The Last September: A Novel

by Nina de Gramont

  There was a pause, her fork in the air, her pale eyes focused intently on me. Deirdre owned the kind of good looks I recognized but did not appreciate. To me, she looked hard, too sculpted. I didn’t know if I was supposed to exclaim over the awfulness of her boyfriend or offer a commiserating complaint about Charlie. Luckily he came out of the kitchen just then, a dishrag over his shoulder. He never wore an apron, so his T-shirt and jeans were splattered with food. Sarah had fallen asleep in my lap. When Charlie sat down, I transferred her to him very carefully and finished my dinner, wishing Deirdre would find something to do so that we could have this, just a little bit of family time out of the day.

  “Can you say something to her?” I asked toward the end of August, with the beginning of school looming and me fully versed in the pitfalls of Deirdre’s relationship. Our downstairs neighbor, an undergrad named Maddie, had agreed to babysit for Sarah when I had class, but I wasn’t sure how we were going to pay her. Business at the restaurant wasn’t picking up the way we’d hoped, and we took out a new line of credit. Everything felt tinged with tension, and I wanted that time—one meal a day—to ourselves.

  “Sure,” Charlie said. “I’ll mention it.”

  For a few months, it was just me, Charlie, and Sarah. Deirdre didn’t eat at all, just moved around the restaurant getting things in order. Charlie must have phrased it in the most diplomatic way possible, because she never looked dejected, just coldly intent on her tasks. Watching her, I thought that a better plan would have been to hire an up-and-coming chef and put Charlie at the front of the house. I think I even smiled to myself as I thought it. All the hearts too soon made glad, returning time and time again just to see Charlie. It was a mistake to keep him hidden in the kitchen.

  ONE NIGHT IN EARLY December I came in after an evening class to find Charlie and Deirdre alone in the restaurant, eating dinner together. The plates of food in front of them—duck for Charlie, some kind of prime rib for Deirdre—looked rustic, not plated for fine dining. It was only nine thirty, and the restaurant should still have been open. But the sign in the door had been turned to closed, and judging from the swept and cleared state of the dining room, the absence of all other employees, they had stopped serving for at least an hour. The door jingled when I opened it, but neither of them looked up.

  Deirdre saw me first. She waved, but the gesture seemed more frustrated than welcoming, as if I’d interrupted something. Charlie followed her gaze and stood, pushing back his chair. He looked so genuinely pleased to see me that suspicion settled before it could rise. I noticed that Deirdre’s eyes were red.

  “Brett,” he said. “It was dead tonight. Do you want something to eat?”

  I followed him back to the kitchen where he put together a plate of prime rib just like Deirdre’s, laying a sprig of rosemary and drizzling reduction sauce over the mashed potatoes. “Her boyfriend broke up with her,” Charlie said.

  Back at the table, I took my seat between them. Charlie poured me a glass of red wine, though he knew I preferred white. Getting another bottle would have meant leaving me alone with Deirdre, but that didn’t occur to me until much later, combing through every possible detail.

  She sat back in her chair a little, sipping her own glass of wine. Right then I felt bad for her, and a little guilty for banishing her from our table. Staring at me, her blue eyes glazed with tears.

  “I’m really sorry about your boyfriend,” I said. She probably didn’t need reminding about all the times she’d complained about him. “How long were you together?”

  “Three years,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

  “You probably did. I’m sorry. That’s so hard.”

  She turned away from me, looking down at her untouched plate of food. Charlie rested his arm on the back of my chair, not around me exactly. But still. Making a statement. I took a bite of the meal and a sip of the wine. Complimented the food.

  “Thanks,” Charlie said. He lifted his arm from the back of my chair and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. I remember thinking that it was a little mean of him, to be solicitous toward me while Deirdre nursed a broken heart.

  “He’s an idiot,” I told her. “You’re so beautiful.”

  She nodded, her eyes filling with tears, too choked up to answer.

