The Last Chance Read online

  “Haviland!” Kerry had said the first time he met her. “What kind of a name is that?”

  “My mother read it off the bottom of a plate she was washing,” she said calmly, and then she laughed at him.

  Poor Margot. Rachel and Lawrence were giving a big party over the July Fourth weekend, and they were inviting Kerry (with his girl) and Margot. Rachel hoped it wouldn’t be horrible for Margot. She couldn’t leave out either of them, and Kerry had said he wouldn’t come without Haviland.

  Nikki and Robert were coming to stay at Rachel’s house for the entire weekend. Rachel wanted Lawrence and Robert to become good friends so the four of them could go out together. It was so nice to have her best friend there for the whole long weekend, she could hardly wait. It made her feel warm and happy to think of Nikki. It was like having a sister but without the sibling rivalry. In preparation for college that fall Rachel had started reading psychology books, thinking she might take psych as another course. There were so many things she’d never even known she was interested in. She had been accepted by NYU, and so that was where she was going.

  Sometimes Rachel wondered if there was more to her feelings about Nikki than just sisterly love. It was almost as if she had a crush on Nikki. She was a twelve-year-old in love with the camp counselor, except that she’d never gone to camp, and now it was a little late for these feelings, wasn’t it? That was the main reason Rachel had suddenly become so interested in psychology. She wanted to know more about herself. She hoped she wasn’t a lesbian. If she was, would it get worse as she got older? There was one case history she’d read about a married woman with two children who ran off with another woman at the age of forty and completely changed from liking men to liking women. Could that happen to her? She couldn’t imagine ever not loving her husband, but on the other hand, could she love both Nikki and Lawrence at the same time, and what was that called?

  She also couldn’t understand the way Nikki behaved sometimes. She was sure Nikki was straight, and yet Nikki flirted with her just as if one of them was a man. Rachel wasn’t sure which one. Nikki acted like a woman flirting with a man, but at the same time she took the active role and was so much more sophisticated that Rachel sometimes thought that Nikki was the man. Did one of them have to be the man, after all? Did Nikki just flirt with her because that was the way Nikki was conditioned? Did Nikki want her to have a crush on her? And if so, why? Rachel didn’t dare discuss any of this with Nikki for fear of being rejected, so she just kept buying psychology books, hoping to find herself in one of them.

  Nikki’s daughter Dorothy worked in the mental hospital where Ellen Rennie had sent her anorexic daughter. Poor Ellen. Rachel had invited Ellen and Hank to the party too. It must be so awful for Ellen to have her daughter in a mental hospital, even though it was only for a month. Rachel thought Ellen was probably blaming herself. You always did, even when it wasn’t your fault. Ellen had sent her younger daughter off for the annual visit to Grandma. Rachel wondered if the little kid felt rejected. And poor Hank’s business was still doing so badly. Everyone had thought summer would be a better time for people to buy cars, but almost nobody bought Hank’s big cars. Rachel thought even she, dumb as she was, could have told him that and warned him. But she never talked business with the men at parties, especially if she was going to have to tell one of them that he was doing something wrong.

  Now, for the first time in so long, Rachel woke up every morning with the feeling that there was something to look forward to besides dinner. Knowing she was going to be working hard in the fall made the leisure of this summer suddenly precious. She had her books and her friends and all her new interests. Best of all, she had her thoughts. Sometimes something she read made her just sit and think for so long she lost track of time. Nobody had ever told her that was what education was for—to make you think. She’d had lousy teachers. Maybe after she’d gotten her college degree, if she wasn’t too ancient, she would take some education courses and get a job teaching little kids. Delusions of grandeur! But why not? Lawrence was a self-made man. She would become a self-made woman.

