Twenty-five
Adina
MY LAST STOP IS BALTIMORE. The ride from Manhattan is six hours long, and the steady, rhythmic click of the train on the track nearly lulls me to sleep.
I have not spent much alone time with my father . . . well, ever. Most of our conversations this trip have been stilted, staccato. It irks me to see him praying over his food in public. How can you still do that? I want to ask.
I shift in the train seat and scroll through my phone. Arjun hasn’t answered my last few messages. Lately his replies have been a mere couple words, and I’ve initiated almost every conversation. I send another casual text. How was your day?
Aba orders us coffee from the train café. When he takes a sip, he sucks in his cheeks and says, “Not as good as the coffee at home. How can you bear to leave that behind?”
He’s trying to make a joke, but we don’t share a sense of humor. If Tovah were here, she’d find a way to make him laugh, but I just give a weak smile before adding sugar to my own cup.
“Aba . . . do you still think going to conservatory is a bad idea?”
He takes another sip of his subpar coffee before responding. “I don’t know what to say. You know I wanted you to apply elsewhere so you could get a more well-rounded education.”
“You didn’t think I’d be successful.”
“That’s not it. No parent wants their child to fail. Of course I think you’re talented, Adi, but things happen. I wanted you to have options, that’s all. But now, if this is what you want . . .”
Because I am dying, I can do whatever I want.
Even Aba knows it.
“It is.”
“I understand this is difficult for you. The most difficult thing you’ve ever had to deal with. If there were a way to make it so you never had to go through what your mother’s going through, a way for me to switch places with you . . . well, I’d do it in a heartbeat.” He sighs. “I won’t pretend I understand how you’re feeling. I can only know what it’s been like for your mother. And on the outside, she handles it well. As well as anyone can. Better, even.”
His candor renders me speechless. He’s never spoken like this to me, not about Ima.
“Aba,” I start when I find my words, but I can tell he’s not done.
“I don’t want you to think you don’t have time, Adina.”
I shiver. Of course he doesn’t know my plan, but his words hit dangerously close to it.
“Ima is forty-six. She was diagnosed when she was forty-two. You’re eighteen.” He slides into the seat next to me, grabbing my hand, holding it tightly. His hand, which sprouts black hairs and weird speckled spots, is starting to wrinkle, his skin forming dozens of miniature accordions. “You can do everything you want to do.”
And in a way, this feels like Aba is giving me permission.
“I love you, Aba,” I say in a voice barely above a whisper, unable to remember the last time I said this to him.
He smiles. “Ani ohev otach.”
When I am gone, perhaps Aba will be sad for a while. He will mourn the loss of a daughter he never really knew, but that is far better than the alternative: forcing him to watch me wither after watching his wife. That is too much for one person to endure. I want to believe he knows that deep down.
Margarine sunlight slants through the windows of the small studio. Two women and one man, all smartly dressed, sit in chairs in front of a music stand. I prepared four pieces, including “Girl with the Flaxen Hair,” and rosined my viola with the Larica Tovah gave me. My auditions in Manhattan and Boston went flawlessly, and I don’t expect this one to be any different.
“Welcome, Adina,” says a woman with sleek blond hair and a slight Eastern European accent. “I am Vera Mitrovic, head of viola here at Peabody.” She stands to greet me, and we shake hands.
“A pleasure to meet you,” I say. “You have no idea how much I’ve been looking forward to this.”
Her mouth curves into a smile. “Have you ever been to Baltimore?”
“First time.”
“And?” She says it expectantly, as though there is a right answer.
“I love it.” I am not sucking up. Not entirely, at least. I love the architecture, the cobblestone streets, the row houses. Mount Vernon, the neighborhood home to Peabody, is more historic and artsy than anything I’ve seen in Seattle. Before my audition, I took touristy photos of the Washington Monument and sent them to Arjun. (He did not reply.)
“That is what I like to hear.” The other two professors introduce themselves as Angela Romar and Donovan Green, and then I set up my viola and launch into my prelude.
This is when it all becomes real. I could live here. This could be my studio. I know from my research that Professor Mitrovic played in the New York Philharmonic for twenty years. I can only imagine what I’d be able to learn from her.
When I’m done, I exhale a long breath that trembles on its way out. I never get a substantial amount of air until I finish playing. This was my final audition, and I’m convinced it was the best of the three.
“Thank you, Adina,” Professor Mitrovic says.
“Thank you for the opportunity.” I turn to place my viola in its case, but my sore fingers lose their grip. The instrument slips from my hand, plunging straight to the wood floor. It lands with a painful smack, and the professors gasp.
I am frozen for a split second, but I recover it quickly, running my hands over it and making sure it’s okay. My index finger finds a crack near its base, and my heart cracks right along with it. I imagine mahogany blood pooling on the floor beneath me. I got this Primavera viola as a bat mitzvah gift, and I’ve always been so careful with it.
