The Last September: A Novel

“It’s nice,” she told me, “that Charlie lets us eat off the menu.”


I nodded, but this was news to me, and I wondered how much it was costing. If I suggested to Charlie making a pot of pasta for his crew, he would just smile. Where would the fun be in that?

Deirdre picked at her food, usually wasting more than half. There was a gleam behind her pale eyes as if her thyroid function ran a little too high.

“He’s so generous,” she said. “Not like my boyfriend. You wouldn’t believe how stingy he is.”

“The same guy we met at the gallery? He seemed very nice.”

“Oh, he’s nice. Just don’t ever try to get him to pay for anything. He got mad at me for drinking his beer. So I said I’d put a jar on the counter and put a dollar in it every time I drank one. I thought that would embarrass him. But he thought it was a great idea. Now every time I have a beer at my boyfriend’s house, I have to put a dollar in the jar.”

There was a pause, her fork in the air, her pale eyes focused intently on me. Deirdre owned the kind of good looks I recognized but did not appreciate. To me, she looked hard, too sculpted. I didn’t know if I was supposed to exclaim over the awfulness of her boyfriend or offer a commiserating complaint about Charlie. Luckily he came out of the kitchen just then, a dishrag over his shoulder. He never wore an apron, so his T-shirt and jeans were splattered with food. Sarah had fallen asleep in my lap. When Charlie sat down, I transferred her to him very carefully and finished my dinner, wishing Deirdre would find something to do so that we could have this, just a little bit of family time out of the day.

“Can you say something to her?” I asked toward the end of August, with the beginning of school looming and me fully versed in the pitfalls of Deirdre’s relationship. Our downstairs neighbor, an undergrad named Maddie, had agreed to babysit for Sarah when I had class, but I wasn’t sure how we were going to pay her. Business at the restaurant wasn’t picking up the way we’d hoped, and we took out a new line of credit. Everything felt tinged with tension, and I wanted that time—one meal a day—to ourselves.

“Sure,” Charlie said. “I’ll mention it.”

For a few months, it was just me, Charlie, and Sarah. Deirdre didn’t eat at all, just moved around the restaurant getting things in order. Charlie must have phrased it in the most diplomatic way possible, because she never looked dejected, just coldly intent on her tasks. Watching her, I thought that a better plan would have been to hire an up-and-coming chef and put Charlie at the front of the house. I think I even smiled to myself as I thought it. All the hearts too soon made glad, returning time and time again just to see Charlie. It was a mistake to keep him hidden in the kitchen.

ONE NIGHT IN EARLY December I came in after an evening class to find Charlie and Deirdre alone in the restaurant, eating dinner together. The plates of food in front of them—duck for Charlie, some kind of prime rib for Deirdre—looked rustic, not plated for fine dining. It was only nine thirty, and the restaurant should still have been open. But the sign in the door had been turned to closed, and judging from the swept and cleared state of the dining room, the absence of all other employees, they had stopped serving for at least an hour. The door jingled when I opened it, but neither of them looked up.

Deirdre saw me first. She waved, but the gesture seemed more frustrated than welcoming, as if I’d interrupted something. Charlie followed her gaze and stood, pushing back his chair. He looked so genuinely pleased to see me that suspicion settled before it could rise. I noticed that Deirdre’s eyes were red.

“Brett,” he said. “It was dead tonight. Do you want something to eat?”