The Sixteenth of June Read Online Free PDF Page B

ritual of his visits as much as he will miss her.
    He enters the train after everyone else. The car smells of baked damp, black umbrellas drying at the feet of their owners like small dogs. A heavy spatter hits as the train lurches forward. The weather forecast, following the Bloomsday report, had mentioned the possibility of hail. Stephen takes comfort in this. The skies should darken for Grandma Portman, a terrible morning to atone for their terrible mourning.
    She had gone more gently than he would have thought possible. No battles or resuscitating. “As little suffering as we can hope for,” Miriam Maxwell, Pine Grove’s director, had told him, and he understood that he was supposed to feel grateful.
    â€œTickets!” the conductor cries.
    It was Miriam who had called him on Tuesday morning. Stephen was groggy when he answered the phone and felt a second behind everything she said. “Twenty-four hours left?” he repeated. “How could you possibly know that?” Yet he registered her calm, the quiet space she gave him on the line, and realized she must make these calls often.
    He still didn’t believe her when he went to Pine Grove that afternoon. His grandmother had never fully recovered from the embolism, but just recently he had thought that she was starting to look better. She had died at dawn on Wednesday, alone.
    The conductor looks menacing as he comes forward, snapping the jaws of his punch. The expert commuters all have their tickets out, badges of veteran experience. Stephen unfurls the receipt of his one-way peak fare, a scroll with a hieroglyph of symbols. He’d been informed at the information desk that his ten-trip ticket couldn’t be used. Four unpunched slots remain: [7] [8] [9] [10]. He’d never imagined that he might not use it in its entirety. How long will it sit now in his wallet, a reminder?
    The conductor swipes his receipt, punches it, and walks off with it in hand, muttering, “Tickets! Tickets!” Stephen does not have a chance to object, to ask if he will need it later, much less to inquire—as he had planned—if cabs are available at his stop. The synagogue is three miles from the station, he had been told.
    Next Tuesday, he reflects. Tuesday will be the longest day.
    A rustle of paper from the man seated beside him, scrawling away on a yellow legal pad. Stephen watches him, his pen flying. Stephen needs for the ride to be productive. He knows this but resists it. He hates toting around his briefcase on the day of her funeral.
    But life didn’t stop for her. His EGL 220 class had continued, Stephen standing in front of them on Thursday (yesterday! Just yesterday) feeling drained. The show must go on, he had thought, leaning on the lectern.
    He could have canceled class; no one would have faulted him. But he’s been putting in the bare minimum as it is. His lectures have grown shorter. He grades hastily. Paradoxically, this has resulted in his students’ perking up, deciding he isn’t so bad. The less of himself he puts into the class, it seems, the more they like him.
    His briefcase holds a thick stack of Milton essays in one compartment and a thin sheath of dissertation notes in the other. It isn’t a choice, really. He can’t bear to face his proposal. He isn’t sufficiently caffeinated, adrenaline-charged, amped. It will likely sit untouched until the last possible moment: 2:00 a.m., the night before a meeting with Stuart, nervous energy flooding his system as he curses himself for having neglected it.
    His efforts thus far have yielded little more than multicolored stickies in various books. Reading 1922: A Return to the Scene of the Modern had achieved the status of a sea creature, teeming with colorful protrusions like a coral reef. Meanwhile, titles flit through his mind, which he jots down in his notebook. Long paragraphs should be filling it. Instead he has single lines with clumsy edits:
    The Caves