The Sixteenth of June Read online

  It was ridiculous how women tortured themselves when they should be revered. “You can make a person,” he sometimes wants to tell Nora when he sees her frowning before the mirror. “Multiple people! You could make an army!”

  Paul and Jake, talking down to Helen, do not realize they would feel like pansies if they ever saw her in her workshop operating the machinery. They don’t think about how she might be more talented, more driven, more capable than they are. She is more diplomatic, that’s for sure. There is never any acknowledgment that women hold a power men lack, the greatest power for happiness on earth, their insides magically rearranging themselves to incubate a human. How fantastic.

  But no one sees it that way, and Leo fears that it might not be possible to raise a confident girl. From what he can tell, it all goes fine during childhood (the girls playing by the Giant Frog statue at Rittenhouse Square are spirited, bossy), and there is hope for adulthood (behold the languid caterer!), but everything in between is a mess. Maybe girls part with their confidence in childhood but then reclaim it later, like a scarf from the lost and found.

  If we ever have a girl, he wants to tell Nora, we need to do something. “Do what?” she will ask, amused. Well that’s just it. He doesn’t know. Give her brothers? Forbid beauty magazines? Even his mother fell victim to that constant self-assault, and she had grown up with everything. If money couldn’t guarantee security, what could?

  Nora, listening to him, would roll her eyes. “It’s not about money, Leo,” she would say, exasperated. But then her eyes would trail off and he would know not to ask, to let this particular mystery rest.

  It could be that the Web will help girls gain confidence. The Internet is blind to its users. When you saw an elegant piece of code, you didn’t know who’d written it. You saw the work before you saw the person. The tech world is filling with people like Sanjay, wallflowers and introverts. Maybe awkward girls are teaching themselves HTML and Java, ready to rise in the ranks.

  Leo spots her then, across the room. Nora. Her dress is white with bits of green, and he realizes that it matches the decor, the invites and napkins. Still trying, in her way. She is talking to some old fuddy-duddy, a guy in a tweed coat and bow tie Leo does not recognize. She is talking in that lovely way of hers, with her self-effacing laugh, the brilliant girl who does not see herself as such. Thoughtful Nora knows how to put the old man at ease, delighting him, impressing him, charming him without realizing she has.

  Stephen stands a few feet over, a circle of women around him drinking in his words. The women laugh gaily, tall Stephen so good at making the women laugh. For a second, his eyes shift and meet Leo’s. For a second, the room stills.

  Leo looks quickly away and focuses on Nora. Beautiful. He will tell her tonight, will sidle up to her with a glass of champagne. I saw you from across the room and you looked so beautiful. Her hair is different, pulled up into some sort of complicated twist.

  I don’t make her unhappy, he thinks to himself. Yes, it’s a rough time, and, no, I don’t know how to fix it. But we’re trying, and that’s what matters. If you fall, you don’t wait to get up.

  He remembers a space of lawn one soft May evening. He was visiting her at Yale, her senior year. “It looks like it’s all going to be okay,” she had said happily into his chest. They were in that grove of lilacs, purple and white, fragrant, slender spectators around them leaning in to listen. “Of course it’ll be okay,” he murmured, the heady smell of the flowers overwhelming the air.

  He kissed her shoulder, kissed her neck. He reached his hands under her thin sweater. They made love right there, the world parting for them. Somehow they had known that they wouldn’t get caught, wouldn’t be seen, as though that garden on that day existed just for them. Later they walked back to her dorm hand in hand. I’m yours now, he thought as they climbed the steps. Sometimes you know a moment when you’re in it, and that was it for Leo: that day, the lilac garden, the dark wooden stairs. I’m yours.

  Fifteen

  Absinthe!” Stuart cries rapturously. “Your mother has thought of everything!”

  Silver trays of martini glasses come forward like a fleet of ships, the glasses glowing green. “First the leg of duck, now this! What’s next? Caramelized kidney? Joyce’s food is brought to life!”

  “You’ll have to tell her,” Stephen replies drily, knowing his mother will frown in confusion. “She’ll be delighted.”