  The party was on Saturday night. Margot and Ellen and Hank had taken rooms in a beach-front motel. Ellen had worried about the expense of the one night, but then she thought that having to drive all the way back to New York at four o’clock in the morning with a probably drunken husband was worse than the expense of the room. It would be good for Margot to get away too, although Margot was so odd lately that she didn’t want to go at all until Ellen talked her into it. It was as if Margot had withdrawn from all of them. There was an icy shell around her now and she never had a kind word to say about anybody. It was ridiculous to let a man get to you that way. Ellen had told her so, and Margot had nodded grimly. Especially, Ellen had added, a man you knew in the first place was going to turn out to be temporary.

  “It’s not Kerry,” Margot had said. “I hate him. I feel nothing for him.”

  “Then why are you so depressed?”

  “Because when you’ve lived with someone for a while you get used to it, and then when he isn’t there any more it’s worse than you remembered it was.”

  “I’d be thrilled to be alone,” Ellen said. “With the girls away, I keep thinking how nice it would be if Hank decided to take a little vacation by himself.”

  “So you could call your lover to come running over,” Margot said. “Ellen, you have no idea what it’s like to be alone. No idea at all.”

  Margot did not like the Hamptons. She had grown to hate any place where youth and beauty were all-important. Any town near a beach, where people took their clothes off for all the world to look at their bodies and pass judgment, where lithe, tanned young girls had taken her place, depressed her. She liked her office, her work, the camera where she was queen if only for two minutes. She liked to sit in New York restaurants in clothes. She didn’t want to be judged as merchandise. It wasn’t that she couldn’t go out on the beach in a string bikini with those kids, it was that she resented it. She knew her bustline was a little lower than it was ten years ago, and still lower than those girls’ bee bites, but what made it difficult was that the men cared. Why should a woman be dismissed as a sexual partner just because she had a little cellulite on her upper thighs? What was so perfect about being perfect? When she was twenty, boys her age had resented her because she was bright and ambitious; now men her age rejected her because she was too old. What made them good enough to dare reject her at all?

  Tennis bored her. She was bored with people who talked about tennis all day when they weren’t playing it. Who wanted one big arm? Margot was a city person, and she swam basically as a means of getting cool when air conditioning was not available, not because she enjoyed the sport. In college she had played bridge, but she hadn’t played for years and had forgotten how. In fact, she couldn’t think of any pastime involving more than one person that she enjoyed except for talking and sex. Most talking smacked more of games than she liked. Her plans for the July Fourth weekend consisted of making a token appearance at Rachel’s party, getting drunk, and hoping the whole weekend would be over with as quickly as possible. The only reason Margot was going at all was that the thought of being all alone in New York with no one to talk to frightened her more than the thought of being inspected and rejected by jerks.

  She couldn’t get it out of her mind that Kerry had left her because she was too old. If she had been of his generation she would have known how to keep him. But why, when she had never known how to keep any man of her own generation? Maybe she should have gotten married. Then she would have some man who was stuck with her, no matter how much they hated each other. Would that be better than loneliness? Was it better for Ellen? No, Margot thought, I’m honest and she’s not. Ellen likes subterfuge, she thinks it’s dramatic. I haven’t got time, and it bores me to play games.

  The Fowlers lived in a huge house on a dune, set far enough back from the sea so that beach erosion could never threaten them. They had a clear view an
d many glass walls with sliding panels. They had a heated pool. But best of all, they had a lawn covered with marble statues: fauns, cherubs, gargoyles, sundials, silver balls on cement pedestals, each different, so many that it was completely camp. It was a joke they enjoyed and shared with their friends. Among the statues were trees and bushes and flower beds, small tables with chairs set under gaily striped umbrellas, all with the sea breeze blowing gently. It was perfect for a party and a perfect place to get drunk.

  The party started at six with cocktails. This year Rachel was being reverse chic and having a cookout—hot dogs and hamburgers and jug wine. She even had throwaway plastic glasses. The bartender was about nineteen and very attractive, Margot noted, and also not gay. Local talent making money on his summer vacation, or someone’s son. But wasn’t every man someone’s son? She had to start thinking of them as people. If I don’t stop this tendency, Margot thought, taking a glass of wine from the bartender and smiling at him, some day I can be a very old lady having a reunion of all my young men, like that movie about the governess, where they all show up with their wives and their baby pictures, and they tell her how they always remembered her. I must not get depressed. The bartender doesn’t interest me. A smile does not a flirtation make.

