The Sixteenth of June Page 16

  Not gay. Then what? Stephen looked crestfallen when Leo suggested he was jealous. “It’s not like that,” he protested. “I was never . . .” Stephen had let the sentence trail off, but that blank contained everything. Never attracted? Never bold enough?

  Regardless, Stephen was trying to meddle. That much is clear. Their grandmother’s misery was supposed to serve as a grand lesson for Leo. Stephen had dangled the comparison before him, waiting for his doofus brother to get it. Like he was an undergrad, and Stephen the professor.

  But maybe that’s you, Leo wishes he’d replied. Maybe that’s what you think, what you see. The parallel between their grandmother and Nora is absurd, visible only to Stephen’s abstract eye. “People aren’t books,” Leo should have told him coolly.

  Of the two women most important to Stephen, one was getting hitched and the other was interred. Of course they seemed similar. They were both unavailable.

  But Leo had said nothing, letting Stephen spin his theories. “She’s changed,” Stephen had remarked, like he was offering some great insight. No shit, Sherlock. But what were they supposed to do about it?

  Wait, apparently. “It’s not the right time to be making decisions,” Stephen had argued. But there was never a right time. There hadn’t been a right time in years—since Leo and Nora had met, really. According to Stephen’s logic, Leo shouldn’t have dated Nora when her mom got sick, shouldn’t have invited her to Philly for that first summer. And who could argue with that summer?

  The truth is that he and Nora always planned around her mother’s illness. Nora needed to be close to Union if something happened; after Milan, she refused to go on vacation or travel. Nora was like an undertaker, needing to be perpetually available for death. They had lived with Iris’s ghost before she died.

  And even if Nora is struggling, doesn’t that mean she needs Leo more than ever? Nora needs an anchor, but Stephen treats him like he’s causing her to sink.

  Stephen likes to speak with great authority. “She saw her shrink this morning,” he had said. “I live with her,” Leo wanted to retort. “But suddenly you know her best?”

  A few guests wander into the room. It is that first trickle, the droplets before the downpour. The early birds are always the same, nervous types with damp armpits who arrive precisely at the stated time on the invite, standing on Delancey’s stoop at the stroke of seven. They jam their hands out before you fully open the door, so eager to please.

  Nora was like that once. She’d set out to read Ulysses for her first party, treating it like homework. “Don’t bother,” Stephen told her dismissively. But Leo found it sweet, his girl trying to please his folks. She got a little awkward with it (“I’m still trying to make sense of that Oxen of the Sun episode, where the language gets so strange,” she had said to a startled June, not realizing that this was the last thing his mom wanted to discuss), but it was touching that she wanted to fit in. It was touching that she cared.

  He shakes the ice in his drink. What happened to that Nora? He looks around the room, at the polite circles of small talk. What happened to the Nora who would never have been late to the party? Who would have been right by his side? The ice clinks softly, echoing his questions.

  Grief is a bitch. It is its own strange animal. If only Nora stayed up late crying or wanting to be held, if only she had quit her job or yelled at him or decided to camp out and watch TV, stuffing her face with potato chips—if only she had done something, lashed out, thrown a fit. Then he would have known that this was the time to see her through. How easily he could have stepped into that role, reassuring and solid, comforting her. Instead there has been nothing for him. She resumed giving lessons after a week, not wanting to let her students down. She attended rehearsals and performed. She was there in every way, except that she wasn’t.

  How do you get someone back if you don’t know where she’s gone? How long do you stand on that bridge, your hand outstretched, waiting?

  Stephen would leave you on that bridge forever. Grief gave Stephen another reason to put off engaging with the world—Stephen, who knows nothing of responsibilities. He still accepts an allowance from their parents, the money getting wordlessly deposited into his checking account each month. He’s never worked a day in his life, but it’s all okay in the name of the obscure academic drivel he cooks up in that apartment. “I made my own way up the ladder,” their dad always said firmly. “No one handed me a thing.” It is what Leo has done, too, going from intern to developer to manager.

