Seventeen
Adina
I SHOULD FEEL GUILTY ABOUT eavesdropping at showcase rehearsal, but I don’t. In fact, I wish everyone would whisper so I wouldn’t have to hear their conversations.
“You’re totally getting into Juilliard,” says one girl to another as she tunes her violin. “Is it okay if I hate you a little?”
“Shut up. I doubt I’ll even get an audition.”
“You will. I’ll be lucky if I get into Cornish.”
Hattie Woo plays violin in the youth symphony, and Meena Liebeskind plays viola. We traded hellos when I came in, but we are not tied together by the strings we decided long ago to devote our lives to. Conservatory spots are limited, and we must fight for them.
“Have you gotten any auditions yet, Adina?” Meena asks me.
They are so conceited, I decide to lie. “Yes.”
Hattie shakes her head, her long black braid whipping back and forth. “She’s lying. None of the schools have started auditions yet.”
I get to my feet, unintentionally aiming my bow at her. “Are you sure about that?” I challenge, and Hattie shrinks back, questioning whether she believes me.
The greenroom is nothing special, a few couches and chairs, a long mirror smudged with makeup, a wall of photos of past conductors and principal musicians. It’s not at all like the grand symphony itself, with its chandeliers and deep red seats and balconies stacked toward the sky.
Later tonight, Arjun is cooking me dinner, which makes what is happening between us feel more real. Arjun and rehearsal are the only things keeping my mind from straying back to where it wandered a few nights ago. Because of Ima, I have been forced to think about death more than most people my age, but I’d never considered ending my life as a solution to anything. I’ve tried to dismiss the terrifying spark of an idea: I was tired. I was distraught after talking to Ima. I was depressed after watching those videos. I’ve shut it in a drawer and locked it away between folds of my brain, but it’s still there. I cannot unthink it.
“Adina Siegel?” a small man dressed all in black calls from the greenroom entrance. Boris Bialik, whom I auditioned for to earn this spot. I give him a weak smile and wave, the evil-eye bracelet winking at him from my wrist. “Pleasure to see you again.”
From his clipped tone, it sounds as though seeing me again is more of a hassle than a pleasure. He is sour because I skipped rehearsal after my test results.
“Thank you,” I say, getting to my feet and making sure my posture is straight. “I’ve been looking forward to this show.”
“We invite luminaries from conservatories across the country to this showcase,” Boris Bialik says. “You could very well be playing for your future professors. Commitment is crucial.”
I feel my face flush, like I am being challenged to prove myself. “I certainly hope so. I have never been more committed to anything than viola.”
He peeks at his watch, which is studded with diamonds. “Laurel is waiting for you.”
Thanking him, I head toward the stage, my muscles wound tighter than the tuning pegs on my viola. I’ve had strict teachers and conductors and music directors, but his words have put me on edge.
Laurel’s handshake is a tight, quick squeeze. Everyone in the showcase is under twenty-five, and she looks to be around exactly that age. It is my first time rehearsing with a pianist.
“Boris gives all the newbies a rough time,” she says. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”
I let out a breath, allow myself to relax a little. “Good to know. Thanks.”
Laurel positions herself on the cushion behind the baby grand and opens her sheet music. “This piece is one of my favorites of Debussy’s. Should we see how it goes?”
I tuck my viola under my chin and stretch out the fingers on my left hand one by one. They are a little stiff, but I’m sure they’ll warm up. The first time I performed on this stage with the youth symphony, I couldn’t believe how much larger it was compared to the middle and high school auditoriums I’d played on in the past. This is my first time standing on it—the way Arjun has me do during lessons. When I’m onstage with an orchestra, I’m seated in front, other musicians surrounding me. I am not the star. In a couple weeks these empty seats will be filled with people watching me, expecting me to create something brilliant.
Laurel is skilled, but not too showy. She knows exactly how to highlight the viola, because that is exactly what this piece is about. Soft, sweet notes pour from my instrument, and the beauty of it lifts my spirit. Très calme et doucement expressif. I can do this. I pull the song tight around me, shutting out everything wrong and bad.
But then my finger slips.
I have the piece memorized, but suddenly I have to think hard about what comes next, as though the notes are not imprinted in my muscles, trapped in my fingerprints. No. I can’t let the song get away from me—but it’s already drifting, my memory fuzzing, my fingers lost. I stumble over an entire measure, then skip two more, and Laurel trips over her keys to catch up to me.
The piano stops, and that’s when I realize my chest is tight and my throat is dry and I’m sucking in deep lungfuls of air.
“Adina?” Laurel says. “Adina, are you all right?”
I put a hand to my chest, my heart banging against my palm. “Yes. I got a little light-headed, I guess.”
Maureen’s words come back to me. We’ll be keeping a close eye on you. There’s no way I’m exhibiting symptoms this early. I’m just anxious. That has to be it.
“Do you need the music?” Laurel asks.
“This never happens. I swear I know the song.” I don’t have the time to be anything less than perfect.
“Being up here does things to people sometimes. It’s no problem at all. Why don’t you get some water, and then we’ll pick it back up whenever you’re ready?”
