Sixteen

Nora stands beside her friend, not wanting to disrupt his moment. He had closed his eyes just as she approached. She wonders if he might be trying to atone for the party, muttering a mourning prayer under his breath, but then his eyes blink open.

“That didn’t go so great, I see.” She gestures toward the second plate.

“I thought the surest way to his heart would be his stomach.”

Nora smiles and sits beside Stephen. “That way might be blocked by a few martinis.”

“I’m just glad someone’s willing to sit next to me.”

“Oh, I’m not the only one.” Nora had watched the women turn their heads when Stephen passed. She picks up a piece of cake, flecked with poppy seeds. “Give him time. He’ll come around.”

“I’m not so sure he should.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Stephen sighs. “I don’t blame him for being mad. I need to learn how to shut my mouth.”

“Oh, Stephen.” Nora looks at him, hanging his head. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. I didn’t hear you say anything too bad.”

“How much did you hear, exactly?”

“Enough to know you were just being a friend.”

Stephen takes this in and reaches for a sandwich. “I hope Stuart didn’t talk your ear off. It looked like you were cornered there.”

“I didn’t mind.” She had been happy to listen to him, especially because he seemed so eager for company. The real issue had been her shoes.

Stuart had started talking to her smack in the middle of the room. There was nothing to lean against, no table or pillar, and she stood listening to him with a smile plastered on her face, wishing desperately for a chair. She shifted her weight back and forth, left to right, right to left, in silent counts of ten.

She remembered the magazine article suggesting that the trick at parties is to circulate. Talk to each guest for ten minutes and then move on, it advised. This struck her as so obvious at the time, in the purgatorial calm of the dentist’s waiting room, that she made an impatient noise. Why did magazines specialize in the obvious? Later, in the dentist’s chair, under the comforting weight of the lead apron, Nora imagined herself finally nailing the party this year and proving herself to be a worthy future in-law. This year, she would show them.

In practice, though, it felt impossible. How was she supposed to turn Stuart away when he was chattering on so happily? If she excused herself, where was she supposed to go? She didn’t recognize anyone in her vicinity. This was not the conversational do-si-do she had imagined, gliding from one partner to the next. She was about to mumble that she needed to use the bathroom when Stephen appeared, saving her. And what did it mean that she felt more at ease at a dentist’s office than at a cocktail party?

“I saw you talking to June and Friends,” Stephen notes. “How’d that go?”

Nora makes a face in response and takes a huge bite of cake. Stephen bursts out laughing.

“That bad?”

It started so innocently. Nora relays to Stephen how June had gestured for her to come join her circle, introducing her to Catherine and Sissy. “You’re the singer!” Catherine exclaimed. Catherine was tall and willowy, in a shimmery dress that accentuated her tan. She looked like the type who played tennis. Nora could picture her with a visor on, a white tennis skirt accentuating her long legs. “I’ve always wished I could sing. Do you perform?”

“Um, there’s a café where I sing. Jazz? On Manning?” Nora’s statements became questions as though she were fifteen. “And I just started singing with a gospel choir.”

“Gospel?” Sissy stirred. Sissy was petite, her hair the color of autumn, wearing a navy dress.

“Nora studied opera at Yale,” June interrupted.

“Gospel is wonderful,” Catherine said, waving June off. “I’ve always loved it.”

“Really?” Nora asked.

“We tried to get the Harlem Boys Choir for the last Komen event, actually.” Behind Catherine, June rolled her eyes. “What an amazing thing that would be, don’t you think? Pink ribbons on their black robes. They were booked, but we’ve got our eye on them for next year.”

“Have you done gospel before?” Sissy wanted to know.

“Me? Oh, no. I mean, I didn’t grow up going to church or anything like that.”

“So what prompted you to join?” Catherine was so tall, but she had a gentleness about her, a permanent mildness in her expression. Nora decided to answer earnestly.

“I’ve always loved different forms of music, the challenge of trying something new. After being trained classically, it tests you to break those rules.”

“That’s wonderful,” Catherine said warmly. “I’d love to come see you perform sometime.”

“Oh! That would be great,” Nora said, feeling pleased.

“We’ve been meaning to come hear the choir,” June remarked. “Especially with Carol participating all these years.”

“Carol?” Sissy asked.

“The maid,” June said. “Though I should say housekeeper, which is the term we prefer. She and Nora are quite chummy, giggling down in the laundry room like a couple of sisters.”

