The Last Girls (40 page)

Jeff half lay, half sat up against the pillows in the old brass bed in the first bedroom, holding a water glass. The bed had been pushed against the open window. He turned his head toward Harriet, but slowly, as if he were blind. With its gray stone walls and its only window blocked by branches, the bedroom was almost dark. Of course they were partly underground. Jeff was looking at her. He had several days' growth of beard.

“Harriet,” he said. “You're here.” He did not smile. His dark eyes had circles under them.

Harriet sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. “You look awful,” she said.

“I haven't slept,” he said.

“Since when?”

“Since, oh . . .” His voice trailed off.

Harriet tried again. “Shouldn't you be at the game?” she said. “Don't you have to march or something?”

Jeff smiled at her, a tired smile, as if he were very old. “Oh, honey,” he said, “I'm through with all that.” He lifted the glass and drank and Harriet saw the pint bottle of Gilbey's gin on the windowsill.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I quit.” His grin was weird, jagged, different. “In fact, I'm going to enlist.”

“Soldier boy,” Harriet said before she remembered that this was what Baby had always called him.

“Soldier boy,” Jeff said.

“Don't do that. Don't enlist.”

“I have to,” he said. “I have to do something.”

“Can I have a drink?” Harriet edged closer, across the dirty sheets.

“You don't need a drink.”

“I want one.”

“No, you don't.” Jeff drained his glass and turned to look at her. The light coming in through the leaves was a pale, strange greenygold. “What
do
you want, Harriet? Why did you come over here anyway?”

“I wanted to tell you . . . I wanted . . .” Harriet couldn't talk.

“What?” Jeff's eyes were like holes in his head.

“You,” Harriet said simply. “I've always wanted you.” It was the truth. She held her breath. Jeff turned to her with a groan, his eyes dark and unreadable. “Look at me,” she said. Jeff came close to her then. He touched her face, cupping her chin for a moment to stare in her eyes. He put his hand on her knee then ran a finger up the inside of her leg. He was going away but it didn't matter.
This
. She would have this, touching the little hollow at the base of his neck. “Oh, Harriet,” he said into her hair. Then he was unbuttoning her blouse and it was on the floor. She was all wet “down there,” as Alice always said, whatever went on down there? Harriet used to wonder but now she knew it was the Fourth of July, the bright explosions and sparks spinning off into darkness. “My God, Harriet,” he said and she
was lying across his bed, she had never wanted to be anywhere else in the world. She knew it then. He would go away but she didn't care, this would be hers, this open window this droning bee the hot little wind like a zephyr from a poem the smell of the mint and honeysuckle. His face above her, the boyface she had always loved. He moves over her now like a storm, like the pouring rain. She can't see a thing but him. He kicks off his cutoffs, oh, he can do whatever he wants. This is Harriet rising to meet him, it's Gypsy Park and they're swinging in the late gray afternoon higher and higher, higher and higher, up even with the bars then out into the sweet open air and they're flying through it up and up and up into the endless sky. She kissed his face and tasted salt. “Oh Harriet honey,” he said into her neck. Later he made a funny little noise that was not quite a snore but more like a bird flying, like the rush of a bird's wings, while he slept through the long afternoon, his arm flung across her chest. Harriet did not sleep. She stayed awake while a beam of sunlight came in through the curtain of leaves and moved slowly across the room to touch the satiny heartpine floor, the dully glowing brass bedrail. Harriet rubbed her fingers back and forth on the rough stone wall, her toes on the gritty sheet, listening to the faraway sound of marches.

She sat by the phone for the next two weeks, willing it to ring, willing it to be for her. But it was always for Baby. “Just a minute,” she'd say, handing the receiver over, or “I'll see if she's around,” if it was somebody Baby might not want to talk to, or “She's not here right now, can I take a message?” when she was out. She was out a lot—with James Flood, the rich and mysterious Memphis businessman who kept flying over to see her in his private plane; with Lap-Dog Brown, a Sigma Nu from W&L; with Red Robertson, a local greaser, a mechanic she'd met at Freddie's. “Oh, come on,” Baby teased her. “You know I like a little rough trade.” But Harriet hated the way Red wore his T-shirts too tight, cigarettes rolled up in his sleeve, she hated
the way he looked at you, she hated his hooded eyes. Harriet sat by the phone reading long English novels for Miss Auerbach's class, trying not to imagine Jefferson Carr in his bed in his room across the mountains, all that pale green light. She wrote a pretty good paper on Thomas Hardy. She flunked her chemistry midterm. She did not climb Morrow Mountain on Mary Scott Day, watching the other girls instead. First they all converged upon the front quad, wearing crazy clothes, to the traditional ringing of the bell which announced the surprise cancellation of classes. Then they set off up the country road for the mountain in a long straggling line, later to be glimpsed as little figures up on Scott Knob, toy girls, waving their tiny hands across the sparkling air. Harriet could barely see them.

