The Last September: A Novel

My mother removed her hands from the table and tilted her head with a loud and exasperated exhalation. “That,” she said, “only works for poets. Not even for them. Just their work. And honestly I’m not sure it works for that post – nineteenth century.”


A group of college girls banged noisily into the shop, laughing with each other and then with the baristas. My mother watched them find a table at the far side of the cafe. I took the opportunity to examine her face. She looked more worried than angry, but I also thought she looked the tiniest bit relieved that she hadn’t found me in an even worse situation. In the stretch of time between Ladd’s phone call to her and now, I’d avoided her, returning calls when I knew I’d get her voice mail. She had waited until fall break to make the ninety-minute drive from Randall and show up on my doorstep. Unfortunately, Eli had answered.

“Well,” I said, when the girls’ chatter was far enough away, and it looked like my mother wasn’t going to break the relative silence. “No one’s brought up marriage. So it’s not a worry for right now.”

“What about Ladd?”

“He hates me now.”

Another deep intake of breath from her, this one more mournful than frustrated. I’d ruined everything.

“Listen,” she said. She retrieved her fork and took a bite of the cake, then frowned at its sweetness. “I’ve been offered a teaching fellowship at University College Cork. It’s a three-year position.”

“That’s great,” I said. She’d always wanted to go to Ireland.

“I’m not sure I should take it now.”

“Oh, Mom. Take it. I’ll be fine.”

“How long will his brother stay with you?”

“Not much longer,” I said. “A few more days.”

“Because I’m really not comfortable with this arrangement.”

“It’s not an arrangement,” I promised. “It’s just a visit.”

Abruptly, as if we’d agreed on a specific time for this coffee date to end and she realized that time had arrived, she pushed back her chair and stood. As I followed her out of the cafe, a notice on the community bulletin board caught my eye, written on lined notebook paper. A kennel just outside town looking for a live-in employee. I ripped off one of the phone number tabs.

By the time I got outside my mother had already headed across the street to Sweetser Park. She sat on the edge of the fountain, staring at the tumbling water. I sat down next to her and said, “I’m sorry.” She nodded as if apologizing were perfectly reasonable. She’d been so looking forward to the idea of me and Ladd, her daughter happy and rich and taken care of.

“I was thinking of selling the house,” Mom said. “And moving in someplace smaller, an apartment maybe, when I get back. But now I’m thinking I’ll just rent it. Maybe I can find someone on a month-to-month lease, so you’ll have a place to go, if you need one.”

Part of me wanted to protest, but I didn’t. The loss of the house where I’d grown up—its book-lined walls and my mother’s overgrown garden—would be great enough to want to forestall. Today, when Mom had arrived at my apartment, after Eli let her in, she’d spent less than five minutes talking to Charlie. Apparently that was enough time to convince her that one day I might need to run from him, or perhaps more accurately, that I would need a place to recover after he ran from me.

She said, needing me to urge her more than once, “Or maybe I shouldn’t go at all.”

“No,” I said. “Don’t be silly. I’m a grown woman. I’ll be fine.”

My mother frowned. “Just promise me you won’t marry him,” she said again, her voice so low she might have been speaking to herself more than me.

“Oh, Mom,” I said, not wanting to say, But I love him so much. Instead I said, “You barely spoke to him five minutes.”

“I know,” she admitted. “But I’ve spent a lot of years with young people. I can read them. That one, Charlie, he’s the kind of person who’d only come to every other class.”

My lips twitched with the effort not to smile. Of course she was exactly right. Whereas Ladd would attend every single class, arriving on time, if not early.