The Sixteenth of June Read online

  She spots Audrey Claire with its chalky-green shutters ahead. Stephen’s favorite restaurant. “Don’t let her frighten you,” he once counseled, looking at her from across the table. “You probably intimidate her.” Nora smiles at the thought of her friend’s words. But she suspects this is the consolation of the rich to the poor, the beautiful to the ugly. Such advice only goes in one direction.

  The jazz café on Manning sits down the street and to the left. She is glad she took Spruce, unconsciously avoiding it. Her palms grow clammy at the thought of her gig tomorrow, a tickle creeping into her throat. “You can’t possibly be nervous!” Leopold would tease, holding up her hand as evidence. “You perform there every week!”

  But that’s just it. The regularity of the gig unnerves her. She worries that one of her students will show up and then see her as a two-bit performer. She has a small following now, regulars who come on Saturdays to hear her, mostly retired couples. They ask in encouraging tones if she’s ever thought about putting out a CD, not realizing that their questions depress rather than flatter her.

  Choir is different. Everyone at the church knows her through Carol, a longtime member, and from her first rehearsal, Nora was treated like family. They know better than to pry, to ask if she misses opera. Other performers understand that such questions aren’t simple.

  If she’s found solidarity at choir, losing herself to the group, she’s found tranquillity in jazz and its wandering riffs. Opera had required her to transform, each performance a metamorphosis. Jazz isn’t like that. She doesn’t have to commandeer the stage, taking the reins of an aria to drive it home, translating the language through her gestures. Jazz is cruise control, singing with her eyes closed. No need to act. The very thought of you / And I forget to do / The little ordinary things / That everyone ought to do.

  “Of course you want to do it in B-flat,” the drummer will groan at rehearsal tomorrow. He keeps hoping for a solo, something peppy. But the upright-bass player, who is older, will smile to reassure her. “B-flat it is,” he’ll say, tuning his strings.

  Nora turns right and passes a group of men on a stoop. Beautiful town houses line Spruce, but Philly is Philly, and she prays the men don’t call out to her. There are three of them, old black men, one holding a brown paper bag, and they erupt into laughter, a flash of gold teeth. One spits a jet of juice that arcs from his mouth. She resists the urge to touch her hair, check her pins.

  She turns the corner unnoticed, relieved. She wonders about the brown bag, why they bother. It’s more of a tell than a disguise.

  Carol would scowl at the men if she were with Nora. “Old men drinkin’ in de afternoon!” she would say, loud enough for them to hear. “People be walking by with dey children! People be walking by on dey way to church!” The accent in Carol’s schoolmarm voice of island reproach would heighten with her disdain. “In Trinidad,” she would continue, yanking her garments around her with a huff, “men did not sit around drinkin’.”

  Approaching Delancey, Nora wonders if June has ever heard her housekeeper on one of her tirades. Carol slips into a nearly unintelligible stream of gossip when on the phone with her aunts and sisters, punctuated by spurts of laughter. Around June, Carol switches into perfect English, suddenly accentless.

  “Yes, of course,” she says, polite, agreeable.

  But then, this street might just do that to you. Nora knows she has an irrational love of this block, but she feels it every time she turns the corner: Delancey Place, with its brick and cobblestones, its town houses erect and tall, the arched entrances like horseshoes. Those men wouldn’t have sat on any of these stoops, pristine and maroon. Delancey is a block away from bums sprawled on benches, but that block makes all the difference.

  Above her there are gabled windows. Her favorite, across the street, has an expanse of gridded panes set at an angle—windows that can be propped open to let in the air. She imagines a space with exposed beams and knotted-pine floors, the sort of place where she can picture Stephen clacking away at his beloved typewriter. 16 June 2004, he would type, the machine dinging brightly at the end of the line.

  Nora comes to a stop at the familiar black double doors and hops up the stairs. She roots in her bag for the key.