It was finally fall. Harriet had found him again last fall, a million years ago. Now other girls and their dates sat on the grass around the duck pond, as
they
had once sat; Harriet watched them from her window. She imagined their conversations. Leaves drifted down past the window, turning slowly in the air. Wasn't there some O. Henry story about some sick girl who believed she wouldn't die until all the leaves fell off the tree outside her window? And then some artist went out in the cold and painted one leaf onto the window so she wouldn't die but then he caught pneumonia out there and died himself? Miss Auerbach would
hate
that story if anybody wrote it and turned it in now—Miss Auerbach hated trick endings. She considered them cheating. Also, trick endings were not postmodern.

“Oh Lord.” Baby came in, dropped her books, and sank down on the bed. “I keep wondering how he is.”

Harriet's heart began to flutter in her chest. “You mean Jeff, I take it?”

Baby nodded, biting her lip, staring out the window.

“Well, I'm sure he's just fine, why wouldn't he be?” Harriet said.

Baby looked over at her. “What's the matter with you? Are you mad about something?”

Harriet shook her head no. “Of course not. Let's go on over to the
dining room and eat dinner early,” she suggested, but Baby said she was on her way to the Cabin and left, jingling her keys.

The phone rang.

“Is this Baby?” a somehow familiar voice asked.

“No, it's Harriet. Baby's not here right now.”

“This is Kyle”—one of Jeff's housemates, Harriet held her breath— “Listen, I know they're supposed to be broken up and all, but I thought Baby might have heard from Jeff or something. Fact is, he's disappeared. Nobody knows where he is.”

“What do you mean, disappeared?”

“He's just
gone
. It's the weirdest thing. I guess we didn't realize it at first because he left all his stuff here, or lots of it anyway.” Kyle had a flat Midwestern accent.

“What kind of stuff?” Harriet asked cautiously.

“Clothes, books, you know, the works. Albums. Everything. But he's definitely gone. No note, no nothing. We can't figure it out. I thought Baby might have heard from him.”

“No, she hasn't.” Harriet's own voice rang hollow in her ears, distorted, as if she were calling down into a well or a tunnel.

“Harriet?”

“Sorry, I'm here.”

“Yeah, well, please call me if you or Baby hear from him, or if anybody else does. You can get me at school, or on weekends at the house. You know. Or you can call Price.” Rick Price was the other housemate. “I think Jeff will call her. It's her fault anyway. Man, is he ever messed up! You haven't ever seen anybody so messed up.”

“I know.”

“This whole thing is such a bitch because once you're out of the institute, they act like you're dead. They act like they never heard of you. But I guess I'll have to go over to the office anyway and try to get his sisters' phone numbers, and call them,” Kyle said. “You know both his parents are dead.”

“I know,” Harriet said again. Later, she could not remember the rest of their conversation.

After they hung up, she lay down and stayed there all afternoon, skipping supper. Finally Baby came back and went to sit on the edge of Harriet's bed, stroking her hair. “Harriet, are you awake? Harriet?” She smelled like smoke.

Harriet breathed in deeply and kept her eyes closed.

“Harriet?”

“Oh, hi. I'm not feeling very well,” Harriet said, which was true. She sat up on her elbows and steeled herself to do it. “Listen, Baby, you got a phone call.”

Baby sat back. “Who was it?”

Harriet hesitated. Then she said, “Elise. She said to call her back tomorrow.”

“Oh. Okay. You want me to get you a Coke or anything? I can run down to the snack bar.”

“A Coke would be great,” Harriet said. “And maybe some nabs?”

