The Last September: A Novel

by Nina de Gramont

  THE MOSS HOUSE NEEDED to be closed up for the winter. I needed to get back to Amherst, to resume my classes and officially break Ladd’s heart. Before his mother got sick, Charlie had been living in Maine, painting houses and doing odd jobs. I can’t remember how we formulated a plan for what would happen next, I only remembered what happened: We drove to Amherst in his mother’s car. He dropped me off and then headed north to collect his things. My apartment was on the top floor of an old Victorian house that had been divided into four units, across the street from the Homestead, the yellow brick house where Emily Dickinson lived almost her entire life. When I walked into my living room, the place smelled sourly of overused cat litter. I’d left Tab with several overflowing bowls of cat food. She chirruped furiously across the living room and jumped into my lap, alternating rubbing against me with grateful passion and scolding me for my desertion. I stroked her back and stared across the room, at the rickety side table and the telephone that perched on top of it. No longer reprieved by the broken cell phone, I had to face the process of disentanglement. I wanted it done before Charlie came back.

  “Brett,” Ladd said. His voice sounded flat and hard.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “I hear condolences are in order.” Dripping with sarcasm, none of the usual attempts to squelch emotion. I tapped my bare fingers on the table, noting the line where his ring had been worn all summer.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We need to talk.”

  “So I hear. Go ahead and talk.”

  By now, Tab had calmed down and lay in a large furry heap in my lap. She purred so loudly I guessed Ladd could hear on the other end of the line through his stubborn silence.

  “Not over the phone,” I said. “In person. I need to come get my things, and give you yours.”

  An intake of breath on the other end, like I’d just told him something he didn’t already know.

  “Seriously?” he said, no anger now, just incredulous hurt. “You’re really doing this?”

  “I am,” I said. “I’m so sorry. But I really am.”

  “Because I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it at all.”

  I nodded at the phone. The reason Ladd couldn’t believe it, I’d never told him about Charlie and the feelings I had for him. If I had, it would all make perfect sense.

  Ladd said, “This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done in your life.”

  “I realize that,” I said, and then—not wanting to doom myself with the admission—I amended: “I realize that it might be.”

  “You know he’s just going to break your heart.”

  I deserved that, so I didn’t flinch away from the phone. In this type of situation, even the most contained person said cruel things, and of course all the worst ones would be true.

  LADD HAD RENTED A house on Pleasant Street, not far from the one where Emily Dickinson lived for a time, on the other side of the graveyard. According to Richard Sewall’s biography, as a child she would watch funerals from her bedroom window—knowing that she herself would likely be buried there and worrying about when. The Poet may have walked over this same path to Ladd’s front door—what was supposed to be Ladd’s and mine, starting in October. I balanced a cardboard box of his things in my arms. It was embarrassingly light. Usually I stayed with Ladd, not the other way around. The primary object the box held—along with a Red Sox sweatshirt, some T-shirts, and an electric razor—was a smaller box, blue velvet, which he had used to present his grandmother’s engagement ring. I couldn’t bear to hand it directly back to him.

  It felt wrong to use my key. Instead I wound it off my key chain and dropped it into the box. I knocked on the screen door. After a minute with no answer, I rang the bell. Then I pulled open the screen door and knocked again. Ladd’s car sat parked in the driveway. He could have walked somewhere, or ridden his bike, but I could see lights inside the house. I turned the knob, and the door swung open.

  “Ladd,” I called, from the threshold. “I know you’re here.”

  “Then why not come on in,” he called back. “Make yourself at home.”

  I paused for the barest second, then stepped obediently inside. It was a classic early-nineteenth-century house, the stairs presenting themselves immediately at the front door, each room contained unto itself, very few closets. Ladd’s voice had come from the living room.

  “Can I come in?” I said.

  “I already told you. Come in.”

