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 his 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 New 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.”

Stephen is aware of a shift of bodies as Leo stalks away. He looks down at the plates in his hands. He is surprised by the sight of so much food, surprised to find himself holding all this.

He sits down on the window seat, setting the other plate across from him. It’ll look like someone’s with me, he thinks.

The party is reflected in the glass of the bay windows. He can’t see out into the street, can only see the dresses and the bodies, the wash of warm light. His thoughts drift to his grandmother. This is where they would have put her—by the window, so that she would be out of the way. She would have watched the whole scene, and then Stephen would have talked with her about it on Tuesday.

He bites miserably into a piece of dry bread. Dinner with a ghost, he thinks, feeling the cool air through the window’s glass. For just a moment, closing his eyes, he can feel her there beside him, keeping him quiet company.