  Not that anyone seemed to notice. They deferred to Stephen, fawning over him. “What do you think, Stephen?” “Did you read that article in the Times, Stephen?” “We should go check out that new play, Stephen.” Even this latest scandal of moonlighting at the nursing home—it briefly put Leo in the warm circle of their father’s confidence, but how quickly he will be on the outside again. Leo can feel it coming. No matter what Stephen does, he will always be the favored son. “It’s sweet, Stephen, that you befriended her,” they will croon. Meanwhile, no one noticed that Leo had hung the banner. Certainly, no one thanked him for it.

  Leo gulps down the rest of his cocktail. He feels the current of gin reach him and gives in to it. Laid-back, they used to mouth at frat parties, aping their arms in the air. With my mind on my money and my money on my mind.

  He nods at a familiar woman in a yellow dress approaching him. There are responsibilities, he reflects. Not to the dead, but to the living.

  “Hey there,” she says a little nervously. Her hair is loose, cascading past her shoulders, and only when her brown eyes meet his does he make the connection.

  “Hey,” he returns, surprised. The image of the tattoo comes to him before her name, the indelible vines climbing her leg. “Glad you could make it.” He leans in to kiss her cheek, smells the perfume in her hair. Helen, he thinks, retrieving it. Her hair is longer than he imagined, luxurious as it spills past her shoulders, and she looks softer, more feminine.

  Her dress, however, is unfortunate. It is mustard yellow and frayed, and even he, practical Leo, recognizes it as a misfire. The cheap fabric clings to his suit with staticky fingers, and Helen, embarrassed, beats it back.

  “No dress code on the invite.” Her eyes dart around the room. “I wasn’t sure how fancy y’all would be.”

  The dress must have been a thrift-store find. Leo imagines her rummaging through a bin at the Salvation Army, not liking the color but liking the price. Helen was so confident at her studio, in her element. His dark suit there had made him feel like a stiff.

  “You’re perfect,” he assures her. “Let’s get you a drink.”

  He guides her to the bar, pleased to be in host mode. Leo often complained about his Manhattan upbringing, but it had trained him well for this. All of those Upper East Side parties and benefits his parents had dragged them to, the teenage boys sulking in their ties—what a bore those nights had been. But Leo knows how to mingle without having to think about it. He knows how to maneuver through a room to the bar and how to chat amicably with guests along the way.

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” Helen giggles, trying out a line from a movie.

  To his credit, the bartender remembers and nods. “Another for you, sir?”

  “Please,” Leo says crisply. He turns to Helen. “I didn’t realize you were coming tonight.”

  “Your dad invited me. I figured he was just being polite, but he insisted. No one’s ever done that before. I mean, I do the invites, but I never get the invite.” She pauses, her eye on the bartender. “Cool guy, your dad.”

  Leo smiles. His mom might not be thrilled to have the help mingling with the guests, but Helen is right: it is cool. How many events a year did Helen handle, printing invites and reply cards, while her own Fridays were spent in that warehouse with the whir of machines?

  “It’s terrible, about the funeral,” she continues, lowering her voice after
they’ve accepted their drinks. “What awful timing. I know y’all have been planning this for months.”

  “These things happen. If anything, it’ll help my dad to be surrounded by friends. Here, we should go say hi.”

  He leads her over to the middle of the room where his dad is with two of his golf buddies.

  “Helen!” he booms. “I’m delighted you could make it.” Michael kisses her cheek, turns to his friends. “This is Helen Schafer. She owns the printing press we use. She’s an extraordinarily talented artist.” He gestures to the banner hanging above them. “Her work, in all its glory!”

  “Hey.” She nods, blushing charmingly.

  “And you remember my son.”

  “Leopold,” he says, thrusting his hand out, ready for their shakes.

  “Am I remembering right that you’re in finance?” Paul, the taller one, has receding gray hair and a matching silvery beard. His handshake comes on like a vise.

  “IT consulting, actually.”

  “A dot-commer! I bet all that stuff is second nature to you. It’s good that we’re settling out after the bust, coming into a plateau.”

  Jake, the other guy, whose hand was clammy and cold, smirks.

