The Last Girls (23 page)

O
NLY ONE WARNING BELL
ever rang, in February after Harriet and Jeff had visited Baby in Alabama over Christmas vacation for her first cousin's much-heralded debut. This cousin, Nina Wade Ballou, was two years younger than Baby, who had already made her own debut, apparently, though she had never once mentioned it. Sometimes Harriet felt that there were two Babys—one, the moody wild girl who stalked around Mary Scott; and two, the other girl Harriet saw fully for the first time on this trip, the lady-in-waiting who was also a lot like all the double-name cousins she introduced Harriet to: Nina Wade, Martha Fletcher, Emma Dell—it was impossible to keep them straight. They looked alike, too, all blonds.

Harriet had been really nervous about the whole thing, but her green satin dress, made by Alice, was perfect. Both Elise and Baby's aunt Honey exclaimed over it when Harriet emerged like Cinderella for the ball. Then Aunt Honey pinned her hair up, while Elise clipped some dangly diamond earrings to her ears.

“Are those real? What if I lose them?” Harriet couldn't quit looking at herself in the pier glass mirror in the downstairs hall—maybe it was the curve of the mirror, or the smoky old glass, but she really did look, well,
beautiful
.

“Oh Lord, I can't remember if they're real or not,” Elise was laughing. “But if they are, I'm sure Troy has got them insured. Anyway,” she went on, “you
won't
lose them. My, aren't you just a picture? Isn't she a picture, Honey?”

And Honey, a fat replica of Elise, sitting squarely in the middle of a pink love seat with her legs stuck straight out in front of her like sausages, said, “Yes indeed, yes indeed,” sipping her sherry judiciously.

“But look here!” cried Elise, and all three of them turned to the winding staircase to watch Jeff come slowly down with Baby on his arm, one step at a time, her red beaded skirt trailing out behind her. Jeff wore his gray dress uniform, its brass buttons shining. “Oh my!
Oh my!” Aunt Honey dug her fists into her eyes as if she might cry and then she
did
cry, loud boo-hoos that Baby and Elise ignored.

“What is the matter with your aunt?” Harriet couldn't wait to ask as soon as they got into Elise's little sports car, Baby driving.

“Well, she's crazy, of course!” Baby said. “They're all nuts, I'm telling you. I mean, she had this fiancé or something, I forget. Who knows? She just cries at the drop of a hat.” Baby was struggling with her big skirt.
“Shit!”
She finally pulled it up to her waist and slung it back over the seat, pumping the accelerator. You could see her panties. “Sorry,” she said to Jeff beside her and Harriet in the tiny seat behind, both half covered in the glittery drift of satin.

“Hey, I don't mind,” Jeff said, squeezing her bare knobby knee. This was the Baby that Harriet knew, the one who went bare-legged no matter what.

“Light me a cigarette, will you? If you think you can do it without burning us all up,” she flung back to Harriet, who did, immediately woozy on that first great rush of nicotine.

It seemed to Harriet that Baby drove for miles out into the vast empty countryside. Alabama was enormous anyway. Even Baby's father's farm was enormous, its stubbly fields rolling out forever to those sketchy feathery bare trees on the far horizon. You couldn't even see to the end of his land. Baby went through a crossroads and over a black river and headed down a long lane lined with flaming torches for the last half mile. Massive and white-columned, the house rose up from the dusk like a vision before them, its upper gallery festooned with green magnolia branches. Harriet decided not to tell anybody that she'd never been to a debutante ball before. Uniformed boys were waiting to take the car. Heading up the great steps, clinging to Jeff's arm with Baby on his other side, Harriet felt as if she were about to burst out of her skin. This is me, she thought. I will never be so beautiful again. Nodding, smiling, drinking the fizzy champagne, Harriet tried her best to notice the red poinsettias, the
pearl and stephanotis arrangements, the chandeliers and candelabras and mirrors everywhere, tried to remember all these details to tell Alice, but then the music started and a boy came up and she was swept away, around and around the hall trying to keep up with him. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Baby dancing with Jeff and then she couldn't see them anymore and then when she saw Baby again, she was dancing with her father whose thick, handsome face was full of pain and pride at the same time. (“Oh, sure, he loves me,” Baby had assured Harriet not long before. “He loves me too much. This is why he can't stand to have me around.”)