  When I rounded the corner, he sat in a wide-striped armchair, the matching ottoman pushed aside, his long legs splayed out in front of him. From his voice, I’d expected a half-drunk bottle of scotch somewhere in the vicinity, but I didn’t see one. His hands gripped the edge of the armrests. Later that summer, Charlie would mix drinks in the evening, Captain Morgan rum and ginger beer. Dark and Stormys. The name of those drinks would always make me think of Ladd.

  I sat down in the chair across from him—a stiff wingback—and put the box at my feet. A few moments passed like this, Ladd glowering, and me, sheepish, waiting for the barrage.

  “Listen,” I finally said. “Don’t think I don’t know this is the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Then why are you doing it?”

  “Because,” I said. Something like tears had begun to gather in my throat, and I worked to control myself.

  “Oh, because,” Ladd repeated. “No better explanation than that, Professor?”

  “I know,” I said. “I know everything you’re thinking about me and it’s all true. So in the end it’s best. Right? You’re better off.”

  “You’re doing me a favor.” His voice wanted to be contemptuous but sounded more anguished. It brought me back, like a sense memory, to that winter after Charlie disappeared without a word. How much worse it must be for Ladd than my schoolgirl heartache over a man I’d barely known twenty-four hours. A man who’d done this very same thing to him already. The other girl, Robin: Ladd had refused to take her back. I’d assumed, coming over here, that he’d already be done with me.

  “Ladd,” I said. “Even if I came back now, why would you want me, after what I’ve done?”

  Ladd moved forward in his chair, the storm clouds in his eyes breaking up just slightly, with this glimpse of opportunity. Before he could speak, I stood up. I knew I had to face him, and at the same time there was nothing to be said. By now Charlie had piled whatever belongings he had into his mother’s car. He’d be heading back toward me by tomorrow at the latest. I wouldn’t allow myself to think that he might evaporate again, unreachable. He would come back to me this time, and he would stay, because I had lucked into a window of opportunity, the one moment in time he really needed someone, and found himself possessable. Given my specialty in late-nineteenth-century literature, I should have known better than to think of it as fate, but that’s exactly what I did. It seemed like proof that we were meant to be together.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Ladd. “But I think I’d better go.”

  “But you know, I would take you back,” Ladd said, his voice cracking. He stood up. “If you wanted me to.”

  The ceilings in the house were low and close. Trying to avoid eye contact, I noticed a water stain just above Ladd’s head. Someone, years ago, had let a bathtub overflow, and no one had ever painted over the stain. He stepped forward, closing the distance between us. The only way to reimpose it would be to sit back down, which felt rude. So I stayed where I was, lifting my chin to look up, toward if not directly at him, granting him whatever came next as his due. The cruel things he had a right to say—about Charlie’s breaking my heart or whatever aspersions he could cast on my character, so obviously lacking. My only excuse was being in love, and I couldn’t tell Ladd that.

  “Stay,” Ladd said. His voice shocked me with its softness. He reached out and closed his hand around my wrist. The grip felt gentle, more plea than demand.

  “I can’t.”

  Anyone could have told me, and I knew even as I moved forward: This whole thing wa
s a mistake. A disastrous mistake. Charlie had already rejected me once. And now I was leaving Ladd, breaking off my engagement, for a man who hadn’t even said he loved me and maybe never would. Charlie was scattered, penniless, jobless. Who knew what he even aspired to, as far as character, as far as life? Whereas this man in front of me wanted to be great and good. Ladd loved me. Even after what I’d done to him, he was prepared to forgive me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to go. Maybe one day we can talk about this, but not right now.”

  “Who decides that?” Ladd said. His grip became slightly less of a question. “Who decides all of this?”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I wish it were different. I wish I felt differently. But I don’t. And I have to go.” I tried to step sideways, but Ladd’s fingers tightened. When I pulled my hand toward myself, away from him, he pulled it back.

  “Ladd,” I said. My voice sounded tinged with humor, it seemed so preposterous, that he would use force. “Let me go.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Ladd said, tightening his grip. “Is this not playful enough for you?”