  Deirdre’s face—strained and devastated—stayed with me all the next day. I thought about how she’d tried to be my friend and I’d shooed her away like a mere employee. After class, heading home, I passed the Amherst Day Spa. Out on the sidewalk they’d propped a green easel chalkboard, advertising a soothing peppermint pedicure for fifty dollars. The air felt crisp, a chill gathering. I had about a hundred dollars left on my last emergency credit card.

  On my way to the restaurant, sun beat down on the back of my head, incongruously accompanied by a chilly wind. I felt lightheaded with my financially irresponsible good deed. It seemed like something Charlie would do. At home, I collected Sarah from Maddie and headed over to the restaurant early, around four thirty. Eventually Charlie planned on opening for lunch, but for now only did dinner service, which started at six. The dining room clanked peacefully with the sounds of silverware being laid, goblets being polished. Deirdre stood behind the hostess podium talking on the phone, wearing a black sheath dress, her long hair loose. She was one of those rare people made more beautiful by distress; clearly she’d been crying again, and it brought color to her cheeks, and darkened her eyes. I could see the sheet in front of her, empty, as she went ahead and penciled in the table for two. As she spoke, she glanced up at me and the sadness in her eyes became something blander, as if I were obstructing something she meant to look at, just behind me. I shifted slightly to the left, the gift certificate in my hand. Deirdre hung up and looked at me, waiting, as if she expected me to tell her how many people were in my party. I slipped the gift certificate onto the reservation book. She stared down at it, uncertain.

  “It’s a pedicure,” I said. “I thought you could treat yourself.”

  Deirdre’s brows knit together. She picked up the gift certificate, a pale mauve piece of cardboard wrapped in a beige piece of twine. “That’s so nice,” she said, not able to look me in the eye, just melting and breaking in front of me. She raised the gift certificate to her brow, as if shielding herself from too-bright light, and didn’t start to cry until she’d turned around and headed toward the back of the restaurant, the kitchen.

  Even looking back, I like her better in that moment than I ever had or would. It was a very human reaction. Someone she’d done a terrible wrong to was doing her a kindness. I saw that, even as I realized exactly what it meant. My gift broke through whatever rationalization she’d worked out for her relationship with Charlie and made her feel guilty enough to break down—though not guilty enough to keep from turning away from me and heading straight for my husband.

  From where I stood, I could just see him, showing a sous-chef how he wanted something chopped. And as he raised his head, noting Deirdre coming toward him, his face rearranged itself into an apologetic kind of sympathy, not seeing the wife, standing back and watching—absorbing—it all.

  And then he did see me. It wasn’t so obviously visible, the fear that crossed over his face. Deirdre probably didn’t register it, not knowing him—whatever she might think—the way I did. But the way he blinked and paused, that was Charlie, crestfallen, and it was the last shred of proof I needed.

  WALKING AWAY FROM THE restaurant up Main Street, I couldn’t get out of the commercial district fast enough, the wide plate windows serving my reflection back to me—in my boxy wool coat and flyaway hair. Unlike my mother and me, my father had specialized in twentieth-century literature. He would have appreciated my thinking of Rosemary Hoyt the first time I saw Deirdre. And he was the one who chose my name. Hemingway had modeled Lady Brett Ashley on Mary Duff Stirling, a glamorous British socialite. Trying to make it home, I couldn’t have felt less like my namesake. Instead I felt like Hemingway’s wife must have, the fir
st time she’d read the book, realizing the romantic lead had been based on Duff and not her.

  At Maddie’s, Sarah lay asleep in her removable car seat. As I carried her down the hallway to our apartment, I could hear the phone ringing from inside. Sarah slept, a thin bubble on her lips, sparse blonde curls damp with sweat on her forehead. I waited till the ringing stopped before opening the door, then carefully lowered the carrier. Tab thumped off the couch and wound herself around my legs. I couldn’t bend to pet her. My hand found its way to my heart, fingers curving into my chest as if I could actually cup it, squeeze it, measure it. But the beating didn’t seem to be any faster than usual. Maybe it was a sign—that I hadn’t seen what I thought I had, that I was wrong, that it was all just some weirdness of Deirdre’s combined with some paranoia of mine.

