The Last September: A Novel (9 page)

Would John Keats have signed a prenup? Would Emily Dickinson?

My constitution could only handle ignoring him for so long. I turned around. The red dress I wore had been purchased for the party, on sale at Filenes. It had spaghetti straps. The hem grazed my ankles.

“Brett!” His eyes looked ever so slightly glossy with sympathy. He likes me, I reminded myself. He is prepared to love me. He wants me to marry his son. “Don’t you look pretty,” he said.

“Thank you.”

Ladd came down the hall to stand next to his father. The two were dressed almost identically, in blue blazers and khakis. “Well,” Paul said. “Should we announce the engagement tonight? At the party?”

“No,” I said quickly. Ladd raised his eyebrows, surprised, and I said, “I want to tell my mother first.” As if anyone at the party knew of my mother’s existence, or she theirs.

“Of course,” Paul said, pretending my request made sense. The three of us went outside to wait for Ladd’s mother by the car.

I HAD BEEN TO
one of Daniel Williams’s Fourth of July parties before, last year, when Ladd brought me home to meet his family. This time I knew what to expect and wasn’t taken aback by the valet parking, the full wait staff, the parquet dance floor installed on the lawn that overlooked the ocean. When we arrived, things were just getting underway. The band hadn’t started playing, and Ladd’s father went ahead and parked his own car, right beside the catering truck. Later on, there’d be professional fireworks, impressive enough to rival the town display down by the harbor. Ladd’s parents stopped to talk to some other early arrivals, and I walked out toward the deck while Ladd went to get us drinks. Daniel emerged and waved at me in a kind of half salute, then reached out to take my hand and examine the ring. “That was my mother’s,” he said.

I waited for him to congratulate me, then realized he was too polite—too old-world—to ever congratulate the bride. Instead he said, “I hope you’ll be very happy.”

“Thank you,” I said. Daniel didn’t drop my hand. He lowered it carefully, back down to my side. Then he let go.

“May I ask you a question?” I said.

“Of course.”

“Did your wife, Sylvia. Did she sign a prenuptial agreement?”

Daniel looked down at me. He had just cut his hair and it looked unexpectedly boyish. “No,” he said. “No, she didn’t.”

“Did you ask her to sign one?”

“No,” Daniel told me. He made his voice very careful. “No, Brett. I did not.”

Ladd walked onto the deck holding two glasses of wine. He handed me my glass and Daniel shook his hand vigorously. “Congratulations,” he said. His voice sounded very deep and very definite. “You have something good here, Ladd, and I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks,” Ladd said. The three of us turned to look out at the party. The guests all seemed to be arriving at once, and a swirl of navy blue and seersucker jackets blended with the wider, more colorful array of summer dresses.

“It’s a beautiful night,” I said. Daniel placed his hand on my bare shoulder, not squeezing but letting it rest heavily. If anyone else had done this—any of the other older men—it would have felt like a drunken gesture. But from Daniel it felt measured, even protective. When he excused himself to greet his guests, I sat down on the built-in bench, while Ladd stayed standing, his hand resting on the rail behind me.

“How come you didn’t want to announce it?” he said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” And then, remembering my previous explanation, I said, “I want to tell my mother first. And anyway, it feels weird. All that attention.”

Ladd nodded and sipped his wine, squinting out at the increasingly crowded lawn. “Look,” he said. “Eli Moss is here. There’s his mother, too.”

I sat up for a better view. All I had to do to find Eli was let my eyes follow Daniel through the crowd. He shook Eli’s hand and touched his shoulder, and then hugged the tall, blonde woman standing next to him—the curly-haired woman who’d picked Eli up from the ferry. Eli wore the same summer uniform as the other men. I guessed his mother had picked out his red tie and probably knotted it for him. Words he’d said years ago popped into my head:
We had this girl who used to take care of us during the summer, Sylvia, she was so great with animals.
Daniel’s late wife had loved Eli, and Charlie, too. It made them and Ladd sort of cousins.

I looked back at Ladd. He said, “Daniel always invites them. I don’t know why they weren’t here last year. Funny, we would have found out then. That we both knew them.”

“Funny,” I echoed. “I think I’ll go say hello.”