  Leo frowns. “Economically, you mean?”

  “Well, and technologically, too. There were a couple of years there with Y2K . . .” Paul shakes his head. “There was talk of having to restructure your whole organization. Turns out it was all overblown.”

  “Well—” Leo begins.

  “And look at where half those companies are now. Belly-up!”

  “There was a lot of overspending,” Leo concedes. “But—”

  “My daughter,” Paul interrupts. “She was trying to get me to join—what’s it called? MyFriend?”

  “Friendster. There’s also MySpace.”

  “Right! What am I supposed to do with that? Why would I want to have a profile?” Paul shoots his friends a grin.

  “I’m techno-averse, too,” Helen pipes in, and the men turn to her. Jake’s eyes dip down to her cleavage, for Helen, in her nervousness, has made the unfortunate move of hugging her arms across her chest. Jake catches Leo’s eye and winks.

  Slime, Leo thinks, downing his second cocktail. The men are off, asking Helen about her business, condescending questions about how hard it must be, running the company all by her lonesome little self, but Helen plays along. It is wise of her. Maybe she could even drum up some business.

  Leo regards Paul and Jake, so comfortable and assured. They are middle-aged men who think they know it all, and they look to Helen in her slinky dress to confirm this. To them, Helen is a schoolgirl selling lemonade. They are pleased by how she defers to them. As it should be, they think, watching her cleavage balloon.

  An evolution is happening as we speak, Leo wants to tell them. Sanjay, the company CEO, was always saying it. Adapt or perish. It was that simple, a Darwinian precept, except instead of jungle vines and predators, the new challenge for survival was virtual—a different kind of web.

  “Our task is to convince people that IT doesn’t mean having a website,” Sanjay explained at the annual conference, to knowing chuckles. “IT doesn’t mean email.”

  But Leo encounters it all the time in people like Paul and Jake, executives who believe that technology, like a stork, has delivered its bundled gift. Any developments from this point on will be incremental, they reason. Email will get faster; computers will get smaller. “No,” Leo has told his dad. “Email is going away. Personal computers are going away.” “Not in my lifetime,” his dad replied. “Try ten years,” Leo countered.

  Systems are integrating. Bluetooth, microprocessors. Soon you’ll be able to set your thermostat from your phone. Your refrigerator will send you an alert when you’re low on eggs. Maybe you could even pull up a picture of its interior when at the store. Friendster, Napster, chat rooms—it is just a matter of time before they converge and the technology streamlines. Our watches will tell us where to go.

  Technology is creating a new creature, a new species, and Paul and Jake are going the way of dinosaurs. Sanjay had told his employees at their off-site retreat about a friend of his in biotech. “We’re talking about prosthetic limbs that interface with the brain,” he said fervently. “We’re talking about sensors that interface with human thought. Not years from now. Now! These guys just got FDA approval for patient testing. This stuff is happening.”

  Paul and Jake don’t realize it, but the future doesn’t look like them, silvery and pale. The future is guys like Sanjay, fast talking and dark skinned, sons of first-generation anesthesiologists and engineers who got into Ivy League schools because they ripped the SATs, not because their dads once wrestled at Harvard.

  Ten years from now, Paul will be scratching his head. He will sit at a meeting, bewildered by the strange terms getting traded by younger faces regarding that creature, Technology. Paul will feel his own irrelevance, not even comprehending the verbs and nouns they use, for even language changes. Paul will not understand how it happened. The end comes suddenly like that.

  “That plateau you mentioned, Paul?” Leo wants to say sweetly. “It turns out that’s just the start of the graph.” But Paul will never realize that he should have accepted his daughter’s Friendster request. That he should have embraced every new twist and turn technology had to offer, even when he was uncertain of its utility. Because the point is not to understand technology or even to enjoy it. The point is to adapt.

  But denial can be a funny thing. Pregnant women don’t want to think about labor. Parents don’t want to imagine their perfect newborns one day having sex. Who wants to contemplate what is coming at you like a train? It’s easier to shut your eyes and take comfort in what you’ve already done.

