The Sixteenth of June Page 6

  For months, Stephen claimed to be too busy to make it to Sunday brunch. It usually ended up being Leo and Nora and his parents, a strange double date, Nora so sullen that he had to work extra hard to cover for her. Leo didn’t mind. But the whole point of brunch was for the family to be together. What good is living in the same city if you never see each other?

  “Work,” Stephen always said apologetically when he begged off. Like he knew the meaning of the word. Yet he’d found time for Grandma Portman. Leo imagines Stephen doing the rounds, making balloon animals and performing card tricks. He imagines Stephen being greeted with applause.

  He should’ve asked that old woman about Stephen’s visits. But what would Leo have wanted her to say? Why Stephen visited so much? What he and their grandmother had in common? Leo pauses, considers. Why he kept it a secret, really.

  It wasn’t something the woman could have explained. Stephen wouldn’t have told the residents he was there on the sly. Sitting in the common room, he wouldn’t have said, “This is just between us here, okay?”

  “You should ask him,” Nora had said in he car. Couldn’t ask him at a funeral, though, he wishes he’d replied. That’d hardly be appropriate. Or: You ask him, if you think it’s so easy.

  Leo drifts to a corner table with soda bottles. The plastic cups are cherry red and lined with bright white, the kind they used for beer pong back in the day. How happy the frat house had felt, always full, bustling with life. Leo used to make the guys laugh by collecting the cups after a party and drinking their contents.

  He pours himself a Coke and takes a sip. Talk: as if that would mend matters. The carbonation offers its sharp bite.

  “It’s better, I think, that we not say anything,” his dad had declared that morning as Leo stretched. His dad was the true runner, with muscular calves that bifurcated like the halves of a heart. Leo used to try to build his up when he was in high school, doing calf exercises on the stairs, until it occurred to him that—as with so much else in life—he hadn’t inherited his father’s genes. No amount of work could give him what nature had withheld. “Sure, Dad,” Leo had replied. His dad nodded, knowing he could trust his son.

  There is valor in letting things slide. This is what Leo has learned from his father. It is why his mom gets her way with the remodels and shopping sprees, why she gets to have the party tonight. We look the other way in love.

  Leo glances at Stephen and Nora across the room. Leo believed her when she said she hadn’t known about Stephen’s visits, but she also didn’t seemed surprised. “Aren’t you offended?” he wanted to ask her. “Don’t you think it’s strange? He’s supposed to be your best friend!”

  But some part of him thinks that Nora is sympathetic to secrets.

  She first told him about the pulling a few weeks after her mom’s funeral, leading him into the bathroom. “Look,” she said tearfully, parting her hair in the mirror. He knew, before he turned, to brace himself—that whatever this was, it wouldn’t be good. He kept his face still as the shock ran through him.

  The bare spot was the size of a quarter, white scalp visible through fine tendrils. It wasn’t like a bald spot on a man, but horribly unnatural looking, like a face without a nose. He kept his breathing steady, the lightbulbs over the vanity gaping. Then, meeting her eyes in the mirror, he took her into his arms.

  There was a name for it. Trich-something. Whenever he types the first few letters into the search engine, the computer supplies the rest. A trick, he always thinks. It fooled you, duped you. You lived with it every day without knowing it was there.

  Nora’s pulling is like an addiction, a dark secret they gloss over. What bothers him is not the strangeness of her desire to pluck herself clean (did it have something to do with her mom’s chemo? He’d hoped one of the shrinks would ask) but that because of it, he has to tiptoe around her. He isn’t supposed to ask about it because there’s always the fear of making it worse. “You pulling?” is the most he ever says. Two words. “You tired?” “You hungry?” “You pulling?” He utters them casually, not really thinking it helps—surely she does it in private, at night—but because it helps him. Those two words were like a release valve letting out steam.

  Nora was horrified when he told his family about it. It didn’t matter that the websites specifically recommended family support. “My parents are sophisticated about this stuff,” he assured her. He refrained from voicing his surprise that Stephen hadn’t already known. Because shouldn’t best friends confide in each other?