June smiled at her, and Nora felt the heat rise to her face.

“Ugh! Leave it to June,” Stephen says, shaking his head. “That’s awful.”

It was awful. Nora had stood there, her cheeks advertising her shame while June sipped her wine. Nora felt like an exhibit at the zoo, the three of them white-coated scientists making notes on their clipboards. Hangs out with black people. Flusters easily.

“I, for one, have no talent in the arts,” Catherine observed. “Though Bruce and I are thinking about dance lessons.” June and Sissy cooed over this, but Nora’s thoughts were still behind as, dazed, she felt the sting of June’s words. What a fool she was, expounding on jazz and gospel, mentioning the club as though they would care.

“I should have been prepared for it,” Nora says glumly. “I hate that feeling, you know? Being caught off guard is the worst.”

“That’s how my mom works, though. The minute there’s a threat, she goes in for one of her jabs.”

Nora gazes at her across the room, her chandelier earrings catching the light. June is wearing an emerald blouse with iridescent threads and long, cuffed sleeves. Surely that kind of sleeve has a name. The blouse is tucked into a satin skirt that falls to the floor. The collar, turned up, frames her face aristocratically.

It is a display Nora cannot keep up with, like the ever-changing windows at Saks. And it isn’t just June’s beauty, her perfectly assembled wardrobe. She also has a sort of polish, a refinement that Nora knows she will never achieve. When Nora complimented her on her shoes, satin peep-toes that sent her soaring into another stratosphere, June smiled indulgently. “D’Orsay heels,” she said, and Nora felt the stab of her ignorance. This was the constant reminder, that Nora inhabits a world with objects whose names she does not know, blouses and shoes and furniture, a vocabulary she never learned.

“I don’t feel like much of a threat,” she confesses.

The women had continued on, mercifully ignoring her, talking about the latest gossip: alleged misconduct by a certain professional golfer, as reported to Sissy by the friend of a very good friend. “People just want to take him down because he’s the very best,” Catherine said dismissively. “I don’t know about that,” Sissy replied. “Men like that are never loyal.”

“Who do you mean?” Nora wanted to ask loudly. “And if you prefer the term housekeeper, June, then why not use it?”

What a relief it would be to talk back! To voice her thoughts and be the uncultured loudmouth. Maybe it’s how her dad feels, proud of his obnoxiousness. Maybe there is pride in the absence of manners.

“It’s the worst feeling,” she remarks to Stephen.

He raises a brow.

“Those comments. You’re right that they’re jabs. It would be better if she just came out and said something. But instead it’s always in this sneaky way that makes you think you’ve imagined it.”

Stephen nods. “People can put up with being bitten by a wolf. What riles them is a bite from a sheep.”

Nora looks down at her plate of food. She probably has poppy seeds stuck in her teeth. The cocktail napkin in her hand is stuffed into the shape of a ball, and without thinking about it, she’s slumped into her usual terrible posture, the shape of a C.

“I’m an impostor,” she says.

“Nora! What do you mean?”

“I’m always trying so hard to fit in, to play the part. Every year I tell myself that the party will finally feel normal, that this will come naturally to me. But it’s not who I am. All of this—it’s never going to be second nature.”

Each year, the party looms on the calendar. The hunt begins in spring for the perfect dress. She had overdressed her first year, trying too hard in red, then overcompensated the next in a casual floral wrap (“How very bohemian,” June had murmured, surveying her). Every year since she has recalibrated, trying to get the look just right. The ivory dress on the hanger struck her as the perfect balance, slightly understated in the fabric and length, making up for it in the details. “It looks great on you,” the salesgirl confirmed in the fitting room.

But June still managed to make her feel like a peasant, like someone who had wandered in from the shore, dirty and in rags, trailing seaweed.

“But don’t you see? That’s the point.”

“What do you mean?”

“My mom doesn’t want you to feel comfortable. That’s how you would want someone to feel. She has none of that concern. She can only feel secure by putting others down.”

“You really think that?”

“She doesn’t just do it to you. Surely you’ve seen it in action.”

Nora considers this. At one moment June had suddenly nudged Catherine and Sissy. “Look at Anne!” she hissed when a stunning woman entered the room. “Wearing a mink stole as if it’s fall!” Sissy smirked, but Catherine shrugged. “Well, it was a chilly day,” she pointed out, and Nora thought to herself that perhaps Catherine wasn’t so bad.

