The Last September: A Novel Read online

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But it sounds like Eli’s off his meds. So if he comes here, Sarah and I have to leave.”

  Charlie’s face looked placid, but I could see the veins in his neck pop up. Once, he told me a dream he’d had about his brother, where an adult Charlie walked along the beach and stumbled upon seven-year-old Eli building sand castles.

  “Eli,” Charlie said, in the dream. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Eli told him. “I am. I’m all right.” And they’d danced along the shore together, in celebration and relief.

  I put Sarah down on her precarious little feet. This time her attempt at a step failed and she teetered onto her bottom. A good sport, she grabbed the baggy fabric at my knee and pulled herself back to standing. Then she let go and executed one, two, three steps, exhibiting the wisdom of waiting till you can do a thing right. Charlie and I were too absorbed to congratulate her.

  “One night,” Charlie said, lowering his voice to imploring. It felt strange and unnatural not to relent to that tone. Before Sarah’s birth, he always won our arguments. I would rather have capitulated than have him be angry at me. But circumstances had shifted these past fifteen months. Before, I’d only been mildly aware of my physical limitations. Moderately athletic, I considered myself in good strong shape, but Sarah’s helplessness had made me acutely aware of my size. I tried to comfort myself by remembering I had the ability to protect her from all the usual dangers: deep water, oncoming traffic, her own unsteady footing. But my imagination—the ability to conjure up more extraordinary evils—made me wish for the claws and strength of a mountain lion, a grizzly bear, a wolf. Evolution, I thought, had shortchanged human mothers, giving us nothing but brains to protect our babies.

  “He’s my brother,” Charlie said to my continued silence, his voice not exactly pleading, but defeated in its matter-of-factness.

  “I’m your wife,” I said. “This is your daughter.”

  Charlie’s eyes narrowed, as if that implication—that he didn’t take our connection to him as seriously as Eli’s—pained him too much to warrant a response.

  “Goddamn it, Charlie,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed, breath gathering as if gearing up for a fight. He lay the wooden spoon across the top of the pot, steam rising up, soaking the porous fibers. Charlie adjusted his shoulders, softened his face. It was one of his talents, halting a disagreement suddenly, harnessing his ability to see the larger world through the mountains of time he would have later, to manage it all.

  “Look,” he said. “If you’re worried, take Sarah over to Maxine’s for the night. I’ll get a feel for how things are with Eli. And we can take it from there.”

  Which would mean saying good-bye to all the work I had to do. I felt the familiar anger start to bubble up and fought against it with a deep and steadying breath. Charlie’s face looked pleading, waiting for me to shift into reason—meaning, waiting for me to shift into agreement with him. I let the words form in my head as if they were my own ideas: Eli could be in trouble. And days would spill forth on the other side of this difficulty, plenty of room for my dissertation. I didn’t want to fight.

  “Okay,” I agreed, on an exhale. “Will you let me know how he seems?”

  “I’ll call,” Charlie said.

  He put both hands on my shoulders, warmth radiating from his palms, the nearness that was second nature to both of us. He kissed me good-bye. When I went upstairs to call Maxine and pack for Sarah and me, I could hear him out on the deck, the sound of his hammer, pounding one more new shingle into the outside wall.

  3

  Sarah fell asleep on the drive to Maxine’s. In the driveway, I unbuckled her in slow motion, easing her out of her car seat with the most careful possible movements, leaving the passenger door open as I hoisted her over my shoulder. Maxine walked out onto the porch looking coolly put together, strands of blonde hair swept off her forehead with a small tortoiseshell clip—the kind of careful details I couldn’t be bothered with anymore.

  “Hey,” she said, her voice full of sympathy, the way you greet someone who has an illness in the family.

  I walked past her and lay Sarah down on the daybed by a wide, sunny window. She emitted the tiniest hiccup of a waking breath, eyelids fluttering, then sighed back to sleep. I went outside to shut the car door, then came back. The expensive hush of Maxine’s remodeled saltbox felt like a bubble of unexpected calm. Maxine had won the house in a settlement from her second husband; it had vaulted ceilings and spectacular water views of Alden Lake. In a couple weeks, Maxine would head back to her winter house in Newton. I’d never been there but suspected it was at least as lovely as this place and wondered for a moment what it would be like—to live balanced between two such well-appointed homes.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Maxine asked.