  “The green-eyed monster,” Stuart muses as a tray nears. To Stephen’s surprise, his white-haired adviser lifts two glasses. “Shall we? Hopefully this will not end in joint hallucinations.”

  They gently clink glasses. Stephen has never seen his adviser like this. He had worried Stuart would pooh-pooh it all, finding the party amateurish. But Stuart, typically elegant in his demeanor, is like a kid at a carnival, nearly vibrating with excitement over every detail. “ ‘Re-Joyce!’ Oh, very good, very good,” he was exclaiming to Nora when Stephen joined them, holding up his cocktail napkin and waving it merrily. “Thank you,” Nora mouthed to Stephen, looking slightly harried as she excused herself to get a drink.

  Stuart lapped up Stephen’s stories about past Bloomsdays, lapped them up like champagne. “An all-day reading,” he said with a sigh, like a teenage girl hearing about a celebrity.

  “If only I’d thought of it before,” Stephen says, watching Stuart smack absinthe from his lips, “I would have invited you sooner.”

  “At least one of us would have enjoyed ourselves. To think that you have been complaining of this!”

  Stephen smiles thinly. “It’s all lost on me, I know.”

  “You are a Woolfian through and through, standing off to the side and scowling. Though I suppose such are the small rebellions of good sons, refusing to follow their parents’ loves.”

  “You think my parents love Joyce?”

  “You think they don’t?”

  “I think they want to. Which is different.”

  Stuart pauses, considers. “Well. That is admirable, too. It shows humility.”

  Stephen nearly chokes on his drink. “Humility! My mother probably thinks that’s a brand of perfume.”

  Stuart chuckles. Stephen doesn’t have the heart to tell him that his parents’ knowledge of Ulysses is questionable at best. June has probably never read the thing. She pretends to love it, following Michael’s lead, but also because in her museum- and play-going circles, bonus points are awarded for obscurity. It doesn’t matter that no one understood why Damien Hirst’s poor shark was frozen in formaldehyde, that yawns were stifled through Fritz Lang. What matters is that one could gloat, “We were at the screening of Metropolis, darling, and it was marvelous.”

  The funny part was that June genuinely loved museums and Broadway shows once. It was why they had lived in New York. But she soon learned that her taste in art was a source of mockery. “Monet!” her friends roared, wiping tears from their eyes. And so June gazed at Water Lilies in private while pretending to swoon over more in-vogue works. She kept When Harry Met Sally hidden behind the Godard and Truffaut DVDs until she forgot it was there.

  As for Michael, he liked to talk about how he had read Ulysses at Harvard. “I was lucky enough to study with Richard Ellmann, the great Joyce scholar, you know.” Stephen winced at his father’s tone, the suggestion of modesty. Every time, he hoped his father wouldn’t drop the name, but every time he did, the belly of a plane opening so that “Harvard” and “Ellmann” could hit their targets. In all likelihood, Michael had skimmed the book, as arrogant undergrads tend to do.

  In fact, Stephen is the one responsible for the menu. When June cornered him months ago and asked that he handle the hors d’oeuvres (“It’s the centennial,” she pleaded), he knew he was being tasked with something literary, not culinary. “Leo’s the foodie,” he had been tempted to reply. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  Putting down his drink, too strong for hi
s taste, Stephen tells Stuart, “There’s something calculated about what my parents do. It’s not just the ostentatiousness that bothers me. I sometimes think they’re more interested in what Ulysses says about them than what it actually says. Our truest relationship with books is private. I love Gatsby. I love Mrs Dalloway. But I would never throw a party for them. A party ends up celebrating not the book but its title.”

  “Hmn. So if your parents were to read it to themselves in whispers and with the shades drawn, you would feel better?”

  “But that’s the thing. Joyce fans can never keep it to themselves. People who tell you that they love Ulysses—they wear it like it’s a badge.”

  “Flaming. We’re flaming, the lot of us.”

  “Pardon?”

