Nineteen
Adina
TONIGHT ONSTAGE, EVERYONE WILL BE watching me.
“How are you feeling?” Arjun asks backstage at the symphony hall. He is wearing a dark-gray suit and a pale-yellow tie I cannot wait to unknot later.
“Nervous.”
“That’s normal. It’s good to be a little nervous.”
I exhale, a tornado gust of wind. “How about a lot nervous?”
“You’ll be fantastic, Adina. I have no doubts.” He drops his voice. “Slight change of plans after the show. I’ve been invited to a New Year’s Eve party at Boris Bialik’s house. The performers are welcome, too, and he asked me to extend the invitation to you.”
I scan the hall, make sure it’s empty. My family’s already seated. “I was looking forward to being alone with you.” That was the plan we made during winter break, when I divided my time between practicing in my room, sleeping with—no, having sex with—Arjun at his apartment, and selling guitar picks and bow rosin at Muse and Music. I cannot kiss him at midnight in a room full of people.
“We’ll get a chance. I promise.” His eyes follow the lines of my body, from my emerald dress’s sweetheart neckline, to the dip at my waist, to the flare at my hips. The pumps I borrowed from Ima pinch my feet, but I imagine her looking glamorous in them, going somewhere people would notice her for all the right reasons, and that makes them hurt a little less. I’m wearing the evil-eye bracelet, my only jewelry. My hair is braided and twisted on top of my head so it looks like a crown, held in place by a thousand bobby pins and a gallon of hairspray. The finishing touch: Siren on my lips.
“I hope so.” I bring my hands to the knot of his tie. To anyone walking by, it would look like I’m adjusting it. Instead, I give it a sharp tug.
“Tonight,” he promises, his hand lingering on my lower back for only a second before he joins the audience.
My set is the last one before intermission, so I remain backstage for the first hour of the showcase, listening to the strings and the applause. Representatives from top conservatories are in the audience. After my mistake during rehearsal, I have something to prove to all of them.
I take my place behind the curtains until someone calls my name, and I lead Laurel the pianist onstage.
Lights temporarily blind me, and I teeter in my heels, but once I blink the bright spots away, I take in the sheer grandness of the symphony hall. It is a sold-out show. I can barely see past the first few rows, but everyone is dressed up. Tonight I am on my own for the first time. Solo. Exactly where I am meant to be.
I straighten my spine. My legs stop trembling, and suddenly I am stable. Then I take a deep breath and drag my bow across the strings.
“Spectacular,” Boris Bialik says in the lobby after the show. He pumps my hand up and down. “What a marvelous performance, Adina.”
“Thank you,” I manage to say. My heart is still racing. I knew I played great, but I had what felt like an out-of-body experience while I was up there. Nothing existed but the music and me.
“Will I see you at the party this evening?” Boris asks. “I would love to chat more about your future in music.”
A hand cups my shoulder. “She’ll be there. Thank you, Mr. Bialik.”
“Mr. Bhakta, you were right. She is a delight. Such emotion, such raw talent. And, if you’ll excuse me, Adina, such beauty.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks as Arjun’s hand ever so slightly presses tighter on my shoulder.
“Thank you very much,” I say, but the comment, which in the past might have made me glow, irks me tonight. Does my beauty somehow make me more talented? More worthy of being onstage, because I am nice to look at?
“If you’ll excuse us,” Arjun says, steering me away, “her parents are waiting.”
“Absolutely.”
I push out a deep breath when Boris is out of earshot. “This is a little overwhelming.”
“Get used to it,” Arjun says. “You were the highlight of the show. Your parents have been waiting to congratulate you.”
When I become a soloist, I will always be the highlight of the show. I will be the entire show. So I square my shoulders and lift my head higher. One day I will grow accustomed to this attention, but tonight, combined with Arjun next to me, it’s almost too much.
They’re in a corner of the lobby, Tovah in a loose-fitting gray sack of a dress, Ima in floral-patterned silk, Aba in a suit. Ima’s arm is linked through his.
“So beautiful, Adina’le,” Ima says, patting my arm. She hugs me and says in Hebrew into my ear, “I’m so proud of you.”
I stiffen at her touch. The way she yelled at Tovah and me a few nights ago is still fresh. “Todah, Ima,” I say before I pull away.
Tovah looks up from her phone. Our parents have never let her skip a performance, the same way my presence was always required at her Science Olympiad competitions in middle school.
“Nice job,” she says flatly, like it would kill her to be legitimately happy for me.
