Fourteen
Tovah
ABA PLAYS NIRVANA THE ENTIRE drive. His fingers drum the wheel, his eyes occasionally catching mine in the rearview mirror. He smiles whenever this happens. We hum along as Kurt Cobain growls we can plant a house, we can build a tree, since neither of our voices compares to Kurt’s scratchy, raw one.
Adi is asleep next to me and Ima is asleep next to Aba, but I can’t nap during road trips. A couple hours of sleep isn’t worth missing the scenery. The farther north we go, the shorter and stockier the buildings get. Streets are replaced with forests, strip malls with acres of farmland, cars with cows and horses.
Canada for Thanksgiving was my parents’ idea. We’ll trade turkey and cranberries for a long weekend of family time. A distraction from our sad reality. British Columbia doesn’t look all that different from Washington. Same mountains and trees and gray skies. When I was small, I thought all countries had some defining feature. Ima’s few photos of her life in Israel gave me visions of an exotic, sacred place. Synagogues with high ceilings and ornate architecture. Sandy beaches and ancient ruins.
I’m hoping, too, that the time away from home will give me a chance to talk to the sister I’ve spent years pushing away. It can take years for people to come to terms with a positive result, but regardless of where we end up in the fall, this is probably my last year living across the hall from Adina—and therefore, my last chance to make things right between us.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
You around this weekend? Troy went with Lindsay to her grandparents’ and I am BORED.
I’m in Canada.
Not helping my boredom.
I’ll see what I can do.
I take a photo of someone walking a dog. I text it to Zack with the caption CANADIAN DOG. Then I do the same with a fire hydrant, a telephone pole, a plastic bag on the sidewalk. I’m not sure it’s very entertaining, until Zack responds.
You’re funny
When we reach the hotel, my parents retreat to one room, and Adina and I unpack our suitcases across the hall. I plug in my laptop and open an AP Bio lab report, but I can’t concentrate. Adina’s already swapping her dress and tights for pajamas. Taking her phone into bed with her, fingers flying across the screen.
I almost start talking to her half a dozen times, but my sister is a deer, and I don’t want to frighten her away by being too forward. If I’m going to make progress, I have to be gentle.
Every so often, I hear her laughing, and it’s so, so nice to hear that I don’t ruin it by asking her what’s so funny.
We pretend we’re a normal American family on vacation. We tour gardens and historic churches and a museum devoted entirely to miniatures. In the car after the museum, Ima sighs deeply and says, “Matt, girls, I might have to call it a day.” Her face is weary, and my heart pinches. I wonder if she notices how much other people stare at her near-constant jerking and twitching. If that adds to the weariness.
For the first time, I wonder if getting into Johns Hopkins will mean missing the last few good years with Ima. But Ima would hate for me to close myself off to an opportunity because of her.
“We can rest before dinner,” Aba says.
“I might take a nap too.” Adina looks up from her phone for what seems like the first time today. “Unless you need the room for anything, Tovah.”
“Go ahead,” I say too quickly. God, it’s like I’m scared of her or something. She should be able to take all the naps she wants.
Aba and I spend the next few hours exploring the city. We meet Ima and Adina for dinner at a kosher restaurant that takes forever to find. We’ve only ever spent Thanksgiving with the Mizrahis or other friends of our parents. It’s odd to share this one with strangers and waiters.
I’m used to people gawking at Ima in public, though in the past they stared at our family for other reasons. It’s unusual to hear Hebrew spoken in Seattle; most people can’t identify the language. I’ve been asked multiple times if I’m speaking German or Arabic or Russian, and when I say that it’s actually Hebrew, I’m met with, “Isn’t that a dead language?” It nearly went extinct thousands of years ago but was revived during the nineteenth century. Today more than nine million people speak Modern Israeli Hebrew. The guttural “chet” and “resh” sounds feel natural on my lips.
Once when Adina and I were little, we were in a restaurant with our parents, the two of us fighting about me quitting orchestra. Adina thought I hadn’t given it a fair chance. We eventually grew so loud we were yelling at each other. “Die! Die!” Ima said to us over and over, which in Hebrew means “enough,” but to all the nearby restaurant-goers, it appeared as though she was wishing death upon her children. Sheepishly, she explained to them that she was not, in fact, a murderous mother.
Tonight, though, the waiter’s gaze lingers more on Adina than my mother, and for an entirely different reason. It’s been this way with my sister and ninety percent of human males for a long time. His name tag says Beau. I comb my fingers through my short hair and eye the curls that crest Adina’s shoulders.
After we order, I lean in to my sister and say, “Beau was checking you out.” Trying to be conversational. Trying to talk to her the way I’d talk to Lindsay.
“Who?”
My stomach twists in annoyance. It was so obvious. “The waiter.”
“Oh,” she says, like she didn’t even notice.
We recite a bracha before we eat, as always, and then my father raps on his water glass with a knife and clears his throat.
“Please don’t make us talk about what we’re thankful for,” Adina says before Aba can say anything.
Aba frowns like that’s exactly what he wanted to do.
“I’m thankful for something,” I say, making eye contact with Aba, showing him I’m on his side, like always. He beams at me. “I’m thankful we didn’t have to go to school yesterday.”
“I’m thankful no one got carsick on the way up,” Ima says.
