The Last Girls (48 page)

“Oh my God! She's coming back. Oh no!” Whirling, Anna swats at her skirts as a little puff of ashes floats back like smoke on the wind.

“Well, shit!” Russell bursts out laughing.

Courtney dusts her hands briskly together. “That's that, then,” she says. But she really should have brought along the
Book of Common Prayer
herself so that things could have been done properly; she should have known Harriet wouldn't be properly prepared. There's the deep froggy tone of a tugboat off to their right now, and then another, why for heaven's sakes, they're coming into New Orleans already. And Courtney won't even have a chance to see the city. First thing in the morning, she'll go straight out to the airport, having given up her expensive hotel room to that little twit Harriet. She hears Gene's voice singing “Heartbreak Hotel” in her ear. She sees his face, his house, his room, his bed. She knows she will never meet anybody else on this earth who is racing wisteria. She sees his crazy cat clock, his kitchen, his wild garden in contrast to her own garden at Magnolia Court which has been so carefully maintained, it has been preserved, right next to the antebellum cemetery where even now the magnificent Berry monument rises from its square marble base straight up to the sky. On one side of it are listed the accomplishments of John Berry, architect and statesman, holder of many offices and winner of many honors. On two sides are carved the names and dates of the Berry children of whom there were eleven in all, though four
of them died before childhood's end. On the back side is engraved the name of John Berry's wife, Cornelia Branch Berry, the dates of her birth and death, and this legend,
SHE HATH DONE WHAT SHE COULD
, in capital letters, which strikes Courtney suddenly as awful, as too sad to bear, though it's not, of course, it's admirable. So why does Courtney feel this terrible sense of desolation sweeping over her suddenly, there on the deck of the
Belle,
when all she has ever done is the
right thing?
She closes her eyes and sways in the wind and sees the Berry monument standing white and pure and straight as any arrow against the evening sky, above the surrounding tombstones and the dark encircling trees. Courtney turns away from the rail as the loudspeaker crackles again. That's that, then. She takes out her camera.

“Speaking of the songs of my life!” Russell says into Catherine's ear as the theme from
A Summer Place
fills the air. “Let's dance, shall we?”

Catherine wipes her hands on her skirt and comes toward him, putting her left hand on his shoulder where it goes. She touches Russell's ear, his hair, his beard, that little place on his neck right below his ear where the hair doesn't grow and his skin is smooth as a baby's. She looks out past Russell's bristly neck and watches New Orleans come closer and closer, all those colored lights.

“Excuse me!”
Anna's trying to push her way across the crowded little deck but they're all dancing now, Russell and Catherine, Leonard and Bridget, and that awful Toastmaster couple from Tennessee—dancing at a funeral! Anna is horrified. In her novels she always makes it rain at funerals or the sky is somber and leaden or the day is drear. Everyone wears black. Though it is true that when Lou died, she and Robert chartered the schooner
Wolf
and sailed out into the ocean and cast his ashes over the side (still in their silver urn, of course, not blowing all around, for God's sake). Anna said, “Good-bye, my love,” while Robert held her. Then the sun did that wonderful thing it does just before it sinks into the ocean off Key West, it sort of spread out at the bottom and swelled up bigger and bigger until its rosy light
filled the entire sky and kept the undersides of all the puffy clouds lit up while the schooner tacked and sailed back to Key West, into its dock at the bight. Now that might not have been traditional but it was certainly very moving and appropriate for Lou, what a guy. To her distress Anna finds herself sobbing right out loud on the deck in the middle of all these dancers. It's true that when anyone dies, the other dead rise up and die all over again. She sees Lou's dark liquid eyes, his sideways smile. “Hey, baby,” he says. “C'mere.”

But it's only Harriet hugging her, only Courtney patting her arm.
They
think she's crying for Baby. What a joke. Everyone always made so much of Baby while
she,
Anna, was the talented one. She has published thirty-four books; she has been translated into fourteen languages. Baby never published a word.
And he loved me, not her.
For just one awful moment, Anna entertains this thought: what if she had
not
listened outside Mr. Gaines's door on that Saturday morning so long ago? What if she had taken that fellowship and gone on to Columbia in her ignorance and had consequently never married Kenneth Trethaway? What then? Doubt and confusion envelop her like a dark cloak. She should never have come on this trip.

“Anna, my goodness,” Courtney says, embarrassed by such large grief.

But Anna can't stand to think these things. Finally her mantra comes into her mind:
que sera, sera
. What's done is done; whatever
should
be,
is
. Touch, see, smell, hear, taste, feel.
Be here now
. This is her mantra, and how could she ever have forgotten it, even for a moment? Anna wonders as the
Belle
makes her way into the crowded harbor past the giant Port of New Orleans sign. The whistle gives two piercing shrieks. Bells clang. People throng onto the decks below them, lining the rails. Through her tears Anna sees the lights of the city ringing the harbor on every side.

Huckleberry turns to Francesca as the changing light makes shadowy patterns on the snowy sheets. “We're coming into port,” he says.

“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.