The Last Girls (35 page)

“Today,” Sandy says, “Alligator Swamp Refuge protects 901 acres of land that is home to alligators, snakes, turtles, owls, white-tailed deer, black bear”—“BEAR!” Anna writes in her notebook—“and more than 250 species of birds.” The
Alligator Queen
cruises out of the still bayou and glides onto a silver lake. “Here you'll see egrets, herons, ibis, cormorants, and anything else that happens to be migrating along the Mississippi River flyway, depending on the season,”
Sandy tells them. “And if you'll look closely, you'll see a lot of ratlike animals, about as big as cats, up there on those cypress knees. Look—right there! Yes, ma'am. Those are nutria. They are not native to this habitat, and they have become the scourge—”

“Oh, gross. Aren't they awful?” Anna exclaims, writing fast.

“I used to have a nutria coat,” Catherine says. “All the girls in Birmingham had nutria coats, it was quite the thing.”

Anna thinks of having her heroine tied to a stump, nibbled by nutria.

“Now right ahead of us, just to the left, see that log? This is actually a huge male gator, we call him Fred, he likes to hang out over here.” The
Alligator Queen
rocks as everybody moves up to look at Fred. “Oh, he's huge!” “How can you tell it's a male?” Giggles. Anna alone still sits in her seat, writing.

“Don't you want to go up and look at him, ma'am?” Bill asks from the wheel at the back of the launch. “We're right on him. You'll get a good view.”

Anna finally looks up, focuses, smiles. “Oh heavens no,” she says. “There are many things which I really prefer to imagine, and this is one of them.” It's so humid out here she's about to faint, and who really cares about all these slimy animals and birds and things, except insofar as they provide
atmosphere
anyway? Especially who cares about their sex lives, which Sandy seems determined to go on and on about.

“Alligators mate very gently, in fact that's the only time you can ever see the difference between the male and the female, the only time you can tell their sex organs, which only come out for breeding.”

“I think that's lovely,” Catherine says, as they all return to their seats.

Anna can't possibly use any of this distracting information, though she does like the way Sandy and Bill wear these big lace-up hiking boots with their khaki shorts, sort of a Crocodile Dundee look, very attractive. Now they have left the lake and headed up another dark bayou which really is primordial, though Anna is aware that she has
used that word too much in the novel already—well, it's almost
intestinal,
isn't it, or
reproductive,
like the dark bayous of the body—

“Oh my God.” She has been so absorbed that she didn't even notice Sandy coming back to stand by her end seat with a real live alligator, a little one, wiggling in his arms. He gets a better grip on it, strokes it, and it closes its heavy-lidded eyes which look ancient, even though it's a baby.

“Wanna hold it?” Sandy asks.

“No, I certainly do not!” Anna says.

He steps closer. “I don't mean the alligator.” He gives her a big wink. Even Anna has to laugh. “Hey, no kidding, it's not slimy at all, in fact it's dry and kind of leathery. Come on, just touch it—”

“You don't have to do that, ma'am,” Bill yells from the rear of the launch. Honestly, these guys are like the Smothers Brothers, or Cheech and Chong, or those car guys on NPR.

Suddenly, Harriet sticks her hand out and strokes its back.

“See? It's not slimy at all, is it?” Sandy asks.

“Not a bit,” says Harriet firmly, flushed with success.

Then Sandy changes the subject to birds, which Anna couldn't care less about. She must have dozed a little, for when she opens her eyes again, he's back up at the front of the launch wearing a—what is that? It looks like a washboard hung around his neck, like they used back in West Virginia to scrub their clothes clean in the creek.

“Zydeco music is like a good jambalaya,” Sandy says. “It's got a little bit of everything in it. Basically, it's an accordion, a scrub board, and a fiddle, playing a waltz tune. But it's a waltz tune with a difference. You'll hear some African rhythms in it, some country-and-western swing, and some Delta blues. But mostly this is Cajun music, Cajuns being those French-speaking Acadians who were exiled from Nova Scotia in the mid-1700s.”