“Water would be good,” I mumble. In the wings of the stage, Boris Bialik has his arms folded across his chest.
Hattie and Meena are waiting in the greenroom as I hold a paper cup beneath a water cooler. “Stage fright?” Hattie asks.
“That’s a shame,” Meena says.
I simply nod, hoping with my whole heart that’s all it is.
Arjun refills our wineglasses with garnet-colored liquid and joins me back at his dining table. Rachmaninoff streams from his top-of-the-line speaker system, and I’m woozy from the wine, the kitchen blurred around the edges. The speakers are, undoubtedly, the most expensive thing in this room. It’s an old apartment. Later, I’ll tell him he should ask his manager about getting the stove fixed so more than one of the burners work.
When Arjun asked how I played, I lied that it went well and hoped he wouldn’t notice the heat on my cheeks. Lately I have been dreaming in Debussy; I cannot believe I needed the sheet music to finish the piece. That can’t happen on New Year’s Eve.
“That was incredible.” I gesture to my empty plate. He made an eggplant curry so spicy it made my eyes water. “Thank you.”
“I don’t cook for people much,” he says. “Don’t usually have the time. Or the space to have a lot of people over. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“Do you always cook vegetarian? I don’t mind at all. I’m just curious.”
“Sometimes. I grew up vegetarian, but I cheat now that I’m in the States. You keep kosher, right?”
“My family does, but I don’t. I stopped when my mom—you know. It didn’t seem important anymore.”
He nods, and when he turns his upper body to me, I close the space between our chairs and rest my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. Tonight he is wearing fitted jeans, a gray long-sleeved thermal, and plain white socks, so much more casual than when we meet for lessons. I prefer him the other way, with his starched collars and wool sweaters and argyle socks. But if this is what he wears when no one else is around, I wonder what it means that he’s dressed this way for me.
Here at his kitchen table, on a night I don’t have a lesson, I feel like his girlfriend. And I realize . . . I want to be his girlfriend. I want to hold hands on the city bus and try new restaurants. I want to go to a coffee shop and drink lattes and kiss the foam off each other’s lips. I want to walk around his apartment in nothing but my underwear and one of his collared shirts.
I want. Two simple words that contain every note of every song I’ve played for him, every second I’ve lain awake at night imagining us together. I want, I want, I want. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to have?
“Do you want to go out somewhere?” I ask. “We could go to a jazz club, or a movie, or go for a walk around Capitol Hill. . . .”
“You know we can’t.” Gently, he pushes my head off his chest so he can start clearing the table.
“What, every single one of your students is hanging out at the jazz club on a school night?” I wince as I say it. Arjun turns toward the kitchen sink, doesn’t look at me. “I’m sorry.” I scramble to smooth things out between us. “Hey, could you teach me something in Hindi? You speak it, right?”
“Yes, but not everyone in India does. The official language of Gujarat, where I grew up, is Gujarati. That’s what I speak with my family.”
“Teach me something in Gujarati.”
He thinks for a moment and at last turns to face me, a smile on his lips. “Tu sundar che,” he says. “You are beautiful.”
My shoulders relax. We are okay again. “Do you want to learn some Hebrew?”
“I think I know a little. Shalom, kvetch, schlep . . .”
Those words in his voice make me laugh so hard I nearly choke on my wine. “ ‘Kvetch’ and ‘schlep’ are Yiddish. ‘Shalom’ is Hebrew. It means ‘hello,’ or ‘peace.’ You can say, ‘hi, how are you’—shalom, ma shlomech?” He repeats it. “Tov,” I say. My sister’s sometimes-nickname. “Good.”
He returns to the dishes, and again I feel the need to drag him back to me. Sometimes it’s as though he’s playing a mental tug-of-war, weighing whether he wants me here or not.
Maybe he feels sorry for you, taunts a small and horrible voice in the back of my mind.
I shove it away as I get to my feet and explore his kitchen a bit, since I’ve never really been in here. A flyer for the New Year’s Eve showcase is stuck to his fridge with a magnet with a dentist’s sparkling face and phone number on it. Probably free. Curious, I open the refrigerator, not quite sure what I am expecting to find but surprised by what greets me. Leftover ingredients from tonight’s dinner, but not much else: some butter, a third of a tomato, a jar of something called achar.
“Whoa, your milk is seriously expired,” I say with a laugh.
“I guess I eat a lot of takeout,” he says sheepishly, and it makes me jealous. I suppose when you live alone, you can fill your fridge with whatever you want.
“Do you want to toss this out?”
“I’ll get it later.”
I close the fridge and lean against the counter next to him. “What was it like, growing up in India? In Gujarat?”
A few moments of quiet pass before he speaks. “I was born in Ahmedabad. That’s the largest city in Gujarat. Have I told you about all the stray dogs there?” When I shake my head, he dries his hands on a towel and continues: “There are so many. They’re so, so skinny, and some of them, you can see their ribs jutting out. Every morning on my walk to school, I’d buy a mango off a street vendor, slice it up with a pocketknife, and feed it to the dogs. One dog used to follow me all the way to school most days, and he’d be there when I got out. Like he was waiting for me. My parents wouldn’t let us have a dog, so I pretended he was mine.”
