Real Life(42)

Wallace hums. “I mean, I wouldn’t say that I want to leave, but I’ve thought about it, sure.”

“Why would you do that? I mean, the prospects for . . . black people, you know?”

“What are the prospects for black people?” Wallace asks, though he knows he will be considered the aggressor for this question. Already, they’re taking stock of the tension in his forearms, in his hands, in the way his eyes are narrowing. Tension gathers at the corners of his mouth.

“Well,” Roman says, shrugging, “with a doctorate, you have better prospects, a better job, better outlook. Without it . . . the stats are what they are.”

“Fascinating,” Wallace says.

“Besides, they spent so much money on your training. It seems ungrateful to leave.”

“So I should stay out of gratitude?”

“I mean, if you don’t feel you can keep up, then for sure, you should go. But they brought you in knowing what your deficiencies were and—”

“My deficiencies?”

“Yes. Your deficiencies. I won’t say what they are. You already know. You come from a challenging background. It is unfortunate, but it is how it is.”

Wallace can only taste ashes in his mouth. He dissects a piece of a casserole and chews it thoughtfully. His deficiencies are indeed what they are. There are the gaps in his knowledge about developmental biology, which he has closed steadily over the past few years, through study and coursework. There was also, in those early years, a lack of technical expertise, which he has acquired through practice. But the deficiency to which Roman is alluding is not one of those, not one of the many ways in which people come into graduate school unprepared for its demands, wrong-footed this way and that by its odd rituals and rigors. What Roman is referring to is instead a deficiency of whiteness, a lack of some requisite sameness. This deficiency cannot be overcome. The fact is, no matter how hard he tries or how much he learns or how many skills he masters, he will always be provisional in the eyes of these people, no matter how they might be fond of him or gentle with him.

“Did I hurt your feelings?” Roman asks. “I just want to be clear. I think you should stay. You owe the department that much, don’t you agree?”

“I don’t have anything to say to that, Roman,” Wallace says, smiling. To keep his hands from shaking, he clenches his fists until his knuckles turn to white ridges of pressure.

“Well, think about it,” he says.

“I will, thanks.”

Emma puts her head on Wallace’s shoulder, but she won’t say anything either, can’t bring herself to. No one does. No one ever does. Silence is their way of getting by, because if they are silent long enough, then this moment of minor discomfort will pass for them, will fold down into the landscape of the evening as if it never happened. Only Wallace will remember it. That’s the frustrating part. Wallace is the only one for whom this is a humiliation. He breathes out through the agony of it, through the pressure in his chest. Roman is whispering to Klaus, and they’re laughing about something.

“Can we get that wine back down here?” Lukas asks in a tone that is both polite and pointed. Nathan is on his phone, reading the scores of the badminton competition in Singapore.

“You’ll have to come get it,” Yngve says, holding the bottle up and swirling it.

“Just give it to him,” Enid says. “Jesus.”

Lukas is already standing, coming around Wallace’s side of the table and approaching Yngve. He reaches for the bottle, but Yngve has bolted to his feet.

“You’ll have to be faster,” Yngve says, and Lukas loads his weight and springs for the bottle. Lukas is much shorter than Yngve. He has a compact, muscular body and the features of a cartoon character—wide eyes, large face. Yngve steps back, Lukas steps forward. It’s a dance.

Nathan pushes his glasses back up his nose. He watches the two of them at the head of the table, the swing and pivot of their bodies. The wine sloshes, glugs in the bottle. There is another bottle of wine on the table. Enid watches it very carefully. There’s tension in her neck. Zoe crosses her arms on the table to support herself. Her shoulders shake with laughter. Miller’s eyes fall to her back just as Zoe’s eyes come across her shoulder. Their gazes meet. And Wallace feels it happening, the tightening between people in common attraction.

Yngve puts his arm around Lukas, gets him by the waist, and lifts him up. “Sorry, shorty. You must be this tall to drink wine.”

“Yngve,” Lukas says, but he can’t help himself. He’s flush-faced.

“What are we, children?” Enid asks. She lifts the bottle from the table and slams it down. It does not break. “Take this one.”

Yngve lets Lukas down. Lukas takes the bottle from his hand. There’s no challenge in him anymore. He takes his seat, breathing hard. Nathan looks down with the same prim delicacy with which one might fold a napkin in one’s lap. Wallace smells the wine, its sweet, dark scent.

Cole laughs nervously.

They are always laughing. This is it, Wallace thinks. That’s how they get by. Silence and laughter, silence and laughter, switch and swing. The way one glides through this life without having to think about anything hard. He still feels the sting of embarrassment, but it has ebbed. Vincent’s gaze clips the outside of his own. Wallace eats his food.