The Last September: A Novel

Ladd gestured sideways with his chin. “Disappeared into the crowd.”


“Oh,” I said. “I wanted to say good-bye.”

“Small world, huh?” A slight edge to Ladd’s voice, as if it might be my fault, the size of the world.

I shrugged, and not just because I didn’t want to take responsibility. In my experience, the world was infinite. Only this very particular world, of summer homes and private schools, could accurately be considered small.

“I never knew Eli very well,” Ladd said. His voice had gone back to normal. Ladd rarely stayed angry long. Typically a flash would rise, visible, and he would squelch it himself before it could fully erupt. I always found the process—the effort to protect me from his negative emotions—touching. Several months before, Ladd and I had gone to an exhibit of Marsden Hartley’s paintings, mostly landscapes of Maine. But for a long time Ladd had stood in front of a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. The title of the painting was The Great Good Man, and I knew Ladd well enough to understand: that was what he aspired to be. A Great Good Man.

Now as I slipped my arm through his, he said, adding to his previous thought, “But Charlie and I were friends when we were kids.”

“Are you still friends?”

“We still run into each other here and there. But no, I wouldn’t say we were friends.”

“Why not?”

Ladd didn’t answer, just moved his arm out of mine and placed his hand at the small of my back, drawing me into his body. I felt his chin against my forehead as I stared out into the crowd and saw Eli getting into the passenger’s seat of a wood-paneled station wagon. The driver was a lean, middle-aged woman with pale curls like Charlie’s.

Ladd and I walked over to the Raw Bar for chowder, and when we sat down he said, “Why don’t you tell me about you and Charlie?” He kept his eyes on the menu, his body falsely still.

“There’s not much to tell,” I said.

“Eli said you went out with him.”

“I didn’t. Stayed in with him. Just once. One time.”

“Really?” Finally he returned his eyes to me. “I have a hard time imagining that, you having a one-night stand.” He didn’t say this in a judgmental way. He wasn’t thrown by my loose morals, it just didn’t jibe with his perceptions of my emotional capacity, and of course he was right.

“Well,” I said, “I was only eighteen. And I didn’t exactly mean for it to be just that one night.”

Ladd nodded, jutting his chin toward me and then abruptly away. “Typical Moss,” he said. His voice was angry, but I felt my shoulders relax, knowing the anger was toward Charlie, not me. I wanted to ask him about the other girlfriends he and Charlie had in common but decided to save it for later.

“What about you?” I said. “You spent summers with them here? In the same town.”

“Yeah. My family has been friends with the Mosses for a long time. You know about my uncle Daniel’s wife, Sylvia?”

“The one who died?”

“She was Charlie and Eli’s au pair, in the summers. That’s how Daniel met her. Did you know Eli went to McLean?”

I nodded.

“Daniel paid for that,” Ladd said. “Because of Sylvia. She really loved Eli.”

I nodded again, as if this were something any ordinary person could do, though I couldn’t even imagine what that must have cost. The wealth of Ladd’s family alternately perplexed and embarrassed me.

“So,” I said. “Do you know what was wrong with him? When he went away?”

“Schizophrenic, I think.”

“But he’s better now.” As if my words could make it so. “The Mosses, they couldn’t afford it? The hospital?”

“Who knows,” Ladd said. “Eli’s father has always had strange ideas about what to spend his money on.”

I felt a little flare of defensiveness. Ladd had no idea what it was, not to afford something. But I stayed quiet.