Baby and her father were the best-looking couple on the floor.

The next day the girls slept until afternoon, getting up just in time to greet Baby's family which was arriving from everywhere, dozens of them, to congratulate Nina Wade and meet Margaret's soldier boy and eat the little fish deep-fried in a big drum of hot oil and a whole pig cooked on a huge iron spit over an open fire. Black men did all the cooking, out in the yard. You ate the whole fish, bones and all. You crunched them between your teeth.

Baby's brothers loved Jeff, following him everywhere. They all shot mistletoe out in the woods and then rode motorcycles down to the river, full speed ahead across the frosty fields, Baby hanging on behind Jeff. Harriet sat on the front porch and watched the three motorcycles disappear into the big red sky of sunset while she answered Baby's relatives' questions as best she could. Now, where was
she
from? And where was that boy from? And who were his people? And what did they do? These old women were much too curious, Harriet thought. In fact, it wore her out, how much everybody in Alabama liked to talk. They went on and on about nothing, really, but nobody—
nobody!
—ever said one word about Baby's mother, who was not pictured among all the portraits lining the long gallery, most of them old, serious, stern-faced Ballous, but some of them more recent: teenaged Baby on Satan, her much-mourned horse, winning a ribbon, winning
a trophy; Mr. Ballou and Elise someplace tropical, pictured in evening dress; the twin boys, little, playing in the sand on a wide, sunny beach—and that must be Baby's other brother, that tall dark thin boy standing with her in front of a church. They look just alike. Maybe it's Easter. Baby, about eight, wears a striped dress with a wide white collar and a straw hat with cherries on it. The boy wears a light-colored suit that has gotten too short for him—suddenly, Harriet imagines—maybe he's in a growing spurt. Though other people are also in the picture behind them, walking up the steps into the church, Baby and her brother stand stock still facing forward, hands barely touching, staring into the camera. Baby smiles happily. But it's as if her brother can see into the future somehow; his hollow boy's face looks haunted and sad.

“There you are! Want to play bridge?” It was Aunt Honey, huffing and puffing, hand to her heart.

Harriet turned away from the wall of photographs with a shiver, glad to join Aunt Honey and some of the two-name cousins, glad that Alice had taught her how to play bridge.

Harriet was amazed by the extent of Elise's Christmas decorations. “Oh, she does it for
months!
” Baby said scornfully, but yet, Harriet thought, the house
was
beautiful, a work of art, each mantel draped in greenery, each door with its wreath, each tabletop with its bit of holly. Harriet's favorite was the wooden manger with all the little wooden animals and people and angels on the table in the hall. It had been carved, Harriet was told, by a black man who worked for Baby's daddy. Harriet could never pass it without picking up the little Jesus and marveling at him, carved from a walnut, big as a fingernail.

Especially Harriet was amazed by Elise's Christmas china, a full set for sixteen, each piece with a seasonal picture in the middle surrounded by a border of evergreen.

“Isn't this
tacky?
” Baby whispered, drying a platter with a Santa on
it. It was the cook's night off, and Harriet had volunteered them for the dishes.

“Well, actually, no, I think it's kind of cute. I like it.” Harriet was glad she'd said this because Elise swooped into the kitchen suddenly, enveloping them in the heady cloud of her perfume.

“You'll have one, too,” Elise said. “Everybody does.”

“Have one what?” Harriet asked.

Baby kept drying pans. She was mad because her father had taken Jeff off with him to Rotary.

“Christmas china, of course. Everybody needs three sets—your good china, your everyday china, and your holiday china.” Elise ticked them off on her perfectly manicured hands. “You'll have yours before you know it, girls.”

“I will
never, ever,
have any Christmas china.” Baby gritted her teeth.

“Oh, Baby, you do say the silliest things! Of course you will, if you want any!” Elise left the kitchen in a trail of laughter. “You girls are just angels,” she called back. “I don't know what we'll do without you, Harriet, I swear I don't. You be sure and come back as quick as you can.”