“You looked very natural up there,” Aba says. I wonder if he still thinks my music is a waste of time or if my result has erased his wish for me to go to a state school.
Ima tells Arjun, “We can tell working with you has made such a tremendous difference.”
“Adina is gifted. It’s a real pleasure to work with her.”
“Will we see you at home tonight?” Aba asks me.
I shake my head. “There’s a party for the performers at the director’s place. I was hoping I could go?”
Asking permission in front of Arjun makes me feel like a child, but fortunately Aba smiles and says, “Have fun. Home by twelve thirty, okay?”
“Matt,” Ima says. “It’s Thanksgiving.”
We all go quiet. Tovah’s gaze flicks to Arjun, as though trying to ascertain whether he knows what this means, and Arjun is looking at me as though waiting for permission to react. I’d like to melt into the floor, turn my skin into carpet.
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” I say. “Not Thanksgiving.”
Ima blinks. “Memory lapse. New Year’s Eve. Of course. No later than two, okay?”
“Okay,” I grit out.
As they turn to walk away, Ima stumbles, low-heeled shoe catching a knot in the carpet. Before Aba can catch her, she topples into a pyramid of empty wineglasses on a nearby table. They crash to the carpet, shattering.
I rush over, Arjun following close behind.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she says, swearing in Hebrew under her breath. Aba and Tovah pick glass shards out of her long skirt. Other concertgoers are crowding around, asking if she is okay. Ima’s face turns tomato.
I grind my own heels deep into the carpet, making sure I am steady.
“Can I get you anything?” Arjun asks my mother. “Water, a chair? Do you need to sit down?”
“No, thank you. I’m just . . . clumsy.”
Arjun signals one of the ushers to help clean up the glass. Still strangers are staring. Some shake their heads, embarrassed maybe.
The horrible truth is that I’m embarrassed too.
The penthouse party is like something I’ve only seen in old movies. Someone is playing a jazz tune on the piano, twinkling lights shine down on us, and a chocolate fountain bubbles in the kitchen. Everyone here is so much older than I am; even their laughs sound more sophisticated than the laughs I hear at school. I pinch a bacon-wrapped scallop off a tray and eat it in one bite. It is small but decadent. I take another.
As soon as we arrived, some of Arjun’s musician friends swept him away, leaving me alone to mingle with the appetizers. I assume he’ll return to my side at some point, but he’s spoken to at least a dozen people so far, and while I haven’t let him out of my sight, he hasn’t once glanced my way or attempted to find me. I suppose these are his people, and he is obligated to make the rounds. Still, it’s hard not to feel envious when I see him clink his glass with a group of friends in cheers, or wildly shake a woman’s hand, or laugh when a man claps him on the shoulder and then reels him in for a hug.
A couple professors, music writers, and Seattle Symphony members introduce themselves to me, eager to talk about their schools or the future of classical music. Once the last one ambles toward the chocolate fountain, someone squeezes my arm.
“I loved playing for you,” Laurel says. “You got over that stage fright after all. You were a different person up there. So much energy!”
“Thank you for the accompaniment,” I say, but my eyes are still on Arjun, who’s in the middle of telling an animated story to a group of symphony members. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but he waves his hands like he’s conducting an orchestra.
She sips from her glass of wine, and I curse my childish sparkling cider. “I hear you’re applying to conservatory.”
“Yes,” I say, and list the schools I applied to.
“That’s fabulous. I went to Berklee, and I loved it.” As she talks about her college experience, I only half listen. On the other side of the room, Arjun is finally alone.
A man taps a fork against a glass to get everyone to quiet down, and a pianist begins “Auld Lang Syne.” A few people start singing along.
“Excuse me,” I say to Laurel. With everyone distracted, I manage to pull Arjun inside the bedroom people have used to stash their coats and bags and scarves.
“What are you doing?” he asks when I lock the door behind us. The room has a king bed and a large window with a view of the Space Needle, where fireworks have already started to glitter the night sky.
“You’ve barely glanced at me all night. You said we’d have a chance to be alone.”
“There were a lot of people here I had to talk to.” He glances at his watch. “It’s almost midnight. Everyone’s going to be up on the roof.”
“Exactly.” I pull his face down and slant my mouth against his. His stubble tickles. I run my lips back and forth across it a few times. My skin might be red in the morning, but I won’t care; at least it will remind me of him. He is a man and not a boy, not like the children tearing through the halls at school.
I need to show him he’s mine. Even surrounded by so many people who want to talk to me about my “future in music,” I am his, too. I hold my palm against the front of his suit pants, feeling his erection. He groans deep in his throat. I love that sound. Lowering myself onto my knees, I unbuckle his thin black belt and unzip his pants.
