The Sixteenth of June Page 22

  She laughs. “No. Not by a long shot.”

  “I mean, my mom, with her constant insinuations. Obviously she thinks I’m gay. She doesn’t seem to get that I would be, if I was. What closet would contain me?”

  “I’ve never thought you were gay.”

  “Really?”

  “You’re just not the repressed type.”

  “Ah, but here I am.” His hands unfold and stretch before them. “I think I’ve been pretending to be repressed, if you can believe it. It’s easier, you know? Sometimes it’s easier to go along with the story than to confront what’s really there. Why not let them think it, if it saves me from having to explain? I wouldn’t even know how to explain it anyway.”

  Stephen shakes his head. “Do you remember those LGBT groups back at school? I was always tempted to go to a meeting and declare myself. What would they do? No one ever talks about celibacy, especially in college. It’s weird, you know, when you feel like none of the letters in the acronym apply. And that’s part of why I liked my grandmother so much. I assume you know. About the visits, I mean.”

  Nora gives a small nod.

  “She never pressured me to be a certain way. With my parents—Leo, too, for that matter, maybe Leo more than anyone—I always get the feeling that they’re waiting, holding their breath. Maybe it’s none of their business, what I do. Maybe I shouldn’t have to explain. But I always feel like I do.

  “And I guess I’ve wondered if that might be what’s going on with you, too. If you’ve been going along with their version of events because you don’t want to explain, either. If it’s easier to ascribe it—I don’t want to say blame it, so let’s say ascribe it—to the grief. To let them think it’s the grief. To let yourself think it’s the grief. When maybe it isn’t.”

  Nora stares at the empty street. It’s as if the hand on a clock is stuck, beating in place, its thudding the sound of her heart.

  “Are you mad at me?” he finally asks.

  “Mad? Why would I be?”

  “You look tortured over there. Please, tell me what you’re thinking, Nora.”

  God. What am I thinking? What am I thinking, doing, feeling? She cannot reply to what he has said. “So you’ve never been attracted?” she asks tentatively.

  “To you, you mean?”

  “To anyone? You’ve never felt anything?”

  “I’ve had crushes here and there. Catherine was one, actually, in high school. It was sort of like The Graduate—the beautiful older woman.” He waves his hand, brushing away the memory. “But that’s just it. It’s always been about the idea of love more than the feeling. The notion of love rather than love itself. And whenever I’m with someone, the physical stuff feels like a chore. I end up craving solitude.”

  She smiles at that.

  “The only exception, in a prolonged way, has been you. You’re the only person in the world who makes me not want to run from it, screaming. You’re the only person I could see being a—a companion.” He regards her, and it seems it is her turn to dutifully study the step.

  “If I could have anything,” he continues, “to answer the question from before, I guess it would be a life with you. That’s it, really. I don’t know how it would work, what we would do. If we would live near each other, maybe even share an apartment. But I wonder sometimes if we’ve found something in our friendship, something rare. A sort of marriage all our own. I mean, couples who have been together forever end up sexless, right? Maybe we’ve just beaten them there.”

  Nora laughs a little. He has no idea how right he is.

  “I feel the most sane with you, Nora. You never get in the way. I never toss and turn at night wondering how to get rid of you.” He smiles. “That doesn’t sound like much of a compliment, does it? But it is. It’s the highest compliment. You never cause me to be anything but myself.

  “We could—God, Nora, don’t laugh, please—but we could go to New York. I mean, why not? We could go to New York and live together and just be. Do our thing. Write, audition. The inheritance will cover the bills.” His words are tumbling out, poised to meet her objections. But she has said nothing.

  “She left everything to me. They—they don’t know yet. But it’s her life savings. She told me a while ago, said there was nothing I could do to change her mind. That I shouldn’t tell anyone about it. She just wanted me to know in case—in case it affected my plans.”

  Nora knows about inheritances. She knows all about them. Money that sits there, looking at you.

  “And then when she died—” Stephen’s voice catches. “When she died . . . ,” he tries again. Nora wraps her arm around her friend.

  “It all changed,” she offers. Yes, she thinks. I know about that, too.

  She watches as Stephen wipes his eyes. He is waiting for her to say something, for some sort of reply.

  “I have an imaginary shrink.” She stops, surprised by her own words. “I don’t actually have a shrink.”

  He regards her.

  She gulps. “It’s just—I never liked any of them. I was supposed to see one. Made to see one.”

  His eyes dart up to her hair.

  “For that, yes. And I hated them. I tried a bunch. It wasn’t working. They all started becoming predictable, and I was sick of faking it with them. Playing a part, like you said. My weekly appointment, where I would go and say what I was supposed to. I knew it wasn’t doing anything.”

  “So you’re not seeing anyone? But you said before that you—”

  “Saw one this morning? Yes.” She clears her throat. “I don’t know. I sort of talk to myself ? I get Leo to leave the apartment. And I get on the couch. Literally, I mean. Sometimes I kind of whisper to myself. But then other times it comes out pretty loud. And I picture someone there, taking it in, asking me questions. He doesn’t have a face or anything like that, but it feels like a dialogue.

