her camera out of its case and focus it, using the zoom lens.
Click:
the deep freckled pink lilies have dark mysterious centers, black stamens. When photographing flowers, Courtney likes to fit several into the frame. She's not going after anything sexual, no weird Georgia O'Keeffe stuff. She catches a monarch butterfly on a yellow flower, which pleases her,
click.
A white egret stands like a ghost in the murky water near the shady bank,
click.
And then
click
again as it skims the blue flowers, rising over the swamp. She'll call this one “Bird on the Wing.” Really this is the most satisfying aspect of photography, the way you can stop time, freeze action forever within the frame. Courtney hastens up the hill, dripping sweat, feeling faint, as if her period is about to start, only it's not of course, she's got her pills timed so she won't be having it in New Orleans as it is not conducive to romance. She attains the top of the hill.

St. Francisville is chock-full of beautiful homes surrounded by live oaks draped with Spanish moss, just the way they're supposed to be. Inviting porches hold wicker furniture and languid green ferns. Everybody on the street nods and smiles, friendly: people down here know how to act, which is not always true back in redneck North Carolina. Courtney snaps first one house, then another. She's
glad
she missed the bus; this is much more fun. She decides to focus on
fences,
as there are so many different kinds of pickets, some of them very original. She can frame them all alike and hang them in the hall, six or eight of them, say, in a nice little grouping.
Click. Click. Click.
Courtney
circles the town, stopping in the Button Shop for more film and some lemonade. She buys a brooch made out of antique buttons for Mary Bell, even though it's much too expensive.
A lady doesn't care what it costs. Click,
old men on the bench;
click,
old lady tourist scratching her butt, Gene will get a kick out of that one. She will not think about Gene.
Click,
the guy from the boat in the red muscle shirt stands before a house that he would never be invited to enter, not in a million years. She'll name this one “Louisiana Irony.”
Click,
the dusty road starting back down the hill,
click,
the beautiful little United Metho-dist Church, she grew up Methodist before she became an Episcopalian to marry Hawk. She won't think about him either.

Courtney has already taken three rolls of film by the time she heads back down the hill toward the landing, but she can't resist ducking into the old cemetery here to the right. Suddenly she remembers how her father used to ask, “Now who do you think is in that cemetery?” whenever they passed one on a car trip. And how she and Jean would ask, “Who, Daddy?” and then crack up every time when the answer came: “Dead people.” This was their daddy, that sweet old drunk. Courtney scarcely remembers him. Also Gene is a fool for cemeteries, they used to have cemetery picnics all the time. How he'd love this one, the most beautiful cemetery Courtney has ever seen. The old live oaks stretch out their long furry gray arms to form a canopy over an ancient little brick Episcopal church and all the old graves that disappear into the shadows there at the edge of the frame:
click.
White stones rising into consciousness like ideas, like memories, like ghosts; darker, older stones with names too faint to read, souls long lost to time.
Click.
Time has stopped dead in here, this high dim leafy tent where it's always cool with a little breeze that makes a sound you can almost hear as it sighs through the Spanish moss. The trees are so tall that they creak, leaning toward each other, telling old, old secrets.

Courtney stops to reload.
Click,
a wingless angel (“Louisiana Irony #2”).
Click,
a marble boy with his marble dog.
Click,
a marble tree
cut down before its time, stump draped in a marble shroud, Louis Chenier, age seventeen years, C.S.A.
Click
, a marble rose that could be paired with a photograph of a real rose from one of these beautiful gardens, “Life and Death,” a study in contrasts. Gene said,
“You can choose.”
Courtney is the only live person in this cemetery, why is that? She needs to get back to the boat. Is it possible that they would embark without her—just steam away downriver leaving her forever in this poky backward town? Security is certainly lax on the boat, that's for sure; nobody checks you off or on when they dock. So who would know? Her heart starts to flap in her chest like a bird at a windowpane. But she just has to have a drink of water before braving that sun again. Maybe the church is open. Her feet sink down in the long soft grass as she goes around to the front. Thank God, the red door gives inward; Courtney pushes it and steps inside the stone vestibule which smells like her own church, Saint Matthews, the very same smell as every other old Episcopal church in the world. Damp and holy and utterly familiar. But it's dark as a tomb in here. Surely there's a water fountain someplace. She finally finds it in the dimness, a silver cylinder against the wall by the coatroom. The water is icy and bracing. Well! That's better. Courtney dabs it on her temples, too, and at her throat.