  “What I’d really love is a shower,” I said. “I didn’t get a chance to take one this morning.”

  “Of course!” She gestured expansively toward the upstairs; then her eyes fluttered toward the daybed as she realized I wasn’t asking for the guest bathroom so much as babysitting services. “Not to worry,” Maxine said, trying not to sound dubious. “I’ll watch her. There are clean towels under the sink.”

  STANDING BENEATH THE RUSH of hot water in the lilac-scented guest bathroom, I thought of the postcard from Ladd and wondered which books he meant. When I’d packed to come to Maxine’s, I’d made a conscious decision to leave my work behind, but if I had new books—important books—I could at least start looking through them. I turned off the water, half expecting to hear Sarah crying downstairs but happily hearing only the settling of water.

  Ten minutes later I came down the stairs in a tank top and long, crinkly skirt, toweling off my hair. Maxine sat in an armchair nearby, leafing through a magazine. Sarah still snoozed safely in the middle of the bed. “Hi,” I said. Maxine looked up, clearly proud that Sarah still slept.

  “Look at you,” she said. “All clean.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That should not be a compliment for a thirty-three-year-old woman.”

  “Thirty-two,” Maxine corrected. “You’ve still got another two weeks.”

  “Barely.” I ran my hand over the nubby back of her couch and said, “Listen. I need to pick up some books at a friend’s. Do you mind watching Sarah for a little bit longer while I run out and do that?”

  Maxine looked over at my daughter. The small, napping stretch of time had given her a false sense of confidence. “Absolutely,” she said. “You take as much time as you need.” Sarah made a small, gurgling sound in her throat and Maxine amended. “Thirty minutes should be no problem at all.”

  NOW WHEN I EXAMINE that day—going over it again and again in my mind—I don’t collect the books from Ladd’s cottage. Instead I realize that if Sarah and I need protecting, then so does Charlie. So I drive back home.

  “Look,” I remind Charlie. “I love Eli, too.”

  I never say this in the past tense, because I do love Eli, even now, after all that’s happened. That day, in my reenvisioning, I invite my husband back to Maxine’s.

  “Eli can stay at the house for a few days,” I tell Charlie. “He doesn’t even have to know where we are.”

  Charlie listens carefully. He hears me. He packs a bag and comes along with me to Maxine’s, where he will be safe. Where he will continue.

  But that’s not what happened. Instead I went to see Ladd, who had found some books I’d been pining after for a long time, The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson. The volumes were impossible to find, as they’d been stolen from every library, even Widener. I’d tacked my name and phone number to bulletin boards of rare bookstores across New England, in case one or both volumes ever appeared. It was so like Ladd, to remember that I wanted them. Leaving his place, I let the car idle at the end of Eldredge Lane. The dashboard clock read 3:36, but it felt much later. One thing that continually astonished me in my life as a parent was how much day I had now that a c
hild demanded my waking before first light. It seemed, today, I had already been up for so long, so much had already happened.

  The sun moved a little lower and a little stronger, as if settling into the late afternoon. I could feel its heat, an Indian summer sort of warmth that raised the hair on my forearms, and I lowered the driver’s-side window. At the same moment, I caught a glimpse of myself in the side view mirror. My skin had a pinkish glow. I thought, for the first time in ages, that I looked passably pretty.

  Seven years ago, I had left Ladd Williams. With only the smallest bit of encouragement, I had run away from everything my life was supposed to become. Driving away from him now, with the dusty volumes resting on the passenger seat, I remembered one of the earliest of those days. This is not hindsight or revisionist history. I remember it absolutely, thinking as I drove, about walking on the beach with Charlie in the days when we were first together.

  That day—the day I remembered—I didn’t have a bathing suit. So when Charlie went out to swim I stood on the sand and watched him. Staring out to sea, I didn’t expect Charlie to stop or wave to me any more than I’d expect that from a porpoise. It felt like enough just to stand there, watching him, knowing he’d swim back to me before too long. And my chest swelled with a very specific sort of joy.