  The foyer is quiet. Nora pauses before the hall mirror, tilting her head to check that the pins are in place. The study, where the party will be, fills with light in the evening. Leo’s eyes will dart toward her hair uneasily and then look away. Daylight is always the worst.

  She sets her bag down and reaches to switch her shoes, but no one is there to express concern. No one to exclaim, “You walked? I thought Leo was picking you up!”

  She gazes around the empty foyer.

  “Stay busy,” the cognitive therapist had advised. She was a perky redhead with an assured mouth, her office walls lined with modern prints. Two Eames chairs sat across from her glass desk. “If you know the behavior tends to occur when you’re alone, then don’t give it the opportunity.”

  Nora liked the personification of her disorder. She imagined a greedy banker who couldn’t be sated, wanting more and more. She imagined a villain with a top hat, tying her to the railroad tracks.

  “Identify your stressors,” the woman continued. “Identifying them is half the battle.” She talked about cognitive techniques they might employ, thought records and habit-reversal training. Nora watched her as she spoke, impressed by her authoritative voice and confident demeanor.

  “Have you ever treated someone with trichotillomania before?” she asked.

  The woman shifted in her chair. “I’ve treated many compulsive behavioral issues. We treat them all essentially the same way.”

  Cognitively, Nora had thought, tasting the word in her mouth like a bright penny.

  Nora suspects that she has become a broken record to Leo and his family, stalled and skipping. They ignore her. As long as she shows up when she is supposed to and follows the general script (Sunday brunch, the occasional dinner), they don’t mind that she is distracted. You’ll never know / How slow the moments go.

  The Portman meals, predictable and polite, she can handle. Any breaks from routine are harder. She can’t stare out windows with strangers or depend on them to make small talk. Strangers don’t know the placement of the mines. “Engaged!” they will exclaim. “Your parents must be thrilled.”

  Upstairs, June is likely assembling battle teams. She’d probably roped Leo into some task before he could call Nora. “Help me with this one thing,” June would have simpered, and Leo would have set down his phone and wallet obligingly.

  No. It is better that no one had been in the foyer. She won’t give Leo a hard time for forgetting to call, nor will she play the martyr. It was a simple lapse, and poor Leo didn’t mean to forget. “There you are!” June will say sharply when she spots Nora, as though she is late. “Hey,” Leo will say, nodding and wiping sweat from his brow, a cardboard box filled with flowers heavy in his thick arms.

  Today isn’t about her. She needs to remember this, to relegate her anxiety to a compartment in her mind. Today she must play the future daughter-in-law, unruffled and at ease. “How are you holding up?” Stephen had asked in the parking lot, and it had come as a relief. Because even if you don’t know the answer, Nora thinks, leaving the foyer, it is nice to be asked.

  Eleven

  Everything good down here?” Leo ducks into the kitchen, where the warm air hits him like a wall. The staff look up like startled penguins in their bow ties and vests. They regard him uncertainly, but Leo knows his next move. “Any chance,” he ventures, “of a pre-event beer?”

  The guy directly across from him, in the midst of filling clear shot glasses with soup, relaxes. “Yeah, man. Bottles just got unloaded.” He gestures with his chin.

  Leo ambles over to the tub filled with ice and selects a Flying Fish IPA. He holds the red-labeled bottle an inch above the counter, judges
the angle, and then brings his other fist slamming down.

  “Jesus,” a girl to his left cries, jumping.

  Leo smiles as the metal cap spins across the white marble.

  “That doesn’t hurt the counter?” She stares at the spot where the bottle made contact.

  “Not if you do it right.”

  Condensation drips from the bottle, but he knows better than to ask for a towel. Stephen would ask for a towel. Stephen would ask for a glass, pouring it daintily while the staff looked on and smirked. “Leo,” he says to the girl, nodding at the others.

  College was good for exactly two things. One was that being an RA had taught him how to do this, how to enter a room and put everyone at ease.

  “Sam,” she offers. “Well, you know. Samantha.” She says this with a grimace, as though nothing could be worse than the feminine name foisted on her by her parents. Try Leopold, he thinks.

