The Last September: A Novel

“Yes,” Eli told him. “I am. I’m all right.” And they’d danced along the shore together, in celebration and relief.

I put Sarah down on her precarious little feet. This time her attempt at a step failed and she teetered onto her bottom. A good sport, she grabbed the baggy fabric at my knee and pulled herself back to standing. Then she let go and executed one, two, three steps, exhibiting the wisdom of waiting till you can do a thing right. Charlie and I were too absorbed to congratulate her.

“One night,” Charlie said, lowering his voice to imploring. It felt strange and unnatural not to relent to that tone. Before Sarah’s birth, he always won our arguments. I would rather have capitulated than have him be angry at me. But circumstances had shifted these past fifteen months. Before, I’d only been mildly aware of my physical limitations. Moderately athletic, I considered myself in good strong shape, but Sarah’s helplessness had made me acutely aware of my size. I tried to comfort myself by remembering I had the ability to protect her from all the usual dangers: deep water, oncoming traffic, her own unsteady footing. But my imagination—the ability to conjure up more extraordinary evils—made me wish for the claws and strength of a mountain lion, a grizzly bear, a wolf. Evolution, I thought, had shortchanged human mothers, giving us nothing but brains to protect our babies.

“He’s my brother,” Charlie said to my continued silence, his voice not exactly pleading, but defeated in its matter-of-factness.

“I’m your wife,” I said. “This is your daughter.”

Charlie’s eyes narrowed, as if that implication—that he didn’t take our connection to him as seriously as Eli’s—pained him too much to warrant a response.

“Goddamn it, Charlie,” I said.

His eyes narrowed, breath gathering as if gearing up for a fight. He lay the wooden spoon across the top of the pot, steam rising up, soaking the porous fibers. Charlie adjusted his shoulders, softened his face. It was one of his talents, halting a disagreement suddenly, harnessing his ability to see the larger world through the mountains of time he would have later, to manage it all.

“Look,” he said. “If you’re worried, take Sarah over to Maxine’s for the night. I’ll get a feel for how things are with Eli. And we can take it from there.”

Which would mean saying good-bye to all the work I had to do. I felt the familiar anger start to bubble up and fought against it with a deep and steadying breath. Charlie’s face looked pleading, waiting for me to shift into reason—meaning, waiting for me to shift into agreement with him. I let the words form in my head as if they were my own ideas: Eli could be in trouble. And days would spill forth on the other side of this difficulty, plenty of room for my dissertation. I didn’t want to fight.

“Okay,” I agreed, on an exhale. “Will you let me know how he seems?”

“I’ll call,” Charlie said.

He put both hands on my shoulders, warmth radiating from his palms, the nearness that was second nature to both of us. He kissed me good-bye. When I went upstairs to call Maxine and pack for Sarah and me, I could hear him out on the deck, the sound of his hammer, pounding one more new shingle into the outside wall.





3


Sarah fell asleep on the drive to Maxine’s. In the driveway, I unbuckled her in slow motion, easing her out of her car seat with the most careful possible movements, leaving the passenger door open as I hoisted her over my shoulder. Maxine walked out onto the porch looking coolly put together, strands of blonde hair swept off her forehead with a small tortoiseshell clip—the kind of careful details I couldn’t be bothered with anymore.