The Last September: A Novel

Ladd jumped in, too, without even taking off his jacket. He grabbed me by the waist. The water was too deep for me to stand in but not for Ladd; I wrapped my legs around him and he held me, kissing me too hard at first—kissing me angrily. Knowing I had caused this, I let him reclaim me. I didn’t push him away. Until the kissing softened, and eventually we ended up in the shallow end, our wrecked clothes floating on top of the water along with the wineglass.

THE NEXT DAY LADD didn’t say a word about Charlie. We drove north, to my mother’s. She had a different way of operating than Ladd’s family—not given over to loving people so quickly. At the news of our engagement, she smiled at me over the rim of her teacup, and I could see a kind of release in her face. Now I would be taken care of. All these years taking care of me, counseling me, worrying about me. And now her work was done, I would be happy. After dinner, outside in the overgrown garden, I told her about the prenuptial agreement.

“Well,” she said, the old anxiety returning to her face. “You’re going to sign it, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, why not. Right?”

Palpably her mood shifted back to happiness, all those years of single motherhood floating off into the summer air, which—after dark in Vermont—felt light and cool. She never understood how loyal I was, to her way of life, her poems and her gardens and just enough money to get by. In my mind I saw the house where we’d lived together sold, her things packed up, the garden weeded and mowed or even paved over for a patio. Life marching forward, the way it can, when people or responsibilities are shed.

NEARLY TWO MONTHS LATER, the day after I went ahead and signed the prenup, Eli showed up at school, out of nowhere, uninvited. Ladd and I had come home from Boston late the night before, after dinner at Sonsie on Newbury Street, and my brain had that particular cider-pressed feeling from too much wine and too little sleep. The law office had looked exactly as I’d pictured it, shining oak and Oriental rugs. Hundred-year-old portraits so thick with oil I thought that if I pressed my finger against one it would still feel wet. At some point, my mother had suggested I have a lawyer of my own look at the prenup, which seemed like a good idea, but I didn’t know any lawyers, didn’t know how to get one. I didn’t know how much it would cost but felt sure it would be more than I could afford. It occurred to me to ask Ladd’s uncle Daniel, but even that seemed too complicated, so much more difficult than just going to the appointment and signing with the Cross pen that was handed to me and then carefully reclaimed.

Of course as things turned out it didn’t matter at all, that signature. What retained significance was Eli. I remember walking out of Bartlett Hall into shocking sunlight. Looking back, it surprises me that I recognized him through the glare, but I did, immediately. He sat on the steps, watching the door as students and professors and TAs streamed out, everyone blinking similarly into the brightness. Although he faced away from the light, and had been watching expectantly for me, I saw him first.

The Eli who waited for me looked much more like the boy I’d known in college than the one I’d seen on the ferry. His hair had grown out, and he’d lost a considerable amount of weight. His skin had lost that pasty pallor. Whereas before he’d looked puffy, lethargic, I could see even from this distance that he’d regained a certain amount of energy. Although I had no idea why he’d be there, the sight of him looking like his old self lifted my spirits. Then I paused for a moment on the steps, feeling exposed in my knee-length cotton skirt. He was your friend, said a voice inside my head, chastising myself for the hesitation. I didn’t like the use of the past tense: Weren’t friends as close as Eli and I had been friends forever after? No matter what strangeness transpired?

I walked over to him. He barely looked up, and for a second I thought he hadn’t actually come to see me. He could have other friends at UMass or he could be taking classes himself, finishing his degree.

“Hey,” I said, sitting down next to him, as if it were something I did every day, as of course it used to be.