  Apparently not. Apparently Stephen and Nora didn’t talk about reality. “You want to come with me to Pine Grove today?” “Nah, I’m planning on pulling out some more of my hair.” Theirs is a different model of friendship, one Leo cannot grasp. Where it is perfectly understandable to have surprises surface. Where it is okay to have kept things hidden all along.

  “Nothing ever happened between us,” Nora told him early on. “Just so you know.” Leo was relieved to hear it. Stephen and Nora had been best friends since her freshman year. It was hard not to imagine a drunken night, a onetime hookup they vowed to forget. “I know all about the appeal of upperclassmen,” Leo teased. “I fell for one myself.” Nora gazed back at him, her eyes level.

  Nora wasn’t Stephen’s type, anyway. Occasionally he brought a date to a wedding, always a ridiculous model type, an art-history or French major who made June’s nostrils flare with jealousy. Nora was pretty—brown hair, green eyes—but unthreatening. She was pretty in a way that drew you in rather than turned you off.

  Stephen’s girls knew their beauty. They were like ostriches with their long, skinny legs, parading around on high heels. They wore plunging necklines to reveal bony torsos. Their hair moved in sheets. They were delicate creatures, used to getting their way. Stephen’s indifference posed a challenge to them.

  “He’s never said a word to you about it?” Leo once prodded. “About what?” Nora asked. “His love life! Why no one sticks!” Nora shot him one of her looks, protective and fierce. “That’s his business, Leo,” she said firmly.

  Maybe. But when you keep your business a secret, it becomes everyone’s business. It becomes the thing people worry about, the elephant in the room.

  And that’s what Nora and Stephen share. They are the kids at the playground who go off by themselves, whispering behind a bush, refusing to play with everyone else.

  That would be fine if they made their reasons clear. But neither of them feels compelled to explain their behavior. They don’t mind leaving puzzles in their wake. “Wasn’t the whole point for you to do opera?” Nora’s dad had said when she graduated. Nora glared at him, but Leo felt a twist of sympathy for the guy. Leo knew what it was like to be on the outside, scratching your head.

  Leo’s job, like a janitor’s, is to push along, never asking questions or complaining about the messes. Never mind that he wants to be a source of support. Your problems are my problems, he wants to tell Nora. Your skeletons are my skeletons. That’s what love is.

  They rely on him to remain steadfast. And how they take him for granted, their beloved dope! They don’t see the gift of his predictability. They’ve never had to worry about him or been thrown for a loop.

  His parents do it, too, teasing him constantly. He is goofy Leo to them, with a humdrum job and a love of sports. They depend on him for it, but turn up their noses as well. Leo is like the corner Wawa: unexciting, but convenient. Always available.

  Growing up, Stephen had been a vortex of need. From as early as Leo can remember, the family catered to Stephen, shaping itself around him. He fought with their parents often, hiding out at the Strand on weekends. He wrote poetry and tacked his dark creations to his bedroom wall. He pierced his ear in high school, a silver loop in the cartilage, up high. And didn’t that mean something, depending on which ear? Or was that only for earrings that went through the lobe? Their parents stayed up late conferring about it,
wringing their hands. Leo made himself a promise to never cost them sleep.

  Teachers used to call home to make recommendations about this gifted, brooding boy. Stephen wasn’t like the others. He wasn’t like the preppy kids at school who took Ritalin so that they could stay up late studying, twitching with ambition. He wasn’t like the usual misfits—the theater nerds and tech geeks. Stephen was a scholar, the teachers agreed. Michael and June fretted over their delicate bird—asthmatic, astute—while Leo played with his LEGOs and joined lacrosse.

  Leo didn’t mind. He didn’t care, even back then, that the attention was on his brother. He admired him, the way Stephen got those awards: best essay, best science project. Then puberty hit, and frail Stephen began to grow. Girls turned their heads. Guys looked at him grudgingly. Leo was relieved for his brother, suddenly tall and handsome, no longer a target in the halls.

