The Last September: A Novel

“What will you do? For work?”


Charlie paused, then pulled the curtain back. The stream of water shut off with a heaving sigh. Sometimes I thought his affair with Deirdre was a way of showing me what would happen if I pushed him in directions he didn’t want to go. For so long, there had been a sacrosanct element to my love for Charlie, and it almost seemed like I was the one who’d muddied it, by trying to turn him into a married worker bee.

Just when I thought he wouldn’t answer he said, “You know. This and that.” From the next room, Sarah began to cry. I went to pick her up, and carried her into the kitchen to make some rice cereal. She was on my hip, hand closed into my hair, when Charlie emerged, wearing nothing but khaki shorts, still dripping. I noticed a splotch of paint he’d missed on his forearm.

“We’d have to give up this apartment,” I said.

He shrugged. “We could always find another one. If we wanted to come back.”

I stared into the filmy white baby food, stirring it unnecessarily. It felt sad to give up this place, where I could stare out the window toward the home of the Poet, where I could walk across the street and stand in her garden. This was the first place I’d lived with Charlie, the first place we’d brought Sarah home. For so many days, she’d retained that newborn scent, of someone who had been living in the most primal, underwater world. Were Charlie and Deirdre having their affair then? Did he leave me that very night we brought Sarah home, on some fake errand, to meet her? It seemed like I would never, ever stop thinking about it. I poured rice cereal into a bowl to cool, holding the pot at a distance so Sarah couldn’t reach out and grab it.

Charlie stepped closer and eased Sarah out of my arms, calmly stating his case. My coursework was finished. I had a little fellowship money. We wouldn’t have to pay rent.

“There’s Eli,” I said.

“He’s okay now,” Charlie said. “He has his own place to live.” Released from Pocasset, Eli had reclaimed Lightfoot and was back in Boston working at Angell.

“For now,” I said.

“Look,” Charlie said. “We won’t live there forever. Just for a little while.”

He sat down at the kitchen table with Sarah on his knee. I sat down across from them, blowing on every spoonful before offering it to my baby, who waved her hands excitedly between each bite, oblivious to everything that went on between Charlie and me.

AFTER PEOPLE DIE, YOU’RE expected to speak for them. What would your mother do? What would Charlie say? As if I had ever been able to predict the thoughts and actions of those people while they were living. Sometimes I try to imagine my mother coming to Amherst after Sarah was born, to help, which would have given her a front row seat to everything that happened with Deirdre. But it was hard to reconcile this projection with the mother I remembered. Maybe she would have come for a visit, and then gone back to Ireland. I would send her pictures over email, making our life seem perfect. She would check in once or twice a week by phone.