When Baby had left the room, Harriet sat up and snapped on the light. The clock read eight-thirty, that's all, she'd thought it was later than that. She looked around the room as if she were seeing it for the very first time: Baby's bed piled high with clothes and books, her jumbled desk; Harriet's neat desk, her own closet door neatly closed. Her own framed print of Monet's
Water Lilies
on the wall. Baby's Janis Joplin and Elvis posters, the Slow Children sign she'd ripped off the road by faculty row, the dead roses in a florist vase. Harriet saw all these things as if they held a secret that could be decoded, as if she were an anthropologist. Everything seemed significant. This was our room, mine and Baby's, she said to herself, at Mary Scott College, 1965. That kind of thrumming began behind her ears and then she was gulping air and then Baby came back.

“Here,” Baby said, handing over the Coke.

“Thanks.” Harriet sipped it, and the hard bright edge went off of
things. “Thanks,” she said again. She looked at Baby. “So what have you been up to? You and—”

“Red.” Baby took off her T-shirt and dropped it on the floor. “Same old thing.” She grinned. “Actually we went up to the quarry.”

Where you went with Jeff and me.

“You know what Red can do?” Baby asked.

“What?”

“He picked up this green lizard? This little green lizard that was running across the rock out there? And then he said, ‘Watch this,' and held it up to his head and the lizard bit his earlobe and hung on like an earring. It stayed till he took it off. It was the most amazing thing.”

“I guess so.” Harriet could see it all: the dark water, the rocks, the iridescent lizard swinging from Red's ear.

“So, are you getting up or going back to bed or what? I mean, I can read out in the study room—”

“Oh no.” Harriet sat up and swung her feet out of bed. “I've got to study for French. So stay here,” she said. “With me.”

S
EVERAL DAYS LATER
, Harriet came back to their room from the library, dropped her books on the floor, switched on the light, and jumped to find Baby sitting in a chair at the window looking out at the late gray afternoon. “Oh!” she said. “I didn't know you were here.”

“I'm not, really,” Baby said. She turned slowly to look at Harriet. She was wearing her old jeans jacket. “Jeff's in the army,” she said.

“He is? How do you know?” Harriet sat down on the edge of her bed.

“Rick called a little while ago.”

“But where is he, exactly?”

“He's in basic training, I guess, in some horrible place. I mean,
I
don't know. I don't care. I don't even know why Rick called me anyway, it's got nothing to do with me. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
That's what I told him, too. I said, just leave me out of it. I don't care. It's none of my business. I don't give a damn.” Now Harriet could tell that Baby was quietly, terribly, agitated. She stood up so abruptly that her chair fell over. “I'm going out to the Cabin for a while,” she said, jingling her car keys. She slammed the door and was gone.

When Harriet went over to pick up the chair, she saw the crumpled slip of paper half under the bed: Jeff's address at Fort Benning, Georgia. She smoothed it out and put it in her desk drawer.

H
ARRIET HAD WRITTEN
him several letters, with no response, when the phone rang early on a Tuesday morning just after Thanksgiving break. She sat up in bed and looked over at Baby who was still sound asleep, face lost in the dark tangle of her hair. Outside it was barely light. The phone rang again. Harriet got up and grabbed it. “Hello,” she said.

“This is Marianne Carr Kingsley,” Jeff's older sister said in her cultured Tidewater drawl. “Could I please speak with Margaret Ballou, er,
Baby?
”

“This is Baby,” Harriet said immediately, looking over at Baby who did not stir.

“I'm afraid I have some terrible news.” But the sister's voice remained neutral, expressionless. “Jefferson is dead. He was killed in a helicopter accident down at Fort Benning where he was in basic training. But I guess you already know all that.”

“
What
happened?” Harriet can't seem to talk right.

“I'm sorry—I can't hear you.”

“What happened?”

“We were notified two days ago by a summary courts officer, a man who also knew him, apparently. Basically Jefferson was on a training mission. It was a troop lift in a Huey helicopter which had just taken off with a full load of fuel when it crashed into a field and burned.
They're still investigating, but they think it was hydraulic failure, the man said. We haven't gotten the full report yet, of course. He said everybody on the helicopter died instantly, the pilot and six recruits. Nobody even got out before it went up in flames. It was at night, Friday night.” Then Jeff's sister seemed to choke or strangle. “This never would have happened if he'd stayed at school. If he hadn't signed up,” she said. “He could have had a commission. He'd still be alive. What did you do?” Now she was screaming.
“What did you do to him?”