You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone

“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 mus

ic 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.”