I picture a young Arjun feeding a dog a mango. “That sounds adorable.” I hook my fingers through the belt loops on his jeans. When I kiss him, I bite down lightly on his bottom lip. It makes him groan deep in his throat. Hopefully he has forgotten my suggestion to venture out into the world. I don’t need that. He is right here.
“Sometimes I forget you’re in high school,” he says. “You don’t seem eighteen at all.”
“Maybe you’re stunted,” I suggest.
“That must be it. I’m stunted, or you’re wise beyond your years.” Then a strange expression comes over his face. “You’re eighteen,” he repeats.
“I believe we’ve established this a number of times.”
“Are you . . . ? I mean, have you . . . ?”
“Have I what?” I tease, though I’m fairly certain I know where this is going.
“Have you had sex before?” And there it is. The words glide out so easily. I always think sleep with, though I’ve never actually slept the entire night next to a guy. “It doesn’t matter to me either way. I just want to know.”
“Yes,” I tell him. Eitan was the first, but he wasn’t the only. Last year at work, a college guy named Pat, a drummer in a shitty punk band, asked me out, and I saw an opportunity to get back the power I’d craved since Eitan left. We didn’t exactly date, but we slept together for a few months, until he quit the music shop to spend a semester in Argentina. He was the second guy to leave me for someplace else, but I wasn’t heartbroken. That time I was smarter. I had told myself it was only physical between us, that we were only together for the time we spent in his room with the door locked, a sock on the knob, his roommate sexiled.
Trying to be coy, I stare up at Arjun from beneath my lashes and pass the question back. “Have you?”
His eyes crinkle at the edges, and he tells me yes, though not condescendingly.
“Good. Glad we got that out of the way.” I pick at my tights, imagining them on the floor of his bedroom. All of a sudden, I’m nervous. I’m not inexperienced, but he has surely done this many more times than I have. I want my performance to impress and astound. In that way, I suppose, it isn’t too different from what I did onstage at the symphony hall earlier today.
“You know, I haven’t heard you play in a while,” I say, stalling for time.
“You mean, since you eavesdropped on me?” He quirks an eyebrow in jest, and I try to look apologetic. “I’ll play if you will.”
“A duet?” If I play flawlessly tonight, perhaps it’ll cancel out my performance this afternoon.
“Why not?”
I follow him into the studio, where he sets up two music stands, takes out his own viola, and pages through a book. We find a Mozart piece that starts languidly. The first few minutes, I try not to watch him. As the concerto builds, I allow myself a peek. He’s sawing back and forth on his viola like he’s about to break it.
His gaze is full of an energy I’ve never seen before. It’s raw and rich and makes me feel alive, something I’ve desperately needed to feel lately. By the end of the concerto, we’re both breathing hard. I have more than canceled out my rehearsal.
“Another?” I ask, and he shakes his head no. He sets down his viola and grabs mine, too, and then he’s kissing me with more fierceness than ever before.
“Bedroom,” he says, and together we stumble out of the studio and down the hall.
His closet door is slightly ajar, exposing a few crisp collared shirts. Books are stacked on a neat black shelf, and a thick one on his night table has a bookmark stuck inside. I had fantasies of undoing his buttons one by one, but tonight his shirt has none, so I tug it easily over his head. His body is lean, not too muscled—skinnier than I thought he would be, but I don’t mind. I press my hands all over his chest, as though trying to convince myself he is real and this is happening. It is. Oh my God, it is.
Suddenly he pauses, clasps my hands in his. “You’re sure about this?”
And though I have wanted this for so long, I appreciate the question. “One hundred percent.”
He unzips my dress, the fabric slipping away from my skin. Dips his hand into the waistband of my tights. Groaning into his ear, I place my hand over his and guide one, two fingers inside so he can feel how desperate I am for him. I can’t keep standing like this for much longer.
“You said you imagined this before,” he says. “Is this what you pictured?”
“Pretty close,” I manage between breaths. “Is it what you pictured?”
“Almost.” He backs me up until I’m on his bed, on top of his navy sheets, and then he strips off my tights, cups my hips, and puts his head between my legs. I clutch at the sheets, at his hair. I am putty.
“Come back,” I whisper-whine, because I want him to see my face when he makes me fall apart. He laughs at my request, this deep and sexy sound octaves lower than his regular laugh. I drag him up to me, pulling off his pants and boxers, and at last take in all of him. All mine. He reaches into a bedside table drawer and tears open a foil packet, and then there is no going back—we will be two entirely different people to each other from this night on.
He has amplified my senses. I hear the symphony of his breathing, in-out, in-out inoutinoutinoutinout. I taste the salt on his skin, the sweetness from the wine on his tongue. I feel his hair between my fingers. I have never been with someone who cares that it is good for me, too. Someone who isn’t in a rush to send me away. He is more aggressive than the others, which makes me feel like he needs me more than I could have possibly imagined. All this is not happening because he pities me. There’s too much emotion, too much raw need. Still, I want to hear him say it.
“Tell me you want me,” I say next to his ear.
“I’ve always wanted you,” he says with a ragged breath, and maybe I really am made of glass, because I shatter.