“Adi,” he growls as I take him into my mouth. We have had sex, and he has put his mouth on every part of me, but we have not yet done this. It’s always felt so intimate to me. His fingers grab at my coiled hair, the slight pain telling me he wants this so desperately that he cannot control himself.
He is mine. I am his. None of those people out there can change that.
Outside they are counting down. Ten, nine, eight, seven . . .
But I can barely hear them. I focus on Arjun’s breathing. I’m using my hands now too, my hands and my mouth, my knees pressed hard into the carpet.
Finally, he lets himself go, his hands flying up to brace himself against the wall. I swallow and get to my feet, continuing to watch him. It takes a few more moments for his breathing to return to normal, and once it does, he zips his pants and hugs me close.
“Happy New Year,” I whisper.
“Happy New Year, Adina. That was . . . a surprise.”
“A good one?”
He gives me a strange look. “Yes. Of course.”
We stand there in silence for a while as the party sounds get louder. Through my pantyhose, my knees are wrinkled by the carpet. Peering at myself in a gilded wall mirror, I repin my hair as best I can. Arjun’s reflection looks uncomfortable, like he doesn’t know quite what to do with himself.
He scratches at his elbow. “Do you want to go up to the roof?” he asks. “We’d probably have a better view of the fireworks up there.”
I don’t want to share him, and I can’t understand why he wants to rejoin the rest of the party after what we’ve done. But the rest of the night, he’ll be thinking about this, so I agree. I sift through the coats and bags on the bed to find my silver clutch and, unclasping it, I check my phone.
Six missed calls and two voice mails, all from Tovah. Shit. Shit.
My hands are shaking so badly, it takes a few tries for me to find the right keys.
“What is it?” Arjun asks, but I can’t answer.
“Adina, it’s Ima,” Tovah’s recorded voice says. “She was in the bathroom and . . . and she fell again. We’re taking her to the ER right now. Call me. Please. Or just come to the hospital.” She gives the cross streets and then hangs up. The next voice mail is her saying they’re at the hospital and “pick up, pick up, why the hell are you not answering your phone?”
I drop the phone from my ear.
“Adi, what’s wrong?”
Ignoring him, I push a trembling index finger to Tovah’s name. Five rings. She doesn’t answer.
“Adina?”
“It’s my mom. She fell, and she’s in the hospital.”
Arjun’s face completely changes. “I’ll drive you,” he says, fishing my coat from the pile. I want to be able to appreciate that he knows which one is mine, but I can’t dwell on the insignificance of that now.
Everyone else is so distracted by New Year’s festivities that we’re able to slip out of the party unnoticed. Arjun pulls a ticket from his inside jacket pocket and hands it to the valet, and soon we’re on the freeway, pushing eighty miles per hour. We don’t talk. When he pulls up to the hospital, I lean over to hug him. Cling to him, really.
“She’ll be okay,” he says. He traces the braids in my hair. Some of my bobby pins have fallen out, possibly making a Hansel-and-Gretel trail from the symphony hall to the party to the hospital. Then he pulls back, pats my shoulder. “Let me know if you need anything?”
“Okay.” What I need is for him to come inside with me, hold my hand in the hospital elevator.
Instead, I get out of the car and into the cold, and he drives away, leaving me aching for more things than I can count.
She smacked her head on the side of the bathtub. They needed to use staples to close her up. I can’t even imagine the gruesomeness of it all, can’t let myself wonder if there is red staining the rug in my parents’ bathroom.
“She lost her balance,” Aba explains. He, Tovah, and I are in the waiting room. Ima is sleeping; they pumped her body full of drugs that will lessen the pain. She doesn’t have a concussion, thank God, and the CAT scan didn’t show any bleeding in her brain. Still, the doctors wanted to keep her overnight for observation, and we’ll have to monitor her closely for the next couple weeks.
My eyes burn, threatening to spill over. Tovah stares out the windows at the slowly brightening sky. None of us says much. We try to sleep as best we can, but I cannot relax with the terrible smell of hospital and a coughing man in the corner and a quietly weeping family across the room. The waiting room chair digs grooves in my spine and neck. My performance clothes are stiff, and Ima’s too-tight heels are numbing my toes. I haven’t brushed my teeth and my throat is dry and my lips are raw from rubbing off my lipstick.
Around seven in the morning of a brand-new year, a doctor tells us we can see her, but she’s drowsy and “might still be a little out of it.” When I get to my feet, I almost lose my balance, forgetting I’m still in heels. The doctor guides us down the hall, past rooms and rooms of sick, sick people.