  Last week, Dave had sent Leo one of those email chains at work. Copy this message and fill in your answers, it said. Then forward this to your friends, including the person who sent it to you. Filling it out, Leo felt a wave of nostalgia, like when they used to trade yearbooks in high school, even the guys writing KIT! for “Keep in touch” and Have a good summer, man.

  1.NAME: Leo Portman.

  2.AGE: 27.

  3.LOCATION: Philly.

  4.HEIGHT: 5'9".

  5.WHAT WILL YOU REMEMBER MOST ABOUT THIS YEAR? The Knicks getting swept in the first round.

  6.GIRLS, WITH OR WITHOUT NAIL POLISH? Yes.

  7.FAVORITE DRINK: Newcastle.

  8.BEST FEELING IN THE WORLD: Duh.

  9.WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD: Boredom.

  10.WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 10 YEARS? A dad mowing the lawn. With a Newcastle. Not getting enough of #8.

  11.WHAT’S THE FIRST THING YOU THOUGHT WHEN YOU WOKE UP TODAY? How much time can I waste on email?

  12.WHAT SONG BEST DESCRIBES YOU? The opening of SportsCenter.

  13.FAVORITE MOVIES: Star Wars. The Breakfast Club.

  He filled out all forty-two questions, cheerfully clacking away, quite enjoying the exercise, realizing with a laugh that his kids wouldn’t do this—that this was the Internet equivalent of getting up to change the TV channel. And so he’d hit print after he was done, slipping his stapled answers into a folder marked Misc, imagining one day finding it and being delighted by it all over again. He and Nora will laugh at the old relic of it. She will tease him mercilessly about his answers, but he’ll remember that exact moment in his office, anticipating their future, and will feel pleased that he has come full circle.

  “And what do you think, Leo?” Helen turns to him.

  “About which part?” he asks smoothly. It was an old trick from school for when he zones out.

  “You worry about eating out these days? Fast food, I mean?”

  “There is absolutely no chance,” his dad chimes in, “of my son becoming a vegetarian.”

  “I’m not talking vegetaria
nism,” Helen clarifies with a laugh. “I’m a Texan, please. But I won’t set foot in a Taco Bell. Did you see that awful footage from the slaughterhouse?”

  The E. coli outbreaks, Leo remembers. A kid in the ICU at the Children’s Hospital had just died. Tainted meat had been recalled, diseased cows reported. But the elderly and kids were more vulnerable, right?

  “I haven’t changed my eating any,” he says with a shrug. “Don’t get me wrong. I feel bad for that kid at CHOP, the people who got sick. But you can’t live your life that way. It’d be like staying home because someone got hit crossing the street.”

  Helen’s lips purse. She probably had her liberal theories about the importance of organic and free-range food. She was a Texan, yes, but probably from Austin, a granola hippie who grew up playing the guitar.

  If Nora were here, she would smile. She liked his pragmatism in these situations. “Organic cows live in factories, too,” he would point out if she were beside him. People get too freaked-out, he always tells her. People watch the local news and then think they’re going to die from a sandwich. “You’re better than Xanax,” she once whispered to him.

  He scans the room, but there is still no sign of her. Was she off in a corner of the house somewhere, pulling? But he’s being paranoid. He shouldn’t assume the worst. She’s probably redoing her makeup or checking her dress for the umpteenth time, turning before the full-length mirror upstairs to examine her backside, whether it was magnified or made small. He cannot comprehend such behavior. Because once the dress is on, the party about to start, isn’t it more sensible not to look and to simply tell yourself you look great?

  But girls—women—don’t think that way. When he reflects back, every girl he ever dated had some sort of issue. Eating disorders were practically fashionable in New York. Abby Stern used to giggle with Marni Siegler over who could eat the least at lunch, bragging about how they subsisted on carrots and pickles, while Leo smiled tolerantly. Because the thing was, even if they were both too skinny, in need of a solid cheeseburger, they were hot. “I can’t believe you’re dating Abby Stern” got muttered to him repeatedly throughout the eighth grade.