  Charlie dove into the waves, disappearing, then reemerged. He stopped for a moment, getting his bearings, searching the sand. Looking for me. Across the water, I could sense more than see him smile. I thought of a stanza from an Emily Dickinson poem, which—if you believed my dissertation—had been written for Sue:

  She beckons, and the woods start—

  She nods, and all begin—

  Surely—such a country

  I was never in!

  At that moment, the world settled in around me. Mist off the ocean draped itself over my skin. I could smell beach plum, rotting snails, and festering seaweed draped over rocks. Not so far away, Charlie dipped and dove under a sun that still insisted on summer. And I didn’t just love him. I loved him enough to stop caring about anything else. I loved him enough to wreck my life. I loved him the way you dream about being loved, when you don’t even know you’re dreaming.

  LATER, THE POLICE TOLD me that Eli arrived a little after five. A neighbor saw his VW Golf pull into the driveway. A few hours later, I was putting Sarah to bed. She sprawled out in the middle of the queen-sized mattress—a fortress of pillows and sofa cushions surrounding her. Charlie and I had never been able to get Sarah into a crib. The first four months of her life, we’d traded off sleeping with her on our chests. Since then, she’d slept snuggled blissfully between us. Once I was sure she’d fallen asleep, I tiptoed down Maxine’s staircase. Walking into her kitchen, I could see the moonlight shine off the lake through professionally washed windows. Everything seemed peaceful and clean. Maxine poured me a glass of white wine and topped off her own while I placed the baby monitor on the kitchen table.

  “So, have you talked to Charlie?” Maxine asked. She and I had met a few years before at the antique shop where she worked in the summer, making her the only person I knew in Saturday Cove whose original connection wasn’t to my husband’s family. Or Ladd’s.

  “He hasn’t called yet. I’ll call him in a bit if I don’t hear from him.”

  Maxine nodded. “It must be so hard,” she said. “The whole thing with Eli.”

  “It’s the worst,” I said, taking an especially deep sip of wine. A book Charlie and I had read, Surviving Schizophrenia, called it “the death of a living relative.” The phrase had seemed exactly apt until the day Eli read the same book and held out the page where I’d underlined that sentence, his face wounded and broken. Brett, he’d said. I’m right here. I’m very much alive.

  “Do you think Eli’s dangerous?” Maxine asked.

  “No,” I said, then paused. Because it sounded dishonest. If I didn’t think Eli was dangerous, what was I doing here?

  “It’s all . . .” I put down my glass, gathering the right words in my head. And there were no right words, really, for the heartbreaking and complicated mess of it. I settled on saying, “It’s just not something for a child to be around.”

  Maxine nodded and put her hand over mine. Despite the conversation topic, it felt so nice, just sitting in someone else’s clean house, someone else’s uncomplicated life, talking to a friend, drinking a glass of wine. Funny how Sarah always seemed so paramount, and then the rare moments without her could feel like the most natural thing in the world. As if on cue, a disgruntled moan peeped through the monitor. Maxine and I stared at it, holding our breath, to see if it would evolve into a full-on wail.

  Which it did. I took the steps two at a time to reach Sarah before she could roll over the cushions and onto the hardwood floor.

  I MEANT TO GO back to Maxine and my wine. But it took so long to calm Sarah from waking up alone in a strange place. And she felt so plush and loving—warm insistence on wrapping her little body into mine. At some point I lulled down along with her. When I opened my eyes, the bedside clock read eleven, and it took a moment for memory to catch up with my anxiety.

  Maxine must have already gone to bed. I got up and tiptoed to the landing, but downstairs was dark. I pictured her, hours earlier, rinsing out my wine glass before turning out the lights. I went back to the guest room and checked my phone. No messages. I pressed 1 on my speed dial.

  “Hey,” I said, when Charlie’s voice mail picked up. “It’s me. Call right back, okay?” I hung up and waited a few seconds, then dialed again. “Charlie,” I said. “You said you would call. So please call as soon as you get this. Okay?”