No dress will ever cut it. This is what Stephen has been trying to tell her. June’s game was predicated on undermining people. She came up behind you and settled her spectacular shoe on your end of the seesaw. She never wanted you to feel as if you’d gotten the balance right.

“Maybe,” Nora admits. “But what am I supposed to do about it?”

“You could stop trying to please her. You could think about how you bring something else to the table.”

“Which would be what? My charming Jersey roots? My heartwarming friendship with the help?”

Stephen regards her, his face thoughtful. “Think of all the people in our family as cocktails,” he says finally. “Like what sort of drink would you say my dad is?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Nora thinks it over. “Something high-­powered. Scotch, I guess?”

“Scotch it is. Leo?”

“Leo’s more of a beer.”

“He’s such a beer. And June?”

Nora looks at her, tall and elegant. “A glass of white wine.”

“Chilly and tart.”

Nora laughs. “I like this. And you?”

“Pick something good.”

“A glass of red. Smooth and elegant.”

“A pinot,” Stephen says with dignity. “One day the masses will wake up from their love affair with merlot.”

“And Carol would be like a rum and Coke.”

“Carol?”

“You know, kind of spicy but sweet. Though maybe I’m just thinking of island drinks.” Nora frowns, wondering if it’s a racist choice.

“No, I was surprised you mentioned her. I thought the next candidate would be you.”

“Oh.” Nora bites her lip. “I’ll bite, I guess.” Her pulse quickens as she watches Stephen’s face.

He leans forward. “Water.”

“Water? Stephen, that’s awful!”

“No, no! You’re virtue instead of vice. A source of clarity in our corrupt household. That’s the whole point!”

“Ugh! I can’t believe you think I’m water. Municipal tap, right?”

“Nope. Fresh from a mountain spring.”

“Uh-huh. Speaking of which”—she dangles her empty glass—“shall we?”

“Sure.”

“No one ever asks for water, you’ll notice.”

Stephen smiles and picks up the plates. “I’ll get rid of these and meet you. Something tells me our cold chardonnay wouldn’t be pleased to see these at the front of the room.”

“Okay.” Nora feels lighter when she stands. It felt good to sit, and probably the champagne was kicking in. Being tipsy usually helps with heels.

But it’s more than that. Stephen always has the ability to make her feel better. Leo would have batted her concerns away. “Nah, she didn’t mean anything by it,” he would have said if she told him about June. “She’s probably been wanting to hear Carol sing.” Nora, exasperated, would regret having brought it up.

Stephen was right. Nora is suddenly glad she hadn’t shrugged off Stuart, making up some excuse the way that silly magazine suggested. She didn’t have it in her to act that way, even when her feet have grown numb beneath her. She may not always know what to say, what to wear, how to handle guests—but at least she knows how to listen.

She makes her way to the bar, glancing around for Leo. He is talking to a group of people with yet another drink in hand. He catches her eye and winks, then makes a lewd gesture with his tongue. “Leo!” she almost chastises aloud, horrified. She shakes her head at him. He grins.

Drunk. Normally he can hold his liquor, but she’s seen him down several of those horrible green martinis.

“Two glasses of champagne, please,” she says to the bartender, who nods.

“I didn’t really mind” was what she had meant to say to Stephen, seeing his failed attempt at reconciliation with Leo. Watching as he’d bravely offered that plate of food and been spurned.

The bartender passes her the two glasses of bubbly. “I didn’t mind hearing you say what you did,” she wanted to say. “Because it was a relief, in a certain way, to hear it.”

But instead of relaying any of this to him, she had ended up talking about the ridiculous incident with June—as though Stephen didn’t have more important things on his mind. She has yet to even talk with him about his grandmother. What kind of a friend is she?

A clinking of glass alerts her to the front of the room. The annual toast, she remembers, seeing Michael stand before them. Stephen is several yards away and makes eye contact with her, but there are too many people for him to squeeze through. He looks at her apologetically. Nora glances down at her two glasses, wondering what to do with the extra, then turns to the guest next to her. “Would you mind passing this down?” she asks. She points to Stephen. Somehow, the drink makes its way into Stephen’s hand, and accepting it, he looks delightedly at her, as though receiving a surprise award. “Cheers,” she mouths.

Michael, at the front of the room, clears his throat. “Thank you very much for coming.” His voice is pleasant, an alto-baritone of amiability, its warmth carrying across the room.

“As you know, June and I always look forward to this day. Today marks an especially memorable Bloomsday because it is, of course, the centennial.” Here he nods up toward the banner above him, and a ripple of appreciation passes through the room.