  Stephen never seemed to notice him back. Not when Leo made the basketball team (“Aren’t you too short for that?” Stephen had asked). Not when he got elected class representative. And certainly not after they moved to Philly, with Stephen halfway out the door to college.

  If Leo was the puppy of the family, Stephen was the cat, regal and haughty.

  Then the three of them had that summer in Philly, and everything changed.

  The funny part was that Leo had by then given up on the idea of being friends with his brother. His freshman year, he’d pledged Pi Kappa Alpha. “You’re such a Pike, dude,” they told him. Brotherhood, he realized, could be found in other ways.

  These guys appreciated him. They noticed him. They loved him. His unwavering normalcy was no longer a weakness, and Leo felt more sure-footed. He might never be a bigwig like his dad, and he wasn’t book smart like his brother. He didn’t have his mom’s looks or care about her frilly world of privilege. But, for the first time, he felt like those things didn’t matter.

  Going into that summer, Leo was focused on Nora. He was thrilled that she was staying at Delancey, that they’d get to spend more time together. He accepted her close friendship with Stephen. There was no point in objecting to it or acting jealous. That would be, as the Pikes liked to say, a dick move.

  So Leo played it cool, tuning them out when they went on about Yale, mentioning shared profs and friends, dorms and events whose names Leo didn’t recognize. He smiled and sipped his beer, pretending not to mind.

  What he didn’t expect was for the three of them to find a dynamic all their own. Philly seemed to open up for them that summer. They ventured to neighborhoods he hadn’t known about in high school: the narrow strip of bars on Sansom, the little pockets of Old City. They would meet for happy hour at the Nodding Head or a picnic at Rittenhouse Square, crowding together on a blanket. Leo realized that he and his brother were finally doing that elusive, brotherly thing of hanging out without its being a big deal. Trivia night at the corner bar, karaoke at the place on Chestnut, Nora bringing down the house with a roar. Even a baseball game once, a season opener, Phillies vs. Braves, the three of them sharing a bag of caramel corn.

  Leo felt some part of him stir that summer, some missing piece click into place. That summer felt golden and whole. He worked for a software company during the day and came home to Nora at night. They hung out with friends and went to bars. The difference was that Stephen was with them, too. Leo saw a glimmer on the horizon. This was how life could be.

  When their exclusionary bubble reared its head, Stephen and Nora laughing at some inside joke, Leo reminded himself that they’d been friends before he entered the scene. They talked like he wasn’t there because it was their habit. He shrugged it off and issued a smile.

  Just as he did today.

  Stephen and Nora liked to play Mr. & Ms. Etiquette, policing his uncouth ways, but they never thought about how they could be inconsiderate, at times rude. Not to a bunch of strangers they would never see again, but to the person closest to them.

  Memo. He feels it coming from across the room. Do not belch and then blow out your Coke.

  His own parents aren’t so particular. His mom, itching to get back to the city, will whisper to his dad at the earliest possible moment. His dad will nod while looking out at the room, a politician getting input from an aide.

  His parents wouldn’t care if Leo ate sandwich after sandwich. They wouldn’t care if he left early to squeeze in some work at the office. Nora fears them too much, convinced that the right combination of outfit and makeup and conversational morsel will produce some effect on them. But maybe that’s how girls are, always trying.

  His dad is the last person to sweat that stuff. He did the prayer thing because it was how he’d been raised, but it wasn’t some display of reverence, the way it is for Stephen. When his dad surveyed the room, it was to check on Sharon, to make sure he had talked with each person there. His dad understands that funerals are a time for family, a time to gather the people around you—not to prove how devout you are.

  Follow-up memo to Leopold: phones are to be put away.

  He slips his Palm back into his pocket. It makes her less anxious, he figures. So he resists the urge to scroll through his email—a workday, his in-box piling up, a mountain to conquer later. Resists checking for pregame updates. (Malone out with his knee!). A travesty that Game 5 is tonight, tip-off at nine, the heart of the party, with an upset in the air. How could you not root for Detroit? The city of underdogs. He won’t be able to sneak up to the TV without his mom tearing him a new one, and his dad isn’t a basketball fan. “League of thugs,” he always says when Leo mentions the NBA.