We stepped down off the deck and partygoers closed in around us. One of them stopped Ladd as we made our way toward Eli, but I continued until another break in the crowd. The rainy day had morphed into a spectacular night. The temperature hovered a few degrees above cool. The wind blew just softly enough to seem romantic—the leaves on the trees fluttering, along with hems and stray wisps of hair. The grass felt slightly damp as I walked across it, toward Eli, who hadn’t yet seen me. From this distance, I marveled at how
normal
he looked, and wondered if that impression would burst as I got closer. Whatever Eli’s state, it made me happy to have someone there I knew, not because of Ladd or his family. I’d had a life before these people.

“Brett,” a voice said as I approached the next section of crowd.

If I’d taken one more step I would have physically bumped into him. Him, Charlie, the only man at the party not wearing a coat and tie, grinning at me like I was something he’d misplaced, and nothing in the world could possibly be happier than at last, after all this time. Finding me.

I REMEMBER THIS MOMENT
two different ways, depending on my mood. One way, I’m an immature and shortsighted girl who’s mad at her boyfriend but not strong enough to say so, my fragile ego still not repaired from Charlie’s rejection. I care so little for morals and responsibility that I ignore the diamond ring on my finger, the future I’ve accepted from the good man who sincerely loves me. And will-o’-the-wisp Charlie, thoughtless and charming, sizing me up because he hasn’t seen any more interesting girls at the party.

AND THEN THERE’S THIS
other way. The way, if I’m honest, I remember the moment most often, even now, knowing where it all led. I remember a single second where the sea of dark and pale blue, of summer paisley and Lilly Pulitzer pastels, fades away. It’s as if every other person at the party suddenly transforms into a thin mist of smoke—leaving
him
standing there, not only without a tie but wearing blue jeans and a white-and-red-striped shirt with a Nehru collar. Charlie, with curly blond hair and eyes the precise color of the sky that frames him. But most important smiling—at me—in a way that contains every private joke I’ve ever wanted to have with him. If I see arrogance in that smile—a
how can you help loving me
kind of knowing—I also see something else, something that looks like very genuine fondness. That affliction—the beating plague in my chest—leaps without any directive from me. If it could, it would escape from my rib cage and tackle him on the spot, like a golden retriever welcoming its long-lost owner home.

“Hi,” I say, hating the catch in my voice, the crackling octave rise.

All the little strands of smoke slowly resume their corporeal forms. Conversational noise—along with the surf and gulls—fills the air around us. A waiter comes by carrying a tray of Champagne flutes. Charlie reaches out and takes the wine glass out of my hand. He places it on the waiter’s tray, takes two glasses of Champagne, hands one to me, then clinks his against mine.

“Do you remember me?” he asks.

“I do,” I say. “You’re the one who didn’t read
Th
e Sun Also Rises
.”

“But you read it.”

“Of course I did. I was an English major. I’m named after Lady Brett Ashley.”

“So why did you lie?”

Th
ump
.
Th
ump
.
Th
ump
. Can he hear it? Can everyone? Can Ladd—somewhere in the crowd? Did he turned into a strand of smoke, too?

“Because,” I say to Charlie. “Because I’m an idiot.”

His smile widens, if that’s possible. As if I’d just paid him the best compliment in the world. And I can’t believe that he remembers as clearly as I do. I thought he had forgotten everything.

Charlie holds out his hand and says, “Present tense. Does that mean still? Still an idiot?”

“Apparently,” I say, then take his hand, and we walk together across the lawn to the wooden steps that lead down to the beach. Ladd’s grandmother’s diamond presses into Charlie’s palm.

When we reach the shore, I can’t help saying, “I’m surprised you remember. About the book. About anything.” I feel grateful that my voice sounds neutral, not wounded or accusing. Just honest.

Charlie says, “I remember all of it. The book. The bear. The snow. The whole night. I remember you, Brett.”

For a moment, I can see it. He looks sad. He looks
sorry.
He’s going to apologize, and might even explain. But Ladd must have seen Charlie and me emerging from the sea of people, walking hand in hand and disappearing behind the bluff. Not hard to catch up to us, our dreamy saunter, and he appears at just that moment, before Charlie can speak again. I remember turning—the sunlight so much flatter, in that direction, pixels from staring at the water still dancing in front of my eyes—and seeing Ladd coming toward us. To my surprise he doesn’t look angry—as if anger, at this juncture, would be too risky. He just looks determined. And separate, as if the
us
naturally refers to Charlie and me. Ladd’s face wears a poorly concealed woundedness, a question mark, whereas Charlie and I stand next to each other, no question mark at all. Owning this moment together, this reunion, but not the discomfort we have created for Ladd. And I know that when I think back on that moment it’s obvious whom I should feel guilty on behalf of: Ladd.

