The Last September: A Novel

“It’s losing money anyway,” Charlie said, like nothing could matter less. “We’ve been getting four, five tables, even on weekends. The truth is, it’s either close it now or close it in the spring. It’s a failure. I’m sorry.”


“It’s okay,” I said. Any sadness I felt over the restaurant’s closing was eclipsed by relief that Deirdre would be ousted, that she couldn’t stay in our lives with a lawsuit—claiming the truth, that we’d shut down the whole enterprise to get rid of her. I examined Charlie’s face closely, for signs of mourning, and saw none. Maybe he felt relieved, too, or maybe this collapse was so closely associated with Deirdre’s exit that he thought it would be tactless to let me see his disappointment. Or maybe it was just Charlie, of the slow smile and easy movements, glad to shelve the ambition that I had foisted upon him.

This way he didn’t have to fire Deirdre face-to-face. He just called a meeting and told the whole staff that the restaurant was closing. I didn’t ask much about it. I didn’t want to talk about Deirdre, or think about her, or remember she existed at all. Because our counseling sessions amounted to one scheduled hour a week to talk about Deirdre, we stopped going. I guess it became our way of coping, to quit everything except each other. At random moments, Charlie would say, “I’m sorry,” and I would reply with a silencing glance, wanting to continue with our plan, of none of this spoken out loud.

The thing about Charlie that I worked on remembering was that family was important to him. I clung to the image of him carrying his mother down to the beach. I thought of how he always came to Eli’s rescue. Now I was his family, too. Whereas Deirdre was just a girl, whom he could abandon as easily as he’d abandoned me back in Colorado. For the first time, that memory gave me comfort.

The name Deirdre became like a ghost, hovering around our interactions, our conversations, but almost never materializing. The person appeared more frequently. I would see her in town, often enough that I learned to avoid the places she might be, the new restaurant where she worked, the coffee shop she liked. She did not take the same approach, and I would see her car, a blue Honda Civic, slowing down as it passed our house, her head turning up toward our window so directly I’d wonder if Charlie ever brought her here. She ran by our house, too, white pony tail whipping behind her, snapping back as she turned her head away from the sight of me on the front porch or as I carried groceries up the sidewalk, parsley spilling out the top of the brown paper bags. As she picked up her pace, I could see her imagining the meal Charlie would be cooking later. Occasionally I would spot her at the university, which was odd because as far as I knew she wasn’t a student. Maybe she had a new boyfriend—a professor or grad student. Whatever the reason, there she would be—spectral as she was in the air between Charlie and me. Hard to believe someone who appeared so insubstantial had managed to do so much harm. Every time I saw her something gathered inside of me, a piece of the anger I fought to subdue, rising and burgeoning, forming a nagging pile of resentment.

“I think we need to get away for a while,” I told Charlie, as the school year spooled to its end. We were both in the tiny bathroom, me perched on the edge of the tub while Charlie showered. He’d gone back to his odd jobs, and his legs and arms were caked with white paint. When he pulled the curtain aside, I could tell from his face that he had also seen the way she watched us. Charlie’s comings and goings were less regular than mine. To find him, she would have had to skulk in produce aisles. I thought about asking if he’d heard from her but worried it would sound too much like an accusation. And anyway, I had stopped counting on him to tell me the truth.

“Maybe we can go to the Cape,” he said. “My father was talking about staying in Florida this summer. We can have the place to ourselves. We can even stay on if we wanted. You can work on your dissertation.”