The Last September: A Novel

“Come on,” Deirdre said, closing her hand around my wrist. “I’ll show you my work.”


I let her lead me across the room. Watching her tiny waist, swathed in a shimmery Asian-style dress, I thought of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s description of Rosemary Hoyt in Tender Is the Night: “When she walked she carried herself like a ballet-dancer, not slumped down on her hips but held up in the small of her back.” By the time we got to the wall where her paintings hung, I felt tired and elephantine. Deirdre’s work was all portraits. To me, the colors felt too garish, the brush strokes too visible. I leaned forward to read the cards that listed the price and title of each painting. The names sounded vaguely familiar: Susan Smith, Céline Lesage, Andrea Yates.

The boyfriend, seeing my mental struggle, piped up. “They’re women who killed their kids,” he said, enthusiastic, as if this were the happiest news in the world.

Deirdre let go of my wrist. “I’m obsessed with infanticide,” she told me.

Putting my hands on my belly would have seemed defensive, so I resisted that impulse. When Deirdre and her boyfriend filtered back into the crowd of well-wishers, I slipped my arm through Charlie’s.

“That,” I said, “was a very odd thing to say to a pregnant women.”

“I won’t let her talk to customers,” Charlie said.

“That will be great,” I said. “A silent hostess.”

We both laughed, but I pressed the issue. “Seriously. Wasn’t that a little creepy?”

Charlie shrugged. “She’s not so bad,” he said. “It’s mostly a put-on, I think. Trying to be shocking.”

Charlie had one more glass of wine, and we snuck away from the party without saying good-bye to the artist.

WHEN SARAH WAS BORN a month later, Eli came to see us in the hospital. He was thickly medicated, the bloat just beginning to take its form. Still I let him hold her. Eli sat down in the chair next to my hospital bed, and Charlie lowered the swaddled, squirming miracle into his brother’s cradled arms. The room filled with Eli’s stale and acrid scent. His clothes looked disheveled, stained, and he hadn’t combed his hair. Staring into the baby’s face, his eyes were dull and glassy. He must have been registering some connection, though, peering close enough so that her newborn eyes could absorb his features. Sarah’s little pink skull cap slid off her head against his elbow, revealing the vulnerable bald head, the soft spot at the crown. Eli petted her, gentle, as if she were a kitten.

A nurse swept into the room to deliver my lunch. She looked at Eli and then at me—shocked that I would let this man hold my baby. But I just smiled and looked back at Eli. He held Sarah so carefully. In his arms, she started, clenched fists jerking up above her head, the Moro reflex. It made Eli start, too. Then his face broke open into something like a smile, but awkward and unsure. Muted. I remembered the way his face used to look, how easily and naturally it moved into happiness, and felt the usual pang of loss. Still. I not only believed that Eli would never hurt Sarah. I couldn’t imagine him hurting anybody.





9


Someone must have told us how much work a restaurant required. Not to mention a new baby. In that muggy, exhausted summer, I often wondered why we didn’t listen. The Sun Also Rises opened in the throes of my sleepless nights and bleary days. Charlie would disappear midmorning and not come home till almost midnight. Every afternoon before service started, I walked downtown to eat dinner. Charlie would bring two plates of his favorite special to the table and sit down to eat with us, ignoring whatever crises arose in the kitchen until someone came to get him. When Sarah woke up and squalled, I had to walk her around the room while irritated waitresses set tables and polished glasses. Usually I ended up back at the table, trying to nurse Sarah and eat at the same time. Which made it kind of odd that Deirdre liked to join us for her shift meal.