The Last September: A Novel

AFTER A DAY OF canceled classes, the roads were cleared and I went back to school. On the way home I drove down Main Street, slowly, trying to see if Deirdre manned her hostess podium, but I couldn’t see through the window because of the glare. I thought about driving into the alley behind the restaurant to see if Charlie’s car—his mother’s old station wagon—was parked there, but didn’t, because I knew it wouldn’t be. He was on Cape Cod, trying to take care of Eli.

That night I made my own dinner for the first time since I could remember. I probably wouldn’t have bothered if I’d been on my own—but I had to stay strong for Sarah, had to nourish my body so that it could nourish hers. As I cracked two eggs into the bowl, my phone rang. I knew it was Charlie. I drizzled milk into the eggs and picked up a fork, battling the urge to answer. Would he beg for forgiveness or launch into a report on Eli’s well-being? Let Deirdre worry about your crazy brother. As those words formed in my head—filling me with regret and loss and self-loathing—I finally started to cry. I wept as I scrambled and cooked so that by the time the eggs were done all I could do was scrape them into the garbage. Still crying, I gave up and slept in our bed. With Sarah beside me, I breathed in the scent of Charlie all night long, thinking about what my life would be like if I never let him come home. A single mother, like mine had been, but relinquishing my baby for weekends and vacations. Watching Charlie walk away on a regular basis. The great love of my life—I had been so sure of it—now in the past.

The world is hardest on people who believe in the way it’s supposed to be. My basket holds—just—Firmaments, the Poet wrote. Those—dangle easy—on my arm. But smaller bundles—Cram.

The bundle Charlie had left me with crammed so painfully, it felt impossible to continue. Still. When I got home from school the next afternoon, there was a letter in our mailbox, postmarked Saturday Cove.

I think about staying on the Cape, Charlie wrote, and I think, I’d rather be with Brett. I think about going back to Amherst alone and I think, I’d rather be with Brett. I think about my life and I think, I’d rather be with Brett.

Standing in the exact same spot where I’d read Ladd’s letter, I looked up, across the street, to the Homestead. Charlie was my Sue Dickinson. He was my Maud Gonne. And the thing I kept forgetting about those two: they were unattainable, they weren’t meant to be attained. I should have known that. I should have walked away.

But I couldn’t. Beyond everything I felt, Charlie was the father of my child. We were married. The adult thing to do was tamp down the rising tide of anger and woundedness. It wasn’t weakness, I told myself, to work on my marriage, instead of just letting it go.

The new dead bolt came off, my defenses went down, Charlie came home.





10


Winter continued in earnest, and Eli returned to the hospital in Pocasset. Lightfoot came to live with us. Charlie had already broken things off with Deirdre; now he had to fire her. He told me about the conversation in the office of our marriage counselor, looking at her instead of me.

“She says she won’t go.”

I turned to him, trying to keep my voice steady. “She won’t go? How am I supposed to deal with that? You working with her every day, her still in our life?”

“She says she’ll sue me. For sexual harassment.” He shrugged. Helpless.

Later that day, at home, he told me he was letting his sous-chef take over for a few days while he figured out how to handle Deirdre. “One thing we could do,” Charlie said, “is just close it. The restaurant.”

I sat down next to him on the couch. Sarah was napping in the other room, so we both talked in whispers. It seemed ridiculous, to shut down a business because of a jilted mistress. It also seemed like the only thing to do.