The Sixteenth of June (5 page)

BOOK: The Sixteenth of June
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No, she hadn't gotten the impression that Hannah Portman was a woman who loved art. She didn't seem especially grandmotherly either. It was hard to imagine her knitting baby bootees, cooing over a bassinet. She seemed like a woman who had perhaps seen too much. A woman exhausted by the long life she'd led.

Perhaps Grandma Portman had felt out of place at Delancey, uncomfortable around the bold, expensive artwork on the walls, the intricate rugs. Looking at June—too tall, too thin, too made-up—she might have wondered why Michael hadn't ended up with a sweet dental hygienist, a Moira or a Debbie. A nice Jewish girl who would pump out kids and bake cakes. Grandma Portman might have imagined them together in the kitchen, sharing recipes, laughter, prayers. When she thought ahead to old age, she probably never imagined such silence.

Nora never stopped to think about why Grandma Portman sat there, withdrawn. What if she dreaded their too-perfect get-­togethers? Maybe she longed for the return to the nursing home, where she could finally relax. She'd call up a friend so that they could watch
Wheel of Fortune
together, clucking sympathetically when the black bankrupt sign hit. They would trade stories about the strange creatures their children had become—their modern, complicated lives.

Nora should have made more of an effort with her. She should have confessed her unease that day, sitting down next to her. “I'm always worried I'll spill something on this couch,” she could have said. “And, my God, the rugs.”

Maybe Hannah Portman would have stirred from her reverie and looked at her anew, this bushy-haired girl who could do more than sing. “I didn't grow up like this,” Nora could have added, because Hannah Portman might have just assumed she had. Those Yale kids, such snobs.

Accustomed to being ignored, Grandma Portman might have enjoyed having an audience. “In my time . . . ,” she might have started, because wasn't that what old people were supposed to say? Yet Nora has never heard anyone actually say it.

Grandma Portman could have recounted a story from when Michael was young, a boy in Brookline. How she watched for him through the window, waiting for him to come home from school, the plate of cookies already out. And then looked on as he did his homework, clutching his pencil too tight. So smart, she might have said. Even then, you could tell.

They might have taken a liking to each other, she and Grandma Portman. The two of them were the only ones who did not zig and zag, but watched it all from a remove.

Maybe that was why Stephen had visited her—because they both felt like outsiders. Maybe no one feels as if they belong in this family, even the people in it.

Nora should have made some fractional effort with her. Who knows what it might have yielded? Instead she had ignored her, too caught up in her own troubles. She'd made a snide joke about how Hannah Portman resembled a taxidermied animal. And she had said it to the person who loved her most.

She feels for Stephen's arm beside her, touches it. I am the one who's stuffed and fake, she wants to tell him. She thinks of his weekly visits to the woman they had all ignored and feels a swell of feeling for her friend. I'm so sorry. If she could say it in Hebrew she would. May peace find you, Stephen.

His hand folds down, finds hers. And here you must comfort me, she thinks. On top of it all, you must comfort me.

Five

L
eo reaches for a white paper plate, using his thumbnail to separate it from the stack. People stand in groups around him in the synagogue's basement. The burial had taken less time than he imagined. Who knew funerals were so fast? This business of death is efficient.

But this is the type of thinking that would make Nora and Stephen wince. They think he is a heathen for not dabbing his eyes and staring off in regret. Only a barbarian consults his watch at a funeral. Only a barbarian is tempted by the food.

The buffet table bisects the room. Black trays with clear plastic lids display their contents: smoked fish, pasta salad, sandwiches. A catering company probably has an in with the synagogue. Shivah trays. So good, you will die. Leo disguises his laugh by coughing into his shoulder. Aunt Sharon must have made the arrangements. His mom had glanced at the table, her lips pursed in disapproval.

