Twenty-three
Adina
THE GUY I LOST MY virginity to is sitting across the coffee table from me, dipping a celery stick into hummus, acting like this isn’t one of the most uncomfortable moments of his life.
Eitan looks good. Better, even, than before, with suntanned skin and hair past his ears and more freckles than I remember. I haven’t seen him in two years, and he’s here for a few weeks visiting his parents. The Mizrahis live east of Seattle on Mercer Island, in a house a story larger and filled with more expensive things than ours. A tabby cat named Kugel pushes his pink nose into my knee, and I brush my fingers through his fur. He purrs as he figure-eights around my legs.
“Eitan has something exciting to share,” Tamar says, scooping up Kugel and placing him on her lap. I frown. I wanted to keep petting him.
“I guess I’ll come right out and say it, then. I’m engaged!” Eitan says, looking anywhere but at me as Ima wraps him in a hug.
“I remember when you were in diapers,” she says. “And now old enough to be married?” His cheeks redden, but he’s still smiling. “I can’t believe it.”
Aba pats his shoulder. “Mazel tov.”
It takes me too long to react in a socially acceptable way. Someone I dated—slept with—is now engaged. It makes me feel at once both ancient and infantile.
“That’s great,” I say, but everyone else is talking so loudly that my words dissolve in the air.
“Tell us about her,” Ima urges. “Is she Israeli?”
“American. She grew up in Dallas. She’s teaching English over there too. Her name is Sarah.” He pronounces it the Hebrew way, though, Suh-rah instead of Sair-uh. A slight difference, but I hear it. “I have some pictures,” he continues, pulling out his phone and tapping the screen a few times. Sarah has blond waves and a small forehead and too many teeth for her mouth.
“Is that the Dead Sea?” Tovah asks, pointing to a photo of the two of them in bathing suits, covered with mud.
“Yep. You have to go to Israel, Tovah. You too, Adina.” He adds this almost as an afterthought. “It’s incredible. All the history. The culture. The food. I feel like I really belong there, you know?”
The phone gets passed to Ima. “He yafa me’od. She’s beautiful. When is the wedding?”
“Next fall. We’re thinking it’ll be back in the States.”
“Is she Israeli?” Ima asks.
Eitan pauses. “No,” he says slowly. “She’s from Dallas.” What he doesn’t say is: You just asked me that. Don’t you remember?
“I can’t wait,” Ima says, not noticing the awkward silence in the room. She lifts my hand from my tights. “Adina’le, leave them alone.”
I steal a sliver of red pepper so my fingers have something less destructive to do.
We spend dinner learning more about Suh-rah and Eitan’s work in Israel, and Tovah talks about school and everyone expresses sympathy yet hope about her deferral, and when prompted, I tell everyone I have been invited to a total of three auditions, all on the East Coast, and we’ve booked plane tickets for the first week of March. Ima was supposed to go with me, and even though I insisted I could go alone, it is Aba who is taking time off work to accompany me.
After a while, as the two sets of parents fill and refill their glasses of wine—except for Ima, who cannot drink alcohol with her medications—I wander back to the living room, carrying my own glass. Through the bay window, Seattle glows in the distance.
“Can I sit here?” Eitan’s in the doorway. His presence is tremendous. I don’t remember him being quite this tall.
“It’s your house.”
He takes a seat on the couch opposite me, putting plenty of space between us. I’m sweating, and I hope to God I’m not blushing. I haven’t been alone with him in two years, and that time, I wasn’t wearing anything at all. Tonight my dress feels too tight, too hot, not enough of a shield.
“Look,” he says, “I don’t want things to be . . . strange between us.”
“They’re not,” I lie quickly.
“You’ve barely looked at me twice tonight.”
“Same with you.”
He waits a few beats, then says, “Okay. You’re right.” He drags his index finger up the stem of his wineglass. “How . . . are you?”
“I guess you heard from your mom.”
He nods, reaches for my shoulder as though to comfort me, but I stare at his hand as if it is an alien claw, and he draws it away before he can touch me.
I say, “I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Sure. I understand.”
Rest-two-three-four, rest-two-three-four. I check my phone for a message from Arjun, but there’s nothing to rescue me from this conversation.
“Sarah sounds nice.” I pronounce it Sair-uh.
“She is.”
A different cat, an albino with red eyes, stalks into the room and rubs up against Eitan’s socks. He strokes down the cat’s spine, up its tail. Aba is allergic to any animals you’d want to keep as a pet, so we’ve never had them. But I love cats. I love their sleek coats and dainty paws. When I live on my own, I will get a cat.