  Stuart smiles. “The Joyce community sometimes reminds me of the gay community. Some of us go quietly about our business, making our choices in love without fanfare. Others insist on being on the float as it comes down Fifth Avenue. Wearing the leather shorts with the ass cutouts.”

  Stephen laughs, startled.

  “Joyce meant for his work to be a challenge,” Stuart continues. “He didn’t want it to be the shy girl at the party. Who was your friend again, that lovely woman?”

  “Nora. She’s my brother’s fiancée, actually.”

  “A singer betrothed to a Leopold!”

  “I know, I know. The whole thing worked out better than my parents could have planned.”

  “Life imitating art! Oh, it’s too good. But, you know, she told me that she never felt so inadequate as when she read Ulysses, that it intimidated her more than any crowd. I encounter that often. Just the sight of it causes apprehension.

  “The books you describe, Stephen. One feels drawn into their world, nearly hypnotized by the spell they cast. But Ulysses was never meant to seduce us gently. Joyce wanted it to confound.”

  “Yes, there’s always an audience for that,” Stephen mutters. “Literary acrobatics. You see it in the contemporary novel.”

  “You think it stunt work?”

  “I’m skeptical of writing that tries too hard. Why can’t writers just come out and say what they mean? Has sincerity gone out of style? I wonder if we’ve become too clever for our own good.” But Stephen pauses. Doesn’t he do it, too? Doesn’t he hide behind his wit, using his sarcasm as a sword? How can he expect sincerity from the world if he isn’t genuine himself ?

  “Novelists should have ambition!” Stuart counters. “They should aim for the fences. This is what one must applaud with Joyce. His work is Everest. Do you see? No one climbs Everest and says nothing of it. It’s an accomplishment! We discover something meaningful in the climb precisely because of how it pushes us. It is a feat to read Ulysses, just as Joyce intended. There are challenges and wonders at every turn.”

  Stephen reaches for his abandoned drink. He recognizes some of this speech from Stuart’s opening lecture to his undergrads. Back when he was a TA, Stephen used to sit in the back row and watch their faces, set at an angle toward the podium, the light falling on them in profile. Some listened intently, studiously taking notes; others were inscrutable with their baseball caps and slumped posture. But you could feel Stuart’s passion radiate out to the very last seat.

  The course Stuart taught was ambitious: four epic novels read closely, painstakingly, over a semester. Those who signed up for it were there for the challenge. But though a few might falter through Faulkner or Proust, nothing caused universal agony like Joyce. No other writer thumbed his nose so flagrantly at the reader.

  Stephen glances around as Stuart warms to his subject. Leo, on the far end of the room, is talking with Michael and his buddies along with a woman in a garish dress. Stephen watches as his brother accepts a martini from a passing tray, depositing his empty cocktail on it. The waiter makes a face as Leo’s glass teeters.

  We skipped dinner, Stephen realizes. They had planned on grabbing food earlier, knowing that hosts never get to eat at their own parties. “We’ll swing by the deli and pick up stuff for everyone,” Leo said, and Stephen could picture him selecting a different sandwich for each family member, wanting everyone to be pleased.

  Stephen feels filled with regret. All Leo ever seeks is to please them, as if the family’s happiness guarantees his own. Leo plays to them so eagerly and affectionately. Why on earth had Stephen been so cruel? What impulse had made him behave that way? He had been judgmental, harsh. Worse, he had feigned innocence. “You’re the one who mentioned Nora,” he had said. It is the noble art of self-pretense, puffing himself up as though it were his right.

  “It’s a book in which one finds everything,” Stuart continues sagely. “I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve opened its pages and found a line, some passing thought—the most mundane detail—speaking directly to my set of circumstances! One finds it magically relevant, as though Joyce anticipates all. It is the great repository of everything.”

  But that’s not what a book is supposed to do, Stephen reflects. A book is a place to lose yourself and then find yourself once more. A book draws you into its world like a charming host. It should not make you regret accepting its invitation.

  “Mother!” he says, seeing her pass. He looks apologetically at Stuart, realizing he has interrupted him. “Forgive me, but I know you’ve been wanting to say hello. Mother, this is my adviser, Stuart White. Stuart, meet June Portman.”