  Leo has resisted other things as well. “Nice out here,” he’d wanted to remark that morning as they glided through the suburbs. The trees looked like broccoli. The potholes disappeared, the road smooth beneath them. He wanted to suggest a quick detour to look at houses, imagining which one might someday be theirs. But Nora’s face had been set, her eyes distant, and so he had refrained. He let her have her space, just as his dad was letting his mom have the party. Because that is what you do.

  It is enough for him, what he has. He gets impatient sometimes, wanting to run out into their future, because he can see it waiting—the house, the lawn, the tricycle resting on the drive. They aren’t ready yet, he knows. The hiccup of the past few years—well, who could have seen that coming?

  And so he must be patient, bide his time. Try not to let those thoughts creep in when he worries if there will ever be a wedding. Of course there will. The doubts materialize when they’re out like this, at a social event, when he can feel people look at them and wonder.

  “No date yet?” Aunt Sharon had said, eyeing him, hefting her mass up the hill after the burial. She was wearing a muumuu that his mom had smirked at. “Well, what’s the rush, anyway?” She lit a cigarette, pausing to exhale through her nostrils. “It’s better to wait. You kids are too young.”

  Twenty-seven isn’t young, he wanted to retort. And who was she to be giving advice? None of his friends are married yet, true. Dave had howled in protest when Leo announced the engagement. “You’re in your prime!” Dave had said, aghast.

  They didn’t see that waiting was pointless. Because if he and Nora want the house, the kids (three, he imagines, playing out different combinations of boy/girl), they have to start taking steps. He isn’t supposed to mention it, but Nora’s birthday is approaching in August, her twenty-eighth. And after the wedding, the honeymoon (Hawaii, he imagines, lush and warm, too hot to quarrel; lethargy; flowers of idleness), she will be that much closer to thirty.

  It’s just a matter of time, he always tells himself. He has to be patient and not press, be patient and seem unconcerned. It is what the Pistons have been doing, defense beating offense, patience beating pizzazz. Hold back, wait. The meek shall inherit the earth.

  He is part of a delicate operation with Nora that he himself barely understands. Is she better? Recovered? Not worse? It is a complicated dance
requiring him to tread lightly, so lightly, on the balls of his feet. He cannot worry about his game plan, about the points on the scoreboard, because then any momentum will be lost. He has to bide his time, feel out Nora’s rhythm. The pesky questions must be kept at bay. Stephen had started hanging out with him, after all, just when Leo had stopped caring.

  That is the economics of life, the market of the heart driven by supply and demand, just like everything else. When you want too much, too openly, life sees your hunger and contracts. You have to conserve your desire, hold it close. Not mind as time unfolds, testing you. Not mind the sparseness, the seeming lack. No roses without thorns.

  Six

  Penny for your thoughts,” Stephen says.

  “I thought they’d be worth more,” Nora replies drily.

  They are sitting in Leopold’s black vehicular behemoth with the doors thrown open, the day finally having shed its damp chill. “Presumably a penny meant more back then. That saying goes back to the sixteenth century, at least.”

  “God, how do you know this stuff ?”

  “Comp exams.” The image of the volume floats up to him. Blue cloth, letters in gold. A compendium of proverbs through the 1500s.

  Nora used to go for walks with him when he needed a break from studying. “Slow down!” she would yelp, his feet on pace with his thoughts. The streets felt surreal after so many hours at his desk. These people don’t have to study, he would marvel, staring at the slow trickle of West Philly—old men shuffling along, young mothers corralling their children. The hypnotic swirl of the striped barber’s shop pole on the corner, curving red, then blue. How distant it felt, a life outside of books.

  Nora’s shoes now sit abandoned on the floor mat. One foot dangles out the passenger side, the other folded beneath her. “They should adjust for inflation,” she muses. “ ‘Ben Franklin for your thoughts,’ maybe.”