“If you’ll forgive the shameless plug, I should also mention that there’s a wonderful biography of Joyce coming out in honor of the occasion, published by a charming local press.” A chuckle from the crowd, and Nora remembers the postcards downstairs on the entry table advertising the book.

“Today is also a memorable day for very different reasons.” He pauses, shifting his weight. “For those of you who don’t know, this morning we buried my mother.”

Nora’s breath catches. She looks around the room. June has the smile from the book plug still frozen on her face. People glance her way, surprised.

Michael clears his throat. “How strange it must seem, to hold a party the same day as her funeral. To drink champagne and chat in lieu of traditional mourning rites.” Nora’s heart gallops. What was Michael doing? She tries to catch Stephen’s eye, but he is watching with a detached expression. Leo doesn’t look concerned, but then again, he isn’t entirely sober. The silence in the room is absolute.

“It might strike some as inappropriate. The rabbi who performed the services this morning would certainly frown on all this.” Michael attempts a half smile, but the room gives him nothing in return.

“Many people would wonder why a book, of all things, deserves attention on a day like today. Or why we should have a party, for that matter. But to me”—he hesitates, perhaps sensing the vulnerable mood of the room—“to me, never before has this book or this party mattered more.

“Part of me thinks my mother would have wanted us to mourn in the traditional Jewish way.” His eyes don’t meet Stephen’s, but Nora can feel these words directed at him. “Tradition meant something to her. Religion meant a great deal to her. But another part of me thinks—knows—that she would have wanted death to steal off with as little as possible. She always wanted what was best for me and my sister, and I think that was her real gift. She wanted what we wanted.”

Nora hears the strain of his voice. From the belly, she thinks, imaging the air burdening his windpipe. It is what she always tells her students.

“As you know, Ulysses opens with a young Stephen Dedalus reflecting on his mother’s death. He, too, wonders about the mourning he has denied her. ‘You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you,’ Buck Mulligan tells him.” This Michael reads from an index card that has materialized in his palm.

“Mulligan has little regard for his friend. His rebuke is meant to goad him, to get a rise out of him. He later offers a gruff apology, saying that he meant no offense to the memory of his mother. ‘I am not thinking of the offense to my mother,’ Stephen replies. ‘I am thinking of the offense to me.’

“And this”—Michael tucks the card into his jacket pocket—“this is what struck me today when I went looking for answers. When I wondered why I was choosing to go forward with this party—when I was up in my office, feeling the weight of the day. Part of me was unsure. Part of me wondered if we shouldn’t just cancel. If that would be the more appropriate thing.” Here, his eyes finally do meet Stephen’s, and Nora understands that children can challenge their fathers as much as fathers can destroy their kids.

“I don’t know that I would’ve noticed these lines a year ago. Certainly, I wouldn’t have looked at that passage the same way. At different times I’ve been struck by different things. By Stephen’s intellect. By Bloom’s humanity. By that scene where he shits in the outhouse, the shock of that, and how it is rendered into something beautiful.

“But today I saw those lines and they were a reminder. More, an invitation. That I think not of the offense to her. That I think instead of me.

“And so I find myself thinking two things on this day, the sixteenth of June, which, like the one before it a hundred years ago, begins with a funeral but ends with something all too lovely. I find myself thinking that with death, we must remember who is left behind. We think automatically of the departed, but we must also think of who is left standing.”

Nora feels the wisp of a breeze touch her shoulder. Even at a party, she thinks. Even at a party about a goddamn book.

“Second, I am reminded that literature provides a comfort. We find solace in its pages. No one can say the right thing to me today; it is a day where words feel insufficient. But this book still speaks to me, after all this time. It always manages to reach me. And that is something worthy of being honored.” Michael pauses and picks up his champagne flute from the windowsill. The room is still silent, but in a different way.

“And so today we celebrate Bloomsday. We celebrate a book’s ability to move us. We celebrate all that makes life worthy, all that makes us rise out of bed when rain and a funeral await. We affirm Molly’s glorious ‘Yes I said yes I will Yes.’ We celebrate this together, and in that I take great comfort. Because when all else has passed, this book will remain.”

He holds his glass aloft. “On behalf of June and my sons, Stephen and Leopold, thank you for coming. Cheers.”