  “How do you do,” she says, turning on her radiant smile. Her white teeth are dazzling against her burgundy lipstick. “Michael and I have heard so much about you. We’re delighted you could make it.”

  “The pleasure is mine!” Stuart beams. Stephen can tell that he is struck by June’s beauty. “That woman did not seriously give birth to you two,” Nora had once whispered to him. “I actually wouldn’t be surprised if she hired someone for that,” Stephen had replied.

  “As someone who has spent the majority of his career on Joyce,” Stuart says affably, “it is a pleasure to be in the company of fellow devotees.”

  A ripple passes across his mother’s features, and Stephen can tell this is news to her. She never listens when Stephen talks about his adviser, always nodding in her way, her thoughts elsewhere. “Yes, of course, darling,” she murmurs.

  “And how dashing you look for the occasion.”

  “ ‘In an oatmeal sporting suit!’ ” Stuart quotes. “Though I couldn’t find a sprig of woodbine for the lapel.”

  June smiles blankly.

  “Too obscure a reference?” He looks crestfallen. “I’ve always loved the wardrobe allusions.”

  “There’s no such a thing as an obscure reference here,” Stephen assures him. Why burst his bubble? He and his adviser have different tastes, and they often debate Joyce heatedly. But Stephen feels affection for him now, seeing how happy he is to feel included. “This is your parade,” Stephen wants to tell him. He eyes his mother’s satin shirt, her dangling earrings. “And here’s your float.”

  Stephen makes as if he has spotted someone. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be back in a minute.” He shoots his mom a glance in parting, imploring her to be kind. But he has deposited Stuart in excellent hands, a Miss America who might not always know the answers but has enough panache to hide it.

  Stephen heads for the buffet table. The second one today, he thinks sullenly.

  The smart move would be to stay by Stuart’s side rather than dump him off like an unwanted drink. For now that Stuart is buoyant and buzzed, it would be the perfect moment to mention the idea of travel. Stephen could make a case for research, for wanting to see Woolf’s papers. Stuart, in the sway of the party, would feel the romantic tug of a journey. “We must make sure you go,” he would say, nodding, and just like that a plan would be set in motion, the ripples of a dropped stone circling out and sending Stephen across the pond.

  A travel grant. After that, it would be easy to settle in Ne
w York.

  Instead, Stephen finds himself staring at piles of food, the very items he had listed in a Word document for the caterer. He begins loading two plates with spiced-beef sandwiches and Gorgonzola salad, toasts with fried liver, and Stuart’s beloved leg of duck. Stephen piles on oysters and slices of seedcake.

  Will anything be different a year from now? Or will he still be procrastinating on his proposal and avoiding Nora and Leo? The next buffet might be theirs, he realizes with a start, Nora in a more elaborate white dress. Maybe this will be Stephen’s fate, to wander from one buffet to the next, feeling only more alone.

  He takes a deep breath and crosses the room. “I come bearing food,” he tries.

  Leo stands off on his own, absinthe cocktail in hand. “Thanks.” Leo surveys the plates. “But fuck you.”

  “Look, you don’t have to talk to me, but you should eat.”

  “Why? So you can feel better about yourself ?” Leo’s words slur just slightly, and Stephen wonders how many drinks he’s had.

  “We didn’t eat before. You’ve been running around all day.”

  “Whatever, Mom. I stopped at Primo’s, FYI.”

  Stephen pauses, momentarily amused by the image of their having a nagging mother. When, he wants to ask, has our mom ever pestered us to eat?

  “Now you’re laughing at me?”

  “What? No, I—”

  “Quit it, okay? Just stop. Whatever it is you’re trying to do here, I think you’ve done enough.”

  “When were you at Primo’s? That was probably closer to lunch. FYI.”

  “You don’t know me.” Leo steps closer, suddenly in Stephen’s face, his breath a medicinal cloud of absinthe and lime. “You don’t know Nora. Stick with books. Quit putting your nose where it doesn’t belong.”