“Everything all right?” Professor Romar asks, but she looks severe, like I have somehow offended her.
“Fine,” I squeak, hugging my case to my chest as I race out of the audition room, my boots skidding on the floor. My feet have a traitorous route all their own.
Aba is meeting up with an old friend who lives in Baltimore, so I have the entire afternoon to myself before we fly back early tomorrow morning. I get on a bus called the Circulator, curiosity pulling me several miles north to Johns Hopkins. My sister has devoted her entire high school life to this place; it must be pretty spectacular.
The route is a study in contradictions. One block is urban, with big buildings and trendy cafés, and the next is full of row houses and yards littered with junk. In Seattle, each neighborhood feels like its own bubble, but here everything runs together.
The campus is not quite as striking as Peabody, a place so beautiful it hosts weddings. Johns Hopkins looks like a textbook college campus: brick buildings and sprawling quad and students slouching beneath the weight of heavy backpacks.
If the past several years had unfolded in a parallel universe, Tovah might be here with me. We would try the hole-in-the-wall restaurants, be tourists at the historical sites, go to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the Meyerhoff or the Maryland Science Center.
So far I have exacted only small revenges: embarrassing her in front of her boyfriend, taking the car when she needs it, sneaking into her room and resorting the assignments in her intricate color-coded filing system. I am saving up for a grand finale, though, something that will certainly destroy her. I am a crescendo; I will get louder and louder until I am nothing but noise and destruction.
When I’m done, she will have no choice but to despise me. And when I’m gone, she won’t miss me.
No sadness. No tears. She can have the spotlight to herself, the way she always wanted.
For a second, I waver. Deep in my soul, I wish I could have her back, that we had never been broken apart. One thing she wouldn’t understand, though, is my plan for when my symptoms show up. In Judaism, some people regard suicide as akin to murder. Tovah and I have never talked about it, but then, we’ve never had a reason to. She has never had a reason to feel sad, to fear for her life. If she had tested positive, she’d go to med school and find a fucking cure.
Even if I wanted to, there is no point in making amends. Why should she reconcile with a girl who is as good as dead? We cannot erase what we’ve done. I cannot go backward, only forward.
“Excuse me. Are you part of the tour?” asks a girl in a blue Johns Hopkins sweatshirt.
I stare at the group of eager kids and their parents that I’ve accidentally fallen into step with. “Yes,” I say. “I am part of the tour,” and I spend the next hour listening to the guide talk about the history and the architecture and the professors and the research opportunities and Johns Hopkins’s world-class reputation. I can understand why Tovah has devoted the past four years of her life to this place.
When the tour ends, I navigate back to the nearest bus stop. If anyone wondered why a prospective Johns Hopkins student was carrying around a viola, they said nothing.
This bus ride, though, I cannot focus on the scenery outside. I keep hearing this sound, like a D-minor chord, and I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. I’m not listening to music—perhaps someone disconnected their headphones?
As we’re stuck in traffic, the sound intensifies. I jump from my seat, knocking my viola case to the floor.
“Are you all right?” asks a woman next to me.
“Don’t you hear that?” I ask, twisting my face and clutching my ears tighter. While I love minor chords, this sound, it’s agony.
“Hear what?”
“That noise? It sounds . . . like a minor chord?”
“I don’t hear anything,” she says, eyeing me like I have lost my mind. Everyone else on the bus is unfazed, swiping at their phones or reading books or chatting animatedly with their friends.
It’s suddenly clear only I can hear the minor chord.
The same way my mother hears imaginary dogs barking.
I sit back on the hard seat and cross my legs. The sound follows me back onto the street, making me even more confused. If no one else can hear it, and it’s only happening inside my head . . .
Though I’ve been pondering death for months, the idea of my plan becoming reality sooner than I previously anticipated is enough to make me cold all over. I still haven’t determined how I will end my life. I thought I had more time. I need more time—not just to plan, but to fit everything in. Achieve what I have always dreamed of: me on a stage and a captive audience.
In my mind I do some quick calculations. Perhaps I could audition for a symphony while I’m still in school. I could still become a soloist—maybe, hopefully—but how many tours will I go on? How many sold-out Carnegie Hall performances?
I hurry back to the hotel room and snap open my viola case, the minor chord still ringing in my ears. I trace my fingers over the scar, and then I start playing. It doesn’t sound the same. I lock it back in its case so I don’t have to look at how I’ve damaged it.
Arjun hasn’t replied to any of my messages, so I send another few.
What are you up to?
Did you get my last text?
Hey, not sure if my phone is working. Text me back if you get this.
Then I wait and wait and wait.
Aba isn’t back yet, so I start a shower to wash the day off me. I do what I always do in showers now: plant my feet firmly so I don’t lose my balance.
With a fingertip, I trace the jagged pink-white scar on my thigh, remembering how it soothed me to dig the blade into my skin. Sometimes I ache to feel a little of that pain again.