  My phone lay silent in my hand. Beside me on the bed, Sarah slept on her back, her arms spread wide as if she’d been making snow angels. I thought about calling back and leaving another, nicer message. Maybe he and Eli had gone out together. The idea of Eli well enough to socialize cheered me and at the same time riddled me with self-doubt for abandoning both of them. I crawled back under the covers.

  SARAH WOKE THREE TIMES that night, and each time after I calmed her back to sleep, I tried to call Charlie. He must be sleeping, I told myself after the second call. But the phone didn’t go straight to voice mail. It rang. Charlie usually turned off his phone before he went to sleep.

  Three a.m. Even if they had gone out, all the bars and restaurants were closed now. What could be keeping him from answering, from calling? I tried dialing the home phone. The old answering machine didn’t pick up, and I just lay there, listening to the endless ringing and watching the first strands of sun reach through the linen curtains.

  “I HOPE EVERYTHING’S ALL right,” I said to Maxine while she ate breakfast. I couldn’t stomach any food. Sarah perched on my knee, chewing on a toasted bagel.

  “Maybe he’s sleeping in,” Maxine said. “Or maybe Eli’s really bad and he doesn’t want to tell you.”

  “Oh, that’s comforting,” I said, and Maxine laughed. “It’s just not like Charlie,” I went on, “not to call when he said he would.”

  Maxine looked away, out the window, as if she weren’t so convinced of Charlie’s reliability. Sarah wailed as I attempted to wipe her face. When she quieted, I called the landline again; its unanswered rings sounded canned, old-fashioned, as if I were calling Timbuktu rather than two miles away.

  “I’d better go over there,” I told Maxine. “Do you mind watching Sarah for half an hour?”

  Maxine was way too polite to point out that this was the same time frame I’d suggested yesterday. She and Sarah eyed each other warily.

  “Okay,” Maxine said, her voice displeased but resolute. “But really just half an hour this time.”

  I left quickly, not realizing till I was halfway there that I’d left my phone on Maxine’s breakfast counter.

  CHARLIE’S PARENTS HAD BOUGHT their house and its oceanfront acre years ago. A two-story, cedar-shingled cape with picture windows looking out on the bay, back then it had been a modest old house in a modest seaside neighbo
rhood. These days there was no such thing as a modest seaside neighborhood, and his father routinely battled the temptation of selling. The only people who could afford to buy beachfront property had too much money to spare. While neighbors succumbed and trophy houses rose up like skyscrapers, the Moss residence stood low to the ground in rebellious disrepair. Other than the ocean view, it boasted nothing in the way of luxury except the wide green lawn where Charlie and I had been married. As I pulled in behind his battered old Golf, I could see Eli pacing back and forth across the grass, the bay clear and calm in the distance. It seemed odd that his little dog, Lightfoot, wasn’t following at his feet.

  My tires rumbled over the seashell and pebble driveway, and I thought of another time I’d rounded a corner and stumbled upon Eli, my sophomore year of college in Colorado, another September day. My birthday, in fact. I’d gone home the back way to find Eli outside, blowing up a package of balloons one by one, and floating them into my open bedroom window. Eli had stood there in the sunlight, concentrating on his task, then looking up at me—caught—his cheeks puffed with air. “You were supposed to go in the front door,” he said. His fair, straight hair stood slightly on end from the static electricity, and his face was pink from exertion. We walked around together, through the front door and into my bedroom, where balloons rolled around at our feet and floated inches above the floorboards, filling my room with color and air. I remember the happiness at the center of my throat, bubbling up, that someone would do this for me. I remember it happening, and I remember remembering it, over and over so many times that it feels like just that—a continuing moment that happened over and over again. It occurs in a series of cartoon infinity bubbles.

  But on this other September day, New England’s sunlight shone dimmer, more nuanced than Colorado’s, and the years had rendered Eli a less welcome sight. At the same time, he was so familiar that in person I didn’t feel afraid of him. I left my keys in the ignition as I waved broadly. Without Sarah, my mother-lion hackles receded. Eli and I had been young together. We had climbed Long’s Peak. We’d eaten pancakes at midnight in cheap diners. He had filled my room with balloons on my nineteenth birthday, and given me away at my wedding.