  Behind me, the door opened and in came Charlie, wearing an expression so similar to the one I’d seen—as Deirdre had walked toward him in the restaurant—that if I’d been holding something in my hands I would have thrown it at him. The door closed loudly behind him and Sarah woke, her infant’s wail filling the apartment almost before her eyes were open. I bent down to unbuckle her.

  “Look,” Charlie said, his hands outstretched, his eyes unable to stop twinkling. Did I ever see Charlie without that light in his eyes, even when his mother was dying? No matter what was taking place, he always had that air, of being deeply amused by the world, even deeply moved by it. But never quite wholly, entirely, here.

  Sometimes now I imagine him turning, with that expression, toward his killer. Whatever argument had arisen, Charlie would have been so certain he could soothe the other person—could elicit whatever response he wanted. Maybe he could. Maybe that’s why the killer needed to wait for him to turn his back, before bringing the hammer down.

  I sat down on the couch and unbuttoned my shirt to nurse the baby. Charlie took a step closer to us.

  “It’s over,” he said. “I swear,” he added, his tone supplicating enough that I understood he meant him and Deirdre rather than our marriage.

  “Over,” I said. “Over?” The worst word I’d ever heard. Absolute confirmation. There was something between Deirdre and Charlie, enough under way that now it could be declared over. While I had sunk all my inheritance into the restaurant that paid her salary. While I had, here in my arms, a baby, so that I couldn’t even yell.

  “Brett,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Shut up.” If I hadn’t been holding Sarah, I would have put my hands over my ears. I would have screamed. As it was, my voice came out low and certain. “You need to leave.”

  “Leave? Brett. Come on. I love you.”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t. You never did.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Go,” I said. “And don’t come back. You can stay with her. You can move in with her.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “I don’t want to. Even if you never talk to me again, that wouldn’t happen.”

  “That’s lovely,” I said. “That’s beautiful, Charlie.”

  “I love you,” he said. “We’re a family.”

  “How nice of you to remember.”

  I looked down at Sarah, Charlie’s little replica. How could I even know which one of us he wanted to stay for? Charlie stood there, his face begging me to be reasonable. Reasonable! I could see the clock from where I sat. Dinner service would be starting. And what did it matter, anything he said? Despite every stupid thing I’d done since the day I’d met him, I was smart enough to know that someone who’d cheat on me would lie to me, too.

  “Charlie,” I said. “Just go. Go cook. And don’t come back here. For once in your life, be a gentleman. Don’t make me leave my home with a baby. Find another place to stay.”

  He paused for a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m leaving now, but I’m coming back. We’ll talk about this. It’ll be okay.”

  I closed my eyes, felt his lips on my forehead. If I let myself cry he would stay, and I needed him to go. It didn’t escape me how soon he must have followed me out of the restaurant, prioritizing my meltdown over Deirdre’s, and I knew how pathetic it was to find comfort in that. Charlie would be coming back, and weak-minded, lovesick girl that I’d always been, I was in danger of listening to whatever he said.

  THE HOUSE WHERE I’D grown up had been sold and was now inhabited by strangers, the locks changed, my mother’s concerned face existing—watching—only from memory. So I drove to the only other place I owned a key for, the only other place I knew how to get to without a map. I didn’t take anything with me other than a few days’ worth of clothes and a bag of diapers. As I drove toward the shore, the autumn light and leaves bowing through the windshield, betrayal thrummed through my body like a drug. I wondered if Deirdre would stay at the restaurant to work her shift. How had my gift, the pedicure, rearranged itself in Deirdre’s mind, during the walk between the podium and the kitchen? Maybe by the time she got to Charlie she had turned it into a calculated move, an attempt to flush them out. Maybe in the morning she would head over to the Amherst Day Spa and help herself to that peppermint pedicure, without remorse, even with a sense of deserving: the same way she’d helped herself to my husband.

