Three
Adina
A FAMILY OF THREE LINGERS in the strings section of Muse and Music, where I work part-time. The parents murmur as they scan price tags. Their young daughter touches all the most expensive instruments.
“You look like you could use some help,” I say.
The parents look relieved. “Hailey’s always been musical,” the mother says, placing a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “She’s nine now, and we’d like to sign her up for music classes.”
“We told her she could pick any instrument,” the father says, “but I’m afraid neither of us knows how to play anything, so we’re a bit lost.”
“I want to play the violin.” Hailey points to a Windsor. “I like this one.”
“What do you know about this?” the mother asks me.
“Windsor is good quality. Solid choice for a beginner. But,” I say, bending down to Hailey’s level so we’re eye to eye, “everyone plays the violin. You’re going to be one of twenty violins in your school orchestra, I guarantee it.” Her hand drops from the Windsor. “Do you really want to be like everyone else, or do you want to be unique?”
She shakes her head. I have said the magic words. “I don’t want to be like everyone else.”
I grin like I am about to tell her a secret. “How about the viola?”
I show them a Stentor, a Mendini, a Cecilio. The makers’ Italian names waterfall off my tongue. Then I go over rental rates. “If she’s planning on playing it long-term—and you said she’s very musical—purchasing the viola outright will cost less than an entire year of renting.”
Hailey likely has a long life ahead of her to play viola. To become a soloist, even, if she truly devotes herself to the instrument. If I test positive, if I develop the disease one day, when will I have to stop playing? That’s what I haven’t been able to get out of my head since the blood draw a few days ago.
“You’ve made our decision very easy,” the father says.
I make commission on every sale, and I make a lot of sales.
The deal I struck with my parents when I turned sixteen was that if I wanted to continue taking private lessons and playing in the youth symphony, I had to pay half. Ima encouraged my music, but Aba wanted me to experience the “real world,” which did not revolve around long-dead nineteenth-century composers. But I’ve always been more comfortable with long-dead composers and string instruments than with anyone with a beating heart.
My manager, Oscar, swoops over once the family leaves. “Can you work your magic on that guy over in guitars? He’s been here for more than an hour.”
The guy is the stereotype of a moody acoustic guitarist. He hunches on a stool with an Ibanez in his lap, strumming a Bob Dylan song, shaggy black hair falling in his face.
“You know,” I say as I approach, “if you own it, you can play it any time you want.”
He plucks another few chords. “I’ve been in here awhile, huh?”
“I love Dylan.” I do not, but music tastes are sacred. There is no more immediate connection you can make with someone than learning they like the same composer, the same band, the same vocalist as you. “And that’s a great instrument.”
When he finally glances up at me, his eyes rove over my body. Up. Down. Up. From my hips to my chest to my reddest red lipstick, a shade called Siren. Men have been looking at me in ways they probably shouldn’t for a long time. Seniors leered at me in the halls even when I was a lowly freshman. I developed early, wore underwire when all the other girls were still in training bras, and I have never looked my age. The attention typically makes me feel important. Wanted. Like I can be a star onstage instead of an invisible piece of an orchestra. Usually, I adore being looked at, but today it irks me. Arjun’s rejection and the impending test results have stripped some of my confidence.
“Can’t afford it now, unfortunately.” He sets it back on the wall. “Do you play . . . Adina?” His gaze lingers on the name tag above my breast. Today I wish I could paste it to my forehead.
“I play viola.”
“Don’t tell me you’re into classical music.” He says classical music the way someone might say using pliers to pull off your fingernails one by one.
That sets me off, makes me wish I’d told him how overrated I find Dylan. He has probably never listened to a classical piece in its entirety. He probably equates it to elevator music. Music without a soul or a heartbeat.
“I am into classical music, in fact,” I say. “It’s been around for more than a thousand years, its composers have more name recognition than whatever ‘indie’ music you’re listening to right now, and symphonies sell out millions of performances a year. So go ahead, tell me classical music is tedious or boring or inferior.”
He shrugs, jamming his hands into his pockets. “I gotta go,” he mumbles, pocketing a few fifty-cent guitar picks as he leaves. If he dares come back, I will report him.
Music snobs who hate classical music mystify me. Classical music is everything to me, and since viola is what I’ve devoted my life to, I don’t tolerate critics. Without viola, I’m not sure who I’d be.
The nearer doomsday draws, the harder it is to keep my nerves inside. My tights develop so many holes, I have to buy new ones. While Tovah has a whole group of close friends, I only have my mother to confide in. On a day off from work, I visit Ima’s fifth-grade classroom. I need some kind of reassurance from her that I am strong enough to handle this.
My first fourteen years carried no tragedies, but Tovah and I still consoled each other during rough times, like when Papa, Aba’s father, passed away. We only saw him a couple times a year, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around him being suddenly gone. Tovah, sad but logical, told me to focus on my good memories of him, hugged me when I cried. Later, I was there for her first heartbreak: when she lost in the final round of the regional Science Olympiad in seventh grade. Silver was a prettier color than gold anyway, I said to her. The other day in her room, I noticed the medal still hung on her wall.