  “Leo doesn’t know. He thinks I’m seeing someone. A real shrink, I mean. He doesn’t know when exactly, just figures it’s during the week, when he’s at work. And on weekends I make him leave if I need it. He never asks why.” She thinks to herself, listening to the babble of explanation, that it is amazing what they have been skirting around, she and Leo. The questions unasked, unanswered.

  “I kind of close my eyes and it happens. And the next thing I know, I’m gesturing and saying all kinds of things. Things I need to get out. It felt weird the first time, kind of scary and crazy. It was supposed to be a little experiment, but then it took. And it helps. That’s the weirdest part, but I feel like it helps.” She risks a glance at Stephen, expecting him to be gazing at her in horror, but his face is composed. “This is the part where you tell me I’m crazy.”

  “You’re not.”

  “And, you know, it hasn’t exactly addressed the original issue.” She thinks of her pins, of what they conceal.

  “No wonder!” he says suddenly. “No wonder you said he doesn’t say much.”

  She gazes at him, unable to believe that she has actually told him this. But there he is, her Stephen, taking it all in, his features as thoughtful as ever. “Frankly, it sort of makes sense to me, Nora.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “It does. No one was providing what you needed. And so you went ahead and provided it yourself.”

  Just like that, with those words, Nora feels something unlock. Before she can help it, before she even knows what’s happening, her face is in Stephen’s shoulder and she is crying. The tears come without warning, her nose streaming. His arms are around her and he is stroking her back. As if he knew, of his own accord, not to touch her hair, which even Leo still forgets.

  She wants to laugh or make a joke of it, to say something silly to Stephen and shove him away, except that it feels good to lean against him like this. She sniffles and wipes her face, trying discreetly to dab at her nose. Oh, whatever, she thinks. She dr
aws the back of her hand across her nose, an unceremonious wipe. What pretenses do they have between them now?

  “I can’t believe I told you that,” she admits.

  “I think that makes two of us.”

  “What, your whole solitary thing? Please.” She rolls her eyes. “That’s not as bad as an imaginary shrink.”

  “I’m asexual, Nora. I’m like an amoeba.”

  “The amoeba and the pretender. We’re quite the pair.”

  She thinks of Michael, his tale of the roommate. Maybe it was fabricated, or maybe it was simply embellished, adjusted so that it applied to her. We all spin stories. That’s what we do. We want people to see certain things about us and not others. What matters is whether you let others in to the truest story, the one that’s the hardest to tell.

  “I don’t know,” she finally says. “I honestly don’t.”

  “About which part?”

  “All of it.” She cranes her neck to look at the town house behind them. It occurs to her, gazing at the brick façade, that nothing had really happened. Everything felt different, yet nothing had changed. She and Stephen had confessed the scariest parts of themselves to each other. Meanwhile the party continued, oblivious.

  A flicker of blue light catches her eye to the right of the study. She frowns at the dance of light, but then it clicks. “The TV,” she says, pointing.

  Stephen frowns, confused.

  “Leo”—she wants to laugh—“he’s playing hooky.” He’d mentioned a basketball game earlier. Leo’s world was rocked by such games, battles on shiny courts and grassy turf. She shakes her head. “I’m glad he got to watch his game. I used to think sacrifice was sweet—that love necessitated it. That it must be real love if a man gives up his life for her. But, I don’t know. I’ve started to wonder. Catering to a woman, deferring to her. No woman wants to hold a man hostage.”

  “Except June, that is.”

  Nora smiles. She hugs her knees to her chest. She imagines Leo watching the game, his face tense. Perhaps he has been waiting for some fight in her to play out, as though she, too, is a game. As though he has bet on the outcome.

  She darts a look at Stephen beside her and sighs. “I wish I could tell you . . .” Tell you what? That, yes, I will come with you to New York? That, yes, you are right, more right than you can know?

  “I wish I could tell you that I know. How I feel. Or what I want. And that’s just it—nothing feels right anymore. Most things don’t feel one way or the other, honestly.”

  She pauses, knowing that this isn’t what she is supposed to say. I like that you wanted to try it with me, she wants to tell him. I like that our friendship means that much to you. Because I can’t imagine life without you, either.

  “We both have so much to think about. It sounds obvious, but that’s just it. I’ve been trying so hard not to think about it, to have life become normal again. But it’s starting to dawn on me that this is what I’ve got.”

  She thinks of the night they sat by the windows, carefree and high. The street had been dark, lit only by streetlamps, their figures casting shadows onto the sidewalk below. Up by those windows they had laughed too loudly and leaned too far, with no thought of falling. They had seen none of this coming, and so they had leaned into each other and laughed.

  We all get stuck, she thinks. Even if you travel the world. It isn’t about being in one city or mired in a department. It’s about tripping ourselves, ensnaring ourselves. It’s as though we lay traps, except that they aren’t for animals—they’re for our own feet.

  “I don’t expect you to say anything,” he says gently. “Seriously, Nora. I’m not looking to you for an answer. I don’t even know what I’m asking. This is all new to me, too. The idea of leaving—I don’t even know if it makes sense.”