A bandage is wrapped around Ima’s head and a needle is threaded through the veins in the crook of her elbow. I am sure Tovah could explain what all this is, but it is easier not to know. My mother is broken: that is what is happening.
“Ima,” I croak. I squeeze her other hand, the one without a needle in it. Her skin is tissue paper, her veins the brightest blue.
“This is a sign.” Aba strokes her hair. “You can’t keep working if this continues to happen. It isn’t safe for you, Simcha.”
And she agrees. My strong mother agrees with my father telling her what to do for maybe the first time. “I think you’re right,” she says. “I . . . don’t have the focus. I want to be able . . . to give it my full attention. . . .”
“Shh,” Aba says. “Don’t talk too much right now. Save your energy.”
A grapefruit-size lump forms in my throat, but I can’t swallow it away. Looking at my mother, I am slammed with a tidal wave of fear. This is going to be me.
Slipping in the bathroom.
Banging my head on a bathtub.
Wrapped in a hospital bedsheet.
Dying.
Dying.
Dying.
I draw my hand away from Ima’s. She wasn’t holding on very tightly anyway. I press it against my chest, like it’ll help me breathe easier, but it doesn’t. This is my life. In twenty years or sixteen or twelve or eight or five. The timeline is indefinite, but the result is inevitable.
“I’ll be right—” The last word gets stuck behind my teeth. I push out of the hospital room, but it’s claustrophobic in the lobby, too. That hospital smell chokes me. I’m getting sicker breathing it in.
Elevator. I punch the button once, twice, three times, but then someone wheels an oxygen tank next to me and I can’t get inside that metal box with actual living death. Stairs. Click, click, clomp go my mother’s heels. I trip, twisting my ankle. Shit. I land on concrete, grabbing my ankle, massaging it with my fingertips. Have to keep going. Have to get out of here.
“Honey, are you okay?” a nurse at the main station asks as I limp through the first-floor lobby, but I don’t slow down to answer.
Finally, I make it outside. The air out here is morning-cold but fresh, and I get a few more blocks away from the hospital before I tear off my shoes and the sidewalk chews through my pantyhose.
Breathe. I’m breathing now.
My ankle will turn violet tomorrow.
I stop on a residential neighborhood street, dropping my hands to my knees. Has it really been only twelve hours since the show? In the distance, the hospital becomes a rectangle, then a dot. The sun is peeking up behind the trees, a sign that the world has continued to spin all the way into a new year. A year Ima has begun with staples in her head and needles in her veins.
It will only get worse from here, and that is something I am certain I cannot live with.
Shivering in my dress and ruined pantyhose, I start walking again, sidewalk square by sidewalk square, block by block. One by one I yank the remaining pins from my hair, waves stretching onto my shoulders and down my back. I left my clutch back at the hospital, but my phone’s surely dead now anyway. Useless. Don’t need it.
Slowly, I allow myself back into the dark place in the depths of my mind, unlocking what I hid there. Only today it doesn’t sound quite as dark. It sounds like relief. Like a solution.
Almost like a cure.
Robe-wrapped people open front doors to collect their morning papers and stare at the strange girl in a green dress limping purposefully down the block. I smile at them, wishing I could tell them I am okay. They don’t need to worry about me.
While I don’t know when my symptoms will begin, I cannot let the disease have power over me even now. I cannot mope through the remaining years of my life, waiting to become my mother. The waiting and the worrying will drive me mad. I’m sure of it.
Everything I’ve wanted—getting into conservatory, becoming a soloist, traveling to places I’ve only visited in my mind, a real relationship with Arjun, even growing close to my stranger-sister again—is still possible, even with my shortened timeline. It isn’t the trajectory I imagined weeks ago, months ago, years ago, but it is the best option I have. The only option, really. If I plan correctly, if my determination becomes an obsession, then I can fit everything in.
The alternative would be to allow the disease to gnaw away everything that makes me Adina. I am scared of HD; I’m not too proud to admit that. I am scared of what it will do to me. How it will warp me. Aba and Tovah will suffer from it too. They will watch Ima die, and then they will watch me.
A car honks and a dog barks and I make a vow to myself. The best solution would be to spare everyone the additional agony and do it on my terms: quickly, painlessly, peacefully, once I’ve accomplished everything I have ever dreamed of. So as soon as my symptoms appear, that is what I will do.
In the meantime, I can have my beautiful life.
And then, when it stops being beautiful, I will end it.