  Margot wandered around the lawn looking at the guests. Why did those beautiful young girls look at those ugly old men with such admiration? Was it real or just charm? There were the divorced women, the ones who hadn’t found lovers yet, sitting with each other and looking at the people who had someone with undisguised envy. I envy no one, Margot thought. I hate everybody.

  She noticed that Ellen hadn’t unloaded Hank yet. Ellen must be more in love with Reuben than she had been with her previous lovers, Margot thought. Staying by Hank’s side was her way of being faithful to Reuben. Hank, on the other hand, seemed to have a straying eye. Margot wondered what he’d ever do if he found someone he liked. Stammer and spill a drink on her probably. Mr. Charm.

  Lawrence and Nikki’s husband, Robert, were in deep conversation. Rachel was wafting around being sweet to people. She had it timed so well—two minutes to each guest—that Margot thought Rachel could get a job in the control room. She wouldn’t even have to look at the clock. Margot had a few more glasses of wine, nibbled on a carrot stick, and looked around to see if any of the men, even one, even a definite loser, seemed mildly interested in her. She might as well have been invisible. There were too many people and too much competition. Rachel loved having young, beautiful people at her parties along with the older ones she and Lawrence really liked; she arranged them the same way she arranged flowers: this would go well here. There was rock music coming out of the speakers outside the house, and the young, beautiful people were ignoring it because this year you didn’t dance. This year you were cool. Margot counted the number of long skirts versus the number of pants on the women, and then counted the number of women who hadn’t shaved under their arms for at least two weeks. That meant they had nobody. If they shaved, or if they’d never shaved and had long, virgin hair under their arms, it meant they liked it that way or someone else did. She listened in on conversations and drank, feeling like Invisible Scarlett O’Neill of her childhood comic-book days.

  “Who are you staying with? Oh, I’m staying with them next weekend.”

  What jockeying for weekend beds there must be among the homeless! What lust for a flow of weekend guests among the house owners and renters, with their lists and their plans! What would happen if it rained and one had asked no guests? Why did city people go crazy for two months every summer?

  And then Margot saw Kerry. He was just coming out of the house, holding on to the tiny wrist of a very tall, very beautiful, very young black girl. They were both wearing faded jeans and tacky-looking T-shirts. The girl had her sandals attached to her belt loop, and no handbag. Margot had known he was going to be there, but seeing him for the first time since that awful night when he’d left her was like a physical blow. She felt personally insulted just looking at his radiant, handsome face. He didn’t see her. He was too busy arguing with the girl. There were a lot of people on the terrace and Margot drifted along behind them, not too close but close enough to hear.

  “Why can’t you stay all weekend?” Kerry was saying.

  “I have a date in the city tonight.” The girl had the calmest voice Margot had ever heard. Not flat, just nonchalant.

  “You came here with me for the party. We agreed.”

  “I’m at the party.”

  “Is he going to wait for you?”

  The girl shrugged. “His show isn’t over till eleven.”

  “It is still him. I thought you gave him up.”

  She just looked at him. That girl has cat eyes too, Margot thought. She and Kerry, two cats. He was trembling, with anger or frustration Margot couldn’t be sure. She only knew she had never aroused such emotion in him.

  “If you’re living with me,” Kerry said, “I don’t want you going out with other guys.”

  “That’s the way I am,” the girl said calmly. “I have to be free.”

  She’s living with him? Margot felt such pain she wasn’t even sure where it came from; it was just an all-inclusive agony. Kerry never asked me to live with him. He visited me. I chased him. He’s chasing her. I made a fool of myself.

