The Last Girls (41 page)

Harriet replaced the receiver carefully and got up and went to stand at the window. In a way, Jeff's sister was right. But it was
her
fault, it was all her fault: Harriet's fault, not Baby's. She could have told Jeff that Baby missed him—it was all she had to do. He would have driven straight over here, they would have made up, he wouldn't have dropped out of the institute, he wouldn't have joined the army. “Soldier boy, oh my little soldier boy, I'll be true to you.” The words from the pop song ran through her head. She had danced to that song at a recent fraternity party at W&L with a boy she had never seen before and would never see again.

Harriet looked out the window at the cold, overcast campus. The still surface of the duck pond shone like pewter. A girl in a black raincoat walked down the path between the boxwoods and was gone. Shivering, Harriet hugged herself, squeezing her arms to make sure she was real. For suddenly she
was
that girl, disappearing entirely into the boxwood hedge. And it was cold in here, too. Harriet stared down into the dark where Jeff blazed up suddenly out of the blackness, outlined in flames, his burning arms outstretched as if to push her away, his mouth a round black screaming O. NO—a round black screaming NO. Harriet wanted to go to him but she was cold, just so cold, and she couldn't get there, her feet wouldn't move. All she could do was cry, or maybe that was Baby crying. Now Baby was crying, too.

Harriet was sick then. First she was sick in bed, then she was sick in
the infirmary where Nurse Pam gave her tapioca pudding and said she would be all right
(liar, liar, pants on fire)
, then she was sick at home with Alice flitting in and out of her bedroom, the front room she had shared for so long with Jill, Dr. Piccolo standing lugubriously in the doorway. He had a way of clicking his teeth that Harriet had never noticed before, it drove her wild. “Call me Ed,” he always said, but Harriet never could. She went back to school and took her exams but then she was home again. It was like she had never left except that Alice had suddenly grown so old. She looked like a crumpled pastel doll version of herself, or like an ancient child, one of those children that have that weird disease that they're born old, whatever it's called.

“Ed!” Alice cried from Harriet's bedside. “Whatever is the matter with her? Can't you do something?”

Dr. Piccolo shook his head and clicked his teeth. Alice smoothed Harriet's top sheet, patted her shoulder, and followed him out of the room. Harriet looked around. There sat her foreign doll collection on top of the bureau, her schoolbooks in the nightstand, Jill's paperweights on their shelves in front of the window. She saw the same view out the window from her bed as always: the red neon Jefferson Hotel sign, the white branches of the birch tree which grew beside the entrance to the sewing shop below, the Lucky Strike sign on the top of the Connor Building across the street, the roofs of the taller buildings beyond it, and someplace in that direction, someplace she couldn't see from here, Gypsy Park. Harriet closed her eyes but could not sleep.

D
R
. P
ICCOLO BROUGHT
her three kinds of medication: a flat yellow pill, a round red pill, and two pale green capsules to take at night. They helped. She stayed in bed and read the books she could find in the apartment:
Babbitt, The Call of the Wild
,
How to Win Friends and Influence People, Butterfield Eight
. Dr. Piccolo came into her room at night and touched her face and her breasts. Harriet pretended to
sleep; this seemed easiest. But then he began doing other things to her, too. Once she decided to tell her mother, but when she got up her nerve and went in the kitchen she found him and Alice playing rummy at the round oak table, bare feet entwined beneath it, in the rosy glow of the hanging Tiffany lamp. “Call-Me-Ed” was in an undershirt; Alice wore the pink silk wrapper of another day.

“So whaddya got?” Dr. Piccolo's hairy back was to Harriet, who stood in the dark. “Huh? Whaddya got?”

“Gin!”
Alice slapped the cards down with a flourish, then burst into giggles. She ran around the table to sit in his lap. “So you've got to pay up, big boy. Now what have you got for your little girl?”

Harriet backed silently into the bedroom. The next day she answered an ad in the paper and got a part-time job in medical records at the famous hospital up on the hill where Jeff's mother had stayed for so long. That summer she also took four courses, two each session, at UVA's summer school, sharing a dorm room with a Men-nonite nursing student.