And the crowd murmurs a quiet “Cheers” that is respectful but also a little uncertain, still heavy with the sobriety of the moment. June is gazing at Michael with a glow about her face, a well of feeling for her husband. Leo and Stephen are also looking at their father, Leo’s expression sympathetic, nearly teary. The three of them as they look at Michael are like magnets, the ties drawing each one to him nearly visible.

That is what family means, Nora thinks. Around her, the crowd is milling, whispering. “A funeral?” she hears. “His mother?”

It is true they hadn’t included her. Would it have been so hard for Michael to mention her name? Did June know that she’d been cruel? They could be aloof, selfish, without realizing it. But at times Nora catches a glimpse of beauty there. Not just beauty. Love.

Theirs was their own love. It wasn’t like her mother’s, protective and obvious. Maybe it was a selfish kind of love because it had trouble letting go of its own desires, but it was there. Sometimes you saw it when you least expected—not in an embrace, but in a speech. It came out before a crowd because that was their only way of expressing it. They couldn’t access their sense of family at the kitchen table or in a hug before going to bed. They didn’t go to the mall or to matinees. Theirs is not an everyday family. But it is a family nonetheless.

Nora’s father had stood like a buffoon in the corner after the funeral. He smiled in his awkward way, nodding at guests, receiving their sympathy as if he had earned it. There was no speech.

He had started a fight with her that very afternoon. She wanted to kick herself for not having seen it coming. The dishes. She’d let the dishes go. “Your mother’s funeral, and you can’t even do this much?” His voice was thick with disgust. There was no thought as to what she might be going through. Was it so much to ask? To have a dad who cared?

Leo thought she was embarrassed by her parents’ lack of money. He didn’t see that his family’s wealth is in its flaws. That is their luxury. Oh, they have their issues, issues that could be stretched into years of therapy should any of them seek it. But the absence of yelling, the absence of fear. To not know what it’s like to have your father scream. To not tiptoe around that sleeping giant of anger, fearful of what might rouse it. To have this family’s set of problems would be a laugh.

A hand snakes around her waist. “Hi,” Leo breathes into her neck. She smells the alcohol on his breath. His arm around her is heavy. “So beautiful,” he mumbles, though she isn’t sure if he means the toast or her.

“I’ll let you two have some time together,” Leo had said that day. Thinking she and her dad would want time alone, the way a normal father and daughter would. “Okay,” she replied, smiling weakly. “Sure.” She watched him walk down the block to the park.

Some part of her hoped her dad might be a little different when she came back inside. That he might, in his awkward way, make an effort. “So it’s just us now, huh?” Or “I know this has been hard for you, Nora.” And it is this part of herself that she hates the most, the part that had hoped despite knowing better.

“You left dishes,” he said in the kitchen. “You knew everyone was coming today.”

“Here,” she whispers to Leo, slipping her arm around him. “Lean on me.”

“What kind of daughter are you?” The plate he was gesturing with fractured as he brought it down. Maybe he didn’t mean to do it so forcefully. An edge sliced his finger and he looked at her accusingly, the red gash echoing his angry face. Tears sprang in her eyes.

Some air, Nora thinks, shuffling to the door. But when they reach the cool air of the hall, it is Nora who feels dizzy.

“I’ll be right back,” Leo says, lumbering to the bathroom.

When she called her dad a few days later to check on him, he was irate that she hadn’t called sooner. “The food’s running out!” he complained, and for the first time since her mom died, Nora wanted to laugh. He wasn’t trying to be intimidating or frightening. In a strange way, he was a child. Of course he didn’t know how to be father. “There’s this place,” Nora told him calmly, “called a store.” She felt strangely peaceful hanging up, as if she had dodged a bullet.

Nora knows exactly what Michael meant about those left behind, the choices you make. Her father didn’t make it hard. Michael opted for a party over grief. Why couldn’t she do the same?

People always have choices. It is just a matter of seeing them. She doesn’t have to be her father’s keeper or come running when he calls. It occurs to her that maybe this is the one perk of her mother’s absence. Maybe Nora no longer has to put up with him.

The Portmans had suggested what she might have instead. Not in terms of possessions or money. But their vision of what they might be, what they might still become, had perhaps shifted some part of her to feel she had a right to expect more. To love and be loved, to not know fear. To feel her choices and be brave enough to declare them to the world.

The hall around her is filled with chatter. Above the voices, she hears June’s tinkling laugh. Enough with envy, she thinks. She stands up straighter. The wall, at her back, is solid, cool. The wall at her back tells her she is enough.