A lively accordion melody comes from Bill at the back of the launch. Everybody claps. Sandy joins him on the washboard as a huge
white bird lands on the dark water ahead and the giant cypresses close like a canopy over the launch. Sandy dips and sways, scraping on the washboard with two forks and singing, “Jambalaya, crayfish pie, filé gumbo.” Sandy dances all over the deck in spite of those hiking boots. “Gimme a little more music, copain!” he yells to Bill. “I feel like dancin' today! Let's show them how it's done.” Bill starts a new melody on the accordion. “All right!
Laissez les bon temps rouler!
” Sandy yells. He takes off the washboard. He kicks up his clodhopper heels. “I need me a
woman!
” Eyes closed, he sways across the deck with an imaginary partner, holding one hand high and the other around her waist. Harriet's heart starts to race in her chest. In confusion she looks away from the dancing Sandy to the nearest bank of the bayou where a red-flowered vine trails down from a tree and a log slips into the water and glides away, giving Harriet a cold chill which runs up her spine exactly like Emily Dickinson described in that poem, “The Snake (A Narrow Fellow in the Grass).”
Oh my God
. Didn't anybody else see that alligator? But no, they're all watching Sandy dance.

“I said, I need me a woman!” he cries with his head thrown back, eyes closed. The accordion notes jangle in Harriet's head and she's not even surprised when he moves her way, dipping and weaving, eyes still closed, engaged in some mysterious yet inevitable selection process. This is the end of the world, she thinks.
Le bout du monde.
Full circle, Sandy wheels around. He comes to a stop at the end of their row.
“Ma cherie?”
Now he's looking straight at Harriet. He bows low and holds out his hand. Harriet rises. She slips past Catherine and Courtney and Anna. Sandy pulls her to him, putting his other hand firmly around her waist, until they're cheek to cheek. Her right hand stays high in the air, gripping his. “Good girl,” he says into her ear. His breath is hot. He smells like sweat, like swamp. “Just follow me. Ready?” Harriet doesn't have time to reply. Bill cranks the accordion into another chorus and they're off,
step
step step,
step
step
step, dipping swaying and swinging around in a circle
step
step step,
step
step step,
step
. Harriet is actually sorry when the song winds up with a flourish and it's all over. Sandy bows, still holding her hand, while Harriet curtsies low to the crowd as if she's been doing this all her life.

Mile 229.4
Baton Rogue, Louisiana
Wednesday 5/12/99
2300 hours

T
HE
C
HOCOLATE
, C
HOCOLATE
, C
HOCOLATE
late-night buffet features chocolate mousse, German chocolate cake, chocolate hazelnut cake, profiteroles, chocolate-glazed pears, Mississippi mud cake, and chocolate truffles, among other things. Courtney, sitting alone, takes the very last bite of chocolate pecan pie, holding it on her tongue to savor it for as long as she can. She closes her eyes. There's really nothing quite like chocolate, is there? But then Courtney feels someone staring at her, sure as the world. She opens her eyes and turns around to see Anna, two tables back. Anna smiles conspiratorially beneath her smoked glasses. She stands and rustles toward Courtney. “I caught you,” Anna says.

Courtney jumps right up. “Actually, I—”

Anna puts a heavy hand on Courtney's thin arm. Close up, Anna smells like, what is it? Patchouli or something, the way it always smells in Pier 1. “It's okay,” she says. “Forget it. Come on, let's go out on the deck and have a smoke.”

They take two rockers at the stern looking down on the wake which streams out in a giant V behind them. The Mississippi is narrower
here. The banks on both sides are dark and mysterious, though a few lights dot the shoreline. The moon, almost full, has turned a dark, peachy yellow. “Pollution,” Courtney offers, waving her cigarette to indicate it. “All that pollution from Baton Rouge, not to mention these refineries and chemical plants. I guess it'll be like this from here on into New Orleans.”

“I expect so.” Anna's match flares. “Where's Harriet?”

“I haven't seen her since the show,” Courtney says. “She went somewhere to have a drink with Pete.”

“Oh my.” Anna sucks deep on her cigar as the moon dips under a cloud. They smoke in silence until Harriet's soft voice cuts into the night. “Hi! I thought I'd check—I can't believe y'all are still up.” She slips into the rocker next to Anna.

