The Sixteenth of June Read Online Free PDF

okay and deposit the box of cookies from Metropolitan Bakery. “I have office hours at four,” he had warned her. But sitting there, the grounds stretching past her window in a vista, he found himself settling into his wingback chair. He talked with her about the events of the past week, how angered he was by the politicians and the talking heads. “I was born in New York,” he said. “And here are all these people in Texas and Alabama discussing it like it’s their tragedy. Like they’re allowed to speak for the victims!” She nodded sagely.
    They continued talking, their discussion lightening as the sky grew dark. He told her about teaching, that sea of alien faces smirking at him. How they fidgeted, turning in papers that were a collective atrocity. And this at an Ivy League school! Next he was going on about his committee, the fatiguing levels of ass-kissing its members required. He felt as if he were getting a degree in babysitting, in appeasement, in coddling. “Stephen, don’t you have office hours?” she interrupted, glancing at the clock. “No one ever comes anyway,” he replied hastily, reaching for a cookie. He thought he saw a momentary gleam in her eye, but she said nothing, her head bobbing away.
    And so what began as a pleasant surprise of a visit, a that-wasn’t-so-bad sort of visit, became a routine. He went monthly at first, then a bit more often. Until finally, by the time Leo and Nora got engaged, he was going every Tuesday, a ritual as comforting as attending synagogue.
    He told himself he was being a good grandson. Responsible. Slightly heroic, even. But when he purchased his ten-trip ticket at the urine-scented kiosk, he didn’t feel the weight of obligation. Grasping that ticket, he felt free.
    He looked forward to the meditative rocking of the train. He had come to know its rhythm: the particular place where the electricity might cut out for a moment before surging back; the moment when the train left the rickety tracks of Thirtieth Street and picked up speed. The conductor, punching tickets as he teetered down the aisle, always nodded at him in recognition.
    With each stop, the town names rang out overhead: Chessssssstnut Hill! Noooooorristown! This bellowing struck Stephen as quaint, a throwback to an era of transport involving steamer trunks and porters. By the time Pine Grove’s stop approached, a feeling of goodwill found its way to him and he felt lighter, jauntier.
    There was none of that buzz in the air at Pine Grove, the incessant hum of reachability. Around him now, the commuters thumbing their phones seem tethered to some invisible force, as though at any moment the great cord of connectivity might give a tug and yank them off the platform. The Times recently ran an article on the growing number of people who check email first thing in the morning. It was a rising demographic, he read. He pictured Leopold scowling at his phone while shuffling to the bathroom in that foul old robe.
    It was the sort of thing he could have shared with his grandmother on a typical Tuesday, a normal Tuesday, when he hadn’t been informed by phone that she likely only had twenty-four hours left. She would have sighed. “We are becoming half-robots,” she would have said knowingly.
    Pine Grove offered him a respite. Each time he walked along the gravel path to its campus, he would be reminded of a leafy sanctuary: college, Central Park. The rush to pair off, to win—it all fell away. No one was in a panic to get to that last chair before the music stopped. No one was in a rush at all.
    Today, it is all different: a new train line, a strange set of names clacking on the signboard. Vendors at coffee carts parked along the platform dole out coffee and plastic-wrapped bagels in a steady stream. Accustomed to the station’s sleepy noontime calm, Stephen feels unnerved by the harried morning bustle. It occurs to him that he will miss the