Leo reaches for a sandwich, a cross-section of turkey and lettuce and tomato speared with a toothpick, green plastic wrap on its end. Is it decorative? For safety? Did that little bit of green protect you from the toothpick's point? He contemplates this, about to take a bite, when he feels himself being watched. He looks up. What? he thinks, as Nora meets his eye accusingly.

Nora's eyes flash their code.
Memo to Leo: Be the hero. Don't eat the hero
. He drops the sandwich like a dog.

The morning has been filled with such rebukes. How Stephen and Nora carried on at the cemetery! Murmuring to each other, eyes lowered. Their gestures composed a ballet, a great performance of propriety. Meanwhile, he watched as Nora tugged at her outfit during the service, so anxious to get everything right. Arms crossed? No, better straight. She darted nervous looks at June, attempting to mirror her movements. And what was so respectful about that? The dead don't care if we slouch. But there Stephen and Nora stand, so upright and stiff, too pious for food.

Leo has given in to their small demands, not minding the way anyone else in his position might. Whether you stand straight or talk in a hushed voice at a funeral is meaningless. But not causing a scene? That, as they say in the MasterCard ads, is priceless.

The dead probably want us to do whatever we think offends them. Eat, cough, laugh. The dead probably long for such acts. All those stirrings and scratchings—glorious when you can no longer do them. These are the fidgets and falterings of what it means to be human. When we are most ourselves, our faulty selves, and finally relent.

“Go ahead,” the dead might say. “Let one rip.”

In the far corner, Nora and Stephen stand huddled together. Their friendship bobs between them like a current, keeping Leo at bay.

He feels a tap at his arm. Magnified eyes under oversize glasses, and what can only be a wig, sitting at an angle that is just slightly off.

“A sad day,” the woman remarks.

“Thank you for coming,” he replies, holding out his hand. “Leopold.”

The old lady comes up to his elbow. She takes his hand using just her fingers, the pressure nonexistent.

“Oh, I know who
you are. I saw pictures.” She shows no sign of relinquishing his hand, and he has the strange feeling of having loaned it to her.

“You're from Pine Grove?”

She nods. “A couple of us came over. The shuttle made a special trip.”

Perhaps at a certain age, he reflects, you dispense with names.

“But where is Stephen?” She peers around the room.

Leo gestures with his free hand and she follows his gaze. Stephen and Nora have been joined by another old-timer, a fluff of white hair over a stick of a body, like a Q-tip.

“There he is!” A smile breaks out across her face. Her lips are frosted pink, a horror against her yellow teeth. “A wonderful grandson, to visit so often.”

“Right,” Leo mutters.

“I don't mean it that way. You kids are busy with your own lives. She knew that.” The woman brushes away the thought. She has pink polish on her nails, which appear large and rounded, like coins. “It's just that those visits meant a lot to her. She kept to herself, you know. But when Stephen was there, she'd light up. A kind soul, your brother.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Well. Our condolences for your loss.” The woman pauses, nods. “She will be missed.” With that she begins shuffling down the buffet.

Leo feels the faint trace of her fingers, his hand finally released. “Our condolences,” she had said. Was she speaking for the lot of them, a bingo club or mah-jongg group? Was she their ambassador? Or had she once been married, her husband now gone but still causing her to default into an automatic
we
after so many decades together? Maybe she was the resident busybody at the nursing home, the one who kept tabs on everyone and attended the funerals. Grandma Portman had probably frowned at her pink lipstick and nails, her ridiculous lopsided wig.

Grandma Portman was impassive. Leo couldn't tell if she enjoyed seeing them at Delancey or if she didn't want to be there. He wouldn't have been offended if it were the latter; he simply wanted to know, either way. It was her inscrutability that bothered him.

Stephen probably knew the answer. Who visited a nursing home like that? Monthly would be one thing, but weekly! Stephen probably wanted to live out there, where his old-man wardrobe of cardigan sweaters and houndstooth blazers would fit right in.

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.

BOOK: The Sixteenth of June
6.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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