It might even keep me company in my final days.
“Hello there, Tobias,” Eitan says to the cat. “Are you . . . ? Are you seeing anyone?” he asks me.
“Yes. I am.” What I want is say is that I’m seeing someone older, and he understands me much better than Eitan ever did. I want to win at the ex game.
“Oh? What’s he like?”
“Adina, you’re seeing someone?” My mother enters the living room and takes a seat on the couch across from us, Tamar following behind.
When I glance up, though, it’s Tovah I lock eyes with. She’s lingering in the hall, back arched against the wall. I can’t read her face.
My hand buried in the cat’s fur, I turn back to the mothers. “It’s nothing official, so I didn’t want to say anything. . . .”
Ima tightens her knitted shawl around her shoulders. “You could have told me.” Because of course I tell her everything. Or I used to, before I came home from the doctor’s appointment that changed all our lives.
Before she gave me her disease, an accusation I know is illogical yet I cannot help thinking sometimes.
“Don’t you know enough about my life?” I fire at her, too ferocious. A kitten with her claws out. “We have plenty of other things in common.”
The silence that follows makes me wish I could spool those words back into my mouth.
“Ima, you know I didn’t mean that.”
“I understand,” she says. “You’re going through a lot.”
Her stung expression is the only thing that makes me waver about my plan. Some days I’m not sure whether I want to distance myself from her so my death is less tragic, or cling to her while I still can. I usually land somewhere in the middle, unable to make a choice.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I announce, because I cannot bear another moment of indecision. In my hurry to get up, I knock over Tamar’s wineglass, spilling bloodred liquid onto the expensive carpet and scaring the cat, who dashes out of the room. “Oh my God! I’m so, so sorry.”
I reach for a napkin, but Eitan holds his arm against mine to stop me. The sudden heat of sweater against sweater freezes me in place. The touch is so casual, as though we’ve never unbuttoned each other’s clothes and pressed our bodies together. When you’ve done that with someone, when they have seen you at your most vulnerable, a simple touch never means the same thing.
“It’ll wash out. Club soda and salt. I’ll grab some,” Eitan says, although I am thinking about how I did the same thing this morning, splashed orange juice all over the kitchen table.
This was how it started for Ima. Basic acts of clumsiness that, when strung together, made a disease.
I race out of the living room, down the hall past Tovah, who is leaning against the wall, smiling at her phone. I open my mouth to say something to her, then close it. I have bigger things to worry about right now.
Bypassing the bathroom, I head farther down the hall to Eitan’s childhood bedroom. Where everything started. A couple suitcases on the floor, a simple bookshelf, a sloppily made bed. I have to grab on to the wall to hold myself upright. The memories are dizzying, yanking me back in time. I can smell his body spray and sweat, hear the Mozart—so predictable—playing in the background.
I imagine Eitan and perfect Suh-rah having sex. I bet they always come at exactly the same moment, and afterward I bet they cry about how fucking beautiful it was.
Part of me wonders what the hell was wrong with him. What kind of eighteen-year-old sleeps with a freshman in high school? Do I look fourteen to you? I had asked him.
The last time we slept together in this room, on this bed, I wasn’t fourteen. I was sixteen, and he was home for winter break. We messed around for a couple weeks; then he went back to college, got his degree early, and moved to Israel.
I check my phone again. Nothing from Arjun. Staring down my twin in the mirror on the back of the door, I run a hand through my hair, use a fingertip to brush away a mascara crumb. This dress fits all wrong; I was right: too low in the front, my bra straps visible through the fabric.
I’ve never thought to demand more than the physical from guys, and now I can’t think why. I trace the curves of my body. This can’t be all I have to offer.
The door swings open, and I jump back.
“Adina?”
Eitan enters, making me shrink back. His childhood bedroom is too small for him now, definitely too small for both of us.
“I wanted to grab an Israeli newspaper from my suitcase,” he says. “To show your mom. What are you doing in here?”
He should not make me this fucking nervous. I take a deep breath, collect myself. Summon the power I usually have around guys. “Wanted to see if your room looks the same.”
He takes a few steps toward me, and I inch back, as though if he gets too close, he might pounce. Tear me open with his claws. He reaches for his suitcase. “I really need to get this for your mom. She wants to see it.”
I cut my eyes at him, straighten my spine, make myself as big as possible. “I’m curious. Does your fiancée know about me? Does she know how old I was?” I drag the words over his skin like they are sandpaper.
Eitan crosses his arms over his chest. “You should get out of my room now.”
