Free The Sixteenth of June by Maya Lang Page B

feels it coming from across the room. Do not belch and then blow out your Coke .
    His own parents aren’t so particular. His mom, itching to get back to the city, will whisper to his dad at the earliest possible moment. His dad will nod while looking out at the room, a politician getting input from an aide.
    His parents wouldn’t care if Leo ate sandwich after sandwich. They wouldn’t care if he left early to squeeze in some work at the office. Nora fears them too much, convinced that the right combination of outfit and makeup and conversational morsel will produce some effect on them. But maybe that’s how girls are, always trying.
    His dad is the last person to sweat that stuff. He did the prayer thing because it was how he’d been raised, but it wasn’t some display of reverence, the way it is for Stephen. When his dad surveyed the room, it was to check on Sharon, to make sure he had talked with each person there. His dad understands that funerals are a time for family, a time to gather the people around you—not to prove how devout you are.
    Follow-up memo to Leopold: phones are to be put away.
    He slips his Palm back into his pocket. It makes her less anxious, he figures. So he resists the urge to scroll through his email—a workday, his in-box piling up, a mountain to conquer later. Resists checking for pregame updates. (Malone out with his knee!). A travesty that Game 5 is tonight, tip-off at nine, the heart of the party, with an upset in the air. How could you not root for Detroit? The city of underdogs. He won’t be able to sneak up to the TV without his mom tearing him a new one, and his dad isn’t a basketball fan. “League of thugs,” he always says when Leo mentions the NBA.
    Leo has resisted other things as well. “Nice out here,” he’d wanted to remark that morning as they glided through the suburbs. The trees looked like broccoli. The potholes disappeared, the road smooth beneath them. He wanted to suggest a quick detour to look at houses, imagining which one might someday be theirs. But Nora’s face had been set, her eyes distant, and so he had refrained. He let her have her space, just as his dad was letting his mom have the party. Because that is what you do.
    It is enough for him, what he has. He gets impatient sometimes, wanting to run out into their future, because he can see it waiting—the house, the lawn, the tricycle resting on the drive. They aren’t ready yet, he knows. The hiccup of the past few years—well, who could have seen that coming?
    And so he must be patient, bide his time. Try not to let those thoughts creep in when he worries if there will ever be a wedding. Of course there will. The doubts materialize when they’re out like this, at a social event, when he can feel people look at them and wonder.
    â€œNo date yet?” Aunt Sharon had said, eyeing him, hefting her mass up the hill after the burial. She was wearing a muumuu that his mom had smirked at. “Well, what’s the rush, anyway?” She lit a cigarette, pausing to exhale through her nostrils. “It’s better to wait. You kids are too young.”
    Twenty-seven isn’t young, he wanted to retort. And who was she to be giving advice? None of his friends are married yet, true. Dave had howled in protest when Leo announced the engagement. “You’re in your prime!” Dave had said, aghast.
    They didn’t see that waiting was pointless. Because if he and Nora want the house, the kids (three, he imagines, playing out different combinations of boy/girl), they have to start taking steps. He isn’t supposed to mention it, but Nora’s birthday is approaching in August, her twenty-eighth. And after the wedding, the honeymoon (Hawaii, he imagines, lush and warm, too hot to quarrel; lethargy; flowers of idleness), she will be that much closer to thirty.
    It’s just a matter of time, he always tells himself. He has to