  The two of us stood there for a long time, me trying to step back, away from him. Ladd holding me there, his body rigid, his jaw set.

  “You’re hurting me,” I said, but still he held on while I understood that the physical pain with its increasing sharpness was nothing compared to what I’d done to him.

  Finally, Ladd must have seen himself and what he was doing—perhaps in the blood I could feel draining from my face. With a step backward he let go. I snatched my hand—myself—back. As I ran out the door without collecting any of my things, I could hear Ladd falling back into his chair. I knew him well enough to understand he would shift from anger at me to despair over what he’d done. I had come to his house to end things, and Ladd—ever the gentleman—had finished the job for me.

  THE REST OF THE day, I tended to business. Replaced my cell phone. Renewed my lease. Replenished groceries, enough for two, remembering Charlie was a chef, buying things like fresh parsley and cilantro. Not just food, but ingredients. I didn’t allow myself to consider the possibility that he wouldn’t come back, not until night descended and I lay in bed holding an ice pack against my throbbing wrist, my landline and cell phone silent. Tab, grateful for my return, positioned herself on my chest, the weight and fluff keeping my heart firmly in place, perhaps the only reason I got to sleep that night at all.

  She was still there when I woke, stubbornly unmoving. Sunbeams slanted through the plastic slats of the window blinds and I tried to stretch, my spine sore from having been pinned so long in the same position. The ice pack had fallen to the floor, and my wrist still throbbed. Tab let out an indignant “mep” as I pushed her off of me. For the first time since last April, the boards felt cold against my bare feet. When I peered through the blinds, I saw the car, the wood-paneled station wagon, one of the last of its kind, parked across the street, packed full to the brim.

  It took a minute to fish my robe from the back of my closet and would have taken even longer to find slippers, so I just put on flip-flops. I had the presence of mind to brush my teeth and hair. When I got downstairs, there he was, sitting on the front stoop, wearing a khaki field coat with a dark corduroy collar, drinking coffee from a take-out Starbucks cup. As I opened the door, he turned and smiled, his face breaking open with pleasure at the sight of me. I hadn’t yet seen him smile this way at anyone else. I smiled back, feeling overjoyed when I saw a second cup perched beside him. He handed it to me and I sat down next to him.

  “You came back,” I said, not caring what these words revealed.

  “Sure,” Charlie said. “I told you I would. Didn’t I?”

  I nodded, thinking that perhaps now everything had changed and he always would follow through on stated promises. Maybe it was just the unspoken ones that gave him trouble. Charlie kissed me, and I leaned forward to hug him, my arms around his neck, conscious that I not let my grip be alarmingly tight, or thankful. As I pulled away, he glanced at my left arm, then gently took hold of it for closer inspection. For a six-inch span, a pale brown bruise, punctuated by four ragged purple circles. Charlie held my arm in his lap, his curls falling forward as he inspected it.

  “What happened here?” he finally asked. Ladd’s voice would have been sharp, urgent. But Charlie sounded calm.

  I shrugged, not wanting any controversy to interfere with his return. My idea of the day stood very clear in my mind. We would go upstairs and make love while more coffee brewed. Then we would carry his belongings from the car to my apartment, establishing him here, my residence now Charlie’s, too.

  He ran his fingers very lightly over my injury. “Looks like somebody grabbed you,” he said.

  I stared down at my arm, examining it closely for the first time. The sight of the bruises didn’t make me angry. Ladd hadn’t meant to hurt me. But I couldn’t be sure Charlie would see it that way. “It was an accident,” I said.

  “Ladd? Did Ladd do this?”

  “When I went to give him back his things. And the ring.”

  The closest we ever came to discussing my broken engagement. Charlie didn’t look at my face. He kept his eyes firmly glued to my injury. It throbbed dully. I thought of a line from a James Wright poem, “delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.” How easy for Ladd to damage that expanse of skin, with just the slightest loss of attention to his own wounded interior.

  “It’s okay,” I told Charlie.