  Margot fled into the house. It was cool there and she wanted to die. She went into Rachel’s bathroom and looked in the medicine chest for sleeping pills. Nothing. Some tranquilizers that wouldn’t work on a baby. A razor, she could cut her neck vein, the large one that stuck out when she lost her temper. She could lie in a warm bath and bleed until she was unconscious and then just slip into the water and drown. The epiglottis closes and they don’t even find any water in the lungs. Wouldn’t you know Rachel used an electric razor? God forbid she should nick her equipment. Margot walked slowly out of the house again and, passing the bar, picked up a glass and a nearly full jug of white wine. Swinging it nonchalantly from one finger by its loop handle she strolled down to the beach. It was getting dark. People were shapes, not the distinguishable person of the enemy. Just lumps making noise. She sat down at the edge of the sea, tucked her long skirt around her legs against the chill, and poured a glass of wine. She set the jug firmly in the sand just where the water lapped at it and kept it cool. Behind her, far up at the house, they were lighting the charcoal grills for the meat. She could smell the smoke and it reminded her of summers long ago when she was young and happy, when evenings like this were challenges instead of defeats. In those days she never knew what adventure would come next. Now she knew only that there would be no more adventure. She would always be alone. It was inevitable that she be alone and lonely, but not inevitable that it be always. She could kill herself if she wanted to. She could sit here and drink until it was completely dark and she was completely plastered, and then she could walk out into the ocean and let it take her. No one would even know. They would think she had gone for a swim to sober up. She would never have to bear the ultimate humiliation of having Kerry know she had nothing at all to live for.

  Rachel set her glass down to greet a friend, and when she turned around again the glass was gone. It annoyed her because it was the third time that had happened this evening. She was sorry she had gotten plastic glasses in the first place. Whoever was grabbing them for the trash was overzealous, particularly since hers hadn’t been empty yet. When you were rich, people thought nothing of wasting your things. Now she’d have to go back to the bar and get another glass of wine or have someone get her one. If she could just catch whichever one of the help was carting things off so fast … She looked around. It was odd that other people didn’t seem to be losing their glasses. On tables, all around, there were partly finished drinks, even full ashtrays. Rachel didn’t approve of the full ashtrays. She went over to one of the boys she’d hired for the evening and asked him in her soft, sweet voice to clean up a little, particularly cigarette butts. Then she went to the bar, checked the ice and the w
ine, the sodas and fruit juices and diet drinks, to make sure enough was set out. The pleasant young bartender smiled at her.

  “Lost your glass again, Mrs. Fowler?”

  “You noticed.”

  “People must really be having a good time.” He gave her a fresh glass and filled it with wine and ice.

  Maybe it was a guest picking up the wrong drink, Rachel thought. But, then, why wasn’t the guest’s drink left instead? What’s so special about mine?

  She felt a strange, creepy feeling of warning, and she didn’t know what it was. For the first time in her life she didn’t feel comfortable in her own house. It was a lack of control, as if she’d been invaded by something or someone, as if she were only another guest here in this mob of people. She wondered why she had invited them all here anyway. Some of them she hardly knew, some she didn’t really like. She just thought she was the hostess, but in truth the party itself had taken over, like a great monster with a life of its own.

  You could almost see Rachel’s body through her dress, and he couldn’t decide if he was glad or angry. He wondered what her husband felt about all the men at this party being able to look at Rachel’s body and have fantasies. Or was he the only one who felt as if he were touching her just by looking at her? He wanted her. It was painful being so close to her after all those frenzied hours of following her in the streets of the city. She had spoken to him tonight, she had touched his arm lightly in greeting and then had turned to his wife with the same warmth; they were all the same to Rachel, he was not really a man to her.

  He watched her mouth moving as she spoke to guests too far away for him to hear the words, he imagined that soft mouth moving on his. Other guests even kissed her hello; why couldn’t he? He was afraid to touch her because his dream of her was so close to the surface of his everyday life now that he didn’t know how he could be able to control himself if once he touched her. He must not let himself be alone with her here, even though it would be easy. He who had followed her silently and unseen through miles of city streets could easily corner her in this house, tear off that indecent dress, and plunge into her flesh, fill her, bite and bruise her, and then tenderly kiss the ravaged goddess.