But oh, Charlie. I’m so sorry. Because if only I had been truer, stronger, deeper. If I’d ever been able to control and squelch that frantic, girlish knocking inside myself. You would still be here today. Not with me, it’s true. But here. Among the living.

What were you and Charlie talking about?” Ladd asked on the drive back to his parents’ house, after five full minutes of loaded silence.

“Nothing. Just hello, how are you. That sort of thing.”

“Why were you holding his hand?” He used a conversational tone that must have taken quite a bit of effort.

“I don’t know.” I tried to keep my voice equally neutral. “He just took my hand. It would have felt rude to yank it away. I think he was just being polite.”

Ladd snorted. I didn’t blame him. And I didn’t have an answer for myself. Riding next to Ladd, it was like I’d just come out of a trance and couldn’t account for my behavior while I’d been under.

He pulled the car into the driveway. His parents were still at the party, so we had the house to ourselves, but Ladd didn’t go inside. Instead he walked around back and through the gate to the swimming pool. I stood on the lawn and watched him go, then went inside through the front door. In the kitchen, I poured two glasses of white wine and carried them through the hall and out the French doors. Rebecca’s dog followed me. Ladd sat by the pool, still wearing his blazer, his pants rolled up and his feet dangling in the cool water.

I put the glasses of wine on the dry deck, then pulled up my skirt and sat down next to him. Ladd had his hands on his thighs, his fingers tense. The dog sat between us, staring out across the pool as if that were the activity of the moment. Which I guess in a way it was. I picked up my wineglass and sat there, waiting for Ladd to tell me how hurt he felt. Or else to tell me the various stories Eli had alluded to, about the girls Ladd and Charlie had warred over in their youth, in a tone that would warn me away from even thinking about Charlie. I imagined leggy debutantes on the tennis court, girls in bikinis. Blonde and blue-eyed girls who lived worlds apart from my own childhood summers of university day camp. I hate to admit I felt a little rush, a bit of unaccustomed ego. I had never been the kind of girl men fought over.

Ladd didn’t say anything. I studied his face, which tended to flush pink around his cheeks and jawline, especially when he’d been drinking. Part of me wanted to reach out and touch him, reassure him. But I worried that might unlock whatever anger he was trying so hard to hold in. When he finally spoke, it was in that same tone, trying to sound calm but with an edge that threatened to break at any moment.

“Girls always loved Charlie,” he said. Which I didn’t want to hear, any more than I had years before, when Eli had tried to tell me.

Ladd went on, not looking at me. “Remember what Eli said? ‘Another girlfriend in common with Charlie.’ Like there had been a hundred. Really it was just one girl in particular. Her name was Robin. I met her my freshman year at Cornell and she came back here with me for the summer. Then she met Charlie. Need to hear more?”

If I said no, it might sound like
Of course she left you for him.
I brought my fingers to his cheek, very lightly. He kept his eyes on the artificial blue of the pool water, tensing as if he didn’t want me to touch him. I lowered my hand to pet the dog instead.

“But before that,” he said. “Summers when we were kids. Once we were thirteen or so. Any girl . . . the girls we met. On the beach. Yacht Club dances, that sort of thing. They mostly liked Charlie. They
all
liked Charlie. You asked why we stopped being friends. I guess that’s mostly why. Robin was the final nail in the coffin. I had to see him, sometimes, because of our families. Obviously I still do. But I never really want to. You know?”

“What happened,” I said, “with Charlie and Robin?”

“He broke her heart. She came running to me. I dropped out of school and went to Alaska instead of taking her back.”

“Oh,” I said. “That girl.”

“Yeah. That girl.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I love you.”

“Do you.”

“Yes. I really do.”

“You know what Robin said when she broke up with me? She said I was too intense. Charlie was playful, she said. He was fun.”

Charlie is unattainable, I thought. Ethereal, beautiful, charming. Nothing I could say about Charlie would be in any way comforting, except the one word Eli had used, way back when.

“He’s a womanizer,” I said.