  She nods. Her words are at the bottom of a pool, dark and deep. She can feel them, even if she is unable to say them. For the first time, she feels as if that’s okay.

  How lucky she is. How lucky to have this friend who sits beside her and accepts her silence. Nothing is expected of her, no answer or assurance. She needn’t say a word. It’s a relief to know that his decision is not on her shoulders. That she owes him nothing other than her honesty. That she needn’t be anything more than what she already is.

  If she had felt trapped, in an impossible place where everything felt inevitable, and the inevitable felt doomed, what does it mean that she has someone who understands? Who seems to have sensed it quietly beside her? What does it mean that they both feel stuck?

  Maybe, she thinks, maybe I’m not so alone.

  She recalls being in the loft that morning, on the couch, speaking into the air. She wonders if some part of her has been speaking to him all this time, wanting to tell him these things and confide in him. She wonders if her imagination had built a shrink that was, in part, Stephen.

  She cannot say yes to Stephen. With Stephen, she never says things unless she means them. It’s unthinkable to say something to him that isn’t true. He never asks her to comply, to go along with something because it is already in motion. What was it he had said of his grandmother? “She never pressured me to be a certain way.”

  I can’t say yes, she reflects. But how lucky I am that you don’t need my yes. That you don’t want my yes for the sake of a yes. You wouldn’t believe it right now anyway. You’d roll your eyes if I said, “Yes! Let’s do it. Let’s go to New York and get the apartment.” You’d say no. I could say yes, and you would say no. Because you know me. Because you’ve been with me this whole time.

  It’s just like that night we leaned out the windows, except now we’re on the ground. After everything that has happened, in the violet dark of night, I still lean into you beside me. And I know that you are there.

  Afterword

  It is different from what she imagined.

  Milan is the same. Beautiful, refined. A shock how much it is the same. She had been prepared for it to not be the place she remembered. You cannot go back, she told herself.

  But Milan was like that. Cobbled streets, the women elegant, the men pressed and ironed. Everything felt elevated, gilded, even the doorways and window frames. The Juliet balcony of her flat is a thing of beauty.

  There is no anger. This is what surprises her most. The world had not come crashing down.

  The envelope sits on the table in the foyer where she keeps her keys and change. She had not known what to do with it.

  The ink this year is tangerine. The stock is a soft blue-gray. It was a bold choice. She’s still got it, Nora thought wistfully when she opened it.

  The invitation was a surprise, yet utterly predictable. She laughed when she received it (how she could picture June composing the guest list!), laughed, but then felt her eyes mist over. She placed it on the table, shaking her head. How life continues! How life continues, spinning like a top.

  It had been anticlimactic with Leo. “Okay,” he had said, less sullen, less shocked, less argumentative than she would have predicted. He nodded to himself in confirmation. “Okay.”

  “You aren’t mad?” she asked uncertainly.

  He looked at her, his eyes sad. “Nora, it’s okay.”

  In some way, she thinks he must have known all along. Those constant efforts to pin her down, to finalize the wedding. Maybe, in a strange way, he was relieved to have her just come out and say it. Listening to her plan, her decision, he had merely gulped, nodded.

  Stephen had not taken it well. “But what am I supposed to do?” he asked baldly.

  “Stephen!” She laughed, exasperated.

  “I know, I know. Go to Milan, then. I will have to fend for myself. God only knows what I will do with you an ocean away.”

  It wouldn’t have been right, she wanted to tell him. It wouldn’t have been right for us to escape together. It was too easy, too incestuous. “Don’t be sad,” she said ge
ntly. “It doesn’t become you.”

  They looked at each other and smiled.

  Stephen had not gone to New York after all. He was making progress on his dissertation. Alarming progress, he wrote. Rapid, astonishing progress. It consumes me. Maybe the answer was to give in to the problem. His postcards were filled with such enigmatic declarations. They came regularly, beautiful little missives, colorful and compact, awaiting in her mailbox like exotic birds. He tactfully avoided any mention of his brother. She hadn’t yet gathered the courage to ask about Leo when they spoke on the phone.

  But the person who had surprised her the most was June.

  June showed up at the end of her last choir practice, standing in the church with her hands clasped before her. Nora had not seen her arrive. She had on her usual makeup, her hair perfectly coiffed, yet something seemed missing, as if a layer had been removed.

  Nora stood there uncertainly, unsure of what to say.

  June gestured toward one of the pews. “I’ve never been here, all this time.” She gazed around at the church. “It’s quite beautiful.”

  “Yes.”

  June didn’t say whether she had heard them practicing. She didn’t say how she had known when to come. She did not engage in her normal June pretenses. They were past that, it seemed, at least in this particular moment.

  “I hated the suburbs, you know,” she said suddenly. The sentence sat between them. Nora watched it settle, floating down like a feather. June seemed to be weighing her words. “You’d never think it now, but I was the rebel in the family. The black sheep, if you can believe it. Marrying a Jew! Living in Manhattan! New York in the seventies was not what it is today. I’m not exaggerating when I say that my parents feared for me.” She smiled to herself.