The Last September: A Novel

MY MOTHER TRAVELED FROM Ireland for the wedding even though we scheduled it at the worst possible time for her, the fall, because we wanted to wait until Eli was well enough—medicated enough—not only to stand up with us but walk me down the makeshift aisle to the very edge of the lawn, overlooking the ocean. Me in a simple white dress, Charlie waiting for me in a white button-down and khakis. A string quartet played as I walked toward Charlie and the Unitarian minister, my arm looped through Eli’s. I must have been beaming, because Charlie had the extremely fond and bemused look he generally wore in response to my adoration. I took the last few steps up to him, and Eli took his place beside his brother. We stood there, listening to the minister, and I kept my eyes mostly on Charlie, my hands closed around my sunflower bouquet. For one moment, I let my eyes leave his, to scan the crowd of a hundred or so people, many of whom I’d last seen at Mrs. Moss’s funeral.

And when my eyes came back to meet Charlie’s, he was gone. Vanished. I stood there alone, the minister still speaking, his voice strained with the effort of pretending nothing was wrong. It took me about ten seconds to locate Charlie, standing off to the side with his head in his hands. Eli stood next to him, talking quietly. I noticed a tangle of poison ivy in the brambles beside them and worried about Charlie’s bare ankles in his Top-Siders. I didn’t dare look at my mother.

It didn’t last long. The whole episode took a total of two, maybe three, minutes. I stood alone at the altar while the minister politely continued to speak. Everything around me and within me froze, but I knew if I could only endure this short stretch of time (promising myself even in that moment that I would never so much as think about it again) my reward would be continuing on as Charlie’s wife. And I was right: Eli brought him back to me, holding on to his elbow with purpose, Charlie looking pale and ever so slightly unlike himself. Are you okay? I mouthed, and he nodded, and reached over to fold his hands over the stems of my bouquet, weaving his fingers between mine. He said “I do,” clearly and loudly, for everyone to hear.

Eli reached into his pocket and handed Charlie their mother’s ring to slide onto my finger. We were pronounced husband and wife, and we kissed, and then Eli kissed me on the cheek—his hand tremoring at my shoulder—before Charlie and I walked back down the aisle together. Nobody ever said a word about that moment, at least not to me. And what did it matter? In the end, he said “I do.” Of everything I’d ever wanted, this was what I’d wanted most.





8


In the American Renaissance class where I met Ladd, the professor was an eccentric and entertaining lecturer, given to innuendo and non sequiturs. But she was a tough grader. Or rather, she insisted that I, as her TA, be a tough grader, since she didn’t read the papers herself. There were nearly a hundred students in the class, and I generally sat in the back row—sometimes grading while she lectured. So I might never even have come into contact with Ladd if Professor Keith hadn’t told me to take five points off for every grammatical error on every paper. Midsemester Ladd walked into my office hours, holding the paper he’d written on Sister Carrie. It was folded back to the last page so the first thing I saw was the C+ I’d written in green ink because I’d lost my red pen. I didn’t recognize Ladd when he walked into the huge office I shared with ten other TAs—our own little areas partitioned with filmy screens—but I recognized the apologetic note I’d written. It had been a good, sensitive paper on Carrie’s theatrical ambitions and Hurstwood’s lovelorn downfall. But Ladd had an unfortunate tendency toward subject-pronoun disagreement, and the mistake had cost him.

“I’m not a bad writer,” he said, settling into the chair across from me. “Just trying to be gender-neutral.”

“That excuse won’t fly with Keith,” I said, letting myself off the hook. “It’s one of her pet peeves.”

In the next cubicle, a girl was crying. Ladd and I could not only hear her, we could see her shadow, repeatedly laying her head on the desk, then lifting it up to speak.

“Don’t worry,” Ladd said. “I’m not going to start crying.”