Tovah had no kind words for me then. I should have expected as much. She claimed, as always, that I am the one to blame, but she is the reason we no longer share secrets or inside jokes.
At her desk, Ima slashes assignments with a red pen, her hand trembling. Errant scribbles mark up the margins. She probably has only a couple years left to work, and she loves her classroom more than anything. I help my mother out at least once a week, but I doubt my sister has ever set foot in here.
“How were your students today?” I ask Ima in Hebrew.
“Today was movie Monday.” Words used to fly from her lips at warp speed. Now, even in her native language, they’re slow, plotted, like her mouth is full of honey. “We started Singin’ in the Rain.” Each Saturday after sundown, Ima and I watch a classic film together; we watch Singin’ in the Rain at least twice a year. Classical music and classic films: I am an anachronism. “Did you know I wanted to be a tap dancer when I saw it as a kid in Israel? I taped shekels to my shoes and practiced in the street.”
“I didn’t know that.”
My vision of Israel, and my mother’s home in Tel Aviv, is blurred. She rarely talks about growing up there, snatches of memories that sound distant as fairy tales. Her mother, who we now suspect had Huntington’s too, died when Ima was young. After she served her time in the military, Ima moved to the States for college and never returned. Another thing I cannot picture: my ima holding a gun.
Her past terrifies and fascinates me, but she’s having one of her good days, and I don’t want to destroy it with a question that could leave a bruise. Huntington’s is okay to talk about, and yet my mother’s life in Israel is off-limits.
“Why didn’t you do it?” I ask. “Become a tap dancer?”
“I have no grace. Not like you, Adina’le.” In Hebrew, adding “le” to the end of a name turns it into a diminutive. Her mouth tips into a wicked grin. “I caught two kids passing love notes back and forth this week.”
“Really? Who?”
“Caleb and Annabel.”
“Didn’t you send Caleb to the principal last week for putting gum in Annabel’s hair?”
“Don’t you remember fifth grade? That was how you told someone you liked them.”
Fifth grade: passing notes to Tovah, scribbled in Hebrew in case they were intercepted, tree tag at recess, giggling during sex ed, being sent out into the hall to calm down, not being allowed back inside until we were “mature enough” to handle talking about vaginas and penises. Fifth grade was, quite possibly, one of our best years.
“I had so many boyfriends in fifth grade. I could barely keep track.”
Ima laughs. She has the best laugh of anyone I know. It’s deep and throaty and makes me feel as though I’m truly funny. I’m only ever funny around her—and Arjun.
“I need to ask you something.” I take a deep breath. There’s not enough time between me and our next doctor’s appointment. I want to pile weeks and months and years on top of each other until I’m confident I can be okay with either outcome. “Would anything have changed for you if you were diagnosed earlier? Or if you’d gotten tested and you knew you were going to develop it?”
Ima purses her lips as she ponders this, loosening the knitted scarf around her neck. Years ago she declared she was going to knit all of us sweaters and scarves and blankets, but soon found she didn’t have the time. Now she has too much of it; her health has made her drop commitments at our synagogue and with her friends. During our movie nights, her needles clack as old Hollywood stars sing and dance onscreen. Half-finished projects hang across the back of the couch and kitchen chairs.
“It might have. Maybe I would have gotten my teaching certification sooner, or I wouldn’t have wasted my time on jobs I didn’t care about.” Ima changed majors three times in college, then bounced from job to job before going back to school to become a teacher. It’s strange how aimless she was, considering both Tovah and I have known our paths for so long. We didn’t inherit the wandering gene from her. “But if you’re asking if it would have changed my decision to have children, I can’t answer that. I can’t imagine a life without you and Tovah in it.”
I don’t want the machala arura, the damn disease, to sneak up on me, but I am also not sure I want to plan my own funeral. If I don’t find out, though, perhaps I’d wonder every day if I might soon start losing control over parts of my body.
“Knock-knock.” Another teacher pokes her head inside the classroom. Mrs. Augustine, who I had for fourth grade, has red spiral curls streaked with gray. “Do you need help with anything, Simcha?”
“Thanks, Jill, but my daughter’s helping me today.”
Mrs. Augustine squints at me through huge purple glasses. “Is that Adina?”
I hold up my hand. “Present.”
She laughs as though I have made a hilarious joke. I haven’t. “How’s high school treating you?”
“All right. Only eight more months of it.”
“Your mom says you’re keeping busy with the violin, and of course we’re all so proud to hear about your sister. I heard she was a National Merit Scholar!”
“She was,” I say through gritted teeth. I don’t bother correcting her about the violin.
Everyone always talks about how noble Tovah’s pursuits are, how brilliant her mind is. We need more women in STEM, after all, and apparently Tovah is going to singlehandedly solve the imbalance. She is going to save lives—but I am going to enrich them.