“I’m thankful your ima convinced me to leave my laptop at home.”
Adina lifts an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything.
I keep it going. “I’m thankful for this salmon, which is delicious.”
“That I’m awake to have dinner with my family.”
“That one of my daughters appreciates Nirvana.”
We all look to Adina. “Okay, okay,” she says, shaking her head like she can’t believe she’s related to us. “Fine. I’m thankful only one of my parents forces us to listen to Nirvana.”
It isn’t very funny, but we laugh anyway.
At the end of the meal, when Beau clears the table, he says, “I hope you enjoyed everything this evening.”
Adina looks up at him from beneath her lashes and smiles with her heart-shaped mouth. “We did. Thank you for taking care of us.” The way she says it, it sounds suggestive.
Two pink spots appear on his cheeks. “Anytime,” he says.
A mix of envy and admiration surges through me. I can’t help it. I wish I had one-tenth of that confidence.
Back in our hotel room, Adina turns on the TV. I’m about to send Zack a photo with the caption CANADIAN TV, but I freeze when Adina gasps and says, “Remember this movie? Oh my God.”
It’s a mediocre romantic comedy from five years ago. A girl and guy are baristas at rival coffee shops, and the girl is a klutz but the guy finds her charming and the guy wasn’t ready for marriage until he met her. The usual clichés. Adina and I are suckers for sappy, unintentionally hilarious movies.
“It’s the part where they try to get each other to fuck up by ordering a really complicated cup of coffee!” I say. “Turn it up.”
“The best part,” Adi agrees, spiking the volume.
“Do you remember,” I say, “when we got kicked out of Mystic Harbor for talking?” It was a tragedy romance with two attractive white people kissing on the movie poster.
“Yes! That was so unfair. Our commentary was more interesting than the movie. I can’t believe—”
“—that the girl was actually her twin sister the entire time? I wish secret twin story lines would go away. There’s no way that happens in real life as much as it does in movies.”
My hand is still on my phone, but after a few minutes, I relax back on the twin bed and prop my head up with a pillow. Maybe this is how we fix us: gradually, while watching a dumb movie.
During a commercial break, Adi says, “You want some candy from the vending machine?” An ad for a knife that can cut through granite plays onscreen.
“Get M&M’s, if they have them.”
When the door clicks shut, I grab my phone, which has been blinking next to me for the past fifteen minutes.
My favorite movie is playing at Rain City Cinema next Sunday. Ever been?
Rain City Cinema is a run-down but well-loved indie theater where audience participation, such as throwing things at the screen, is highly encouraged.
Yeah. Lindsay and I saw Rocky Horror there a few years ago.
I’m gonna kick myself if you say no again, but I guess I’m feeling lucky today. Want to come?
I ball my damp hands into fists and recall my conversation with Lindsay. Zack could be new and scary—but also thrilling.
Sure, that sounds fun.
Awsome, can’t wait.
We make plans to have dinner beforehand, and even though he misspelled “awesome,” I’m grinning when Adi returns with candy.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say quickly, shoving my phone on the bedside table. “Just the movie. What’d you get?”
She spreads her haul on the bed. I snatch the M&M’s and she chooses a bag of jelly beans, both of which are kosher. They’re the types of candy we used to get when we went to the movies together. More accurately: when we sneaked in candy from the drugstore next to the theater.
Adi in pajamas, her long hair in a messy ponytail, carefully picking out all the peach and pear jelly beans because those are her favorites, looks so innocent and childlike. It makes the reality of what will one day happen to her—to her body and her mind—seem more unjust.
She never wanted to know.
“Adina,” I start gently, gently, because I have to acknowledge it if we’re going to move forward. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for forcing you to take the test. That should have been your own personal decision.”
She chews loudly on a jelly bean. “I don’t want to talk about it, Tovah.” But she doesn’t say it in a mean way, and when the movie ends and another one starts, we don’t turn off the TV.
During the opening credits, after the actor’s names flash onscreen, I say, “I love Camila Rivera’s production design.”
I watch Adi, waiting for her to grin. She does, remembering our game.
“Oh, yeah, and don’t even get me started on Richard Potter’s music supervising,” she adds as his name pops up. “Truly top-notch.”
We used to do this all the time: pretend we knew the crew the same way we’d know the actors.
“They got Yvonne St. James to do the casting? She’s my favorite!”
We’re both laughing now. The game reminds me that for most of our lives, we were inseparable. Our parents begged the school to put us in different third-grade classes because they thought it would be a good idea to get us out of our comfort zones. By the end of the first week, I’d made three new friends and Adi had cried twice. So back I went into her class, where I had an automatic partner for every classroom activity, group project, and presidential fitness test, which we both failed because we couldn’t touch our toes with our fingertips.
After a while, we fall back into relative silence. We don’t talk about college or boys or any of the things I talk about with Lindsay. Every commercial break, I want to interrogate her. Who were you texting all day? How are your conservatory applications coming? When are you coming back to synagogue, and what do you do when you’re not there? How are you doing with all this? Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?
But I don’t. I keep the questions locked inside because even though we only open our mouths to make fun of a particularly cliché line of dialogue, Adina and I never have this anymore. In a few days we’ll be back at home, but for now it’s just me and her, and I let myself pretend this can last longer than tonight. That we can have this when our futures turn real again.