The Sixteenth of June (14 page)

On Saturday nights, a singer with a fuchsia mouth held the microphone too close and compensated for lack of range by being breathy. Nora began to grow impatient, listening to her wavering pitch. She went back to Delancey and listened to
Tosca
. But she wondered if she could do better than that lipsticked fraud.

She didn't stop to think about what it would mean, taking a job as a lounge singer. What mattered was the dreamy feel of that summer, as though it could be preserved. As though the logistics might change—a loft swapped for the attic; real jobs in place of summer ones—but the feeling would remain.

What Nora hadn't anticipated was that disaster could occur on vacation. That you could be shipwrecked, even though the water looked so clear. Here was what she had so often dreamed of, an oasis from the fights and turmoil. Abundance rather than lack.

Her mom's chemo was deemed a success, and Nora grew excited for Milan. Her vocal scholarship wasn't supposed to include a semester abroad, but the program director had applied for special funding. “We'd be remiss in your training to not send you,” he told her. “You'll see opera as it's meant to be done.”

A week before Nora left, her mother's scan came back showing abnormalities. “But they said they got it all,” Nora protested. “Apparently this happens,” her mother said. “We'll do another round of chemo. No big deal. Don't for a second think of canceling your trip.” “Do what you want,” her father said tersely. Nora couldn't choose right either way.

She winds the hairs around her finger, then drops them into the trash.

“Have you pulled before?” the cognitive therapist once asked.

“Sort of.” Nora remembered pulling when she was eleven. She had tried it as an experiment late at night, pulling a patch of scalp clean over a few weeks. Who knew where the impulse came from? Her parents never discovered what she was up to, and she reveled in her secret. It had stopped on its own, fleeing like a foreshadow, showing itself in a glimpse, promising to return.

In Milan, opera began to lose its heart. Nora felt glum recognition when her voice coach yelled, “Listen! Hear the anger, the hostility! Then the sorrow, the loss, oh—the bitterly held last note.” Opera had been abstract before, but Nora now understood those emotions better than any junior in college should. She felt herself turn away from them.

“You don't want to do opera anymore?” her program director repeated when she returned to New Haven.

She shook her head.

He considered this. “I always encourage students to explore different facets of music. But, Nora—you are gifted. Dazzlingly gifted. Your place with a major house—one hesitates to say it is assured . . .”

Nora stopped listening. One hesitates to say, she thought. Yes, one hesitates. One should hesitate. What is the point of singing in French, in Italian, in strange tongues? She took history-of-music courses the next semester, courses with textbooks that she could read on the train. She decided not to audition for the Paris program. She decided to stay close to home.

Her senior year, she struggled to pass. She didn't tell her program director about her mother, even though he kept trying to pry information from her. Her scholarship was in jeopardy, and she knew the logical thing would be to explain her circumstances, as Leo urged. But she didn't want to be looked at with pity, passing through the narrow halls of the music department. By April of her senior year, her mom was in a second remission. Nora turned in her midterm papers late and begged for leniency. “I'll pass you,” the director said finally. “But only if you stay on for a year as a voice coach.” “Me?” Nora repeated. “Those who can't do, teach,” he said lightly.

He had hoped she would see how much better she was than the freshmen, that she would fall in love with opera again. Marilyn Horne and Renata Scotto were the master-class teachers that year, and they both advised that she continue with her training. “You are meant for La Scala,” Renata Scotto told her in her lovely, lilting English. “This is not a compliment! This is the calling. You must answer.”

Instead, Nora discovered that she loved teaching. She was good at it. “That's great,” Leo said. “You can give lessons when we move to Philly.”

“Do you see what's happening?” Stephen groaned. “Already you're regressing because of him.”

Maybe, but being in New Haven that year had worked out well. Leo was finishing up school in Boston, and her mother seemed to be in the clear. Soon, she and Leo would be in Philly once more. She would give lessons. Maybe she would even try her hand at jazz. The feeling of that summer would return.

No one could have known what the next few years would hold. No one would have thought the end was so near. Their glorious summer retreated into the distance, and over time the memory of it confused her. What had once been her escape had become a prison. How does one escape the escape?

Nora scoops the bobby pins from the sink. She faces her reflection to ready herself once more. The creak of the ceiling tells her it is time.

Fourteen

L
eo imagines it was the grief talking. He watches the bartender assemble his gin and tonic, tiny bubbles racing past the ice. A wedge of lime bobs at the surface like a bloated corpse.

Stephen didn't mean it, Leo will assure Nora later, assuming she decides to join him at the party. Who knows where she had run off to?

The bartender plucks a cocktail napkin from a stack. Leo recognizes it from the kitchen, the bright green edges fanning out to the world like steps in miniature. The bartender places the drink upon the napkin with great ceremony and then bows. “Er, cheers,” Leo says, taken aback by the man's solemnity.

People are weird. It is Leo's only way of making sense of the world, the patronizing Stephens and strangely formal bartenders. But at least the bartender has respect for his trade. “Whatever one does, one should take it seriously,” Michael often remarked, and Leo looks for it at work. Guys like Dave wear slouchy khakis and play video games, too cool to care.

Leo spears the lime with a thin, red straw. “People don't always do what makes them happy,” Stephen had lectured. Leo takes it out on the lime, the wedge turning pulpy.

Across the room, Stephen chats with a tall woman in a silver cocktail dress. Leo recognizes her as one of their mother's friends. She smiles as she speaks, toying with an earring, regarding Stephen through a fringe of lashes.

Leo has long been resigned to his brother's being the handsome one—there is no fighting it. But he also suspects that women can somehow detect Stephen's aloofness in the way that mosquitoes are drawn to certain blood types. They sniff out the sweet challenge of him from across the room.

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.