  Boston University’s other gift was that in such moments, he remembers he is a Pike. Once a Pike, always a Pike. “A brotherhood of gentlemen,” Stephen had read from the brochure. “Does that pertain to the bikini contest?” But Leo carries it with him like a security blanket, that feeling of belonging. Brotherhood, he wants to tell his brother, is the best feeling in the world.

  “Clay,” the guy across from him says, doling out the soup. It pours out of a metal dispenser, the opening controlled by a lever under his thumb. From where Leo stands, the shot glasses look uncannily even.

  Samantha is around nineteen or twenty. Still in school by the look of her, in that world of summer jobs and evolving majors. She has a silver rod shooting through her eyebrow and a black hoop between her nostrils that gives her the appearance of a bull.

  Clay looks a little older, twenty-three maybe, a sleeve of tattoos on his left arm. He wears the tortoiseshell glasses that have been popping up everywhere. A guy at the far end of the kitchen assiduously chops herbs, looking up from his work only when the back door smacks open.

  “Whew!” The caterer bustles in, heaving a crate of glassware onto the island and wiping her forehead with her sleeve. “You get the rest,” she says to the herb chopper. “Truck’s open.”

  Her eyes adjust to the inside light and come to rest on Leo. “Man of the house,” she remarks with a smile. She remembers. It is his recurring duty, sent to the bowels of the kitchen on this day every year to check on the troops.

  “Good to see you.” Leo holds up his beer in salute.

  “You’re allowed, I suppose,” she teases, her eyes twinkling at the sight of the bottle. She has a long, thick braid draped over one shoulder and wears chef’s whites. Her eye makeup is smudged from the heat, but it lends her a sultry look, tendrils of brown hair framing her face. A nice smile in those turquoise eyes. Leo takes a pull from his beer. The icy cold of it runs down his throat.

  The caterer turns to check on the progress in the kitchen, surveying the platters and trays. “Don’t forget the garnish, now,” she reminds Clay, and Leo can tell from his nod that he is not bothered by this, that they have a smooth rapport. Her hips sway as she traverses the length of the kitchen, patting Sam’s shoulder, counting in midair, her fingers ticking pots, pans, glassware, platters. Her eyes skim past Leo as she turns, but not without shooting him a quick wink.

  This is what you should see, he wants to tell Nora. The woman has a thick waist, her white, buttoned top an undulating hill of curves, but her easy confidence gets him, moves him. “It’s not about being skinny,” he always insists to Nora. “It’s not about wearing the right outfit.” “Then what’s it about?” she asks, confused. But he can never bring himself to say it. Because what could be worse than telling an insecure girl she needs confidence?

  They say older women have more of it. Leo remembers feeling the same spark last year, watching the caterer command the kitchen. She was playing music, and “One Love” drifted through the room. “Let’s get together and feel all right,” she crooned, her hands in the air, and Leo thought, That! That’s it! That delicious moment when a woman loses self-awareness, sheds it like a second skin, and you are left with the tender heart of her.

  The first time he had seen Nora perform was at that snooty Yale thing, Stephen sitting with his long legs crossed like a girl’s. When Nora took the stage, Leo felt a swell of nerves, his heart pounding for her. But something happened when she opened her mouth, a sort of alchemy. She became a vessel, the sound pouring out of her. She was extraordinary at that moment, radiant, the audience in her palm. Her voice was a winged creature, fluttering, exotic. It soared, a bird, and held its flight.

  “Bravo!” There were roars at curtain call, all for her, her green eyes blazing. “Bravo, bravo!” People actually called this out, even the undergrads. Nora stood onstage, the flowers raining at her feet.

  After, in the lobby, Stephen was filled with his pretentious chatter, legato, vibrato, bouncing with excitement as if he were her manager. But it was Leo’s eyes she sought, a question in her gaze. You saw?

  He smiled, surprised that she needed to hear it. “You were amazing,” he told her.

  “How’re we doing on the liver?” the caterer asks, peering over Clay’s elbow.