“So, did you have fun?” Courtney just has to ask.

“Yes,” says Harriet. “Yes,” she repeats but not really to Courtney, as the yellow moon pops out to sail forth across the cloudy sky.

“I'm so glad,” Courtney says. This is not true. She puts her cigarette out and stands up. “Good night, then,” she tells them abruptly.

“In spite of all her good manners, sometimes she seems almost angry, doesn't she?” Anna says after she's gone. “What's going on with her, do you know?”

“Hawk is having some medical tests this week, maybe that's it. Maybe she's just worried about him.”

“Probably. Ah well, we've all got our little histories, haven't we?” Anna takes a drag on the cigar.

Harriet turns to look at Anna's face, smooth as a Buddha's in the moon's yellow light. Of them all, Anna has changed the most. They're the only people out on the deck now. “Oh, Anna.” On impulse, Harriet reaches over to touch her plump, ringed hand. “Anna—whatever has happened to you?”

“What do you mean?” Something inside Anna that has been expanding, opening up, quivers and stills.

“Obviously your first marriage didn't work out, to Kenneth Trethaway, I mean. But what did you do after that? Did you ever remarry? You
did
find someone eventually, didn't you? Something you said earlier made me think that.”

“Oh yes.” Anna's face flares up as she lights another cigar; she looks softer now, smiling in a way they haven't seen. “He was the love of my life,” she says simply.

“And—”

“And I can't talk about it,” Anna finally says, “not even to you. It's too awful, too sad. I simply can't go there. This is why I write romances. They end at a certain point. Every true story ends terribly, if you follow it far enough, I mean. Don't you know that?” Now her voice is shaking.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry. It's late anyway. I believe I'll go on to bed now.” Suddenly Harriet is almost too exhausted to stand up, walk back to her stateroom. “Good night.” She squeezes Anna's shoulder.

“Good night, dear.”

Anna feels years older than Harriet, watching her slim back disappear down the deck. She feels a whole generation older. A snatch of music comes over the water. A cluster of lights appear on the riverbank, twinkling like jewels, then disappear. A little town. A whole town full of people asleep in their beds, dreaming, or not dreaming, not asleep, worrying, remembering. Each one filled with love, pain, joy, loss, whatever. Anna is shaking. Real life is entirely too much to bear. Sweet, innocent Harriet:
Anna, Anna, whatever has happened to you?

Terrible things, my dear
.

Which will come to us all eventually, though in Anna's case they came sooner than most … ah well. Whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger, she believes. She has to believe this. But of course she has never believed in talking about it either, preferring to grow strong in
silence, in darkness and privacy, as she has done. Her books speak for her now, and they are a comfort, to herself as well as to her readers. She has written so many—so very many—books. She will write many more. She has to. And yet in some ways it still feels like yesterday when she wrote the first one, just after leaving Kenneth Trethaway.

S
HE ARRIVED AT
P
IGGOTT'S
I
SLAND
, Georgia, just at sunset, wading ankle-deep into the ocean in spite of the cold, stretching her arms out to the wind.
Stretching her arms out to the wind,
she thought. She could probably get the hang of this. She drove around until she found the Flamingo, a peeling, pink-painted boardinghouse set down in the dunes, with a cheap vacant room and two old sisters who loved to feed people. When they found out she was pregnant, there was no stopping them. Crab cakes, smothered chicken, she-crab soup. Anna swelled up like a tick. She got dimples. She wrote the book in the mornings and walked miles on the beach in the afternoon. Every man who stayed at the Flamingo made a pass at her; she knew she had never looked better.

Her money lasted about as long as her pregnancy.

When the time came, the sisters drove her to the hospital in Savannah. “Spare no expense!” they screeched at her astonished old doctor, who had assumed all along that she was married. She went into labor laughing.

It lasted all night and into the next day, until Anna really thought she could bear it no more, until the town clock struck noon and suddenly her body bent up double like a nutcracker and then there was her baby in the old doctor's arms, long and—blue?—but just for a second, and then the doctor gave Anna a shot, and then she went to sleep. She woke up in a sweat, a panic. “Where's my baby?” she screamed at the soothing nurse.