“Well. I’ll leave you two. Simcha, we’re still on for the faculty breakfast next week?”
“I never pass up pancakes,” Ima says with a big smile, which doesn’t leave her face until Mrs. Augustine’s heels click-clack out of earshot. Then she turns back to me. “I brag about both of you,” she says, as though she can tell from my stiff posture that Mrs. Augustine’s words have hit a nerve. “You know how much I treasure your music.”
Logically, I know my parents don’t play favorites. But I have always believed my mother understands me better than she will ever understand my sister.
“I’m no National Merit Scholar, but thank you.”
“You are at least a hundred other good things. Don’t let what she said bother you, okay?”
I shrug. Ima returns to grading her assignments, and I start cleaning the classroom. As I push the vacuum across the carpet, I force my thoughts somewhere happier. I can still feel the warmth of Arjun’s hand beneath mine. Wouldn’t he have moved away faster if he didn’t like me? The thought builds me back up, restores my confidence.
As far as I know, Arjun doesn’t have a girlfriend, though last year he hinted at it. Occasionally, he used the pronoun “we,” which sent shivers of envy through me. We are going to the farmers’ market Saturday. We are going to the symphony next week. I was only a me.
Once when I used the bathroom, I found a tube of wild rose–scented moisturizer in the medicine cabinet. Did she simply leave it there one day, or did she regularly spend the night? Was she moving in? I squeezed a dime-size amount onto my palm. I wondered if Arjun liked when she wore it. If it made her skin soft when he touched her with his long, beautiful fingers. Then I panicked. Arjun might notice it when I got back to the studio, so I turned on the water and scraped my hands until they no longer smelled sweet like Arjun’s girlfriend.
When I checked a few weeks later, the lotion was gone, and when Arjun talked about his weekend plans, his “we” turned back into an “I.”
“Adina?” Ima’s yell penetrates my eardrums over the vacuum’s roar. I switch it off. “I’ve been calling you!”
“Sorry,” I say. “The vacuum—”
She interrupts, waving me over. “Come here for a second.” Before Huntington’s, she was even-tempered, but now her moods shift quickly. It’s jarring when she raises her voice.
Above her desk is a window with a view of the playground. “Do you hear that?” she says.
Whatever it is, I probably couldn’t hear it over the wail of the vacuum. “Hear what?”
“The barking.” She sounds exasperated. “I’ve been listening to it all day. I think there are some dogs on the playground.”
There probably are. Too many people in Seattle let their dogs go off-leash. Last week at the bus stop, a collarless mutt yapped at me for a full fifteen minutes before the 44 bus arrived.
I’ve always had excellent hearing, able to pick up nuances in songs, detect when a single string is slightly out of tune. But right now I only hear the wheels of the janitor’s cart squeaking down the hallway.
“They have to be somewhere out there. Under the slide maybe? It could be dangerous with so many kids around, especially if the dogs are strays.”
“Ima, I don’t hear them.”
“Oh! There they go again.” She pushes open the window, letting in a cool breeze. “Get out of here!”
Then I realize it: The barking isn’t real. The dogs aren’t real.
I’ve never been alone with her when she’s—hallucinating. The word itself is terrifying. It has too many syllables; there is no simple word to explain how complicated and scary it is. Aba’s always been around, and Aba, who takes notes during Ima’s doctor’s appointments, always knows what to do. Whenever this happens at home, I flee the room as fast as I can.
She’s sticking her head out the window, flapping her arms wildly. I rack my brain, trying to remember how Ima’s specialist told us to handle her hallucinations. We’re supposed to tell her that we believe she’s really hearing this, but I can’t go along with it. I have to snap her out of this somehow.
“They’re not real. They’re not real, okay? You’re imagining it.” I want her to believe me, not whatever’s going on inside her head.
“Go back where you came from!” She climbs on top of her chair to fit more of herself out the window. “That barking! I can’t stand it, Adina. It’s dreadful.”
“Please,” I implore her, steadying the wobbly chair with my hands. “Be careful.”
Her head whips around. “Don’t just stand there. Help me! Azor li!” Continuing to mutter under her breath, she stumbles off the chair and tears out of the classroom.
“Ima!” I chase after her, punching open the metal doors to the playground. A few kids on swings stare at the strange teacher crouching on the woodchips, peering underneath the slide.
“I can’t find them,” Ima says, “but I can still hear them!”
This could be you someday, a voice at the back of my mind warns.
I swallow around a knot in my throat. It’ll be okay soon We’ll get through this and we’ll go home and have dinner and I’ll practice for my audition Aba will take her to the doctor and they’ll change her medication and everything will be fine.
“We’ll find them.” Cold air bites at my cheeks and nose. “I’ll help you, okay?”
Then, certain I’m doing this all wrong, I yell and wave my arms along with her. Together, we shoo the imaginary dogs.