The Last September: A Novel

He kissed me and then ran off to dive into the frigid waves. By the time Eli lumbered down to join us—a shuffling, Frankenstein gait that had nothing to do with his old self—Charlie was bundled back into his clothing, his hair still wet, freezing Atlantic seawater beading at the base of his neck and dampening the collar of his sweater. I moved in closer when he put his arm around me, hoping I could transfer a little warmth. Eli walked down the shoreline wearing Charlie’s field coat, smoking and looking out across the water. I kept waiting for the stream of voices to begin, to make their way across the rocks and sand to us; but whatever went on inside his head, for now it all stayed quiet.

BEHIND THE RED-AND-IVORY TAPESTRY in my bedroom with Charlie, the air persisted, still hanging thick with oxytocin and pheromones. On the other side lurked Eli, the cigarettes he wasn’t supposed to smoke in the apartment, my lavender soap operating as a low base note after he showered, but beaten down within hours by the sour, sickly scent—a kind of ruined sweat—that clung to him in every temperature. Mostly Eli slept, shirtless in the living room, my mother’s itchy nylon afghan sliding off over his belly—growing almost like a pregnancy, as if the enforced sanity were something that had to incubate. Despite promises from Mr. Moss to collect him, Eli stayed on my couch till the weather turned too cold for a throw, and it was an old down sleeping bag that failed to cover his nakedness when I crept out of my room in the morning. I could hear him snoring as I made coffee and showered, as I tried to be quiet as possible. He seemed less like an old friend than a convalescing stepchild. Meanwhile, Tab had abandoned me within days of his appearance, joining me in the kitchen only for her morning can of Fancy Feast and then immediately returning to her spot on his chest.

Was I afraid of Eli, during those days? Never once, never at all. Even in his heavily tranquilized sleep he would lift a hand to stroke the cat. I thought about his theory, human hands, as the cat’s eyes glazed, her lids at ecstatic half-mast, and I felt sad that he couldn’t ever be a vet, let alone a doctor. Then I would close the door quietly behind me with my hair damp, because I didn’t want the blow-dryer to wake anyone, and return toward late afternoon with a bag full of groceries for Charlie to prepare our dinner.

“JUST PROMISE ME YOU won’t marry him,” my mother said.

We sat across from each other at the Black Sheep coffee shop, the rich chocolate cake she’d insisted on buying sitting untouched between us. I sipped my coffee to avoid answering, and she handed me her fork. “Eat,” she said. “You look thin.”

It was true. Despite Charlie’s meals I was losing weight, the effort of loving him, of accommodating him, burning more calories than I could possibly take in. I picked up the fork and ate a small bite. My mother watched me, her brow furrowed. Fading freckles obscured whatever lines marred her forehead. She had blue eyes and fair skin. Her hair used to be red, and she’d let it fade to dark gray, still curly and abundant, pulled off her forehead with a silver barrette in a way that should have looked girlish but didn’t. As one day few people would take Sarah and me for mother and daughter, so it had always been with the two of us.

Mom sat back, placing her broad, freckled hands flat on the table. “I don’t understand what you’re doing,” she said. This was the posture she always assumed when posing questions to her class. Measured questions, meant to incite conversation and even argument. She would float them out and then sit back, waiting to observe and assess the reaction.

To stall, I took another bite. She wouldn’t understand anything I told her. If my mother ever went on a single date after my father died, I couldn’t remember it. I could only remember my serious, widowed, tenured mother. Two simple missions in life: raising me and teaching literature. Specializing in Yeats and Coleridge, all the romance in her life existing in the poems she studied. I couldn’t say that Charlie was my Sue Dickinson, because she didn’t agree with my theory. So instead I used Yeats’s muse.

“He’s my Maud Gonne,” I said.