Back at Mary Scott for senior year, Harriet moved into the single room she had requested in Ransom Hall. Anna had a single room in Cabell while Baby roomed with Catherine Wilson, in Oglethorpe. Four new freshmen had the Tower Suite in Old South. Harriet got a good look at them as she drove past the familiar old dorm in the Volkswagen that Mr. Carr had bought her from beyond the grave. Three of the new Tower Suite freshmen were carrying an old red leather sofa across the grass, while the fourth shouted encouragement down from the front window of what used to be Courtney's room. The new girl's long blond hair hung down from the window like Rapunzel's, in a golden rope.

A note from Courtney had been waiting in Harriet's mailbox, written on heavy new informal stationery, engraved with her new initials, C. G. R. Harriet tore it open in the post office. “Of course I have not gotten any sleep since Scott was born,” Courtney wrote, “but somehow
I don't even care. Isn't he cute??? I don't need to sleep, I am so happy. I never knew I could love anything or anybody so much as I love this baby. I will bring him up to see you all later on. XOXOXO, Courtney.” The baby's picture was inside: a funny little thing with a pointed head like a little cap, and squinty eyes.

“Oooh! Let me see!” It was Catherine, grabbing the letter, hugging Harriet. “Oh shit, look at his head! Do you think he's all right?”

“I think Courtney would tell us if he wasn't, don't you? She's always been pretty up front about things,” Harriet said.

“I guess so. But my goodness, just look at
you!
” Catherine hugged Harriet again and then held her out at arm's length. “You look different,” she announced. “What's different about you? Aren't you doing something different with your hair?”

Harriet shook her head no. “You just forgot,” she said. “I haven't seen you all for almost a year, remember. It's just the same old me.”

But Catherine continued to peer closely at her as they walked out under the giant oaks of the front quadrangle. “That's not true, is it?” Catherine said. “Something has changed. What is it, Harriet?”

Harriet shook her head.
“Nothing,”
she said. “I told you, I had mono, remember? And then it was too late in the semester to come back to Mary Scott so I got a job and went to summer school at UVA.”

“So, how's your mom?” Catherine sat down on the miller's stone and lit a cigarette.

“Fine.”

“And the doctor?”

“Hirsute as ever.” Harriet sat down beside her on the huge stone, still warm from the day's sun.

Catherine laughed. “That word was actually on my college board test. And now we're graduating. Well, I'm ready to be out of here. You know, Howie has already gotten two raises at his job. And he loves it.” After one of the world's longest engagements, Catherine's
wedding was still nine months away. “Exactly like a pregnancy,” she said, scooting across the rough stone to hug Harriet. “I'm just so glad to see you! But now tell me the truth—what's with you and Baby?”

“What do you mean?”

“She says you never wrote her back or answered her calls or anything after you left last year. It really hurt her feelings, Harriet.”

Harriet studied the grass, too green.

“Harriet? Tell me?”

Harriet sighed and took off her sandals, digging her feet into the grass. “It's a long story,” she said.

“Well,
she
still wants to be friends. You know she got pretty messed up after Jeff died, everybody did, but she took it the hardest, of course. She got skinnier and skinnier and Nurse Pam made her go see this psychiatrist in Roanoke twice a week, or they said they would send her home. But now, guess what?”

“What?”

“She's engaged, too! To this older guy named Charlie Mahan that she's known all her life practically, I think he may even be her cousin although of course I'm sure it's her third or fourth cousin once removed or something like that. Baby says he's from ‘the Delta' like it's a big deal or something.”

“Charlie Mahan?” A sudden image of Charlie Mahan came into Harriet's mind as he had appeared when she went down to Alabama for the cousin's debut party, sophomore year—Charlie Mahan showing up at the airport in his big blue pickup truck, throwing Harriet's suitcase into the back, helping her up into the cab in courteous, cowboy fashion. Baby always claimed Charlie wasn't “all that smart” but he was clearly nice, one of the nicest boys Harriet could ever remember meeting. Too nice for Baby, went through her mind. Somehow she remembered that he had dropped out of Ole Miss to go home and run his family's farm when his dad got sick.

“The wedding is set for the end of June, three weeks after mine,” Catherine said with evident satisfaction that hers was first. “Just after Howie and I get back from Bermuda.”

“I always thought Baby would go to graduate school,” Harriet said.