  “I was about to check it,” he replies, wiping the edge of the platter.

  “How I’m supposed to make liver ‘less gamy, more modern.’ ” The caterer’s index fingers carve out air quotes. “If you don’t want liver, then don’t serve liver!”

  Leo recognizes his mother’s words in this, can hear her orders, prim and directive. His mom was accustomed to getting her way, the world bending to her whims. But really, he wants to tell the caterer, it’s about the feeling you give her—the sense that you are on her side. Every year, he assures her he will check on the staff, but all he ever does is sneak a beer.

  In truth, his mom will forget what she said once the party begins. The lists, the menus, the precise instructions—they will all go out the window. All she wants is for the party to be a hit. She doesn’t understand that she could best ensure this by letting go, relaxing her grip on the reins. She forgot that the point was to attend to her guests rather than stoke her own need for compliments. Each year she wanted more, a junkie needing a hit.

  “If you think the liver doesn’t work, nix it,” Leo suggests. “Seriously. She’ll only notice if it’s bad.”

  The caterer considers this. “Stick around and taste a couple of things,” she instructs. Her clear eyes meet his. She turns to the stove and Leo can feel her awareness of him, knowing that his eyes will linger on her. Men are idiots, he thinks, a vague stirring in his groin. He remembers Helen and her climbing vines. We are fools.

  “You’re whipped,” Dave has told him at work. “You get that, right?”

  Dave’s remarks started when he caught Leo looking at rings online. “No,” Dave groaned. “No, no, no.” In the world according to Dave, men settled down in their late thirties at the earliest. Anything sooner was a crime. “You watch,” Dave told him. “You give her that ring, you’ll be getting less action than ever.”

  “Better than none, dude,” Leo retorted, and guys in neighboring cubicles laughed. Leo isn’t bothered by his friend. He feels sorry for him. Because one day, at Nora and Leo’s wedding, Dave will feel a shadow of doubt pass over his convictions. He will wonder about the stream of girls making him feel more lonely, not less.

  Dave doesn’t know what it’s like. Neither does Stephen. They are islands of loneliness, adrift at sea. And it isn’t about sex. It’s about that feeling of being with someone, joined. When he and Nora are talking about nothing at all—small things, inconsequential things—Leo feels a happiness that pierces through to his core.

  The caterer hands him a Chinese soup spoon, a white porcelain boat filled with a heap of greens and cheese. “Gorgonzola salad,” she says as Leo stuffs it in his mouth. It hits him like a punch: peppery greens and bracing cheese with something wet a
nd pungent in his nose. “Mustard vinaigrette,” she adds as a sheen of sweat breaks across his forehead. A bite of pear waits at the bottom, sweet and clean, and Leo clings to it like a raft, feeling a wash of gratitude for its presence.

  He chews, swallows, the mix of flavors lingering on his tongue: spicy, cool, sweet. “A revelation,” he says, conjuring the word, surprising himself. The caterer beams. “Really, that pear—” But she has already turned, satisfied, moving on to the herb chopper.

  Leo looks into the bowl of the empty white spoon.

  “That’s awesome,” Dave acknowledged when Leo recounted the story of the proposal. Dave said it grudgingly but with a show of goodwill, slapping Leo’s shoulder and doing the half embrace of men.

  Leo had adjusted the story slightly for his audience, the group of guys at work. He cut to the moment of collapsing down on his knee, skipping the part about how Nora had been so moody that morning that he’d nearly aborted the plan. He had taken her to the corner of Seventeenth and Walnut, not knowing if she would remember. It was the place where she had turned to him during that first summer together and said, “Don’t you think this is how things should always be?” He had stopped and gazed at her because she had echoed his sentiments exactly. “Remember this corner,” he had murmured into her ear, thinking that one day he would propose.

  Pedestrians pointed. It was an early-springtime scene, and Leo knew the guys would get this, the pressure of a crowd. He knew that they would appreciate that, for a moment, he had made the city pause.