“No hanky-panky!” Baby had told Jeff, wagging her finger, showing him to his room on the day they got there. “And Harriet stays with me.” Yet whenever Harriet awoke, Baby was never beside her in the heavy canopied bed, and on the last night, she stayed awake until early gray light came in the window through the wavy old glass and Baby came to sleep beside her like a child. Harriet lay propped up on one elbow watching Baby's shallow breath slip in and out, in and out, until the alarm finally went off and it was time to get up and pack and leave.

B
ACK AT SCHOOL
, winter dragged on forever, gray and messy. Harriet was doing research for a play about Mary Shelley which
she planned to write as her big project in Mr. Arlington's modern drama seminar. She had a secret crush on Mr. Arlington, but she'd die if anybody, even Baby, found this out. It was a pretty safe crush, actually, since the only student Mr. Arlington really seemed to like was Catherine, who had a steady boyfriend at W&L. It was close to curfew one Sunday night when Harriet came back from the library and entered their dark room to the ringing of the telephone. She threw down her book bag and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Is she there?”

“What?”

“Baby. Is she there?”

“Well—I—don't know. I just came in, actually.”

“Okay. I'll wait. Look around.” Brusque, nearly rude, Jeff didn't sound like himself.

“Listen, I—what's the matter?”

“I just need to know if she's there.”

“I thought she was with you. In Lexington.”

“Harriet.
Please.
”

“Okay. Hang on.” Harriet put the receiver down and switched on the lights. Baby might not be here right now, but clearly she had come back from Lexington. There was her black dress, thrown across her unmade bed, there was her overnight case on the floor. The bathroom door was closed.

“Baby,” Harriet said outside it. “Baby, are you in there?”

It was not a sound, but almost a sound.

Something made Harriet pause, then turn on her heel and go back to the telephone before she opened the door. “Jeff, she's here someplace, but I don't know where, exactly. I mean, her bag is here. Maybe she went down to the snack bar.”

“Well, tell her to call me whenever you see her.” Jeff sounded relieved. “And Harriet …”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.” He hung up.

Harriet went back to the bathroom door. “Baby,” she said loudly and—she hoped—calmly, “I'm coming in there. I'm going to open this door.”

But it wasn't locked. Baby was sitting in the tub with her legs drawn up, arms crossed on her knees, face down on her arms. She didn't look up when Harriet opened the door.

“Baby!” Harriet drew her breath in sharply. The water in the tub was red. Baby's dark hair hung down into it. Finally she looked up, her face dead white in the stark fluorescent light. She had black shadows like smudges under her eyes and no expression, none whatsoever, in them.

“Let me see your arms,” Harriet said.

Baby stared at her.

“Arms. Hold out your arms!”

Still staring at her, Baby held out her arms one at a time. Harriet had never noticed how thin they were, actually the word was
scrawny
. A short diagonal red slash crossed Baby's left forearm, halfway between elbow and wrist. It was still bleeding.

“Is that the only one?”

Baby nodded.

“You didn't really mean it then, right? Or you would have gone for the vein.” Harriet swung from fear to fury in an instant, shocking herself. What was the matter with her? “I just can't believe you would do this to us.”

Baby sank back against the tub, knees drawn up again, watching her. “Don't be mad,” she said like a little girl.

“Don't be mad!” Harriet repeated. “Mad! Are you crazy? Come on. Get out of there, right now.”

“No.” Baby shook her head so hard that a long wet strand of her hair stuck against her cheek.

“Yes,” Harriet said firmly. “We're going to the infirmary.”

“No.” Baby struggled to sit up, looking a little bit more like herself. “No, please, it's not even deep, you can see for yourself. I didn't really mean it. Haven't we got some Band-Aids someplace? I feel a whole lot better now.” She stood up, holding on to the edge of the tub. Her hipbones stuck out, you could see her ribs. Her breasts looked like something stuck onto her skinny chest, their nipples all shriveled up. Harriet held out her hand for balance as Baby stepped out of the tub. The minute Baby touched her, Harriet's anger disappeared, leaving a profound anxiety in its place.

“Are you sure we shouldn't go to the infirmary? Maybe they could give you a pill, like a tranquilizer or something.” In the back of her mind, Harriet thought that it might actually be breaking the rules
not
to take Baby to the infirmary. She put a big towel around Baby's shoulders as she stepped from the tub.