The Last September: A Novel

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”


ELI ASKED ME TO drive his car—or rather, his mother’s car. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and I would have asked him to stop except that it seemed to calm him. So I just buzzed down my window. We were driving south on I-495 before he spoke.

“So you’re studying,” he said. It was a pattern I would learn, an early sign, his concerted effort to punctuate moments with questions, expressions, that might seem normal. “What are you studying, Brett?”

“American literature,” I said. “Mostly American Renaissance.”

“Oh yeah? We had one of those, too?”

It sounded like something he would have said—the person I’d come to think of as the real Eli. So I smiled. I told him a little bit about what I’d just started to study at the time. How Emily Dickinson fell in love with Sue Gilbert, who broke her heart but stayed close by marrying her brother, Austin. Eli lit another cigarette and stared at the roadside trees. My words hung in the air with the smoke, and I stopped talking and rolled my window down a little farther.

When my phone rang, I said, “It’s probably Ladd. Could you get it for me? But don’t answer it.” Eli fished through my purse, then handed me the phone.

“Where are you?” Ladd said, without any kind of a greeting. I had left him a message, telling him that I was going to spend the night with my mother.

“Didn’t you get my message?” I glanced at Eli, who had his eyes closed, resting his head against the passenger’s window. Hopefully he wouldn’t speak. He took one last drag of his cigarette and lofted the butt out the window. Nicotine-stained fingers drummed restlessly on the dashboard. I wondered if he’d exhausted his supply.

“You’re still driving?” Ladd said.

“Just taking the exit to Randall now,” I said, measuring the words, testing for believability. I didn’t have much practice as a liar.

“Well,” he said, “tell her hi for me. You think you’ll be back tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said. “Tomorrow. I’ll call you in the morning. Okay?”

“Okay,” Ladd said. “Drive safe.”

“I will.”

“You know, I can get in the car right now. I can meet you there.”

“No, no,” I said. “I mean, you don’t have to.”

He paused another second, then said good-bye and “I love you.” I did the same, then tossed my phone into my purse at Eli’s feet, slowing the car into the rotary before the Sagamore Bridge. I waited for Eli to comment on the way I’d lied to Ladd, but he didn’t say anything, just stared out the window, looking—I finally realized—as if he were listening to something else entirely.