Finally Ladd turned to look at me. “Yeah,” he said. “A fun and playful womanizer. You know what I think he would do? If he saw his fiancée walking down to the beach holding some other guy’s hand?”

I waited for a moment, raising the wineglass to my lips. Before I could take a sip, Ladd put his hand at the small of my back and pushed me into the pool. The shove was a little too abrupt, too hard, to own the word
playful.
My glass went flying, erupting in a pale arc of Pinot Grigio until it landed, still a quarter full, to bob beneath the diving board. I treaded water in my red Calvin Klein dress, which had originally cost $400, but which I had bought on sale for $149—the most I’d ever spent on a single garment. I hadn’t yet looked at the care label, but I had a good idea it said Dry Clean Only. The dog jumped in after me, paddling in noisy circles.

Ladd jumped in, too, without even taking off his jacket. He grabbed me by the waist. The water was too deep for me to stand in but not for Ladd; I wrapped my legs around him and he held me, kissing me too hard at first—kissing me angrily. Knowing I had caused this, I let him reclaim me. I didn’t push him away. Until the kissing softened, and eventually we ended up in the shallow end, our wrecked clothes floating on top of the water along with the wineglass.

TH
E NEXT DAY LADD
didn’t say a word about Charlie. We drove north, to my mother’s. She had a different way of operating than Ladd’s family—not given over to loving people so quickly. At the news of our engagement, she smiled at me over the rim of her teacup, and I could see a kind of release in her face. Now I would be taken care of. All these years taking care of me, counseling me, worrying about me. And now her work was done, I would be happy. After dinner, outside in the overgrown garden, I told her about the prenuptial agreement.

“Well,” she said, the old anxiety returning to her face. “You’re going to sign it, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, why not. Right?”

Palpably her mood shifted back to happiness, all those years of single motherhood floating off into the summer air, which—after dark in Vermont—felt light and cool. She never understood how loyal I was, to her way of life, her poems and her gardens and just enough money to get by. In my mind I saw the house where we’d lived together sold, her things packed up, the garden weeded and mowed or even paved over for a patio. Life marching forward, the way it can, when people or responsibilities are shed.

NEARLY TWO MONTHS LATER,
the day after I went ahead and signed the prenup, Eli showed up at school, out of nowhere, uninvited. Ladd and I had come home from Boston late the night before, after dinner at Sonsie on Newbury Street, and my brain had that particular cider-pressed feeling from too much wine and too little sleep. The law office had looked exactly as I’d pictured it, shining oak and Oriental rugs. Hundred-year-old portraits so thick with oil I thought that if I pressed my finger against one it would still feel wet. At some point, my mother had suggested I have a lawyer of my own look at the prenup, which seemed like a good idea, but I didn’t know any lawyers, didn’t know how to get one. I didn’t know how much it would cost but felt sure it would be more than I could afford. It occurred to me to ask Ladd’s uncle Daniel, but even that seemed too complicated, so much more difficult than just going to the appointment and signing with the Cross pen that was handed to me and then carefully reclaimed.

Of course as things turned out it didn’t matter at all, that signature. What retained significance was Eli. I remember walking out of Bartlett Hall into shocking sunlight. Looking back, it surprises me that I recognized him through the glare, but I did, immediately. He sat on the steps, watching the door as students and professors and TAs streamed out, everyone blinking similarly into the brightness. Although he faced away from the light, and had been watching expectantly for me, I saw him first.

The Eli who waited for me looked much more like the boy I’d known in college than the one I’d seen on the ferry. His hair had grown out, and he’d lost a considerable amount of weight. His skin had lost that pasty pallor. Whereas before he’d looked puffy, lethargic, I could see even from this distance that he’d regained a certain amount of energy. Although I had no idea why he’d be there, the sight of him looking like his old self lifted my spirits. Then I paused for a moment on the steps, feeling exposed in my knee-length cotton skirt. He was your friend, said a voice inside my head, chastising myself for the hesitation. I didn’t like the use of the past tense: Weren’t friends as close as Eli and I had been friends forever after? No matter what strangeness transpired?

I walked over to him. He barely looked up, and for a second I thought he hadn’t actually come to see me. He could have other friends at UMass or he could be taking classes himself, finishing his degree.

“Hey,” I said, sitting down next to him, as if it were something I did every day, as of course it used to be.