He should be terrified of me, and one look at his face confirms that he is, a little bit. My power, restored. I hope I never have to see him again.
On my way back to the living room, I check Arjun’s flight info on my phone. He was at a professional conference in Philadelphia this week, and he was supposed to get back to Seattle tonight. His plane wasn’t delayed and he must be home by now, so I send an innocent text: How was your trip?
Arjun will love me the way Eitan couldn’t. I don’t have time for anything less.
He hasn’t replied. It’s three in the morning, and he was supposed to be home hours ago. What if he got in a car accident on the way home? Since I can’t sleep, I crawl out of bed and check the local news, the police blotter. There are no mentions of a sexy viola teacher perishing in a fiery crash.
I try to rationalize Arjun’s silence. His plane must have arrived late, and he was tired, and he didn’t want to wake me up. Philadelphia is three hours ahead. So it’s really six in the morning for him. He didn’t forget. He’s just tired.
Repeating those words eases my anxiety only an infinitesimal amount. If I could see him now, I’d brew some tea, ask questions about his trip, stay up all night talking. Relationship things. I toss and turn for another couple hours, scripting conversations in my head.
I will be too tired for first period tomorrow, so I turn off my alarm. On days I skip school entirely, I ride the bus around Seattle, pick up shifts at Muse and Music, practice viola. Sometimes my mother doesn’t realize it’s a weekday and I should be in class. Other times I am able to convince her we’re off for the day or I am not feeling well enough to go.
Having half convinced myself everything will be fine and I’ll hear from him in the morning, I take my phone with me into the bathroom. I grab the nail scissors and start trimming my nails; I have to keep them short for viola, considering I’ll be auditioning soon. I make sure my hands are steady. No shaking. I was so calm a week ago, and now I’m not.
Drastic mood shifts: one of Ima’s first symptoms.
It makes me wonder if it will soon be time to set my plan in motion, a thought that fills me with a cocktail of adrenaline and terror.
As I wash the white half-moons down the drain, I get an idea. The only pain I’ve ever felt has been accidental. Tripping on the sidewalk, stubbing my toe, slashing my finger with a box cutter. What would it feel like to hurt on purpose?
I pull down my pajama pants so my thighs are exposed and aim the scissors at my skin. I need to prepare myself for what is going to happen.
For an early death.
A death that might be pain or infinite peace or nothing at all.
At first I poke at my right thigh with the metal point. I’m too cowardly, I think, until finally I grit my teeth and dig the metal into my skin. A whimper catches in my throat as I drag the small scissors across my thigh. The blade is sharp and it goes in much deeper than I thought it would, much deeper than I thought I’d be able to stomach. Red comes to the surface, and though I’m biting the inside of my cheek because it hurts, it feels like something else. . . .
Like a release. Like relief.
Someone knocks on the door, startling me, and the scissors drop to the floor.
“Adina?” Tovah.
“I’m in here!”
My phone lights up on the counter.
Jet-lagged. Sorry.
I have been balancing a grand piano on my shoulders, buckling beneath its weight, and with these words I can finally stand upright. I breathe out a sigh mixed with a laugh that takes with it all the tension in my body.
I need to see you. I can’t wait until my lesson. I delete it, then type, I miss you so much. Delete that. I want to see you is what I finally decide on.
Tomorrow evening?
Yes, I text back, remembering how good it feels to breathe deeply when my chest isn’t knotted up like one of my mother’s balls of yarn. We can still make this work. I have time.
Tovah bangs on the door. “I need deodorant. I’m going for a run.”
The blood has formed a thin river across my thigh. I clean the scissors and return them to the drawer.
“I’m still in here.” Here she is again, acting selfish: She is the only one who matters. Her run is so important. She cannot always get what she wants, even if it is something as simple as deodorant.
“It’s four in the morning. What are you even doing in there?” She smacks the door again. “Come on. Are you five years old right now?”
“Yes.” I take my time searching for a Band-Aid, smoothing it across my broken skin. Through the transparent bandage, the red of my blood spreads. I add another Band-Aid.
“Can you just hand me the deodorant? I swear, I won’t look at . . . whatever it is you’re doing.”
“In a minute.” I pull my pajamas back up and sink to the floor, rereading Arjun’s texts.
“Are you . . . okay in there?” Tovah asks.
I groan. Embarrassing. “God. Yes. I’m fine,” I say, and finally open the door.
Tovah and I pass each other in the hall. I refuse to meet her eyes, as though, even though it is impossible, she knows what I was doing in there.