The Last September: A Novel

I didn’t say anything at all about how I worried Eli at his worst could be dangerous. My hands stayed firmly in my lap, resisting the urge to touch my forehead. Maybe all those years ago he hadn’t meant to hurt me. And Charlie—he had meant to hurt himself more than Eli had done him any violence. I reached over and stroked the back of Charlie’s head, the tiny bumps where his stitches had been ever so slightly detectable beneath my fingertips. And I remembered the way Eli had held his head in his hands, as if measuring the damage.

THE FIRST THING ELI wanted was a pack of cigarettes. The second was to see their mother’s grave. She was buried in the Blue Creek cemetery, a bucolic piece of land despite its proximity to a busy street. Even the whoosh of constant cars took on a calming rhythm, like the wind soughing through the maple leaves and the crash of the waves from over the hill. The mound of earth over Sarah Moss’s grave—swollen and fresh a few weeks ago—had already been tamped down by rains. Somebody had left a white plastic flowerpot, meant to look like a wicker basket, leaning against the stone, dried and wilted calla lilies poked into sodden Styrofoam. I picked it up and stood back. Charlie knelt and placed a little bottle filled with colored sea glass where the arrangement had been. He stood again, the two brothers shoulder to shoulder, staring at the grave as if the inscription were long and involved, not just a name and dates. Finally Eli broke the stillness by lighting a cigarette. He curved a tremoring hand around his lighter to block it from the wind. The smoke settled in around us, a defeated and outlaw scent. Eli’s hair looked faded, almost brown, as if his time in the hospital had drained it of its brightness. It flopped across his forehead as he leaned into the cigarette, and I wondered if his mother had been the last person to cut it.

“It’s crazy,” Eli said, the emotionless voice I would come to find comforting. “It would be easier to believe she was there, down under my feet, if I’d seen it. You know? Seen her die. Seen her buried.”

“I’m really sorry,” Charlie said.

“Crazy,” Eli said again. He flicked the ash from his cigarette. I waited for it to land on the grave, but it didn’t, just blew toward the road, fading out to invisibility on its way.

“You want to walk down to the beach?” Charlie said.

“No. I think I’ll sit here a while. You guys go ahead, I’ll meet you.”

Charlie took my hand and we headed toward the spot where the road turned into a brambled beach path. October now, with leaves and beach plums mulching into a cidery scent that mingled with the approaching ocean, both of us in sweaters and sneakers, I didn’t think Charlie would swim. I didn’t know yet, how he swam one day every month, and in order for it to count he had to dive under the waves at least three times.

“I want to say thank you,” Charlie said, as he started taking off his clothes. “Because you’ve been right here whenever I need you. Loving me.”

A kind of glow washed over me, as if I’d stumbled on a key so naturally. That was all I had to do—love him—and everything would be all right.

“You’re my rock,” Charlie said.