“Oh,” he said. Startled. “Brett.”

For a moment, I felt like I’d intruded on something. Maybe I was wrong. From the way he looked ahead, still focused on the crowd, he really could have been waiting for someone else to emerge from the building. He had a pen in his hand, and he wrote something on his pants leg. I squinted, trying to read the tiny handwriting, and Eli put his left hand over it, hiding it from me.

We sat there for a moment, then I fished in my bag for sunglasses. I slid them onto the bridge of my nose, and once I was properly shielded I said, “What are you doing here?” I tried to make the question sound gentle. Along with the pounds, Eli seemed to have shed years. Except for him writing on his clothes, it felt almost normal sitting next to him, as if I had walked out of Bartlett Hall and into a geographical time warp, and now sat outside Hellems in Boulder, Colorado—which would explain the sunlight, way too bright for Massachusetts even in late summer.

“What am I doing here?” Eli said. He turned and looked at me, and I remembered his eyes from that night on the rooftop. It took considerable effort not to bring my fingertips to my forehead.

“Yes,” I said. “Were you waiting for me?”

Something in his face softened. He reached out and closed his hand around mine. His grip felt gentle, and his fingertips chapped. Eli looked so sad. I took my other hand and placed it on top of the two of ours, and we sat there a while, me comforting him for a problem that hadn’t yet been identified.

“I tried to go back to college,” he finally said.

“You did?”

“Yeah. Tried a semester at Manhattanville after I got out of the hospital. But those fucking drugs they put you on, nobody can concentrate. You know how they used to lobotomize mental patients surgically? Now they do it with pharmaceuticals.”

“Oh,” I said, without thinking, almost laughing. “It can’t be that bad.”

“You want to try my Clozaril?” He turned his head toward me sharply, with such an air of rebuke that I drew my hands back.

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“And then community college. Remember how I was going to go to Harvard Med? How that was the plan? And I end up dissecting kitty cats at Westchester Community College. Not that I could handle that, even. Dropped out after six damn weeks.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But maybe you could still go back? Ladd did. People do all the time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eli said. “Once these drugs are out of my system, that’s what I’ll do.” He spoke a little too loudly, a few people walking by turned their heads. He didn’t notice, the decibels rising when he said, “Look. My mother’s dying. I want you to come see her.”

“Me?” I said. Then I absorbed the first part of his sentence. “Eli,” I said. “I’m so sorry. Are you sure?” I remembered seeing her just a few months ago. She’d looked fine.

“Am I sure? Is the fucking hospice turning our house into a death scene? Does she weigh like fifty-eight pounds?”

“I’m really sorry,” I said again. It must have come on very fast. “That’s terrible.”

“Terrible,” he echoed. “Terrible, terrible, terrible.”

“But Eli, she doesn’t know me. Why would she want me there?”

“I want you there,” Eli said. “It’s what I need. What I want. I can’t explain everything.”

The words came out too fast, too loud, running into each other. I felt a little afraid of him. Also afraid that if I went, Ladd would be furious.

“Is Charlie there?”

“His mother’s dying. Where else would he be?”

I glanced down at Eli’s hand, still covering whatever he’d written, more indecipherable words surrounding it.

“Please,” Eli said. Sorrow strangled the word. “Please Brett.”

I remembered that Colorado night, Eli carried away on a stretcher.
Do you want to ride with him?
And what had I done, that time, but nothing? So rare that life presents an opportunity, another chance, to do something better.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”

ELI ASKED ME TO
drive his car—or rather, his mother’s car. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and I would have asked him to stop except that it seemed to calm him. So I just buzzed down my window. We were driving south on I-495 before he spoke.

“So you’re studying,” he said. It was a pattern I would learn, an early sign, his concerted effort to punctuate moments with questions, expressions, that might seem normal. “What are you studying, Brett?”

“American literature,” I said. “Mostly American Renaissance.”

“Oh yeah? We had one of those, too?”

It sounded like something
he
would have said—the person I’d come to think of as the real Eli. So I smiled. I told him a little bit about what I’d just started to study at the time. How Emily Dickinson fell in love with Sue Gilbert, who broke her heart but stayed close by marrying her brother, Austin. Eli lit another cigarette and stared at the roadside trees. My words hung in the air with the smoke, and I stopped talking and rolled my window down a little farther.