  He nodded, then lifted my arm to his lips and kissed it, as if that would make the bruises go away. As if he were apologizing for his own role in what had hurt me. Ladd would have risen to his feet and stormed away, to confront the perpetrator. But Charlie let it go. I didn’t count this for or against him. Nothing mattered except the fact that he’d come back. I couldn’t worry about Ladd, or my wrist, or my own guilty conscience. I was too busy breaking into blossom.

  FOR THE FIRST COUPLE weeks, Charlie didn’t look for work. I would go to class, and the library, and office hours. Charlie had a little money, the security deposit from his place in Maine, and he would shop for groceries and cook dinner. He went for walks. I told him the story of Emily Dickinson and her sister-in-law, the unrequited love, and how they lived next door to each other most of their lives. He showed an interest by touring the Homestead and the Evergreens. One day when he got home, there was a package from Ladd waiting on the doorstep, with all the thing I’d left behind at his house, and a short note apologizing for hurting my wrist. Charlie carried the box upstairs and never asked a single word about it.

  Another day I came home to find a message from Eli on my answering machine. “Hey, Charlie,” he said. No one in the world would have connected this voice with the one I’d heard weeks ago above the cranberry bog. It was clear and careful, a tiny bit slow, each word separate and precise. “It looks like I can get out of here on Wednesday. If you could get back here or find a way to call me before then . . .” and then the sound of a click. I could picture Charlie, running across the short expanse of my apartment, making sure to get the phone before his brother hung up.

  “Is your dad coming?” I asked.

  Charlie was in the kitchen, crumbling basil into the blender. Since his arrival, my kitchen had gone from bare bones to fully equipped, every kind of gadget and paring knife tumbled into the cupboards and drawers.

  “He can’t,” Charlie said. “He’s not . . . he doesn’t do great with this, when Eli gets sick. My mom usually deals with it. Dealt with it.”

  “But,” I said, as if what he’d said hadn’t registered, “are you going to drive him down to your dad’s?”

  “Maybe after a couple days. We’ll see.” Our conversation halted for a moment as he turned the blender on to Puree, basil and garlic and olive oil and balsamic vinegar whipping into the vinaigrette that I would never be able to replicate, no matter how many times I followed the steps exactly as Charlie showed me.

  “So where’s he going to stay befor
e then?”

  Charlie looked up, one of his pointed moments of stillness, then took another moment to just look at me. Since he’d moved in, I’d found myself imitating his style in small ways, rope necklaces, Indian prints, whimsical flourishes. Today I wore a sundress that had been in the back of my closet for years, along with a thick wool sweater, my hair in a loose ponytail tied with a piece of his butcher twine. Charlie smiled and held his arms out. I stepped into them, my lips just even with the U of his clavicle.

  “I thought he could stay here,” Charlie said, his voice a little muffled against the top of my head. “If that’s okay with you. Just for a couple days.”

  I wanted to turn and cast a glance at the tiny space, my one-bedroom partitioned from the living room by an open archway, no door. But that would have required moving away from the embrace and, worse than that, the possibility of displeasing him. “I guess he can sleep on the couch,” I said, picturing Eli’s long legs hanging over the armrest. I remembered a tapestry folded into the bottom of my sweater drawer, a dark-red-and-ivory print that Charlie would like. We could hang it in my doorway tonight. Refusing to have Eli here, in my house, would be like refusing to have Charlie.

  “You’re the best,” Charlie said, winding his arms around me tighter. “I love you.”

  IF IT WEREN’T FOR Eli, Charlie and I never would have met. Still, over the years it was difficult not to imagine what we could have been without him, the specter of his inevitable comings and goings. “Only the mad will never, never come back,” wrote W. H. Auden, and I found this to be true, although the two new versions of Eli—medicated (bloated, docile) and not medicated (wild, muttering)—did return again and again. But the original Eli, the real one—the boy I’d known in Colorado, the one who’d stayed resolutely beside me when his brother had not—seemed to be gone forever.