“No, she's not,” Catherine said. “You know what I think? I think she's just
tired,
Harriet. I think she's all worn out. It's real hard to be Baby. I think she wants a normal life now, somebody to take care of her, and I must say, I don't blame her. I, for one, am real happy for her. Didn't you know she dropped out of the writing workshop?”

“Really? When?”

“Oh, way back last spring. Well, look, speak of the devil, here she is now! You'll see. She's missed you, Harriet.” Catherine touched Harriet's hand lightly for emphasis; Harriet jumped back. Baby! In a way Harriet could not explain, she felt that Baby had died, too. She was as dead as Jeff, though here she came, loping across the grass with her big stride and her big lopsided grin. Harriet shrank back on the miller's stone.

“Hey,
Harriet!
” Baby leaned down and hugged Harriet fiercely. Her hair was much shorter, cut in a trim pageboy. She had gained weight. She didn't look so haunted. Even her hands looked different, ragged nails now manicured. She wore a short flowered shift and sandals, legs as long and bare and tan as ever. “Oh, Harriet, I've missed you so much—how are you?”

“Fine—” Harriet said, then stopped cold. She swallowed. She remembered what Mama used to say to Jill: Cat got your tongue?

“Well, I've got to go see the registrar, right now. See y'all later.” Catherine stood and left.

“Me too.” Harriet jumped up.

Baby looked at her quizzically. “So, is that how you feel? You don't want to be friends anymore? You don't want to see me now?”

“Of course I do,” Harriet was lying. “Don't be crazy.” Though
actually she couldn't really see Baby at all from this angle, with the sun in her eyes.

“That's exactly what I'm trying to do—not be crazy,” Baby said.

“Well, did it ever occur to you that maybe you ought to try that on your own? That maybe you don't have to have a boy around all the time?” Harriet was amazed to hear herself actually say this, though she knew immediately it was true.

“Charlie isn't a boy, he's a man. He's really nice. Don't you remember him? He picked you up at the airport that time you came at Christmas for Nina's party?”

“I didn't really talk to him,” Harriet said.

Baby moved over so the sun was no longer in Harriet's eyes and looked straight at her. “Oh, come on,” she said. “Charlie
knows
me. He knows all about me. And he still loves me. Don't you want me to be happy?”

“Sure. Great. Be happy. Now I really do have to go over to the registrar's office, I've got to make sure I get credit for those summer school courses I took”—Harriet stopped—“Oh, Baby,” she said. “Why did you do it? Why did you ever break up with him anyway?”

Baby threw her arms around Harriet again. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm so sorry. Sometimes I just run out on people, I don't
know
why. I just can't help it. Please don't hate me anymore.”

“Hate you? I don't hate you,” Harriet said into her hair.

“So we're friends again? We're okay?” Baby sounded doubtful, pulling back to look at her. She ran her finger along Harriet's cheekbone.

“We're okay,” Harriet said, giving Baby everything she wanted, everything she had to have, and oddly enough it
was
okay, though it would never be the same, and that was as close as they would ever come to talking about it.

Mile 155.1
Vacherie, Louisiana
Friday 5/14/99
1200 hours

A
LL DURING THEIR
Friday morning tour of River Road Plantation, Harriet keeps whispering that she doesn't feel well. Courtney practically has to drag her down the long alley of arching live oaks, almost like a tunnel, back up the levee and onto the
Belle
for lunch.

“I really think I ought to just lie down,” Harriet says as they enter the dining room.

“Nonsense.” Courtney seats herself and wipes her face with her napkin. She doesn't care if all her makeup comes off or not, she's too
hot
to care. Plus there is certainly nobody on this boat she wants to impress, that's for sure. “You need to eat something, preferably something with some salt in it.”

“I could order the gazpacho,” Harriet finally says.

“The gazpacho would be perfect. Actually I have two really good gazpacho recipes, remind me to send them to you. They're both real easy—basically, just a big can of tomato juice and some vegetables in a blender. I often serve it on the patio in the summer, in a cup, before we go to dinner.” Somehow, since Courtney has renounced romance, it comforts her to think about her house: about her beautiful
slate patio, for instance, with its big urn of flowers, its ferns, its bougainvillea trellises.