  When I got to the Moss house, Eli’s car was parked in the driveway and Lightfoot sat on the lawn, panting. It was dark by then, but the front lights had all been left on. The dog sat just within the bright circle cast on the grass. She looked thin, even for her breed, and agitated. I checked the rearview mirror. Sarah was still tiny enough to need a backward car seat, but even if I hadn’t had a baby mirror facing her, I would have known she was sleeping from the silence. I got out of the car and walked toward the dog, who stood up, very still, an intense look of assessment on her pointy little face, as if she’d been waiting for someone to help and couldn’t decide if I were a likely prospect.

  “Hey,” I called. “Hey Lightfoot.”

  She ran toward me, full of relief. I knelt to pet her and her ribs felt sharp, alarming, under my fingers. I thought about loading the dog directly into my car and driving away. But where would I go? And could I really leave without checking on Eli? He was both my old friend and my family.

  I glanced toward the backseat, where Sarah lay sleeping. A voice rose up in my head, battling the moment of uncertainty. Come on. Do you think Eli would hurt a baby? I was so used to Charlie’s rebuttals they arose even in his absence, making me feel silly—selfish—for hesitating. Eli wasn’t some bogeyman who would snatch my baby and swallow her whole. He was just Eli, my friend who suffered from a debilitating disease. Whatever state I found him in, he wouldn’t hurt anyone. Quietly as possible, I clicked the infant seat out of its holder and carried Sarah into the house.

  I’d barely crossed the threshold before realizing that talking myself out of my gut reaction had been a mistake if the house was any reflection of what was going on in Eli’s mind. The living room looked ransacked, newspapers and garbage strewn everywhere, books tumbled from the shelves, clothes draped over every piece of furniture and all over the floor. A low-hanging odor of cigarettes and must, possibly urine and feces.

  “Come on,” I said to the dog, who had trotted to the middle of the room and stood there, expectant. “Let’s get out of here.” She hesitated, either waiting for me to find her bowl and fill it or else too loyal to desert Eli. “Come on,” I said again, slapping my hip with my free hand. “I’ll get you some food.”

  And then Eli appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, completely naked. A cigarette in one hand, his hair greasy and matted. I took another step backward, closer to the door, and moved the baby seat behind my knees, as if I could hide it.

  “Eli,” I said. I had to clear my throat to be audible. “Your dog is starving. I’m taking her to get some food.”

  He dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out with his bare foot. Then he went back into the kitchen. Still facing the kitchen doorway, I started to back toward the open fron
t door, calculating how fast I could carry Sarah through the screened-in porch and to the driveway. Eli reemerged with an unopened bag of dog food. He ripped into the top and turned it over, the kibble pouring in a loud rush onto the floor. Lightfoot ran forward, her tail wagging, and ate while the two of us stood at opposite ends of the room, watching.

  “There,” Eli said. “There you go.”

  Standing on the other side of the room, staring at Eli and the ravenous little dog, I felt a rush of very serious anger. At Charlie and Deirdre, yes, but also at myself, and Ladd, and even my father and mother. All the little pieces, the unravelings, that had led me to this exact spot, again and again and again, the only place I had to go.

  “Listen,” I said to Eli. “I just have to get something out of the car.”

  He stood there, placid, as I left the house. Crossing the lawn, I gulped in the clean night air. Sarah woke up and started to wail, but I steeled myself against the sound, clicking the seat into its platform and climbing directly behind the wheel. I screeched out of the driveway and drove up the street, less than half a mile before I pulled over. Unsettling as the sight of Eli had been, I wasn’t worried that he would follow me. It didn’t take much distance, to stop being afraid of him. I climbed into the backseat and unbuckled Sarah. Once I had her nursing, I dialed Charlie.

  “Brett,” he said. “Where are you.”

  “I’m on the Cape. I just went to the house. Eli is there and he’s in bad shape.”

  On the other end, an intake of breath, Charlie unsure which upheaval to address.

  “I’m just calling to tell you,” I said. “I’m not ready to talk.”

  “Are you coming home?”

  “What does it matter? You’re coming here.”